The Beauty & The Beast

I heard an interesting story about Ulysses S. Grant once. 

In 1854, after he had graduated West Point and served with distinction in the Mexican-American War, Grant returned home to Missouri and experienced a series of business failures. Down on his luck, Grant resorted to cutting timber and selling wood in St. Louis. 

One day, as he hawked wood on a street corner in the city wearing dirty, tattered clothes, he was approached by a man who recognized him - an officer in the Army. 

“Great god, Grant”, the man exclaimed, “What are you doing?” 

Grant responded in his typical, dry tone, “I’m solving the problem of poverty”. 

Obviously, Grant would go on to decorated military service during the Civil War and serve as the 18th president of the United States. But I can’t help but feel like his success started as soon as he was willing to solve the problem that was directly in front of him with the tools at his disposal. 

Solving the problem in front of you with the tools at your disposal sounds so simple and intuitive. But many times, we don’t do it. 

I see this a lot in the agency world. 

Most of the agencies I work with face something similar to Grant’s poverty problem - some lead generation or growth challenge. Agencies want to grow (or at least maintain their current revenue) but for some reason, they often don’t want to solve that problem with the tools at their disposal. 

I call it The Beauty and The Beast problem. 

An Agency Example

Let me give you a real-life example of this problem. I recently worked with a design agency that offers an entire menu of services. They’ve had some turnover on the Business Development side of things and engaged with my firm to help develop a long-term growth strategy and refine their positioning. 

During the early stages of the engagement we talked in-depth about their current offerings and where they wanted to grow. Very quickly two distinct services jumped out. 

The first was an AI innovation workshop - a relatively new offering they wanted to center their positioning around. 

The second was design and development for customer portals - a service they had been selling for a few years. 

I asked for some sales numbers for the two services over the past year and here’s what I saw: 

AI Innovation Workshop 

• # Projects: 8

• Annual Revenue: $96,000

• Average Margin: 18%

Portal Design & Development: 

• # Projects: 18

• Annual Revenue: $2,250,000

• Average Margin: 32%

Based on these numbers, I would expect the firm’s portal work to be featured prominently on the agency’s website and a core pillar of their proposed long-term growth plan. But it wasn’t, they wanted to go all in on AI innovation workshops. 

Sure, they would keep doing the portal design and development if the projects came in, but AI innovation just seemed more interesting to them. 

What?! 

Maybe I’m boring, but good volume, high gross revenue, and a healthy margin are far more interesting to me. 

As surprising as it may be, many firms want to position themselves around service offerings that are far more attractive to their practitioners than their clients. 

The Beauty and The Beast 

The Beauty is the client and project that your team can’t wait to work on. It’s exciting, it’s meaningful, and it makes those “what do you do for work?” conversations far more interesting. The case studies practically write themselves. “This is why we exist”, you tell yourselves. 

The Beast is your boring client and boring project. It might make a good case study, if it wasn’t so boring. Your team could work on The Beast with its eyes closed, but they want a challenge - and it’s so boring. It’s so boring I want to stop writing about it. 

Oh yeah, and The Beast pays the bills. The Beast makes up 80% of your total revenue. The Beast is reliable, ongoing, recurring work.

How to Balance Passion and Profit 

Agencies are full of passion. Their position in the marketplace dictates that they are a source of novelty and fresh thinking, so it’s no surprise that agency leaders and employees are driven by a passion for their craft and a desire to innovate. 

Nobody wants to be on an assembly line, putting together the same highly profitable widget everyday. But at the same time, nobody wants to be a broke artisan offering something they can’t get paid for. 

The key, in my mind, goes back to Ulysses S. Grant. What are the tools at your disposal that you can use to solve the problem of profit? 

Find a profit driving service or product (The Beast) and identify ways for you to infuse passion and innovation (The Beauty) into it while demonstrating an ability to do the basics effectively. 

I’m not suggesting you stop pursuing The Beauty. I’m suggesting that the script should be flipped. Position yourself for The Beast and enjoy the opportunities to work on The Beauty when they present themselves. 

Focusing on The Beast doesn’t mean you can’t innovate, try new things, and grow. In fact, it just means you’re giving yourself and your team a firm direction for your exploratory work - and a strong foundation from which to take calculated innovation risks.

The Market Dictates

As you explore offerings and market positioning for your agency, ask yourself, “are we pursuing this work because our clients want it or because our team wants to do it?” 

Finding passion in your work is fantastic. But as a leader of your firm, it’s far more important you steer your agency to offer something the market has demonstrated a desire for (your determination of their “need” is immaterial). 

If you can do that, you’ll end up giving your team the chance to do meaningful work while enjoying a profit.