Good, Cheap, Quick

Small businesses and start-ups taking their enterprise to market usually have two things in limited supply: money and time. They need to get selling fast, but they also need to establish their credibility in the market place. They need good, relevant, creative marketing collateral quickly at the lowest possible cost.

That's all very good, but the reality is, you can have good and cheap but you can't have quick. You can have quick and good but you can't have cheap. Of course this observation is relative to the type of service you engage. If you use a freelance such as me, you'll pay a lot less than if you were using a mid-sized agency with its additional overheads.  They'll quite possibly take you to lunch. But with a freelance, you will miss out on the added services and sometimes unnecessary trimmings (that "free" lunch?) that a mid-sized agency can provide. They have not only designers, but marketing experts. People who will help you with strategy, a team of copywriters and designers who will spend time brainstorming your brief. Often they will have two or more teams working on different approaches to your brief. But the time mounts up... and to some extent (remember, it's relative), cheap and quick go out the window.

At the other end of the scale, you can log onto whichever crowdsourcing site takes your fancy and get hundreds of pitches from creative freelances around the world. You could quite possibly end up with good, cheap and quick. Or not. I have previously written about crowdsourcing and have also written about what really goes into a professional design process. Professional design with due process takes time. Time is money. Ignore the due process and you could end up with a lovely (or not) looking piece of design that does nothing for your business.

Good: How to get it.
The ingredients for a good job are many, but the basics are this:

1. Talent. Much like owning a pen does not make you Shakespeare, owning a computer and all the necessary software does NOT give someone talent. You need to be able to see the genuine creative talent shining through.
2. Due process. I can if I wish, knock out an acceptable brochure or flier within an hour or two; buy a couple of stock photos for a few quid, bang out some text, add a drop shadow or two and Bob's your uncle. But I don't. I have a process that ensures what I create does the job it is supposed to. Which costs money. I spend time working on a strategy, then a concept. I spend time crafting the copy. And before I even do that, I endeavour to properly understand your business and your market, because how on earth am I going to effectively communicate otherwise?

Cheap: How to get it
You want to save money, not throw it away:

1. Prepare a decent, detailed brief. If you don't know how to do this, a good freelance will help you prepare one with all the salient points and objectives clearly expressed. Understand what you are buying: the freelance's time, so don't waste it. Have your ducks in a row.
2. Be realisitc. You will not get the same level of service from a freelance as you will from an agency. You will not have an account manager, you will not have a team beavering away in the studio for you. Instead, you will have one hungry, experienced individual who will be in direct contact with you. Don't expect long boozy lunches, though!
3. Pay on time. If you pay late, your next job will be likely to cost more or you'll maybe have to find another freelance, which is time consuming and wasteful of the legacy of knowledge regarding your business your designer will have built up.

Quick: How to get it
You want it fast, so smooth the way

1. Adhere to the above points
2. Become a favourite client. Freelances have to sometimes juggle jobs. Make sure that the guy doing your work wants to make your job a priority.

Copyright © 2009 Paul R Davey. All photographs, text and artworks in this portfolio are copyrighted and owned by the artist, Paul R Davey unless otherwise stated. Any reproduction, modification, publication, transmission, transfer, or exploitation of any of the content, for personal or commercial use, whether in whole or in part, without written permission from the artist is strictly prohibited. All rights reserved.

Paving: I'm no expert, should have used one.

Because it was a long weekend I intended to have a well deserved, long lie-in followed by a leisurely listing of the relaxing, cool activities in which I'd indulge myself for the next three days.

I had little movies playing, as they so often do in my head, where I the Star, would be attending some sexy food market somewhere, purchasing the makings of a rather elegant (but casual) dinner. Another movie had me entertaining good friends with wine, and a braai (that's a 'barbecue' to those who are unfortunate enough not to be southern African).

Well what actually happened was this: I gave up trying to sleep at about 6.30am (thirst, backache, headaches, heartburn - all the usual stuff) and blurted out to the lovely Anna (my supervisor-cum-girlfriend) that I would like to build a patio for the braai.

Please read this story carefully because it will reveal an important moral.

Yes, we'd been humming and hawing about this project and I considered myself equal to the task. Just dig out a hole, make it level, toss in some sand and lay the paving stones on top. Doddle. I'd be done and dusted by lunchtime.

So after a "discussion" revolving around the layout of tiles, the repositioning of the composter, my alleged lack of spatial awareness, the fact that Anna is always right, the fact that she isn't etc. we headed off to Homebase, our chosen source of blue slate paving stones. After looking at all the things we don't need, we went out to where the paving stones were and proceeded to discuss (rather too bloody thoroughly) the merits of each individual stone and to pile them onto the trolley. Ow! They pinched my delicate, baby-smooth office-worker's fingers.

