Entering the last 25% of 2020, I wanted to revisit my habit & goals tracker to see how I’ve kept up since my last “report card” back in April. I’m happy that I’ve managed to keep up with the tracker dutifully marking “x” in the appropriate columns day in and day out. It’s been a ritual to reinforce the notion that I can only control what I can control and that it’s best to focus […]
It’s been an eventful past 6 months, and I wanted to revisit my personal finances to see how things have changed since my last update in March, when COVID-19 started turning into a pandemic in the United States, the market had hit its lows, and there was much uncertainty about what would happen next. The High-Level Summary In March, I saw our investments decrease by nearly 20% from their highs in late February. Luckily, my family […]
Intro to a New Series I’m 14 years and 4 months into running Barrel, a digital agency that I started with Sei-Wook Kim back in 2006. We’re a team of 30+ full-time employees and dozens of contractors all over the world. We work with a number of brands and organizations to build and optimize their websites and help them on their marketing efforts across email, social, and search. I’ve been publishing on my blog about […]
My first volume of “operating rules”, written about 18 months ago, included the following: Get the unpleasant thing out of the way sooner than later Very few things are worth getting worked up over There’s no need to have the last word There’s no rush, stick to a pace that works for me Just listen, no need to provide advice Play offense, not defense Things I will never regret: time spent writing, time spent with […]
In the play No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre, three deceased characters find themselves in an unexpected Hell, a plain room where they are seated together, no instruments of torture in sight. As they learn more about each other and are exposed to their respective manipulations and fits of anger and sarcasm, it’s clear that eternal damnation is coexistence with other people, hence the famous line: “Hell is other people.” I found myself thinking about this […]
At our quarterly town hall meeting at Barrel, one of the questions asked was: “What are the top reasons why we don’t win projects?” The answer we gave at our town hall was something like this: There are numerous factors ranging from our pricing, our body of work, the impression we made on the prospect, who referred the prospect to us, etc. that contribute to why someone ultimately decided not to work with us. The […]
What does a Culture of Fear at a company look like? People are afraid to speak up for fear of what management or other team members might think. People are afraid to take initiative for fear of making a mistake and getting reprimanded by management. People are afraid to help each other for fear of being blamed if something goes wrong. People are afraid to go above and beyond for fear of being seen as […]
Some years ago, we had a fresh out of college employee at Barrel who was sharp and smart. This was during a time when we had a very flat structure and whoever was available, regardless of experience, was staffed on projects as needed. We staffed this employee on a number of fairly important projects and told the employee to figure things out. That’s what smart people are supposed to do, right? Some weeks later, we […]
Client concentration isn’t a topic that comes up much when I chat with other agency operators. The most common references to client concentration I’ve heard are usually concerns from folks who rely heavily on a single client for most of their revenue. Agency business experts and 2Bobs podcast hosts Blair Enns and David C. Baker recommend that creative firms should have a roster of around 8-15 clients. This doesn’t matter if you’re doing $1 million […]
Some of the companies doing well in the public markets these days are the very businesses whose software we use at Barrel. What if, instead of just paying these companies for their software, we had invested that same amount into their stock? What would that be worth in today’s dollars? Ground Rules For this experiment, I pegged the “investment date” to the day we started paying for the software. For companies that were not listed […]
Corporate Turnaround Artistry: Fix Any Business in 100 Days by Jeff Sands was a timely read as we entered the coronavirus crisis because it outlines a number of valuable lessons on managing through a tough situation and what it takes to fight for a company’s survival. The book focuses primarily on the process of turning around a business that is suddenly unable to make its debt payments, therefore prompting the bank to seek action. Oftentimes, a […]
Note: I initially published on March 30, 2020 via AgencyDocs, a Barrel-owned website geared towards other agency owners who’re looking for templates to help run their business. I’ve reposted here and expanded some more to include some additional developments including the receipt of our Paycheck Protection Plan loan from the US government. As an agency, Barrel has been hit hard by the coronavirus crisis. Within a span of 2 weeks, we saw over 18 engagements–a combination […]
I started 2020 with a more rigorous tracker and game plan to keep up with some habits that I felt were vital to my wellbeing. Three months into 2020, it’s clear that a strong foundation of habits is more important than ever, especially during this COVID-19 quarantine period where many familiar routines are no longer viable. Reflecting on my Q1 2020 efforts, I can confidently say that holding myself to a more detailed tracking document […]
In this troubling and uncertain climate, I thought it would be a good time to review my personal finance stack head on and to share some of the moves I’m making. Like most others, there’s been a great deal of pain seeing my investment portfolio take some big hits. However, there’s opportunity to do some discounted buying in the coming weeks which may pay off in the long run. Then again, as a small business […]
I wanted to jot down and share some quick thoughts on running a small agency business during the COVID-19 (coronavirus) situation developing here in the United States. As an agency with offices in New York City and Los Angeles, we made the call last Monday (March 9th) to have the Barrel team go fully remote. In hindsight, I think we made the right call and acted fairly quickly. The biggest thing that I can’t emphasize […]
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: […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]