We Totally Revamped Our 18 Year Process and it Rocks

March 1, 2024

If you’ve been following along this last year, you know that MayeCreate is on a full on journey to operate in a way that meets our values, both as a team and as individuals. 

We transitioned to a four day workweek after testing it out in May and that amazing feat was years in the making. To work less and not get paid less meant we had to reevaluate nearly everything we did.

But we were still stuck in the office 5 days a week. 

So we took a step back to the one thing we held onto like a lifeline though it all. Something we had nursed like a baby and developed through 18 years of hard work.

Our account service process.

I remember sitting in my office and looking at Stacy and shaking my head saying, “It’s the only thing left, so it has to be wrong, I don’t know how to fix it but we can’t leave it like it is. It just doesn’t work.”

And after many discussions we birthed a whole new brainchild that’s even better than the last, one that creates better websites, faster, with less mistakes, that meets our current version of success.

Let’s start at the beginning…

(Yes, I’m going all Sound of Music on you.)

In 2005 we built our first website as a company. And at that time we used a creative process very similar to the one we have now:

Download Our Process

Ok so that’s a gross oversimplification of things but you get my drift. Start with planning, do the work and then put the site where everyone can see it.

For at least the last 13 years we’ve built sites on a 3 month timeline, spacing the steps out over time so we could keep workflow even and give clients time to meet their deadlines.

Our goal was to finish our projects with what we call the “Joanna Gains Experience”, an epic reveal of the perfect space for people to gather and learn about your company…

And people weren’t excited about the site being done. Everyone was just happy they didn’t have to deal with it anymore. We were all exhausted (client’s included).

And to add insult to injury the template we’d build 8 months ago was going to be out of date in another 8 months.

Perfect. (That was sarcasm.)

Dang you must think we really suck about now.

But here’s the deal. I’m telling you this from the other side of the battle. 

We knew it wasn’t easy to drag everyone through the process of building a site (especially a really big one) and we kept adjusting everything we could think of to make it easier.

And you know who it was ultimately the hardest on? 

Our project managers. 

Those folks are the glue that keep us all together and they were buried under little boxes to check to make sure we got everything just right. 

We hired them assistants. And that worked for a while. 

We hired a traffic manager. That seemed to lighten the load.

We even bought chocolates for clients after the site launched!

We thought by adding support and treats we could do more work, make everyone happy, give everyone raises and be more efficient. And instead we didn’t make any more profit than we did with our smaller team and it felt like we were babysitting adults while creating more hoops to jump through.  

Wha wah waaaaaaaaa.

So back to that scene in my office. The one where I look at Stacy, shaking my head saying, “It’s the only thing left, so it has to be wrong…[blah] [blah] [blah]…”

We asked ourselves, “What’s the thing we hate the most about the process?”

And we both said, “It feels like it takes FOREVER!! And by the end we can’t even remember what’s going on.”

See Stacy and I are women of action and we like to take a project and GET. IT. DONE.

Spreading out projects for months made us nuts! And nothing demotivates us more than red tape.

So Stacy said, “We should shorten it to weeks, not months.” 🤯

If we could do it quickly, then everyone could remember what they were supposed to remember. And we could have less meetings and less red tape and get it done, making it more efficient and profitable. Plus everyone would still be excited about it in the end…

But that thought was also scary. 

What would we do if someone canceled and no one else was ready to go? 

How would we keep busy?

It will not surprise you at all that the next thing that happened was Stacy made a big flow chart.

She mapped out how it could work, what questions we needed to answer for ourselves to know if someone could even fit into this process. Because not everyone could fit into a faster process. Some websites are too complex or large to build in a fast turn quickly.

She mapped the time it could take from 3-5 months to 3-5 weeks.

One of the big things that had to change was client due dates.

In the past we gave clients a little over a month to deliver their text and images (assuming we were not writing it) after the creative meeting. To do the site in 3-5 weeks, they would have to give us that content before we started the process. Would they be willing to do that?

We decided we would share our Better than DIY Website Program page planning and writing modules with our clients to make writing faster and easier for them. We felt like if they started with a bit of training they’d feel more comfortable and in control during the writing process so they’d be less likely to procrastinate. 

Once we thought through all the ways this new plan could go wrong and created contingency plans we decided to test it. So Stacy contacted three clients who she knew would take the leap with us, very clearly indicating it was a new process and it might not go perfectly. 

The clients were pumped about being paying guinea pigs. They loved the idea of a faster build time. And were OK with their new due dates as well.

We met with the design team.

Our team would now have a tighter turn around. We would take 4 days to turn around what we’d usually schedule over 2 weeks. So we worked together to document what that new turn time would look like. We decided contracted websites work would have to take priority and be done at the beginning of the week so it could be reviewed, revised and delivered to the client by the end of the week.

Okay, so we’ve been doing it for a little while. How’s it going?

After 9 months we’re rating the new process as awesome.

Why the heck are we even writing about this?

Because sometimes doing things the same way that you’ve always done them can block your path to going where you want to go. The way you did them before was right then. And it worked up until this point. But sometimes we have to evaluate the things we hold onto the tightest to find what’s really holding us back.

We had to literally go back to something that was at the core and the very beginning of our business and reevaluate it. So if you’re in that position, it’s okay. As long as what you’re doing still fulfills your goals, and aligns with your core values now, it’s working for you…but if it’s not, then even things that scare you can turn out OK, maybe even turn out awesome, if you’re willing to give them a try.