The great difficulty in running any kind of service business is managing the ebb and flow of work.
You have busy times and slow times.
That’s fine. Except for balancing money and the team. You have to be a bit of a fortune teller. What the future holds will influence how you balance things.
While people say, “It’s just business,” it’s more complicated than that.
You are dealing with people who are relying on you.
So, you hire people during busy times. But what happens during slow times?
Do you just lay them off?
Maybe you hire temporary people. Or maybe you use an outsourcing service. Or maybe you hire people hourly.
This is becoming an issue at SageRock because things appear to be ramping back up.
This kind of trend is always a great opportunity. You can learn from the past. You can see mistakes that you made and hopefully try something different.
The trick in “learning from your mistakes” when it comes to building a team is that you never are sure if the mistakes made were structural or if you didn’t have the right people in the right positions.
Right now we have a great core team of really sophisticated leaders. I feel that is better than at any other time in our history.
But what next? Do we try for another leader? Or do we try for more support-type roles?
The recession has made me gun shy. How much can I trust that we are in a steady forward growth phase?
If I thought we were in for another 3-5 years of consistent growth I would probably look for a more senior person.
But what if it’s a fluke? What if we are actually at a peak right now? Then the core leaders of the company would be enough. We could just use support people.
So, I have no answers here. Only questions.
If you have some recommendations on this please let me know.
I don’t have a current structured outside advising team at the moment. So maybe I can use all of you for that. Any and all thoughts on this are appreciated.
Sage
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My name is Sage Frederick Lewis. My kid's name is Indiana Sage Lewis. I am filled with love and passion for many things in life. The list of things I like about life is MUCH longer than the things I don't like about life. So, since you don't have all day reading about the mundane things I love (some of which, btw, include: Rocky, Indy, SageRock, movies, pizza, cheesecake, running, exploring.) here are the things I don't like:
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It’s not easy – when I first started Acquisio, we were an agency much like yours. I faced the same issues. I don’t think I have the answer, but here is what I did and it worked out fine in the end.
I built a nice network of specialists (you know where to find those guys for sure) who could help deal with overflows. I kept only staff that were able to prepare proposals, get the deal signed, execute the work month after month (seo-ppc-analytics), keep the client happy, and make sure they paid their bills. They were all entrepreneurs who weren’t ready to make the jump, and were happy to work for a good salary and some upside (commissions, bonuses, etc).
All of the grunt work was outsourced, some of it to Indian workers, other to local experts, like designers, copywriters, book keepers, lawyers, etc.
So my advice to you is to stretch that elastic and only hire people who are as good or better than you are yourself at all of these things, and who are happy to be in fact like a small business inside your own. And pay them extremely well.
always stretched the elastic til it feels like it’s about to snap.
Hey Marc!
That’s great advice.
Thanks man.
Sage
Great points by Marc. An agency, especially a digital one should focus (IMHO) on what they’re passionate about, my guess is that would be strategy and creative. They should “outsource” the high volume/transactional work (aka “grunt work”) to specialists as Marc calls them who are passionate about that. Where I differ with Marc is that advertising, much like human resources or other high touch functions is too client facing to off-shore, outsources YES, off-shore no… as the impact and implications for such can be disastrous to your client relationships. Here is link to HfS Research paper (http://db.tt/ysXlW3Y) we contributed to on new agency operating models. Happy to help more, just call or email.
Thanks Scott!
Outsourcing in country has an appeal to me. It’s something we’ve never done but might be interesting to try.
Hiring a great person has consistently always changed our company. Adding a great person to a small business will literally change your life as a business owner.
I’m inclined to try to get another strategist / creative person and then possibly test the waters with some in-country outsourcing.
At the end of the paper you linked to (thank you, btw) they write: “Invest in account management.” That does seem like an important component. A great account manager is incredibly valuable.
This is all very helpful. Thank you!
Sage
Sage,
Please feel free to email me directly at scott.golas@centro.net. This is the “opportunity” we regularly encounter (you’re the third person I’ve talked to this week on the topic) with non-holding company agencies who are trying to build profitable businesses…without incurring huge fixed costs. Happy to help.
scott
Thanks Scott!
I’ll definitely keep you in mind as we progress.