Today marks the most exciting and important day in my company’s little history — Tiffani Jones (my fiancée!) and I will be joining forces. My days of ‘freelancing’ are hereby put to rest, and thingsthatarebrown is reborn as a slick, two-person micro-agency. Though her role will grow and change over time, Tiff will be joining me at first to lead project management, business development, and client relations as my Director of Operations (she likes her titles as badass as possible).

De-stressed

Far and away one of the biggest challenges in running your own design company is coordinating all the communication, assets, and scheduling with your clients. Project management is roughly 30-50% of the total work on any given project, and the ‘cognitive switch’ load of going back and forth between productive creative and management is just too much to bear — both sides of my work suffers, and it’s stressful as all hell.

No more with Tiff on-board. She brings nearly two years of agency experience leading PM duties at Blue Flavor. She’s got the chops to handle one of the most difficult positions in any creative setting — making sure it all works, and everyone is happy and excited. She’s great under pressure, and definitely owns her nickname — “The Hammer” — keeping clients (and me) focused on goals and engaged in their projects.

But wait, there’s more!

Just as exciting is that Tiff is also starting her own business — content strategy and web copywriting and editing through Second & Park. She’s offering her services to other design firms, as well as bringing her talents to thingsthatarebrown. As I’ve learned the hard way over the last year, great copy is just as vital as great design, so having an exceptional copywriter on-hand will be a priceless resource.

There’s lots more in the cards, so please stay tuned.