We loaded the car and headed home with our precious cargo of stones. I then proceeded to move the quarter of a tonne of paving stones through the house into the garden, noting how with each load my body ached a little more. Once the car was unloaded we headed off to B&Q to buy building sand. 6 bags, 25 Kg each. And then home again. for another 6 trips to and from the car...

I was feeling the burn.

Using pegs and string, just like real builders, we laid out the outline of the patio and I started to dig. We don't have a pick so I had to make use of a fork and a small spade or "spadette". I never expected there to be so much "spoil" (Get me, with the technical jargon!!!) which I had to lug across the garden in a rubble bucket. I was busting a big old sweat and my back was in agony. Four years later, I'd dug the hole, leveled it and had stood, swaying, sweating and wheezing gazing at the very disappointingly small, shallow indentation I'd created.

Ah well, onwards and upwards! All I had to do now was toss in the sand and lay the paving stones. It was very satisfying to slit open the bellies of the sand bags, spilling their contents into the hole. By bag number six it was obvious that I needed more sand. And we'd decided to just use all 300 x 300mm stones meaning I had to replace the three 600 x 600 stones with 12 new 300 x 300mm ones. Back to Homebase.

Once again I pinched my delicate designer's fingers and felt my back crunch alarmingly as I loaded another four bags of sand and 12 paving stones onto the trolley...

Once back home I repeated the car unloading pantomime lugging the dripping wet bags of sand through the house. And the paving stones...

Again I slit the bellies of the bags. Again I realised I needed more sand...

Day Two: Aluta continua...

Barely able to stand we made our way back to Homebase to buy more sand. And a rubber mallet. Again I lugged the sand through the house. Again I nearly passed out with exhaustion. "This is supposed to be simple!" I thought to myself and to make myself feel better I blamed Anna for all the woes in the world. She said, "Yes dear." and carried on supervising the trailing lobelia and geraniums.

And so it came to pass that I began to lay the paving stones. The first one took 20 minutes. I could NOT get it to sit level and at the correct height. I was almost tweezering in individual grains of sand in an attempt to get the bloody stone to sit properly, at the right height and to not rock. Stone number two was a bit easier. It took just 10 minutes. Now please bear in mind that I have what orthopedic surgeons call sore knees. I hate kneeling. I hate even more, standing up after kneeling as this hurts my knees and my (what spinal surgeons call) achy back. Added to this I have either a beer belly or a "food baby", I'm not sure which, weighing me down. I am not built for crawling on the ground. So I moaned, groaned and cursed and swore and blamed the ever patient Anna.

After paving stone number eight was laid it became apparent that there was an issue with the levels. Yes, they were all laid in a beautifully straight line, but paving stone number 8 was aiming skywards; the Ying was correct, the Yang not so. Buggeration. I tried to re-lay stone number 8, but this then showed up the problems with stone number seven. Stone six was influencing the angle of stone seven but was also being led astray by stone five. Stone four was... Sod it! I started all over again.

To cut a long and extremely tedious story short, I eventually did finish laying my patio. It has a few moments where it comes close to being level. If I squint my eyes It almost does look level. Almost. The tiles are all pretty close to the same height as each other and only some of the rock a little. I have assured Anna that "they will settle". Now all I need to do is assure myself of the same thing.

So here I am. Mr Braai Patio. Am I proud of it? Perhaps a little - I mean it is all my own work. Am I pleased that I did it? Perhaps a little - but it is not perfect and that irritates me (although not as much as doing it again would). I have to live with it. With second best. Anna stands on individual paving stones rocking... inspecting...considering. She reminds me a of a female weaver bird inspecting the nest her mate has just built...does she like it or will she rip it to bits??? So far so good, but I think she's being kind...

But the real lesson is this: An expert paver will have created a much better patio. It would be level. The tiles wouldn't rock. He would have had enough sand and the correct tools. He would not have broken a sweat digging the hole. He would have built the whole damn thing in a morning. It took me two long days and I'm now crippled. My back's killing me and every muscle in my body aches. My knees have handed in their notice. By contrast, my patio looks amateurish. It is amateurish and I thank God I don't have to use it to attract customers to my business, because it would reflect badly on me.

So, for the few small businessmen that read this blog, next time you want to create a brochure or build your own website, think of using an expert. Think of using an expert like me - and if it just so happens you want a brochure or a website for your paving company, I have some paving that needs sorting out. We can can do a little quid pro quo...


