Author: Peter Kang

Hindsight: Why 2015 Was A Bad Year for the Agency

March 2, 2020
by Peter Kang
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I decided to create a tidy table view of Barrel’s business performance for the past 14 years cleaning up some numbers and simplifying the view to focus on revenue, cost of goods sold (COGS), gross profit, and gross margin. I decided to keep owner’s compensation completely out and defined COGS as the sum of our payroll and any amounts paid to freelancers/consultants/other agencies to help us deliver work. One year immediately jumped out to me: […]

Calculating Project Profits at a Creative Services Agency

February 16, 2020
by Peter Kang
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A digital marketing agency, design/branding studio, UX consultancy, web development firm and any other creative services business are all similar in that they are asset-light, people-intensive businesses that rely on successful delivery of work for clients. What constitutes a successful delivery? Client satisfaction, team satisfaction, and profits. I want to focus on the profits part in this piece and explore some examples of what a profitable engagement looks like and why the two biggest levers in […]

Highlights from What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence by Stephen A. Schwarzman

February 3, 2020
by Peter Kang
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Blackstone co-founder and CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman’s memoir What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence is what you might expect from a successful billionaire who exudes self-confidence and knows he has achieved most anything he’s set his sights on. Unlike, say, Disney CEO Bob Iger’s memoir The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company, Schwarzman doesn’t linger on internal struggles, moral crises, or any vulnerable moments. Instead, […]

Lessons from Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen

January 20, 2020
by Peter Kang
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I benefited greatly from reading Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. My only regret is that I didn’t read it years earlier when I first heard about it. My initial reaction to a book about a framework/methodology for getting things done was: “I’m pretty organized, I have To Do lists, and I get stuff done every day. No need.” Such arrogance, such missed opportunities to get better. But better late […]

The Downstream Impact of New Business Decisions on an Agency Business

January 13, 2020
by Peter Kang
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Last week, our leadership team at Barrel spent 3 full days aligning on goals and priorities for 2020. We came away with some concrete assignments that will improve processes, enhance our service offering, and deepen relationships with our clients. A recurring theme that’s become clearer to us in the past year is that all the problems and all the successes of an agency business, when you get down to the root of things, really boils […]

My Single Stock Purchases of 2019

January 6, 2020
by Peter Kang
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I bought some single stocks this year for my personal portfolio. I’ve decided to revisit these purchases and make note of my thought process so I can do a better job the next time I decide to buy single stocks. Side note: when it comes to investing in public markets, I mostly stick with automated monthly purchases of index funds. I split some into a couple of no-fee funds from Fidelity, FZROX and FNILX. I’ll […]

2019: Habits That Stuck

December 29, 2019
by Peter Kang
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It’s hard to believe that our son Grant’s first birthday is right around the corner. I didn’t know how parenting would impact my habits in 2019, but I’m happy to report that many of the habits I valued didn’t go away. There were a number of adjustments I had to make along the way, but overall, I’m incredibly grateful for how smoothly things have gone. I’ve adopted (and adapted) a number of different routines for […]

Playing in the Capitalist Economy

December 23, 2019
by Peter Kang
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I came across this tweet by Gumroad founder Sahil Lavingia: Lavingia’s epic post “Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company” on his founder’s journey is worth reading. He also openly shares the progress of the business in both a public dashboard and in tweets like this, always fascinating to see as a business owner. I wanted to save his tweet about owning capital in a capitalist economy because it made me think about […]

Small Agency Owner Compensation

November 23, 2019
by Peter Kang
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Can an owner of a small creative/marketing/digital agency make decent money? The answer is yes, but like anything worthwhile, it takes discipline, hard work, and some luck. The business model itself is really simple: be great at sales, control costs (especially labor), do excellent work, and have a good CPA. I built a really simple model on Google Sheets to show the inner workings of a small agency’s business from the owner’s perspective.  You can copy […]

Lessons from Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday

November 17, 2019
by Peter Kang
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Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday is a book about inner peace and how this “stillness” is the key to “unlocking all that we are capable of in this life.” Holiday references ancient philosophers, religions, historical figures, and other successful people throughout the book to lay out his framework for achieving stillness: mastering the mind, spirit, and body. I’ve been a long-time subscriber to Holiday’s monthly newsletter where he recommends books he’s read. It’s […]

