Yesterday I had an idea that I would chronicle my life as an entrepreneur this coming year. But then I realized that getting ready for 2017 was a major part of what I’m working on right now. So, I suppose, no time like the present.
My objective in writing is two-fold.
First, I’m hoping that the experience of writing — if I manage to keep it up — will be cathartic. I hold my successes and failures (especially my failures) very close and I have difficulty letting go of frustrations. A mistake or a bad client interaction, even after more than a decade of business ownership, keeps me awake at night. Writing about these issues may make it easier for me to get them out of my system.
Second, capturing my perspective on events as they happen may make it easier for me to learn from myself as time goes. We’ll see.
My core business, my small business digital marketing agency, is changing. A year ago, I might have done anything to excuse myself from all this and find a graceful way to bow out. Something clicked though this year and I found a way to get over all the general crappiness I was feeling and fall in love with what I was doing again.
We’ve been selective about clients, we’ve been pushing to stick closer to project scope, we’ve been evolving our process and our services to reflect the way that I want to do business, rather than simply “do whatever the client wants” which, as it turns out, benefits nobody. Very few of our clients have marketing experience and they often ask for things that will have a negative impact on the success of their project. We have clients that want to ignore my decades of design experience and use me or my employees as their mouse: “move this here now, make this blue, can we add lots more shadows?” The end result is a product that doesn’t make them money and that reflects poorly on us. Lose/lose.
This year we’ve told clients that we are going to insist on a 50/50 partnership, that we expect them to follow our lead from a design and marketing perspective and that we will follow theirs as related to their industry knowledge and business objectives. It’s worked surprisingly well and I am truly interested again for the first time in probably two years.
Today I sent offer letters to two contractors to make them proper employees. It’s a big step and one that doesn’t come easily for me: I’m admitting now that I want this business to grow again, that I want to make it successful in a way that does more than simply pays me a salary.