Managing a Creative Agency

The Virtual Office is Complete

July 24, 2007

Many of you have expressed interest as to how the move to a virtual office has gone. Now that I have completed the move and have been able to experience it for a full week or two here are my thoughts:

Pros

1. The bathroom is closer.

2. If anything I'm getting more work done.

3. The phones work just like the phone in our office did. Better, in fact.

4. Internet works just fine at home.

5. Many of my employees were already contractors who worked remotely, so no big change there.

6. I really do not miss paying the rent at all.

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The Virtues of Going Virtual

May 28, 2007

I bet that title has been used for some other article already, but I promise I came up with it myself.

It's official, MWI is going virtual. After seven years of having an office we have decided to leave it. Though we love it, there are a number of reasons why having an office doesn't seem that important or necessary.

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How to Start an Agency

January 13, 2007

Dear Mr. Steimle,

I come from a creative marketing/media background and recently went back to school to get my MBA degree. The final project involves creating and implementing a business plan for an integrated creative marketing agency such as MWI. I was hoping, if you have time (if not I understand) to give me some insight into your world. Since I come from a creative services background I feel I am lacking in marketing research, especially target market numbers as well as the not so obvious startup costs.

Ask a question, get an answer. Here goes...

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MWI's 2006 Financials

January 9, 2007

I've been inspired once again by SEOmoz's open attitude and I too feel like sharing. Rand does it because "it fits with our philosophy and with our goals - to be as open as possible about everything that we do" but that's not necessarily my reasoning. I figure it will be interesting to do, I'd love it if all my competitors did it, I don't believe it can do much damage, and it could possibly do some good. Sometimes when I give people an idea of what MWI brings in people are surprised at how much we make, whereas I would expect most people to be surprised at how little.

As a disclaimer, let me say that these financials are for a private company, they have not been audited, nor have they undergone their final review by our accountant. They are provided to you, the public, purely for entertainment purposes and cannot be relied upon as anything other than pure fiction. Is that enough to remove me of any liability?

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When Web Designers Attack

December 28, 2006

I like to think that most of those who have met me think I'm a decent enough guy. I try to smile, I'm generally not very sarcastic, and I refrain from spitting, swearing, and burning flags. But I'm sure there are a few people out there who think I'm an absolute crook. I've come to believe that if you run a business the number of people who will believe you are a crook depends on how many customers you have worked with. Since most companies gain customers over time, your criminality is a function of time.

Of course actually being a crook can have a substantial effect on your record, but my experience is that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, somehow, somebody will come away thinking you've ripped them off. The following are some of my experiences.

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How to Avoid Bad Clients

December 5, 2006

Over the years I've had mostly positive experiences with clients, but I've had a few that were ugly, and a select few that were disasterous. I can't claim that I or my firm were completely innocent in every case, and in some times we helped client be "bad," but in most of the serious cases I can confidently say that had some things been different about the client the problems we experienced never would have happened. And so here's my list of how to avoid bad clients.

1. Don't discount your prices. Somehow giving clients a break seems like a good idea from time to time, but in my experience the clients who pay the most and don't try to get discounts are always the best clients to work with, hands down, and not just because the profit margins are larger. They are genuinely different in personality. Sometimes you're tempted to discount your prices because you want a certain client gracing your client list, or because of the promise of more work to come. If you have to discount your prices to land a client, it's probably a bad sign. The project will probably go awry and while you may get their name on your client list, chances are you'll never get more work from them. Think about what discounting your prices says about you. It's like saying "We are so desperate to have you as a client that we're willing to make no profit on this job." Who would you rather work with? An agency that says that or one that says "We're so good we don't need your stinkin' account because we've got tons of work." I'd choose the snobbish agency any day. If they're snobbish but busy then people must like the results enough to look past their other personality flaws.

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MWI's New Website Design Goes Live

October 16, 2006

If I had known how much work would be involved it may never have launched, but MWI's new website design is now live.

Why the new website? Read on for the full story.

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How Necessary is Office Space?

October 6, 2006

I've got another question for the masses and would appreciate your candid responses.

