Aaron Ware
President @ Linchpin. A full service digital agency based out of Rhode Island
The Big Fail
Breaking down the 4th wall of agency life.
If you want to play along.
You can share your Fails, Successes.
visit https://theware.house
Hi I'm Aaron
I'm the founder and owner of Linchpin a Digital Agency based here in little Rhody.
I'm an Entrepreneur, Plugin Developer, Workaholic, Lover of Process that makes sense and automation for busy work.
And a complete failure...
The
4th
Wall
Shakespeare practically invented it.
It was referred to as an "aside"
I learned about it from this guy
Ferris Bueller
Deadpool uses it heavily
And in a way
I'll be doing that today
Hot take #1
As a society we fear failure
We fear projecting weakness or
taking a photo
at the wrong angle
We Present
Our Perfect
Selves
Failing Sucks
Without failure
how can we learn?
Adversity
Problem
Solving
Too many times
many of us do kick ass
and are successful
Suffer from
Impostor syndrome
Sometimes
We lose sight that we've
had a "success"
As a service based business and industry
We're really no better
As an agency we're supposed know everything, every solution, every patch, every trend, every platform, every </snippet>
Freelancers Too!
As an agency we're supposed know be experts in everything, every solution, every patch, every trend, every platform, every </snippet>
The
Great Ones
Do
Many smaller agencies
Struggle just to keep their house in order
...get projects done on time, on budget, turn a profit and move on
to the next one.
rinse
&
repeat
As an Agency Owner
I fear I am failing
by staying in in this cycle.
Life
is full
of
failures
It's these struggles
that define us
And it feels awesome
when you solve a problem
or overcome a challenge
90%
of startups fail
https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilpatel/2015/01/16/90-of-startups-will-fail-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-10/
All it takes is one episode of SharkTank to realize some businesses
should fail
or not even start
Fail
Quickly
+ Cheaply
80%
of small businesses with employees survive
their first year
source: https://www.fool.com/careers/2017/05/03/what-percentage-of-businesses-fail-in-their-first.aspx
50%
of them survive
their fifth year
< 33%
make it past year 10
Linchpin
is in that 33%
SUCCESS!
With a lot of little failures along the way
You can share yours soon
Our industry is
still easy to get into.
But it IS getting tougher and tougher to be successful.
Whatever success
means for you
Necessity is the mother of invention
-Unknown
Laziness is the father of invention
-Some Other Unknown
Failure is the drunk uncle of invention
-Aaron Ware (Also pretty unknown)
Failure is not an option
-Gene Kranz
Head of Mission control during the Apollo 13 Mission
Failure is not optimal
Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.
-Ben "Mother Eff'n" Franklin.
The best historical figure ever
-Aaron Ware
Speaking of my man
Benjamin Franklin
Did you know Ben Franklin
Invented a new Alphabet?
The Phonetic Alphabet
A utterly awesome failure!
It's super kool!
-Merriam Webster
Wait what?
Remove C, W, J, Q and more!
Add in new characters for Th, Sh sounds.
For keyboard layout enthusiasts
It's like Dvorak or Colemak.
If you're into it, it totally makes sense.
Obviously it did
not catch on
Y'know, you can't please all the people all the time... and last night, all those people were at my show.
-Mitch Hedberg
Sharing Time
Admitting failure
Your Shares Games Coming up...
The hardest part
of agency life for me.
More Benjamins
Money In, Money Out
- Acquiring New Work
- Projecting Workload
- Staffing
- Balancing Incoming Work w/ Current Work
- Payroll and Benefits, HR
- Upselling on Services
- Not to mention the day to day business things
- Repeat!
*This is my busiest slide
Tip of the Spear
when it comes to sales
But we HAVE TO
After working 120
collective hours
On a
$200K+
Proposal
Our best
proposal ever
With our highest
acquisition cost
I had a great idea
A Ben Franklin
Level Idea
I'll
Drop it off
In Person
Me
I missed the cut off for submission
The amount of time Aaron missed the submission cut off by.
What is 9 Minutes.
But Aaron!
What did you learn?
Punctuality Matters
https://theware.house/failboat
Turning Failure
Into
Success
Let's fail together
Hot take #2
Slack
Slack Founder and CTO Cal Henderson cannot make a video games.
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/cal-henderson-slack-cto-author-science-fiction-fan/
BUT
he and his team have made the best chat app since AOL
He also worked on Flickr as a side project to fund
his first game
The game failed and he worked for Yahoo! for a few years
Fast forward 4 years and he started making another game
He worked on Slack to
have better team communication
Slack
Blew
UP!
No more games?
Another Success from
a different start
Bubble Wrap
Who knew it was meant for walls?
Enough
Doom + Gloom
Success Story
Sharing Time
The Big Fail Breaking down the 4th wall of agency life. If you want to play along. You can share your Fails, Successes. visit https://theware.house
WCRI 2017
By Aaron Ware
WCRI 2017
This is my keynote presentation from WordCamp Rhode Island 2017 (Sept 22nd, 2017). I have made a few minor revisions for clarity. There are some dynamic live event aspects that are not shown here.
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