1. Treat yourself as an interview subject.

The least productive way to start on this task is to just start writing. You’ll hit so many road blocks, struggle with prioritizing, and most likely, get very repetitive if you try to wing it. So don’t. Take a moment to gather your thoughts and consider what questions you’d ask someone if you were writing their biography, only ask them of yourself. If you’re writing a bio for your company’s website, for instance, start with the basics: What got you where are you are today? Where have you worked in the past? What keeps you motivated to come into work every day? What do you hope to achieve in this position? What do you do in your free time that keeps you grounded?, etc. Then, answer them.

2. Prioritize.

Chances are, if you asked yourself some stellar interview questions, you’ll have a lot of content to work with. Check your available length and then start to move your answers around based on what’s the most important for the medium. (Be sure to use other bios as a reference so yours meshes well with where it’s being placed when it comes time to prioritize so you’re not talking about your pet goldfish for paragraphs on end.)

3. Remove yourself.

Now that you have responses to questions and they’re organized by importance, it’s time to start reworking your replies to fit your medium. Double check it’s placement before determining if you’re going to be writing in first or third persons before doing so, but this is where you have to remove “you” from the equation and just imagine you’re writing about a wonderful product with a set of features. For example, if you replied to the question, “What keeps you motivated to come into work every day?” with, “I have a strong passion for my career and love to see the difference I can make in people’s lives” can be turned into: Jane’s passion for her career and ability to make a difference for her clients is what keeps her coming into work every day with a smile. Once you’ve done this step, you should have a list of several usable sentences that will become your bio.

4. Edit, tweak, revise.

After creating your list of sentences, take a moment to read through them in the order you originally planned. Do they make sense? Does it flow well? Probably not, but this is your chance to combine similar thoughts (say, you had two sentences about passion and motivation, they might be able to be combined here), move things around, and get a solid biography completed. Your bio doesn’t have to be a magical document seemingly written by the Gods, so don’t be too hard on yourself. Generally, biographies tend to be fact-based, to-the-point, and injected with a bit of a human touch… after all, this is a person, with human qualities you’re talking about here. As long as yours meets those areas, it’s probably just splendid.

Now, you might be asking yourself, how do I add this “human touch” you speak of? A lot of the time, a default way of achieving this is by ending a biography with something about how you spend your free time. While this accomplishes that goal, there’re ways to be more creative here. Think of ways to interject a little personality throughout your bio to keep things lighthearted so you won’t have to rely on one little sentence at the end of your bio to get across how human you are. For example, say you mentioned one of your top skills as being able to multi-task. This would be a great opportunity for exaggeration or quotes from coworkers if this is something you’re known for. Try infusing it with something like this, “John’s known around the office as “the octopus” for being able to do so many things at once, he’s often assumed to have 8 hands.” There. Fun, right? I sure think so!

With these tips in place, writing your biography should not only be a cinch, but you may just enjoy doing it. Ha. Wishful thinking, I know.

When contemplating a name change, consider the following:

1. Does your name have brand equity?

Will you lose customers if you went by a different name or does your product or service stand well enough on its own to be valued and desired regardless of the name? The best way to analyze this area is by taking a look at your customer relationships. If you have several larger, loyal customers who would come to you no matter what you were named, you might be OK with changing your name. If your customers pop in and out due to their recollection of your specific brand name, falling off the radar one day could cost you quite a bit of steam.

2. Will the possible outcome of this change outweigh the costs?

This isn’t just monetary expenses such as product packaging, but the resources it will take to effectively communicate this change across your company and to your customers through marketing. It takes a very solid, well planned out communications strategy to get this modification in front of the consumer in a way that they’ll understand. Not to mention, you’ll need to prepare to handle backlash and questions while monitoring and participating in conversations happening online.

3. Are you changing it for the right reasons?

“Because you’re sick of it and want something new”, sadly, isn’t one of them. Knowing your customers have difficulty finding you because it’s a common word, is another. This decision should always be a business decision, not an emotional one.

