Schmooze Featured Member Interview for April 2008
Steven De Costa
Director, Link Web Services
What inspired you to establish Link Web Services?
My business partner, Jessica Salvage, and myself both held growing fears that we wouldn’t find the type of jobs we wanted here in Canberra. I’d held technical, management and sales roles during my career and I wanted something that allowed me to keep doing it all. Jess, on the other hand, was driven to improve her management skills on important projects within a creative environment. For both of us, starting Link just seemed like a great idea at the time.
How do you manage running a business, managing clients and creative input into your projects?
I think people who trust in themselves develop a strong sense of what feels right and what doesn’t. Managing the business is then a matter of keeping informed across all elements of the business and keeping things moving in a positive direction. It’s ok to make mistakes so long as you are always on the lookout for them, and react quickly to correct them.
For me, creative input starts with listening to everything, looking at things from every angle, and questioning your own perception of what things are. At Uni I wrote a paper on the creative process suggesting all manner of theories including things like subjective nodal deconstruction and reformation. These days I’m more inclined to think coffee has a lot to do with it.
For our projects, the creative aspects are about stringing unique ideas together in a sensible formation that succinctly communicates a concept, emotion, solution, or whatever. Even spending a little time here and there on each job allows me to contribute ideas and direct work toward better outcomes for our clients.
Does Link have a business philosophy or values?
We strive to develop trusting relationships with our clients. We don’t pretend that things will always go perfectly, as any project will have at least a few hiccups along the way. But, we know that, if we can develop and hold our clients’ trust, then we’ll always have the opportunity, and they’ll have the faith in us, to fix problems. Once we have earned their trust, our clients are our most valuable asset, and our most effective sales people.
There is a very definable economy to the notion of trust. It allows us to quote less on work because we already know how our clients work and, importantly, they know how we work. Trust also allows our clients to exhaust less energy in briefing and managing new work with us, so there are multiple savings.
Do you have role models for your business?
My father is my greatest role model. He developed a very successful grocery and liquor wholesale business and earned the lasting respect of everyone he dealt with. He was known as a very shrewd businessman who would always negotiate the best deals for his company.
I would also have to mention my brother as a strong role model. He founded Local Liquor about a year before I started Link. Local Liquor is now a very strong brand throughout the ACT and NSW with hundreds of stores trading under the group banner.
Is small beautiful?
Maybe, maybe not, but I definitely believe that simple can be elegant. I’d like to think that a successful small business can be more focussed on its core goals, and therefore achieve a more effective outcome than somewhat larger companies.
Work- Life balance for small business- is there such a thing?
If work is part of your everyday life, then sure. I can’t imagine separating the two things so I don’t really consider the need to balance one against the other. People who care about me will sometimes point out when I need to take a break, so I guess I do have a balancing issue to sort out, but I’m a fairly obsessive person and once I get started on something I’ll focus on the task until I’m exhausted.
Was there a turning point in your business life that saw it take Link to the next level?
Sure. The day Link won a contract to build a large kids website for the Australian War Memorial. We pitched our ideas against some of the biggest web companies from Sydney and Melbourne to win that work, and we followed through with a site that was an Australian Interactive Media Industry Association award nominee. Winning the work secured an opportunity which I knew would allow us to prove ourselves, so it was a big day and a very definite turning point.
Where do you see your company going in the next few years?
We’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing, helping people get online. But, I think we will also end up with a number of clients for whom we will deliver business critical services enabling them to perform at a world class level. We are doing some extremely important work for the National Portrait Gallery at the moment, a client we’ve nurtured for seven years. The experience we have gained places us in a fairly unique position and I expect we’ll be able to market aspects of our technical and creative solutions to similar organisations throughout Australia and overseas.
What I like about the direction Link is heading is the general excitement I feel when I consider the impact Link can have on the success of an organisation. I don’t think you can simply substitute the services of one design and development company for the next. There are a few companies that really understand what’s going on and there are a great many others that are just out to make some money by building websites. When I talk to clients I listen hard to what they are asking for, and I give the best advice I can. This often means suggesting solutions the client hadn’t even considered.
What current projects are you excited about at the moment?
ACTTAB is a very exciting client for us. We have been providing design and multimedia for their various forms of advertising for a number of years, but we have just launched a progressive Keno dashboard system which allows their account customers to play Keno online. Completing this project has now cleared the way for us to begin an entire website redevelopment project. With some great ideas on the table, I think the new website will turn a lot of heads and bring ACTTAB into view for a whole new generation of punters.
Another exciting and very new client for Link is Jackgreen Energy. What’s special about this client is that we are taking a leading role in designing multiple aspects of how the organisation will be seen online. The website is just a starting point from where we’ll then move on to social networking, viral marketing, online public relations and campaign management. At Link, we are adopting a holistic approach to online advertising and consider it to be a matter of connecting with, and receiving connections from, new audiences. What’s exciting is that the rigid and accountable measurement tools being built into the current generation of our content management system will allow us to easily assess where our audience development efforts are succeeding.
Many people talk about Web 2.0 not always knowing what it means for businesses- what’s your take on it?
Web 2.0 is where demand has taken over to drive supply. You could always do a lot of things online from day one; the difference now is that there is a growing online community of users who expect organisations and people to be a part of their online life.
If you walk in to an office, you expect to be greeted by a person. There is an awkward pause if you walk in and nobody is there and there is no bell to ring. The web is becoming a bit like that. You arrive at a company or organisation website and it can be very off-putting if it doesn’t comply with the social norms.
Understanding Web 2.0 is just a matter of connecting with those people living various aspects of their lives online. They might be blogging, shopping, learning, gaming, working, entertaining themselves, chatting with friends or sharing their interests with the rest of the world. In the online space, such activities segment an audience just as effectively as sports events and technology conferences do in a physical way.
Business should be looking for opportunities to inject their own presence into these online spaces. They don’t need to use overt or aggressive tactics either. They can think about it as online networking, with a view to raising the online profile of their business.
How does Schmooze fit into your business or marketing plans?
Developing the website for Schmooze and supporting its effort to connect people both professionally and socially will certainly help to raise Link’s profile. However, at this point it’s just nice to know that Schmooze is there, with the right attitude toward business networking in Canberra. I like the brand, I like the idea and I like the people involved.
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