Mirror Mirror On the Wall

Who’s the fairest strategist of them all?

You may have noticed, but the direction of this blog has changed of late. The last few posts have centered around the issues I am confronting as my business grows. Obviously I am thrilled to even be given the opportunity to deal with problems of hiring, real estate (for office space), the drawing up of financial projections, purchasing health insurance and revenue sharing.

And because this business was born on the web, and with the particular principles of social media embedded directly into it, I am excited to continue blogging and writing about this journey as it happens, with the same commitment to honesty, authenticity and transparency that have always motivated me. I will be the first to admit that I have not always achieved these rather lofty goals that I set out for myself.

Every now and then, especially when I’ve worked especially hard on a new strategy for a client or come up with a creative solution to an existing problem, I have hesitated and often enough held back from sharing that work, that solution, that creativity with the world around me. This is short sighted thinking and I am guilty of it.

But what I aspire to be, in all my activities, is someone with a keen eye on the long-term. We are so used to having what we want right now. That is the culture I grew up in. That is the culture that shaped me and because of that, I need to remain vigilant every single day against it. This is why I want to share revenue with my employees and partners. It is not because I want less money today, it is because if they are happy and motivated and feel like they are properly incentivized they will work harder and smarter and we’ll all do better in the long term and in more ways than just financially.

To me, this feels radical. But why am I telling you this?

Because in continuing this series on “Building the New,” I am heading into sensitive territory. I’ll be talking more bluntly about the things I want and cannot have. The things I need but won’t get. And of course, I’ll be talking plainly about the fat thinking and laziness inherent across the agency spectrum.

But I will also be talking about what I do want, and how I’ll get it. For instance, although I work with a bevy of designers, I really want a designer/ developer on staff full-time. Why?

1. So I can bounce ideas off of them all day and all night long.
2. So I can be educated on aspects of branding/ design/ user experience that I lack.
3. So I can have designs and branding done whenever I need and want them, which means I can pitch more businesses and occasionally punch my weight
4. So I can challenge that designer to think beyond what they know. One of my greatest assets is my ability to push the people around me to think differently about the problems before them, whether professional or personal.

So, more to come, in the days and weeks. I can tell you are reading. Traffic here is spiking. I wonder if it is because I am finally getting more honest about what I am building. If it is, then thank you for the vote of confidence. It is going to be a busy busy fall.

Image courtesy of Beverly & Pack on Flickr

Tagged as: Building a Digital Agency, Digital Strategy, Ephemerality