Lessons I've learned leading TINITT through design consulting and through product launches about the importance of great design in creating a successful company.
Key lessons:
1) Learn to say no
2) The client isn't always right
3) Create a design process early on
4) Think three moves ahead
Reach out to me on twitter at @KevLeht with comments or to start a dialogue.
(This presentation has been reposted from my old slideshare account found here: http://www.slideshare.net/infinitekevin/idsa-2013-design-driven-business-development)
Event hosted by the Consul of the Bologna Professional Networking Group on Wed 03 Feb 19:00 - 20:00
https://www.internations.org/activity-group/2949/activity/423709
Tips and tricks to build and test a business idea. Shaping an idea means translating an intuition into something you can experience: a trial project, a proof of concept, a minimum viable product. To prototype a business idea we need to think like designers and act as entrepreneurs, which means taking some creative risks and making a move before having all the answers. This blend of skills and competencies is usually gained during years of experience, a number of failures and continuous learning, but can we start small?
Speaker
Vincenzo Di Maria is a service designer and design thinker, contract professor at the University of Bologna, partner of commonground srl and author of Start Small: Service design for small companies.
This is my presentation from eMetrics Toronto 2011, presented April 29th. The purpose of the presentation was to introduce Analysts to the user experience design process so that they could understand how UX practitioners design experience, and could see where metrics might help inform the design process.
Akar Şümşet - Product management is complexity management: End to End approachProductTank Odessa
The document discusses product management and innovation. It introduces the concept of the 5 Ds of product management which are an end-to-end approach consisting of Destination, Discovery, Definition & Design, Development, and Data & Optimization. Each D provides guiding principles and inspiration from thinkers in areas like design thinking, jobs-to-be-done, agile development, and data-driven optimization. The 5 Ds framework aims to connect various concepts and tools to help manage complexity and deliver results through an integrated product.
Crafitti started in India in June 2008 as an innovation research and consulting startup. This presentation was made at Nepal Engineers Association on 11th October 2014 to describe our learning and experiences.
9 tips to boost your innovation project (by @nickdemey @boardofinno)Board of Innovation
Nine practical tips to consider before starting an innovation or ideation project. Based on LinkedIn discussions and our own experience in running innovation projects for our clients.
The document discusses Design Sprints, which are a framework for validating ideas and solving challenges in 5 phases over 4 days. It focuses on understanding the customer or user. The phases include defining problems and understanding needs, sketching solutions, deciding on a solution, prototyping it, and validating it with users. The document also addresses potential hurdles like people issues and mindsets that can arise, and provides advice on how to address them, such as assigning roles and ensuring collaboration. It promotes a focus on listening, adapting, and valuing individuals over rigid processes. In conclusion, it provides information on Design Sprint tools and confirms that with preparation, Design Sprints can help teams solve problems.
You Can’t Ship from Your Ivory Tower: Including Developers in the Design Proc...Matt Edwards
If you consider yourself the only designer on your team, why should you expect anyone else to care about design?
In reality, your organization already has some of the best design thinkers you’ll ever meet nearby: your developers. In this talk, we’ll have an honest look at our shared tendency to be “Design Prophets” instead of “Design Facilitators”, and how this tendency can hurt our ultimate goals. We’ll also discuss the concept of a “Design Culture”, and the role of you and your team in building that culture in your organization.
Event hosted by the Consul of the Bologna Professional Networking Group on Wed 03 Feb 19:00 - 20:00
https://www.internations.org/activity-group/2949/activity/423709
Tips and tricks to build and test a business idea. Shaping an idea means translating an intuition into something you can experience: a trial project, a proof of concept, a minimum viable product. To prototype a business idea we need to think like designers and act as entrepreneurs, which means taking some creative risks and making a move before having all the answers. This blend of skills and competencies is usually gained during years of experience, a number of failures and continuous learning, but can we start small?
Speaker
Vincenzo Di Maria is a service designer and design thinker, contract professor at the University of Bologna, partner of commonground srl and author of Start Small: Service design for small companies.
This is my presentation from eMetrics Toronto 2011, presented April 29th. The purpose of the presentation was to introduce Analysts to the user experience design process so that they could understand how UX practitioners design experience, and could see where metrics might help inform the design process.
