Lessons from the Second Wind Creative Agency Financial Seminar
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From September 18 to 19, I was lucky enough to attend a Second Wind Creative Agency Financial Seminar in Chicago, Illinois. Geared towards CFOs and Accounting Leads, the 2 day seminar provided real value to the attendees – as well as a few laughs. By the end of day 2, I can safely say the room was buzzing with new ideas to bring back to their organizations and new connections.
Our speaker for the 2 days, Tony Mikes, Managing Director of Second Wind, kept the room engaged and involved throughout. Tony provided some excellent major take aways when it comes to having a profitable and engaged creative agency.
Here are some of those points that resonated the most for me, and made me think of several of our most successful clients here at Function Point:
1) Analyze your Chart of Accounts on a regular basis, at least once a year. Ensure that you are accurately capturing all the services you offer, as well as any expenses you incur.
2) Review your billing rate(s) often. An out of date, or out of touch billing rate can be a major source of profit loss.
3) Track your billable time religiously. Have everyone commit to complete their timesheets each day, and set up serious consequences for those who do not.
4) Look for ways to make more of your staff’s time billable. Every team member – from the Creative Director to the Receptionist – should be able to contribute to this.
5) Have a very strong creative brief/requirements gathering document. If the brief is off, the whole project will be.
6) Have a good estimate and keep making sure that this estimate is closely matching your actuals. If not, see this as a red flag on your estimating process that needs attention.
7) Start a daily dialog with the team. This can be a 10 or 15 minute “huddle” to share your good news, bad news, and goals or needs for the day. In the following huddles, you can report on how you’re faring with those goals and if you need help. Bottom line, you’ve got to connect everyone.
I’d encourage everyone to check out www.secondwindonline.com to learn more about this stellar group, and their upcoming seminars.
For more information how Function Point can help your agency please contact us!
