7 Reasons to Fire a Designer
3 Website Types and Red Flags for Firing a Designer
I fired a designer after about nine months because the warning signs piled up, including misaligned goals, missed timelines, radio silence, constant complaining and copied work. The work started excellent, but by the end I was losing sleep over poor communication, project delays and angry clients, and a stolen design stopped a launch.
Blaze here for Week 8,
I’m growing fast. The struggles with studio positioning and hires are real. Here are my notes that you can learn from:
3 categories of websites
| Website type | Trait 1 | Trait 2 | Trait 3 | When you're positioned here |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Performance Website | Emphasizes metrics like conversion rates and average order value | Streamlines the buyer path as much as possible | Typically doesn’t need strong brand guidelines | You are positioned here if results are what sell your product or services. |
| The Brand Experience Website | Prioritizes the emotion and lasting impression left on the user | Relies heavily on high-quality, asset-rich content | Needs to have strong brand guidelines | You are positioned here if your website is used for a highly engaged audience |
| The Hybrid Website (This is where Shovel is positioned) | A strategic blend of performance and brand experience | Reliant on a design system combined with high-quality assets | Needs to have strong brand guidelines | You are positioned here if aesthetics and history are what sell your product or services |
I have a full YouTube video with examples on these categories here
Firing a designer
I have no FT employees, only contractors I have consistent relationships with and sometimes retainers for. There was a designer working project-to-project with me for the last ~9 months.
At the beginning the work was excellent. Turnarounds were timely, a process was defined, and we had a happy client.
By the end of the relationship I was losing sleep from the lack of communication, project delays, and angry clients.
A bad hire doesn’t just slow your business down. They inherently make your life worse. These are the red flags we can look out for going forward:
Your foot is on the gas to expand and grow. Their foot is slowly moving off the gas to relax and have work/life balance.
I support being able to have time off of work, because that contributes to work, but where I’m at in life right now, I can’t risk taking a full month off projects when I get a big paycheck. Goals need to be aligned from the beginning.
Giving the benefit of the doubt too often
It's fine to be strict. Telling someone that their actions are not okay helps everyone in the long run. When stress is created from the person you hire, that's something they don’t get a pass on. Ditching a project to leave me with an angry client shouldn’t get a pass.
Being untimely
We’re paid to be at a specific spot at a specific time. When you sign a contract with a client, you’re often obliged to work around their timezone.
Radio silence
Not responding is understandable when messaging is out of hand and being spammed. If it's out of pure laziness over a 2-minute follow-up, that's not cool.
Reoccurring emergencies with convenient timing
From the employer's POV, the best thing you can do is be understanding about this, but you have to communicate that there’s a timeline that's being affected. FT employees can get more of a pass with this stuff, but contractors will have to bite the bullet on any deductions that happen.
The complaint pattern
From my experience, this came from a mix of emotions around payment or personality mismatch. Speaking negatively about a project & client off the onboarding is not a good look. We don't have to be infatuated with everything we do. But we do have to problem-solve to find a solution if something is wrong. It's fucking miserable when you’re working with someone who shit-talks everything with no proposal to a fix.
Stealing work
Yeah, this happened. I went to bed one night 2 clicks away from launching a sick website. Then I woke up to a text from my developer saying that the design is 1:1 to another website I’ve never seen before. This stopped the launch and had me actively redesigning it just enough to feel bespoke. As a design studio, you need to stand on original work. This design hire doesn’t feel the damage the client or I would have gotten.
Ideal life positioning and habits that create it
Before I created Shovel, I started with the image of my perfect life. Down to exactly what I’m seeing, feeling, and smelling on a daily basis. With that end goal in mind, it’s much more clear to map goals that will eventually get me there.
There are actual numbers you can *try* to calculate that will support this life. If I want my own 1400sq ft house next to a body of water, there's going to be a monetary cost for that.
If I want 20-hour weeks for work and 40-hour weeks for family when I’m 35, my business needs to be built in a way to support & grow itself.
Does design & development get me there? It can, but not by only working directly in my projects. There are better people and systems that can help me with that.
There’s also a lot of consideration around a pivot of Shovel. Do I lean more into content services? Do I learn more into content sponsors? Do I lean more into strategy? Do I just start a new brand? Am I just overthinking because life is good now?
Before any of those decisions are made, I’m fully understanding the trade-offs before I commit.
Spending multiple thousands of dollars to someone who’s helped multiple people figure out these questions is worthwhile. Why is it normal to drop $25k on a university with professors out of industry, but it gets missed to give another entrepreneur $5k to learn what’s working right now?
Torrent (new Shovel employee)
Speaking of an ideal life. I’ve always wanted my own dog. To give him the best life possible, we’re spending any bit of free time (even a majority of work time) and will probably drop ~$10,000 on him this year.
Not the best investment from the standpoint of a business lol. He’s been a great challenge and will be even better when he chills out. Right now we’re deep in the puppy-hell phase.
Also, this dude rips on views, and with a good format, we’ve been able to see an interesting user behavior in the dog lifestyle niche.
People seem to be highly invested in this algorithm, to the point where they’re editing meme images in the comments.
To actually make money in this niche, you need to be in the top 5% of creators, but more importantly, find interesting angles on popular formats beyond what everyone else is posting. He’s actually been a good practice on my content skills lol.
722,000 views across 4 pieces of TikTok content.
People I met through content this week
Ryan To - Another legend in the game of content and an agency. I found a lot of similarities between our thought processes on this current social economy.
Last note, I need help
If you have PROVEN design system experience and are open to a small (1-week-long) project. Please email me!
This isn’t a massive project. I have about a $400 budget. It's likely a full day or two of work from my estimation.
Take care
Feel free to reply to this email with any recommendations you may find valuable here.
Talk next week! - Blaze
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