Akar Şümşet - Product management is complexity management: End to End approachProductTank Odessa
The document discusses product management and innovation. It introduces the concept of the 5 Ds of product management which are an end-to-end approach consisting of Destination, Discovery, Definition & Design, Development, and Data & Optimization. Each D provides guiding principles and inspiration from thinkers in areas like design thinking, jobs-to-be-done, agile development, and data-driven optimization. The 5 Ds framework aims to connect various concepts and tools to help manage complexity and deliver results through an integrated product.
Crafitti started in India in June 2008 as an innovation research and consulting startup. This presentation was made at Nepal Engineers Association on 11th October 2014 to describe our learning and experiences.
9 tips to boost your innovation project (by @nickdemey @boardofinno)Board of Innovation
Nine practical tips to consider before starting an innovation or ideation project. Based on LinkedIn discussions and our own experience in running innovation projects for our clients.
The document discusses Design Sprints, which are a framework for validating ideas and solving challenges in 5 phases over 4 days. It focuses on understanding the customer or user. The phases include defining problems and understanding needs, sketching solutions, deciding on a solution, prototyping it, and validating it with users. The document also addresses potential hurdles like people issues and mindsets that can arise, and provides advice on how to address them, such as assigning roles and ensuring collaboration. It promotes a focus on listening, adapting, and valuing individuals over rigid processes. In conclusion, it provides information on Design Sprint tools and confirms that with preparation, Design Sprints can help teams solve problems.
You Can’t Ship from Your Ivory Tower: Including Developers in the Design Proc...Matt Edwards
If you consider yourself the only designer on your team, why should you expect anyone else to care about design?
In reality, your organization already has some of the best design thinkers you’ll ever meet nearby: your developers. In this talk, we’ll have an honest look at our shared tendency to be “Design Prophets” instead of “Design Facilitators”, and how this tendency can hurt our ultimate goals. We’ll also discuss the concept of a “Design Culture”, and the role of you and your team in building that culture in your organization.
Agile Creativity - a transformation roadmapClint Bryce
This document outlines a framework for transitioning an agency towards developing digital competencies. It discusses how the agency model is challenged by changes in technology, consumers, and the need for digital fluency. Six inertias are identified that current systems and behaviors must overcome through upgrades. Eight pillars are proposed to manage the transformation, including dissolving strict linear processes, dismantling separate digital departments, and redefining what is considered creative work. The goal is to fully integrate digital and classic approaches to ideas.
ITSM Process Design Workshop Pittsburg June 2013Navvia
The document summarizes a workshop on ITSM process design. It introduces the presenter and their experience. It then discusses how to effectively sell the value of an ITSM process design project by focusing on inspiration and communicating how the project will benefit different stakeholders' perspectives, rather than getting stuck in technical details. The workshop format is also outlined, emphasizing interaction over slides.
Small Business Marketing: Is There Really a Secret SauceDeluxe Corporation
This document discusses online marketing trends and provides tips for attracting new customers. It presents a case study of an optometrist who opened a new practice and discusses analyzing her situation and opportunities. The document emphasizes that marketing requires planning and measurement to focus efforts on a company's core capabilities and customers. While no single approach works for all, low-cost online tools and assistance are available.
What makes a great intranet? What do the best intranets on the planet look like? How did they get there?
This informative 60-minute webinar with intranet expert Toby Ward showcases the most important ingredients of a successful intranet, with plenty of examples from great intranets.
Slides from a webinar run by Robert Craven from The Directors Centre for HR professionals. Helping HR to be more business focussed and strategically relevant. Learning from entrepreneurs
SiliconAlley Startup Services for StartupsMiles Rose
SiliconAlley services for startups to accomplish milestones on both time and budget. SA provides reference customers, SMEs, capital, personnel, funding, development, business development.
Key success factors selling OpenERP. François Pietquin, OpenERPOdoo
This document outlines 16 key success factors for selling OpenERP:
1. Choose an out-of-the-box or project implementation strategy based on client size.
2. Build an appropriate operational staff for each strategy, including sales, functional experts, and programmers.
3. Promote OpenERP through the website, webinars, events, social media, and content marketing.
4. Qualify leads properly to focus on valuable prospects for each strategy.
5. Prepare customized sales speeches and demo skills for each strategy.
Consumer Internet Lessons for Enterprise Product ManagersMichael Korcuska
A track keynote presentation I gave at the 2014 NASSCOM Product Conclave in Bangalore. I convey a few lessons I learned while transitioning from a career in enterprise software to a consumer internet company (LinkedIn).
