Josh Guffey Interview

Feb 17 2011

Josh Guffey, Lead Developer of The Pancake Movement, talks about why he left one agency to start another. Josh shares his thoughts on small business and talks about how entrepreneurship compels him.

Links referenced in the show:

The music in the show, Have Mercy — Big Walter Horton, was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley.

Transcription

Josh 00:00:19

Hi. My name is Joshua Guffey. I am lead developer and owner of an agency called The Pancake Movement. And today we’ll be talking about what it’s like to leave your full-time job and go independent: create your own adventure.
That sounds exciting and terrifying, depending on how you look at it.
It’s both.
Ryan 00:00:42

So, wait a minute. You were working for an agency, which sounds like that’s a pretty cushy gig. Why would you leave that to something, you know, working without a net like this?
Josh 00:00:49

It was super comfortable. They loved me, like, it was a good relationship that I had with my previous employer. I left because I wanted to take a risk and do things on my own terms and kind of experiment a little bit more and my technical side of things with my code. So it was kind of like a leap, but it was something that I wanted to get out of my system too.
Okay.
You know?
It’s a stage you’re going through.
It’s a stage I’m going through.
Ryan 00:01:18

Some people buy expensive cars. Some people start their own business.
You know, yeah. Spend a lot of time and money.
Cool. So before… I guess your role’s changed a lot. Was it mostly what you expected to get out of it or were you completely surprised?
Josh 00:01:34

I’m kind of still new into this industry so there were unknown knowns. There were things that they were doing that I had no idea they were doing, you know?
Right.
I didn’t find out until I was doing them on my own. So what was funny is, like, I was getting more involved with project planning at my last job and getting involved earlier in the projects, giving estimates, blah, blah, blah, blah. At the time, you know, I was like, “This doesn’t mean that much,” you know. “This isn’t that interesting to me. This is somebody else’s problem.” And then when I find myself doing that for myself I’m like, “Oh my gosh. Like, this is exactly what they were training me to do and I didn’t realize it.”
Ryan 00:02:14

So what we haven’t mentioned yet is the name of your new agency. So, The Pancake Movement. So you’re lead developer. You want to talk about the team: introduce them; key players?
Josh 00:02:23

So the team is Willie Morris who is our business developer, client manager, and usability design guy.
Friend of the show.
Friend of the show. Good guy. He went to school in Alabama and I grew up and lived in Alabama. So that was kind of an interesting tidbit to find out about him. I would have never expected that. Auburn University, graduate right there. So that’s Willie. We have Brian Benitez: super young designer but he’s extremely talented. Just, like, blows my mind with the stuff he can do. He’s a Photoshop guy; he uses Photoshop and he’s extremely good at making things look really pretty.
Is he responsible for those business cards?
He is. Those business cards made the first page of Dribbble, yeah, which is pretty awesome.
Ryan 00:03:08

That can’t hurt with trying to get a little bit of street cred for your new agency.
Exactly, right? Our business cards are pretty fly.
They’re very nice.
Josh 00:03:17

Let me introduce the last guy: Andy Vitale who is our art director. He’s got experience in teaching design classes, he has experience doing video, and he has a lot of knowledge of how to run a business, which was surprising but it’s helped us out a lot. And me, that rounds out the team; four small.
Just like the A-Team.
The A-Team, exactly. Yeah, so those business cards are pretty fly. They have Spot UV on the back, foil print on the same side as the UV, and Willie found some maple syrup perfume to spray on our cards. It’s pretty cool.
That’s a pretty nice touch.
So if you ever get a business card from any of the Pancake Movement team make sure you smell it.
Doesn’t everyone always?
I know, right? It’ll smell like maple syrup.
Ryan 00:04:09

