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Nov 08, 2006 12:22 PM
Direct from the 2006 AIGA GAIN Conference – Running It Like a Business
The feedback from the seminar was just tremendous, so we wanted to give a very brief overview (considering the medium).
The first topic we covered was – Why should I even run it like a business (after all, it’s a “life-style business”). But the truth is that running a creative service firm can be like living on a roller coaster – that’s some life, huh?
With the assumption that our goal isn’t to spend our lives on a roller coaster, we talked about goal setting and attainment and used the Organizational Development Model as a tool by which to plan and monitor your progress towards your goals. And then we dug right into the root of the problem – how your personal relationship with money affects how you run your business, because how you run your personal finances is how you’ll run your business’ finances.
After a discussion about our personal relationship to money and its effect on our business, we moved on to discuss hiring staff according to personality type, rather than by skills – because the way we figure it, skills should be a given.
Switching from the “Know Thyself” portion of the seminar on to the “Know Thy Business Model” portion, we covered topics like the professional service business model, how it works and why it’s damn near impossible to stay in business as an independent freelancer – and the three levers of a service-based business: rate, utilization and leverage.
We closed out that section with four tips (based on the four areas of a company: sales, marketing, operations and finance) designed to have an instant impact on your company.
Those four tips:
Sales: Be cognizant of the fact that, there is a definable sales cycle. And if you understand the sales cycle and where your prospects and clients are on that cycle, you can be much more effective in enrolling those prospects and getting your existing clients interested in learning about services that they’re not taking advantage of. For more on this topic, click here and read an article that Smith Content ghost-wrote for Jason Pappas, CEO of Entrequest.
Marketing: On the marketing side, ensure that your company has a fully developed value proposition that answers the following eight questions for your audiences: Who are you, what do you do, for whom, why are you different, what are the benefits to the audience, how does your solution work, when should it be brought in, and what is the call to action (the next step that someone needs to take in your sales cycle). For more on this topic, click below and read the two articles that we wrote on the topic for Create Magazine.
“Eight Things You Must Communicate to Your Audience”
“The Well-Crafted, Well-Placed Message Makes the Sale”
Operations: Define your process and be able to articulate it to your prospective clients as part of your sales cycle. We don’t publish our process online, but if you’re a Web designer, print designer, search engine optimization firm or other potential partner of Smith Content, we’re happy to share our process with you, making us both stronger in the event we end up partnering on a project.
Finance: Creative service companies must have three financial perspectives on their company. The rearview mirror (or bookkeeper, who tells you where you’ve been); the dashboard (or comptroller who provides insightful reporting as to where you are); and the windshield (the CFO, who can tell you based on where you’ve been, where you are and where you’re headed). Most small creative service firms are driving their businesses forward by looking only in the rearview mirror. You need all three functions and if you can’t buy them, rent them! We recommend Manny Skevofilax, an excellent virtual CFO to play that role. They can work with your bookkeeper to set up reports that can act as your dashboard.
We closed the conversation out with a discussion about values (you can read about ours by clicking here). At Smith Content we spend time every Monday morning talking about how in the previous week we, as individuals, either upheld or fell down on those values. It’s a great opportunity to call ourselves back into integrity and start the week off on the right foot, or to commend ourselves or each other on upholding the values that we hold dear.
The Smith Content Handbook: We’re in the process of writing a book based on these topics and if you’d like to be notified upon its publication (or be updated on other important news from Smith Content), you can subscribe to our blog (Click here for instructions) or subscribe to Smith Content’s rich e-mail newsletter. And if you and your company share the same values and you’re looking for a partner to handle part of the marketing mix that you don’t – reach out to us!
In the meantime, keep running it like a business!
The first topic we covered was – Why should I even run it like a business (after all, it’s a “life-style business”). But the truth is that running a creative service firm can be like living on a roller coaster – that’s some life, huh?
With the assumption that our goal isn’t to spend our lives on a roller coaster, we talked about goal setting and attainment and used the Organizational Development Model as a tool by which to plan and monitor your progress towards your goals. And then we dug right into the root of the problem – how your personal relationship with money affects how you run your business, because how you run your personal finances is how you’ll run your business’ finances.
After a discussion about our personal relationship to money and its effect on our business, we moved on to discuss hiring staff according to personality type, rather than by skills – because the way we figure it, skills should be a given.
Switching from the “Know Thyself” portion of the seminar on to the “Know Thy Business Model” portion, we covered topics like the professional service business model, how it works and why it’s damn near impossible to stay in business as an independent freelancer – and the three levers of a service-based business: rate, utilization and leverage.
We closed out that section with four tips (based on the four areas of a company: sales, marketing, operations and finance) designed to have an instant impact on your company.
Those four tips:
Sales: Be cognizant of the fact that, there is a definable sales cycle. And if you understand the sales cycle and where your prospects and clients are on that cycle, you can be much more effective in enrolling those prospects and getting your existing clients interested in learning about services that they’re not taking advantage of. For more on this topic, click here and read an article that Smith Content ghost-wrote for Jason Pappas, CEO of Entrequest.
Marketing: On the marketing side, ensure that your company has a fully developed value proposition that answers the following eight questions for your audiences: Who are you, what do you do, for whom, why are you different, what are the benefits to the audience, how does your solution work, when should it be brought in, and what is the call to action (the next step that someone needs to take in your sales cycle). For more on this topic, click below and read the two articles that we wrote on the topic for Create Magazine.
“Eight Things You Must Communicate to Your Audience”
“The Well-Crafted, Well-Placed Message Makes the Sale”
Operations: Define your process and be able to articulate it to your prospective clients as part of your sales cycle. We don’t publish our process online, but if you’re a Web designer, print designer, search engine optimization firm or other potential partner of Smith Content, we’re happy to share our process with you, making us both stronger in the event we end up partnering on a project.
Finance: Creative service companies must have three financial perspectives on their company. The rearview mirror (or bookkeeper, who tells you where you’ve been); the dashboard (or comptroller who provides insightful reporting as to where you are); and the windshield (the CFO, who can tell you based on where you’ve been, where you are and where you’re headed). Most small creative service firms are driving their businesses forward by looking only in the rearview mirror. You need all three functions and if you can’t buy them, rent them! We recommend Manny Skevofilax, an excellent virtual CFO to play that role. They can work with your bookkeeper to set up reports that can act as your dashboard.
We closed the conversation out with a discussion about values (you can read about ours by clicking here). At Smith Content we spend time every Monday morning talking about how in the previous week we, as individuals, either upheld or fell down on those values. It’s a great opportunity to call ourselves back into integrity and start the week off on the right foot, or to commend ourselves or each other on upholding the values that we hold dear.
The Smith Content Handbook: We’re in the process of writing a book based on these topics and if you’d like to be notified upon its publication (or be updated on other important news from Smith Content), you can subscribe to our blog (Click here for instructions) or subscribe to Smith Content’s rich e-mail newsletter. And if you and your company share the same values and you’re looking for a partner to handle part of the marketing mix that you don’t – reach out to us!
In the meantime, keep running it like a business!