Misconceptions about Product Management by iwoca Senior PMProduct School
Main takeaways:
- There are a lot of opinions written and spoken about Product Management, popularized by big consumer companies and silicon valley startups
- Why you should not try to apply those opinions without realizing the context they were applied in
- When the rubber meets the road, you should start realizing that the path to building great products comes down to basics - not the buzz words
Interested in starting your own design business, but don't know how to do the "business" part? This comprehensive presentation covers how design studios make money, the ways design studios organize themselves to support making money, considerations for managing your studio's finances, a method for creating your own studio model, and the story of Design Commission (http://www.designcommission.com), a successful design business in Seattle, Washington. This presentation was delivered by David Sherwin and David Conrad as part of AIGA Seattle's "Design Business for Breakfast" series and is now part of David Sherwin's book "Success by Design: The Essential Business Reference for Designers" (http://www.davidsherwin.com/success).
On-Shore and Off-Shore Hybrid Agile DevelopmentGlenn Bailey
A short presentation explaining how Mediawide can help Publishing companies develop new software solutions using on-shore and off-shore hybrid Agile development, saving time and money whilst utilizing industry savvy developers.
You get the cost benefit of off-shore development, and the advantage of local US based project managers!
The Business Model Canvas - Your Plan For Success (Startup Weekend Montreal)Davender Gupta
The document introduces the Business Model Canvas as a visual tool for developing a business model. It breaks down the key elements of a business model - including customer segments, value propositions, distribution channels, customer relationships, revenue streams, key resources, key activities, key partnerships, and cost structure. For each element, it provides guidance on important questions to consider when defining that part of the business model. It stresses that the canvas allows viewing relationships between elements and serves as a tool for identifying assumptions to test through validation.
The document discusses challenges in measuring marketing ROI and provides lessons for improving KPIs and ROI measurement. It recommends focusing on volume, velocity and customer behavior over technology and tactics. It also stresses the importance of data quality, alignment between sales and marketing, comparing metrics over time to identify issues, and creating a marketing forecast tied to revenue. The overall message is that marketers should aspire to use metrics to understand business impact rather than to justify their own existence.
An Introduction to Lean and Legal Process Improvement, University of Ottawa, ...KarenGimbal
Why are lawyers starting to think about Lean? Because process improvement helps attorneys cut costs, increase productivity, and become more competitive. This slideshow presents the context for Lean and how lawyers can use it to increase value to clients, and decrease the waste in their practice.
Impact Mapping: Making an Impact over Shipping SoftwareEm Campbell-Pretty
Are you lost in a sea of business requirements? Are you struggling to articulate the business value of your technology project? Do your user stories lack context? Is there a lack of alignment between your delivery teams and business stakeholders? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions then this session is for you!
Impact Mapping is a facilitation technique that brings technologists and senior stakeholders together meaningfully to explore options. It exposes assumptions and helps shape a path from “We want everything” to “We want to to make these impacts in this order” avoiding the trap of solutions looking for problems.
This session provides an overview of how to create an Impact Map, share some real world examples of how impact mapping has helped support the delivery of software products and even provide an opportunity for you to start using the tool!
Presented at Agile Australia 2014.
You can access a video of the presentation at: http://bit.ly/ImpactMapping_InfoQ
Impact Mapping:Making an Impact over Shipping SoftwareContext Matters
This document summarizes Em Campbell-Pretty's presentation on Impact Mapping. Impact Mapping is a strategic planning technique that prevents organizations from losing focus while building products. It involves workshops to determine goals, key stakeholders, desired changes in stakeholder behavior, and deliverables to support those impacts. The process results in an agreed upon set of priorities and iterative plan to achieve goals, keeping users happy.
The document discusses adopting an agile approach to marketing. Some key points:
- Traditional annual marketing plans are no longer effective due to constant and rapid changes. Agile practices like iterative planning, testing, and adapting can help marketing keep up.
- Agile marketing involves maintaining a backlog of campaign ideas that are prioritized and pulled into short sprints for development and testing. Results are reviewed regularly to inform future work.
