Search results for: “about:blank”
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Five Pre-Tests of Your Agency’s Positioning
There are five early tests that can be applied to your positioning before you make a choice. I’ve covered the first extensively in an earlier post (the number of competitors and prospects), and I’ll cover the other four here. Next month we’ll look at the tests that you can apply after your positioning is up…
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What I Learned from the Race Track
The deeper your professional expertise, the broader your life outside of work needs to be. It provides context, it grounds you, and it stops you from being one of those weirdos deep into a sub- sub- sub-forum on Reddit where you argue about the most insignificant things. The other thing is does—for me, anyway—is provide…
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Q/A No. 01: Your Questions and My (Attempted) Answers
Q: “I think I’ve heard you say on podcasts that ESOPs are immoral. Why is that?” —Chris, in Atlanta; “I’d love to know why you say ESOP is universally a mistake on your website. I can come up with my own reasons, but would love to know specifically your thoughts on it.” —Josh, in California…
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How 3 Consultants Might Evaluate Your Positioning Instinctively
Inevitably a new client will ask, “So how do we compare with the other firms you’ve worked with?” Some of my clients make astounding amounts of money and I’d never want to work there. Others are brilliant but struggle with the killer instinct that puts space between their performance and a peer. Others do remarkable…
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How Your Hiring Strategies Change
What got you here—in terms of your approach to staffing—won’t get you there. There are some staffing strategies that are absolutely the right choice in the early days, but they are a mistake, later. I’m going to describe the differences in what kind of people you hire by picturing three different stages, but the truth…
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Your Own Definition of a Successful Business
I’ve been wondering about this. Some of you are content to have a job, essentially, where you can be your own boss. That’s so critically important that you’ll take on more risk, make less money, and do many things that you don’t like (managing people?). It doesn’t have to be that way, though. Nor does…
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How to Talk About Scope Creep
Managing scope creep is as much fun as arguing with your conspiracy-prone cousin at the Thanksgiving table, but not managing it well is the surest way to lose money, and also a good way to introduce tension in a client relationship. In today’s very brief article (there’s a 150′ tall oak tree on it’s side…
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Adapting to a Modern Workforce
In years past, it was difficult clients that wore you out and planted the seed that maybe it was time to move on. But now it’s something else. But first an admission. I’ve been sitting on this article longer than any article in the queue, afraid that I would get this wrong. And I might,…
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Can You Be An Absentee Owner of a Digital, Marketing, or Creative Firm?
Doing this a number of years gives me a longer arc to see how some things have changed in the industry, and an entirely recent development is this crazy idea that independent marketing, creative, and digital firms are worthy investments for a non-participating entrepreneur who would cash the checks without participating in the firm. By…
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Expertise Is Mainly About Asking Great Questions
One of the biggest misconceptions you’ll have on the way to delivering expertise is the notion that you need to have all the answers. How We Normally Deliver Expertise We catalog our learnings, articulate particular positions, write white papers, and keep inserting more and more statements into our presentation decks. People say “expertise” and with…