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!

source: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/benjamin-franklins-phonetic-alphabet-58078802/?no-ist

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.

source: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/benjamin-franklins-phonetic-alphabet-58078802/?no-ist

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

WCRI 2017

By Aaron Ware