As we all do this time of year, business owners around the world are starting to turn their attention towards end of year. Will this year end well? Did we reach our goals? What must we focus on in the year ahead? But this year is different. It’s not the end of a year… It’s…
Insights
This past week from the main stage at the Bend Design Conference I threw down the gauntlet: We suck at marketing. And as a result of our inability to properly position our creative firms, all those great clients with the greatest needs – challenges, problems, projects, and the like… Can’t find us. Which means that…
Perhaps you’ve noticed that when it comes to the topic of positioning, I’m obsessed. Why? Because every day I meet yet another creative firm failing to articulate who they are, how they do what they do, and why they do it. In a word, being unhelpful. A few years ago, this was a problem… but…
Last week several Jumpstart alumni and I took a break from the DDD Conference in Milan. As our lunch conversation dove into the production challenges in running a studio, I asserted rather abruptly: “The producer position is the most underrated role in our industry.” Several owners scoffed: Really? Why would you say that? After all,…
Greetings from London. Two weeks ago at my Qohort private dinner in LA, a client said something casually which stopped me in my tracks: “Producing great work is only half the battle.” Wait… what did you just say? The simplicity of that statement blew me away. We then compared this notion against the conventional wisdom…
Fresh on the heels of our QOHORT dinner last week in LA, Tim Thompson and I hosted the NYC edition last night. Huge thanks to the dozen or so owners who participated in each location. It’s a joy to facilitate these special events for such fabulous creative entrepreneurs. Framing our conversation was a provocative concept…
This topic continues to resonate. Responding to my list of pros and cons in Selling subjectivity – part two, Picturemill’s William Lebeda sent me this candid feedback (shared with permission): This clarifies the danger of repeat business in a way I had not understood so clearly before. With that, let’s put this topic to bed…
Reader Nic Justice wrote with this feedback on my previous email: Unhealthy amounts of repeating business seems counterintuitive to me. Repeat business seems like a good thing from where I am sitting. Yes, I’ll admit at first blush my statement about “unhealthy amounts of repeat business” sounds crazy. After all, isn’t that the dream? To…
In the 9-week, drinking-from-the-firehose experience known as Jumpstart, one of our biggest topics is pricing. Often my group of up-and-comers are asking questions such as: How do we determine – and raise – our rates? Should our proposals include detailed cost breakdowns? How do top firms get away with charging more than competing firms? My…
Jonathan Stark’s Ditching Hourly is one of the few daily emails that I actually read. So imagine my delight when this email below had this to say about the podcast he and I recorded last Friday… all about positioning: Joel Pilger from RevThink joined me on Skype yesterday to record an episode about positioning for…
