Business – Craig Jamieson

Good Work Attracts Good Work

When I talk to CEOs who run product shops, especially dev-led companies, I often hear the same frustration. They struggle to bring in work that truly moves the needle. They end up relying on small projects that barely cover costs, never mind deliver meaningful profit.

Naturally, the conversation turns to lead generation, inbound funnels, outbound sales and positioning. Yet the focus is often misplaced. The simplest and most effective way I know to attract more and better work is this: do good work.

Why they don’t get the big projects

The reason these companies often miss out on significant opportunities is painfully simple: they don’t produce good work.

Yes, they ship. They deliver something. But what’s shipped is usually a watered-down version of what was promised, padded with excuses about constraints, and polished just enough to get it out the door. When you look past the visuals and the charm of the sales team, there’s little to celebrate.

This happens because of mis-steps during production, poor prioritisation, and a defensive culture that values output over outcome. Instead of delivering success stories that can be proudly marketed, they are left with compromises.

The imbalance inside the team

The root problem is how these teams are weighted. Too often, the COO and CTO dominate discussions, while design and business strategy are sidelined. User experience is treated as lip service, bundled with UI as a checkbox rather than a leadership function.

Business thinking is reduced to project management and billing, not to challenging the client’s model, path to profit, or market fit. Conversations get intellectualised to sound clever, but they rarely tackle the fundamentals: realistic budgets, pragmatic timelines, and whether an MVP can prove market demand before more money is sunk.

Notice that I’m not talking about frameworks, stacks, or architecture. I’m talking about products that people actually want and businesses that can actually make money.

Where it goes wrong

I’ve seen founders and corporations alike sink significant resources into projects no one wanted. Stakeholders become so convinced of their idea that dissent is silenced. When the project fails, they blame resourcing instead of asking if the product should have existed in the first place.

Meanwhile, dev shops perpetuate the churn by accepting projects with limited information, focusing on building what they can rather than what the client needs. They ignore design and business disciplines that could have made the product viable.

This isn’t just naïve. It’s unethical.

What good looks like

The companies that stand out take a different approach:

Invest in a well-rounded team that balances design, tech, and business.
Refuse to overpromise or hide capability gaps.
Push for outcomes, not just output.
Build products that clients can proudly share, that the industry talks about, and that their teams are motivated by.

Doing good work creates a ripple effect. Clients become advocates. Projects become case studies. Teams become proud ambassadors. The company culture thrives, and more opportunities follow.

I would rather go broke delivering on a project than protect my margin by putting out something half baked.

If your rallying cry is progress over perfection, ask yourself this: do you really believe you inspire anyone with that? Do you think clients with real budgets and serious ambitions want to hand over their money to a team that advertises compromise as a value?

No amount of repositioning or trend-chasing will achieve what consistent, excellent work does.

The responsibility

If clients are not coming to you, it isn’t the economy, or the market, or the latest technology shift. It’s you.

As a CEO, you have a responsibility to build a business that delivers what it promises. That means more than shipping. It means creating outcomes that clients value and products that prove themselves in the market.

Do that, and you’ll never worry about where the next big project comes from.

Creatives Need a Manager

Creative talent is facing a crisis. As the global economic situation worsens, agency groups consolidate, and AI reduces headcount, waves of talented people are being left without work.

The ripple effect is that more creatives are building their own brands, freelancing, coaching, or forming small shops as clients move away from the perceived uncertainty of the big names. Many of these creatives are struggling to find their feet, caught between the desire to focus on their craft and the pressure to now manage every aspect of their business.

The talented Rodd Chant, who leverages his love for music, got me thinking about the need for representation after reading his post exploring creative teams to bands and the idea of having a band manager.

Throughout my career, I’ve met people who absolutely get creatives but don’t have a creative bone in their body. Yet, they can sell ice to Eskimos. They have the gift of the gab and the business acumen to turn a one-off hit into a sustainable career.

Now, imagine you could take that same set of skills and apply it to the world of designers, developers, and small creative teams. Imagine someone whose sole focus is to keep the creatives creating, without worrying about client management, cash flow, or chasing invoices.

