The Busy Creator episode 11, w/guests Michael Sacca and Alex Rolek, co-founders of Brandisty.com
Michael Sacca (@MichaelSacca) and Alex Rolek (@AlexRolek) are the co-founders of Brandisty.com, a website that allows companies to put their brand on the web. The duo started out as a small agency doing web design and software development before shifting towards a B2B product. Along with Prescott, they discuss the origins of Brandisty, how they went about getting early feedback, and the day to day scrappiness of running a small web software company.
Show Notes & Links

Brandisty is a small software company, about 5 staffers plus contractors
TinyFactory, the agency from which Brandisty was born
Brandisty’s inception was born from frustration — “can I get a transparent PNG?”
Valio Con, a design conference where Brandisty was introduced as a beta product
The Busy Creator on Brandisty
Delete Blood Cancer on Brandisty
TinyFactory started as an agency
Michael studied the music business
Alex studied finance and real estate development
Entrepreneurs struggle to install productivity habits
Distractions at work are annoying
The difference between marketing and sales
The conference was to validate the idea
“customer service is our marketing”
Say Rhythm rather than Routine.
Alex endorses a lifestyle of moderation

Tools

Brandisty.com, (obviously)
HTML5
Node.js
AoHell (RIP)
Visual Basic
Amazon Web Services: Route 53, EC2, Virtual Private Cloud, S3
SublimeText, the text editor of choice
TextMate, also good
Git and custom Git servers, rather than GitHub
GoLang, a language for lower-level image processing
Trello, for project management
Do.com (RIP), Jira — other project management software tools
Salesforce, the owners of Do.com
gChat and Skype to keep track of remote workers
Google Docs for company-wide assets
Medium, well-read site but doesn’t convert well
Reddit, as an underrated communication medium
Designer News and Hacker News
Inbound.com / Hubspot.com
GrowthHackers.com
HOW Forums (RIP)
Creative Mornings
Likemind 

Techniques

Use a blackboard in your office. Keep it old school
Keep a Kanban board with projects; rearrange as necessary
Use small post-its on the cards
Don’t use a mobile phone app to do your laundry (it’s not needed!)
Use the Rubber Duck test
Template your email responses and communication tools
Set “Do Not Disturb” mode for the working day, counter-interuitively
Generate potential leads, do some research, ask them to become beta testers
Generate leads from content and social media
Aim for better quality traffic, not necessarily more
Give up coffee or alcohol; observe results.
Don’t forget to read books, in addition to blog posts, to learn other people’s perspectives

Habits

Get everyone together for planning and vision; let people work independently from there
Monday morning meeting: plan the week, review stats, update on all departments
Friday meeting focused on marketing and to review stats
Handle communication and responses in the morning; focus on productivity the rest of the day
Alex favors the “anti-routine”, and fear of monotony. Varies his wake-up and work-out times.
Michael favors a strict routine (due to fatherhood). Gym in the morning, breakfast, show, and off to work.
Wake up before the sun rises.
Try networking events in the morning, rather than those in the evenings