Are you in Wartime or Peacetime

Hey Reader,

Where are you feeling the most friction in your business right now? Hit reply I'd love to know how we can better help.

Messy Musings

This paragraph in Steven Bartlett's email this week that's been living rent free in my brain since I read it:

Peacetime doesn't really teach you anything valuable about yourself. So I’ve always valued wartime. And there's a weird small, slightly sadistic part of me that enjoys pushing myself to my absolute limits and I can confirm.. That right now... I’m at my limits. -Steven Bartlett

In The Hard Thing About Hard Things Ben Horowitz popularized the wartime vs peacetime framework that basically states the needs & role a leader plays are different depending on the season.

Here's a quick comparison summary (compliments of gemini)

Over the past few weeks we've been in a few conversations with business owners that are struggling right now. Leads are drying up, the needs of their customers are changing faster than ever, platforms are making it harder to get in front of audiences that used to organically see our content, and the definition of a "creative" feels like it's changing in uncomfortable ways.

But on the flip side we've also talked to creatives that are growing faster than ever, they're increasing their rates and customers are saying "that's it?", they're being more selective on who they work with, and they're turning out higher volumes of work than ever.

In this moment for some of us, our business needs us to be a wartime leader, and for others we need to be a peacetime leader.

If you're in a season that needs a wartime leader mindset right now you should be:

taking decisive action based on a clear vision (management style)
making and iterating decision that see results quickly (time horizon)
staying hyper-focused on the thing(s) that are working without getting distracted and being crystal clear on the purpose of everything your doing (tolerance for risk)
In this season I'd recommend focusing on becoming amazing at sales & lead generation that isn't based on hoping people reach out to you

If you're in a peacetime season, you should be focused on

maximizing the opportunity (primary goal)
working on long term goals that you can be actively working towards (time horizon)
actively experimenting with new things since peacetime won't last forever (tolerance for risk)
building moral & values even if you don't have a team that's still building boundaries & routines that support you (cultural focus)
In this season I'd recommend focusing on systems & reducing anything that isn't in your zone of excellence

My question for you: does your business need you to be a wartime or peacetime leader right now?

This Week's Needle Mover

Define Scope Creep Instantly: Clearly outline project expectations and the specific financial penalties for scope creep or client-caused delays directly in the initial contract and onboarding materials.

In our branding photography days, at one point we offered an annual package with quarterly branding sessions and a payment plan that spread out the investment over the whole year.

But we made the assumption that calling something "quarterly branding" would infer it would happen each quarter... and we didn't put it in the contract when it had to happen by.

Which means we found ourselves with $1k worth of travel costs for a session, 6 months after the payment plan income had run out and 18 months after they originally signed on as a customer.

It wasn't malicious, they didn't try to be a bad customer, but life happened and sessions got pushed and we didn't have the verbiage in the contract that they couldn't without a fee & we didn't set that expectation originally since we thought it was common sense.

How you can prevent this from happening to you:

Put clear definitions of the project scope in writing that clients sign in a contract, along with at minimum "anything out of scope will be an additional fee", and/or you can add a fee for the most common scope creeps (eg: additional hours for your photo session are billed at $xx.xx or additional contact forms can be added for $xx.xx per form, and needs client confirmation on the added fee before they start)
When someone asks a question that's hinting at going out of scope, including simple verbiage (in writing) like "I'd be happy to do that, but it will be out of scope of your original project" with either the price or an offer to quote it out if they're interested. (eg: the next time we were asked to push a session they got "sure, but it will have to happen within the 12 month contract, or we can push it further out at a cost of $xx.xx")

We would generally be more specific in a contract about scope than on a sales page, just because it's documenting all the "common sense" things just in case. Some things that seem odd to include that we recommend:

What would cause a project delivery date to get pushed back (eg: response time from customers, scope changes, etc)
How many revisions & the process
Who's responsible for change of travel cost (if the client requested it)
What your services don't include (if competitors include them, eg: photoshopping stuff out, writing copy, etc)
What the client is responsible for (eg: cost of studio rental, purchasing font packages, setting up their domain, etc)

Get the full list of ideas here

This Week on the Podcast

Do you have a process for Lead Gen?

This week we sat down with Alyssa who runs a DFY Lead Gen agency about:

How she find leads on Instagram.
Her daily sales routines that take less than 30 mins.
The 8 type of posts that you should be posting to support your lead generation process.

You can grab the companion workbook here that works through Alyssa's Sales Content Recipe with 8 types of content & the 3 pinned posts you should have on IG.