Nigh eight years ago, I sat downward with my partner in criminal offence, Gavin Kelly, and nosotros fabricated one of the all-time decisions of our lives–we started our own design consultancy, Artefact. We were driven by the non so humble ambition to become the best digital design and innovation company in the world. And we call up nosotros are on the right path. But starting, running, and growing your own blueprint visitor has as well been a tremendous learning experience. With every achievement comes a new ready of challenges to overcome and lessons to larn. In the spirit of transparency, and with hope that by sharing the lessons nosotros accept learned nosotros could save swain designers some frustration, here are eight insights we've gleaned over the years.

The design industry is changing rapidly. At that place is a ton of business out there, but information technology has gotten a lot more competitive. Ever be ready to accommodate.


The design industry has changed dramatically since we founded Artefact almost eight years ago. In an manufacture that shifts as much equally ours does, you need to exist ready to constantly adjust, evaluate and improve along with it. You lot should know there is no such affair as a steady country.

Compared to when we started, there are many more businesses out at that place doing what we do, with more entering the loonshit every year. Early on, Artefact competed with the classic design consultancy legacies of companies like Ideo and Frog. Today, many different kinds of competitors take entered into the digital innovation and blueprint thinking fray, from McKinsey Digital to Accenture Digital, not to mention encroachment from the big digital agencies similar R/GA. The fact that so many different kinds of companies are now working in this infinite is attestation to the demand for our kind of expertise, but when need is stiff and then is the competition. A discussion almost starting your own agency would not exist complete without a little reality check about how hard it is to ready yourself apart these days.


Your ii biggest avails are your people and your reputation. Quality and creating a best identify to work is what drives profitability.

The only style to get a great reputation is to do great work. The only affair more important than doing great work is hiring keen people. That's the unproblematic undercover of doing business organization well. Information technology'south a cycle: hire well, do quality piece of work, get recommended and the quality of opportunities (for both piece of work and new hires) will improve.

The other part of doing great work is making sure you don't compromise on quality just because you are young, new to the business organization or plain hungry. When you lot start out, make sure you are being hyper vigilant almost your values, quality and integrity and avoid bad habits. The start gig you get with a client will exist how they cast you forever, so act every bit if you're a much more mature company doing infrequent piece of work (and then do that), because that's the only style yous will survive.


You can't blueprint culture. Simply you can design the conditions for a culture to come into existence and thrive.

Culture is a far subtler matter to design than a policy. Culture emerges from the values, policies, and behavior that you and your employees manifest each day. It's never static and always subject area to the tensions and moods of the people in the studio, the clients, and the business climate.

As an employer, yous have this relationship with people who came to piece of work for you and believe in yous. You accept to give them reciprocal amounts of trust back to create a place of piece of work where people desire to return the side by side mean solar day. At Artefact, nosotros dropped the corporate baggage adopted from previous employers for a much more trusting environment. Everyone gets the same corporeality of vacation, in that location is no limit on sick days, and employees tin can work from habitation as long equally they communicate with the people they are working with. As a result, we work in a much more egalitarian organization.

Showtime equally you mean to get on. The first projection you do with a client casts the mold forever.

Your all-time clients know your worth and will pay you for adept work. You should never work for less than you're worth and especially never piece of work for costless. It not but devalues your work, it devalues our whole discipline.

The rare exception to this is when the opportunity is so slap-up, relative to the investment, that you would be crazy not to go for it. But if you become down that path, become all in, and do it to win. These opportunities are often competitive and if you don't put in the work, your competitors volition. This goes back to the bespeak most reputation: the beginning chore y'all get with a client forever casts the mold for that relationship, and so make sure to outset out on the correct pes.


You lot don't have to like sales. Just yous accept to do information technology, and yous accept to be expert at information technology.

A consultancy is as much a design business as it is a relationship business. This is specially true when y'all kickoff outset out, considering your first client relationships can determine if you succeed or non. But it really doesn't change fifty-fifty after yous are more established. Even at present, 70% to lxxx% of our work is echo business as a issue of existing connections we have cultivated over time, with the assist of keen people and a great reputation, of grade (see Insight No. 2).

The business has two temperatures. Scolding hot and ice cold.

When the concern is thriving, yous'll wonder if yous can grow speedily plenty to go on up. In the opposite country, you'll wonder if you lot've lost your mojo. You take to be resilient enough to go on a steady hand on the business and a balanced response to concern conditions. Practice not panic.

Here are the hush-hush numbers to starting and maintaining your agency: three out of 4 of your employees should exist at to the lowest degree lxx% billable in a given year, later on adding your turn a profit margin to all your expenses. Don't let those proportions go out of whack.

Utilise slow times to invest in initiatives that help you grow as an arrangement or within an manufacture. At Artefact, we take a big-movie vision for what success looks like and we invest in areas we are passionate nearly. Initiatives like our internal innovation programme Startefact and passion areas like borough appointment and health care assist u.s.a. even out the extremes and maintain an environment of constant development.

Your only existent ability: say no and walk away. Focus on what yous believe and what you are great at.

You would be surprised at how oft maxim "no" really results in a more positive consequence. The honesty generates more than respect from your client and the relationships that result are often stronger. It's truthful what they say: beingness principled is a fine affair.

Practise information technology for the right reasons. Because in that location are ii exit strategies: decease and quitting.


In order to build a neat consultancy, you demand to call up long-term. Beginning an bureau considering you lot love the idea of working with bully clients on a massive variety of exciting projects and you want some degree of autonomy over your destiny and legacy. If you lot are starting an bureau in an endeavor to exercise something else, then you are choosing a risky and roundabout path. Eventually, most agencies fold; some figure out leadership succession plans and a very small fraction (think winning-the-lottery) sell their business to a bigger business organisation and survive the cultural transformation that results. Starting a consulting visitor is not a get-rich-quick plan or a startup; but when things are running well information technology'south a not bad and fulfilling life.

Artefact's other co-founder, Gavin Kelly, and I agree–Artefact is the best thing we've always done in our careers. It has not always been a smooth ride, only we set out to make a visitor that was world course and that is what nosotros've got. I'm effectually people I respect and want to come to work with every twenty-four hour period. I'm inspired by what we can and do attain every twenty-four hours. I'm challenged day in and day out to help united states of america realize our full potential. What more could you ask of your career?