I co-founded Starr Tincup in November of 2000. My role over the last two years has been the management of sales, marketing, business development and operations. I’ve been responsible for building the Starr Tincup brand that most people know (and, ahem, love), including the website, book (Try Not To F&ck This Up), direct marketing, email marketing, event strategy, social media strategy, etc, etc. If you liked our marketing, you would enjoy conversations with me. In 2009, sales for Starr Tincup were flat (the new up!) under my stewardship. In fact, I sold a year’s worth of marketing services in Q1 of 2010 alone. Accolades and applause aside, lately I haven’t been a pleasure to be around. I knew something wasn’t quite right with me but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it….
Have you ever fallen out of love with something you helped create? Well, I did. After owning and operating an agency – specifically, an outsourced marketing services firm – I came to realize that my heart just wasn’t in it any more. Quite frankly, I’m not sure I believe in the outsourced marketing services model.
Anyone can say they are a marketer – charlatans and hucksters abound on the internet. Degrees and certification in marketing are, for the most part, laughable… from the point of view of both the profession (read: agency people) and clients. Plus I don’t think we know what “should be” outsourced and what should always be delivered internally. In my opinion, it’s not so much that a paradigm is shifting…one doesn’t even exist. When it comes to outsourced marketing, I think clients are confused as to what to buy, from whom, how long things should take, and what things should cost. In fact, I see the same kind of confusion with all my colleagues that own outsourced marketing service shops. Who knows…maybe in 20 years the market will determine what should and shouldn’t be outsourced. Meanwhile, my belief is this: outsourced marketing services are new… and when a service is new, it has all kinds of growing pains. Living on the frontier equals lots of arrows in your back. (This is kind of insensitive, given my heritage and all, but by now you get the point.)
In particular, one struggle stood out for me. On the one hand, I would argue about how critical marketing was, yet on the other hand, I would argue that outsourcing (to us of course) was best for organizations. Kind of hypocritical. Either marketing is core to the business and thus should be done internally or it isn’t. This quandary led me to think more and more about the outsourced marketing services model. On a daily basis, I would find myself giving away strategic advice so we could win transactional or tactical marketing gigs. For example, I would find myself routinely talking with prospects about show strategy, product roll out strategies, analyst relations, etc. in hopes of “winning” their email marketing business. I would think to myself…how retarded is this? The truth is…I believe most clients would just like to be taught how to do things and/or the logic and best practices of how to get things done. I believe most marketing leaders would prefer to have internal people own “critical” marketing initiatives. I think back to all my conversations where prospects asked for advice – not a full-bore retainer relationship, but just advice on what to do, why to do it, how to do it, when to do it, etc. And that kind of conversation makes complete sense.
So now you understand why I fell out of love with the model. Three things actually led to me getting out of the game: the concept of leverage, the concept of maximization, and “no one says thank you anymore.” Please file all of these in “the things we think but do not say” folder…details to follow….
As much as an outsourced marketing services provider would like to think of himself as being a “partner” with the client, the truth is, he is not. Not at all. Clients are always trying to leverage the “relationship” they have with their partners. This is the real grind…every day is a new negotiation. Didn’t call me yesterday – the account is in jeopardy. Broken link on the email campaign – the account is in jeopardy. The white paper didn’t include the “right” quote – the account is in jeopardy. The wrong boilerplate was used in the most recent press release – the account is in jeopardy. WTF? If any of these “critical” mistakes were made by an internal employee, no one would know or care. Truth is…these “mistakes” happen every day in marketing. But when you are an outsourced marketing provider, these are the things that get your firm fired. More often than not, these things are used to kick your ass, or whip you into shape, and/or as a leverageable moment. Yep, leverage – that’s the game and that’s just one reason I had to get out. I grew tired of stupid shit causing me pain. Honestly, I think ALL clients that purchase outsourced marketing services think about leverage. They think about it differently and they draw down on it differently, but they ALL find a way to leverage vendors. And, maybe they are supposed to…meaning maybe that is the role of the client…to be overly demanding. Dunno.
So, as I said, the second thing that kicked my ass about running an agency was the concept of maximization. Agencies are unfairly held to an unattainable standard. As an example, an internal employee can create a white paper in about a month, yet an outsourced marketing services firm is somehow expected to create the same white paper in five days. Why is that? Well, on the one hand we (all outsourced marketing service providers) are partly to blame because we sell based on some mythical cost savings or employee replacement model. The other reason is tied to the concept of all clients wanting to maximize their investment in marketing. If they are paying your firm $15,000 a month, they want to receive $20,000 worth of stuff. If your firm creates two press releases in a week, they want you to create three. Part of this issue is because no one knows what this stuff really costs or the time it really takes to create it. No one. I also believe that clients are always thinking about the age old concept of “make versus buy” and how they should and/or could get things done internally. And, truth is, maybe that is how they should think. But, I can tell you that after managing this stuff for 10 years…that grind really wears at your soul. As an outsourced marketing services provider, you are only as good as what you did yesterday, last week and/or last month. No one really thinks about the great stuff you did last quarter…clients don’t have that kind of memory, and, once again, maybe they shouldn’t. Dunno.
This is going to seem completely trivial but the straw that broke my back was the realization that over the course of 10 years in the game I might of been told “thank you” seven or eight times. I (read: my firm) changed lives, changed destinies, built lasting brands, created market share, created real value, got people promoted, etc, etc. Yeah, I know – payment for services rendered was my thanks. Yeah, well, that wasn’t enough. Rarely do clients say thank you to a provider and in my opinion that wasn’t going to change. So they say…change “the” situation OR change “your” situation. I chose the latter.
In terms of my exit from Starr Tincup, well it happened fast but extremely gracefully. Although I fell out of love with “the model” I helped create, I loved the people I worked with, in fact, they’re the greatest team I’ve ever been affiliated with. I absolutely love, respect and trust my (former) business partner Bret Starr. But I needed a fresh start and I needed to get out of the outsourced marketing services game because it was killing me. I knew it, but I didn’t know how to get out of my own firm. Then it happened.
Bret threw me a life preserver. He purchased my equity in Starr Tincup via a promissory note. So in essence, I don’t have to work for several years. We agreed to the business valuation in 15 minutes. The payment terms took us 10 minutes to nail down. The actual legal agreement took only 9 business days to create and consummate. That’s what happens when you have business partners that love each other. I cleaned my office out on a Thursday; we told our employees on a Friday; I went back to work on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday; then I promptly went on vacation for a month. There’s no doubt that I will miss the agency world. I’ll miss my friends and colleagues at Starr Tincup and mostly I’ll miss my daily conversations with Bret. That said, I am relieved to be out of the game.
If you are reading this website and wondering if I compete with my former firm, the answer is “No.” They deliver things. Other than sage advice, I don’t deliver things. In addition, I don’t have a non-solicit, non-compete or non-disclosure agreement with Bret Starr or Starr Tincup. I’m free to do whatever my heart tells me to do.
