LAUNCH PARTY

Join us for a Black History Month fireside chat, moderated by BLAC Internship Program alumni, about ownership & amplification of Black ideas and talent on Tuesday, February 28th at 5pm EST! Moderators: Savannah (Sav) Hogan (BLAC '21) Jaydin Geer (BLAC '21) Panelists: Ashley Richardson-George Alexis K. Johnson Robert Baker Myles Williams, MBA Jasmine Burnett Contributors: Belise Nishimwe (BLAC '22) #blackhistorymonth #ownership #amplification #blackcreatives #blacinternship #crcsmxms #smallagency

If you're feeling bored at work and looking for a challenge try this little game I play. It's called waiting until the last fucking second to do everything.

How to productize professional services. AKA How to get some control in this simulation we call life👈 What do I get? How long does it take? How much does it cost? These are the questions every client is going to ask if you work in professional services. These are the questions YOU ask when you hire someone, right? Doesn't matter if it's a plumber, electrician, architect, you name it. PRODUCTIZE For the longest time, I pretended like I couldn't answer these questions, until I realized the cat and mouse game is stupid. It's just not where the industry is going. If you want to move on from the hourly model (which you do), you need to answer them. Here's how: Find three times you've done the project you're about to do. Average the time. Write it down. Average the cost. Write it down. Look at the specific recurring deliverables. Write them down. There's your answer. Now you have a deliverables based scope. Why is this better? 🚀 You can evaluate your projects by profitability. 🚀You can eliminate the ones that lose you money. 🚀You can bake in your profit margin. 🚀You can staff accurately. 🚀You can teach your sales team how to sell what you do best. 🚀You can plan accordingly. 🚀You can set crystal clear expectations internally and externally. 🚀You can build a scorecard for how many projects you need to sell. 🚀You can build a pipeline for your products. You can't do anything about the fact that we live in a simulation, but you can gain a little control along the way.

🎉 It’s fucked up fact Friday! 🎉 If you’ve got creativity problems, I feel bad for you, son, I got 99 problems and…EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM was pointed out by someone trying to look smart in front of their boss. Fact: Killing ideas makes you look smarter than supporting them, and is probably better for your career. That’s not me, talking, that’s the Harvard Business Review: “Research shows that people believe that they will appear smarter to their bosses if they are more critical—and it often works. In many organizations, it is professionally rewarding to react critically to new ideas.” But this article is long, and it is old. So I’ll summarize and colorize… In many corporate settings our desire to look smart results in hyper critique, and finding fault in new ideas that ultimately kills the creative process AND the rewards thereof. Sound familiar? Yes, there are million reasons to kill creative ideas. So how do we overcome that? By focusing on the qualities of great creative ideas so that we can build thriving creative cultures where the people in the gingham shirts and khakis and the people in all black everything outfits come together and build each other up instead of tear each other apart. Great news: There are 2 components of successful ideas. And that’s where you want to focus. Before we get there, though, there is a pre-requisite: You MUST define the goal that the ideas are trying to solve. Once you’ve done that, you can evaluate good creative ideas that are BOTH 1. Novel 2. Useful. A new idea that isn’t useful is pretty worthless. A useful idea that isn’t somewhat novel is boring so who cares? By focusing energy on supporting and building on the two components of good creative ideas you will align everyone in the shared mission to get to great, creative ideas. Come on, everybody, let’s all be stupid out there today and not kill ideas. https://lnkd.in/gyNg6bbQ.

There are two differences between marketing/advertising and journalism. (Besides the fact that they're both dying industries. JUST KIDDING) The letter H and time. Journalists write about what happened AFTER the fact. They use the 5 W's. Marketers write a story that's going to happen BEFORE the fact. Which is why we need an H. H stands for HOW Marketing/Advertizing = The 5 W's + H 👇 Who (Customer) What (Outcome) When (Launch Date) Where (Media) Why (Brand strategy) HOW (execution)

The algorithm prefers us to speak. But it’s often better to listen.

RTWY (right there with you)

The power of LinkedIn!

#agencystrategy