That’s really cool. I think that might be something worth talking about too. Just the idea that this business card, I mean, you guys could have phoned it in but, of course, as a design agency you put extra, you know, well, I guess not design, you’re a full-stacked agency, right?
Full-stacked, right. Full service.
People would assume that you’d put extra effort into it, however, I don’t know that it’s obvious to everyone what kinds of benefits putting that effort into your marketing can bring you. So, you know, front page of Dribbble, it’s kind of big news, right? Like, a lot of traffic. I assume that you’d check the sources for that.
Yeah, we got a good spike of traffic just from that.
Yeah. So everybody’s trying to figure out, you know, how do I get people to look at my Website? It may not be obvious to say, “Make a better business card.”
Josh 00:04:51

Yeah. I know, right? And then post it on Dribbble. Or allow the agency to post it on Dribbble because, I mean, the agency will get mad cred from that too. So it mutually benefits both. Another thing that you bring up, like, how much time, you know, to spend on your business card, Willie was at a party and I don’t remember. One of these events that he goes to with a bunch of people. He showed somebody one of the business cards and then, you know, told them it smells like maple syrup and they’re like, “What?” They smell the business card. Next thing you know, Willie’s, like, out of business cards. Like, the thing just spread like wildfire. Everybody’s like, “Oh my gosh. Let me see this.” And like, he handed every single business card out, which is pretty cool.
Ryan 00:05:28

And that’s awesome because that’s people saying, you know, “I want your business card.” Because there’s always, you know, like, that guy who’s like, “Hey, take my card, take my card.” It’s like, you haven’t given me any reason to want that yet.
Exactly.
We haven’t had a conversation, but it is a focal conversation starter in and of itself and it’s this nice novelty.
Josh 00:05:45

And then people are walking up to Willie like, “What do you do? Do you make pancakes?” Like, “Explain to me what this Pancake Movement is.”
Yeah.
So it worked. It was very successful.
Very cool.
Yeah. And that’s kind of the idea. We’re a full service agency so we do branding and marketing too. So if we can, you know, market ourselves then figure that out for our clients too, you know?
Right.
Very beneficial.
Ryan 00:06:09

Yeah. I think it’s easy for people to say, “Well, it’s extra important for, you know, an agency to be that clever,” just because I think that’s the assumption, right? That you’re going to be a little cheeky and do something way out there, but I think it’s definitely something just about any business could do. You know, think about, like, MailChimp, for instance. You know, that whole clever twist that they do with the monkey and all the extra little jokes. Otherwise, I mean, e-mail marketing: not a very interesting thing, right? Like, I think it would be easy to phone that in and say, “This is a boring business and people come here because they have to so it’s okay for us to be boring.” But now, you know, thinking about, you know, kind of implicit marketing just because they do clever things with that monkey now we’re talking about them.
Josh 00:06:52

Exactly. Yeah, I mean, they have a beautiful Website on top of that. So, like, the experience of doing that boring thing which is, like, sending an e-mail is pleasant.
Yeah.
And you’ve got, like, those cute little messages like “Three visits from Mexico,” you know? “Hola,” or something like that, you know. Little things that you’re like, “Ah, that’s funny.”
Right.
Combine that with the awesome design and, like, the slick Website, you know. It turns a boring service into something that when we were deciding, you know, “How are we going to send out our newsletter,” the only choice was MailChimp.
Serendipity. Did not know that before the interview.
Yep. Constant Contact? What? No. MailChimp all the way.
Ryan 00:07:35

I’ve never used MailChimp myself, but I always say if I was going to get back…I go through shaky bits if I think I have to do e-mail marketing because I did that for about a year and now it’s like, “I don’t want to touch that.” Although a lot of people think it’s the future, ironically, right?
That’s kind of weird. Didn’t somebody just say that e-mail was dead?
Well, you know, everything’s dead in the future kind of at the same time. It’s the weird circle of life thing.
Yeah.
Like the phoenix: you have to declare it dead before it can be the future.
It has to die and then come back to life.
So with starting up The Pancake Movement, are you guys pretty comfortable, like, do you have more work than you can handle, are you looking for people to help you out, are you looking for clients, or where do you guys find yourselves? It sounds like a lot of people really like what you’re doing and are kind of coming to you. Is that, do you find it’s just basically become a pretty self-sustaining thing or is it really hard to get out there?
Josh 00:08:30

