The Business of Creativity is a series from Emily Cohen and Hunter Vargas of Casa Davka, a consultancy that helps creative firms evolve their business strategies and practices.
The new year is an ideal time to take actions that will have long-lasting and positive impacts on your business. Consider the following suggestions not as “New Year’s resolutions”—as those aren’t always kept—but more long-overdue and necessary changes that will result in impactful wins across all areas of your business.
By all areas of your business, we mean just that. But to help you out, we’ve indicated with different emojis the areas of your business each of these actions will have the most impact on:
💞 = Business Development
🤝 = Client Management
🧑💻 = Organizational
🎯 = Operations
💰 = Finances
Mantras
1. “Do or do not. There is no try” 💞🤝🧑💻🎯💰
Embrace Yoda’s philosophy. While we all love to plan, research, ideate, and design, we often have difficulty following through and implementing our ideas. Just take action! Take a small baby step and go from there. For example, you don’t need to deeply research and develop a list of 100 prospects and relationships to build (instead, see #13).
2. Stop making assumptions 💞 🤝🧑💻🎯
Don’t assume you know how your clients, team, business partner, etc. will respond to any concerns, push-back, hard questions, or thoughts you may have. Just ask direct, honest questions to get the real answers. Stop guessing (see #4)!
3. Stop blaming your clients 🤝🎯
Look first at yourself, your firm, and your processes instead of blaming your clients. We often can create or encourage misbehaving clients because we haven’t managed them well from the start. You can begin by improving how you define, communicate, and enforce your firm’s relationship parameters and approach to project and client management, as well as contracts and proposals. Like dogs and children, clients thrive with parameters.
4. Embrace conflict 💞 🤝🧑💻🎯
Embrace honest conversations and say “no” when necessary to foster more productive, mutually beneficial relationships with your clients, team, business partner, etc. Avoiding conflict harms both you and your business by leaving important issues unresolved. The longer these unspoken conversations linger, the more resentment, complications, and negative energy they create (see #2).
5. Stop using non-value-added words 💞 🤝🧑💻
If you see yourself as a value-added expert rather than a commodity, avoid promoting your studio or firm as boutique, discount, or fast/quick. Additionally, always present yourself as a “we,” not “I,” to represent your team, showcase your value as an entity (not just a pair of individual hands), and highlight the broader expertise you bring to the table.
Quick Wins
6. Send out an email blast 💞
By the end of January, update your mailing list and send out an email newsletter to all your contacts to tell them what’s new (e.g., a new project, hire, service) and remind them you are out there. Then, remember to send out an email blast every quarter thereafter.
7. Set new business goals 💞💰
Set new business goals to envision, manifest, and drive your business development and relationship-building efforts. Break down your financial projections by the number of clients within each industry (vertical markets), project budget, and, potentially, service/project type (horizontal markets). Then, check in quarterly to see how you’re doing against these goals and increase your relationship-building efforts accordingly if you see an imbalance in any area.
8. Obtain success metrics 💞🤝
Contact your most valuable clients from 2024 and ask them: How did your work with them impact the success of their brand, sales, marketing, product, or awareness? Replace client testimonials with more quantitative data demonstrating tangible results and your value (e.g., % increase, $ sales). Update your case studies to feature these success metrics prominently and shout them from the rooftops during your capabilities presentation.
9. Stop doing work at a discount or free 💞💰
Unless there is a clear and defined win for you (e.g., guaranteed and prominent press/credit, tickets to a fundraising event at a table with the most influential donors), you should never do work for free or even at a discount. This hurts both your business and our industry overall.
10. Increase your rates 💞🤝💰
The new year is the ideal time to increase your project fees and hourly rates. If you need to defend these new fees to existing clients—which you really shouldn’t have to—you can state that your fees have increased to align with industry standards and cover the increase in the cost of living (e.g., salaries, overhead, etc.).
11. Let go of one client 💞🤝
You should let go of one client to move your businesses forward and take back control of your firm (e.g., a long-term client you’ve outgrown, an unprofitable client, a client that damages team morale). Often, this leads to you manifesting new business opportunities. Plus, it just feels damn good!
Habitual Wins
12. Leverage your time to align with your value 💞🧑💻🎯💰
Those at a leadership level should evaluate where they spend their time in both billable and non-billable areas and ask themselves: Is this the best use of my valuable time (and salary)? Which areas should I stop doing (e.g., hands-on design, bookkeeping, administrative areas), and which should I be more focused on (e.g., business development, strategy, creative direction, thought leadership)? Then determine the who, when, and how you can move these to someone else.
13. Reach out to two to three contacts per week 💞
Each week, introduce yourself to two to three people and follow through on past introductions. This should include at least one existing/past client and one new prospect/connection. Make this a new weekly habit, and never stop. Baby steps, remember (see #1)?
14. Develop and document your processes 🧑💻🎯
Conduct an internal exercise with your team to update, document, streamline, and onboard your processes, including clarifying the who, what, when, where, and why of how you work as well as how you communicate.
15. Learn something new 💞🤝🧑💻🎯💰
Identify what you want to learn this year—or perhaps quarterly—and explore the topic through a class, book, podcast, etc. Encourage your team to take on this challenge as well! Then, host internal lunch-and-learn sessions to share the insights and knowledge you’ve gained. Learning is growing!
Just do it!
While we advocate for taking action and embracing change throughout the year, we understand the start of a new year is a perfect moment to re-evaluate and take action on all areas of your business, so just do it! The above actions will lead to a more positive and improved outlook on and wins around how you work, communicate, build your business pipeline and relationships, and care for yourselves, your team, and your clients. Take the new year as an opportunity to review and identify new habits (or, we guess you could say, “resolutions” 😉) and strategies to improve and elevate your business practices and behaviors.
Making small, incremental changes and being more action-oriented can lead to big wins; you just have to start!
Emily Cohen and Hunter Vargas are business partners and consultants at Casa Davka who offer customized business solutions to creative firms so they are able to refine, evolve, and elevate their strategies and practices. Emily has been in the business for over 30+ years, partnered with 500+ leading creative firms, and is a frequently requested main-stage speaker. Hunter is an experienced marketer, project manager, client partner, and business development manager. They also happen to be a mother/daughter pair, so they work together seamlessly, complementing (and challenging) each other in many ways.
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