When Dan and I started Double Forte in 2002, we were in the last downturn and the business we set up was in reaction to the condition of PR firms in San Francisco after the bubble burst and some personal things that my life required - mostly, the flexibility to travel to Wisconsin to be with my dyng mother (who outlived her prognosis by 3 1/2 years - yeah mom!).
So we decided that hey we LIKED, no LOVED the work involved in PR and Consulting, were tired of having to make stupid moves based on NYC home office demands, and really really tired of training young staff to show up on time, and learn how to dress and how to actually finish something before they went to Yoga class. Double Forte was born with an upside down model -- 10years minimum to qualify + you had to like to work + you had to be a good person. Oh and we didn't use the term PR anywhere, because we didn't like what PR had become in San Francisco.
It was destined to be small. We thought 10 max.
But no, the special sauce that is our special brand of service helped us grow to 18 last fall.
Around us, boutique firms with experts only had grown to about 8-9 and traditional model firms and media-company-owned firms had swelled -- staffed by a plethora of 1-4 year experience people learning the ropes. Last summer we started hearing more and more in pitches that clients were tired of the bait and switch, and not getting experienced people on their accounts, etc. It was deja vu to 2001 all over again. Actually it really pissed me off -- how could this be? How come no one was shifting to ensure that the one thing that brought us all down before wouldn't bring us all down again.
At the same time, it was getting increasingly hard to find qualified good people at the 10 year mark, and the 5-8 year experience pool was looking shallow (because no one hired between 2001 and 2004ish).
And then on September 15th as the Dow was falling 900 points, it was clear that our world was shifting again. We knew that several clients wouldn't get the funding they needed to keep us. We knew that spending would tighten up quickly; we knew that many people in our field would lose their positions -- in house and at agencies; we knew that big firms would slash their minimums; we'd seen little onesy-twosey firms hit the skids earlier in the year, so that was drying up too.
So we cut expenses immediately; we re-oriented the staff on what to expect and how we needed to react and act, and despite our moves and great work we had to downsize by 3 in January.
And then the hard work of reconfiguring to ensure that we THRIVE in today's market and in tomorrow's market started. Because now, with no one getting hired NOW, there will be a really small talent pool in the 10 year experience mark in 18 months - 2 years. Our business model has been made obsolete.
And frankly we're not that encouraged by the caliber of the training that has happened in agencies in the last several years. So what to do?
Well it's clear we need to shift to this situation. And we need to train our own staff now to fill out the ranks. And we need to get them early so that they don't learn bad things.
So we're going square -- if the typical agency model is a pyramid with 1/4 at the top and 3/4 under 10 years billing 95% (so on the client dime to learn the work), and we were a long, flat rectangle with everyone with 10-20 years doing everything, now we're going square, well actually it's an upside down isoscles trapezoid -
where the experienced staff will outnumber the junior staff.
This of course is heresy. But since 25 cents isn't going to NY then we can do what works. And what works is people who know what they're doing, doing the work and more junior people just billing the time for real client work not Learning work.
But we can't revert to the old tried and untrue - because IT'S BROKEN PEOPLE! We've all proved over and over and over again that the pyramid doesn't work, is not sustainable, and creates client conflict.
Now is the time to shift so that you are in a stronger position on the other side of this downturn. Join the upside down isosceles trapezoid!