This week, what’s inspiring Derek Ashauer, a web designer, developer, and founder of Ash Web Studio.
A podcast worth listening to:
I don’t do educational podcasts, I use them as a way to disconnect. I find Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend to be a way to laugh out loud and make fellow dog walkers look at me like I’m crazy.
A concept worth understanding:
If you are making sites for clients, you are giving them a solution not a product. It needs to solve their problems. A site should help their business grow online and the tools that make that happen don’t necessarily matter to your client like it does to you.
A Twitter account worth following:
No idea—I’m still new to Twitter myself.
An article worth reading:
I wrote Designing For Clients Made Easy 17 years ago and it all still holds true, and are ideas I follow to this day. I wrote the article at a time when I worked for a company churning out an incredible number of sites per year. I had at any given time as lead designer 50-60 projects ongoing at once. Doing those design consults with clients was something I had done so many times it became repetitive and felt like I had it down to a science, and felt like I could help some others by writing it. My favorite part is the ‘Be A Pro’ section as it helps me each and every day. If a client simply trusts you, they won’t nickel and dime you with silly requests that eat up time that could be better spent elsewhere growing and building your own business.
A habit worth forming:
Break things down into their smallest pieces as you can. When I feel overwhelmed, I find picking out a few small things and just focusing on those one at a time helps me feel less overwhelmed and can quickly get back into the swing of things.
© 2023 The Repository, a Words By Birds project