For ten years, I worked for myself, handling every single part of the business. I was both the craftsman and the businessman. I was far better at making than deal-breaking, but the business side was a constant grind. I wasn’t a huge success in terms of scaling up or minimising stress, and I don’t wish that on anyone.

There are few people out there with the business sense of a Dan Mall or a Chris Do. Those guys know how to run a shop, but not everyone has that knack. Not everyone wants to. But the reality is that a lot of talented people are drowning in the demands of business because they’re too afraid to let go or they haven’t found the right person to step in.

I’ve seen incredible talents hang on to toxic situations for too long, purely because the idea of going it alone is terrifying. They stay in agencies with abusive clients, bad bosses, or unfulfilling projects because that small slice of comfort is the only safe place they have to practice their craft.

With all these layoffs, there might not be an agency to call home. We talk a lot about burnout and boundaries but rarely about how having someone to handle the business side can completely change things.

That’s where the manager comes in. Not a boss or gatekeeper, but a partner. A manager sets the stage, manages cash flow, and handles the business end so creatives can stay in their zone. They’re not there to take over. They’re there to clear the runway, open doors, make introductions, and keep the money flowing.

Think of them less as a traditional agency account manager and more as a hybrid of an agent, business manager, and creative wrangler.

Actors and musicians have agents and managers who handle the business side so they can stay in their creative zone. Yet, in the creative industry, we still expect people to wear every hat.

Some people can do it all and thrive, but not everyone is built for that, and that’s okay.

Take Kanye West. Unquestionably one of the most talented artists of our time, but his career is littered with controversies as he navigates unchecked. He could use someone in his corner not to stifle his creativity but to keep him from blowing it all up.

The bigger the talent, the higher the stakes, and the less you can afford to go unchecked. The same is true for smaller creative teams. You can be the most talented designer in the room, but if you’re not bringing in work, managing client expectations, and keeping the cash flowing, it’s only a matter of time before things implode.

The idea that creatives need to do it all is outdated and exhausting. For every creative burning out from juggling too many roles, there’s someone out there who knows how to sell, how to set up systems, and how to keep the money coming in while the creatives focus on what they do best.

Why I Don’t Want to Start a Business Now

I’m often asked why I don’t run my own business. The quickest, easiest answer? I don’t want to.

The longer answer is that I’ve had my own businesses before, and that experience made one thing clear – I don’t want to build and run a business again. It’s not about fear or lack of ambition. It’s about knowing what I enjoy and where I create the most impact.

Some people assume that not running your own business means you’re not an entrepreneur. I disagree. I bring that same entrepreneurial mindset into leadership – driving innovation, solving complex problems, and building something bigger than myself. I just don’t want to be in the business of running a business.

If starting my own company meant I could focus purely on great work, be valued for it, and consistently earn what I want, I might think differently. But that’s rarely the case. Business ownership often means constantly selling your services, convincing people of your value, and managing client relationships where they hold the power. I don’t want my livelihood to depend on others’ willingness to see my worth.

That’s not to say traditional employment is perfect. But for me, there’s less risk in leading within an established brand than in investing in my own venture—especially in an industry where people often don’t fully understand, let alone value, what I do.

Entrepreneurship isn’t just about owning a business. It’s about thinking big, taking risks, and driving change. I do that as a leader. I just choose to do it within companies where I can focus on what I do best.

Freelance TV

Dann Petty has put together a series called Freelance TV that documents freelancing. Inspired by the interviews, I thought I’d talk to the many freelance roles I have for filled over my career.

Independent

There is a stigma with the word freelancing that made me uncomfortable early in my career. To me I did not work for free, I was not some guy working in a basement etc, rather I was an independent professional and I guess, literally a one man show for the first 10 years of my career, because I chose to be self-employed as I had no formal design education.

Freelancer slash unemployed

Between working at agencies, I was forced to freelance in order to bring in some sort of income between finding full-time employment.

