The entrepreneurs running creative firms are different than their older counterparts. Here's a recent podcast episode where Blair Enns interviews me about that subject. If you enjoy this episode, I hope you'll subscribe. We'd also value your positive rating on iTunes.
The only preparation we do before each recording is a quick email that says: "Hey, Blair, interview me about this tomorrow. Here are three or four talking points." And then we launch into what at times could be considered an awkward transparency about what we are thinking (we take turns interviewing each other, with a different topic each episode). There are no retakes and no editing of the content. It's been new, fresh, and fun for us. You can find out more here. Click below to listen to this episode immediately.
Here's another of my favorites. In this one....
Time to talk about clients. Not specific ones, though, but rather what an ideal client base looks like for a smallish, privately-held firm in the marketing field. I doubt that this would apply outside this field, so use with caution if you are a different type of firm.
Start by listing all your clients in a spreadsheet, from largest to smallest in descending order, like the illustration above. One very important note: if you have the data, list just the fee income from these clients. That’s what’s left after pulling out all the external cost of goods sold like media, printing, and contractors. Don’t pull out internal salaries as those are never properly categorized that way.
I’ve numbered the graphic to direct your eyes to what you might look for.
First, note the relative size of your largest client. If you are working for multiple departments or divisions of the same larger entity, they should be listed as a single source of work. For more on dealing with a client concentration issue, see the position paper here on "Qualifying Clients" (it's free).
You want that largest client to represent 15–25% of your total fee billings. Larger than that and most of the clients that follow will be too small to generate profit and to let you get deeply enough into their situation to move the needle on their behalf. Larger than that and your firm could also suffer harm when that much business is lost as the client moves on. But the larger the better as you nudge up against 25%.
Second, see how many clients....
Our recent analysis of ca. 300 firms found that around 98% of them weren’t getting paid fairly for their work. It comes from some degree of underpricing, defined as intentionally pricing a project at less than what an objective pricing would suggest, or over-servicing, which is intentionally over-delivering what you and the client agreed to.
Underpricing occurs before the project starts and it’s usually motivated by a fear of not getting the work, either because you don’t want people sitting around without enough to do or because you honestly believe that landing this project will open some opportunity for you (that’s a lie that’s easier to tell yourself).
Over-servicing occurs during the project itself and its motivations are more complex. A creative might land on something interesting to explore, and they might be excited enough to pursue it on their own time. Or the client might express some disappointment with your work as it unfolds and so you try to repair the relationship. Or the client begins flirting with a competitive alternative and you stretch to impress them. Or your positioning simply hasn’t created enough power in the relationship and you feel vulnerable. You might even care more about effectiveness than the client does!
Now here’s why underpricing is so dangerous. You follow a certain research method and creative process that cannot easily be compressed. You know this, too, because....
Risk-taking is a crazy thing, right? I think you should make a lot of money, but I hate debt. I advocate ruthless positioning, but I don’t think you should grow too fast. I think you should never compromise on culture, but I think you should make some risky hires.
We all have a different tolerance for risk, too. Some of you move from one gorilla client to the next, and others can’t stomach any single client that represents more than ten percent of your business. On the other hand....
I’m getting more calls than usual from agency principals who are nervous about their businesses. It’s a combination of three things, it seems:
Those are the three external factors that are bringing some agencies back to their home bases where–truth be told–they are doing really good things:
I think the current agency leaders are the best leaders we’ve ever had.
That’s a very confusing statement on the surface, so let me explain. The global economy is sending mixed signals these days and so salary load is top of mind for principals. Let me walk you through the decision matrix so that you can make a smart business decision about that. (Please forward this to your controller if you need help following this.)
First, figure out your salary allowance. Look at your fee basis for last year. Look at total revenue ($4M in our example firm) and subtract cost of goods sold ($1M) These COGS capture outside expenses like media and freelancers but not employees on salary–put employee salaries in here and you’ll get it wrong. That leaves us with $3M in agency gross income, gross profit, or fee revenue, which all refer to basically the same thing. You can afford to spend 45% of that on unburdened compensation, including your own. So add up what people make ($36K + $78k + $128k, etc.) and see where you stand. Our example firm can afford to spend 45% of $3M, or $1,350k. It turns out that they are spending $1,620k. It appears that folks are overpaid, but not so quick.
Second, normalize the allowance. There’s a calculation here that you cannot skip, and that’s to calculate....
What do you do with smaller clients, especially the legacy ones? The acquisition cost is behind you, but should they occupy a spot on the roster? It's one thing to hire for additional capacity when you land a new client, but there's also a good argument for cleaning out your client base and freeing up existing capacity first.
