(Style Hatch)*2 It’s official, Style Hatch has now doubled in size.  This week it grew from simply myself to add on Jess Brown as the Director of Customer Experience.  Already he has tackled a killer new setup to handle even faster personal support for all the premium Tumblr themes.  Plus far better documentations is on the way!   In addition to helping everyone out with the themes, as a talented jack-of-all-trades he will work with me on the design and front-end for future Tumblr themes and the upcoming Virb premium theme market. Follow Jess Brown on Tumblr and Twitter, and say hi.

(Style Hatch)*2

It’s official, Style Hatch has now doubled in size.  This week it grew from simply myself to add on Jess Brown as the Director of Customer Experience.  Already he has tackled a killer new setup to handle even faster personal support for all the premium Tumblr themes.  Plus far better documentations is on the way!  

In addition to helping everyone out with the themes, as a talented jack-of-all-trades he will work with me on the design and front-end for future Tumblr themes and the upcoming Virb premium theme market.

Follow Jess Brown on Tumblr and Twitter, and say hi.

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Swell 1.0 Launch & Style Hatch Update Finally, the latest Style Hatch premium theme, Swell is live!  Although the design is a bit more on the simplistic side there is an insane amount of detail that went into the build and overall experience.  Early next week I’ll write up a post going into the details of how I pull off some of the more intense features.  For now, here’s an overview of some of my favorite features: Infinite scrolling & lightbox post view - One of the things I don’t like about most infinite scrolling sites is scrolling down several pages, clicking on a post, and going back to find that I lost where I’m at.  To get around this in Swell I introduced a lightbox style post viewer.  With the viewer the page never has to refresh or update as you’re browsing. Deep linking and browser history - As you’re going through the posts you will notice that the URL updates with post hashbangs (/#!/post/5649171891/water-changes-everything) that allow you to copy and paste the URLs.  Plus this allows for the browser to track your history so that you can use the back / forward buttons. Keyboard shortcuts - Browse the posts by hitting J/K to go next/back and ESC to close the window. Description reveal - Rather than cluttering the page with the site description, recent tweets, liked posts, Flickr posts, etc all of those features are hidden at the top of the site in a reveal.  You can click the top right triangle, about link in the header, or browse to (/#!/about) to see the reveal. Typekit - Like all the other Style Hatch themes this one includes full Typekit support allowing you to set the title, body and UI fonts. Swell Updates After seeing real-world usage of Swell I already have a growing list of tweaks and improvements for the theme.  Most of them are focused on increasing performance so that the theme is lightning fast when hundreds of posts are on the page at once.  Across all the Style Hatch themes I’ve pushed live nearly 100 updates, so this is only the beginning. If you have any questions, ideas or issue email me personally at swell@stylehatch.co.  I always try to get to emails within a day with the exception of weekends and holidays. Giving Back At the beginning of May I decided to start taking a portion of each theme’s sales to give back and help do good in developing countries.  Now, for every 5 themes sold 1 person will be given access to clean water through Charity Water.  At the close of the month I will share more details, including the ability to track and see specific freshwater projects that were made possible through Style Hatch.  I really hope that this doesn’t come across as a marketing gimmick.  Honestly I’m extremely excited to give back to something that makes a real difference.  Already hundreds of people will be helped.  Learn more about what Charity Water is doing—Why Water? The Future of Style Hatch There is a lot going on behind the scenes with Style Hatch right now as I’m working to launch even more premium Tumblr themes and move to other platforms (no plans for Wordpress themes).  On Monday Jess Brown, my first full-time employee, starts working with me at New Ezra and Style Hatch.  His official role will be the director of customer experience which will cover support, outreach, as well as many other things.  The future is extremely bright!

Swell 1.0 Launch & Style Hatch Update

Finally, the latest Style Hatch premium theme, Swell is live!  Although the design is a bit more on the simplistic side there is an insane amount of detail that went into the build and overall experience.  Early next week I’ll write up a post going into the details of how I pull off some of the more intense features.  For now, here’s an overview of some of my favorite features:

  • Infinite scrolling & lightbox post view - One of the things I don’t like about most infinite scrolling sites is scrolling down several pages, clicking on a post, and going back to find that I lost where I’m at.  To get around this in Swell I introduced a lightbox style post viewer.  With the viewer the page never has to refresh or update as you’re browsing.
  • Deep linking and browser history - As you’re going through the posts you will notice that the URL updates with post hashbangs (/#!/post/5649171891/water-changes-everything) that allow you to copy and paste the URLs.  Plus this allows for the browser to track your history so that you can use the back / forward buttons.
  • Keyboard shortcuts - Browse the posts by hitting J/K to go next/back and ESC to close the window.
  • Description reveal - Rather than cluttering the page with the site description, recent tweets, liked posts, Flickr posts, etc all of those features are hidden at the top of the site in a reveal.  You can click the top right triangle, about link in the header, or browse to (/#!/about) to see the reveal.
  • Typekit - Like all the other Style Hatch themes this one includes full Typekit support allowing you to set the title, body and UI fonts.

Swell Updates

After seeing real-world usage of Swell I already have a growing list of tweaks and improvements for the theme.  Most of them are focused on increasing performance so that the theme is lightning fast when hundreds of posts are on the page at once.  Across all the Style Hatch themes I’ve pushed live nearly 100 updates, so this is only the beginning.

If you have any questions, ideas or issue email me personally at swell@stylehatch.co.  I always try to get to emails within a day with the exception of weekends and holidays.

