Here’s a sobering rule of thumb. The easier it is to enter into a business partnership the harder and more messy it will be to get out. And since failure rates for design firm partnerships are very high (statistics vary, but a greater than 50% failure rate is conservative), when you enter into one you […]
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The book of Ecclesiastes begins, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” If your design firm is not operating profitably then the answer to this question is probably, “not much.” Of course you could be profitable and still not have much […]
My last post pointed out how tracking time is fundamental for getting a grip on your profitability. You can’t fix what you don’t know is broken. I also addressed one of the barriers design firms face in tracking time. That is artists and designers tend to perceive time tracking as negative pressure on the creative […]
Back in 2000, one of my employees at Newfangled produced a Gantt chart of our typical web design process. It revealed that we were spending, on average, almost three times the number of hours on our projects than I had budgeted. No wonder I was chasing after old invoices, desperate to close new business, all […]
Whether you’re a freelancer or an agency principal, setting your firm’s target hourly rate is a crucial decision. While I would advise my clients not to bill by the hour, setting a target rate is essential for estimating projects and evaluating your profitability. Your target rate must take several things into consideration. Most importantly your […]
Over the 15 years I owned Newfangled, I made the mistake of hiring a salesperson more than once. The idea of a dedicated employee whose job is to find clients and who operates mostly on commission was too attractive an opportunity not to bite on. But it never worked out. There are many reasons why […]
One of the distinctives of Rewarding Toil consulting is the 5th “M” of my methodology, that is “motivation.” Sometimes when we think about business motivation we conjure up thoughts of sales teams gathering for a hyped-up, pre-game pep talk. That’s not the kind of motivation I bring. My purposes in addressing motivation goes much deeper […]
Back in 2005, as I was writing monthly newsletters for Newfangled, I took an opportunity to write one on how the Bible had influenced my experiences in business. This is part two of a re-posting of that content–slightly edited to bring it up to date. [Part one is here.] Part Two: Dealing with stress and […]
Most advertising agencies and design firms began with a designer’s impulse to strike out on their own. This ambition was usually fueled by a combination of desires: a desire for greater creative freedom, higher compensation, or more personal freedom. Sometimes a small group of designers get together and think it would just be a blast […]
Back in 2005, as I was writing monthly newsletters for Newfangled, I took an opportunity to write one on how the Bible had influenced my experiences in business. Re-reading this content I find it all still very relevant to some of the core values I bring to my current efforts in consulting and mentoring small […]