Know Your Business

Once all of your marketing, networking and social media efforts drive clients to your door, there are only two things you need concern yourself with: turning potential clients into actual clients and servicing your actual clients unbelievably well.  Yet, all too often, when I ask where the business is in both of these categories, the answer is an exercise in “where are we with so and so…” to your staff, a let me rack my brain to see if I can remember it all, and a scan of your appointment book.

There is literally no more important information for you to know about your creative business.  No clients, no business.  If you are constantly trying to count trees, not only will you miss the forest, you will probably forget a tree.  What level of information you need on your potential clients and where your actual clients are in your production process is entirely personal to you.  Some of you need only know that everything is on track, others might need more detail.  Regardless of your preference, the information should be at your fingertips, always in real time and detailed enough for you to understand where you are, but not so much as to overwhelm you with the sales/production process.

Whether your creative business is just you or if you have lots of employees, the answer is the same as to how you generate the information on your potential and actual clients.  First, commit to providing yourself with the information at least weekly.  And, if you do have more than one employee, assign rotating power and responsibility to keep the information up to date.  Assigning power will require that the task be completed.  Assigning responsibility will make sure it gets done on time.  Rotating power AND responsibility ensures everyone’s cooperation.

The lesson here is for you to get out of the way.  You hired your staff for a reason – to help you run and build your business.  If you have hired well, they are all, as Seth Godin would say, indispensible and integrated.  It can never be that one person’s best sabotages another.  Your job is to make sure that everyone understands that your creative business is a living, breathing organism.  Everything and everybody relies on each other and you will definitely succeed or fail together.

Today, it is not enough to tell someone to sweep a floor and then be upset when it isn’t swept quickly enough or in the right way.  The sweeper needs to understand why she has to sweep the floor how and when she does AND that her job is as important as ANY other in the business.  With that sense of empowerment, maybe she will be motivated to figure out how to sweep the floor in half the time, or, better yet, figure out how eliminate the step altogether.

You instill the value of empowerment and cooperation through the delivery of information.  The better and smoother the flow of information, the more you will empower and inspire.  With staff handling what is in front of your creative business, you can focus on what is most important – seeing around the corner and discovering where to go next.