Observations and learnings are key when building a business.

For those that don’t know the Demographica story, we have gone through a fundamental restructure of the company business model. The entire restructuring process took roughly 6 months and we were operating within our new structure from the 1st of November 2013.

Today we’re roughly 8 months into our new structure and there have been some incredible observations which I think are well worth sharing.

Observation 1 – Our strongest employees have bought into our new vision.

During and after a restructure, it is normal to have a high level of staff turnover. A big reason for this is that the company is now a different company to the one your staff had initially signed up for. People leave companies for various reasons but if an employee kept his/her job during the restructure and then decided to leave voluntarily afterwards, the reasons are generally that the employee has not bought into the new vision of the company. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s better for everyone for them to leave.

As an employer, I believe that you owe it to the employees that have bought into the new vision to surround them with colleagues that share it. Poison spreads fast – so be mindful of it.

Observation 2 – Make decisions around your clients.

Advertising agencies like Demographica live and die by the quality of their clients and the work that they do for them. We know that if we grow our clients businesses then we grow our business. It’s a symbiotic relationship and anything less than that is not sustainable.

We are very specific about the clients that we retain. Unless we know that we can consistently grow our clients businesses, we do not pitch for the work. To take this a step further, we have resigned clients that we don’t share values with and have resigned clients that don’t take their work as seriously as we do ours.

Observation 3 – There is no substitute for efficiency.

Restructuring Demographica from a 7 year old media owner to a newborn Direct Marketing Agency is literally starting a new business. We’re a startup again and startups require an immense amount of work!

I’ve discovered some productivity and efficiency tools that we are using now and it’s proven to be the game changer in our output. I estimate that we are over 200% more productive in the same amount of hours – no exaggeration. I firmly believe that Demographica’s recent windfall of new client wins is solely down to the significantly increased efficiency levels of our sales team.

Lastly, Observation 4 – Success breeds success.

One of my business partners Mark Levy says this to me all the time and I’m watching it happen right in front of me.

We pushed hard in our new structure to secure some strategic client wins. In a startup, you have no history on what to say to clients, how to tailor your pitch and how to close the deal so you are completely reliant on gut, passion and drive. As soon as we had our first client win, another one came in soon after and another one soon after that. Everyone at the company gets a lift because the reasons to restructure finally become validated and the morale booms!