Management

Most creative firms are poorly named, especially if they are named after the principal and perhaps multiple partners. Unless you turn out to be a very large agency with a 40+ year track record, your name matters. Naming it in the traditional way after yourself does this:

• it makes it a tad more difficult to sell
• it encourages new clients to work with you when you should be doing other things that the firm really requires of you
• it makes it difficult to add significant partners, because every time you do so the name will likely change
• it makes your agency look small

Chances are that you didn't put much thought into naming the company when it began with just you as an employee. The attorney was pressuring you to come up with some name that s/he could put on the forms, and so you defaulted to the easy choice. If I had done that, my company would be Baker Inc., or Baker & Associates, etc.

I have had the privilege of working with hundreds of professional service firms over the years, spending at least one full day and countless hours with each principal, and also interacting with thousands of the employees who make things happen at these firms. I say “privilege” because it’s stimulating to be around their energy, creativity, independence, humor, and “otherness.” I love my work.

Because I’ve been successful in that work, many people informally ask me questions about starting businesses, fixing businesses, and even buying/selling businesses. This might happen over a drink or a meal. One of the concepts that frequently surfaces is this idea that people ought to pursue what they love and success will follow. “Just follow your passion and the success will take care of itself.”

I'm 51, so I figure I'd better get this right pretty soon. :) I think about this a lot, though. The common thread through the last 25 years, though, is that I've worked for myself. That's a lot of years without a safety net, and it's also a lot of years to learn habits that would make it almost impossible for me to work for someone else.

About 20 years ago, though, I put together this list. At the time, I felt like most of my life was ahead of me and that I wanted as many options as possible. So there's very different from each other, and it was just me dreaming one day:

What leads to business success? If you’ve ever gone back to your high school reunion, you’ve probably seen some surprise success stories and scratched your head while asking the same question. For small marketing firms, success typically follows one of two paths.

What does it mean to build and then lead a staff? Few of us received any formal training for it, so we often model our own style on the examples we’ve had in other bosses (and parents). Too bad, really, because learning to do this ought to be a lot less accidental.

Burnout is widely felt in marketing field. So much so that every individual will face it at some point in his/her career.

Some of it stems from a propensity toward short attention spans, developed at an early age. Oddly enough, if you didn’t have access to a TV or hours of video games, you might be more creative now! (So much for the impact of your profession.)

Don’t we wish that performance was as easy to measure in all positions as it is in the sales function! Because sales does lend itself to measurement, we leap toward that comfortable spot, relieved that our management load has been lessened.

But just because it is measurable doesn’t necessarily mean that we should view it primarily in that fashion. In fact, experienced managers sometimes get this nagging feeling that they are missing something by implementing commissioned sales in a service business.

We all define the ideal client in many ways, but essentially it boils down to two things: the ideal client relationship is one in which you make money and have an appreciable impact on your client. Sure, you want to enjoy the relationship, you want referrals, you want prompt payment, you want to work with a decision maker, and a dozen other things. But those two things are the really important ones: money and impact.

We talk about money in various other position papers—here I want to talk about impact.

 There’s not a lot to say on this subject, but management does seem to attract control freaks in inordinate numbers. My own experience as a control freak was a bit hilarious. I decided that it was time to research OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) tendencies, and so I went online and ordered three books. Right. Not one book, but three. As I explained this to someone, she just laughed, nearly rolling around on the floor. Ordering three books on obsessive compulsive tendencies seems to confirm the diagnosis before even cracking open one of the books, no?