News from the former head of Adobe Type

MrEchs

Hi everybody. I think I know most of you here, some of you are good friends, and the rest I hope soon will be. To the rest, it is very nice to meet you.

I'm Matthew Rechs, the former head of Adobe Type, Adobe Fonts, and Adobe Typekit. 

One month ago I left Adobe and announced that I'm starting up a new shop, called Business Letters LLC. This firm will be my new professional home. 

Yesterday I launched the new web site for Business Letters: http://bizlet.org

I hope you'll check it out. 

Briefly, Business Letters will do two things. First, I'll do business coaching for designers in the type and creative industries.

What is a business coach? A business coach is somebody who helps you succeed by teaching you the business skills that you weren't born with, and that aren't taught in design school, but which are essential to running a successful business. How to sell yourself, how to get paid as much as possible, how to get clients and keep them, how to collect what you're owed, how to negotiate everything.

I'll also do consulting on type projects for corporations, focusing on the business and product end of things -- the same kind of work I was doing at Adobe. Clients, it turns out, also aren't born knowing anything about working with type or the creative industries. And so I'll also try to help them with that. 

If you think you might be able to benefit from some help making your design business run like a business, please get in touch with me. It will be my pleasure to chat, and a phone call for us to get to know each other need not cost anything. My phone number is 1 973 798 6868.

I'm also happy to answer any questions about my new business, or about my old business at Adobe. Now that I've completed my separation, it's a great time to ask me anything.

Thanks for reading!

--Matthew

Kent Lew

Sounds like a valuable venture, Matthew. Thanks for announcing here. Best of luck!

Matthew Rechs

Thanks Kent!

One area where I think I can be particularly helpful is in sales of licenses that are complicated, high-volume, or big-ticket, aka "enterprise sales.'

This is an area that I have a great deal of experience in from my time at Adobe. 

I'm confident that working with independent designers, I can take leads for complex sales, make them much bigger, and get the deals closed properly. 

I really like the idea of being enabling type designers to spend more of their time drawing letters, and less time on phone conferences and contracts. 

If anybody's interested in talking about that, you can reach me at mjr@bizlet.org.

--Matthew

[Deleted User]

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MrEchs

Hi James, it's been a long time!

In my opinion, when everything is set up properly, the vast majority of sales shouldn't require legal review, even for enterprise sales. Otherwise it would be impossible to grow an enterprise sales business faster than your attorney's.

Legal terms should be separated from business terms in sales documents, so the latter can be negotiated without revising the former. There are many ways to do this, in terms of forms, contracts, and EULAs.

Of course some deals will call for customized legal terms, and those will require review. One thing I've done in the past is configured pricing so that clients who insist on negotiated license terms are required to buy at a higher price point. This caused many of them to decide they don't need to redline the agreement after all.   

Ultimately, good legal representation is essential to sound business practices. But in my opinion if you're using an attorney in a sales capacity, you're making poor use of their time and your money.

--Matthew