Resources

We coach and consult with many service-based organizations and we are finding some patterns after the pandemic. Many entrepreneurs are struggling with what it is like to now lead a company considering the remembrance of where they were before the pandemic, what the pandemic has done to their companies, and how they have been affected personally as leaders.  We’ve all been struggling personally after the impact of the pandemic on our lives and those around us. And now an unstable economy is bringing a lot of discouragement to service entrepreneurs. You are not alone if you feel this too. Many [...]

With experience comes a lot of value and power in business. You can typically raise your price or hourly rate as you learn more and hold yourself out as an expert. We teach entrepreneurs how to narrow into a market just so they can do this - become experts. But with experience and knowledge comes the belief that you ‘know enough.’ You prove this to yourself every day as you solve complex problems and you become the person that people go to for answers. You begin to believe that you know enough. This belief can sneak up on us as [...]

Remote jobs are a big draw these days to job seekers.  They are like a shiny new car…great in theory, with no maintenance for a while, better gas mileage than a similar used car, and the technology is top notch.  Sounds like a dream, right?  The only thing is, once you get that new car, a lot of times it’s more work than you expected.  You want to keep it looking nice, so you take it to the car wash once a week.  That remote work technology is great…when it works.  You can get out of bed whenever you want [...]

This year, the Blumer team has made a commitment to read more.  We are currently reading Atomic Habits as a team to benefit the Blumer community as well as to benefit ourselves as individuals.  One thing we are learning is that habits are made by repetition and consistency.  We also tend to keep those habits (good or bad) by focusing on what we want to accomplish, not just setting a goal.  Once you set a goal to “read a book”, you’ve met that goal when you reach the end, but if you focus on “reading a chapter a day” or [...]

This year is an exciting journey through the world of capacity planning, and research around resource planning for service firms that are growing. I’m partnering with Ian Vacin in this work and we are learning a great deal of information in the research we are conducting with service organizations around the world. For a brief primer, when service organizations (like agencies) scale and expand, they often run into the complexity of knowing the ability of their growing teams to be able to produce revenue. How you bring in your revenue is important. Project-based vs recurring revenue will dictate and change [...]

I know we’ve heard this before, but as a reminder, there are no people with magic skills who are smarter than us at business. But we do get confused when we see people who seem to have a touch of ‘magic’ in the craft that they perform. How do they do that? When you study these people you find that they have a different view of what it takes to achieve mastery in their work. Essentially, mastery of something is a matter of getting in more reps than anyone else in your craft. Kobe Bryant is one of those people. [...]

Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) Reporting is on the Horizon As you may have already heard, there is a new type of information reporting that will be required of businesses: Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI). This requirement was created in 2021, when Congress passed the Corporate Transparency Act. This new reporting requirement involves submitting information on beneficial owners (those who own or control businesses) to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the US Department of the Treasury. New businesses (those that are started in 2024) are required to file a BOI report within 90 days of formation. However, for existing businesses, [...]

When designers and freelancers begin to think about growth, they eventually run into needing to hire. When you sell services there is no other way to grow except to hire people. You can use software, become more efficient, and even let AI help you do some of your work. But you will eventually have to replace yourself if you want to grow the revenue of your creative studio.  Who do you hire first? Of course this depends, but there are some general principles we can learn from here. When growing, most smaller design and freelance studios think of replacing themselves [...]