TexasDesign

After owning a marketing firm for six years and then advising other principals for nearly fifteen, one of the unsolved mysteries that still makes me scratch my head is why the vast majority of people in this field fade away from it in their late forties and early fifties. Not only is that unique in the professional services sector, but it’s also a darn waste because these people are smart, hardworking, and capable of having a significant impact on their employees, their clients, and even the world.

So why is that? Is there something inherently unsustainable in the way creative people are working that causes them to have only so many years of contribution before they move on? I still don’t have definitive answers, but here are seven suggestions if you want to beat the odds (particularly if you are the principal of a firm or the manager of an in-house department).

First, shape your own role so that you’re not as central to daily interactions. Specifically, that means not being directly responsible for client relationships, tracking the internal details of workflow, or providing mentoring feedback on individual projects. (We call those Delivering, Resourcing, and Shaping.)

Second, build your positioning and marketing plan to generate a steady stream of exciting opportunities. And then size your firm just under that so that your opportunities always exceed your capacity, giving you the courage to say “no” more often as you get choosier about clients and projects.

Third, size your firm to your own desires and management style. If you let growth happen to you, getting a bigger body count than you should, you’ll keep getting drawn to the “do” side instead of the “manage” side and you’ll start to resent all your management duties. If employees become a necessary evil in meeting your goals, the management experience will be as frustrating for you as it is for them.

Fourth, pay attention to the financial fundamentals of what you’re managing so that there’s a sufficient cash cushion to quell the panic when you’re tempting to make a decision not in your best long-term interest, and so that you personally are paid a lot of money on a predictable basis to keep your interest level high.

Fifth, switch your focus from taking care of clients to taking care of employees, starting with investing as much time in finding the right employees as you do in finding the right clients. If you take care of your people, they’ll take care of your clients, and that’s the only way to make it work, because taking care of your clients is just too big a job for you personally. If you do this right, you’ll find great people to take things over instead of just finding people to help you do all the same things you have been doing.

Sixth, forget about “having fun” as a primary criteria in how you work. Instead, make sure every client brings you money and the opportunity to have an impact on their behalf. If you skip those first two steps and skip straight to the fun, you’re not really building a sustainable business, and the management tension that comes with such an approach will elbow out any fun that you might have otherwise experienced. Build the right foundation and the fun will follow.

Seventh, have a terribly interesting personal life outside of work. That’ll free you up to make work decisions that are smart business decisions (meaning that they allow you to make money and have impact regardless of how much fun you happen to have). That just ensures that the business is healthy, creating less stress for you, while generating enough money to really pursue your hobbies.

Finally, do you look forward to the start of each work week? Really? I love what I do and I hope you get to the point where you enjoy the daily process in an infectious sort of way.