Good creative leads and where to find them

Or, business is slow. What are you going to do about it?

Here at A Hundred Monkeys, 2023 is off to a slow start. New leads, referrals, and new projects are all below average. The first thing we wanted to check when we realized this was “Is this an us thing or an everyone thing?” So we reached out to friends who run other design and brand studios and the answer was near universal. Almost every creative studio we asked was dealing with the same thing.* The level of anxiety was variable but the situation was the same.

This isn’t a problem we’ve dealt with a lot. Our last down year was 2013. We survived multiple tech bubbles, 2008, and early Covid unscathed. Some of this is down to preparation and a conservative approach to growth.** Some of it is luck. So needless to say when the phone stopped ringing this year, we were a little rusty on how to handle it.

Our gut reaction was to reach out to everyone we knew. Maybe this is because of social media or something else but when you’re not getting work, the natural reaction is to talk to the people who normally bring you work. Sure, they know where to find you when something comes up, but probably good to reach out just in case. So we had some good catch ups and lunches. Heartwarming. But it’s not like they were holding onto potential projects and waiting for us to reach out. That would be… odd. There’s a difference between being busy and productive. These check ins felt more busy.

But why is this happening to us?

A lot of companies, particularly in “tech” are laying people off. Layoffs.fyi built a great tracker. As of writing, 454 tech companies have laid off 123,882 in 2023. This is in addition to the 161,411 laid off in 2022. So almost as many people have been laid off in the first two months of 2023 as in all of 2022. Some people say that a lot of these layoffs are copycat behavior. A lot of these companies are still profitable. As someone running a creative studio, understanding the micro/macroeconomics here isn’t too important.

What can we do?

So what next? What are things we can actually do to make projects happen? We shared this question with our team and set a time to discuss ideas. Here are our ideas. Some of these might be specific to what we do but it’s certainly worth thinking about how they might translate.

1. Reach out to clients/partners outside tech. Medical, not for profit, arts. Layoffs aren’t happening everywhere.
2. Offer discounts to projects in our pipeline that have stalled out.
3. Create more small business offerings. How can we scale offerings to better fit small businesses and reduce cost appropriately?
4. Adding optional additional offerings to proposals. Be sure to discuss them first so they aren’t coming out of the blue.
5. Send donuts. Enough said. 🍩
6. Figure out mutually beneficial collaborations with studios or clients looking for work.
7. Create a “hotline” where people can call in with questions and get quick answers
8. Come up with small products to sell directly
9. Write blogs that are speaking to a very small audience like a specific person or company. Show them that we’ve put a lot of thought into their brand already.
10. Pitch projects we want. Reach out to companies we really believe we can help with genuine interest and excitement.

Don’t waste a crisis

This is a piece of advice we got from a client ten years ago who was a former special forces operator. It’s a simple statement but it keeps coming back to me. In a crisis, most of the normal rules and conventional thinking go out the window. You can try stuff you wouldn’t dream of in normal situations. So alongside looking for the minor adjustments, look for the major ones. Can you meaningfully shift the way you work? Five years ago turning into an all remote company seemed ridiculous. Now it’s normal. What opportunities does this crisis provide?***

How long will this last?

To use a very California metaphor, mass layoffs are like a wildfire. They’re disruptive but they play an important role in the ecosystem. These people getting laid off aren’t going to hang out in their pajamas eating Ben & Jerry’s out of the pint for long. They have skills, pride, and mortgages. They also now have motivation to show the companies who laid them off that they made a big mistake. Fire creates new growth. It doesn’t happen immediately but it always happens. So don’t panic. Keep the business going even if it means straying outside your comfort zone or taking on work you might normally avoid. This is why animals have more than one food source. Being adaptable is essential to survival. So once business is back to normal you can go back to eating live king salmon with your c̶l̶a̶w̶s̶ hands.

If you run a creative studio and are looking to change the way you do business, you can check out Run Studio Run and get in touch about Studio Sessions.

Footnotes:

* If most of the studios I spoke with were doing fine, we would have a different problem on our hands.

** If this is something you’re curious about, reach out. I would be happy to talk/write about it.

*** Sure, “crisis” might be overstating it a bit, but there are opportunities available now that didn’t exist last year. What are they?