So right now things are going, like, extremely well. We have clients and we, you know, we’re in production with some projects too. So right now things are moving along, you know, at a steady good pace. We might be looking to bring some people on just to help us out if we get super busy.
Okay.
And we’re always looking for clients. One thing I learned is it’s really hard for me to turn down business. So we’ll do what we have to to take people on and if that means growing the business a little bit then yeah, cool.
Ryan 00:09:00

Well, it always seems like it’s, you know, cyclical feast or famine, right? Like, you either have too much work or you’re really nervous about where the next client’s coming from, right?
Josh 00:09:09

Exactly. That’s kind of the whole marketing/advertising route. Maybe even Web development, you know, works the same way. It kind of does, I guess. Yeah. As a solo developer you’d go through the same cyclical pattern: ups and downs. We were talking a couple days ago about this too, about the new economy being small, independent people. And I think that ties, like, nicely into this because, yeah, when you’re in high demands like we are right now you can grow a little bit, you can bring some people on, work in-house, you know, and help you bang this stuff out without growing too big and without paying, you know, too many people on payroll that aren’t doing anything for the next six months. You know what I mean?
Right. Yeah. So it’s a little bit more ad hoc. Maybe, you know, have some sort of, like, loosely coupled relationships, right?
Josh 00:10:00

Exactly, yeah. It’s interesting. I think that’s the future of the economy. The interesting part is going to be, like, taking credit...
Right.
...for those projects when you do do them. You know, if you bring somebody on and then you don’t have enough projects to keep them on, will they be out there saying, you know, “Oh, we also did this Website that The Pancake Movement did too,” you know what I mean?
Ryan 00:10:22

Yeah. Well, maybe there’s something to that though. Like, maybe not saying, I know historically it’s been the agency wants to own that credit, even if they have a freelancer do it for them.
Exactly.
But maybe with things like Dribbble that just has to go away and you have to say, “Well, you know, Pancake Movement was smart enough to use this particular freelancer because they are awesome.”
Yep.
And then in that helping to promote them independently, sure, you might lose a little business to them because odds are, you know, they might have overhead differences where, you know, they can kind of undercut you.
Yeah.
Then you just kind of have to have some sort of relationship where you can trust that they don’t or just know that you let some of it go away because it’s ultimately going to benefit you in the long run.
Josh 00:11:04

Yeah. Or you put in their contract that they can’t talk about it.
I mean, you can but...
No, I’m just kidding.
Right, like who’s going to take that?
I know, I know. Yeah.
Ryan 00:11:13

Right. But, I mean, that’s, well, I mean, you say it as a joke and I know that because I know you, but I think there’s plenty of people that say, “That’s what you do, right? Isn’t that always how it’s worked?”
It is.
Yeah.
Josh 00:11:24

It is how it’s worked. Yep. I’ve had personal experience with that. But I think that part of the new economy will be being more transparent and saying, “This is how we run our company and this is what we believe in.” And we’re not doing these things because we want to be different. No, we’re just being honest and our work will speak for itself. Like, “Oh my gosh. I can’t believe you hired somebody else to do those hand-drawn illustrations of your site.” Like, are you kidding me? We’re a digital agency, you know. “Sorry that the usability and the interface designer doesn’t have awesome illustration chops like this person does over here. So yeah, yeah, we outsourced the illustration, but we found the very best that we could and the end product is awesome. So as long as you’re happy with it, you know, like, roll with it.”
Ryan 00:12:07

Yeah. It’s sort of like, I think it was Jeff Jarvis was talking about the state of, like, news and he had this thing, he’s like, “Do what you do best and then link to the rest.” I mean, this is basically the same kind of thing, right? And it seems like that would be awesome for someone who is thinking about hiring you guys to know that you can put your ego aside for the good of the project.
Josh 00:12:26

