Our Zeitgeist tagged with “mark-busse”
Even in the best of circumstances, I believe that the first question any entrepreneur should ask themselves is “do I really need a partner to achieve my goals?” There are numerous arguments supporting business partnerships such as cost savings, shared risk, expanded client list, and enhanced services and management skills. But it all comes at the cost of giving up ownership of the company you worked so hard to build, so be very careful, do your homework and protect yourself.
My business partner and I have enjoyed 12 years of business success and our partnership has flourished because we are very different people. There exists minimal overlap between us although we share similar backgrounds, educations, and skills. This is in stark contrast to what we have witnessed over the years as friends have partnered with like-minded or similarly skilled friends, enjoying shared perspectives and core competencies, but ultimately ending in failure. The deep respect and trust that has developed between my partner and I has allowed us to delegate key decisions and tasks to each other. Our open communication allows us to speak freely, even arguing over important issues when necessary. But by challenging and complementing each other, we bring out the best in one other and in our team.
There are numerous steps that any reasonable entrepreneur should take before committing to anything as serious as a partnership.
Be assertive when questioning former clients, employers, employees about the candidate’s claims, background, reputation and abilities to make very sure you found exactly the right person is critical. Hire a good accountant experienced with valuations and complex ownership scenarios. Use a lawyer experienced in mergers and acquisitions to create a legal agreement which outlines the arrangement including a trial period and mechanism for if/when one partner leaves—whether you eventually part on good terms or bad, it’s best to enter a partnership knowing how you can get out. If you do your homework up front, you’ll save yourself a huge headache later.
But before you start to look for a partner, or talk to a corporate lawyer, SWOT yourself. A SWOT analysis is common first step in developing a business strategy, so why not do one on yourself? If you are honest with yourself, you’ll likely paint a picture of what’s missing in your business and of the type of person you require for a business partner. And make sure you SWOT your potential partner too before committing.
And even if you think you have found the perfect partner, be ready for things to change.
The hard truth is that people change. You may change. What happens in a year or two if your new partner decides they want to do something different and want out? Or maybe you do? Understanding this and being okay with it is a key to business survival and a strong reason to prepare a Share Holders Agreement that protects all parties involved.
We’ve all heard the comparison between business partnerships and marriages. Indeed, like a marriage, a partnership is easy to rush into, but painful and difficult to get out of. Just as a shotgun marriage will likely result in misery down the road, rushing into a partnership can be a costly mistake, ultimately sinking your business instead of saving it. Make sure you’re comfortable with each other before moving in together.
Another hard truth is that partnerships often fail. Things can go sour quickly—regardless of whose fault. An ill-conceived or poorly planned partnership that fails will reflect negatively on all parties involved and possibly lead to business failure. In the lead up to the split, the tension will grow like cancer in the culture of your team and staff may quit to save themselves the anxiety. Clients may lose confidence, and unlike children during a divorce, want nothing to do with either partner and just walk away.
The good news is that the economy will ultimately improve and good times are ahead for those who plan smartly. Ask yourself if your potential new partner, their reputation, their clients, and their working style will still look good once the market recovers. Don’t just opt to partner because you are shoring up for a short- to mid-term storm. Do it because it makes ultimate sense and because your business is more likely to survive to see the good times.
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I was recently asked to submit an article about partnerships for the Small Business section of Business in Vancouver (BIV) magazine. The article, called Is a partnership the right choice for your business to weather these stormy times?, fo [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Monday, January 12th, 2009
Categories: Articles | 3 Comments »
In an economic downturn, your business may seek ways to costs while maintaining its competitive edge. By slashing your budget for marketing and communications, however, you may do more harm than good. Instead, consider working with your communication designer to apply strategic, creative thinking to keep your brand message focused on your audience in ways that will not only help you survive the recession but also contribute to your long-term growth.
In fact, many great brands were created during economic turmoil by companies that recognized their customers’ changing needs, seized the moment and innovated, communicating their ways through difficult waters. Here are some approaches that can help.
Focus on your brand
Brand equity is a valuable asset, especially during a slow-down. Critical aspects of brand-building in hard times are differentiation and relevance. Experienced designers put their own assumptions, biases and aesthetic preferences aside in order to identify your unique selling proposition (USP) — what makes you different — and tailor your message to a specific audience in a consistent manner. Identifying your USP helps you use the economic climate to pierce the clutter and seize the attention of potential customers. Leaving a gap in your brand presence lets savvy competitors step in and capitalize as markets improve.
Downturns create a buyer’s market
As your competitors slash their marketing and communications budgets, reallocate your own spending strategically. Media is on sale! While others pull back and disappear from the minds of consumers, you can expand your own exposure without increasing your budget, ultimately grabbing additional market share. That will mean growth, profit and a stronger brand presence once the economy begins to rebound.
Include design early
Creative thinking should be a part of strategic business planning, not tacked on at the end just for aesthetics. Invite your communication designer to the boardroom table. Recognizing that communication design is far more than window dressing allows you to use it to your competitive advantage.
