Be ready for change

- If you are on the creative business, get this book. It will be delightfully direct, immediately usable, and a great read. - I wanted to be very straightforward because I'm known for that. I'm known for like getting right to the point, telling you what the answer is. If you disagree with it, that's cool. We'll have a debate. - Do you remember when I quoted you to work for us? Do you remember that experience? - No. - Yeah. You were great by the way. I was at this point and I just didn't know, - Right. - anymore if I could do it. Not that I had lost passion to run the firm. That wasn't it. I didn't know if I had the skill sets to go from like a three person firm. I think at the time were going to, it was like seven. It felt overwhelming to me. - How are, how many people you now? - We have 14 or 15. - A few. - Yeah. - That's great. And I just, I knew you, in fact, I had just seen you. And so I'd kind of given you some description. You gave me like a proposal back and I don't know what I was expecting, but at the time I didn't feel like I could afford it. And it was great. You said something along the lines like, "Hey, that's okay." - Yeah. - "I'm here when you're ready." - Yeah. I tell that to people all time. - And I thought, "she's not trying to talk me into it." - Yeah. - She, you stated very clearly what you could do for me. - Yep. - And really it was whether or not I could either afford it or invest in it or whatever. - Right. - And so I always really appreciated that about you. - Yeah. No, I definitely tell people that. Like, if you can't afford it, that's cool. Just wait till when you really to invest in your business. - Yeah. - I always say that. Like, you have to invest in your business, and if you're not ready, that's cool. I get that. And the other thing is, I think sometimes people are just a little bit afraid of change. And I'm not ready to work with people who are afraid of change. You have to be ready for change. - Yeah. - Because we all have to change. We all have to pivot. The industry's changing, like daily. Right? I'm sure, like you said, the whole thing about podcasting. Like we have to constantly go with the flow because industry is changing so much. And if we're not willing to change. - Yeah. Well, you know this better than anyone. I was in New York last week at the AIJ gala. - Yeah. - And someone had said, I think it was at, on stage, that in the last five years, our industry has changed more than the last hundred years combined. - Oh yeah. I bet. Yeah. - And so for someone who's middle, maybe approaching maybe near the end of their career. - Yeah. - Uh huh, that's depressing. - It's not who that -- we don't know who those people are. - But that could be equally exciting and terrifying. - Yeah. - Because, you know, just to date myself, when I came out of school, that's just when the internet kind of had started. - Yeah. - Commercially. - And so you had to learn all of that, right? - Yeah. - And so now, think about, you know, social media, - Yeah. - and you know, video and how, you know, firms now shoot movies. I mean, it's awesome. - Yeah. It's -- I love it. - To be a creative. - But it can also be overwhelming. - Yeah. It can be overwhelming. And if you're not ready for it, if you -- a lot of just people are set in their ways. It's a really hard industry to be in. But I would say that about the world. The world is changing so fast. - Yeah. No, I agree with that. - You know? - Yeah. - So what are some of the things that you most commonly -- I have two questions for you. - Yeah. - You most commonly come up against? Like, when you're working with a leader, - Yeah. - what are the things that are most commonly present? - Two things. There's a lot of commonalities. One is the person who's running the firm is so in the weeds designing every day that they're not focused on the big picture of their business. So a lot of designers start their own firm cause they want to do cool work. And they can't trust their team to do their best job. And they don't want to. They start -- they don't want to let go of doing design. And when you run your own firm, I don't know what about you, but you know, it's running a firm is not designing. It's a lot of other things. Being a great creative director and letting people design awesome work for you under your vision. You know? And so I think that's a big one. I think most of my clients start from that place of like always in the weeds, always fighting fires, never thinking about, "Well, who am I as a company? Where do I want to go?" So they're allowing cleanses gets back to new business. My second point and it's related, which is they allow all their clients, and even their staff, to drive the direction of the business. - Mm. So all your business is by referrals. So that's the second thing is, is a lot of my clients, all their new business is by referrals and they're proud of it. And they should be because that means they're doing great work and the clients love them. But that allows the clients and all the people you know to drive the direction of your business. So, it's embracing new business or embracing relationship building, so that you can control the direction of your business, because you're only going to get the work of people that know each other. - Yeah. - And then that's going to be the same kind of work and the same kind of industry with the same kind of personalities and the same pricing structures. So I think that's the two things. One is a principle that doesn't get out of his own way and really focus on the big picture of the vision. And the other one, relying on others to drive the direction of your business and not having a focus on operations and new business and staffing and building culture. And that's the stuff I love. Like, I love building culture. I love staff management. I love client management. I love like the big picture of things. - Yeah. I can tell. For those of you obviously listening to this, you can't see, she just lit up right there, when she talked about it. - Yeah. - So it's exciting. - Yeah.