Small Business Articles on People

And How to Respond to a Declined Job Offer As a creative agency owner, you will know how difficult it is to recruit the right people. And it’s getting tougher. We’re currently in the toughest hiring market in living memory. Sure, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, at the beginning of October 2021, there are 8.4 million potential workers. But there are almost 11 million open jobs. It’s a candidate’s market. The competition for talent is intense, and it’s difficult to tell what the best candidates are looking for in a job. They might be looking for a company with a greater work-life balance or a company that offers more opportunities for professional … [Read more...]

Your Foolproof Checklist for Hiring Employees To grow your creative agency, you will have to hire people. There’s only so much you or your existing team can do. The problem is that you find hiring procedures for creative agencies more than a little challenging. If the hiring process leaves you frustrated and fearful that your chosen candidate will turn out to be a failure, you’re not alone. I’ve had hundreds of creative agency owners tell me their hiring horror stories. Others become so frustrated that they take potentially calamitous and costly hiring steps. Here’s a couple of examples: One executive told me that he has practically given up trying to hire … [Read more...]

7 Simple Strategies to Motivate Exceptional Feedback Getting feedback from customers is arguably one of the most important aspects of being an owner of a creative agency. Feedback from clients can help you to understand your business’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s the best way to know what your clients prefer and dislike about a service or product. It can help improve their experience with the company and even generate more sales. You know this, though, don’t you? Then why is it that a Gallup study found two-thirds of employees have direct customer contact every day but don’t have a clue what their customers care about? How much better could your business be if … [Read more...]

How to Get Feedback from Your Team Feedback is an essential part of leadership. Giving feedback is essential to develop individuals and teams, and to boost their performance. However, many leaders (especially those with little leadership experience) tend to forget the importance of receiving feedback. I’ve seen this a lot with my clients. As you build and scale a creative agency, the pressure is on to ensure your people are doing their best work for your clients. That pressure often leads to a one-way street of feedback. In the short term, this serves the purpose intended: your team develops and does its best work for you. But without feedback from your team, how do you know you are … [Read more...]

Saying No When You Need to Can Enhance Your Reputation and Revenues Saying no to a customer is not always easy, but it is necessary. When you hear a client’s requests, you need to take a step back and think about the consequences of saying yes. Start by asking yourself, how will this impact our firm?  If you always accommodate every client request, you will run out of time and resources. You’ll fall out of the helicopter.  You need to take a step back. You must learn how to say no to a customer without damaging the relationship.  The typical day of an ‘always yes’ leader As an ‘always yes’ leader, you aren’t controlling your firm. … [Read more...]

Red Flags and Solutions to Get Your Hiring Process Back on Track Bad hires caused by common hiring mistakes. So easily avoided, too. Are you guilty of making them? If you are, how do you avoid them? In this article, I examine the top 10 hiring mistakes employers make. You’ll learn how to spot them, and how not to make them – the red flags and solutions that will take your hiring process to where you need it to be. The cost of making a bad hire There’s a great piece of research by the National Business Research Institute (NBRI) that details just how costly a bad hire is. They have calculated bad hires to cost as much as $300,000, depending on the seniority of the hire you make. A bad … [Read more...]

Steps That Deliver Consistent Recruitment Results  I’ve developed this hiring process checklist for businesses who have consistently hired the wrong person in the past, and for those who are hiring for the first time. If you have never made a bad hire yet, then congratulations – you’re already using this hiring template. I’ve spoken with hundreds of business owners and heard hundreds of hiring horror stories. Managers who have only made a handful of good hires in all their time of recruiting for talent. Others who rely on luck, hiring as many candidates as possible in the hope that one works out. This checklist for hiring employees takes the guesswork out of … [Read more...]

Hire Creatives with These Executable Tips You need a creative hire. A designer, writer, artist, etc. An employee who will help you develop your brand and sell your services, doing the creative work that you have never mastered. But something is holding you back. You find the idea of hiring creative talent more than a little daunting. You won’;t find them in your usual networks. They speak a different language. How do you critique their work when it’s not in your sphere of expertise? 7 Tips for hiring creative talent Whether you need a copywriter to develop marketing material, a content writer to make your website pop, or a designer to create eye-catching websitesbrochures (plus a host … [Read more...]

Being an entrepreneur might sound like a glamorous and lucrative career, but the reality is that entrepreneurship is more of a roller coaster ride. If you aren’t expecting the ups and downs, then you aren’t prepared for the experience.  Running my own business has been nothing less than some of the best experiences of my life, along with some of the worst. And, unlike a real roller coaster at an amusement park, I haven’t been able to predict when those highs and lows will occur.  I’ve won big deals, then lost them. I’ve hired an employee who seemed like the perfect person for my business, only to have that person snapped up by a competitor. I thought I had the perfect marketing … [Read more...]

“What got you here won’t get you there!” ~ Marshall Goldsmith Congratulations, you’ve grown your business and achieved a major milestone, one million in revenue. Well done! It’s a huge achievement. Less than 4% of business in America reach this goal.  Now that you’ve celebrated, let’s talk about your next steps. Do you want to keep growing? If so, there are some major changes ahead. The skills and practices that made it possible for you to bring in a million dollars this year aren’t going to scale when you are at two million or five million. You’re going to need to do some things differently.  I get it, change is hard. And delegating can be hard, too. But learning to accept these … [Read more...]