In-house vs out-sourced

Companies hate hiring agencies, and I totally get it. You’ve got to hear all their dullard pitches, then you have to onboard the lucky winner, then you have to pay them, and then you IMMEDIATELY don’t trust them at all because… well, they’re an external agency, ergo CHARLATANS laughing as they cash in your cheques and drink champagne on the back of your hard work. Probably.

So wouldn’t it be better to get someone in-house? Your own secret weapon that squirrels away in the cold corner of the office, delving into his/her/they/them little black book and introducing you to companies you only ever dreamt of being told “go away” by previously?

Well yes. And no. But mostly “no”.

Obviously I’m likely to say that because I want you to chose us as your new business agency, but I also have some quite compelling arguments to support that entirely biased point of view.

1) Oh, so you WANT to be a Sales Manager?

Yes, now you have to manage this person (assuming you want to keep an eye on what they’re up to. Oh, did I not mention that you’ll also immediately not trust them either? Totally. You’re going to need to put some KPIs in place, set some activity targets, appraise them, etc etc. I’m not saying an agency doesn’t take some management, but the whole point of hiring an agency is that they are already an operation with managers, systems, databases, reporting structures, etc. However, once Johnny or Jane is set up, who’s to say if that ‘networking meeting’ isn’t them taking their best mates to Yauatcha for a blow out?

You thought you’d be that cool guy that lets them get on with their job, but once three months has gone by with nary but a handful of people who want you to ‘keep in touch’ I guarantee you’ll be squinting at them through the crack in the adjoining door if they spend more than three minutes NOT on the phone.

2) I can’t keep writing.

This blog has gone on too long and I’ve already made an excellent point. Perhaps I’ll complete it in a different post.

Anyway. Hire us. THE END.

Don't expect New Business to sweep the leg

In the CLASSIC movie, Karate Kid, Mr Miyagi gets Daniel-san to clean his cars under the pretense of teaching him karate (by the way, I’m talking here about the original film, not that horrible remake with Will Smith’s cocky kid where you want to punch and drown him after five minutes). The “you work, I teach” manoeuvre from Miyagi is a genius move in the history of child labour and one I wager we’ll not see the likes of again in our lifetime.

Anyway, after LIKE FOREVER Mr Miyagi finally reveals that the moves involved in cleaning the cars are (very loosely, let’s be honest) related to the karate moves that are going to enable him to put other children into hospital (GREAT life lessons like this are littered throughout the film).

I studied Wadō-ryū myself under the legendary sensei, Yoshitsugu Shinohara, and never once did he trick me into learning karate. He’d simply say, “when someone tries to punch you in the face, move your arm up to block it”. In retrospect I feel somewhat cheated that he didn’t instead have me installing blinds in his kitchenette. Anyway, he’s dead now, so… lesson learned.

Still here? Wow. Thanks.

So, what you’ve ‘probably’ guessed from all this is… when bringing in a team of experts such as Sponge NB to do your new business, don’t expect to just be told “if you do {THING} you will immediately get {RESULT}”. It’s not that we’re going to have you cleaning our cars or anything (probably) it’s just that - like Mr Miyagi - we believe that a longer process without pressure actually leads to better, stronger and more sustainable outcomes.

Now we could simply tell you to block the punch on Monday and then enter you into the All Valley Karate Championship Tournament on Tuesday, but - frankly - you will end up in hospital with at least a punctured spleen. Being told the basic premise of a process isn’t the same as understanding it, working on it and benefiting from it.

We’d rather have you cleaning cars (again - for clarity - this IS a metaphor) for a while (and in real terms that might mean creating bespoke creds, compiling a solid database, practicing pitches, etc) before punching you in the face (again METAPHOR).

Look, we’ve all had a lot of fun with this blog, but in a word: New Business.

(Sayonara).

Keep your claims believable

Everyone exaggerates (as an award-winning, 6” 5’ muscular gold medallist with perfect teeth, I understand).

I also appreciate that no one ever misses a chance to take credit for something not necessarily down to them. I was once a celebrated PR in the video games industry. I even held some records for the most magazine covers ever for the games I looked after. These were, however, some brilliant games (Unreal, Duke Nukem, Driver… etc.). So, while I like to think I did a great job, it was kinda hard to fail with a roster of games the world was gagging for.

I personally take more pride in the really crap games that I got ANY PR traction for - they were the ones where I actually did something impressive. But if I was going to sell myself to you as a PR expert, which would I mention? Yes - the sexy stuff, of course.

However, when you present your ‘sexy stuff’, don’t push things too far. I will believe that your Twitter campaign helped push a brand deeper into consumers’ minds, but telling me the company saw a 400% increase in sales ‘because’ of your Twitter campaign… hmmm… well you just went from being a credible part of the story to sounding like a BS artist (and once I stop trusting what you say, even the honest stuff will fall of deaf ears).

Remember that the people you’re telling your stories too will know what they might expect from your part in the campaign. Whether you’re creating a logo, running social media or media buying, you will have a positive impact on the outcomes, but it won’t all be down to you.

Be humble and believable and i’ll both credit you for the work and credit you for being smart enough to be reasonable and honest.

New business and social media

Following 678 - Followers 8

It’s my strong belief that anything you do when it comes to self-promotion should directly be linked to winning new business. Social media has become a quick and easy way to share results, key announcement and the work you actually produce. It can, however, also become an albatross around your neck (or at least several pigeons if you don’t have albatross in your region).

