Friendly Design Co.

The challenge

Growing pains

Friendly Design Co. had a problem familiar to many small agencies: the founders were doing everything. Ross Nover and Geoff Silverstein built a thriving eight-person strategic design studio in Washington DC, but Ross was stretched across creative direction, sales, and project management — none of which he'd been formally trained for. Projects started with him as a bottleneck. Designers sifted through dozens of emails to understand what was needed. Without structured onboarding or clear handoffs, things slipped through the cracks. Stress was creeping into a studio built on warmth.

"Geoff and I had come from a design background. We had been around project managers and tried our best to emulate what worked, but our strengths are definitely not in project management. I was doing a lot of it and needed to stop."

— Ross Nover, Founding Partner, Friendly Design Co.

Our operational findings

What we discovered

• Founders stretched across too many roles — creative direction, sales, and PM all competing for attention
• No dedicated project management meant scattered information, constant back-and-forth, and missed details
• Projects started with Ross as a bottleneck, slowing everything downstream
• Designers losing valuable creative time filtering through emails to understand their tasks
• No structured onboarding or handoff process — projects felt chaotic from kickoff to delivery
• Team lacked clear role boundaries, making it hard to specialize or forecast capacity
• Late hours were becoming the norm — stress was eroding the studio culture

"Rachel's coaching has allowed us to be more collaborative and productive and fluid. We know what to expect from each other now. There's a system behind our project management. There's a lot less back and forth because there's more understanding and trust as coworkers. We get less bogged down in each other's unnecessary minutia."

— Rachael Senning, Producer, Friendly Design Co.

Results & highlights

What changed

• Added $54,000 to project budgets within the year through better scoping and client conversations
• Increased average client revenue by 27% by shifting from reactive to strategic engagements
• Built a repeatable onboarding and handoff system that made clients feel safe and supported
• Freed Ross to focus on creative direction and business development — zero PM on his plate
• Designers reclaimed hours of creative time previously lost to email and project confusion
• Created clear role definitions across the team so everyone could specialize in what they do best
• Dramatically reduced late hours — the team started leaving on time, consistently
• 75% of clients now return for repeat engagements, up significantly from before

"Hello Rachel (formerly Louder Than Ten) helped us with so many pieces beyond just project management. At a firm like ours, everything affects everything else. Pricing affects timing, meetings affect marketing, workflow affects pitching. She helped advise our entire team on how to better integrate project management into our entire process."

— Ross Nover, Founding Partner, Friendly Design Co.

The future

Where they are now

Friendly Design Co. continues to thrive as one of DC's most beloved strategic design studios. Ross leads business development and creative direction with clarity. The team works with structure and trust, not chaos. Projects start with project managers, not founders. And the studio's signature warmth? It's no longer competing with burnout — it's the foundation everything else is built on.