Part 19 (1/2)

Builders are services designed to set the foundation for future success, whereas drivers are intended to produce short-terenerate traffic, create inbound links, produce quality leads, row your clients' businesses

Every agency in the ecosystem, from disruptors to soloists, has to understand that there are nois connected Success depends on the integration of services and collaboration a short-terht of the higher-priority outputs that will build our careers and businesses and make us better and happier people

Our minds are wired to work and think sequentially, not siically iive our full attention to more than one task at once

Chapter 9

Embrace Failure Never hesitate to head in a direction that others seem to fear

If Your Model Is Broke, Fix It

History is full of industry leaders and business pioneers who have become irrelevant because they failed to innovate and evolve Maybe it is the result of conservative cultures, poor leadershi+p, a lack of will and vision, or the systematic inertia that builds from years of complacency

Or, possibly, they were just afraid People fear the unknown They resist taking the bold and decisive actions that are needed to survive because they do not want to fail However, we learn from failure It builds character, teaches us hues us to continually test, revise, and iency leaders beconore their instincts for change, instead favoring status quo They make decisions to avoid short-terencies' long-term viability Even worse, this tentativeness trickles down to ens

Marketing agencies must take action to survive and thrive in the new ecosystem They have to ency-centric pricing y, recruit and retain hybrid professionals, build scalable infrastructures, and transfor to make mistakes They have to embrace failure

We can learn nearly as much from an experiment that does not work as fro to be avoided but rather so to be cultivatedAll creative avenues yield the maximum when failures are ee, Wired1

The Disruptor Advantage

The unknown is one of thean entrepreneur It is the adrenaline rush that co down the road less traveled That is the disruptor agency advantage These organizations, by their very nature, are risk takers They thrive on change, easily tire of tradition, and pride the firer,new, hybrid agency round up They do not have the restrictions of legacy systee They have flexibility in their pricing, lower overhead costs, and more dyna to take risks the established agencies cannot or will not While traditionalists try to fix theiryours

Never hesitate to head in a direction that others seem to fear

The Traditionalist Opportunity

I have watched some incredibly talented traditional firms fade or disappear in the last decade because they continued to do as familiar While revenues fell, and their staffs slowly churned, they would just put their heads down and keep grinding Rather than getting to the root of the problem-a broken ic partnershi+ps, and reach out to the same tired networks on which they built their firms

Many of them suffered from what I call the Frodo syndros: The Fellowshi+p of the Ring, Frodo Baggins, beaten down and scared, confides in Gandalf, ”I wish none of this had happened” To which Gandalf, in his wizardry wisdom, replies, ”So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide All we have to decide is what to do with the ti with soloists and specialists, have to put their fears aside and confront the challenges ahead, just as Frodo did in The Lord of the Rings They have to acknowledge so to fix what is broken, and return to the ideas and inspirations that reat They have to think and act more like start-ups They have to become disruptors theh traditional firms may hesitate to , they can start to progress by experi in niches or with select prospects

For exaes in fall 2008 They were targeted at the specific needs and goals of HubSpot custoed froe, to 2,999 per es bundled services such as SEO analysis, on-page opti

These first service packages helped to differentiate the agency and bring in new business, but I would not consider them a financial success The efficiencies and profitability were low, but that was part of the process We had to take a chance and try so new in order to learn and evolve

Trust Your Instinct Trust your gut instinct when it co direction Research and analyze your options, but only to refute what you already know to be the best choice This can becoencies, but theconsensus and support for their visions, no matter how unconventional they s that le cofounder and CEO2 Deconstruct Your Brand Be willing to deconstruct your brand and business model to re Historyif you have no future

Maintain a Sense of Controlled Urgency Soreatest inventions and advances in business have come in the face of adversity, but do not wait for desperate times to evolve The best time to pursue opportunities and innovations is when you are prospering So to disrupt your agency, so ittradition and conventional wisdo Take risks, be bold, and dare to fail

Failing Forward: The Return and Revenge of Steve Jobs

In 1984 Steve Jobs was fired froarage He went on to found NeXT, a computer company, which was acquired by Apple in 1996 for 429 million Jobs returned to Apple as CEO in 1997, and he has since created soy products in history

Spend Less Ti

Plans have their place in business and life, but I have found that they often serve as a convenient excuse to avoid action We hold oals, create proposals, assign responsibilities, and build task lists and ti approvals, only to have our strategies be outdated by the time they are finally activated

Business y is changing, consu Marketing agencies have to beco and , both for themselves and their clients

Venture into the Unknown In January 2011, Seth Godin, best-selling author of Linchpin, took to the Helen Mills theater stage in New York to share his ideas on the new dyna