Lessons From the Last Two Years

Photo by Patrick Desloge on Unsplash

I celebrated my two year anniversary at Risdall Marketing Group in September and looking back it’s astonishing how much I feel I’ve developed a short amount of time. Much of the growth was out of sheer necessity in order to maintain the quality of work we deliver, as well as provide a stable base mentally going  from work to home and back again. As my agency peers can attest, the three tiers of spinning plates of new business, client, and internal work all have to be kept up moment to moment, seeming to never cease.

This is one of the main reasons I wanted to get into the agency world, along with the ever widening variety of industries, business types and management styles you get to experience each day. I love the fact that each day is different and what you think you’ll do in a day inevitably morphs into other projects and areas of interest.

While my love for the creativity and the ever-changing landscape has stood firm, the last two years has also put a number of things into perspective that my younger self would have either laughed at or tried to power through.

Here are three things that stick out as important wins and things not to lose perspective on as we continue to march ahead into the future.

1) Agency Experience Required

As I was finishing my Master’s program in Business Communications I was applying to many agency jobs and this was a phrase I would always run up against.

At the time it was frustrating and I would be saying to myself as I filled out the n-teeth application and cover letter: “How am I supposed to get agency experience if you won’t hire me!”

In my mind, the reasoning behind it is the pace of your day and the amount of information you have to retain in order to bounce from meeting to phone call to working to another meeting all for different clients who have different industries, goals and personalities associated with them.

While the phrase still bugs me a bit, I’ve come to understand why it’s there and can now appreciate the reasoning behind it. The agency world is definitely not for everyone. A person with a 9-5, punch-in punch-out mentality won’t do well because of how adaptable you have to be each day.

2) It’s Not About Perfection. It’s About Continued Improvement.

Agency life, like other business services professions, forces one to become organized and develop process to stay afloat or you drown. This is true not only in balancing your workload, but also in you’re professional development.

It’s really important to invest in your process and the process of your organization. More often than not small changes can have huge repercussions in positive outcomes. Use gmail extensions, Chrome or Firefox browser extensions, and software like Trello, Evernote and Feedly to keep yourself organized and shave off time in your reoccurring activities.

After all, shaving two minutes off of a couple of activities you do week after week equates an additional 3.5 hours you can reinvest elsewhere by the end of the year!

(2 min x 2 weekly activities x 50 working weeks/yr = 200 min = 3 hours & 20 min)

3) Zen Required

Playing off of the continued improvement and not focusing on perfection, is the ability to keep things in perspective while also being amazingly flexible with what your tasks for the day will be.

When the phone rings and the deadline for a projects gets cut in half, or someone’s site gets hacked, you have to be able to accept that your circumstances have changed, then adapt. Like having systems in place to build in efficiencies with your time, it is also imperative to be efficient emotionally as well.

So far it’s been an amazing ride and I’m fortunate enough to continue to love what I do.