We’ve formalized our business development process here at Three Point Four. New Client Month helped us better understand our business and the ways we want to grow it.
Previously, we would reach out to people and then follow up to remind them we exist. We’re still doing that—I’ve found that when I talk to people at agencies and studios as small as us and much, much larger that their biz dev process is more or less the same—but we’re doing it more often, tracking what happens, and then discussing strategic ways to capitalize on a potential lead or other avenues to explore. We didn’t feel the need to invest in a CRM, we just built out our own custom spreadsheet detailing the client relationship (and how we’re managing it). The other day our accountant said “a CRM is only as good as what you put into it,” and so far we have taken his advice to heart and put a lot of work into it.
Onto the links.
An Article
There’s plastic in everything now. This Times piece is horrifying (but you also probably knew and/or assumed a lot of this stuff?).
There is plastic in our bodies; it’s in our lungs and in our bowels and in the blood that pulses through us. We can’t see it, and we can’t feel it, but it is there. It is there in the water we drink and the food we eat, and even in the air that we breathe. We don’t know, yet, what it’s doing to us, because we have only quite recently become aware of its presence; but since we have learned of it, it has become a source of profound and multifarious cultural anxiety.
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A Project
New Dropbox work went live this week. Happy with how this one turned out. We’ll have another video we produced for them out in the world soon as well.
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A Book
Currently fully immersed in Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver’s epic about a kid growing up in Appalachia (this dramatically undersells it—it’s one of the best books, line-for-line, I’ve read in a long time and the characters are so moving I had to put the book down). Whenever I tell someone I’m reading Demon Copperhead they have either read it (or are reading it) or had a conversation that same day with someone who has read it (or is reading it). It’s that good. Believe all the hype!
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A Movie
Our local movie theater played the 1997 classic Face/Off on the big screen last Friday. It’s a delightfully insane action movie. Nic Cage as John Travolta, John Travolta as Nic Cage? A gratuitous boat chase scene? Yes, and I’d also like a very large bucket of buttered popcorn with that.
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A Run
I’m on the mend after surgery for my broken collarbone, filling in Noah with inane recovery details via Slack. I’ve been spending a lot of time riding a stationary bike in the garage and was able to go for my first run last week, and even got to see my favorite neighborhood dog Peggy pictured above. We’re easing back into things here at Three Point Four Ann Arbor.
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Thanks, as always, for listening. Noah will be with you in two weeks.