Lessons from Orphan X and His Ten Commandments

October 2, 2019
by Peter Kang
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Orphan X is a entertaining fiction series from author Gregg Hurwitz. The hero, Evan Smoak a.k.a. Orphan X, is a product of a government black ops program that turned wayward children into deadly assassins. Smoak is out of the program and has turned into the “Nowhere Man”, an invisible force who saves the helpless, dishing out punishment to sex traffickers, rapists, domestic abusers, gangs, and other nefarious characters. Think Jason Bourne meets the Equalizer. I’ve listened […]

Lessons from The E-Myth Chief Financial Officer

June 24, 2019
by Peter Kang
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The E-Myth Chief Financial Officer: Why Most Small Businesses Run Out of Money and What to Do about It by Michael E. Gerber and Fred G. Parrish focuses on the importance of the chief financial officer role in a small business and how, in the absence of a full-time CFO, the entrepreneur must be willing to play the role. It’s taken me well over a decade to truly appreciate the importance of how financial thinking […]

Reflecting on The 11 Laws of The Fifth Discipline (from Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline)

June 4, 2019
by Peter Kang
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It’s been a year since I read Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline and yet, I’ve been reminded almost every single day of the lessons from the book. My company Barrel recently celebrated 13 years of being in business. My co-founder Sei-Wook and I have been there for all 13 years, and I feel like it’s only been in the past year that the two of us started to take a less reactive approach to running […]

Operating Rules Vol.1

February 17, 2019
by Peter Kang
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I’ve found myself recently repeating a few different rules to in my head as reminders on ways I should be operating, whether it’s in day-to-day behaviors, in occasional decision-making, or interactions with others. Sometimes, when I’m distracted, emotionally incensed, or completely in mindless mode, I’ll forget these rules and behave in regretful ways. But one thing I’ve noticed is that as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to embrace the upside to slowing down and considering […]

My Personal Finance Stack 2019

January 14, 2019
by Peter Kang
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I last wrote about my personal finance “stack” in the summer of 2017. A lot has changed since then, so I want to make this an annual activity and use it as an opportunity to examine how I’m managing my money. Without going into any absolute figures, I’ll share how I organize my money, what types of investments I’ve made, and the services and tools I use. Money is something that’s still a tough topic to […]

2018: Habits That Stuck

December 31, 2018
by Peter Kang
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2018 was a good year for experimentation. I tried out a lot of different approaches to cultivating or switching up my habits . Some ended up sticking and many were abandoned. I’m grateful that I’ve had the luxury of time, energy, and resources to continually mold my daily routines freely. I know that this won’t always be the case, especially when new responsibilities (e.g. parenthood) emerge, but I hope that the past few years of […]

Lessons from Atomic Habits by James Clear

December 2, 2018
by Peter Kang
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I’ve thought and written a lot about habits over the past few years. However, after reading Atomic Habits by James Clear, I realized that I was still lacking awareness when it came to understanding how habits formed and stuck around. While many of the ideas, examples, and concepts in the book were very familiar to me (e.g. cognitive biases, small wins / reinforcing feedback loops, tracking, etc.), it was really nice to see everything come together in an […]

Continually Evolving Thoughts on Talent and Hiring

October 28, 2018
by Peter Kang
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In writing this post, I wanted to make a reminder for myself about the continually evolving nature of how I’ve viewed talent and hiring, and how it’s possible that my views will continue to change in the future. When we first started Barrel, Sei-Wook and I were essentially a couple of freelancers who said yes to enough work that we needed to hire people to help us. We used Craigslist and that was the start […]

Common Opportunities in Growing E-commerce Businesses Vol. 1

September 23, 2018
by Peter Kang
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At Barrel, a segment of our clients (and prospective clients who contact us) are growing e-commerce businesses doing anywhere between $500k to $5 million in sales. They are typically run by small teams (usually less than 10 people, often just 2-5 people) and have either been bootstrapped (funded with the founder’s savings plus the profits of the business) or with a small seed investment from friends and family. Drawing from my observations and experience reviewing dozens of […]

Exploring Daily Commitments

September 9, 2018
by Peter Kang
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I recently signed up for an online fitness program called Athlean-X. It’s a 3-month plan that requires 5 days of workouts with 2 days of rest and recovery. I haven’t been able to keep up day-for-day with the plan, especially as I like to fit in basketball and running on some of the days, but I’ve tried my best to fit the 5 workouts every 8-9 days. The workouts themselves are not overly difficult or […]