What is the best bit of advice you can offer a new business?

I came across this article with interviews from Lord Sugar.

Each one of them made me think and review what we’re doing at Moove Agency.

And interestingly, all that he was talking about, we are actually doing.

We’ve never studied any MBA or economy or entrepreneurship at school. Both me and Adrian are building this business as we go along. Day by day we become better and better and the agency grows. So I always find it very pleasing and also fascinating when I hear other entrepreneurs ”advising” something we have naturally came to realise or do ourselves.

Adrenalin in business

One of my favourite bloggers has made a comment that strongly resonates with me.

“You don’t need to go to a casino to experience drama in your life. You can have it all in businesses.”

I totally agree. Sometimes I feel that running a businesses is like playing a computer game. You have limited cash available, limited time and all sorts of opportunities. You also have competition and perhaps even enemies. And the clocks are ticking. With the limited time and resources that you’ve got you have to make the best out of everything that is available to you.

Of course, you never know what the future holds so not only you have to concentrate on the growth and sustainability of your business, you have to be a little visionary too to make the right decisions. Which opportunity to persuade, how many employees to get on board and when, which services to concentrate on, which tasks to work on today… Thousands of small decisions every day and a few big ones here and there. And you never know which decision will be the right one only after you make it and the whole company moves into that direction.

Especially if you have a fast growing business you probably know very well what I’m talking about. Sometimes it’s a gamble: the judgement you made is either right or wrong - you win or loose. What’s important is to get it right most of the time.

Running a businesses is better than going to a casino or playing computer games. It’s for real. 24/7.

Adobe Creative Suite CS5

Our Moove team visited MediaPro conference some time ago, in November 2010. Uff, the time flies!

I’ve been really impressed then by the Adobe’s efforts to stay the course despite Apple’s efforts to wipe out Flash from the web.

So what is it that Adobe does now? What they have always been doing!

Imagine there used be print as the main “marketing” medium - and to help designe’s Adobe brought Photoshop and InDesign to enable them to design business cards, flyers, brochures that were eventually printed on paper. Then technology improved and we had the Internet.  Adobe introduced Dreamweaver, Director and Flash. Great, now we don’t want flash anymore nor Director. What do we want then? We want tools that will allow non-programmers and designers to create apps for Iphone, Ipad and other smart phones. Is it a remote dream? Why should it be? Website designing or flash animations  also used to be for hardcore programmers only until companies like Adobe developed tools making it easy to create stunning animations without the knowledge of any programming language.

Now we have the Adobe Creative Suite CS5 that makes the transition: helping designers to move from print and flash to smart phone devices… InDesign CS5 can now create and export interactive magazine for iPad and other devices using the Adobe Digital Magazine Solution.

I find it truly inspirational that this company does not sleep just to become one of those who forgot to innovate and one day finds itself forgotten in the history.

So the business lesson of today is: make sure you keep in touch with current trends (business, technology, your industry-specific) and that you innovate (your products, processes, everything). Not because everyone else is doing, but because who’s not doing it will be out of the game soon.

Marketing strategy

We’ve just had our historically first meeting with our Business Mentor.

It took 4 hours and we briefly discussed almost all sections of our business. We primarily concentrated on our marketing, our position on the market, our opportunities and created a simple plan to follow.

One of the key elements we discovered during the meeting was that we need to spend more time on marketing our agency. Hence, you will see quite a few new exciting creative projects coming out from our production promoting our own brand. First one that I can promise you is a refresh of our homepage and our portfolio. If all goes well, we will go live by Friday this week.

Eventful day & awesome week

I had the most amazing day yesterday!

I’ve been privileged to have a private tour of the House of Lords and the House of Commons by someone I really admire and respect: Lord Richard Harries.

The experience on its own have been breathtaking. And to top it up (!!!), we have bumped into Lord Sugar himself on the stairs! I was in a total shock!!!! Lord Sugar himself!!!! Amazing. I’m still speechless

On a different note, I feel we are entering a new level of service at Moove Agency. Our processes are well defined, team works famously together, production is smooth AND we started to suggest creative and technical solutions to solve our client’s problems. From now on, it’s us who drive the production, advise clients and deliver more than clients could even imagine yesterday (I’m not kidding!). We are becoming a REAL creative agency. And we are just at the beginning.

