The BS In Our Businesses (And How To Get Rid Of It)
Where exactly is the BS in our businesses?
Why does it happen?
Where does it come from?
How much of it is acceptable in our businesses?
And how do we get rid of it?
What BS looks like
I think a lot of people use the phrase no BS in their marketing, because it sounds like they're no nonsense, right?
They cut to the point and they're not going to waste your time.
But I've also seen varying degrees of what they mean when they say BS.
And quite frankly, a lot of people who say ‘no BS’ actually have tons of BS in their processes and how they work.
So let's talk a little bit about what I mean by no BS, and what a No BS Agency really means.
And I think the best way to do that is to talk about what kind of BS we're all dealing with.
The origin of no BS for my company, Worstofalldesign, came from a frustration that I had. After years of working with clients, where I felt like I was doing all kinds of backflips and fancy tricks just to get them moving along in a project, it felt like most of the things I was doing at certain points was complete BS. It had no relevance to the outcome that they were looking for.
I can't tell you how many times I went back and forth with the client over email.
10 or 20 times tweaking a logo or a colour blue or a colour yellow, so that it could be a little more vibrant, a little less vibrant, a little bit bigger, a little more pop, a little more this, a little more that.
Basically, I've had clients ‘back seat’ design with us over email over the course of days, weeks and even months.
I remember one of our first clients paid us $300 for a logo.
And we did 11 rounds of revisions, after showing the first set of logos that had five different logo ideas, each with five or six variations. We literally made this guy hundreds of versions of these different logos for $300.
And you know what happened at the end of it?
Oh my gosh, this is embarrassing to say.
When all was said and done, he didn't want any of them.
But he liked us so much that he asked us if we would do it again.
And we did. We actually agreed to take another $300 and do the whole process again, thinking that it would somehow be easier this time.
And you know what ended up happening?
We did the same thing, another dozen logos, another dozen rounds of revisions, although this time we finally ended up with a logo that he used.
Now if that isn't a story chock full of BS, I don't know what is.
Because guess what? This guy was full of BS.
He owned a real estate investing company and the logo had to be the perfect ‘something’ for him.
I don't even know what he was going for - total bullshit was total bullshit. It was a farce.
It was a way for him to distract himself from the work that he needed to do.
I think there's value in a badass brand, and a badass logo and brand identity, of course I do.
But this guy paid $300 and spent weeks and months and hours and hours tweaking little things that don't matter at all. That's BS.
And that's the kind of BS that sucks your soul as a creative.
And it sucks out the time and energy from that person's life that they should be spending building their business.
So one way that I would describe BS is anything that's just wasting everybody's time, that doesn't have an outcome that anybody cares about.
It's about focusing on the wrong things.
Working for free
What is the point of a creative project?
It’s to get an outcome for the company.
It's to help the company stand out.
It's to help the company visualise what they're all about.
It's to quickly demonstrate to the world that they are serious, they're professional, maybe that they're friendly or creative or whatever it is.
It’s not so that the owner wastes their time moving pixels around, looking at five versions of turquoise that all look the same, but look different on different computer monitors, just so they can get it to one that they think is perfect.
Because guess what? It’s never perfect.
That experience I had early on makes me cringe thinking about it now, but it made me realise that there was so much BS in this industry.
And it took me a couple of years from then to realise that I actually played a huge part in it, because it wasn't that guy's fault.
It was my fault.
It was my fault for not managing that project well.
So BS rule number one is allowing clients to get lost in their own bullshit about their projects, and letting them focus on the wrong things.
That generates a lot of wasted time for everybody.
Another piece of BS that I take issue with is the bullshit process of pitching for free.
Now I understand when you're first starting out, you may not have a choice.
If you have no trust in the world, you have no authority, nobody knows who you are, you don't have any contacts, you don't have any experience, well, you're gonna have to do some work for free here, because you're gonna have to build that experience and build that trust with people.
But outside of that, if you're a professional and you've been doing this for a while, if you're an expert and you know what you're doing, if your time and your ideas and your work has value, then spending your time pitching people for free is total bullshit.
Why should somebody spend their time working for free when their time is worth something? They shouldn't.
It's the same way I think that unpaid interns are BS, right? Everybody's work comes with a value, and it deserves money.
Now, that's another piece of BS that we are in charge of that we can get around as the creative agency owners, because the reason that you are probably pitching for free is because you don't have a different way of convincing a client that they should hire you.
If you had a way to show them why they should hire you without working for free, would you do it? Of course you would.
But it's your responsibility as the business owner to create that experience for them. So that when it comes time to actually potentially hire you, they're ready to pay.
And one way around this is to have the trust building mechanisms in place that don't require your time.
Content is a great example of this. I can't tell you how many times I've read a book and thought that the information inside the book was incredibly valuable. It changed the way that I thought, and I would have immediately hired that person to help me with whatever that thing was, if they were available.
And right in front of me, that is a perfect example of not needing a proposal or to do work for free, because you already did the work for free.
You did the work of writing the book, maybe not for free, but for $9.99 on Kindle.
So the BS of doing free work is something I have always wanted to get rid of. And it's something that we all have the opportunity to get rid of, we just have to take charge of that process and own it by filling that need with something more valuable than a proposal.
Managing scope creep
Another piece of BS that I hate is scope creep.
And how often, when you are running a creative agency and you're working with clients, do you have all these little things that come into play that take up all your time?