4. Are you prepared to change your name and stick to it?

If this renaming thing is a common occurrence for your business, there’s probably an underlying issue that’s not being addressed by this change. It’s time to start fresh and get a solid foundation down so that the next name you chose is the final one.

5. Is this name change being prompted by things that are actually important?

If you’re wanting to change your name so you have an easier URL or better social media addresses, it may not be worth the change. With so many people out there sitting on so many domains, struggling to find a URL that’s unique and available and naming your business after it is missing the point of a business name. While simple URLs are always going to be preferred, there’s plenty you can do with search marketing to ensure your name is still showing up and there’s little confusion with your web addresses.

And now, a few good reasons for a name change: 

1. A shift in primary business focus
2. Merging with or detaching from another company
3. Difficulty with spelling or pronunciation
4. Indistinguishable from others in your industry
5. Confusion due to changes in industry/technology

Run business, run!
By turning down projects that aren’t aligned with your core competencies (you know, the things you’re best suited for), it frees you up to take on projects that are better for your company’s size, knowledge base, and experience. By continually saying “yes” to projects that demand more time and resources than you have, you’ll constantly overwork yourself and your employees/contractors and create an environment that’s less than pleasant to be in. It’s scary to think of saying “no” simply because you don’t have the resources to handle something because it seems so easy to solve (just hire some contractors and work late a few nights, right?) but it’s much more than that. By saying “yes” to projects you can’t handle, you run the risk of needing to grow in size way too quickly to do it well, and once the project ends, what happens to your increase in overhead? Do they get cut? Do you continue to seek bigger and bigger projects just to keep them busy without analyzing the type of work you’re accepting? It’s a vicious cycle.

Your best bet in these situations, if you must say “yes” due to financial or other reasons, is to partner with other firms who can supplement the areas you’re less experienced in. This will allow you to stick to your expertise, while finding other firms who can stick to theirs, giving each of you the opportunity to shine in what you deliver to your client instead of barely getting by. This also influences your reputation as a company that works well with others, making you attractive to firms who may need a partner in the future.

Laws of attraction
Saying “no” attracts more customers than saying “yes”. Why? Because saying “no” makes it much easier for a client/colleague/peer to understand out of the huge amount of things any designer, developer, agency, etc. what it is that you actually do. Elimination is the easiest way to get to understanding. Human brains can only access so much information at any one time, so if your bucket of services grows and grows and grows with yeses, your offering becomes more diluted and less appealing. By eliminating things that either aren’t interesting to you, others are better at than you, or you just don’t have the resources to manage, what you can offer someone becomes more and more clear, and thus, easier to remember. (See: Schemas)

Always saying “yes” leaves someone’s understanding of you open-ended, which is where most of us think we want to be in order to continually get work, but in reality, not only is it harder for most people to wrap their heads around your company, but you’re also doing a disservice to your clients by saying “yes” to things you’re not the best at.

Being the best: the American way
If you’ve never read the book, The Culture Code, I’d highly recommend it. In it, a marketing consultant and psychoanalyst explores what makes various cultures around the world tick. (His research is responsible for some of the most successful marketing campaigns to ever run.) He digs deep into the American culture and determines that because of our history as a country, we’re all seemingly stuck in the adolescent, “I want it all”, gimme-gimme mindset. It’s very eye-opening when you consider most of your business and personal interactions to date. Particularly in business, there is often a theme of wanting to be the best at everything, at all costs, because we’re all in it for ourselves. Unfortunately, this mindset makes for great high school reunion talk, but in actual practice, is harming our clients, reputations, and businesses. By wanting to take on more and more, despite not having a strong expertise in it, you’re delivering things to your clients that aren’t cutting it, and harming your reputation in the process. We’ve all looked at agencies, designers, and interactive firms work that was very obviously outside of their area of expertise and thought to ourselves, “we could have done it better” or “why would they even attempt this if they didn’t know what they were doing?” And sadly, our clients sometimes don’t know any better.

