The eight-hour workday is a tired and old concept. It's time to put aside this tired, arcane way of thinking about work. In order to understand how to fix it, we have to understand why we have the eight-hour workday to begin with.
In the late 1800s, full-time manufacturing employees would work around 100 hours per week. Death and injury were commonplace. It wasn't uncommon for children to put in far more hours than we think reasonable today in the factories, fields, mills, and mines.
Last year we tested, and then made official, Office Free Friday. It's been a very cool thing for us as a company because it's provided us some much-needed focus time each week where our customers expect us to be a little less available.
If you aren't interested in clicking through to that announcement link, I'll give you the simple gist here. On Fridays, we officially close our office and our phones go directly to voicemail. It's still a working day, but because the office is closed, our employees have an option to work wherever they want.
I had a neighbor ask to pick my brain about what it takes to move into the web design and development field. She is starting her degree program and still has a couple of years but is wise to start working toward her career now. I was originally just going to respond to her directly but I figured I’d write a blog post because I think it might be helpful to others, too.
One thing to note: the answers I give here are based on how we do things at Tribute Media but we are a little unique… mostly in how we work with our employees. Our office is closed on Fridays and we encourage our employees to work remotely every Friday. Most agencies/companies will expect their employees to work on site but allow contractors to work wherever. There is something positive creatively about working on-site with your team that you can’t get remotely.
Oh, and a little, not-so-humble brag here.
Last year, Jillian and I attended the Best Places to Work in Idaho ceremony for the first time. We felt proud to be surrounded by so many incredible local employers, and we were buzzing with anticipation (and maybe a little wine).
Autumn Kersey of Treasure Valley Children's Theater began calling up winners from our category. Believe me, we were so honored to be there, we would have been thrilled to be called up first to accept the 10th place award. With each winner that wasn't us, our eyes grew wider. 10th, 9th, 8th, 7th--and these were amazing companies we respect and admire! We couldn't believe it when Autumn announced her "friends in downtown Meridian, Tribute Media" for 5th place.
What is marketing myopia? Simply put: it's tunnel vision. More specifically, it's what occurs when a business becomes complacent in its marketing efforts, and either focuses too much on the products they sell and not enough on the benefits it provides the user, or focuses far too much on one marketing channel and ignores others.
Years ago, in a different life, I was a sales manager in a different industry. I had ten sales associates working for me in outside sales. We won some and we lost some.
Whether we won a deal or lost a deal, I would ask my sales rep to debrief. I wanted to know how it all worked out. I was always much more interested in the reasons we lost deals than the reasons we won deals.
In that highly commoditized industry, more often than not, the reason for losing a deal came back as, "We were too expensive."
That always frustrated me; not because we were over-priced but because the sales rep didn't understand that price is only one part of the buying decision. It's usually not even the most important part.
Let me get to the switch on that bait right off the bat. Your sales pitch is probably okay. What really sucks is your sales approach. But, that might not make you feel any better.
The sales world is changing. In my opinion, the consumer isn’t really changing but, instead, the options available to consumers in they way they buy makes the consumer realize they don’t have to put up with the crap traditional sales people spin. Inbound marketing has changed the way people buy and if sales people are still using the old methods of selling the consumer simply gets angry.
When you were growing up, it was probably a safe bet that you wanted to grow up to be Batman. Who can blame you? A billionaire entrepreneur playboy who spends his nights fighting crime and injustice. Even as an adult that sounds pretty cool.
As a recent college graduate, I’ve found that one of the only downsides to “real life” is sitting in a chair all day. I found when I first started my job that when 2 o’clock rolled around, I’d realize “my brain can’t brain” anymore. I quickly realized that I couldn’t keep things as they were; otherwise, I would underutilize precious time by allowing myself to lose brain power. To combat this, I came up with a few ways to upset routine and allow the creative juices to keep flowing.
We have a philosophy here at Tribute Media- client success is our top objective. When I meet with a client, I want to learn about them, their business, their business goals and objectives, and how we can assist in making those goals and objectives come to fruition. We do not take on an account unless we are confident we can help our client be successful. At times, that could mean turning someone away. In order to maintain the level of integrity that we all believe in at Tribute Media, we have determined that a few prospects would not be a good fit, and ultimately declined the opportunity to work with them.