Chris Beaudoin, Creative Director
I am student entrepreneur and marketing junkie. I am in charge of coming up with creative ideas and implementing them into our campaigns. I enjoy connecting with people all across the web and when I'm not working or studying I enjoy being active in my school and playing a variety of sports.
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Don’t Forget About the Other Side of Your Business
Last week I wrote a blog post titled A Day With Doug Smith and I made mention to this quote from Doug,
It’s fun to focus on aspects of the business that you are good at, but you have to focus on all of the aspects in order to be successful.
The funny thing is that I’ve been thinking about this quote and I’ve spent the last week thinking about ways that this applies to Netgen. Which areas do we excel in as a company and where should we be focusing more of our time.
When I look at our team I see
Brad: An awesome designer and developer,
Kyle: Our fearless leader focused on business development and improving our company culture.
Gabe: Our video and animation developer extrodinaire
Myself: Creative Director and new media guru
After examining our team I realized that we can create and implement some kick ass marketing campaigns, design and launch wicked awesome websites, and shoot and print corporate and web videos of the highest quality. We have always been aware of these aspects and managed the business effectively, but how can we excel and grow a business by focusing on core business systems? This is the question I’ve been thinking about after my day with Doug.
It is very similar to how we develop marketing campaigns, including goal setting, proper planning, execution, monitoring/measuring and re-evaluation. Over the last while we have moved our business in that direction and it has paid huge dividends.
As a bootstrapped company we have had to stay lean in order to prosper, which means that we all have to chip in and learn new roles. This includes HR, CRM, financial planning, and operations management, all of which are a huge piece in Netgen’s success plan.
Being young we are lucky, to have valuable mentors, advisors and the know how to leverage the internet and it’s various resources to ensure we were developing a strong model. This process reminded me of a chapter I read in Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith called The Archimedes Effect. Archimedes was the guy who shouted “Eureka!” and talked about the use of levers. What Trust Agents talks about is about leveraging existing infrastructure and tools to improve you business practices. In turn, when we wanted to learn about other aspects of our business, all we had to do was look for information and tools that already existed. This saved us time and effort focused on other aspects of the business so we could get back the the stuff we are good at and enjoy. .
You can also apply these principles to your everyday life. There may be things in your life that you really enjoy and you actively seek to improve these aspects, but you may me ignore other essential duties. Maybe you enjoy going to the gym and working out, but if you ignore your personal finances you can never be properly prepared for the future, or visa vera. The first step is discovering which aspects of your life you enjoy and which ones you like to ignore. Afterwards you can begin the process of leveraging existing tools to improving your overall lifestyle.
The moral of the story is that Doug Smith made a valid point in saying that it’s fun to focus the things you are good at, but you can’t forget about the other side other your business. Chris Brogan and Julien Smith also make good points in that you can leverage existing infrastructure to make you life easier. In the end you may not enjoy working on the other aspects of your business or life, but with the proper planning and leveraging they don’t have to be a burden. So when is the last time you took a look at the other side of things?