By explaining to our clients why a certain project falls outside of your strongest areas of competence, and sending them in a direction that would better suit their needs, you’re elevating the standards for your industry as a whole, which we all want, right? By also admitting that someone else may be better at something than you, you’re helping to strengthen your confidence in what you do excel at, and helping to better position your company for projects in the future.

Reciprocity goes a long way in business.

Just like you wouldn’t go into a doctor telling them what’s wrong with you, clients shouldn’t be going to the experts explaining what it is that they need to solve their problems, yet they do it every day. So how can you combat this? A wise person once explained to me that clients come to your agency through one of two doors, the “strategy door” or the “implementation door”.

The reason to get clients in through the “strategy door” is that they turn into better, longer-term clients because they’re seeking a diagnosis and not simply coming to you to give them the pills they think they need.

So how do you get your patients to stop dictating their care and start to think of you as the expert they come to with symptoms instead of solutions? It’s easier than you might think, but requires a shift in your thinking that you can’t back down from.

1. Learn

The easiest way to start directing patients through the strategy door is to be the one in control in your conversations. If a potential client calls you to discuss their problems, make sure you’re the one dictating the phone call. Ask them about their symptoms, pain points, struggles, and goals. They may seem to resist, but they are looking for that expert to tell them what’s up. If you notice them diagnosing their own symptoms (“I have a sore throat, it has to be strep!”), be ready to combat this by directing the conversation to the bigger picture, explaining your process for diagnosing their symptoms, or providing anecdotes to express the complexity of their symptoms and that the answer may not be so simple or obvious. The easiest way to get clients to see you as an expert is to act like an expert.

2. Diagnose

During this conversation, make note of the actual symptoms they mention (not the solutions), and assess them for a bigger picture analysis. If their throat is sore, their back hurts, they have constant headaches, and they’re always thirsty, a doctor would look for an answer that encompasses all of the symptoms instead of treating them individually. That’s what experts do, and as the expert in this situation, it’s your job to notice patterns and diagnose problems that probably started at a higher level than how they see it. This way of thinking, especially at the pace of a phone call or meeting, will take practice, but with time, you’ll probably even find that many of your clients with varying symptoms, have similar diagnoses, enabling you to help them much more efficiently.

3. Prescribe

At this point in your discussions, you’ll have learned about their problems, diagnosed them with what the real issue might be, so this is where you begin the process of walking them into the implementation room. You’ll have gained enough knowledge to know what they need to feel better, and this is the place that you prescribe them a solution to their problems. You’ll notice that many clients want the conversation to start here and skip the diagnosis altogether. Just like in medicine, after time, these patients become painfully obvious (“I just need the pills!”), and sometimes you can get them to sit down with you for an assessment and diagnosis, but sometimes they just want the pills. In the long run, the pill-poppers aren’t good for your business, but sometimes you have to take them to stay afloat. Just know the side effects before you accept the risk of handing off pills as they need them.

4. Follow up

After you’ve prescribed what your clients need to solve their problems, it’s important to see how their treatment went. Doctors will always schedule a follow up appointment to make sure their pain has subsided or the symptoms have disappeared, which can also be a great tool for your agency. Many times, you’ll find yourself assuming that if the client has any problems, they’d tell you, but often, just as in medicine, patients just need you to ask. Take this as an opportunity to follow up, see how things are going, and see if they’re feeling better or even have new symptoms! This follow up can even be scheduled at the completion of their project!

Using this model for your agency will take getting used to (for both the client and you), but in time, it will allow you to enter from the strategy/diagnosis side more often to establish better patient relationships because they can easily see you’re looking out for their well-being.

Let me explain.

