Agency

Please, never include rollover hours in your retainer contract

There is one certainty: the sun will rise tomorrow. Whether or not your contract gets signed, your client gives approval, or your post gets shared, tomorrow is another day — and this one is gone for good. The labor you could have used today was either used or never will be used.

February 1, 2022

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Client School: Have the respect to say no

If you get a proposal, respond. Even if it’s a no. Nothing is more universal when I speak to other agency executives than one frustration: their absolute rage when they pour time and resources into a proposal or a pitch, just to send it off into a black hole and receive deafening, endless radio silence.

January 10, 2022

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At least do the little things right

There’s an old saying popularized by former President John F Kennedy, “victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” While he was referring to the phenomenon of countless big and small contributors coming out of the woodwork taking credit for good things and saying “never knew ‘em” to failures, this phrase also carries meaning in the actual creation of those victories.

December 15, 2021

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Don’t just read business books

Every now and then the same exhausting content pops up on tech/VC/hustle Twitter: some collage of the “best” business books, an implied MBA on a bookshelf that includes the likes of the The Lean Startup, Good to Great, and maybe Sun Tzu if the poster wants to feel more worldly.

November 4, 2021

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Untangling the knot: Working and winning with gnarly stakeholder relationships

For a lot of people, as the CC field on an email gets longer and longer, their anxiety rises in step. Each name is another personality to contend with, another person who has an opinion that can throw your project off the rails, or even just another person whose busy calendar can make scheduling a nightmare. Weirdly, I love this.

November 2, 2021

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Ben Guttmann