eROI Days Email Agency

Reunite on Ice (ROI) – you inspired me last night. I yelled my heart out for you. I sang off-key in the shower this morning. I can’t stop thinking about how awesome your performance was last night at PAF’s Battle of the Bands.

Everyone was amazing – Mike on the drums, Mitch on keyboards, Sam in his acid-washed jeans on the bass, Alex w/ some insane guitar solos and even better facial expressions, James for belting it out then ripping off his shirt at the appropriate time, Chris for some mad freestyle rapping to “Another One Bites the Dust”, but the MVP goes to the mustache-wearing, hip-gyrating Victor Nakada with special moves like the fake tear streaming down his face, high intensity – AMAZING.

I’ve had proud moments of my teams in the past, but this one was one of the proudest.

Thanks for bringing home the trophy yet again! And, thanks to all the eROI band supporters – I hope you all show up to Band Camp this summer. Because, that one time…at band camp…

To see more videos, check out the eROI YouTube Channel >>

As Portland Ad Federation’s website says, “Go a few rounds with Portland’s heavyweights. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

As a lightweight in the Portland creative realm, I absolutely loved being part of a creative concept that further reinforced Portland agency owners collaborating to do something very cool. Livengood Nowack came up with the 60’s style, boxing inspired theme to this year’s Rosey Awards – 11 agency owners dressed in boxing attire and got greased up for the photo shoot. I was having a really hard time putting my “Eye of the Tiger” face on as other agency owners like Scott “Vanilla Thrilla” Nowack and Phil “The O’Reilly Factor” Reilly were continually busting jokes.

Check out the site: www.RoseyAwards.com and click on “Features” in the navigation. One more reason to love Portland and its Creative Class. Big kudos to Livengood Nowack for making this happen!

Lessons Learned
When you go through an emotional and professional journey like this one, it only makes sense to share my mistakes and the few things I did right. There are hundreds of lessons in just this one story, but I’ll share my top five:

1. As a business owner, never assume that informal socializing with employees is good enough. You must regularly meet one-on-one with your employees in a professional, confidential environment where true sharing is encouraged and rewarded. Additionally, I learned that employees that seem to get along socially do not necessarily respect one another professionally.

2. Take action quickly.

3. If your company is out of alignment, listen to your employees and let them know you are listening by sharing their suggestions with the whole company.

4. Get advice from other entrepreneurs. I was fortunate to have co-founded a group of 18 founders of high-growth startups called Starve Ups and received a lot of trusted advice from the trenches. Additionally, I am part of another group of advertising agency owners called Agency Owner Roundtable which is run through the Portland Advertising Federation. Both of these groups gave me pointers of real-world experiences on employee advice, branding advice, and strategic direction that I couldn’t get anywhere else.

5. You think you’ve delegated and given up a lot of control of your company, but you haven’t. If you want your company to soar, embrace delegation on every level and truly give key pieces of control to your employees. The Process Team is a result of this.

Bonus: Celebrate success when it happens.

One of our programmers is a line-drive hitter and a lefty. This, my friend, is a dangerous combo for the fielding team’s second baseperson. This week’s game was the first of the season and it started out with a bang. Even though I didn’t hit the ball, I still have that “Ouch” expression every time I see this photo. Read more about it on the Boo Boos Journal blog >>

It reminds me a bit of the picture of our own Creative Director Sam White when he didn’t hit a project deadline. Read more about it at www.SendaHighFive.com >>

Agency owners don’t have any peers in our own companies. It’s too cliche to say that we’re a lonely breed, because we’re way too social to be lonely. However, we have a lot of questions that need answers from other agency entrepreneurs who’ve been there before. What is normal for an annual profit margin goal for other agencies? Should our agency charge for the value of an idea or simply charge for our hours? What operational efficiencies can we learn from one another?

We want to know what other agency owners know. Recently, a group of agency owners in Portland, Oregon started a peer group discussion called the Agency Owner Roundtable facilitated by the Portland Advertising Federation. These conversations are completely confidential, so I’m not able to share any individual responses. One of the most interesting pieces to the discussion overall are the topics of interest to our group of a dirty dozen agency owners:

• Intellectual Property and Agency Compensation from clients
• Employee Recruiting and Retention
• Employee Training
• Organizational Structure

I like all 4 topics above, but the first one surrounding the concept of clients “Paying for the upside of the idea, instead of just hours” is of particular interest. Check out these articles:
1. As Agency Work Gets More Engaging, So Does Compensation
2. Fed-up Agencies Quit Punching the Clock
3. Portland ad firm tries pay-for-results

If you are an agency owner in Portland and want to talk about employee issues, agency compensation, or innovative ideas of where the marketing industry can evolve, please shoot me an email (ryan at eroi.com) or comment to this blog posting.

If you are in the Marketing or Advertising industry, you really don’t want to miss this event. Register today >>

OgilvyInteractive Partners Paul Beck and Jeanniey Mullen, based in New York, discuss how Ogilvy got into the interactive online creative business. Paul and Jeanniey will share their experiences at Ogilvy as well as smaller agencies and technology companies that they led. They will provide a framework of how Ogilvy is structured and all of the different marketing channels where Ogilvy helps its clients. Paul and Jeanniey are dynamic and engaging speakers who speak often around the country on the newest trends in Interactive Marketing.

When: January 19, 2007 at 11:30 AM
Where: Kell’s Irish Pub. 112 SW Second Ave. Portland, OR 97204
Cost: PAF Members: $30.00, Non-Members: $45.00

Getting a bunch of Agency Creatives together to knock one anothers heads off is a grand idea. Now not that any agencies in Portland WANT to knock eachother out (maybe??) but this event was a great idea to raise some money, bring the Art Directors and Biz dev team into the ring and of course, drink some PBR.

Cheers.

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