Peak Performance Digital: Agency Introduction (November 2022 Update)

Hi, my name is Adam Lowe, and today I’m going talk a little about my company, Peak Performance Digital. I’ll cover the basics of who we are, what we do, how we operate, and what you can expect when working with us. This video is for companies who might want to hire us to work for them or agencies who are looking for a white-label partner.

This is going to be quite a bit different from the other content I typically create, so if that’s what you are looking for, you probably aren’t going to be interested in this video. Of course, you are welcome to stick around and peek into my business if you want. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a video like this, and the last one is a bit out of date, so I thought I’d change the format up just a little bit. As I mentioned, this video is a broad overview. If you check down in the description, though, you’ll see that I have placeholders for specific topics that I can fill in as they are recorded or updated. Breaking this up into smaller videos should help me keep things up to date, and it lets you check out just the topics you are interested in.

I’m going to start by showing you the four core tenets of everything we do at Peak Performance Digital. They are Stability, Maintainability, Accessibility, and Scalability. You’ve probably heard these words thrown around, and to different people, they can mean different things. Even in our business, they can take on slightly different meanings depending on the context. Rather than go into detail about each of them here, I’ll create a separate video and link it down below in the description.

So, what does Peak Performance Digital do, and who do we work with? Here, we have four broad umbrellas. First, and most importantly, are our consulting services. Whether we perform a separate consulting engagement or include them as part of a broader package, this is foundational to everything we offer. Think about it for a minute; not only do we need to make sure we do things right, but we also need to ensure we are doing the right things.

Next, we have our website projects. The types of projects we take on usually fall into the categories of new website builds, website redesigns, website technology refreshes and remediations, website performance optimization, or website accessibility.

We don’t just build or rebuild websites and then hand them over. We also provide website management services for ongoing support, maintenance, and hosting to make sure that your website continues running the way it was designed and to help you plan and implement any future changes. We offer a range of options for everything from the smallest authority sites to complex dynamic platforms that support thousands of simultaneous users.

We do this for sites that we build ourselves and websites that were built by others. We even handle emergency situations where either the website or our client’s pre-existing agency relationship has deteriorated.

And lastly, we have our training services. I strongly believe that a rising tide floats all ships and that increasing the skills of my peers, partners, and colleagues only helps us improve as an industry so we can better serve all of our customers. If you are watching this video on YouTube, you’re already in the right place to see some of the materials I’ve published for free to the public. To take a look at my paid training courses, check out the link in the description below. And if you are interested in private training, send me an email, and we can take it from there.

Now that you know what we do, you are probably wondering who we work with. This, I break that into three broad categories. First, of course, are businesses that want to hire us directly to help them with their websites, web projects, or website management. This is where most of our work comes from, and I love the challenge and variety that each of our customers brings to us.

We also work directly with other agencies in a white-label manner. This means that, from time to time, other agencies subcontract with us to supplement their team and provide skills or resources they don’t have themselves. Sometimes we do these projects completely behind the scenes and only work with the agency that hired us, and other times we work directly with the company that hired the agency. Both methods have pros and cons, and sometimes the right choice can differ from project to project.

The last category is somewhat ambiguous, and that is learners. I include anyone who gets a benefit from the educational content I produce in this category, whether they are paying me with money or simply sharing my videos on social media to help me expand my reach. I’ve been teaching classes on different topics for nearly ten years now, mostly through in-person classes, workshops, and seminars, so branching out into YouTube and online courses is a natural progression.

I’ll give you a little background on my personal experience and my company’s history. I’ve been in the technology and web fields for nearly 25 years. In fact, I started by making business websites and Macromedia Director programs in 1997. After spending my early career as a consultant, project manager, and in a strategic in-house role providing technology direction, I struck out on my own and formed Adam Lowe Creative, LLC.

At first, I worked mainly as a freelancer, providing photography, videography, and website services. By 2017, website services had become the primary focus of the business. I rebranded that part of the business to Peak Performance Digital, and I started building a team to support it. By early 2020, I had a dedicated team working for me, a 2500sq ft studio space, a wide range of website and digital marketing services, and more prospects knocking on my door than I knew what to do with.

Of course, then came the pandemic, and everything got turned upside down. I did a hard pivot, restructured the company, and decided to focus on our core competencies, which are the website services we provide today.

I was incredibly lucky that my office lease was expiring a few months into the pandemic, so I made the decision to work from home and to re-staff my company with a mixture of reliable subcontractors that I could keep on retainer, and ones that I could bring in on an as-needed basis. With those changes, we’ve been able to adjust to meet our client’s needs and to be nimble enough to quickly adapt to a changing environment.