Know yourself
Be really honest with yourself about what your organization is, where you want to go and how you can get there. Experienced communication designers are skilled at helping groups research, identify and analyze their needs in relation to audiences and competitors. They can help you clarify business strengths, weaknesses and opportunities and the impediments you face in meeting your objectives.
You get what you pay for
Be smart in how you conserve and consolidate expenses. As companies downsize, many may let their large agency partners go in favour of smaller, less expensive teams. Make sure any “replacement” team consists of experienced design professionals, not desktop publishers or ill-equipped freelancers who may seem like good deals. Even if you already have a well-defined brand identity, a terrific logo, a graphic standards guide (style guide), and templates or previous samples for reference, make sure you get the most qualified help. Create comprehensive and fair requests for proposals (RFPs) that will identify your best-suited candidate, not the cheapest bidder.
Don’t skip steps
Times like these call for vision and leadership, not shortcuts. Now more than ever, focus on working closely with well-trained experts. Craft clear and comprehensive creative briefs that outline project parameters, goals, timelines and budgets.
Ask for help
Don’t panic or act rashly. It’s tempting to cut back on expenses, but skimping on your strategy, graphic design or production may damage your brand in the long run. The Society of Graphic Designers of Canada (GDC) can help. With its directory of designers across Canada, its effective job board and its numerous resources including a handy RFP tool, the GDC is the smart place to start your search.
Everyone suffers during a recession, but if you understand that good design is good for business, you can save your organization by developing solid relationships with skilled design professionals and actually help strengthen the company’s brand and market position.
If you're wondering how to use brand and communication design to help your business survive the sagging economy, please
contact Industrial Brand soon.
[post_title] => How Design Can Help You Survive a Recession
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As President of the BC chapter of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada (GDC), I recently wrote an article on behalf of GDC called How to Use Communication Design to Weather a Recession for Business in Vancouver (BIV) Magazine. The ar [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Saturday, December 20th, 2008
Categories: Articles | 2 Comments »
The album is called
A Night Remembered, featuring the trumpet stylings of Chris Davis. It's a beautiful album and he's a wonderful, soft-spoken, genuine jazz man. I began the project as we do most, by sitting down with the client to ask a bunch of questions.
I listened to his numerous answers as he told me the story of how the album came to be and why it was special. That story is actually recounted on the liner notes on the album and well worth the read. Of course I also listened intently to this collection of soulful jazz tunes seeking inspiration—and there was plenty to be found.
In the end, I asked him to summarize all we had discussed into one single sentence that would describe what he wanted the album design to express. What was the one message that would impart the special aspect of this particular album and serve as the creative brief guiding my design of the project. That sentence was:
When people listen to this album, I want them to experience a celebration
of raw, honest, musical joy—devoid of any deep symbolism or intimidating
jazz attitude—like I did when I played that special night.
While still influenced by
some of the classic jazz album covers from Blue Note Records, I tried to capture elements of memory in a simple, informal layout design without it seeming too "jazz-like". I hope my design adequately meets the challenge of that eloquently expressed brief and beautifully performed music. Thanks for the chance to work on this important project Cory and Chris. And thanks
Steve Mynett for the terrific photography.
Chris Davis can be found on myspace.com and his newest album can be purchased online at cellarlive.com or in person at The Cellar Restaurant & Jazz Club in Vancouver, BC.
[post_title] => Chris Davis: An Album Cover Remembered
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As a Partner and Design Director at a thriving studio, I tend to spend more time bringing in new business, dealing with clients or taking care of administrative duties more than actual design and production these days.
Par for the course I [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Friday, October 31st, 2008
Categories: Design, Industrial Brand, Music | 1 Comment »
While I'll leave the note-taking to the super blogger Lauren, here is the agenda of the presentations:
8.30 Opening Remarks
PSFK founder Piers Fawkes welcomes the audience and introduces the agenda.
8.45 Trends-Should you care?
Ed Cotton (BSSP) explains why trends and inspiration matter - and how you can judge and use them.
9.15 San Francisco Snapshot
What makes the Bay Area tick? Colin Nagy (Attention) leads a discussion with passionate locals discuss what aspects of local culture inspire them the most. Panel includes Amit Gupta (Photojojo), Jeremy Townsend (Ghetto Gourmet), Kevin Allison (Financial Times) and Liz Dunn (funnyordie.com)
10.00 Shape The World
Chris Riley (Apple) explains how three Bay Area residents have shaped his world.
10.50 New Art
Since opening her online and offline art galleries, Jen Bekman (20×200) has witnessed (and encouraged) and new movement of artists, themes and styles. Bekman talks about the trends she sees in art and artists’ use of technology to connect with art-lovers and buyers.
11.20 Make It With Us
Ezra Cooperstein (Current TV) and Andrew Hoppin (NASA) describe how to shake up large bureaucratic industries (e.g.: aerospace and broadcast media) by turning customers into creators and collaborators.