- Technology like marketing automation is needed to execute iterative testing of campaigns across multiple channels and measure results in real-time.
- Adopting agile practices requires changes to processes, using tools like backlogs and sprints, and embracing constant testing and adaptation to stay responsive to changes in
Agile Creativity - a transformation roadmapClint Bryce
This document outlines a framework for transitioning an agency towards developing digital competencies. It discusses how the agency model is challenged by changes in technology, consumers, and the need for digital fluency. Six inertias are identified that current systems and behaviors must overcome through upgrades. Eight pillars are proposed to manage the transformation, including dissolving strict linear processes, dismantling separate digital departments, and redefining what is considered creative work. The goal is to fully integrate digital and classic approaches to ideas.
ITSM Process Design Workshop Pittsburg June 2013Navvia
The document summarizes a workshop on ITSM process design. It introduces the presenter and their experience. It then discusses how to effectively sell the value of an ITSM process design project by focusing on inspiration and communicating how the project will benefit different stakeholders' perspectives, rather than getting stuck in technical details. The workshop format is also outlined, emphasizing interaction over slides.
Small Business Marketing: Is There Really a Secret SauceDeluxe Corporation
This document discusses online marketing trends and provides tips for attracting new customers. It presents a case study of an optometrist who opened a new practice and discusses analyzing her situation and opportunities. The document emphasizes that marketing requires planning and measurement to focus efforts on a company's core capabilities and customers. While no single approach works for all, low-cost online tools and assistance are available.
What makes a great intranet? What do the best intranets on the planet look like? How did they get there?
This informative 60-minute webinar with intranet expert Toby Ward showcases the most important ingredients of a successful intranet, with plenty of examples from great intranets.
Slides from a webinar run by Robert Craven from The Directors Centre for HR professionals. Helping HR to be more business focussed and strategically relevant. Learning from entrepreneurs
SiliconAlley Startup Services for StartupsMiles Rose
SiliconAlley services for startups to accomplish milestones on both time and budget. SA provides reference customers, SMEs, capital, personnel, funding, development, business development.
Key success factors selling OpenERP. François Pietquin, OpenERPOdoo
This document outlines 16 key success factors for selling OpenERP:
1. Choose an out-of-the-box or project implementation strategy based on client size.
2. Build an appropriate operational staff for each strategy, including sales, functional experts, and programmers.
3. Promote OpenERP through the website, webinars, events, social media, and content marketing.
4. Qualify leads properly to focus on valuable prospects for each strategy.
5. Prepare customized sales speeches and demo skills for each strategy.
Consumer Internet Lessons for Enterprise Product ManagersMichael Korcuska
A track keynote presentation I gave at the 2014 NASSCOM Product Conclave in Bangalore. I convey a few lessons I learned while transitioning from a career in enterprise software to a consumer internet company (LinkedIn).
Misconceptions about Product Management by iwoca Senior PMProduct School
Main takeaways:
- There are a lot of opinions written and spoken about Product Management, popularized by big consumer companies and silicon valley startups
- Why you should not try to apply those opinions without realizing the context they were applied in
- When the rubber meets the road, you should start realizing that the path to building great products comes down to basics - not the buzz words
Interested in starting your own design business, but don't know how to do the "business" part? This comprehensive presentation covers how design studios make money, the ways design studios organize themselves to support making money, considerations for managing your studio's finances, a method for creating your own studio model, and the story of Design Commission (http://www.designcommission.com), a successful design business in Seattle, Washington. This presentation was delivered by David Sherwin and David Conrad as part of AIGA Seattle's "Design Business for Breakfast" series and is now part of David Sherwin's book "Success by Design: The Essential Business Reference for Designers" (http://www.davidsherwin.com/success).
On-Shore and Off-Shore Hybrid Agile DevelopmentGlenn Bailey
A short presentation explaining how Mediawide can help Publishing companies develop new software solutions using on-shore and off-shore hybrid Agile development, saving time and money whilst utilizing industry savvy developers.
You get the cost benefit of off-shore development, and the advantage of local US based project managers!
The Business Model Canvas - Your Plan For Success (Startup Weekend Montreal)Davender Gupta
The document introduces the Business Model Canvas as a visual tool for developing a business model. It breaks down the key elements of a business model - including customer segments, value propositions, distribution channels, customer relationships, revenue streams, key resources, key activities, key partnerships, and cost structure. For each element, it provides guidance on important questions to consider when defining that part of the business model. It stresses that the canvas allows viewing relationships between elements and serves as a tool for identifying assumptions to test through validation.
