Kill the Translation Tax.

ok so we need to put together a proposal for nordstrom — i think marcus talked to their marketing director last week?? or was it operations. anyway they want a "brand refresh" whatever that means, budget is like somewhere between 150-300k they said something like that.

we do websites and visual identity and maybe some strategy. timeline theyre thinking Q3 but thats just vibes. need to send something by friday. last proposal we did was for like a restaurant chain so probably not the same format lol

so we keep saying our ICP is "mid size B2B companies" but honestly i dont know anymore. we got a great client last month — healthcare tech startup, 40 employees, super fast decision maker, paid on time, referred two others.

but also we work with big enterprise sometimes and those projects are big money but sooo slow and painful. also had this agency client that was a nightmare. trying to figure out who we should actually be going after

meeting notes from tuesday call with priya at Luminary Group. she talked a lot about wanting things to "feel premium" and mentioned competitors like twice. also mentioned something about their rebrand 2 years ago that apparently didnt go well — sounded like internal politics?

she said the CEO has strong opinions. budget came up and she kind of dodged it. seems excited but nervous. oh and she said shes been burned before by agencies that "dont listen". rambled about sustainability values for like 10 mins. team of 35.

need to email the client about the delay on their logo files. basically our designer got sick and we're behind by like a week. they were expecting stuff thursday but its not gonna happen.

also we want to ask them about the colors they said they'd send us like 2 weeks ago and still havent. and can they confirm the kickoff meeting for next wednesday at 2pm. trying not to sound like its our fault even tho maybe it kind of is

ok so i have to tell marcus tomorrow that his work has been slipping. like the last 3 projects he's been late and the quality isnt what it used to be. someone on the team mentioned he seems checked out.

hes been here 3 years and i dont want to lose him but this cant keep going. also last month he asked for a raise and i kind of said maybe. now i have to have this conversation and i dont know how to start it without it turning into a whole thing

ok so we're presenting to the board of a mid size fintech on friday and we have like 45 mins. we want to cover: our agency background, the discovery findings (user research, competitor stuff, some analytics), then the strategy we're recommending (positioning + website direction), and then pricing options.

i dont want it to feel like a sales pitch but we also need them to approve the next phase. we have like 20 slides worth of content maybe more. feeling overwhelmed

hi! so we need a website for our new product launch. it should look modern and have like animations? we want people to be able to sign up for a waitlist. also maybe a blog?

and we need it by end of next month. budget is flexible but not crazy. let me know what you think!

— sarah

website project for claire's company starts april 7. they want it done by june and they said june 30 is a hard deadline for some reason. we need to do discovery then wireframes then design then dev and also copywriting which they're doing themselves.

we have 2 designers and one dev. dev said he needs at least 4 weeks. discovery usually takes us 2 weeks. not sure how much time for design but its a full site like 8 pages. also client is slow to respond sometimes

hey here's the creative brief from the client lol. "we want to revitalize our digital presence with a fresh modern aesthetic that connects with our core audience while staying true to our heritage brand values. the new website should feel dynamic and accessible and convey trust and innovation simultaneously. we see ourselves as the apple of our industry."

thats basically it. they also said no white backgrounds. i have no idea what they actually want and our kickoff is thursday

project for terraline corp. main contact is jessica but she cc's her boss david on everything and he sometimes replies with completely different opinions. IT has to sign off apparently.

also the marketing coordinator amy sends a lot of feedback but i think she might just be passing along what someone else says. legal reviewed the last round and made us change like 4 things. theres a board presentation in may that our work might be shown at. not sure who the final approver is

so the client keeps saying the website "just doesn't feel right" and they want it to be "more exciting" but every time we present something they say it's not quite it. we've done 3 rounds now.

i think the problem is the copy isnt engaging but my partner thinks its the layout and our junior designer thinks we need more color. the client said they showed it to a friend who said it looked "corporate." im losing my mind a little bit

ok so from thursdays call: sarah is going to send over the brand guidelines sometime next week. we need to finalize the homepage copy before we can move forward with design. tom said he'd talk to the tech team about the CMS situation.

