I started my first business when I was 14 years old. It was – and still is – an agency business. We started mediasign by building websites, designing logos and printing business cards for our clients.
I think everyone’s first business should be a service business. It allows you to make mistakes without ruining the whole company. Sure, you might lose an important client or two but a mistake won’t kill your business like it could kill a product business.
Working in a service business definitely has its perks – you get to know various companies, industries, and partners. We worked with more than 20 clients on average per year.
It’s in the nature of a service business that you get paid for your time. That’s why you want to work as efficiently as possible. Every hour you spend on a project but don’t get paid for is your loss and in fact lost revenue. Working on mediasign inspired us to build Sendtask. Because while there are many tools out there to work efficiently with your team, we couldn’t find a tool that allowed us to work efficiently with the three largest groups an agency is in contact with: your team, your clients, and your service providers.
Your team
Sendtask allows you to see who in your team is working on what and finishing when.
While there are many tools out there for team collaboration – Asana, Trello, Podio, Teamwork, to name a few – there are very few that allow you to work not only with your team but also the other two groups of partners you interact with.
Your clients
Sendtask does not require accounts. Your team can collaborate efficiently with your clients without having them register. This would have been huge for us – our consultants and project leads spent a good amount of their time chasing clients and reminding them of deliverables. With Sendtask, you can not only track who’s falling behind on a deadline but they will also get automatic reminders every day after the due date.
Your service providers
Especially when working with service providers, it’s crucial to be mindful not only of your own time but also theirs – because you’re paying them by the minute or hour. Sendtask allows you to set them up with an efficient workflow without having to spend time onboarding them first.
I wish we would have had a tool like Sendtask when we started mediasign. It would have saved us many tedious hours of reaching out to clients, reminding people on our team or coordination with service providers. That’s why we’ve decided to build it.