Post Summary: Dividing the Work Is What Costs You
Work that gets divided has to be coordinated, and coordination costs something that a single person carrying the account never pays. That’s the case for the smaller operation. The other half of the answer is structural: the name and the philosophy are trademarked, so what a client bought does not depend on one man staying alive. Retention has run at 98% across more than three hundred businesses since 2021, and nothing contractual is holding any of them.
One electrician arrived after years of being discounted for problems, which meant the price here matched what he was already paying. He’d been waiting on edits nobody was in a hurry to make. Five words came back: “I don’t care about the setup, let’s get started.”
Below: four decades of research on why teams underperform their own resources, and what happens here when something goes wrong.
The Question Behind Every Other Question on Sales Calls
The question comes up on calls more than you’d think. Not always in those exact words, but the shape of it is always the same, what happens to my website if something happens to you?
It’s a fair question. And it’s usually the question sitting behind every other question about working with a boutique web design company instead of a bigger operation.
So here’s the honest answer.
The Entity Lives On
If something happens to me, the founder, and that might mean I’m gone, gone, the entity, Yeet Websites, lives on. That’s why we have registered trademarks on the business name, on Yeetish, on Yeet Talk. Everything we’re building is structured so that those that come after me will be able to continue with the same philosophy.
The only thing that would change is that I wouldn’t be around. Which would be a bummer for me and you.
That’s the real answer. Not a continuity plan buried in a PDF somewhere. Not a “don’t worry about it.” It’s the kind of question that usually goes unanswered, because the business is built to outlive the founder, and the philosophy is protected so it doesn’t drift into whatever the next person thinks sounds good.
The Electrician Who Was Tired of Being Forgotten
We had an electrician come over from a big company. Everything at the old place was split across people and nobody owned his account. Edits went in and sat. He was embarrassed by the website and frankly, too afraid to ask for help.
He was completely tired of being forgotten about and not a techie type of person.
Here’s the part that surprises people: our pricing was about the same as what he’d been paying. The big company had discounted him so many times because of all the issues that by the time he found us, the numbers were nearly identical. His response was five words, I don’t care about the setup, let’s get started.
People get so fed up that it’s time to change. That’s not a sales pitch. That’s what happens when the company is nice enough on the surface but failing you where it counts.
Why Splitting the Work Costs Something
The objection we hear is “but big companies have teams and backups.” And that’s not really a good reason to go with a big company. Long contracts tend to come with scale. A smaller operation doesn’t need them the same way.
And on the teams and the backups: splitting work across people carries a coordination cost that one dedicated person doesn’t pay.
J. Richard Hackman, the Harvard psychologist who spent over four decades studying what makes teams succeed or fail, described the problem in an interview with the Harvard Business Review:
“Research consistently shows that teams underperform, despite all the extra resources they have. That’s because problems with coordination and motivation typically chip away at the benefits of collaboration. And even when you have a strong and cohesive team, it’s often in competition with other teams, and that dynamic can also get in the way of real progress. So you have two strikes against you right from the start, which is one reason why having a team is often worse than having no team at all.”
— J. Richard Hackman, Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology, Harvard University. Source: hbr.org
If a smaller company has done you wrong and you’ve always done well with bigger companies, then stay with a bigger company, but you don’t have to worry whether your business is too small for Yeet Websites. Go with what you’re comfortable with. If you look at everything we’ve done, the reviews, the personal service, and none of that jives with you, then you should go somewhere else. We treat our clients like people, and they’re not customers. If that doesn’t work for you, then absolutely, that’s not what Yeetish is about, and that’s okay.
The Point Where Clients Stop Asking
Clients who came in with the size question don’t tend to raise it again. When something happens, it gets fixed. When they need something, it gets done. It’s just like working with a great executive assistant. That’s how we roll. And that’s why many of our clients are referred to us.
That usually stops being a question once the site is live.
We’ve been doing this since 2021. Over 300 clients served, 98% retention rate. The ones who stayed didn’t stay because they were locked in. They stayed because there was never a reason to leave.
And when something does go sideways, because it will, at some point, with any company, what matters is what happens next. That’s where the philosophy stops being a philosophy and starts being proof.
You’re wondering if a boutique web design company is reliable. That’s the right question. The answer just doesn’t come from the size of the building, it comes from what happens when you call. And when you do call, do your best to tell your story. We often find that some prospects lie to us and that is such a bummer because it always comes out.
Yeetish Questions
What happens to my website if something happens to the founder?
The business is trademarked and structured to continue. The philosophy, Yeetish, is protected. The only thing that changes is that I’m not the one picking up the phone, which would be a bummer. But your website, your hosting, your service, none of that disappears because one person does.
Why would I choose a boutique web design company over a bigger operation?
Because coordination has a cost, and one person carrying the whole account doesn’t pay it. The electrician who came to us from a big company was paying roughly the same, and getting forgotten. The size of the company was the problem, not the solution.