Gary started out as a designer in the early 2000s and became a Creative Director while working for a large design agency.
Realizing he had the experience and knowledge, he decided it was time to start his own agency in 2007, At Play Creative. They are working with pretty big and impressive clients, such as DC Heroes, Disney and Hasbro.
He’s been working with some clients for as long as 12 years, so speaking with him was super interesting, let’s dive into the case study…
How Did Gary Approach Web Projects Before Atarim?
“Chaos, some clients don’t even believe in subject lines…”
Going through how Gary approached projects was very interesting, because it is almost identical to how I used to go about it during my design agency days.
As he was delivering projects to corporate clients, he is usually dealing with a project manager or CEO, depending on the size of the company. This meant that most of the time, especially at the beginning of a project, him and his team were forced to drive 20-30 minutes to their offices for face to face meetings (in the pre-COVID world)…Or even worse, they would have to fly to a different city just for an hour meeting.
Then would start the email back and forth and chaos ensued.
Clients sending emails about random different things every time a light bulb sparks in their brain…
Clients sending 3 different emails to speak about one subject, sometimes not even including subject lines…
Clients sending texts at 6am…
He then moved over the Basecamp to try and organize these emails in some way to make it easier to find all of the fragmented information, but this actually made it worse as it was taking up more time.
Now, that all sounds crazy right? But I bet you’re feeling a similar pain.
Gary started accepting this as a part of business, and that’s “just how it is.” We’re here to show you that, no, it’s not how it has to be.
And he hits on the head with this:
“If the project is to design and build a functioning and efficient website, shouldn’t most of the time be spent designing and building that website while talking to your clients? Instead, 50% of the time is being spent on DECIDING how to talk about designing and building the website?”
And whatever agency Gary has worked for over the last two decades, even the best and biggest, fragmentation is ALWAYS there. So much so that they hire people whose job is only to make sure fragmentation is not happening…
And that is madness.
How Has Atarim Changed Gary’s Agency?
Heard of us in a FB group.
Gary originally heard of us in a Facebook group where he was recommended our tool by a friend. He bought a plan very early on actually, quickly after we launched…
BUT, it almost took him a year to start implementing Atarim.
When he first dived in, it was very foreign at first. Understandable, bad habits die hard and using email to communicate with clients is one of the worst habits out there.
We are all creatures of habit, and that extends to our clients 100%. It can be difficult to cut ties with a platform or method of doing something, especially if you’ve been doing it for the last 20 years.
At the time, Gary had massive clients that were big enough to influence how he was operating, and this meant if they didn’t want to learn a new tool, that was that.
Now though he introduces Atarim like this:
“I’ve installed a new feature on YOUR site, to make it much easier for YOU to communicate with me…”
Now they literally don’t even want to send emails anymore.
He is no longer chasing information from his clients in an email, that might have no subject line, or it’s in base camp, trello, text message…It’s right there on their live website.
The amount of time spent on communicating with clients has literally been cut in half, meaning he has more time to actually BUILD and DESIGN the websites instead of just talk about them.
Would Gary recommend that others use Atarim?
“I want you to really think about how much time you spend talking to your clients? Now just that, but how much time do you waste trying to find what your client wants or specifically what they’re talking about?
Imagine if every time you spoke to your client, you had 100% clarity on what they were saying, without them needing to be specific.
Sounds too good to be true right? This is how Gary’s day-to-day is now, he no longer has to hunt for information or waste time speaking with his clients.
So he would absolutely recommend the tool ?
Are you ready to stop wasting your time going back and forth with your clients and get to the point?