Yeah. Exactly. Well, I mean, it’s also me personally. I don’t really have much of an ego.
Or that place where an ego would be.
Yes. Exactly.
Ryan 00:12:38

So you talk about having, you know, a lot of clients and, you know, that’s going very well. Are there any particular projects that are interesting that you want to highlight?
Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve heard of imaneed.
Yeah. Matt Lally: friend of the show.
Josh 00:12:52

Matt Lally, yeah. Willie and Matt are working on, like, a front-end facelift for imaneed.
Yeah.
And so we did that. We had a designer comp up some facelift features and went ahead and I coded out the front end for it. Matt is a really good Ruby on Rails developer so I didn’t get to touch any Ruby, but I did get to do the markup, the CSS, and javascript for the new homepage and stuff. So that will be going live shortly. In addition to that we also are designing the iPhone interface. I don’t know if that’s hush-hush, if I can even talk about that.
You heard it here first.
Yes, you heard it here first.
Unless I have to edit out.
I know. I’m going to have to talk to Willie.
Okay.
A new iPhone application for imaneed is coming out and, yeah. Brian did rock those designs. Like, they look awesome. I think he’s got screenshots on Dribbble. So, yeah, I guess it can’t be too secret.
Very cool. Sounds like fun. Yeah, imaneed, that’s a really neat project.
Indeed. Yeah, I can tell you our designer’s name on Dribbble; you could look it up.
All right.
Notorious USB.
That’s so great.
That’s an awesome handle to have, right?
It is.
If you go check out his page on Dribbble, you’ll see our business cards along with some other stuff. It was nice juicy design work there.
Ryan 00:14:11

So he has his persona online and that strengthens your brand and that’s okay. Like, it’s not like all of a sudden you need a new Dribbble account for “the agency” and everything kind of gets thrown under there. I think that’s really good. I hope a lot of people move towards that more than maybe they are currently.
Well, the company is still a baby.
Right. So maybe later you’ll regret that choice.
Josh 00:14:35

No. No, no, no. Personally, I don’t have a problem with that. Yeah, I mean, he is a member. He’s a partner in the company, so yeah, yeah. Notorious USB. And also JGuffey, you know, like, jguffey.com, my Website. Check it out. No, but in all seriousness, like, I think that there’s enough business in the world, like, that everybody, like, can share. Like, I’m not too worried about; we were talking about that before. There’s not like a scarcity market. You know, we’re just out there to make really cool designs and really cool Websites and applications and branding, so yeah. I mean, there’s always going to be another client.
Right.
You know?
Ryan 00:15:16

Yeah. I think in all sorts of industries, like, that idea of, like, there’s always going to be more. Like, don’t worry, like, most things are less precious than you think they are.
Exactly.
If you’re realistic.
Josh 00:15:29

Yeah. Well, that doesn’t transfer into the way that we treat our actual clients that we have, you know. We’re all about them. But I’m just saying, like, if some fallout happened and, you know, an employee of our company left and, you know, a company followed them that would suck but, yeah, there’s more fish in the sea.
Ryan 00:15:51

Right. Well there’s a big difference between, like, trying to hang onto things kind of ruthlessly and then just good customer support where you treat every client like they’re your only client, right?
Josh 00:16:02

Yeah. Well, yeah, definitely. But, I mean, I’m kind of like a personal guy. So, you know, if something wasn’t working out with a client I’d, like, I’d be upfront with them and tell them why it wasn’t working out or if they left me, you know, I’d hope that they would do the same. They’d be like, “Hey, I love your agency, but you cost too much and then we’re going somewhere else.” Like, okay. Cool. That’s an adjustment that we need to make in our business, you know. Our business plan or something like that. But, I mean, I’d hope that that would never be the case because, you know, we’ll be delivering, you know, the quality that we’re charging for. And if we’re not, then something’s really wrong.
Ryan 00:16:40