It might be emails, or requests for meetings because clients have an idea.
It might be requests for additional revisions like that first client I told you about.
It might be new ideas the client has and things they want to add on or change because they saw something on a billboard and they realised that they want to go in a different direction.
There are so many different reasons that scope creep comes into play, but it is a huge piece of BS that you need to stamp out right now.
Luckily, yet again, this is a piece of BS that we as business owners have complete control over.
The way you do this is twofold.
One, you start with a really clear plan and a really clear understanding of the project.
First, this requires you to be relatively expert in your field, because you need to know how to pull that information out of your client and create the plan that is the right plan for the client.
Second is showing up as a leader and leading your client through the whole process.
When you have a clear plan, a map of what you're going to accomplish and then you lead your client through that map confidently, clients will follow suit and they are much less likely to take you off course.
In fact, the more confident you are as a leader, the less able they'll be to take you off course.
It's not about being stern or bossy, it’s about being confident about the plan that you laid out, and making sure that they understand why that plan is the best route for them.
And this gets rid of all those little requests, those meetings, those changes in ideas, those revisions all of it.
Pricing your services
Another piece of BS I see a lot is not getting paid what you're worth.
There's a caveat to this, because although most people are not getting paid what they're worth, most people also overestimate what they should be getting paid.
That sounds mean, doesn't it? Let me explain.
Most people, especially in the creative space, believe that their worth is based on the work itself, and your work might be amazing. I don't doubt your work is amazing. But that's not the value that people are going to pay for.
People are going to pay high prices and high value for work that gets them the results and the outcome they are looking for, and the certainty that they're going to get those results.
So the reason that people who have a lot of authority in the world, or people who are viewed as experts get paid more is not necessarily because the work or the design is objectively better.
It’s that the person hiring trusts that it will be better.
When you're hiring for a service, you have to trust that that person is going to be able to take it to the finish line, because you're not buying a product that you can take out of the box.
You can see it right in front of you, you are buying the possibility of what is going to happen in the future, after this person that you hired does their work.
You're buying potential, and you will pay more for that potential.
If the person you're buying that potential from has a track record, a lot of trust with you, a lot of authority with you and other people.
Because if I'm going to outlay a lot of money to somebody, I want to believe that they are definitely going to do a great job.
And I would rather pay twice as much to guarantee a great outcome than half as much to hit or miss.
So when you're thinking about getting paid what you're worth, it's not just about the work itself, it's about how reliably can you deliver that work?
And how reliably can you communicate the value of that work?
And that goes not just to the creative process itself, not just to your strategic thinking or the delivery of your work. It goes to your business, your process, how able you are to show up as a leader to communicate to take somebody through the process from beginning to end, where they feel safe and secure and trust you and believe you the entire way.
That's how you get rid of the BS of not getting paid enough.
Eliminating BS for good
I hope you can see a common theme about all this BS that I see across all the small branding agencies that I work with.
All of that BS wastes your time, wastes the client's time, gets you underpaid and overworked, stressed out, you don't have enough time for yourself and you don't have enough time to build the business that you need to build in order to get paid more.
But it's all in your control.
You have the power to get rid of all this BS.
You see, when I was just starting out, I thought that it was clients, I thought it was the industry, I thought it was just this is how it is. This is the process you have to go through and it's full of bullshit, until I learned that all of these things are in my control, and that I can actually do something about it.
I can do something to make sure that I command a higher price, I can do something to shorten the time that it takes to deliver a process by having a process, I can bypass the need for free proposals by basically pitching myself through authority content.
And guess what? You can totally do this too. If you have an agency that is full of bullshit that is just sucking your soul, you really do have the potential to change it.
But the first step is seeing the bullshit in your business and deciding you want to change it. And frankly, some people don't.
Some people are married to the idea that their projects take as long as they take.
Some people can't let go of the idea that they might be unaffordable to somebody if they raise their prices.
I meet people all the time who say no, I want to be affordable. That's okay. But you're going to have a lot of BS in your business.
Just know that if you want to get rid of the BS, you can do it. You’ve just got to choose to identify it and take action to get rid of it.
Now the actions to take are all things that I teach here and inside my program, No BS Agency Mastery.
We knock out, bit by bit, each piece of BS in your branding agency, and we implement processes and systems to get rid of it for good.
Along the way, you might feel resistant at times, and that's okay.
That's why we have a community and support and coaches and colleagues who have all had those same feelings of resistance, so we can help you through them.
The only way to build a business without BS is to become a business owner who doesn't want to stand for it anymore.
If you're interested in learning more about No BS Agency Mastery and you think maybe it's time for you to get rid of that bullshit in your business for good, go to nobsagencies.com/apply.
Send us some of your details, schedule a quick call and let's see if you're really ready to get rid of this stuff.
It’s not going to be easy, but if on the other side of this work is the business you always wanted, don't you think it'll be worth it?
Here’s what you need to get…
There’s a lot of BS in running a branding agency, but the first step is to notice and then decide that you’re going to do something about it.
It’s not coming from the clients or the industry or any other external fact. You need to take a long hard look at your own processes, systems and even your mindset, and then decide if you want to keep putting up with it, or if you want something better.
The good news is that all of this is in your control and you can do something about it.
P.S. Jump on a call with my team if you want to fast-track eliminating the BS in your agency, and learn all my other tools and strategies to scale up - just go here to get started!