Small Business Growing Pains

Starting Doodle Dog as a one-woman show 5 or so odd years ago, was easy. The mission was to get as many customers as possible, and do the best work possible for each and every one of them. At that time, I was creating brand designs, collateral pieces, and websites. I was working with a couple clients at a time and launching about 10 sites per year. As Doodle Dog grew, we became a team of developers, designers and all around creative thinkers, who collectively launch around 50-60 brands and websites per year. As you can imagine, our business model, strategy, process and goals have evolved a bit, which hasn’t come without the experience of some small business growing pains. I meet with business owners everyday, most of whom are in the “5-7 year stretch” and who are experiencing unique challenges of their own, as their business is growing and transforming. I appreciate the fact that our clients feels safe enough to talk about these challenges with me, but recognize the fact that most of them aren’t sharing their experiences with other business owners. So, in the spirit of true transparency (and in hopes that it may be helpful to some of you who may be in a similar stage of business), I wanted to share our goals and challenges with you. Today, our goal is no longer to get as many clients as possible, but simply to work with the right clients. OUR MISSION: To create smile-worthy concepts that capture personalities and inspire brands. To create a lasting product, that will help businesses grow, and to provide an enjoyable experience while doing so. OUR GOALS:

1. To grow our team. We have hired additional “Doodle Doggers” to ensure that we can continue to deliver our caliber of product in our standard time frame.
2. To simplify our process. We have created an intake form (much like our beloved creative brief), called the client content form, this will help clients organize their website content all in one place (as opposed to scattering throughout 20 emails), which will help us ensure that we don’t miss a thing when we are getting your site online! This is a big one for us, as we have found that the biggest challenge in each launch, is making sure we’re using the latest version of copy, photos and links that the client has sent – since it’s never in one place. We know that this will help expedite and streamline the process for all of us.
3. To inspire additional confidence in each of our clients online and off. With every new launch we see the value in the promotion of the new site and/or brand on our blog, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest account and other networks. We understand that this is  a great tool for our clients to gain additional traction and traffic, and will continue to make this a priority. We want each client to get the most out of their new brand and website launch, so if there is anything we can help you do individually, just let us know!
4. To improve our response time. We understand that as we’ve grown, out response and turnaround time has naturally slowed down a bit.  To speed up response time, we have built a support system into our own site, to help answer some of your questions without always having to wait for an email response. This is a great starting place to look for an answer to your question and receive an immediate response, if one of our other clients has already had the same question in the past. We plan to continue to grow this database of questions to help provide you quick and easy support. This database will contain answers to simple questions and directions on simple updates, but email will still be the best path to follow for more complex questions or updates that you may have.

As any small business owner can attest – each stage of business growth comes with its own challenges, failures and successes.  From staffing and organizational challenges to technology, policies and procedural challenges, most businesses have been forced to overcome one or another. We hope that in writing this post, you will see that you are not alone as a small business owner who is tackling challenges everyday. Thank you to all of our clients, potential clients, and followers for helping us evolve to what we are today and what we will continue to grow to be! – Nikki