If you think about it, an hour of your time, at your hourly rate covers the time it takes you to work through a problem plus what it costs you to run your teeny little business, right? So, for our sake, let’s say your hourly rate as a freelancer is $100 per hour and $10 of that goes towards costs for running your business, and $90 is time working directly on a project. To contrast, if an agency charges the same $100, it gets divided differently because they are structured differently. For our example, let’s say that $80 of that $100 hourly rate goes straight to overhead costs such as salaries, office space, benefits, etc. and $20 is time working directly on a project. That means, for the same $100, a client can choose to spend it with you and get 90% of your attention, or with an agency and get 20% of their attention.

So for a client to get the same level of expertise from an agency that they get from a freelancer, they need to spend 10 times as much money.

Knowing this, most freelancers will price their services way too low, assuming their customers can’t afford rates similar to an agency, and if they could, they would just rather go to an agency. This way of thinking could be keeping you from finding better qualified, and more enjoyable projects. While larger agencies have their place in the market, they’re not meant to be seen as the “premium” in creative services. Rather, they have more capacity and broader specialties, making them a better fit for some  clients, not just clients with big budgets.

By pricing your services based on your expertise instead of what you think your clients can afford, you’ll probably find that your clients can still manage to afford you. Why? When you attract your clients based on your experience, portfolio, reputation, and years of experience, your price becomes less of an issue. When you  win business based on price, you’re in a losing battle and you’ll find yourself with unfulfilling projects that aren’t well-suited for you because you’ve given the client all of the control.

It’s time to stop thinking of your freelance business as being a cheaper alternative to big agencies, and start thinking of it being a different option with its own, unique set of benefits. Once you can wrap your head around this concept, you’ll begin to wonder how you could be charging anything but what your expertise is truly worth.

Freelancers, what do you have to say about this?

Agency size and employee prominence are inversely proportional. The reason is that small agencies have to hire top-notch talent in order to succeed because dead weight will result in lost profits due to incompetence. For larger companies, dead weight more easily slips through the cracks because the company is often inundated with managerial layers and procedures making them harder to spot. Therefore, agencies rely too heavily on each individual employee to allow anyone not pulling their weight to continue very long with the company. You can choose to be terrified at the prospect, or you can embrace it, and I’d strongly encourage the latter.

Why does your agency benefit from employee prominence?

By thinking of employees as investments, instead of future competitors, you’re helping to sky rocket your agency’s ability to gain new or deeper levels of information that relate to your core expertise. And all of this can happen without having to gain company-wide acceptance followed by two-week training programs for each department since the information is housed within your employees, who individually represent a large percentage of your organization.

But be careful.

Remember earlier when we mentioned that employees come and go? If you forgot, I’m either worried or you’re skimming.

No, I’m not going to say you should fear them turning into your competition, rather, ensure that the individual knowledge contained in any one employee is always being shared through across your company. This way, if your employee leaves, which they inevitably will, you’re not stuck with a process or deliverable that no one else in your company can complete. Many companies find creative ways to cross-train for this exact reason.

Encouraging the development of personal brands within your employees is no easy task, unless they already have a strong brand going for them. Generally, employees are motivated to develop their personal brands when they find themselves inside a culture that’s always encouraging the gaining and sharing of new information. This gives them confidence in themselves and their work. Here are some simple ways to help them develop this mindset:

• Start a conference/workshop/meetup program where employees are encouraged to attend as many as financially possible
• Don’t restrict the use of social media, particularly while at work, even for their own personal accounts
• Start a book club, visit the library as a company, or start a book trading program to encourage constant learning
• Train everyone in RSS feeds and allow them time during the day to simply keep up with industry news
• Encourage everyone to contribute to company communication channels such as blogs, newsletters, presentations, etc.
• Link to or promote individual employees’ personal content within your company’s

This phenomenon is especially true when posting the same content between two Twitter accounts, say a personal and business account, because it’s so easy for someone to instantly stop listening to you. Before you start connecting all of your accounts to save precious time, take some of it to understand why this may not be the best idea for you or your brand.

