“business insight for the modern marketing firm”—sept 22, 2016.

a brand new seminar intensive from

recourses: david c. bakernashville, at the all-new music center center, sept 22, 2016

a gathering of disciplined + courageous + intelligent + modern creative leaders.

eager to thrive as experts in this new business landscape.

to do good work with a great team for clients who respect them.

A core belief that informs my advisory work with independent, expert marketing firms is this: firms fail or thrive based almost entirely on the quality of their business decisions. However creative you are, unless your business is run on sound principles you’re not going to be around long, and your actual and potential clients won’t benefit from your expertise.

Overlaid on that simple fact is the modern landscape within which your work thrives. There’s more collaboration, new tools, the democratization of expertise, millions of possible clients, thousands of competitors, and hundreds of voices in your head claiming to have the secret.

How do you make sense of all this? What principles are still true and which have thankfully been rewritten in a new world?

How about taking one day out of your hectic schedule to sit and reflect, learning from a gentle expert within the context of 50 other smart principals who will be honest with you about their own journey.

Let’s start with the purpose and why for what you do. How do we balance the competing interests of making money, having impact, and loving what you do. Given the importance of culture, what’s important to you and how will you orchestrate a place to work where you want to go every day?

We’re all in this to earn money, but there are ways to actually create wealth and even beyond that to change your family tree. Getting from here to there requires understanding your business and the different levers that you can pull to change the results. We’ll help you construct a simple dashboard to achieve this.

We really need to talk about growth, too. Growth seems to be the holy grail that few people understand, both the how and why of growth.

What can you ignore while you grow? How do you break bad habits formed while chasing growth when you settle down to make money again? (Attend the session tomorrow if you want to talk about succession options.) What are the signs that growth is out of control? How do you tame it? How do you prioritize growth decisions? Where does the money come from? How far out should the troops be from the supply lines? You’ll have far more interesting conversations at the bar after this section.

Whether you’re adding people or not, shaping your own role is difficult but critical. What should you be doing? What should you not be doing? How does that change with a partner? Completely master this question to find a comfortable place for yourself.

Closely related to that is what the supporting cast will look like. What positions should be on-site and/or full-time? How do you manage the dance between account service and project management? Most importantly, how do you influence a culture where team members are lining up waiting to work for you when a slot opens up?

Beneath all this planning is a critical decision that we cannot escape, and that’s

how to position your firm so that it’s less interchangeable in the marketplace. So that you can maintain a price premium and direct the client relationship (instead of the inmates clients running the asylum). From there we’ll talk about a few effective lead generation ideas for our new age.

Finally, the future is coming so quickly that we’d better start planning it now since it’ll be here sooner than the last future was.

I hope you can join us in Nashville on Thursday, September 22. We’ve priced it so that most anyone can come.

the new marketer + the right business insight = remarkable results.

THURSDAY, SEPT 22

9:00 to 9:45 Introduction and Introductions 10:00 to 10:30 Nailing the Why for What You Do 10:30 to 12:00 A Few Sensible Financial Metrics 12:00 t0 1:00 Lunch, On Your Own with Other Attendees 1:00 to 1:30 Demystifying Growth 1:30 to 2:00 Crafting Your Own Role Thoughtfully and Sustainably 2:15 to 3:00 Who and How and When to Hire 3:00 to 3:45 Using Your Positioning to Charge More and Direct Client Relationships 4:00 to 4:30 Future-Proofing Your Agency

PRICE$400 for tickets 1–16.$560 for tickets 17–32.$720 for tickets 33–50.

Payment due in full at registration. Tuition fees are non-refundable. Substitutes welcome at any point, though, and registrations can be transferred to any event within one year. Principals/partners and senior leaders will be most comfortable. Travel and accommodations and meals are not included. Multiple attendees from the same firm should each complete an individual registration. Inquire about discount for three or more attendees from the same firm. No discountes for subsequent events, unfortunately.

ACCOMMODATIONSWe aren’t holding a room block, but there are two dozen hotels within walking distance of the venue.

REGISTRATIONTo register, please follow this link:

https://2016bizinsight.eventbrite.com

help us put the right group together.

Is this a fit for me? That’s the question I’d ask in your shoes, so let me take a stab at giving you a candid answer.

Most everyone here will be a partner/principal or a very senior decision maker. Either way, you’ll get the most

benefit if two things are true.

First, you have access to the firm’s financial data. Second, you are in a position to impact the firm’s performance or culture or positioning, etc., either directly (by making changes) or indirectly (by

making recommendations to someone who can).

There will be no forced disclosure of your firm’s financial performance, but it will be useful if you can run a few calculations on your own numbers. We’ll illustrate

how to calculate them and then guide you in doing it for yourself.

As with all of our seminars, there will be an open environment of helpful sharing, but that’s certainly voluntary on your part.

We’ve priced this one-day seminar so that all the partners can come together. Depending on where you live, you could easily fly in the night before and leave the same day of the seminar, minimizing your time away from the office. Or stay for

Friday’s event on succession. And maybe even tack on a weekend in Nashville.

behind the scenes.

DAVID C. BAKERUnderstanding marketing is a pursuit of endless depth because it involves an attempt to understand elusive Humans.

Flying airplanes and helicopters gives me context and perspective.

Capturing images tops off my artistic soul and expresses it more kindly.

Music theory and vocal performance majors merge math and linguistics.

Growing up with a

Mayan tribe incorporates anthropology and history.

Learning eleven languages and theology leaves me loving language.

Visiting thirty plus countries helps me define

“best” in different ways.

Consulting is something I understand as meaningful conversations, appropriate venues for applying intellect, and the helpful pressure to articulate.

I see myself as part researcher, part scientist, and part educator. In that role, I have worked with 800+ firms around the world, just like yours.

Images + Copy + Design, using Frutiger LT Std. ©2016 ReCourses, Inc. All rights reserved.

This seminar is planned, delivered, and owned by ReCourses, Inc., the vehicle through which David C. Baker provides business insight to expert marketing firms as an author, speaker, and advisor.