12.00 Making Inspiration Matter
Gathering trends and ideas may be important but how do you take inspiration and create change? Gareth Kay (Modernista) leads a discussion with Eric Corey Freed (Organic Architect), Frank Striefler (Media Arts Lab) and Josh Morenstein (fuseprojects).
1.40 Thoughtful Change
Jean-Marie Shields (Starbucks) explains that the future will embrace brands that connect with consumers by converting ideas into Thoughtful Change.
2.10 Aligning Interests
When cynical people admit they’re idealistic you might be on to something; Publisher and Founding Editor Max Schorr shares his inspirations and learnings from the beginning of GOOD Magazine.
2.40 Look & Feel
Creative designer and inventor of Red, the award winning In Flight Entertainment system for Virgin America, speaks about innovation in the cabin worldwide.
3.40 Using It
How can companies and organizations leverage social media to enhance consumer dialog, evolve product offering and improve sales. Bootstrapping expert George Parker will lead a discussion with leading marketing innovators Adrian Ho (Zeus Jones), Mark Lewis (DDB), Lynn Casey (Team Noesis) and Rohit Bhargava (Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence).
4.20 When Words Are Not Enough
Using experience design to enhance communications: George Murphy (Modo-Group) and John Pollard (Microsoft) describe how environments and technology helped consumers connect with the brand.
4.50 Behave
Josh Handy & Nate Pence talk about how they design the method way, and how design and creative both mirror and shape the organization.
[post_title] => PSFK Conference: more than just trends
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Today I am in San Francisco at the PSFK Conference, billed as a day of trends, inspiration and creativity. So far I am enjoying the content and discussions so much that I am going to avoid trying to frantically keep up with notes, Twitter [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Thursday, July 17th, 2008
Categories: Events, Inspiration, Learning, Trends | No Comments »
As mentioned previously, Matt and I recently gave a presentation about personal branding to a local professional association. We talked about how some simple brand strategies and tactics often reserved for businesses could be applied to he [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008
Categories: Branding | No Comments »
Why do I so often find myself sitting in presentations that are so ill-suited to my mood or experience level or completely different than what I expected based on the pithy description you provided in your beautiful conference guide agenda? Granted, I'm an older, experienced designer, but I go to design conferences to expand my knowledge and skills just as much as the young design grad. Regardless of how many cool people I meet or how many free drinks you give me at the vendor-sponsored receptions, I'm here to learn too.
Does that mean I don't want to sit back, put my hands behind my head and laugh instead of frantically scribble notes all the time? Of course not! But throw me a bone please, will you? Your descriptions about "so-and-so and his inspiring story will provide you with insights into design leadership and describe the lessons he learned leaving you with strategies you can apply in your practice" is really unfair when it turns out to be someone glumly flipping through slides of all their accomplishments or pretty slides from their portfolio with no take away. Can you please strive to communicate to me more clearly the kind and caliber of presentation and which audience it's geared towards? If it's for newbies, please just tell me straight up. If it's a feel-good story, tell me that too as I may just be in the mood for that.
OK, enough ranting—er, observations—onto the suggestion part.
I suggest the creation of a simple scoring system based on two axis. One axis (numbers 1–5 from left to right perhaps) could be a scale from "practical" to "inspirational" so conference attendees can get a sense of the potential for practical learning and frantic note-taking versus the kind of talks where one kicks back and enjoying stories and a laugh. Both are equally as valid, but warn me please. I don't think this is too much to ask.
The other axis in this system (letters A–E from bottom to top for instance) could simply be something like an experience continuum from "rookie" to "senior"—bearing in mind that some talks are well-suited for everyone, regardless of experience or age. This way if the conference guide informed us that a workshop was rated 1A we'd at least know it was geared specifically for junior designers and would likely be a valuable learning experience. But if a talk was rated on the other end of spectrum—let's say a 5E—then you should expect it to be an inspirational experience without specific design relevance a high priority and directed to a more experienced audience
I think a system like this would be especially effective if conference speakers themselves were informed of ahead of time and required to rate their presentation, thus tailoring their materials to a particular audience—sort of like a design problem, don't you think?
Generous Design Conference Organizers, even if my suggested system isn't well considered, please consider adopting something like it so that you give us, your loyal attendees, some understanding of the kind and caliber of a presentation, drastically reducing incidents of someone being wooed by a well-written description only to find out later they missed something far more suitable in the room next door.
Gratefully yours,
Mark Busse - HOW Design Conference Alumnus, 2008
[post_title] => Conference Presentations: That's Not What the Description Said!
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Steve did a good job summing up our experiences with his review of the 2008 HOW Design Conference, which I enjoyed, so I won’t double our efforts describing the event here. But as I hear myself responding to so many questions about h [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Monday, May 26th, 2008
Categories: Design, Events, Tips | 2 Comments »
I was recently honoured to be invited to contribute a poster design to Prografica’s exhibit Design/Culture: Posters for Cultural Diversity as part of the Icograda World Design Congress 2007 held in Havana, Cuba this past October. I&# [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Monday, November 26th, 2007
Categories: Industrial Brand, Inspiration | 1 Comment »
