Whereas in ancient times a big waistline was an indication of prosperity, today it’s not. The same goes for your creative business.
“The conventional wisdom in our business is that you have to grow and keep moving to survive. We never grew, always stayed tiny, and it serves us very well over the years, allowing us to pick and choose projects, and keeping our financial independence from our clients. We actually have a rather good track record, because we do select projects carefully. Most of our ideas don’t eat dust but glimpse the light of day because we find it much more helpful to spend some serious time and effort before we start working on a project, rather than suffer through it afterwards.” – Stefan Sagmeister, Designer
Your client list can get big. Your staff can get big. Your hopes can get big. Productions can get big. Even invoices can get big. But none of that means a thing unless you’re doing work that you believe in and doing it well. And only you can measure that for yourself. Where do you want to go and what do you want to do?
Bigger is only better when you’re talking vision.
[thx to the lovely blog the99percent]
Ótimo texto. Vem ao encontro do momento de transição profissional que vivencio.
Quem quer, faz. Não importa o que terá que superar. Simplesmente faz. Mas saber como fazer é sempre fundamental, diferencia.
Agree 100 percent – can we share this with Wall Street
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.”
– Edward Abby
I went from single photographer to staff of 8 in the early 80’s. Cut back to only two over a period of two years… just hated the shooting towels and garage door parts and such to make payroll. Then added design to the business and by 2000 we were the 2nd largest ad agency in AZ (OCEAN Integrated Media) and had 20 people working for me and my partner.
I am back to only one… thanks to the dotbomb and 911 and a crookedasswipe of a partner, but I love it. I really do. My clients love me, and I deliver exclusively to them. I agree with Sagmeister 110%… I love keeping the overhead small and the work large.
Chase, I’ve had more offers in the past couple of weeks on different projects then I have ever had in my career, and only one of them do I want to do, and none of them do I need to do. For some reason I’ve been stressing on how to get them all done by mid-June, which seems to be around the time of all their deadlines…in short, I needed this post. Thanks buddy.