also we need to set up a review call — i think we said maybe the week after next? client wanted us to look into whether we can add the video section they mentioned. and someone needs to send the contract revision to legal. i think that was on us but maybe marcus?? super unclear

so much has changed in this project and i can barely keep track. we changed the color palette in week 3 because the client said teal was too close to a competitor. we decided to go with wordpress over webflow because the client's IT team wanted it. the navigation got simplified after the CEO saw it and hated the mega menu.

and then last week they asked if we could bring back teal "just a little" and we said yes??? i think. also someone approved the logo but i dont know who

trying to write the weekly status update for the client. ok so design is basically done except we're waiting on the homepage hero image and the footer needs work. dev started last monday but hit a snag with the form integrations — apparently their CRM is old and the API is weird.

we're still on track for the overall deadline but maybe not for the mid point check. copy is done. the client owes us feedback on the about page from 2 weeks ago. and we probably need 2 more weeks not 1 for dev

website is basically done. it's a 5-page marketing site, responsive, has a contact form and stripe payment.

check that it works i guess. make sure nothing is broken. client is picky about fonts and the logo should be right.

mobile matters a lot for this one.

we have a really big client launch coming up in 6 weeks and im starting to stress. the client keeps adding stuff ("can we add a blog? and an events page?") and we've kind of just been saying yes. our dev is also working on two other projects.

the client hasnt sent final copy yet. we built on a platform theyve never used before. their IT team is new and we haven't really talked to them yet. also we promised a multilingual option and i dont think we scoped that correctly

things keep getting stuck and i cant figure out why. like design cant move until we have copy but copy is waiting on the brand strategy but brand strategy is waiting on the stakeholder interviews which havent been scheduled yet because the client keeps rescheduling.

also dev is ready to start but technically needs the designs first obviously. and the logo has to be done before we can finalize any of the design. client is also supposed to give us access to their hosting but they forgot. im pulling my hair out

we're supposed to launch the website in 4 days and im trying to figure out if we're actually ready. dev says its done but i havent checked all the pages. we still need to test the contact form. i think we need to redirect the old URLs but i'm not sure which ones.

client hasn't confirmed they're happy with the content on the about page. not sure if google analytics is set up. also we promised the client a tutorial on how to update the blog and we haven't done that yet. SSL cert thing? not sure.

just finished the brandco project and it was a lot. started ok but then we hit delays because of the logo — client kept changing their mind like 5 times. that pushed everything back. dev had to crunch at the end which was stressful and he's annoyed.

client seemed happy at launch but we went over budget by like 20% and i dont think we charged them for the extra logo rounds. the team is kind of burned out. i want to do a postmortem but dont really know how to structure this conversation

need to hand off the atlas project to the client tomorrow and trying to figure out what to give them. its a wordpress site. they have a blog section they'll be updating. we used a few plugins — woocommerce, yoast, a slider thing called smartslider3, and a contact form plugin.

there are two admin accounts i need to tell them about. we have a staging environment they should know about. and some things are kind of custom built that might be confusing. the client is not super technical

been thinking about this for a while — i feel like we're always busy but not always making money. we have 6 people and last quarter we did about 380k in revenue. some projects went over budget. we spend a lot of time in meetings.

proposals take forever to write. we use slack, notion, figma, harvest, asana, and gsuite and honestly i dont think we use most of them right. certain clients take way more time than they should. i want to figure out where we're actually losing time and money

my partner keeps saying we should be using AI more but honestly i dont even know where to start. we do branding and web design. we're a team of 5. some stuff we do feels repetitive — like writing proposals, writing creative briefs, doing competitive analysis, that kind of thing.

we also spend a lot of time in early-stage client calls trying to figure out what they actually want. im not against AI i just dont know what actually makes sense for an agency like us vs what's just hype