Copyright © 2009 Paul R Davey. All photographs, text and artworks in this portfolio are copyrighted and owned by the artist, Paul R Davey unless otherwise stated. Any reproduction, modification, publication, transmission, transfer, or exploitation of any of the content, for personal or commercial use, whether in whole or in part, without written permission from the artist is strictly prohibited. All rights reserved.

The recession: Stop carping. Carpe Diem!

So there's a recession. The dreaded beast has officially arrived and all the businesses in the world are going to collapse. We'll all end up beggars and that's just the way life is.

No! This recession is going to be the making of many small businesses if they are prepared to swim against the current. I was reading Vincent Laforet's excellent blog about "The Perfect Storm" where he examines the impact of the economic crisis on photographers. He warns us that (particularly in America) business is starting to dry up and that many publications are likely to go to the wall. Budgets have been so severely cut that some publishers have NO advertising booked for 2009. That's the cold that America has and we're going to catch it.

But where some see gloom and doom, I see opportunity. I think this "perfect storm" will allow the savvy amongst smaller businesses to come out of the shadows and into the light. Now is the time for compact, agile businesses to go for the opportunities that were once the exclusive reserve of the big ticket players.

Be a piranha

If you've ever seen piranhas feeding, you'll notice how many of them make short work of the body they are feeding on, not by taking large bites, but by taking little chunks. And that's what small businesses need to do - take lots of little bites. While times are tough, remain a piranha, don't try to become a shark. Don't worry too much about expanding your business, because you'll also grow your overheads. If you're doing well, perhaps tweak your pricing upwards so you can save more money - you don't want to become a lumbering behemoth right now, but being cash rich would put you in a much more powerful position.

Twice as much marketing for half the budget

Increase your marketing activity if you want to keep busy or sell more product. You're a small business - a sassy street kid. Be street smart and hustle. Its time for clever, low cost marketing initiatives. Again, small businesses are far better positioned than the giants to seek out new opportunities and if you're smart, you can do it for almost free. But remember, you are growing your brand so make sure that whatever you do, you still reflect the values that underpin your brand, your corporate image. Low cost marketing should never be cheap and nasty - use an expert!

Lean on the desperate.

That sounds brutal. It is. But "the desperate" in the world of marketing are the media. Their revenues are falling dramatically. If you want to buy advertising space or time, now's your opportunity. Negotiate - you're in a powerful position.

Use a sniper's rifle.

Be clever with your targeting. I think that during a recession its better to go with more tightly targeted marketing rather than a scatter gun approach. Pick off prospects one-by-one and work harder to convert them.

Give them some love

The customers you won during the recession will stay loyal when its over, but only if you build on their loyalty. Keep on showing them some love. Keep in touch with them. Charm them. Keep it fresh.

None of the above are especially insightful or brilliant ideas. They are all dead simple. There are so many ways - most of them are common sense - for your business to flourish right now. Carpe Diem!

Keeping the Faith

I seldom have clients complain to me about work that I have done for them. Either they are genuinely pleased (and I think most are) or they are apprehensive about angering 220 lbs of fully grown adult male Zimbabwean (I hope not)! But every now and then I get clients who very nicely, ask me to tinker with the work I have done for them; they are not getting the results they expected and understandably want to put this right.

Now forgive me for sounding arrogant - I do not mean to - but it usually turns out that the work I have done does work if it is allowed to. A common misapprehension clients have is that an ad or a website is all they need to get instant business rolling in. Wrong! Your website is just one of numerous links in a chain between your customer's wallet and your bank account.

When I create a brochure or a website for you, I see them as tools that enhance the prospects of engaging with a new customer. They cannot work in isolation and they cannot be expected to deliver a sudden and immediate rise in business. Sorry.

To see an increase in business, dramatic or gradual, two things are required: Firstly, you have to drive people to your website or business by letting them know that its there by any and all means possible. Secondly, you have to be patient. In most cases, marketing activity delivers a gradual ramping-up of new business. It is also logical that the more marketing activity you do, the more people will engage with you.

Marketing is like hammering in a nail: If you want a sudden and dramatic impact, you need to be able to afford a nail gun. Small businesses seldom have nail gun-size budgets and so have to make do with a hammer that gradually drives their "nail" into the market.

Successful marketing is not difficult and it need not be expensive. In fact, it can largely be free! I generate a lot of business by placing just four ads a day on a free classifieds website, Gumtree.com. It takes me just 10 minutes every day to update the ads (I could choose to pay for them to be automatically updated, or even featured on the site, but I'm happy to spend the ten minutes rather than the money). I also advertise on as many free directories as possible - and the results are both on my web stats and trickling into my bank account.

