Dispatch No. 11 - Designing the Work You Can Live With

One of the hardest parts of running a small studio—or any creative business—is deciding what shape the work should take. The instinct is to simplify: fewer offerings, cleaner language, tighter scope. But clarity isn’t always the reward for narrowing down. Sometimes the more you isolate each piece, the less sense the whole system makes.

That tension is what pushed me to revisit how Mosaic’s services fit together. What started as a list of disconnected offerings began to look more like a set of interlocking stages—a way to meet clients where they are instead of forcing everything into one model. And, a way to keep my own focus.

I wrote more about that process here: Choosing Core Services.

In short: I stopped thinking in terms of deliverables and started thinking in terms of momentum. Most projects move through a cycle—understanding what exists, shaping what’s next, steadying growth, and amplifying what works. Those became the four anchors I now build around: Audit, Architect, Advise, Amplify. It’s not a rigid framework so much as a map, one that helps both sides see where the work actually lives.

The takeaway isn’t that every studio needs the same model. It’s that clarity comes from designing your work around how clients move, not how you wish they would. When your structure mirrors theirs, conversations get simpler, decisions get faster, and projects stay grounded in reality instead of jargon.

Anyway, that’s where my head’s been lately—trying to keep things useful without over-engineering them. If your brain needs a break from systems talk, here’s something lighter...

👉 The Useless Web — one random, pointless internet delight with every click. It’s StumbleUpon for the overstimulated era, and I promise it’s ten seconds well wasted.

Until next week,
-MG