The document discusses challenges in measuring marketing ROI and provides lessons for improving KPIs and ROI measurement. It recommends focusing on volume, velocity and customer behavior over technology and tactics. It also stresses the importance of data quality, alignment between sales and marketing, comparing metrics over time to identify issues, and creating a marketing forecast tied to revenue. The overall message is that marketers should aspire to use metrics to understand business impact rather than to justify their own existence.
An Introduction to Lean and Legal Process Improvement, University of Ottawa, ...KarenGimbal
Why are lawyers starting to think about Lean? Because process improvement helps attorneys cut costs, increase productivity, and become more competitive. This slideshow presents the context for Lean and how lawyers can use it to increase value to clients, and decrease the waste in their practice.
Impact Mapping: Making an Impact over Shipping SoftwareEm Campbell-Pretty
Are you lost in a sea of business requirements? Are you struggling to articulate the business value of your technology project? Do your user stories lack context? Is there a lack of alignment between your delivery teams and business stakeholders? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions then this session is for you!
Impact Mapping is a facilitation technique that brings technologists and senior stakeholders together meaningfully to explore options. It exposes assumptions and helps shape a path from “We want everything” to “We want to to make these impacts in this order” avoiding the trap of solutions looking for problems.
This session provides an overview of how to create an Impact Map, share some real world examples of how impact mapping has helped support the delivery of software products and even provide an opportunity for you to start using the tool!
Presented at Agile Australia 2014.
You can access a video of the presentation at: http://bit.ly/ImpactMapping_InfoQ
Impact Mapping:Making an Impact over Shipping SoftwareContext Matters
This document summarizes Em Campbell-Pretty's presentation on Impact Mapping. Impact Mapping is a strategic planning technique that prevents organizations from losing focus while building products. It involves workshops to determine goals, key stakeholders, desired changes in stakeholder behavior, and deliverables to support those impacts. The process results in an agreed upon set of priorities and iterative plan to achieve goals, keeping users happy.
The document discusses adopting an agile approach to marketing. Some key points:
- Traditional annual marketing plans are no longer effective due to constant and rapid changes. Agile practices like iterative planning, testing, and adapting can help marketing keep up.
- Agile marketing involves maintaining a backlog of campaign ideas that are prioritized and pulled into short sprints for development and testing. Results are reviewed regularly to inform future work.
- Technology like marketing automation is needed to execute iterative testing of campaigns across multiple channels and measure results in real-time.
- Adopting agile practices requires changes to processes, using tools like backlogs and sprints, and embracing constant testing and adaptation to stay responsive to changes in
RPWORLD offers custom injection molding service to help customers develop products ramping up from prototypeing to end-use production. We can deliver your on-demand parts in as fast as 7 days.
1. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS
DEVELOPMENT
KEVIN LEHTINIITTY | FOUNDER & CEO
1Sunday, April 21, 13
• Hello everyone
•Talking about design driven business development
2. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
1994 2000 2007 2009 2011 2012 2013
BorninFranceMovestoIndianaCreatesfirstventure
FoundsCSIndy
CSIndyrebranded
to
TINITT
Rejectsacquisition
offer
Namedin20under20
Namedin20
under20again
2010
FoundsJummba
Jummbafails
Kevin Lehtiniitty
TINITT|Ventures
2Sunday, April 21, 13
•A little bit about me.
•[Go through the timeline].
•going to share with you a few of the less obvious lessons we’ve learned along the way.
•We lost a lot of time and money making these mistakes so hopefully, if you can avoid one or two of these, this talk will have done its job.
3. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
http://www.seriouswheels.com/pics-mno/Mercedes-Benz-SLR-McLaren-Cutaway-1920x1440.jpg
3Sunday, April 21, 13
•Whether we’re talking about a high performance sports car,
4. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
http://www.cruisescope.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/cruise1.jpg
4Sunday, April 21, 13
•a big cruise ship
5. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/flyingwithfish/files/2009/04/ba_concorde.jpg
5Sunday, April 21, 13
•a sleek high speed jet
6. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
http://www.e-architect.co.uk/images/jpgs/england/mclaren_technology_centre_fp270509_ny_1.jpg
6Sunday, April 21, 13
•or growing a business...they all need the same two things
7. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Power & Direction
7Sunday, April 21, 13
•power to move and a direction to get where we want to go.
8. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
http://www.coolfunpics.com/slides/Crazy_Stuck_Car.jpg
8Sunday, April 21, 13
•no matter the potential, if you have no power your not getting anywhere
9. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Client acquisition drives business
9Sunday, April 21, 13
•client acquisition powers business development
10. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Two less obvious lessons
we learned the hard way
10Sunday, April 21, 13
11. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
1. Learn to say no
11Sunday, April 21, 13
•Learn to say no to perspective clients.
12. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Myth:
12Sunday, April 21, 13
•very common trap that we fell in for a few years
13. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
=
=
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/assets_c/2010/11/stack-of-money-3153.html
http://s396.photobucket.com/user/eln1/media/marketing%20pictures/money.jpg.html
13Sunday, April 21, 13
•myth is the more clients you have the bigger your business gets
•If one client equals money, the 10 clients must equal 10x money
•We were in this for a a little over a year
•year of very slow growth that we could have used to develop our business much faster had we been smarter about our clients.
14. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Number of Clients
BusinessSize Focusing on landing as many clients as possible
14Sunday, April 21, 13
•this is what we saw.
•We focused on landing every client we saw no matter the size of the account or the industry they were in.
•We had low profits from our clients and no pieces to put on our portfolio to bring us to the next level.
15. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Reality:
15Sunday, April 21, 13
•We were barely able to pay for our office and our other expenses
•we made the scariest decision we’ve ever faced.
•started saying no to clients who would bring in the money we so desperately needed.
16. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Quality
Quantity
16Sunday, April 21, 13
•We picked a few markets that weren’t too saturated with design, educational institutions for example
•focused all our efforts on landing bigger clients in those few spaces
•turned down all clients that didn’t fit our profile.
•focused on quality over quantity.
•one of the best decisions we ever made.
17. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Number of Clients
BusinessSize Focusing on landing quality clients
17Sunday, April 21, 13
•used every client as a portfolio piece to land even more profitable clients the next time around.
•able to climb up the ladder of design projects getting to more interesting and more profitable projects.
•by focusing all of our clients into a few niche areas, the effects were amplified.
•we were able to say look at this great project w did in your industry.
•That was the competitive advantage that pushed us over the top when competing for bids.
18. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/3942365/50+shades+of/4#4
18Sunday, April 21, 13
•Turning down clients doesn’t seem intuitive to growing a business but there’s only so far you can go by grabbing every client you see.
19. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
2. The client isn’t always right
19Sunday, April 21, 13
•The second big and costly mistake was letting clients drive our final product.
20. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
http://www.ready2spark.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/customer-service.jpg
20Sunday, April 21, 13
•signs like this posted in too many offices to remember including my dad’s.
•first “take your son to work” day, my dad’s shining cubicle and a big “the customer is always right” sign on the wall.
•That’s the customer service environment I grew up with so that’s exactly the attitude we took.
21. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Image courtesy of McCann Erickson
21Sunday, April 21, 13
•clients aren’t always right.
•We’ve all had the experience of creating a truly great product and seeing it get ruined by client change requests.
22. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
What clients want:
22Sunday, April 21, 13
23. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Image courtesy of Clients From Hell
23Sunday, April 21, 13
•log onto clients from hell and the horror stories start pouring out.
•we lived in fear of the inevitable email that contained client feedback
•we realized that none of our portfolio pieces actually showcased our work and our abilities.
•All the projects we had to show had been subjected to the whims of our clients, most of which knew nothing about design.
24. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lnF2ymkb5KI/Tw1YS7X9IAI/AAAAAAABQHc/FlFmE0VBKo8/s640/172458_10150137277585751_634670750_8380962_3247352_o.jpg
24Sunday, April 21, 13
•We got tired of taking all sorts of bullshit from our clients.
•This is our field and we weren’t going to let clients ruin our hard work.
•We decided to push back
•Instead of losing clients they started to respect our opinions.
•most clients are actually looking to you for guidance, big company politics has just trained them to keep to themselves and not ask for help.
