PRINT is back. And soon, we’ll be relaunching with an all-new look, all-new content and a fresh outlook for the future. Stay tuned. By Guest Contributor Emily Cohen To state the obvious, the next few months will be difficult and will involve some tough decisions, smart thinking, thoughtful planning and a good degree of reasonable risk. But what we shouldn’t do is panic. I’ve developed and curated a list of six strategies that will help you avoid making poor decisions that sacrifice your business as well as our industry’s long-term sustainability and health in exchange for short-term gains.
If you do choose to take on clients simply to pay the bills, try to be smart about how much you are willing to sacrifice. You may lower your fees, but perhaps you also deliver fewer concepts/revisions or you don’t sacrifice your terms (e.g., usage rights and the right to use the work for self-promotion). If you do take some projects that are outside your positioning, make sure they represent no more than 25% of your workload. And, when you do take on these clients, you should be ready and willing to fire them when the economy recovers, which it will. Ultimately, you should continue to be kind and generous to your clients, staff and vendors, but not to the level that will have a long-term impact on your business and in situations where you are making all the sacrifices without any gains. The following are two great resources developed by my colleagues that are also extremely helpful. We all have different voices and may share similar strategies (with a few differences, of course) so, take a look--
A brutally honest consultant, Emily Cohen has been honored to consult and work with many leading design firms across the country. Through these experiences, she has developed, tested and curated key business insights and strategies that have helped firms become more effective, profitable and fun to work at. Emily conducts strategic business planning retreats and provides confidential, best-practice insights and advice on staff-, client- and process-management strategies. She loves sharing her expertise through speaking engagements, guest posts, her courses on LinkedIn Learning/Lynda.com and Skillshare, her industry activism and, most recently, in her new business book for creatives, Brutally Honest: No-bullshit business strategies to evolve your creative business. The post Don’t Panic: 6 Business Strategies for the Era of COVID appeared first on Print Magazine. via Tumblr Don’t Panic: 6 Business Strategies for the Era of COVID
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Charles Gorton
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April 2020
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