by Joseph Graves | Jan 4, 2014 | 30 Day Blog Challenge
You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
You may find yourself in another part of the world
You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife
You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
-Once in a lifetime, Talking Heads
I had been in the homebuilding and remodeling business for nearly 20 years prior to taking over Workshed. I had the wonderful opportunity to grow from a kid working as a laborer to the CEO (I use that term reluctantly) of a four million dollar a year business employing designers, project managers, carpenters and office staff. We were pretty successful- winning awards while building a portfolio full of really cool projects. We had a great reputation and a long list of happy clients.
One of the cool homes I built
Through this experience, I found that what I really loved was creating the processes that allowed my talented team to do what they do- design and build at a high level. Putting a solid structure in place helped them work together seamlessly which resulted in happier employees, happier clients and smoother projects.
Then, as we all know, the market cratered. There weren’t enough projects to keep my team busy so we had to let them go. It sucked. It really sucked. All that hard work seemed to be for nothing.
I began to think about pursuing something new where I could apply my passion for process and working with creative folks.
Which brings us to Workshed.
Joe and I had wanted to work together for several years and were looking for the right fit. When we heard that Workshed was available we were immediately intrigued. Both of us believe passionately in building a strong local economy (which requires healthy local businesses) and love solving problems. We felt that we understood the needs of the small businesses that Workshed serves and that we could have a positive impact- so we took the plunge.
Some people may wonder what a “construction guy” is doing with a website company. Well, I’m not really a construction guy and Workshed isn’t just a website company. My true passion is improving businesses and that is the mission of Workshed v2.0. We aim to build a great company that helps other folks build great companies. Building websites is one component of what we do to help businesses, but it’s an outcome of the process of solving a problem, not an end in itself.
My goal is to apply my hard-earned knowledge and skills to help my clients solve problems. It’s what drives me to work at expanding my capabilities into new territories (like how to build an effective website that generates a positive ROI). By working with the brave entrepreneurs who accept the risk of starting a business, I’ve found the perfect avenue for having a positive impact on my community and I’m helping to make the world a better place.
That’s why I got into this business.
by Joseph Graves | Jan 2, 2014 | 30 Day Blog Challenge, Articles
How can we help you?
There. That’s it. It very simply gets to the heart of the matter. Businesses exist to serve the customer’s needs.
Before you try to meet someone’s needs, it helps to know what those needs are. Many businesses (and salespeople) mistakenly assume to know what the needs of their customers are. Maybe they do, but you know what they say about assuming- something about making an ass out of….well you know the rest, so why take the risk?
The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.
–Thomas Berger
Ask and you shall receive! You never know what you might learn from asking questions. At a minimum, you’ll confirm what you thought you knew, but you might just uncover a need you never knew existed.
At Workshed, we like solving problems, and we really like solving problems for our customers.
So how can we help you?
Contact Us
by Joseph Graves | Dec 17, 2013 | Technology, Workshed News
An out of date version of WordPress is one of the primary ways malicious hackers gain access to websites. Updating your site to the latest release is essential, but depending on how your website was built, upgrading to a newer version can come with it’s own set of risks.
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by Joseph Graves | Dec 13, 2013 | Articles, Marketing, Technology
Custom WordPress Themes Are a Bad Idea…
Just because you can do something, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should. There are many things in life we can make from scratch, but don’t simply because it’s not necessary or practical. For example, if I wanted to bake a loaf of bread, I could plant wheat, harvest it a few months later, thresh it, mill it, and mix it with the other ingredients I had to grow. Or, I could just buy freshly milled flour and other quality ingredients from a reputable company and get 99% of the benefit for a fraction of the cost. The same is true of building websites. Sure, we could code every line of HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and php from scratch, but do we really need to? At Workshed, we think not.
It’s been our experience that custom themes for WordPress are expensive…at best. Most of the time they end up being problematic maintenance nightmares, wasting time and money for the duration of their existence. This is not to say that websites should be templates or even that customization isn’t worthwhile, just that it’s what and where you spend your time customizing that matters most.
We prefer to start with a premium framework like Genesis or Thesis and customize from there. Doing this allows us to focus our customization time on things like SEO, content, images and graphics (we are not fans of stock photos), as well as layout and functionality. All of the security, maintenance, and updating is expertly handled by the teams of developers at the theme framework companies; software engineers that focus exclusively on writing excellent code. This delegation of the core functionality means we can focus on the stuff that leads to more sales; things like creating content that makes your phone ring with new orders.
A full custom, built from scratch website is fine too, just know it’ll come with a few idiosyncrasies…kind of like owning a vintage British sportscar.
Contact us if you want to discuss how we use websites, social media, and our business perspective to grow your business.
Contact Us
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by Joseph Graves | Dec 12, 2013 | Articles, Marketing
Is your marketing working? Is it bringing in the right customers and helping you achieve your business goals?
If not, why?
From what we’ve seen, many small business people are too busy running their businesses to spend time defining their goals. They come to us and ask for a new a website and help with social media. Then hope this new website and some facebook posts will magically bring in more customers and all will be well.
We think there’s more to it than that.
Yes, we can build a great looking website. We can optimize it for search engines and help get your social media infrastructure in place. But none of it will matter much if it isn’t helping you achieve your real business goals.
This is where Workshed is a little different. We don’t just build websites for the sake of it. A website and social media strategy is an outcome of knowing where you want to go. Before we work with you, we get to know your business on a deep level. Marketing is about communication and we can’t effectively communicate your message to the customer you want without knowing who you are, who they are and where you want to go.
How do we define the goals?
First we ask lots of questions. We try not to take anything for granted. We help our clients develop tangible, quantifiable goals. Then we put it all down in writing along with a plan for achieving them. Once we’re in agreement on the plan and the goals, we’re ready to start creating.
Measure, report, adjust. Rinse and repeat.
With the infrastructure created it’s time to execute. Then we measure, report and adjust. We love data. Digital marketing is awesome because you get incredible real time information. This allows us to quickly assess the effectiveness of each component of our marketing and make necessary adjustments promptly.
By continually measuring, reporting and acting on the data you can hit your business goals.
Ready for your marketing to get together with your business goals?
Contact Us