You know, just thinking about you talking about your work with imaneed raises something that, I don’t know that it’s necessarily intuitive for a lot of people, like, say I’m a developer with no design skills. I know that, I accept that, but I’m living with that. I don’t know that I would think about going to an agency such as yours to handle, you know, the view of my app. I don’t know that that’s things that people, I don’t know if that’s...
Think about?
Right. Because it’s, why do you go to an agency? For the marketing. So you need print work, you need business cards, you go for that. But actually, you know, interface design or actually the front-end development, I don’t know that that’s something that people think about. It certainly isn’t a way that I’ve ever thought of it before until you mentioned it.
Josh 00:17:29

Yeah. It’s kind of odd, right? I think that it’s part of knowing what you do best and what we were talking about before: outsourcing the rest, you know what I mean? And if somebody is, like, an awesome developer, back-end developer, maybe they do need help with the usability side. I mean, you can’t be good at it all, so why not, you know, approach an agency, a small agency is the best for that kind of a thing, and talk about, you know, what you can do? And the thing is, like, it’s not just, you’re not just getting, like, a new Website refresh or something like that. You’re getting consulting too. And the more eyes you have, like, looking at a product, the better it will turn out to be if those people are putting in valuable information. And we try to do that, like, all the time. You know, be like, instead of seeing, okay, so there’s a form with, like, 50 fields on it. And the end goal of the client is, you know, “I’m not getting enough people filling out this form.” Maybe it’s not that the form doesn’t look right. Maybe it’s the fact that it has 50 fields. Like, let’s get to the root of the problem and, you know, find a better way to do this: to, like, to get to your goal.
You got to work out that causation vs. the correlation, right?
Josh 00:18:39

Exactly. And that’s kind of like a hard thing to see if you’re just trying to, like, fly it solo and you’re like, “Ah, I don’t need an agency.” You know what I mean? But you can kind of, like, an agency can help consult those kind of decisions too.
So how does your agency work? Do you try to build, like, long-lasting relationships with clients?
That’s the main goal, yeah.
Okay.
Josh 00:19:00

I mean, we like to be, you know, to be agency on record, like, if they have, like, a new product launch. Or even, you know, to maintain what we build for them. So when we push out, we’re working on another e-commerce site for a tennis apparel brand that we’re actually, like, developing the brand and the Website and everything for. Even after we finish with that, I mean, I don’t want to, you know, dust my hands off and walk away from that at all. I want to be there, you know, to maybe put their newsletters together. You know, and help them grow their business even after, you know, the site launches and they’re selling and making money.
Ryan 00:19:41

Cool. Yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense because there’s, you know, internals of businesses. A lot of times, if you’re going to bring somebody outside just for a short-term thing, it’s really hard to explain. You know, maybe it’s culture or maybe it’s just, you know, business logic that needs to be communicated correctly. Like, it seems like a lot of times that’s the hardest part of starting a new relationship with, you know, like, trying to bring work in. But yeah. If you work really hard at, you know, maintaining those relationships, you know, you can always, you know, sort of, like, skip step 0, right? Why wouldn’t they just stick with who’s already been treating them well when they start a new project?
Josh 00:20:19

Exactly. I mean, the thing is, yeah. Like you’re talking about, learning the new business. Learning the way that your company sells potato chips, you know?
Right.
Like, once you understand, like, the target market and, like, the pros and the cons and the nature of their business (because every business is going to be very different) you might as well stick with them, you know? Like, it saves a lot of time and communication, you know, than trying to get a new agency.
Ryan 00:20:47

It’s always funny too because some people find that really frustrating, like talking about, like, freelancers. Like, “Ah, I just got to learn this business. It’s hard. I just want to make a Website.” But, like, when I was doing more freelance stuff that was always my favorite part. Like, it was like, “Wow.” You know, every day is a new day with a client like that. Trying to figure out what it is that makes them special and how do you highlight that. I think that’s such a fun part of the problem solving.
That’s why we’re in this industry, right?
Right. I would hope so.
Because if we wanted to do the same thing every day we’d just sell paper clips.
Sure.
Josh 00:21:18