Its taken me a long time to generate the levels of business that I have. To be honest, I have not done nearly enough (which is why I don't own a Porsche). I should be networking. I don't. I should be attending trade shows. Have I? No! I should be writing articles for my trade press. Not a word. And I should have set this blog up ages ago. Lazy bastard. But as I imagine my bank manager says, something is better than nothing.

The other thing to do is to become a forensic marketing detective. Try to discover where, how and why your customers are being lost. There is a lot to consider on this subject, so I will write more about it another time.

So summing up: Tinker with your marketing by all means, but give it a chance to work. If no one's visiting your website, its not because your website is at fault. Its because they do not know that its there. You need to do something about that.

Getting Paid

As a small business specialist and more particularly as someone who has had his fingers severely burnt in the past, I thought I would air my thoughts on the getting paid side of my business.

I have a simple policy: No credit. Generally, this works fine - many of my clients pay their up-front deposits without arguing and then pay the balance on completion. I like that. And I like them for paying so promptly. Its clean and simple and it allows me to cost less - because believe me, if you wanted to pay on 30 days you'd be paying significantly more for the privilege. Its a trade-off for both me and my client.

So why am I such a hard-nosed bastard? First off, I may seem hard-nosed but I'm not. People who are purchasing my services are not buying them as "stock" to sell on for an eventual profit. They are not waiting for someone to pay them for the service they just bought. Sure, my services are there to help generate business, but lets be honest, they are just part of a whole range of things one must do to attract customers.

Secondly, I have very few clients with a track record long enough - or more importantly, big enough - to qualify for a 30 day account. When a business can demonstrate a continuing habit of spending about 5k a month with me, (and they do not make up a major percentage of my overall income) then I will be astute enough to offer to ease their path with a 30 day account. I will also do other things to earn their love and loyalty: A (genuinely free) lunch or two, perhaps drinks after work on a regular basis... But I will also watch them like a hawk. I do not tolerate 30 days slipping into 60 days...

Thirdly, and I've already touched on this, my clients get to benefit from my many years of experience and my hard-won skills, not to mention talent, for a very reasonable rate. Working as I do with start-ups and small businesses, I have to compete on price with others. If my quote is not attractive in the first place, it is unlikely that prospective clients will hang around to discover my talents.

My cash system seems to be working quite well. I do have the odd hiccup with the occasional client who pays the balance late, but at least I'm still in possession of their work. Also, the balance due is seldom a back-breaking amount. I make sure that it isn't by offering clients a staggered payment arrangement over the course of a big-spend project. But most importantly, I believe that my clients are glad to pay for the work because I deliver beyond their expectations.

I have been using Google Checkout for client payments, but recently I have been getting them to pay directly into my account by bank transfer. Why? Because these days the transfer amount is generally reflected instantly rather than in the past when the banks required four working days for 'clearance'. Google Checkout, I suspect, sits on the cash and earns interest for a few days before crediting it to my account. Not good enough!

The Economic Meltdown...Yay?

I refuse to let this "credit-crunch-economic-downturn-recession-depression-crack-of-doom-disaster" get to me. No way Jos´e!

First off, my phone hasn't been ringing any less. There are still lots of people wanting to set up new businesses. In fact, I think that given a bit of time, there will be an increase in business as more and more people set up small businesses offering more agile and cost effective services to businesses struggling to survive.

I'm definitely aiming a little higher too - I want to get more "proper" design work, creating stuff for clients who are beginning to baulk at the cost of their design or ad agencies' services. I'm a one-man-band. I don't have to pay account managers, secretaries, receptionists and others. And if I did recruit (and I just might be doing that soon) I'd be looking for freelances who I'd pay by the job, without having to increase my charges to the client.

Now more than ever, clients are going to demand value for money. And that's where us small guys come in. Many of us are hugely experienced, quick and burdened with mortgages we have to pay - at all costs. We're genuinely hungry. Unlike salary men and women, we have to work hard. We cannot loaf or pull sickies. We know the real cost of a holiday (earn nothing and pay for flights and accommodation). In short, we represent real value for money. Sure, there's a dearth of account handlers etc, but how many clients need an account manager when they can go direct to the source?

In times of economic hardship, those businesses that increase their marketing activities are more likely to survive - and can even overtake their competitors. Carefully chosen freelances or boutique agencies allow businesses to continue marketing whilst saving on costs. We are also very likely to increase the freshness and vibrancy of the work as the lines of communication shorten between the creative at his Mac and the client-side Marketing Director.

Yes, the economy is in trouble. Yes, we will all feel the effects. But life goes on. People still have to buy and sell at any level. Business will follow the path of least resistance. Small businesses are that path. Embrace us!