Giving Back

At the beginning of May I decided to start taking a portion of each theme’s sales to give back and help do good in developing countries.  Now, for every 5 themes sold 1 person will be given access to clean water through Charity Water.  At the close of the month I will share more details, including the ability to track and see specific freshwater projects that were made possible through Style Hatch.  I really hope that this doesn’t come across as a marketing gimmick.  Honestly I’m extremely excited to give back to something that makes a real difference.  Already hundreds of people will be helped.  Learn more about what Charity Water is doing—Why Water?

The Future of Style Hatch

There is a lot going on behind the scenes with Style Hatch right now as I’m working to launch even more premium Tumblr themes and move to other platforms (no plans for Wordpress themes).  On Monday Jess Brown, my first full-time employee, starts working with me at New Ezra and Style Hatch.  His official role will be the director of customer experience which will cover support, outreach, as well as many other things.  The future is extremely bright!

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Forget Passion, Focus on Process

Find meaning in what you’re doing. Work to improve your industry. Get joy from making a customer’s day. Surround yourself with the kinds of people and environment that keep you engaged. Figure out the details and day-to-day process that keep you stimulated. Focus on how you execute and making continual improvements. Get off on how you sell, not what you sell.

Process is what motivates me and moves me forward.  Product launches are fun and full of energy, but it the tweaking and refining of the process and customer experience where you will see the most gains.  

Like quality over quantity, put process over passion.

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This week is going to be a good week.  I’m extremely excited to reveal details on all three later this week—especially the ‘giving back’ portion.  Starting yesterday, May 1, a significant portion of every Style Hatch premium Tumblr theme sold goes directly to funding clean water projects across the globe.  For quite some time it has been my goal to integrate giving into each of the companies started under New Ezra, including Style Hatch.  Now it is a reality!

This week is going to be a good week.  I’m extremely excited to reveal details on all three later this week—especially the ‘giving back’ portion.  Starting yesterday, May 1, a significant portion of every Style Hatch premium Tumblr theme sold goes directly to funding clean water projects across the globe.  For quite some time it has been my goal to integrate giving into each of the companies started under New Ezra, including Style Hatch.  Now it is a reality!

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F*ck You. Pay Me

Excellent presentation by Mike Monteiro co-founder of Mule Design and as a guest his lawyer Gabe Levine (follow him on Tumblr) on getting paid for your work.  If you have or ever will do work in exchange for money take the time to watch this 30 minute presentation from Creative Mornings.  If you don’t have the time to watch it now, bookmark it and watch later.

Be specific and confident about money. Money is an incredibly nerve wracking thing to talk about. If you are trying to convince somebody to give you money and that you are the right person to give it to when they’re asking how much something costs and the first thing out of your mouth is “uhhmmmm”.  You just lost $10,000.

If you know how much something cost stand up confidently and tell them. If you don’t know how much something costs then say “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out and get back to you as soon as possible.”  Just be confident.

Here’s my summary from the talk - always use a solid contract, be confident in pricing and negotiations, and hire good advisors.

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“First, if you’re going to start a business, make it your business. Don’t take capital or lose control of the company before it’s even off the ground, because if it fails — most do — you’ll never know if, done your way, it would’ve been a success. It’s relatively easy to get money for a start-up, but usually the founder is risking a lot more: his time.”

Robert Graff, Goldstar
From Bootstrapped, Profitable, & Proud: Goldstar

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Branding and Multipliers

Most companies see brand building as a process of addition, where every touch point adds to the overall experience. They summarize that each point of contact adds to their brand’s overall equity. Yet, branding is not based on the process of addition. It’s based on multiplication. The greatest return doesn’t come from improving the variables with the most value but rather from improving those with the least. In fact, a single point of failure can negate everything.

Excellent post by Mark Gallagher and Laura Savard at Blackcoffee on the nature of a well rounded brand and how a single point of failure can kill the viability of a brand.  The position of brand’s promises or expectations does not equal Customer Support + Quality + Functionality, but rather the equation is better represented as Customer Support x Quality x Functionality.  Score a zero in any of the category and your brand is at risk of loosing all crediblity with consumers.

To be effective, your brand must not only be the best at what it does, it must also improve upon its weakest traits or remove those variables from the equation all together.

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Mission Based Businesses

What comes first at Etsy is the problem/mission. Etsy wants to make life easier and better for people who make things and who want to make money from doing that, either part time or full time. Etsy is about commerce between two people, one who makes something and one who wants to buy it.
- Fred Wilson

If you can manage to cut through all the excess of an idea or business, and get down to the heart of what it really needs to accomplish you’ll be far better off than all the others with formal plans, detailed objectives or funding missing the core mission.  Fred Wilson’s article on Mission Based Businesses is in response to Inc Magazine’s profile of the Etsy founders.

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How Inventables makes a site that inspires exploring

I still remember getting my first Popular Science subscription in the 3rd grade, and every month I would flip to the back pages and dream of the hovercrafts, personal helicopters, and ray guys that I could build by myself with the mail-order assembly guides.  When I found the Inventables site on 37signal’s Signal vs. Noise blog this morning it sparked a similar urge to tinker, experiment and invent.  I have no clue what I could make with hand moldable plastic, skin conductive switches, squishy magnetic gel and glow in the dark thread, but now I’m determined to find a use.

Rather than taking the typical approach for selling scientific materials by listing the crystallisation temperature, viscosity, melt flow index, Inventables created their site to spark inspiration with great product photography, example applications and easy to read descriptions.

It’s a good lesson for anyone who’s trying to compete with bigger competitors. If you’ve got a smaller product mix, you can obsess over these details in a way that big guys can’t. Customers respond to that.

Take the time to read the article on Signal vs. Noise and browse through Inventables.  Both are full of lessons that can be applied to any site, product, brand, or business.

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