Yeah. But yeah, it’s really cool. I mean, it’s why we aren’t, like, I’m saying, like, it’s why we’re in the business, you know, to look at things from a third-party view, you know, separate. So that you can come in with fresh ideas and fresh technology and, you know, invigorate the brand, the company, whatever and help them meet their goals. It’s pretty, like, it’s pretty awesome. That’s, like, a big draw of having an agency and, like, starting my own agency is, like, it’s going to be different every day with every product. And things that you learned from client A or even from promoting yourself, like the maple syrup card incident, you can apply to your clients and help them, like, achieve what they want to achieve.
Ryan 00:22:03

So having taken this plunge to start your own business. Because I know a lot of the listeners from what I’ve heard just running into people, you know, offline. They have either an entrepreneurial streak to them or they’re thinking about it, right? Like, they maybe haven’t taken the plunge but they’re trying to figure out, you know, weighing the pros and cons a little bit. So for that person, a good idea?
Josh 00:22:27

A good idea is to, so, I think we’re being pretty open about this. Yeah. Freelance is definitely like your training wheels to owning your own business. You work all day and then you come home and you stay up all night, you know, doing freelance. But you learn what works and what doesn’t work with a client and you learn how to market yourself and all that stuff. When the tide start shifting to where, like, you’re at work and all you can think about is, like, going home because you’re working on, like, an exciting project or, like, you’re just making, you know, a good amount of money when you’re not at work at your fulltime gig, then you know that the time is coming soon. That it’s about ready to take a plunge. And then one day you just do it. And it’s scary, but it’s exciting at the same time.
Ryan 00:23:21

Cool. So you’d recommend that people do kind of just pull the double shift, you know, more like the moonlighting approach as opposed to just, you know, pulling up stakes and starting something new.
I think that way is a lot less risky to kind of ease into it.
Okay.
Josh 00:23:36

As with anything, you know, instead of just saying, “On this day I’m going to stop my fulltime job and, you know, I don’t have any clients and I don’t have any money saved up and tomorrow I’m going to be independent and wing it.” Like, that’s not really a good idea. You know, you’ll have, like, a very, like, a higher level of success if not only you have some money saved up and you get that from moonlighting or experience that you also get from moonlighting, you know, freelance.
Ryan 00:24:09

That’s good. I think that’s good for people to hear because I think maybe some louder voices say, “No, just quit and do it. If you, you know, if you jump in you’ll learn how to swim. Just trust that.” And it’s like woah, that is terrifying. Especially to anybody who has a mortgage.
Oh yeah.
It doesn’t seem like it’s, I mean, and they say, “Well, you know, the risky advice is the best advice,” or whatever. But it’s good to hear people saying both approaches are how they’ve gotten to where they’re doing okay with. So if somebody just doesn’t feel comfortable with that, then it’s not saying, like, “Well, you have to be comfortable with that or you don’t have a chance.”
Josh 00:24:41

Yeah. Well you have to be kind of like the person that wants to learn things too. And, like, the thing that freelancing will help you the most with is just learning. Like, learning what does and doesn’t work. But, like, overestimating your hours, underestimating your hours. Like, that really hurts. And it really hurts when you’re working fulltime and you told somebody it’s only going to take a month and it’s actually going to take two and you still have to do it in a month anyway. And you go, like, a month without sleeping. Like, those are the hard kind of lessons that you want to learn while you still have a steady paycheck as opposed to, like, when you’re just out on your own. And yeah, yeah. People might say, like, “Aw, it’s riskier just to quit and do it.” It’s not so much, like, people focus on the money a lot. It’s more about the learning process and, like, just getting experience of running your own business. You are running your own business when you’re doing, like, moonlighting when you’re freelancing so the transition’s, like, a lot smoother into it.
Cool. Well I think this is a lot of great information for everybody to kind of chew on. So thanks a lot for your time.
It was good talking to you. I’m going to have to tune into this one.