Your audiences are different

You’ve probably noticed that  sometimes you post things to Twitter and get tons of immediate feedback, and sometimes you hear crickets. The same is true for Facebook. The reason is because people on these sites are quite finicky. If you’re looking for interaction (which, no matter how much you beg to differ, is the point of even being on these sites), it’s important to pay attention to the types of content, the timing, and the medium which your post was received and interacted with. There are plenty of studies done about ideal posting times and the like, but really, it’s about what you post, not when you post it. By posting the same information to both places, you’re doing yourself a disservice by not tailoring the content to the platform, and forcing people who follow you in both places to only interact with one post (based on their preference) and people who aren’t the audience of your post to gloss over it. Over time, this creates a pattern for those who befriend/follow you and you’ll probably notice dwindling interaction on all fronts.

The platforms are inherently different

The same content just doesn’t belong on both Facebook and Twitter. Facebook is about rich, multimedia content and Twitter is short bursts of information, generally with a link to more information. Posting tiny snippets and links to Twitter that get automatically sent to Facebook doesn’t bode well for interaction because people who visit Facebook generally want to stay there. Posting nothing but links to other websites to a Facebook page or profile is going against what the general user wants from the website, which is to be there for a while, catching up on their friends, families, and ex-boyfriend’s lives. Posting content to each place (even now, Google+), requires a different approach based on what the platform was intended to do. Skipping this vital step can come back to bite you in the butt since Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm places a higher value on media-rich content, so your posts won’t be shown as often when they’ve been translated from another platform.

It’s just plain messy (and quite obvious)

Sure, there are tools out there that allow you to only post certain posts from Twitter to Facebook with a simple hashtag, but everyone can see that you’ve done that, and if anyone knows any better, it just looks lazy. I’m not against posting similar content, but if you took the time to add your hashtag, why not take 2 more seconds to post something similar, but appropriate for the medium, to your Facebook page? Along with this aspect of crossposting, generally, posts just don’t translate between platforms easily. You know why? Because they’re not supposed to! There’s a reason your hashtags don’t show up on Facebook and your links from Facebook on Twitter have odd formatting and cut off in weird places. They don’t want to get along, and they shouldn’t have to.

But… but… it saves time! 

If you’re really so pressed for time that you can’t determine where a piece of content should go, so you just put it everywhere, then you have bigger problems going on. Just like with every piece of marketing you do, you need to evaluate the best places and the best execution for what you’re communicating. Blanketing your messages everywhere you possibly can is more of a time-waster than simply evaluating what content you do have, and pushing it accordingly.

There’s a huge difference between repurposing content, and reusing it. If you want better results, try disconnecting for a bit and see what happens. Trust me, it’ll be worth the lost seconds of time.

Disagree? Let’s hear it!

As entertaining as they can be internally, they do little to portray a credible, valuable image. By making light of something your customers, personally, may value in their own careers, they can feel like you’re not very serious. Sure, your brand may  be based on a fun-loving attitude that job titles don’t seem to fit well within, but it’s important to find alternative ways to demonstrate your quirkiness that don’t impact your company’s perception.

Beyond the perception issues associated with offbeat job titles, it can just be downright confusing. In order for people to process the vast amount of information they receive any given day, they’re subconsciously looking for mental shortcuts so they don’t become overwhelmed with data. One of the most important shortcuts we create involve grouping people into understandable categories so we can access their information more readily when we need it, something your job title can assist with. By going against the grain in such an important area for most people’s understanding, it can do more harm than good. Sure, you might be thinking, “hey, if I can be remembered for having a different job title than everyone else, then I’m golden!” But it’s just not true. If you don’t position yourself in a way that fits nicely into something understandable for a potential client, you’ll get filed away in the, “I don’t know what they do” category, which doesn’t bode well for being remembered.

So before you forego the traditional job titles, think about how this affects your ability to be remembered for the right reasons. There are plenty of ways to stick out in your customers’ minds that don’t involve confusing them, and everyone else, about what the heck you actually do.