Freelance employee

While holding a position at agencies, I have worked as a freelance designer while also earning a full-time salary. This was nice way to earn some extra income, but it’s time-consuming and really difficult to pull off given the attention to detail I am used to putting into projects.

Freelancer at an agency

Probably my least favorite experience has been freelancing at agencies. The sitting at an agency having to design or direct seems forced and just didn;t sit well with me. People don;t treat you with the same level of respect and you pretty much just feel like a screwdriver executing someone else’s bad ideas.

Whatever your situation and your reasons for freelancing, I hope it gives you both the freedom and rewards you deserve.

Designer Ego

We all have ego’s and they are gluttonous beasts within all of us. As designers, our egos get in our way and often chase a lot of great opportunities away. My best advice I have for everyone, including myself. Get rid of your ego, focus on your work and be excited by every opportunity that comes your way. We are problem solvers and there’s little that should be beyond our ability to apply our thinking.

Yes we all want to work on hot brands that make us feel great, but doing great work of your own, trumps the success of others, honestly, get over yourself, there are very few people who can singularly lay claim to an entire brands success.

I was watching a talk the other day where the speaker explained that when you work at Apple, it’s not your design, it is Apple. Ego is gone! Product and brand are great, you work there, contributing the team that makes Apple great.

There are a lot of great people willing to afford us many opportunities if we just drop the ego, so be rid of it and you will do the best work of your life.

Creative in Business

Everyone likes to call themselves creative these days, long gone are the days when creative purely meant those weird arty types who draw, act and write poetry. No these days everyone thinks they’re creative and are entitled to be creative. Often I hear people say, “ideas can come from anyone, even the tea lady”. Does that make her creative, or perhaps part of the creative department in an agency? My best are the bean counters who handle the money and assign the budget, who proudly proclaim to be doing, creative accounting. Well I have to agree, creativity is not exclusively for a single department, any more than being good at business isn’t restricted to the suits. But we all have our roles to play and more importantly our responsibilities within an organisation. Lets face it, we are all paid accordingly.

The creative department; by which I mean art directors, copywriters, designers etc quite frequently solves business problems, that is the business we are in. But more often than not, creative departments go beyond merely solving the client’s business problem, they are often solving a critical agency business problem. So what is this problem I speak of? There is no title, because purely calling it a business problem, would mean the business side of an agency would have to take responsibility and actually do the job they are titled and responsible for, and being that they also want to be part of the creative process when it suits them, we just don’t want to label it. So let me explain. Quite often the business side of the agency agrees to things, over commits, under charges and so on, while the creative departments are left to find a way to get it done. More often than not, the creative departments work themselves to death and complete the ridiculous tasks set before them, often feeling under valued, resenting the client (who is usually blamed for the poor timings etc) and putting out some half-baked work, that does little more than keep the lights on. All while having to share what they’re doing with the business folk, to make sure they don’t feel left out and like they’re just paper pushers, you know, they have ideas too. I was once told I’m like Willy Wonka and sometimes the suits also want to share in the magic of the chocolate factory. Vom!

I’d prefer that the business side of an agency focus on business, hell they could even get really creative about business, but as long as they keep the money on their end and don’t make it the creative departments problem. By this I mean they need to start caring and taking responsibility for bringing in the numbers without inconveniencing the creative department. I promise you will not get better ideas through threats of being fired by the client if we don’t nail this concept. All the time lurking while creatives try to solve these problems, should be spent thinking of creative ways to bring in more revenue for the business. Finding better ways of working with the client to write a brief, plan their project and hopefully save everyone some money.

I am yet to have a business person walk into my office with a puzzled look on their face, and after I asked whats wrong, get told, “I am trying to figure out a way to make real money from digital” or “I am trying to figure out a better way to estimate time on projects, so that we don’t under charge our client” these are business problems that could involve creative, my door is always open, so I am happy to help where my insight is most valuable, but these are challenges facing suits which they should be thinking about.

