I attended a conference on Monday where an agency owner presented on how they had completed a profit analysis by service line. They discovered that the digital marketing service they offered had been creating a loss and eating the profit of the web development service they offered.
This amused me because I’ve often looked across the fence at digital marketing agencies and thought, “that’s a better business model.”
And I still believe it’s a better model than project based web development work, despite what the presenter found.
The presenter had been catalyzed to investigate their service lines because they had benchmarked their agency against others and fell short. “What do we do really well?” Is the question that they centered their investigation around. What they found is that they do web development projects really well.
We all occupy markets that have variation from each other. As owner operators, we bring unique strengths and experiences that inform how our businesses are operated. Our teams are a mixture of individuals with their own distinct capabilities.
The result of this is that there is no one answer, no one way of doing things. Your success, whatever it is, will be your own trail to blaze.
Featured image is Corps of Discovery meet Chinooks on the Lower Columbia, October 1805 (painted by Charles Marion Russel, c. 1905). Used under public domain.