“Hey, Pat – So you own and run an agency in trendy South of Market area of San Francisco, with Fortune 50 clients, and you’ve been doing this for over 15 years?!! Wow, that is so cool, you must be doing great!”
Through hard work, creative ideas, fair pricing, a large portfolio of varied work, longevity, trustworthy vendors, very loyal clients, a good business sense, very thorough processes, happy and talented employees, and consistency, we have earned a reputation as a very good agency, if I don’t say so myself – but the reality of an agency being so cool, fun, profitable, and creative is something I am here to shed some light on. For those of you other agency owners reading this and asking why I’d want to tarnish this mystique that we all try to build up, I am here to say that I have all the confidence that those who know me and Belding Associates will think no less of us for sharing the truth.
Like any small business owner, running an agency is like a balancing act, but with 15 performances a day! And that’s exactly why I love it. My biggest balancing act is not being sucked in to working IN the business but ON the business. I can easily get caught up each day with IT issues, financial situations, personnel matters, general operations, facilities and matters IN the business, but in order to succeed I have had to differentiate between what a mentor of mine, who is president of Second Wind, calls “IN the business” and that of working “ON the business”.
“ON the business” is what is intellectually and creatively challenging and thus inspiring. We’re helping clients reach new audiences, gain market share and go down paths that are leading them to new successes as businesses – this is fun (maybe not as fun as skiing, vacationing in Hawaii, etc, but fun in the work world!). Working “ON the business” is finding the right opportunities and creating the right solutions for our clients. But again, the problem in the agency world is that no worthwhile campaign really repeats itself, thus this finding of the opportunities and solutions is part of the daily fold of the business from now until the end – which is just another reason that agencies don’t last forever.
The agency-balancing act continues each and every day both internally and with clients. Our creative director and account team have an incredible idea that is the perfect solution for the client. The client agrees – everyone is happy. As the project moves along, the timeline slightly changes, the budget gets squeezed, some project-creep happens, a few new people are part of the review, and – surprise, surprise -compromises happen. Expectations need to be managed, creative egos need to be kept in check and we need to stay the course and roll with the punches and meet or exceed client expectations. We do! Or did we? Now it’s time for the analytics, the ROI(Return-On-Investment), not the client results but the results of the final audience. And phew, all went well and we reached our target. Time to celebrate like agencies do- party all night, play pool all day, sit in bean-bag chairs and hang out until the next job. Oh, maybe not, we have other clients , other jobs and now that that idea has been used – it’s old – time to start again new!
