Something great about Savannah is that even though it's thriving and inspired and oh-so-creative, it is still a small town. Business owners grew up next to each other, or went to school together, and can support each other in this "grown-up" phase of our lives. I had the pleasure of going to middle school (wow!!) with Focus Lab's, Erik Reagan. He was an inspired young man then, and (an undisclosed amount of) years later he's busy changing the face of branding in Savannah and beyond. Please get to know my old friend, Erik:
ERIK REAGAN
Partner & Technical Director, FOCUS LAB, LLC
CLUTTER
FURNISHINGS AND INTERIORS: What drew you to the world of web development?
ERIK REAGAN: My dad was the computer teacher at my school when
I was in 6th grade. At the time he was teaching his classes a bit of
HTML, the language that is the building blocks of all webpages. From what I
remember my first little website in his class had to do with Greek Mythology
and doubled as a project for another class. I enjoyed building these digital
pages of information so I continued to play with it throughout middle and high
school.
It was in high school where I started learning
more of the “dynamic” parts of building websites. At 16 I completed my first
paid job building a website with the guidance of my dad. From there it remained
a hobby. A few years later it became a source of income. Not long after that, I
decided I wanted to run a business doing
this web stuff.
CF&I: For
us technological Neanderthals, how does Focus Lab work?
ER: Focus Lab isn’t just web development. Much of what
we do is very simple.
It all starts with us finding a good client fit.
We spend a lot of time in our sales process vetting clients and having them vet
us. It’s very important to us that we’re a good fit for them and that they’re a
good fit for our team. This is the foundation of a good project together, which
in turn keeps energy and excitement high amongst the Focus Lab team. This is
really important to me.
Most of our projects involve more than just
development, so it will probably be easy to grasp what we do. We spend a lot of our time and energy creating visual
brands (logos, color palettes etc.) for new and renewed businesses that want to
best represent what they are and what they do. We have a really talented team
of graphic designers who do wonderful work. (They’ve won awards and their work
has been printed in multiple publications. It’s an honor to work with them.)
Sometimes our work involves designing a new
website as well. At that point our development team, which I lead, enters the
picture. We take the designs and turn them into functioning websites. It’s
somewhat equivalent to a homebuilder taking blueprints and designs and actually
building the real house. I’ll spare you the details, because that’s where it
does get pretty nerdy.
Regardless of the context of our projects, our
ultimate goal is to help organizations reach their goals. Most often that involves some type of revenue
increase, donations increase or more communication with their audience. We keep
these goals at the forefront of each project we do, which helps us maintain a
consistent rate of success across projects.
CF&I: Where
is the future of web development taking us? Will there be robots there?
ER: Everything is going mobile right now. If your
website doesn’t load quickly and optimally on a mobile device there is a really
good chance you’re missing some of your key audience. Mobile isn’t just about
websites anymore though. It’s also about native apps for iPhone and Android
devices. There are many businesses that benefit from having applications for
these phones. The “now” of web development is very mobile-focused and that will
only increase over the next couple of years.
Beyond mobile, my prediction is that “the web”
will continue to show up all around us, more than it already is. Can you
imagine that? It’s starting to show up in TV’s and will likely be in other
devices that we wouldn’t expect. Web development as an industry is a rapidly
evolving world. The market demands for innovation make it a place that’s very
difficult to stay up to speed. It will be interested to see what the next 5 or
10 years bring.
CF&I: What is your social media
medium of choice?
ER: On the personal side I use a few of them for a
variety of purposes so I don’t have a favorite. Many of my peers are on Twitter
and I’ve been using that for 5 years. Over that time many of these peers have
become friends, so it’s more personal than it used to be for me. I used to
tweet dozens of times a day. These days I’m a little busier so I’m on it a
little less.
I also use Instagram to share photos of family and
random stuff. I keep Instagram to just friends and family (locked account). I
use Facebook to keep other friends and family in the loop with work stuff and
other random family stuff. I don’t have much overlap between my Twitter
followers and my Facebook friends.
For Focus Lab we use Twitter mostly. My business
partner and I are the faces of the company so most of our business tweeting
still occurs from our person accounts, in spite of our @focuslabllc account
existing.
CF&I: What is your favorite thing
about being a business owner in Savannah?
ER: Honestly, those two things are very separate to
me. I love being a business owner and I love being in Savannah. I’m sure I
could be a business owner in any other city though. My industry in particular
is highly digital so we can do our work from anywhere. There’s nothing about
Savannah that necessarily helps or hurts our business. That said, I certainly
love living here!
CF&I:
What is your guilty pleasure?
ER: Disney music. Especially from the past few
decades. I really love music and Disney has worked with some fantastic
musicians. My favorite is probably Alan Menken. Don’t be surprised if you catch
me listening to a soundtrack from a Disney movie. I don’t even try to use my
4-yr-old as an excuse. I happily own this guilty pleasure.
CF&I:
Describe Focus Lab in five words.
ER: Fun.
Open.
Inspired.
Intentional.
Determined.