•In our experience, dictating the project - within reason of course -
•gained us a lot of respect,
•helped grow our business to the next level,
•decreased stress
25. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Power without direction
25Sunday, April 21, 13
•second component to growing any business is having a direction. If you don’t...
26. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
http://i674.photobucket.com/albums/vv101/Konradius5/Gary%20Larson%20Comics/GoingInCircles.jpg
26Sunday, April 21, 13
•You’ll end up going around in circles.
•No matter how much power you have driving growth, you need somewhere to get to.
27. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Steering with long term strategy
27Sunday, April 21, 13
•This is where a long term strategy comes into play.
•Starting out long term can mean 6 months, a year, two years, it doesn’t matter.
•The point is to set a direction a go after it.
28. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Two less obvious lessons
we learned the hard way
28Sunday, April 21, 13
29. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
1. Create a design process early on
29Sunday, April 21, 13
•Creating a design process sounds really boring but it’s one of those business structures you have to put in place to grow a company.
•started with the process our freelancers had before they came to TINITT.
30. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Image courtesy of Toothpaste For Dinner
30Sunday, April 21, 13
•looked a little like this.
•This leads to a few problems when you’re trying grow a business:
•becomes extremely hard to track your workload
•building a business is so much more than just completing client projects
•when you spend 80% of your time fucking off you spend all of your actual work time designing.
•seems great, spend all our time doing what we love.
•But that doesn’t really grow business.
•have to spend a little time everyday deciding where you want to take your business.
•This give you a lot more time to adapt and you’re constantly keeping your end goals in mind which keeps you focused on moving towards
them.
31. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Image courtesy of Lifehack
31Sunday, April 21, 13
•This was one of the hardest things for me creating a business.
•I’m a huge procrastinator and it took a lot of missed business opportunities and a couple hard conversations with some of our key employees
to get me to start doing things right away.
•Once we put in some concrete plans for how we develop our products, I began to see how much business we had lost because of my
procrastination.
•I wish we would have created our work flow and processes much earlier in our companies history, we would have been able to grow
significantly faster.
32. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
2. Think three moves ahead
32Sunday, April 21, 13
•you always have to think at least three moves ahead if not more.
•The great part of big companies is if you or I make a mistake and they lose some money we might get yelled at, demoted, or even fired...but
the company will go on as if almost nothing happened.
•When your creating and growing a business mistakes can bring down the company.
•avoid mistakes by creating plans.
•When we were landing every client we could find we didn’t have any idea where the company was going to go so we went nowhere
•Eventually decided that we wanted to make the web beautiful and functional.
33. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
http://www.commonplaces.com/sites/commonplaces.com/files/ugly%20baby.jpg
33Sunday, April 21, 13
•The web still looks extremely ugly and most websites are “ugly babies”.
•So now we had an end goal, something to work towards.
•But we’re not just going to wake up one day and see the web has completely changed.
•have to take small steps one at a time to reach our goal.
34. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
http://www.squidoo.com/chess-three-move-checkmate
34Sunday, April 21, 13
•we started creating a plan.
•The chess analogy is really overused but it’s true.
•We started creating a plan to eventually get to our goal.
•didn’t work.
•you need a lot of plans.
35. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
http://alltheragefaces.com/img/faces/svg/misc-all-the-things.svg
35Sunday, April 21, 13
•We were dead in the water with no idea what to do.
•cost us a lot of money.
•A few months later we hit the same scenario but this time, we had a plan B.
•burned through that one unsuccessfully too.
•plan a and a plan b aren’t enough...we almost went bankrupt making that mistake.
•Now, we have at least four plans to move the company forwards towards our goals.
36. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
1. Learn to say no
2. The client isn’t always right
3. Create a design process early on
4. Think three moves ahead
36Sunday, April 21, 13
Here’s a quick recap of the 4 big mistakes we made developing our business. Hopefully some of you can avoid them.
37. COPYRIGHT 2013 TINITT | DO NOT DISTRIBUTEAPRIL 20TH 2013
DESIGN DRIVEN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Post panel questions
Twitter: @infinitekevin
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/infinitekevin/
Email: kevin@tinitt.com
Web: http://infinitekevin.com
37Sunday, April 21, 13
We’ll be taking a lot of questions after presentations but if you come up with questions afterwords you’re all welcome to contact me. Twitter
and email usually work best.