The 2024 Gametape Review: Fresh Bruises
Imagine sitting in the dark of a film room watching a football game that you’ve just finished playing. Your bruises are fresh. The coaches are stern. You watch onscreen as the tight end—that dazzling, eligible receiver—whips around you again and again like a stuntman. The magic of his movements still mystifying. And there you are, still as statuary. Each time not anticipating his drives. The clock is winding down. The year, darkening at its edges. What could you have done better?
But look who I’m asking.
It is our habit to take the winter months as a time to reflect on our year, to lean into the warp of the seasons and review what we’ve done well and what we could improve on; to clarify our materials and fine-tune the strategies and the structures we’ve built. It’s time for our own Gametape Review. We learn so much from our clients, all of them so different, all of them—like the tight end—moving in ways we could not have anticipated. In reflecting on our year in business, it’s easy to see how we might have changed our tactics to better match our clients’ steps and anticipate their needs.
Here are just a few things we’ve learned this year:
When clients are left to their own devices, they are free to create their own narratives
When clients have questions, and we’re not there to answer them directly and thoroughly, they may fill that void with their own answers and potential angsts. We learned, for example, it’s better to talk our clients through early design rounds rather than to send a long-legged, overly detailed email full of probabilities and references and leave it fluttering wildly in the breeze. Initially, we felt that laying out options for our clients in a structured and thoughtful email showed our research and our attention to detail. We thought we were giving our clients an opportunity to see all the possibilities, think things through and come back to us with their reactions. However, responses beget more questions, and if we’re not there with a quick reply, panic can easily replace queries in the vacuum of not-knowing.
Meeting face-to-face with our clients over Zoom and talking them through their options provides a much quicker route to decision making. It allows both sides to ask for clarity and understand the issues at hand. Even though a face-to-face client meeting requires a high level of attention and quick thinking (in addition to clean hair and a nicer shirt), it offers our clients an appropriate level of attention and heads off any questions born of a void.
Our clients, like us, also run small businesses—balance and empathy are essential
The clients we work with are often small business owners running at a breakneck speed, juggling cutlery, anvils and torches. This year, several of our clients were opening new locations or renovating their brick-and-mortar businesses at the very same time they were upgrading their brand identity and digital presence. We learned that this can be a tricky balance for our clients as well as for us. We want to support them and provide them the assets they’ll need as they start marketing their new location. However, a physical renovation is unpredictable and is often met with delays and fraught with unforeseen expenses. With setbacks born of black mold or construction materials suspended in transit, it becomes difficult on our end to anticipate a realistic timeline for the project. Everyone, on all sides, can become frustrated and lose steam and enthusiasm for the rebrand.
We must be cognizant of the fact that our clients, like us, are busy running small businesses and are being pulled in many different directions. We can provide support by being empathetic and flexible. We can create a working schedule that hinges and recesses, depending on our client’s needs. We can plan for contingencies on our end and be realistic about how much time it may take to complete each phase of the project. And when we do have our client’s attention, we can provide a very clear vision of our expected workflow and remain in control of the project as we move through the design process. We need to focus and guide our clients, providing reassurance that despite any unforeseen delays, their vision will be brought to life.
Sometimes the project with the lowest price point ends up inviting the most time and energy
Before we restructured our offerings and packages, we took on several à la carte projects that we considered small in scope. These projects included simple logos for budding entrepreneurs. Because these projects seemed like quick, one-off jobs, we did not anticipate that they would languish for months on our to-do list. In the end, these projects included many, many design rounds—often far more than our much larger (and more profitable) branding projects.
Because we had not anticipated the stretch of time and energy these small projects would eventually take up, we did not impose rigorous enough limits in our initial proposals. Unlimited design takes on a whole new meaning when you’re on round 27 and you’re still going back and forth about the distinction between oxblood and burgundy. Energy that could have been used on more complex and ultimately, more profitable client ventures or even on our own business, ended up going into the black hole of these modest projects.
The first time it happened, we thought it was a fluke…but then it happened again. We realized that small projects do not equal simple projects. We learned that even if it takes extra time up front to establish rigorous boundaries and a meaningful timeline, it will end up saving us time and energy.
The Long Game
Sometimes running a small business feels like living through a compelling psychological drama. The good news is that reflecting on our experiences and course correcting does not generally require huge shifts in our processes or frameworks. We’ve learned so much this year from our clients (and from our missteps), and we will create structures to avoid these pitfalls in the new year. Even on the days we feel we are failing, we have to remember that there is value in malfunction. If we are committed to playing the long game, we must remind ourselves to reframe these losses as wins, take some time to review the gametape and keep on moving forward.