Being on the digital side of advertising for most of my career, I have often felt a lot of pressure to deliver the goods on some ridiculous budgets and deadlines. I constantly try to think of new ways that we could manage this all better, how we could increase our rates without chasing away clients and how we could better manage client expectations on time and project outcome.

TV as an example hasn’t changed in years and while current trend is to reduce media spend, TV in most parts of the world still has the largest reach, so it’s a profitable business to be in. The format hasn’t changed very much, so the production is pretty similar and easy to estimate, get buy-in and get a reasonable advert produced. Digital on the other hand is more often than not, pretty unknown. There are so many variables involved and quite often being innovative means, so many are unknown. Yet the manner in which digital is billed, is completely flawed. Clients generally pay by the hour, which is charged based on an estimate before any of the relative teams who actually produce the project ever even know what has been agreed upon. A half-baked brief is put in the system, usually just before month end, so that the suit meets their monthly target and then it’s up to the creative team to solve. Suits rarely ever like to phone the client and ask for more time and budget when the teams figure out that what is being asked for is impossible and more often than not, build something that delivers to some degree, but could have been much better had they had the time.

Often when people see my personal websites people comment on the level of craft that goes into them, well there’s a simple answer. I constantly keep perfecting the design and functionality, while I aim for a target date, I would rather do it properly than meet the deadline. I constantly keep iterating even after launch as the beauty of digital is it’s not like a TV Ad that has aired or a printed item that once the ink is dry, it’s done, no more changes can be made. I see this as a huge opportunity to continue to make money, as it means no project is ever really complete and if only someone could make the client understand this, we might be onto a way of making money continually while offering the very best solution.

What amazes me is that clients pay millions to produce 30 second TV Ads, yet they won’t spent nearly a fraction of that on digital projects like websites, which actually live online 24-7-365. This is one of those business problems I feel our suits should be trying to solve, their chance to get creative doing what they do. You should be proud to say you are in the advertising industry, it is perceived as creative, but that doesn’t mean you should try to be part of the creative team, be a team player by being creative about how you do business and bring in real money, so the business has the time to be creative.

Tossing Tables

It’s been my experience that most agencies are structured wrong for optimum creative collaboration. Traditionally there are studios that have client service departments in one room, a boardroom or two and the creative studio, which consists of even more rows of desks. While I would love to tackle the entire agency, in this post, I want to challenge the perception of the creative studio.

First thing I would do, is toss the tables. They take up too much space and unless you do production, I can’t see a major reason to have them cluttering up the limited floor space.

Of course there is a need for desks, so I’d put a variety of different spaces for people to plant their laptop around the office. Things like small tales with chairs around them. Higher cafe/bar style surfaces along the walls. This is a great space saver and additional helps creatives stand and work which is highly recommended. The use of board room tables can also be used. Coffee tables are perfect for lounging.

On the topic of lounging, this is where I’d use the floor space. I’d create clusters of couches, bean bags and go so far as to say have hammocks if need be. We’re in the idea business and we spend large amounts of time thinking, so why not do it comfortably and socially.

With the use of wifi and the mobility of devices like laptops, tablets and smartphones, it’s easy enough to sit where ever, when ever.

Some might panic because they don;t have a space to put their stuff, well it would be easy enough to give the staff lockers or shelves they can call their own.

Another great addition to help use both sides of your brain are having play areas with games, toys and libraries.

The factory like setup does not promote collaboration or encourage creative thinking. It’s too easy to get stuck in your own space, staring at a screen all day. The perfect environment would be cozy, fun, collaborative and stimulate the already challenged creative minds.

7 things I’d like to see in digital for 2013

I was just reading a .net article on the 20 top web design and developments trends for 2013 and I have a few thoughts on what I’d like to see in digital for 2013, especially in South Africa.