My team includes developers, designers, support engineers, and a project manager. Rather than spend my time interviewing and hiring each person individually, I decided to subcontract some of those services through white-label agencies that provided dedicated resources and are flexible enough to integrate into my processes.

In addition to my team, I’ve built fantastic relationships with other web agencies, our vendor partners, and my local business community. Anyone who has ever tried to run a business knows that it truly takes a village, and I’m not sure what I would do without these amazing groups of people around me.

Of course, since I’m the sole employee in my business, that comes with a certain amount of risk. And if you know me, you know how risk-averse I am, and you know that I’d do just about anything to protect the interests of my clients. To that end, I’ve taken several steps to make sure that the impact on my clients is minimized if something were to happen to me.

First, it’s worth mentioning that my support team is always paid three months in advance, and all our critical services are paid from an account with an adequate contingency fund. This ensures that you will continue to receive support and transition assistance in the event of a disaster. And, of course, we have processes in place with all critical parties to notify my clients and help transition them.

Failing all that, don’t forget that we always make sure that you have the “keys to the kingdom” for each of your websites and can transfer them away regardless of whether we provide assistance or not. Your website is your business asset, and there is never a good reason for us to keep any part of it from you.

Moving on from that depressing bit of business, let’s talk about communication. This is an easy one, I am your single point of contact, and email is the only thing you need to use to work with us. Just send an email to our support mailbox and we’ll take care of entering your ticket and assigning it. Are you working on a project with us? Just send any project communication to “projects” so we can record it in our project management tools. And for anything else, you can email me directly at [email protected]. You can also use the meeting scheduler link in any of my emails or go to https://schedule.peakperformancedigital.com if you want to have a zoom or phone meeting.

I have a strong background in project management and have actually maintained my Project Management Professional certification for over 15 years. I bring that experience to the table on every project, but the place where it’s most obvious is in the very beginning.

I have no idea how this ever came to be, I keep hearing story after story about other web agencies who quote their projects in the most ridiculous way. With minimal information, they provide an estimate and get started. Only then do they dig into the details and requirements, which they usually find out too late. This leads to project delays, cost overruns, and endless amounts of frustration for everyone.

If you were building a custom home, would you ever accept this kind of process? Of course not. You would hire the architect to do a project where you would document all the requirements, get all the quotes, and line up all the vendors before a single shovel ever hit the dirt. We work the same way.

Our website builds are always broken into two separate projects. One project defines the requirements and produces the project plan. This includes a fixed fee quote and timeline. Only then do we start the contract to build the website. Although it takes longer before you see anything on the screen, this process actually speeds up the entire project. It reduces the number of nasty surprises and helps us all reach the finish line on time and on budget.

When we’re working on website projects, we follow another time-tested process. We’ve already planned the project and defined the requirements; that’s what we talked about before. We call that the discovery phase or discovery engagement. Next, we prepare the content for the website. This is an iterative process where we produce the website copy, images, graphics, and any other assets that we need. We do this in conjunction with wireframes and mockups so we can see a representation of the website before a single line of code is written.

Next, we plan the data structure and develop the website. During this process, we hold regular meetings to ask and answer questions and to review our progress. Don’t get me wrong, I hate meetings as much as the next person, but doing this has proven to be beneficial for everyone and is crucial to making the project run smoothly.

Before launching the website, we ensure that everything is fully tested by our clients and us, and we make any necessary revisions.  Once everything is ready to go, we launch the website. We provide increased post-launch support to address any issues that come up in the first few days, as well as a 30-day warranty period where we address any defects that might be found.

Our involvement doesn’t end once the website is launched, however. As I mentioned earlier, we also provide a range of Website Management Services. Just like you take your cars to the shop for routine maintenance, or you have your IT Service provider support your servers and computers, your website also needs ongoing care and support.

Our Website Management Services make sure that the investment you make in your website doesn’t deteriorate. We take care of the whole website, from basic things like hosting, patching, and security, to routine consulting sessions to plan your ongoing website strategy. We even have plans that include updating or adding new content, so you never have to touch the backend of your website if you don’t want to.

I hope this gives you a good idea of what we do and how we operate. A lot of thought goes into everything we do for our clients, and we strive to provide not only excellent websites, but also the highest level of service. If you have any questions at all, or would like to start working with us, the best way to reach us is by emailing [email protected] or by going to our website at https://peakperformancedigital.com.

I look forward to working with you!