working smarter

JILLS SPOTLIGHT on TEAMING UP to SCALE UP

JILLS SPOTLIGHT on TEAMING UP to SCALE UP

Debbie White, Founder of the Seattle boutique advertising agency, Frank + Candor, knows a thing or two about staying agile in a changing workforce.

Debbie has long since recognized the effectiveness and the efficiency of hiring the right person for the right job at the exact right time and she teams up with a collection of on-demand creative professionals to ensure her project outcomes are always unique, targeted, and top notch. Debbie's work-style is smart and savvy giving her the flexibility to team up to scale up as she accesses the best of the best to fill each project niche as she encounters them.  Debbie and Frank + Candor represent this new nimble future of work that THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES™ supports, encourages and knows that women can lead. 

Debbie was one of the first JILLS Members and proudly touts the power of women to be an economic force in the future of work. Her Seattle based, ad agency, Frank + Candor, works with companies across the nation and is a female-centric marketing agency focused on "Peak Women", 45-70, who she says "represent the most powerful, yet misunderstood, buying segment of any demographic." 

In an excerpt from the Frank + Candor blog, Debbie shares why she knows 'small is the new big'. 

"In advertising, I think the future is going to be small. As in small advertising agencies, boutique firms, and virtual creative hubs. As I sit here in our downtown Seattle WeWork office looking out at a slew of plugged-in workers that must be doing very substantial and exciting things, I think to myself, “I’m a part of this,” the small business, start-up co-working thing.

We’re all here, all of us independent business, co-working, kombucha-on-tap-drinking go-getters!

I see how well it works because this lean model is so adaptable to an ever-changing, project-based advertising business. From our standpoint, we have a small senior staff and our go-to specialists (that’d be super awesome freelancers in real-speak) that we partner with for particular projects. Those wonderful people are an integral part of our team, yet they are virtual—which makes everyone happy. And when we meet in Seattle, they get to have kombucha, too. Expanding and contracting with the needs of our ever-evolving clients, we work from home, co-sharing workspaces, or any wired place on earth. In fact, our most extensive account is 2,340 miles away.

This small but ever-connected ecosystem of seasoned creative thinkers is the new big advertising agency thing. And we’ll drink our rooibos kombucha to that!"

Entrepreneurial Lifestyle

Entrepreneurial Lifestyle

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Spend Money to Make Money

Our JILLS have great things to say and we're so happy to share it! 

Belinda Wasser is the founder of Rocket Girl Solutions and a guest contributor to THE JILLS NEWS. With over 25 years of experience in business workflow and logistics, Belinda offers up practical advice on running your business so it isn't running you. We're proud to have Belinda as one of our JILLS OF ALL TRADES and welcome her expertise in working with solo professionals and small business owners as their part-time business managers. Belinda loves taking care of the daily details and minutiae so business owners can get back to the work they love doing!  Our JILLS have great things to say and we're so happy to share it in THE JILLS NEWS. 

Our JILLS offer up some of our best tips and in this post, Belinda reminds us that we need to rely on the skills and talents of others to truly build our businesses. 

Belinda Wasser, founder of Rocket Girl Solutions

Belinda Wasser, founder of Rocket Girl Solutions

Authored by Belinda Wasser

I was in Rosie’s on Elm Street last Thursday, enjoying a few quiet minutes at the end of the day with my friend Jennifer. We were talking about the usual things – business, kids, weather and more business.

And then she said, “It seems like you have no problem spending money to make money.”

I don’t, but I was definitely surprised to hear her say that. To me, this isn’t just a good approach; it’s the only approach that really works if you want to grow your business.

Here are some of the things I had mentioned during our conversation which prompted her to say what she said:

Debbie Faye is working with me on improving my speaking presentation.”

“I hired a business coach, Jane Pollak, to help me reach my goals for the year.”

“I’m working with Scarlett DeBease to update my wardrobe.”

“I’m interviewing new accountants to help me organize my business.”

Later, as I was driving home, I realized how happy I am about what has now become my standard approach: Paying wonderful, capable people to help me work better, faster and smarter.

In other words, instead of doing everything myself (the way I did for years), I surround myself with experts. That’s real leverage.

Unfortunately, lots of solo professionals don’t see the world this way. To them, spending money (especially if things are feeling financially tight) feels like an extravagance. What I’ve found, though, is that you have to spend it to make it!

When is it time to get help?

In almost all cases, the answer is: Sooner than you think! In my experience, people wait way too long to bring in support, often putting it off until things have gotten really bad with missed deadlines and worse.

So, here are two questions to get you started:

  1. Are you doing work you’re not really qualified for?

    Tinkering with your website, doing your own taxes, setting up an email newsletter are all business essentials best handled by experts. Maybe you’re good at some of these things, but many people aren’t, resulting in poor quality work that takes a lot of time to complete.

  2. Are you doing work that’s below your pay grade?

    There’s nothing shameful about putting together your own client gifts or running down to Kinkos to make a bunch of copies for tonight’s presentation. But much of this work can be done less expensively by somebody else. If you’re spending time on this, you’re not spending time doing higher value tasks.

Simply put, you can’t build much of a business if you’re not willing to rely on other people. Find others to support the high quality – high paying! – work you do best and pretty soon you’ll also be spending money to make money.