Now, there are ways to have a little fun with titles that don’t involve ruining their understandability such as creating silly/offbeat taglines that support your titles that maybe only appear on your website (Marketing Director “AKA Social Media Maven”) or mix 2 or 3 standard job title terminology with something memorable about your brand (“Chief Marketing Dog”).

Whichever you choose to do, it’s important to think beyond what you think about it and consider how it impacts your perception. Which, in the end, is what brand’s are based on.

To better understand what gender has to do with business, let’s take a look at what masculinity/femininity means in a cultural setting. Geert Hofstede is the pioneer in studying cross-cultural groups and organizations and created a framework for comparing cultures on various factors called the Cultural Dimensions Theory. This framework analyzes culture by assigning and comparing power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, and masculinity across various cultures. This framework seems to have leaked into the world of business when assessing traits of businesses, which is probably a good thing, but it’s often miscommunicated.

In masculine cultures, traits such as assertiveness, competition, materialism, and ambition are valued greatly (such as in Japan and Germany), while feminine cultures value relationships and quality of life (such as in Norway and Sweden). Knowing this, is leaning towards one of these traits over the other bad for business? In general, a healthy business needs to encompass both of these traits to be successful.

As this framework suggests, these values are all measured on a scale of 1-100. For masculinity and femininity, where would your agency fall?

Before we dive into how this character can influence your agency, let’s take a second to examine the qualities that encompass Harry Potter himself. The reason this character has enraptured much of the youth, and even more of the adolescent and adult, culture is that Harry has certain characteristics, that, on their own, aren’t all that impressive. It’s the trio of friends that make his character come alive. He brings a humble attitude, inquisitive nature, and tons of heart to the stories, with sidekicks Hermoine and Ron Weasley taking over the book-smart and street-smart roles, respectively. This powerful combination of characters makes for an endless number of stories and adventures undertaken by this unstoppable trio.

Now, how does this have anything to do with your agency? Let’s take a look at the qualities of Harry Potter himself and see how they can relate to your brand and marketing.

1. Be humble.

First and foremost, Harry Potter is a human. Don’t argue. As much as he *is* a wizard, he’s essentially the most down-to-earth wizard in their wizarding world. Since he was raised as a muggle boy, he was never exposed to the fanciful life that many of his peers experienced, allowing his appeal to lie in the genuine nature he caries with him. Agencies that are genuine in their brand are the ones that people want to be around and associate themselves with.

2. Surround yourself with people who are better than you.

Much to Harry’s chagrin, he’s not very book-smart, but managed to find that quality in Hermione whom he relies on constantly. Does this make him look dumb? Nope. In fact, it’s the opposite! Because of her intelligence, he can rely on her while focusing on his own strengths. And then there’s Ron… who, uh… is important in the books as he holds all the knowledge of the wizarding world that neither him nor Hermoine know much about. This trait is the most important aspect of management

3. Ask for help when you need it.

Not only does Harry surround himself with the right people, but he knows and understands that he needs to make use of them to get anywhere. Sure, he doesn’t want to put them in harms way, but he’s the first to admit that every successful encounter he has with evil was never only his effort. The ability to find and make use of people who are better than you is a humbling experience, but one that makes for exceptional management.

4. Don’t be afraid of a fight.

Sure, he’d rather never have to, but he’s always willing to defend what he believes is right. This ability to confront and defend his beliefs is a rare trait that causes him to be perceived as overzealous, but always results in strengthening his character. If your agency believes strongly in something, defend it and defend it proudly. Sure, you’ll make some enemies, but the strength you’ll gain is well worth it.

5. Delight with a little magic.

As much as Harry is relatable and endearing, there’s still the element of magic that makes his character entertaining. As agencies, we get told to be transparent and accessible and tell everyone everything. As much as this sounds wonderful, there’s still something to be said for finding that little bit of magic that’s all yours that, no matter how hard you try, you can never explain. Learn this about yourselves and be sure to remind people of it regularly!

With this knowledge in hand, your agency can conquer evil, attract fans, and tell a great story. What more can you ask for?