One more month has passed, and we had a good dose of reflection about client management, learning to say “no”, among other topics that give us headaches but make us grow and be more effective.
“How do we make the client value our work?”
Our main goal as a creative studio is to add value to our clients, make them grow, rose, but what if they don’t understand what we mean, or don’t even want to listen?
We had some conversations about our brand, and how we present ourselves, we realized that we have to rethink our speech, we have to really focus on the client, on what he wants, what he needs, and show him that we understand what his pains and problems are, and that we want the same thing, to solve them.
The problem comes when, even after this whole process, the client doesn’t believe in the power and value of design, or the importance of a well-defined brand.
We saw this happen many times, and this month we found our work being undervalued again. For us, it’s essential to the success of the project and the final product that the brand is well defined, that the navigation and structure are well thought out and that the user experience is well constructed. This phase cannot be undervalued over any other, because, when that foundation fails, it’s much harder to make the rest work. That’s what we fought for in this project, and we learned a lot about managing clients, expectations, and, most important of all, to value our work.
We internally decided to maintain our position and not give up our values. We lost a big project, that we would really love to be a part of, but we also learned that when the visions aren’t aligned, when the expectations aren’t the same, it’s not worth to fight against it, it’s necessary to understand and value to get to a good result, and that is the only way that makes sense for us.
“The eternal search: how long?”
Summer is here, and we are starting to plan our work breaks. Maybe because of that, we felt like talking about our progress, our time invested and our expectations. We knew what we were putting ourselves into (or so we thought) when we started working independently, but the truth is, the constant search for clients and projects can become exhausting.
We are constantly thinking of new strategies, finding new ways of approaching new clients, new projects, and we feel like, despite all these efforts, we never get anywhere, many times we can’t get the return we wished to achieve, it doesn’t work out how we wanted it to. It’s hard for us to think of new strategies, and make them work, because we (still) don’t know what we’re doing wrong, or how to turn it around.
We are so lucky to have made some partnerships with people that bet on us and believe in our work. We are very thankful for that investment, and we want to value these partnerships even more and improve our mindset.
However, several questions eventually arise over time: Is it normal to take this long to achieve a stable business? Should we keep insisting? Is it too early to think of other possibilities? Or should we try to find other paths? We discussed many possibilities, several possible plans that we might invest in the future, and we might have news sometime soon.
We discussed these questions that still scare us, as we feel these vents work to take some weight and pressure out of us. Writing them down also helps us explore them deeper, and that ends up motivating us.
“Make it fun”
The last topic we discussed related to our posture/attitude as a studio, as business owners, and mainly, as friends. We were friends before anything, and we feel this process is no longer fun and dynamic like it was when we started it. The truth is, with our constant search, all that pressure, we end up not having a margin to explore, to have fun, nor to make mistakes. We start being afraid of each other’s opinions and we repress ourselves because of that, when those opinions should only take us further. We are always on the same cycle, without ever stopping to think about it. We have to let ourselves stop, fail, explore, miss the path we restrict ourselves to. We have to look at every circumstance as an opportunity, instead of just doing it.
We must never forget that we started this because we wanted to do more and better.
We’ll document our journey, and we hope you join us and find it helpful, even if it’s by learning what NOT to do!
‘Till next month,
96STUDIO.