Responsive Web Design
Probably the largest trend, still not picking up enough traction in South Africa is RWD, which makes absolutely no sense to me. The thought of creating a website purely for desktop, when we have such a large percentage of mobile users locally its ignorant. At the same time, RWD might not be the perfect solution after all, given that have multiple layouts require content to be turned on or off, but that only means its hidden from the user’s eye, but all the multiple layouts and content are still downloaded, which in SA, really defeats the purpose.
Content
If you’ve ever read anything on the web, you’ll know that for the most part, it’s absolute rubbish. I believe that content has to be a bigger priority in 2013, that doesn’t mean to say that it needs to be bloated, while content is king, it doesn’t have to be a silly bloated one at that. Craft of visual assets needs to be factored in and more relevant content be created, instead of just recycling images from a google search on a specific subject, purely as a cheap option to visually populate your wall etc.
Conversation
Social media conversations need to be better aligned, this prescribing posts months in advance has to stop. Agencies need to be employed and empowered to write content in real-time. While a strategy can be in place to guide the conversation based on the brands objectives, a more natural real time conversation should take place, where agencies speak in the brands tone to people, engaging in conversation rather than shouting out and waiting for responses. The other problem with the month in advance post prescriptive content creation is waiting for client to sign off everything is the delays it causes. clients need to have a little faith in the communication agency they hire.
Focus
Most agencies try to be all things to everyone, instead of trying to do everything poorly for the same budget, agencies need to identify real opportunities in the digital space and focus more on that specific area rather than spread themselves too thin across every digital channel.
Hybrid designer
I’m borrowing the term Hybrid Designer from the .net article and I’m going say what they’ve said in my own words, the best digital designers have the ability to code as they have a better understanding of what the constraints of the medium are. I’ve mostly done all of my own coding of the sites I’ve done in my career. I lack the level of development of a lot of the talented developers I’ve had the privilege of working with over the years, but I have always had a better balance between design and development output.
Story telling
I believe true engagement is to tell a really compelling story, taking people on a journey, giving people a reason to believe, to interact and be inspired to want to share. In SA, I’m yet to see anything like the type of campaigns AKQA or North Kingdom produce. We spend millions producing TV adverts that run for 30 seconds for a couple of weeks, instead of creating rich online engagements that can last for much longer and offer a lot more information, interaction and share-ability.
Waving carrots
I have noticed that there are few digital campaigns that don’t involve a huge prize as an incentive to engage. If the prize is the reason to engage, then the focus isn’t on the message we’re trying to drive, but rather the “whats in it for me” mentality. If you’re going to give something away, then it’s simple, have an entry form. But if you want people to understand and engage with your brand, give them an experience they’ll never forget.

2011 a short look back

This past year has been an interesting one which on the eve of the new year, could sooner be forgotten if it weren’t for some really significant events.

Steve Jobs
Online it must have been the most significant event in history when Steve Jobs passed away on October 5th. He seriously left a huge dent in the universe and I think people are waiting to see the first significant Apple release without the creative genius driving the company.

Facebook Timeline
Love it or hate it, as of the December 22nd, Facebook officially rolled out Timeline. As an early adopter it took me very little time to really start appreciating the life event display of my personal information. While there are some people who aren’t as happy about the changes, personally I look forward to further enhancements and also seeing Timeline used for page profiles.

Google+
New to social media was the much hyped release of Google’s latest social platform Google+ which has been released publicly, but to date is still very much a geek network. Google also rolled out a really significant UI redesign across most of its platforms, which has significantly improved the look and feel and unified many of their online spaces.

Twitter
Twitter redesigned.

Digital Monarchy
Marianna and I decided we were taking the leap from full-time employment and started our own little digital studio. We were originally going to call our company Harakiri, but the timing was too close to the Tsunami which hit Japan, so we settled on Digital Monarchy. We have no plans of taking over the world, we simply want to do good work. While only being in business for 9 months, we have worked on some great brands with some brilliant people.

FWA
I spent my December holiday in 2010 redesigning my personal website, choosing to try my hand at a responsive html5 design, which won me FWA Mobile Site of the Day on March 16th. Digiguru has now existed for over a decade and will continue to improve while showcasing my ever-increasing portfolio.

2012
With the new year, brings with it new optimism, may your 2012 be full of fun, excitement, success, laughter, good health, peace, love and happiness!

Thank you