Overstaffing can break your small business — here’s how to know when to fire someone
Small business owners often have little time to develop strategies to effectively monitor their company’s financial health. As a result, many of them know what their company needs to survive, like how much revenue they need to cover payroll, but [...]
Are agencies a dying breed?
I always find it fascinating when conferences bring together a panel of professionals and ask them to look into their proverbial crystal ball and tell us how the world will be different. A couple weeks ago, during AdvertisingWeek's conference, a [...]
Why you need to stop billing by the hour
If you're like most agencies, you are still primarily using the billable hour payment. This model relegates you to a manual laborer rather than a solution-driven partner. It also puts you and your clients at odds, rather than forging a [...]
How to Prevent Scope Creep when Scaling Your Business with Ryan Meo
If there’s one type of project that every agency struggles to do profitably – it’s websites. But what if it was possible to do web dev and not lose your shirt? My podcast guest Ryan Meo runs ScaleSquad.com, a private [...]
How to Stop Your Client from Shopping Around
Think of the last time you went shopping online. Was it for clothes? Shoes? Maybe even a graphic designer? We live in an age where creative contractors are only a click away. More and more, clients are hiring them for [...]
Why Good Writing Matters — and 4 Ways to Teach It to Your Team
In a time of emoticons, abbreviations, and 140 character-count replies, a three-paragraph email is the equivalent of “War and Peace.” But communication is a vital part of office life, whether you’re a lab technician sharing results or a human resources [...]
4 Ways To Compete With The Big Guys
Right now, there’s a lesson big business owners are beginning to learn: Never underestimate the underdog. In a modern world, bigger isn’t always better. In fact, in an age of rapid communication, social media and light-speed tech innovation, people crave [...]
How To Hire Strategic Thinkers — Not Just Order Takers
Good help is hard to find. You want people you can throw in the deep end on day one and can trust to make smart decisions and understand the context and impact of their choices. In other words, you want [...]
5 Big Agency Owner Mistakes Make and How to Avoid Them
All agency owners have one thing in common: the desire to create a company that does it better and does it their way. But you can’t realize your vision if your agency isn’t financially successful. It’s simple: Your agency must bring [...]
When Agencies Self-Destruct
In old cartoons and action movies, the idea of self-destruction usually involved a giant red “self-destruct” button, just waiting to be pushed to trigger an explosion of impending doom. When pressed, it initiated a countdown, and the characters scrambled to [...]
