creative briefing

My agency will be undergoing a number of changes over the next few months that are part of the natural evolution of the business. With faces, structures, models, and handful of other elements due to be changed, I see the process as an opportunity to hit the reboot button and rebuild certain aspects from the ground up. This got me thinking - what would I change?

It’s not very often that a business gets a chance to tear down everything and start again. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears go into developing the brand, reputation, networks, clients, PR (for the SEOers), and basically every other grain of what you call your business - so much that “starting over” is a concept that is usually quite foreign to most. But let’s entertain ourselves for a bit, shall we?

What if you had the opportunity to do it all again? Over the years, months, weeks, and days that you’ve been a business owner (yes, this applies to you freelancers as well), you’ve picked up an immense amount of new knowledge. Knowledge that sometimes helps you realize that some of the things you’ve done were not the right things to do. Knowledge that sometimes makes you think, if I could do it again, this is how I’d do it.

So what would you change? What would your business look like if you were to start it again today? What were your biggest mistakes and what have you learned?

To get the ball rolling, here’s a few of my biggest business mistakes:

• Not setting aside budgets for internal work: Budgets for client work are a no-brainer and are easy to justify. Why shouldn’t internal work have the same rationale? Your brand, website, and products are all important assets that, when properly invested in, will offer a [bigger] return.
• The ‘we can do that’ mentality: Every small agency’s tagline should be “we can do that” - not because it’s a good strategy, but because you end up saying it so much that you it might as well be a tagline. Trying to take on too many things outside your realm of expertise will thin out your business and leave you delivering less than mediocre results.
• Not having a hiring strategy: When you first start out, your business doesn’t need 30 sets of hands. It probably doesn’t even need 10. What’s more important to focus on is getting the right set of hands to work with you to build the business and more importantly, to run and execute the business and bring in the revenue. Partnering with a developer to match your design skills = great idea. Hiring a team of designers before you even have an established flow of work coming through = bad idea.
• Not having a growth strategy: Hiring is part of this, but a bigger part is having a plan for how your business will grow in 1, 5, or 10 years. If you’re a lemonade stand, you should have a plan on how you will grow your business into some kind of industry leader in lemonade production or distribution (for example). Without a growth strategy, you’ll always just be that same lemonade stand at the front of your house (or in my case, that lemonade stand with a really thirsty neighbor - thanks Satish).

These, and many more, are considerations that I’ll keep in mind as I begin to build the next instance of the agency.

What about you? Leave your biggest mistakes in the comments and share what you’d do differently if you could start over again (if anything).

PS - As further support that this is an important topic to consider, Naomi from the IttyBiz factory has also recently asked the same question to her readers. Check out her blog if you haven’t already - it’s one of the most entertaining and insightful small business blogs around.

As fresh entrepreneurs and freelancers we are often blessed with the consistent inconsistency of work flow from day to day. There are times when it feels like there just aren’t enough hours in a day to meet all the deadlines we’ve committed to. Yet still, amidst all of that work, we can sometimes get uneasy about the following week knowing very well that the work scale might just end up tipping the other direction.

This organic (for lack of a better term) lifestyle is what drives many down this path. And for the most part it’s fantastic; work hard when you need it, relax when you don’t. It’s the flexibility that a desk job, suit and tie, and a 9-to-5 schedule just doesn’t grant you the privilege of having.

On the other hand, it can catch many unsuspectingly, hitting the hardest with those who haven’t yet internalized the fundamental nature of the career they’ve chosen. There are bills to pay. Mouths to feed. Girlfriends to pamper. Friends to entertain. Parents to prove wrong.

Firstly - take a breather. It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. (Say it a couple more times if you need to) Good? Good.

It’s time to see your downtime for what it really is - a blessing. When work dies, the world doesn’t stop turning. On the contrary, there are plenty of other useful things you can do to take advantage of these moments, some of which will also ensure you have less of these downtimes going forward (for those who are still uneasy). Here’s a small list of suggestions of things to do the next time clients give you a moment of rest.

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In my spare time lately I’ve been catching up on a good dose of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay. If you aren’t familiar with this show or who Gordon Ramsay is, here’s the premise in one sentence: Scottish award-winning celebrity chef rescues failing restaurateurs from bankruptcy with brutal honesty and humorous obscenities.

