Saying no to work

Confession: it took me three years of wrestling with myself and worrying about “saying no to work” to properly define our service offering and focus only on what we do best (Strategy, Branding, Websites and content creation for expert firms). 

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You see when we started out as an agency we just did what people asked us to do… whatever that was! 

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We couldn’t really afford not to, so we just bit off more than we could chew and chewed like hell. 

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Now obviously we could do those things well and did them well, but we didn’t enjoy it and frankly they stressed me the hell out. 

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When all is said and done I love strategy and I love making great looking things and completing amazing projects that add value to our clients brand. As a business we love being able to do work, put a bow on it and bathe in the glory of the finished product. 

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Unfortunately a lot of what we were doing didn’t align with this. 

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So what did we do that we don’t offer anymore?

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• Advertising - Ads stress me out. I’ve built huge lists and managed campaigns for years but I really really don’t like pure quantitative marketing because I’m a brand guy not a quant guy and I can’t control a clients sales process after the lead is created. So we don’t do ads anymore but can put you in touch with a few agencies that do.
• Sales training - From phone calls to sales process. Having run teams of direct sales people in recruitment I deeply understand it, but deeply dislike it. We don’t do sales, we do brand.
• Newsletters - I spelt Christmas in my own newsletter once and basically have a nervous breakdown every time I have to send one because I am a control freak and would never want to do that to a client. I also don’t like spam emails and find them annoying. We don’t manage email campaigns anymore but will happily write it just not manage it! 

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And now? We’ve well and truly found our zone of magic. I regularly say no to work and refer people to other companies, especially if I feel their core focus is on short term lead generation.

The result? We are so much happier in the work we do. We get to focus on what we do best, and get better at it every day.