03: Profits Make You Powerful

Delivering on time and budget is core to the role of producer. Everyone agrees. So much so that every job description on every careers page for every studio asks for it. You’ve undoubtedly realised then, that efficiency is good. Now what you need to know is how good.

Earlier in this series, we discussed Andy Bounds amazing insight that “people only care about what they’re left with after you’ve done it.” Well, what’s left at the end of an efficient production is profit.

As unsexy as it sounds, it’s a fundamental truth that creative companies, like every other kind of company, exist to make money; and producers are hired to make it rain. What is sexy is how that puts you at the beating heart of everything that matters to the business.

“Profit is the reason companies are in business — not sales, not revenues, not growth, but profit.

Tim Williams

THE PETER PARKER PRINCIPLE

The fact is, we haven’t worked with many producers who a) want to think of themselves as the money makers or b) act like this is the reality. Yet the ones who know this truth and embrace it are, in our experience, the very best among us.

With great power comes great responsibility. Profits (producers) keep the person beside you in a job. Profits (producers) pay for that swanky office in Shoreditch. Profits (producers) enable everybody in the team to their “20% time” on personal development/projects every week. Profits mean the difference between the business surviving or thriving. If you’re the one to deliver them, that makes you powerful.

Look, we’re not percentage junkies. We’re not saying you should make your target margin on every project at all costs. What we are saying is, you should be looking at every decision through “commercial lenses.”

That means cash.

Whenever your teammate or director talks about adding another feature or taking a few more days to finish up a design, or any other thing that’s going to fuck with your budget, the rule of thumb to live by is turn the ask into cash.

It’s not 5 more days of a developer. It £6,000 in fee, maybe £3,600 in profit. £3,600 probably pays for the office PACT Coffee subscription and all your Friday snacks. Now imagine you don’t get the goodies anymore and see how it influences your decision about whether that scope creep should fly.

Taken in the abstract on a spreadsheet or a post-it note, money is really easy to fritter away. Especially when it isn’t yours. But I guess what we’re trying to say is, it is yours. When a business is profitable it means real-world happiness for you. Try to remember that, innit.

Part 4 of this mini-series is online now, here.

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