This Thursday and Friday, I provided two lectures for SCAD's Entreprenurial Forum 2011 in Savannah, Georgia. This event was presented by SCAD's Office for Career and Alumni Success, and was designed for students across all majors to gain perspectives on how they can become successful as businesspeople in today's economic climate.
The above slide deck is from my second lecture, called "My Top 10 Design Business Failures." You could call this my greatest hits album of major business mistakes I've made over my career, both as a freelancer and while working within agencies of all shapes and sizes.
My first lecture, "Being an Agency of One," kicked off the event on Thursday night. I talked about the four primary areas that any designer or artist must master in order to create the foundation for a successful business practice and be responsible while doing what they love:
- Understanding your business model and what sources of revenue can support it
- Designing the appropriate touchpoints required for well-considered client service
- Discovering how effective project management creates sustainable studio success
- Crafting the philosophy and plan that drives both your personal practice and your business practice, via a framework that David Conrad and I created called "The Elements of Design Studio Experience"
You can see an 11-minute clip of me answering student questions after the first lecture on the SCAD eLearning site. Some of these student questions I will be readdressing on this blog in the coming weeks.
If you live in Seattle and want to dig deeper into this material, please join me for the Design Business for Breakfast Series in Seattle, which is going on right now. Registration is still open for the last three talks. The next one is this Wednesday, February 23rd.
All of this material is drawn from my current work-in-progress for HOW Books, Design Business from A to Z, which will be out in the Fall of 2012. Both presentations were deeply informed by the following collaborators, who deserve great thanks: Erica Goldsmith, Fiona Robertson-Remley, and David Conrad.
Some great observations there David!
I would add another failure 'Not continually cultivating new business'
If you aren't constantly out there looking for new business then your business will shrink when you least expect it.
Posted by: Graphic Design Boss | February 21, 2011 at 05:45 PM
Good slides
Thanks for sharing
Ned
Posted by: Ned | February 21, 2011 at 06:14 PM
Great slides. I like how you calculate hour rate, many new businesses dont't see hidden costs and they charge far less than they should.
Posted by: Krzysztof Bachula | February 23, 2011 at 03:00 AM
Great research you did here really good slide so thanks for sharing..:)
Posted by: Ajay shirma | March 02, 2011 at 04:57 AM