Royal Ascot

An event of the year?

This year will be my first year to visit the Royal Ascot - the world’s most famous racecourse. I’m so excited about it and can’t wait for the day.

Just for a bit of fun I uploaded a picture I’ve taken in the office today: me with the fascinator I’m going to wear!

How do you like it?

Big bus challenge

I passed this advert on the London Underground:

Someone has launched this “competition” to submit an advertising campaign to run on national buses: www.bigbuschallenge.com

I love the idea. We got to learn about it only this week so we don’t have much time to prepare any submission. In fact, the decision was not to even try as we would have to spend a few days designing/brainstorming/preparing and the deadline is just around the corner.

The reason why it caught our attention though is that growing as an agency, there are opportunities for us to make ourselves more visible every day. Once again it is a task for me & Adrian to decide which ones we are going to take, leave behind or put on the watch-list for the next year.

Latest news

I’ve been quite busy with all sorts of projects at Moove and also my personal activities (holidays, events) recently.

Moove Agency brings me a lot of joy now. We have many interesting projects in the production and the whole team now works very well together. We found a new graphic designer almost two month ago (replacement for Charlotte who left earlier this year). It was quite a challenge to find the right person but all worth it. The right people are the core of this business.

We also had a very unpleasant encounter with a company who did not pay our invoices from the beginning of this year.  It always astonishes me how someone can ask another person to work for them and then not having enough moral to pay them for their work. Money are important but what about personal integrity? Something I can’t understand.  In every case, I will dedicate a whole blog post about this topic with some tips on how to recognise clients who may turn into a nightmare.

Another good news is that I started to play around in Photoshop coming up with the new design for this website. Being a designer and a client to myself, the whole process is quite fun and enormous challenge at the same time. This project will most probably take me a while but rest assured, it will be worth it

Lastly, I keep pushing myself to spend more time writing blog posts and I’m really hopeful that I will be able to dedicate a few moments here and there to actually do that. I struggle to perceive it as high enough priority to dedicate too much time to it. So my new strategy will be to write just short posts with few thoughts whenever something crosses my mind. Let’s see how this goes.

Power of advertising…

…is understated. Advertising is not just about making the masses to spend their money on products they don’t need. The power of advertising is also in raising the awareness.

London has a community of passionate cyclist; one of which I am. The dangerous that lie on the road for us are many and are serious. The first time I saw this advertisement I thought it’s great. Everything that advertising could/should be:

It’s funny ( I do find it funny how many of those bikes are there! ), it’s informative (we’ve learnt something, haven’t we?), it’s attractive (captures the attention)  and puts the message across quickly and simply (people won’t give you more than a few seconds of attention).

“Have you been to Rituals before?”

“Have you been to Rituals before?” is the question that staff at Rituals welcomes customers entering their store. I usually visit Rituals when I shop at Westfields. I enjoy shopping at Westfields. It might be because that’s the way I used to shop in Prague when I lived and studied there - going to a shopping mall where you have everything you need under one roof. I’ve never warmed up to street shopping so popular in London: Regent’s Street, Carnaby Street, Neal Street and the posh venues around Sloane Square…Hmm, maybe one day…

But shopping malls have their down-sides: they’re overcrowded and noisy. Entering Rituals in the middle of a crazy arena is like landing in an oasis after walking miles in a dessert. It’s peaceful, quite, with a spa-like feel to it. It feels very refreshing and special. The whole experience.

“Have you been to Rituals before?” The question is just a slight variation to the standard: “Hello. How can I help?” that you receive everywhere else and that makes you feel a bit hunted; especially if you don’t really know what you actually want or what the store has to offer.

“Have you been to Rituals before?” opens up a conversation. “No, I haven’t” invites Rituals’ staff to give you a tour of the store. In a soft and totally natural way.  ”Yes, I have. Thank you.”  draws a friendly smile on my face  and makes me feel welcomed somewhere where it makes a difference if I am a returning customer.

Just a slight variation to the standard….