The First Rule of Starting Your Own Agency…
There’s a line in Fight Club where the Narrator says something along the lines of “after a few weeks [of Fight Club] a man is carved out of wood.” Sometime during the past month, I started thinking about the idea behind this quote and how it perfectly encapsulates my journey so far.
Many Hats, One Person: A moment that captures just how much is happening at any given moment came during my onboarding session with Intern Evan. I setup his email the week before he started and sent some things to think about and prepare for before his first week. Intern Evan never received the new email invitation! During our kickoff call I remember purposefully taking a calming breath and saying to myself “you can figure this out” before diving into Google Workspace and figuring out what I had done wrong. The IT help desk I’ve been so used to? Now replaced by yours truly.
My New, “New” Commute: I certainly remember driving to the office five days a week, did it for years — decades actually. I never truly experienced driving to where the work is, taking calls along the way, and blowing past the mileage from a month of ‘old’ commutes in one trip to Charlotte, NC. There are frequent days where I have a meeting in Durham, a lunch in Raleigh, followed by another meeting in RTP. Work me is getting used to a day ‘in the office’ followed by a day ‘on the road’ while I’m still figuring out what this means for life at home (especially during the summer).
Handling Growth: ArcSense Communications has doubled its number of retainer clients during the past month and I feel very strong about a handful of proposals in the pipeline and my ongoing new business efforts. When I started getting serious about launching my own agency and writing its business plan, the goal was (and still is) to grow and scale the business, and hire a team of incredibly sharp communicators. I recently find myself trying to mentally plan for how a sudden influx of a few more accounts would change how I work today and would very likely bring those future plans into 2024. It’s a great problem to have, but it’s one I thought I’d simply have more time to think on and prepare for.
While I write this post and format my July newsletter in Mailchimp, I feel the pressure of…not filling out a W-9 for a new client, of not working on a pitch for a meeting tomorrow, and so much more.
So I remind myself: “Take a deep breath….you can figure this out…”
I am Khaner’s to do list.
I get longer, not shorter.
