I recently had a friend who told me she thought she was feeling depressed and felt this was strange since it started AFTER the holidays were over. I told her that I thought instead of experiencing depression, it might be Decompression.
Being one who travels almost every week, I experience this phenomenon virtually every time I have a little time at home. I will wake in a panic – not sure where I am or if I have over-slept. I feel uncomfortable and anxious. After a while of experiencing this – only when I am home in a safe environment, I realized that it was decompression I was experiencing. My mind becomes accustomed to waking in a hotel room and navigating around strange cities that it begins to feel uncomfortable when it I am in a familiar environment.
The Holidays create a similar situation where we are scurrying to get all of the shopping for presents completed in time. We have parties to go to – which can create another kind of discomfort for some of us, decorations to put up, family to visit and cooking meals that we do not cook but once a year.
Then, on January 2nd, everything goes back to normal. No more panicked shopping excursions with thousands of our closest strangers. No crazy meals to cook. None of this – just an ordinary drive back to work to face the same tasks to complete and the same problems to solve.
One way I have learned after years of experiencing this decompression, is to use it to my advantage. Instead of coping with the discomfort my mind creates until I get back into the routine, I instead find something to learn or a project to accomplish. In essence, I “up the game” of my routine. I add to what was my normal routine, new challenges that meet my minds new expectations. By doing so, I keep from experiencing the decompression blues while expanding my horizons and gaining new skills and experiences.
I challenge you to start this new year with a new project and goal that will up your game. I am curious what challenge will you take.
- If you bring in a new client, or grow an existing client, do you know what the incremental costs will be?
- When you are selling ideas to your clients and prospects, can you explain the financial benefits for your plan – not just tell them they will reach more people with great creative execution?
- Can you define your value to the company in real facts and figures?
- Are you able to rationalize your need for additional resources other than making a vague statement that your staff is ‘just stretched too thin’?
If you answered “No” to just one of these questions, I highly recommend you attend a 2-Day Workshop Money and Finance for the Creative Industry. You will get the Yes answers to these questions and Much, Much More! The Workshop will be held at The Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, NV on April 5th and 6th. You will leave with a wealth of information, real life applications of the knowledge you will gain, and a lots of ideas and concepts to share with your company. The first 10 people to register can do so at close to HALF of the normal registration fee. There are still some of these available – so be sure and register now!
Creative business owners often need management tools for running their shops. These tools help relate the financial information with the overall performance of the agency. One of these tools are financial budgets. Budgeting may be one of the most important accounting tools you can use in your business.
Creating and tracking financial budgets provides many benefits to your company such as letting you adjust spending, increase sales efforts, and know how to react to an unexpected drop in revenue. While there are many benefits to budgeting, this tool can be damaging to your agency if not prepared correctly. For example, budgeting just to put limits on spending might keep you from being able to react early on to market fluctuations.
Some of the benefits to budgeting include:
Creates Financial Roadmap
Budgets act like a financial GPS for your company. They let you set your goals and priorities telling you when and where to turn along the journey. They will quickly identify bumpy roads and show you where to make adjustments to get back on the right course.
Establish Pricing for Profitability
More and more often I hear my clients say they decide what to charge their clients based on what they think the client will pay. Not only does this approach leave money on the table, it may put you out of business. Budgeting is a valuable tool that helps you set pricing based on financial facts, not gut guesswork.
Forecasting
You get an RFP from a client that is a perfect match but can you afford to spend the money to stay in the fight with your competition. Having a budget not only provide the answer to this question, but it makes sure you have planned and are ready for the moment. Budgeting for future growth opportunities ensures that companies have enough funds on hand to make quick decisions for expanding business operations.
Some people see budgets as a way to give departments their allowance for the year. While this is one of the benefits of budgeting, there is so much more that budgeting will provide your company.
Not sure the best way to create and/or take full advantage of your budgeting processes?
This is one of the areas covered in our upcoming two-day workshop “Money and Finance for the Creative Industry” where attendees will not only learn the how’s and why of financial budgeting, but you will leave with an actual budget for your agency.
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Let’s consult Urban Dictionary on “impactful”: “a nonexistent word coined by corporate advertising, marketing and business drones to make their work sound far more useful, exciting and beneficial to humanity than it really is.”
“One-stop shop”
This reminds me of my last ‘real job’ almost 20 years ago. I had just finished reading “The Dilbert Principle” that discussed the overuse of the word “paradigm” that has begun in the world of academia. During a company-wide meeting with all of the big-wigs and head-haunchos, the word was mentioned by five of our leaders at least 20 times. I couldn’t help but laugh knowing that they were already being cliché – and again, that was almost 20 years ago.