We've got fairly nice office space here at MWI. It's about 3,500 square feet, newly built out, nice conference room, four offices, receptionist area, open space, big sign on the building where it's highly visible, etc. But for a long time I've been wondering whether it's worth it, and I want to know what you think.

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Where's the Client Cutoff?

August 28, 2006

Lately I've been doing some hard thinking about profitability. In the web development/branding/marketing/advertising/design business it can be difficult to figure out how much money you make on a job without instituting controls that make projects less profitable, the company a less fun place to work at, and your agency a less agreeable agency to do business with. That is, detailed tracking can stifle innovation, risk taking, creativity, customer service, and response time. Large agencies generally suffer from these maladies, but they can get away with it because they've already "made it" and their reputation keeps them going. Smaller agencies like MWI have to be careful to track enough to have an idea of what's going on, but not so much that it hampers our ability to deliver.

Over time, the combination of experience and limited data have helped me to figure out some ways to improve profitability. One of our practices is to not go after clients that have budgets below a certain threshold. Why?

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Running a Web Development Firm Stinks!

August 18, 2006

At my former firm I had a business partner who, whenever something wasn't going right with the business, would say "This business model stinks!" This always put me on edge because he would say it with true frustration in his voice, loudly, and in front of our employees. But in the seven years I've been running a web development firm I've come to agree with him. However, I've also have identified some solutions that take the stinkiness out of it. However however, I've also found that implementing the solutions is harder than identifying them.

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Whither MWI?

July 12, 2006

While anyone who is reading this blog is well aware that I myself am alive and well, some people might be wondering exactly what MWI is up to. After all, the MWI website is a bit stale, we haven't posted new press releases since last year, and if you used to see me at networking events before then you may have noticed that I haven't been in the business networking scene for over a year. All this stems from one thing--we're busy. If you'd like a high-level view of what we're busy with, read on.

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MWI's History of Office Spaces

June 12, 2006

MWI is moving up in the world. We'll be moving into new office space within the same building, except this time it's on the second floor. The new space will give us more total square footage, a true break room (finally), a friendlier floor plan, and a larger conference room, amongst other things.

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The Design Agency's Dilemma, or the Future of High-end Design

June 8, 2006

If manage a design firm, ad agency, or web development firm and you haven't read The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen you should. The process described in the book by which small companies are able to not only compete against much larger companies but also put them out of business can also be applied to your industry.

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Upgrading Quickbooks Enterprise 2.0 to Pro 2006 - A Nightmare

April 17, 2006

If this blog were a gun and Intuit were a person there'd be a smoking hole in the wall somewhere above their left ear and I'd be brandishing for a second shot. It's a good thing there aren't waiting periods for creating new posts on blogs, because I'm angry now.

Alright, I'm not really that angry, but I am perturbed, annoyed, and frustrated. With who? With Intuit. Who's Intuit? They make Quickbooks. What's Quickbooks? It's accounting software for small to mid-size businesses. What are mid-size businesses? They're small businesses that don't like being called small so they had to make up a new term.

The cause of my frustration begins with a phone call I was on with a sales person from Intuit a few weeks ago. On that phone call I asked the person "Can I upgrade from Enterprise 2.0 to Pro 2006?" The answer was "Yes, but you won't have access to the Enterprise features." Turns out the sales guy didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

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Don't Discount Your Services

January 26, 2006

Just read Just Say No to Discount SEO by Lee Odden.

Lee gives some simple and effective advice on how to respond to clients who want you to discount your search engine optimization services, but the principles apply to any services, not just SEO. This is somewhat related to a post I wrote last year about how the clients who spend the least are the hardest to work with.

So why shouldn't you discount your services?

1. You make less money. "But if I don't discount my services, I won't get the job at all? Isn't something more than nothing?"

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Pitching Success, How to Win Accounts

January 23, 2006

Whenever we win or lose a job, we almost always ask what we did right and what we could have done better. Sometimes we get answers we're used to, and sometimes we're surprised. We were recently surprised to find out that a client chose us, at least in part, because they liked our proposal. That is, they liked the actual proposal, rather than just what was proposed in the proposal. This caught me off guard because I thought our proposal had lacked detail and had many errors in it. But the client's point of view made more sense when he told us that one of our competitors (a major ad agency) had delivered a proposal that required running Word's spelling and grammar check on it just to make it halfway understandable.

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How to Buy a Three-Letter Domain Name

I just read ShoeMoney.com's post entitled My tips for buying domains that are taken.

Over the years I've been asked many times where the name of my agency MWI comes from. You can get the short story on that from MWI's February 2005 newsletter. As a follow up I'm also often asked where I got the mwi.com domain from, which is a story in and of itself, and only briefly touched upon in that newsletter.

And so I give you my tips for buying a three-letter domain, based on my own experience.

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Stupid Interview Questions

December 17, 2005

I just interview nine students from Neumont University last week, and I just read this BusinessWeek article last night.

I was chagrined to find out the first "stupid question" on the list is one I asked all nine of the students and which I frequently ask interviewees.

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Successful Client Relations - Managing Expectations

December 10, 2005

"I'm disappointed in you" were words my dad could use in a calm and direct way that was more powerful than any physical punishment or tongue-lashing I can imagine. In fact, I'm pretty sure my dad only had to use these words on me once, because the first time was enough. Well, there was the other time he used those words because I dyed my hair black, but on the inside I think he may have been laughing.

These words carry more weight when they are used without anger or frustration. The key, if you're a parent disciplining your child, is to be sincerely disappointed and that's all.

Disappointment is the result of unmet expectations, and when you're managing an agency you need to take care to manage the expectations of your clients, lest you end up with many disappointed customers. This can be particularly challenging for firms specializing in advertising, marketing, web development, and graphic design, because these services are so commonly misunderstood.

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10 Tips for Freelancers, and Agencies

November 28, 2005

Full-time Freelancing: 10 Things Learned in 180 Days by Cameron Moll.

Cameron came to my office and we talked just days before he took the leap of faith he talks about in this post. Frankly, I'd love to have the guy working for me and I told him that when he came by, but I bet he's making more money freelancing than I would ever be willing to pay somebody. Sure, some of that has to do with his obvious talent, but you know as well as I do that most clients don't know what talent is when it comes to design and CSS, so I'd wager even more of Cameron's success has to do with following his own rules.

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Failure is a Choice - Thoughts After Reading The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

August 24, 2005

I recently read The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway and quite enjoyed it. In case you haven't read it, it's about an old man in Cuba during the 50s or so whose wife has died, he apparently has no children, and he has a small boat in which he fishes. He's had a string of bad luck and hasn't caught a fish for almost three months, whereas other fishermen are catching almost every day.

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Cheap Clients and Expensive Projects

June 3, 2005

You know, I think I'm a pretty reasonable guy. I don't yell, I try to be reasonable, I'm seldomly paranoid, etc. But one thing I've noticed after five years of running an agency is that there seems to be a direct relationship between how much a client is willing to pay and how easy they are to work with.

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How Much Does a Website Cost?

April 6, 2005

"More than you can afford" is what I should start telling people when they ask. But I'm nicer than that.

Since 1999 I've been asked about how much a website costs more than a few times. The first response is usually "it depends" because it does depend on what the client wants. Do they want a one page website or a website with 5,000 pages? Do they want a content management system? Some Flash? Some custom illustrations as part of the design? There are too many factors to be able to just say "$5,000" and be done with it.

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What Does "MWI" Stand For?

April 5, 2005

Full text available at: http://www.mwi.com/about/newsletter/newsletter_february05.html

Normally this newsletter contains helpful information related to advertising, marketing, design, or web development. However, just this once, I'm going to depart from the usual content and answer once and for all the question we get asked more than any other, although I doubt it will stop the question from being asked.

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MWI Launches New Web Site for International Technology Company

March 7, 2005

MWI provides Parvus with new database-driven Web site

Salt Lake City, UT - 07 March 2005 - MWI, a brand management and Web development firm, today announced it has launched a new Web site for Parvus Corporation, the US arm of the Eurotech Group.

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Someone Ripped Off MWI's Website Design

February 17, 2005

Hey, MWI got its website ripped off today! But they didn't do a very good job.

Now you might say "But these websites look almost nothing like each other!" True, they only bear minimal resemblance to each other now, and perhaps the sin is forgivable for that, but the design is a ripoff nonetheless. If you need proof, read on.

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MWI Chief Executive Officer Recognized as Top Entrepreneur

February 1, 2005

Joshua Steimle Elected into 2005 Class of vSpring Capital's 100 Top Entrepreneurs

Salt Lake City, UT - 01 February 2005 - Joshua J. Steimle, chief executive officer and founder of MWI, Inc., a Draper-based Web development and brand management firm, was named one of Utah's top 100 entrepreneurs by vSpring Capital, a Utah-based venture capital firm.

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Updated Website for MWI

January 24, 2005

www.mwi.com. Check it out y'all. Not a redesign, but a fairly comprehensive update of our site. New featured work section, new navigation, white papers, newsletters, yeah.

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10 Tips on How to Get a Job as a Designer

January 18, 2005

This is from a letter I wrote to the faculty of the Visual Arts Department at Brigham Young University.

___________________________

Hello BYU faculty, I'm the owner of a firm in Draper that provides graphic and web design services. I get a lot of resumes, emails, and phone calls from recent BYU graduates and students of the design program. Although we do have positions open from time to time, and we do have opportunities to pass work along to freelancers when we're overloaded, most of the inquiries I receive from students and recent alumni are not successful. This is not necessarily because the individual in question is not talented enough, but often it is because of how they go about the process of trying to get a job.

Perhaps you already have some sort of handout you give your students on the business of being a designer, how to get a job, etc., but if you find my comments to be in any way interesting or useful, please feel free to pass them along to your students. My disclaimer is that these comments are based solely on my own experience, and may or may not apply to other firms (although I suspect they do). I just wrote these up this morning because I got yet another resume from a BYU student and feel that he and others could benefit from a little advice.

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Hiring the Right People for a Creative Agency

January 13, 2005

David Ogilvy said "Managing an advertising agency isn't all beer and skittles. After fourteen years of it, I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principle responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work."

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Getting Results from Search Engines is Easier Than You Think - MWI Newsletter - January '05

January 10, 2005

Full text available at http://www.mwi.com/about/newsletter/newsletter_january05.html

Are you the kind of person who fixes your own car, or do you pay someone to fix it? I never learned how to fix anything on a car growing up, even though my father spent most Saturdays behind our 1969 VW Camper-Van and tried to teach me something about its finicky engine. When I got a car, I realized I could either pay someone $25 to change my oil or I could do it myself and save some money. Having never changed the oil in a car, I thought it would be too difficult and better left in the hands of professionals.

One day, I became friends with a professional auto mechanic and he told me that changing the oil on a car was easy, and taught me how to do it. And he was right, it was easy, and it was kind of fun working on my own car. However, the novelty soon wore off, and I realized that saving a few bucks wasn't worth it to me. So I started taking my car to Jiffy Lube and I've never looked back.

A lot of people look at search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) the way I used to look at changing the oil in my car-as complicated, confusing, and better left to professionals. However, just like changing the oil in your car, it's not as hard as you think. Even so, you may still want to turn it over to someone else.

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Salt Lake Law Firm Strong and Hanni Launches New Web Site by MWI

January 3, 2005

New site powered by MWI's content management system

Salt Lake City, UT - 03 January 2005 - Strong and Hanni Law Firm, a Salt Lake City law firm since 1888, has launched a newly redesigned corporate Web site as part of the firm's rebranding process. The new site, designed and developed by MWI, a Draper-based Web development and brand management agency, runs on the proprietary MWI content management system.

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Law Firm of Siegfried and Jensen Chooses MWI to Provide Marketing Services

December 14, 2004

MWI to provide search engine marketing, graphic design and Web development services for Salt Lake City personal injury law firm

Salt Lake City, UT - 14 December 2004 - MWI, a brand management and Web development firm, today announced it has been contracted to provide marketing and Web development services to Siegfried and Jensen, a leading personal injury law firm based Salt Lake City.

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A Dummy's Guide to Branding & Logo Design - MWI Newsletter - November '04

November 30, 2004

Full text available at http://www.mwi.com/about/newsletter/newsletter_november04.html

Do you hate it when creative-types with messy hair and thick-rimmed glasses talk about "branding" in a way that leaves you wondering if they're talking about your company's logo, your advertising, your business cards, or something more ethereal? For all those who have ever felt confused about the word "branding," we offer this brief and (hopefully) informative guide.

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All About Flash - MWI Newsletter - October '04

October 30, 2004

Full text available at http://www.mwi.com/about/newsletter/newsletter_october04.html

ALL ABOUT FLASH
Some people hear the word "Flash" used in the context of a website and the first thoughts through their minds are "What about people who don't have Flash?" "I hate those Flash intros--just let me see the website!" and "Isn't Flash expensive?" I thought it would be appropriate to answer some of those questions we get asked about the infamous technology produced by Macromedia and give some examples of how Flash can be used wisely.

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Content Management - MWI Newsletter - September '04

September 30, 2004

Full text available at http://www.mwi.com/about/newsletter/newsletter_september04.html

CONTENT MANAGEMENT
You may have heard about "content management" but don't know exactly what people mean when they use the words. There are indeed many different meanings, and we're going to help you understand it all, right here. But first of all, lets lay down some ground rules. When we say "content" we mostly mean text on a website. For example, if you look at an article on Connect Magazines's website you'll see some graphics at the top, the article text, an ad banner and other assorted graphics. The content is the article itself, not the other graphics. Now if there were a photo placed within the text of the article, we would refer to that photo as being part of the content as well. Ok, lets proceed.

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What We Do - MWI Newsletter - August '04

August 30, 2004

Full text available at http://www.mwi.com/about/newsletter/newsletter_august04.html

WHAT WE DO
MWI is primarily known for creating great websites and web-based applications, but we're expanding the range of what we offer through hiring, partnerships, and maybe some acquisitions to include a comprehensive suite of marketing and advertising services. Here's a fairly comprehensive list of the services we provide.

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MWI Newsletter - July '04 - The First One

July 30, 2004

Full text available at http://www.mwi.com/about/newsletter/newsletter_july04.html

THE ECONOMY. In August of 2000 I started my first web development firm, Mindwire Interactive. Although you might think that was about the worst time possible to start an interactive agency, we had a pretty good track record for the 2 1/2 years I ran the firm until we sold it in January of 2003. Just the same, I'm somewhat regretful that I didn't start a firm in 1998 so that I could have enjoyed the boom years. The difficult economic circumstances following the stock market peak of March 2000 helped us to run a lean operation and be smarter about where our dollars went, and despite our penny-pinching attitude we were still able to produce high-quality results. However, as much as I'm in favor of gleaning knowledge from tough times, I'm glad to see the economy picking up. June was MWI's best month to date, July promises to be even better, and we're receiving more requests for proposals than ever before so it appears we've got a good pipeline of work ahead of us.

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Wasatch Venture Fund Launches New Web Site Using MWI Content Management System

November 13, 2003

November 13, 2003 Salt Lake City, Utah - Wasatch Venture Fund, a venture capital firm headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, announced today the launch of their new Web site at www.wasatchvc.com. The new Web site features a secure section for limited partners of the fund to receive quarterly reports and other information, and provides an email newsletter signup for the general public. The Web site, developed by MWI (www.mwi.com), includes a content management system allowing WVF employees to update the site through a secure login from any Internet-connected computer, without needing any knowledge of HTML.

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MWI Completes Branding Initiative and Online Design for Sorenson Capital

October 22, 2003

October 22, 2003 Salt Lake City - MWI announced today that it has developed a new brand identity and online presence for Sorenson Capital, a new private equity firm with offices in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Palo Alto, California. The new brand and online presence help Sorenson refine and extend its business to make small and middle market growth investments in companies. Available at www.sorensoncapital.com, the site provides informational content regarding the firm, its employees, and target market.

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