We coach and consult with many service-based organizations and we are finding some patterns after the pandemic. Many entrepreneurs are struggling with what it is like to now lead a company considering the remembrance of where they were before the pandemic, what the pandemic has done to their companies, and how they have been affected personally as leaders.  We’ve all been struggling personally after the impact of the pandemic on our lives and those around us. And now an unstable economy is bringing a lot of discouragement to service entrepreneurs. You are not alone if you feel this too ..read more

This year, the Blumer team has made a commitment to read more.  We are currently reading Atomic Habits as a team to benefit the Blumer community as well as to benefit ourselves as individuals.  One thing we are learning is that habits are made by repetition and consistency.  We also tend to keep those habits (good or bad) by focusing on what we want to accomplish, not just setting a goal.  Once you set a goal to “read a book”, you’ve met that goal when you reach the end, but if you focus on “reading a chapter a day” or reading “10 pages each day”, then you have a habit tha ..read more

Overview Meet 3 Media Web, a digital marketing and website development agency that provides services and support to B2B companies in a wide range of industries.  Over the past five years, company leaders Mary Novick and Jess Hennessey found themselves more and more engaged in working “on the business” rather than in it, and eventually moved into C-suite roles. When the former CEO decided to step down from ownership, it felt right for them to pursue purchasing the company themselves. The Problem Buying a company is a big deal: it’s not something many of us do every day, and when you’re d ..read more

Overview Stoked is a global design company based out of Nashville, renowned for its expertise in fostering healthy work cultures, guiding teams through transitions, and providing organizations with tools for sustained positive impact. At the head of the company stands CEO Anna Love–a sort of accidental business leader.  The Problem Anna and her cofounder found themselves starting a business without really meaning to. In her words: “Neither of us had the business prowess that is probably needed to be wise business leaders.” And a big part of leading a successful business is having a firm ..read more

This year is an exciting journey through the world of capacity planning, and research around resource planning for service firms that are growing. I’m partnering with Ian Vacin in this work and we are learning a great deal of information in the research we are conducting with service organizations around the world. For a brief primer, when service organizations (like agencies) scale and expand, they often run into the complexity of knowing the ability of their growing teams to be able to produce revenue. How you bring in your revenue is important. Project-based vs recurring revenue will dicta ..read more

I know we’ve heard this before, but as a reminder, there are no people with magic skills who are smarter than us at business. But we do get confused when we see people who seem to have a touch of ‘magic’ in the craft that they perform. How do they do that? When you study these people you find that they have a different view of what it takes to achieve mastery in their work. Essentially, mastery of something is a matter of getting in more reps than anyone else in your craft. Kobe Bryant is one of those people. His skills on the basketball court seem like magic, but you find out they are just a ..read more

When designers and freelancers begin to think about growth, they eventually run into needing to hire. When you sell services there is no other way to grow except to hire people. You can use software, become more efficient, and even let AI help you do some of your work. But you will eventually have to replace yourself if you want to grow the revenue of your creative studio.  Who do you hire first? Of course this depends, but there are some general principles we can learn from here. When growing, most smaller design and freelance studios think of replacing themselves to grow. So if they do ..read more

My partner and I work with a lot of service-based entrepreneurs that are seeking to grow their firms, agencies, and consultancies. We’ve been doing this for decades, and the more we work with these entrepreneurs the more we see the trouble so many have with something that is generally labeled “Capacity Management.” Many want to know if they have the right team capacity to take in a larger amount of revenue. Many don’t even understand how closely capacity management is tied to revenue performance. And many don’t look at these concepts at all, and their agency begins to consume them because it ..read more

If You Only Do 5 Things In The Coming Year, Do These So here we are again, facing the end of one year, and the beginning of a whole new year. A shiny, brand-spanking new and unused year, full of possibilities and opportunities. This time of year always has me reflecting on the past year, as well as thinking ahead to what I’d like the next year to look like.  Here are some ideas for what I want to take into 2024; hopefully you can find something useful for your new year, as well. Decide what your work/business “word of the year” is for 2024. Then try to live it.  The “word of the yea ..read more

One thing we believe that sets us apart as a firm is our commitment to learning with our team. You can always know this about our firm: we are talking about new things, learning new things, being challenged by what we already (think we) know, and making presentations of new concepts to each other. It means we are in a constant state of maturing as a team. Of course, we have to do this on the technical side of our profession (it’s required!). And we let the team lead this learning too, from their own perspective. Our leadership team is always seeking to know what our learning is for the upcomi ..read more