Start by getting all the data together that you need, which is primarily cost accounting. If principals and key leaders aren't participating in the timekeeping system, estimate their time to cover that. This is important because legacy clients have outsized relationships with principals because of the way accounts were handled in the past, before you grew. Next, score each client in five categories:
Years ago, when I still owned my agency, I went to work one Sunday afternoon so that I could get something done without the usual interruptions. I was anxious to catch up on our billing because receivables were dropping as clients paid and I needed to turn some WIP (work in progress) into some AR (accounts receivable). I hated the accounting nature of that part of my job, but it felt so good to generate $100,000 of invoices in just a few minutes.
I finished and felt like I'd accomplished something. I was satisfied because I was suddenly caught up, in this one thing, for this short time. It almost felt like I'd earned all that money in a few minutes!
But not for long. That next morning I started the week off and I kept thinking about how high our high receivables balance was! When would some of that client money start coming in? I knew why it was high--I'd just bumped them up to that level the day before--and I knew that none of it was due yet, but I could see this underlying anxiety in myself. Yesterday it was because receivables where low; today it was because they were high. Crazy.
Do you see that in yourself? Always worried about something? It's a curse and a blessing, really. You're never satisfied. You never rest for long. It's always this or that on your list of tasks:
My Declaration for Your 2014: The Year of Your Own Oxygen Mask
This year I will jot down some clever ways to peg the amount of "care" my clients bring to the table, and I will willingly match that level, just because it's the right thing to do. But for my own sake, I will not exceed that level, just because it's also the right thing to do.
I will quit pretending to solve the potable water crisis in Africa and I will take a glass of cold, refreshing water to a randomnly chosen employee on occasion. I am tired of the hypocrisy of wanting to change that world while being a #@%!) shitty manager in this one.
Not inconsistent with this, I will finally boot that one employee out of the nest. Yes, they have done every job in the place and been with me as the organization has matured, but they no longer have the presence, objectivity, ability, or hunger that we need. If I hear them tell one more new employee that they've been here the longest, have done every job, and know how and when to present things to me, I may just make a decision on the spot.
I will be so, so grateful for whatever health and intelligence I've managed to retain through these years. [Pause and be grateful, please.] I won't view life as something that happens after I fix it, but something that happens while I fix it. The journey itself must be savored, along with the control and freedom and opportunities I have to NOT feed the machine.
If what I've just said still doesn't...
I don't think I've ever posted a blog entry this long, but if you read it like I did, you'll forget about time and be so engaged that you read it all. It's from a friend (Schuyler Brown) who consults out of NYC. She graciously allowed me to publish this. More about her work at the end. Broadly, the subject of this is money and life, and based on the questions I've been getting recently, many of you are thinking about just that.
Like many Americans post-recession, I've been taking a close look at my relationship to money. To my surprise, what started simply as a responsible exercise turned into a deeply instructive philosophical journey.
I'd been ignoring the task of addressing my ideas about money for years, hiding behind an image of myself as Bohemian, an artist, a spiritual aspirant. Money seemed something too concrete to factor into my flights of fancy. Even as an entrepreneur I never stopped to think much about money. I worried when I wasn't making it and was jubilant when I was...it was a roller coaster.
It was my daughter's birth two years ago that unexpectedly initiated a shift in my approach to money, because she shifted my entire perspective on the future. Her presence forced me to imagine a future I'd been happy to leave to chance. One day, exiting the subway on my way home, I caught myself with a furrowed brow worrying once again about the numbers in our bank accounts...this time with no regard for my own needs, but for hers alone. I heard a steely voice of resolve somewhere deep inside say, "I never want her to suffer the burden of financial strain." At that moment, I felt my actual walk change. I became more directed.
But it wasn't until an incident this summer....
A "client concentration" problem refers to having a single related source of work representing more than 25% of your gross profit (fees + markup income). That's usually the point at which the yellow light should blink on your financial dashboard. That same light should blink red if it moves to 35%, because my research shows that to be the median at which one-half of firms fail. In other words, one-half survive the loss of a client that represents ca. 35% and the other one-half fail. Maybe not immediately, but they can usually trace it back to that point if they were not prepared for it. This is meant to prepare you for it.
You either had, have, or will have a gorilla client. Don't be afraid of it, and don't say "no" to the work. A problem like this almost always comes from something great you've done and you deserve the accolades in the form of even more work. Don't get a huge head, though, because unusually high spikes in your top line revenue typically stem from a client concentration issue and not unusual and sudden strong new business skills.
First Step: Honesty
When I talk about this to clients, the first thing they always say is this: "Yes, but all this related work is coming from different departments, and even different contacts in the same department. In fact, they hate each other and we'd probably get more work if we lost one department!"
That's bullshit, if you'll pardon me, because it assumes....
A great client recently asked me to outline my definition of success for their firm. I really enjoyed doing that, and below is a version that you can adapt to your own situation, putting your own stamp on it:
