Creating Remarkable Web Experiences

Interview by Kevin Ohashi of Ohashi Media

Richard Banfield founded FreshTilledSoil.com, a web/user interface design and marketing company, where he is currently the CEO. Richard has worn many hats over the years ranging from dive master to a military officer in South African Defense Force. He also is very active in the local entrepreneurship scene of Boston. Boston is perhaps only second to Silicon Valley in terms of startup culture with some of the world’s leading universities nearby such as The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard. Somewhere in between all these activities he also managed to found multiple companies and attract some of the largest companies in the world as clients.

FreshTilledSoil.com is a new kind of web design company, they don’t simply design an experience, they make it work for their clients and deliver measurable results. They also cater especially to entrepreneurs because they are entrepreneurs as well. Don’t let that fool you though; FreshTilledSoil.com has an impressive list of clients such as General Electric, Harvard University, BlueCross BlueShield, and Boston University among many others. They operate using a hybrid model of development consisting of agile, scrum and rapid prototyping to bring their clients the most engaging user experiences possible.

MO:

As I understand it, you worked full time while running FreshTilledSoil.com on the side. It goes against some of the traditional wisdom espoused by people such as Paul Graham (of YCombinator) that the most important thing is to ‘quit your day job.’ Do you think that is generally correct or do you have any insights from your experience to help other entrepreneurs make that decision? What made you take the leap into becoming a full time entrepreneur and give up your day job?

Richard Banfield:

Like most big decisions in life, there really is never a perfect time to take the leap. No two situations are the same so it’s hard to make up hard and fast rules like Paul Graham has. I do agree that once you have made the decision it’s really important to give it as much of your attention as possible. Whatever you put your attention on is the thing that will return the results to you. So if you’re working part time while starting a business then expect part-time results.
My decision to be an entrepreneur was something I didn’t consider as a trade off between a day-job and starting my own business. For me it was always going to be my own business. My dad was an entrepreneur and I’m a bit of a control freak so it made perfect sense for my personality.

MO:

You are clearly very active in the local entrepreneur scene in terms of attendance and sponsorships. As an entrepreneur I find it is often hardest to quantify the value of attending/participating at an event. How do you evaluate where to spend your time and is it more of a personal interest or a professional one? How do you justify all the participation?

Richard Banfield:

In general we avoid the huge events where there is little chance of actually having focused or intimate conversations with other business owners or decision makers. We select events that have smaller, higher-profile audiences where we can actually have one-on-one conversations with the people attending. My suggestion is to find events where there will be 20 – 50 people that represent your primary customers.
Sponsoring is a different story. If we are sponsoring an event we choose events that are focused on supporting young entrepreneurs. It’s our way of returning the goodwill that was shown to us over the years. Our goal is not necessarily to generate business from these events but that often happens anyway.

MO:

You’ve put together a great team at FreshTilledSoil.com. I can imagine having such an entrepreneurial mindset at the company could encourage people to start their own projects/businesses. How do you first find such talented people and then manage to retain them?

Richard Banfield:

We take our time selecting people that reflect our culture of “work hard, play hard”. Skills can be taught but discipline, energy and smarts are impossible to teach someone. We’ve all become friends so we tend to look out for one another. My favorite moment was when one of my senior guys said “Fridays are my worst day of the week because it means I won’t be seeing the team for a whole two days”.
We’ve retained almost 100% of the people we’ve hired because we return power and authority to each person. We don’t hire ‘delegators’ or middle managers so the buck can’t be passed without someone having to own the outcome. In many ways each person runs their own business because they have so much control and responsibility for the work they do each day.

MO:

As a web design and seo company you mainly work for clients. Do you guys have any of your own websites (besides FreshTilledSoil.com), applications or other projects? If you do, could you tell us a bit about them? If not, how come?

Richard Banfield:

We have several other projects and businesses we either own or have a stake in. From time to time we invest either cash or in-kind services into our clients businesses in exchange for equity or revenue. Right now we have 8 investment businesses including Web-o-Matic and Filings Made Easy. Our model is to find a great CEO to run the business, if one isn’t already in place, and provide them with a combination of service support, weekly mentoring and financial support. It’s very similar to the Y Combinator and Dog Patch Labs models but we have more control over the outcome because we’re the ones providing the web design, search marketing and executive mentoring almost daily.

MO:

Designers and developers seem to have endless stories about how terrible their clients are treating them (See ClientsFromHell.tumblr.com for examples). You call your clients ‘Awesome,’ but you must have had some difficult clients in the past. Could you tell us about how you generally deal with difficult clients?

Richard Banfield:

Lol, love the ClientsFromHell site. No service business is immune from difficult clients but there are things you can do to prevent problems. The first step is to design a very specific work process and take the time to explain it to your clients in detail when you start the project. By setting expectations up-front there will be fewer opportunities for failure. Essentially it’s about communication. Having frequent and honest communication solves problems before they become an issue.

MO:

FreshTilledSoil.com also does Social Media. In my experience it seems like a very hard sell to many older and established companies. The younger companies all seem very engaged but very few seem to use it effectively to actually grow their businesses. How do you deliver value through Social Media for your clients?

Richard Banfield:

We don’t try sell the value of anything to our clients. If they don’t already see how important good web design and social marketing are then there is no point in trying to convince them. If you’re always urging your clients to do things they aren’t comfortable doing then you will be setting yourself up for failure. The best course of action is to show our prospects what we have been able to achieve for other clients and let them make up their minds. In the last 6 years we delivered over 400 projects and every single one of them came as a result of a referral. Good work speaks for itself.