Aside from his entertaining overuse of the F-bomb, what I’ve found is that Ramsay brings a wealth of experience, knowledge, and insight to the table on how to run a business. He himself has been at the head of many self-started restaurant ventures - some successful, some not so successful - and his passion, talent, and wisdom are clearly elements that have led him to become one of the most well-known businessmen in and out of the kitchen.

In Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, Ramsay applies a number of basic principles to help failing restaurant owners turn their fate around. While the series revolves around the food industry, much of Ramsay’s lessons are applicable to businesses of any nature. Here’s a list of 10 of those lessons that will help you run a more successful business.

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This is a self-response to Great ideas, a mild rant I made a few months ago that questioned the commitment of an entrepreneur to his self-started venture and his/her ability to divert his/her interests into new side projects.

From the original post:

…as an entrepreneur, how restricted are you from diverting your attention to other ventures? Is it a formal duty or a personal judgment call that holds you back? Do you create policies that govern these scenarios for you, your partners and your employees? Does that make things a bit hypocritical? Does that make you hypocritical?

It’s taken a few months to set in but in my current state of mind I’m not only a strong believer that great ideas, otherwise known as brain crack, should not be restricted, but that they should also be encouraged within any organization dynamic enough to handle it.

Being your own boss gives you the flexibility and atonomy to run your business the way you want to. It means that if your creative agency wants to start a subsidiary that sells t-shirts tomorrow, then it very well can (not to say that it would be the best business decision though). The difficult debate here is what amount of commitment - time, energy, brain matter - do you owe your main venture and the people involved with it? This is what seems to have been deeply disturbing me back in October. But here’s how I see it now.

Side projects keep you fresh.

They keep your brain from going stale over working on the same thing over and over again by giving you something new and exciting to work on.

Side projects make you versatile.

They put your talents to the test - including those that aren’t used in your core work. Diversifying your interests also means diversifying your skillset, making you a more dynamic and competitive individual in the market place.

Side projects leave you happy.

The energy boost from having a great idea will leave you foaming at the mouth. They call it brain crack for a reason. Plus the satisfaction of launching something new will give you the very same tingly sensation that you experienced when you launched your first venture.

So, you owe it to yourself, your ventures, and the people you work with to take in some brain crack every once and a while. My agency has already begun internalizing this model and it’s made our daily work that much more up-beat. But don’t just take it from me; many great things have already come from people who have embraced their great ideas and allowed them to flourish - and all without losing direction or focus on their main priorities.

FreelanceSwitch and all its sister sites presumably all spawned from great ideas at the Eden house. Nick of the infamous N.Design Studios has built his entire brand off side work like Best Web Gallery and the ever-growing Web Designer Wall. More recently, the guys at Shane and Peter have launched Sproutwire, a great new tool geared at those interested in only the best of the best small business reads across the internet. Hell, even one of my business partners owes much of his success to his past side projects.

So the moral of the story is this: embrace the brain crack. Especially for you entrepreneurs and freelancers - don’t let your client work be all that you are. Be fresh. Be versatile. And most importantly, be happy.

More on brain crack

• the show with zefrank (07-11-06 edition)
• The Brian Shaler Blog (That Internal Project…)

After challenging tradition and working at home for the past 6 months, I’ve gathered a great deal of new perspectives. I’ve learned a lot about myself and what I want to do with my life. I’ve learned that being your own boss is a dream come true. I’ve also learned that there can be bitter elements to even the sweetest treats. But more importantly, I’ve learned a lot about how to make the best out of this spectacular experience.

When I wrote about the downsides of working at home (which you should read before reading this), I was amazed at the responses from everyone that shared the same sentiments. Clearly, we’ve all had a taste of a good thing going bad when served in bulk. What really hit me was that, while everybody had their own version of their rants, the majority still whole-heartedly enjoyed working at home. Good - there is hope after all!

The key to livening up the work-at-home lifestyle is to minimize the things that can turn the experience sour, and to take advantage of all the new opportunities that the cube life just doesn’t offer. I’ve combined a few things that I’ve learned to do over the last 6 months and the responses that some of you offered to put together a list of 13 ways to liven up your work-at-home routine. I hope you enjoy it!

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