Meet John D Saunders | Web Designer and Founder

We had the good fortune of connecting with John D Saunders and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi John D, how has your perspective on work-life balance evolved over time?
It’s changed a lot! When I started my agency, I worked 14+ hour days and it took a toll. So much so, I lacked sleep and burned out. I used to think the longer I worked, the more I would accomplish, but it’s what you DO with those hours, not how long you work. This all changed when my wife became pregnant. I really wanted to build a life with her and my son and I couldn’t do it working the entire day. That’s when everything changed.

I started to document EVERYTHING I did in the business, building a knowledge base and standard operating procedures I could use to build a team. By documenting my process, I was able to begin hiring team members to help facilitate the workload.

Now, I’m working 8-2:30 and I’m able to pick up my son daily. I have to thank my remote team and the ability to create operating procedures we can leverage to scale our efforts and grow our business.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I’ve been a full-time entrepreneur for 7 years now. Honestly, sometimes it doesn’t feel real. I wasn’t really “entrepreneurial” growing up. No lemonade stand or entrepreneurs in my close family. So, I read as many books as I could, solicited advice from others and learned from a lot of mistakes, and turned them into lessons.

Some of my favorite lessons in the journey:

1. Niche down and focus – focus on a few core service offerings. Especially if you’re in a service-based business. Try to find where your customers are and tailor your content around them. By niching down, you become a specialist and specialists can charge a premium. We migrated to offering Branding and Web Design and it changed everything.

2. Document the Process – make sure you’re documenting your tasks for delegation. Systems are the key to growth

3. Show Your Work – show your audience what you’re working on, share your process and document your journey along the way. There’s transparency in that.

Regarding our agency, 5Four Digital it’s led us to my proudes t business ever, Black Illustrations. When it came to finding illustration assets for our diverse client base, however, I kept running into a wall. I simply could not find assets that accurately reflected the different ethnicities of our clients. To me, it was about so much more than skin tone.

“ou might see an illustration of a ‘person of color,’ but it’s literally just an illustration of a white person with the pigment changed. They don’t necessarily have the hair texture, body type, and different features that a person of color would have. I thought to myself, I think there is something that we can do about this.

This is the key design challenge that sets stock photography apart from web illustration; in photography, the ethnicities of the models portrayed are an unquestionable part of the photo as a whole. For many distributed illustration packs, however, simply ‘reskinning’ illustrations with different pigments is often passed off as a solution.

We set out to provide a different product, one that would accurately represent black and brown people in commonly used web illustration contexts. This is where Black Illustrations, his passion project, was born.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Oh, man in South Florida? There are so many places! It’s a melting pot of culture! First, we’d hit my favorite spot for Brunch: Red Rooster. Located in the heart of Overtown, Red Rooster serves comfort food celebrating the roots of American cuisine and the diverse culinary traditions of the neighborhood.

Next stop, Wynwood! Known for its many colorful murals, Wynwood is one of the city’s most happening districts. Wynwood Walls is an outdoor museum showcasing large-scale works by some of the world’s best-known street artists. The surrounding streets have converted warehouses housing craft breweries and funky art galleries.

Then, the beach. I love Fort Lauderdale beach because it’s less crowded and has beautiful, scenic views.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
So many things inspire me, but if I had to choose it would be my trifecta:

1. Wife
2. Mom
3. Sister

These women have inspired me beyond belief. They believed in my abilities before I acquired them, supported me through my growth, and always provided exactly what I needed at the time.

Website: 5fourdigital.com / johndsaunders.co / BlackIllustrations.com

Instagram: instagram.com/johndsaunders

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johndavidsaunders/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/johndsaunders

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JohnDSaundersIII/

Youtube: youtube.com/5fourdigital