FORM © 2024: A Retrospective
We’re officially nine months old.
And with that, comes two things: a whole lot of gratitude to our clients for trusting us in business and design to bring their ideas to life, and also a whole slew of lessons learned along the way.
Whether you are the founder of your own creative agency, a freelance designer or creative, or an aspiring business owner in an entirely different industry, here are some lessons we learned along the way.
WORKING IN AND ON YOUR BUSINESS
We put the most important lesson first, which poses the question: are you working in, or on your business?
From personal experience, we found it incredibly busy to slip into the “in” part of the business – working day to day on client work, obsessing over vectors and designs and rarely leaving Illustrator or InDesign, getting caught up in emails and proposal writing and all the day-to-day, nitty gritty elements.
We found that in the times we only worked in this area, other parts of the business went by the wayside: securing new clients, scouting for new client work, showcasing the work we had done via social media and a robust content strategy, and writing insight posts like the one you’re reading now. These are all critical parts of running a new business – especially when one of the most critical parts of staying afloat is securing new business – which makes it incredibly important to work “on” the business.
We equate it to the importance of building the bike and not just riding the bike. Plus, no one pays you to zero your inbox or send proposals with your fingers crossed.
SAYING NO IS SAYING YES
Especially in year one, we had many times we were tempted to say yes to any and all projects that came in – but we found it important to know the difference between a project that is fruitful for both studio and client vs. projects that have undefined scopes, undefined budgets, undetermined revision numbers, and vagueness.
These are the projects that cost you time, cost you money, and cost you sanity. There is always other work out there. Saying no to these projects is saying yes to projects that align with your business structure, your time, and your energy. There is an abundance of (the right) projects out there.
EVERYTHING BENEFITS FROM PROCESS
You can’t and shouldn’t do everything. Read that one twice.
Any business can be boiled down to a replicable set of processes. Agencies are no different. From project inquiry to proposals* to project management nuances, we have everything dialed down to a science. To be honest, the first few months of the studio consisted of ensuring our Statements of Work, Master Service Agreements, and other documents were razor sharp.
A big reason for this: better process and project management gives you more time to work on the thing you signed up for in the first place: creative work. Messy process and project management just loses you time in the long run and gives less time for the creative work.
PITCH ONE CONCEPT
For us, gone are the days where we pitch the client 2-3+ logo ideas for an identity. We certainly used to, but we find now that more variations and ideas just confuse everyone and cause projects to drag on – especially if there are multiple stakeholders required for signoff/approval.
While we certainly iterate on dozens – if not hundreds – of logo ideas before the final idea comes to fruition, we pick the strongest concept and iterate around that, taking the time to create high quality mockups, messaging, and animations around that instead.
The client feels more confident when you feel more confident, and that, for us, has been shown when we reveal one concept with depth, than several more unrefined logo ideas.
SCOPE CREEP IS THE WORST
Yes, we’ve been there. But we no longer are.
While we clearly define and agree upon the scope of work in our Statements of Work (contracts), and as much as we can on the Discovery Call with each client, occasionally scope creep happens.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, the idea is this: midway through a project or design phase, another, un-budgeted need comes up on the client front (“actually, we need a website as well!”), with an expectation of simply adding that to the to-do list, as opposed to renegotiating the terms of the contract to include it.
Our favourite phrase for this, whenever scope creeps up in a client call with a new request, is to say “Sure, anything is possible with time and money..”
SMALL EFFORTS WITH SCALABLE RESULTS
On the subject of securing new business, sure, going to events and socials and networking is great – but the downside to that is your time is only so scalable, ie. you can only be in so many places at once (and if you’re like us, your social battery has limits).
By focusing on our content strategy and showcasing the work we do both on-site and on-social, we’re able to reach more people with more value at scale. We encourage you to do the same to free your time/energy.