Viewing entries tagged
Q2 2018
As a business owner, you may feel alone in the fear, procrastination, doubt and frustration of entrepreneurship, but you’re not. As Dr. Sherry Walling says, entrepreneurs all break in the same ways. The key is acknowledging when you’re not feeling right and finding ways to give your mind and body a rest. Take a moment, breathe and treat yourself to a well-deserved moment of founder zen.
In Blairtopia, time is a thief. Blair Enns, CEO of Win Without Pitching, and author of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto and Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour, is out to create a more utopian state. One where firms win without pitching, get paid for the value they create and let time go. Tune in for Blair’s take on mastering the value conversation, three levels of financial success for creative and marketing firms and how agencies can leave time behind to change the very nature of their firms.
Race, gender, sexual orientation, diversity, inclusion…These terms can elicit different feelings in different people. Viewed through the lens "diversity is a design process," conversations become softer, more open and accessible. Design for Diversity™ is the brainchild of Boyuan Gao and Jahan Mantin, founders of the New York-based consultancy, Project Inkblot. As they describe it, tech and media are at the critical juncture of humanity right now. As an industry, we need to shake things up, and create human experiences that all people can see themselves in. Tune in to hear how Project Inkblot took shape and how you can solve for diversity with your own team, within your own resources and community assets.
In 2013, about 150 project managers came together in Philadelphia for the inaugural Digital PM Summit. That year, it was all about finding your people, running web projects and keeping clients happy. This year, the Summit agenda runs the full gamut of topics and speakers: Agile, IoT products, PM self-care, what’s next in our careers and more. Brett Harned, Founder of the Digital PM Summit, joins us to talk about the evolution and growth of the community as well as subsequent shifts in programming. Tune in to hear about the 2018 Digital PM Summit in Memphis, and how the community can lift itself up by doing better.
Process. It feels like the answer to so many project woes and a threat to culture and creativity. So how do you go into an existing team with an existing flow and social dynamics and “fix” things? What’s the process process? To start, you observe. That’s what Robert Sfeir, Senior Director of Engineering at Huge, explains as he shares the story of aligning the efforts of a 1,500-person digital agency. Too often people approach process change looking for patterns they know instead of watching to find small tweaks that could make things better. Once a few successes are enjoyed, the team starts to trust that improvements can be made. That’s the spark that gets real change underway.
It’s an idea that several digital client services shops toy with: build and launch a product of your very own. So what do you do when you have the idea, know how to build it and want to give it a go? Craig Bryant, Founder/CEO of We Are Mammoth has been there, lived that. With the help of his team, he’s successfully spun up not one, but two SaaS products. Craig joins us to share insights into We Are Mammoth and the stories behind two products: DoneDone, a simple bug and issue tracker, and Kin, HR software to improve onboarding, engagement and the bottom line. Craig discusses five and 10 years into a product, patience as a critical virtue and how to go with your gut when you’re told to pull the plug.
Has project management reached a tipping point? Rachel Gertz, Partner and Digital PM Trainer at Louder Than Ten, believes so. In the not-so-distant past, project managers didn’t have much say in how their companies were run. They shuffled folders, organized to-dos and made small talk with clients. Today, companies recognize DPMs as the front lines of business, secondary business developers, early-stage strategists and more, well worth attention—and investment. Rachel joins us to talk about a new class of empowered DPMs and how these resilient leaders are shaping the future of the industry.
As digital agencies, we’re great at marketing our clients. Marketing ourselves? Not so much. Mark O’Brien, Chief Executive Officer at Newfangled, knows how this goes. In 2015, the “too cheap to fire” intern turned CEO realized Newfangled needed to ditch 20 years of web development fast or perish. Going through the EOS Traction coaching program, Mark helped Newfangled to tai chi its way to discover its unique ability. Tune in to find out how you can uncover hard truths, market smarter and overcome your fear of changing out the plumbing while the water is still running.
How do you gain more control over leads, and improve your chances of working with your ideal clients? For Bear Group in Seattle, the answer lies in Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and personalized campaigns—getting in front of the right people at the right times, in the right places. Can this approach work for you? Greg Bear, Systems Architect / President, and Travis Caldwall, Marketing Director at Bear Group, outline their process, drop resource hints such as Predictable Revenue and ZenProspect and discuss how they’ve found focus through ABM and personalized campaigns.
Over the past nine years at Sparkbox, Rob Harr has engineered a finely tuned Ops system built on Friday forecasts, micro-cash sheets, rolling six-month billable averages and two years of feeling really uncomfortable. Tune in to hear the method behind his magic and learn how to uncover truth in your own data sets, repetitive grading and a fresh mindset.