One quick exercise… take a look at your followers on any given social platform that you actively spend time posting on. How many of those might one day become customers, and how many are simply other agencies that want to keep an eye on you (or followed you back because you followed them)?

I imagine the ratio is pretty heavily weighted towards peers rather than future customers (let’s be honest, what are the chances BA’s Marketing Director follows loads of design agencies on Instagram?)

So, the larger question is, why are you spending all this time showing off to your competitors? Is it to prove you’re better than them? Is it to gather those eight ‘likes’ from chums in the industry who appear to spend their lives looking for things to like?

If you put all your time posting on social media down as building “good brand awareness” you’re simply trying to justify a massive waste of time in your day. The time you’ve spent showing off on social media could have been spent reaching out to potential customers.

Stop trying to make people who will never employ you think “oooh, how clever”.

Every time you get the urge to prove how clever you are, instead impress me by writing a great email to a potential client. You might not get any ‘likes’ that day but you might make a new connection and win some business.

New business: impressive versus realistic

Before I was involved with Sponge New Business, I didn’t even know the new business sector existed. I’d sit in my office being pestered by various agencies (I was a senior marketing decision-maker), never for once thinking it wasn’t the actual staff themselves getting in touch. This is either a testament to the job being done by those reaching out to me, or a testament to how stupid I am. Take your pick.

Once I was aware and involved in the sector I started researching the different business development companies to see how their offerings varied. Though it’s a fairly busy sector, it seemed the companies I encountered were easily pigeonholed into two boxes: they were either focused on delivering the lean, tough scraps achievable in this sector, or they lied through their teeth about the HUNDREDS of opportunities they were going to bring to the table just to win the business.

When pitching to new potential clients it seems we have two options: we can either tell them what they’d love to hear, or tell them the truth.

When I was in PR, people would ask for guaranteed coverage from our activities. I’d tell them “You’re thinking of advertising; that’s not how PR works”.

Similarly, if you’re shopping for new business agencies and REALLY like the sound of their proposal, you’re probably on the cusp of disappointment.

#fearpromises

The promise(s) of New Business

A recent Semrush study (“How Companies Look for Marketing Agencies”) spat out some great facts and figures for me to base blog entries on.

One of my favourite parts of this report was a “Top Ten” of the biggest red flags that turn businesses off and affect an agency’s chance of success. There are some obvious candidates in the mix (poor communication, lack of expertise, etc.) but in at number three is “overpromising results”.

This is an incredibly hard one to get right and we’ve fallen foul of it ourselves many many times - not so much in the delivery stage, but in the pitch stage.

It’s a moral dilemma as much as anything: do I lie to you now to win the business (but have to face you when the exaggerated results never appear) or do I tell the truth from the start, setting things up realistically but risking not being hired to begin with?

We’ve always chosen to be honest from the very start but (I won’t lie) I’ve often wondered if we’d win more business if we just promised the moon to trick new clients onboard (I’m pretty sure others out there are doing that as standard).

The report isn’t necessarily geared towards a new business agency such as Sponge, but the dilemma remains none the less: how do you balance promising the kinds of results the client wants to hear versus the kind of results you believe are achievable?

The answer is… “I don’t know” (oh sorry - you thought I knew? Apologies!)

I would however suggest promising the kinds of results that are going to challenge your team. That way, even if you miss certain KPIs along the way, your client will - one would hope - certainly be able to see and appreciate the effort being put in.

Good luck. Oh and watch out for the minefield on your right.

Why Marketing Directors are always angry.

THE UNFAIR TRUTH:

If a product does well, it’s because of the Sales Director. If a product doesn’t do well, it’s because of the Marketing Director. The packaging was all wrong. The demographic was way off. We should have spent less on outdoor and more online. We should have spent less online and more outdoor. We should have gone with that bold font and not italicised. Etcetera.

THAT is why Marketing Directors are always angry.

That’s also why Marketing Directors get furious when marketing agencies pretend to operate in 'The Same Space’.

If you look at a senior Marketing Director’s LinkedIn page you’ll probably see a few ‘likes’ per week or month, the odd “well done team” post, and lots of recruitment stuff.

If you look at any marketing agency boss’ LinkedIn page you’ll see them variously sharing photos of the latest word they’ve been paid thousands to change the font of, or - if you’re really lucky - find some click-desperate imbecile doing push-ups, singing or recreating his favourite movie scenes in a galling attempt to get as many ‘likes’ and ‘love’ from similarly spare-time-rich agency owners.

To quote a colleague: LinkedIn has become an agency circle-jerk.

I was once told by a junior colleague that she never sent emails to marketing directors after 4:15pm on a Friday because “they’ve probably gone home”. I slapped her (I didn’t). If you think that the more senior you are, the more you can skive off and get away with doing nothing, you’re wrong.

The more senior you are, the longer the hours you work, the more conference calls with Australia or America you’re on (neither of which give a shit whether it’s 6am or 6pm for you) and the more pressure and responsibility falls on your shoulders as your knees buckle and the bags form under your eyes.

These days it’s way easier to take conference calls remotely, but back in the day you were trapped in your office, huddled around some primitive speaker phone, watching as the office emptied while you calculated just how late you’d be home for that revered lamb bhuna and two bottles of red.

When some 42-year old man-child with a backward baseball cap turns up at your office, flamboyantly parks his electric scooter and then moon-walks into your office to tell you why “Monttocks Script Font is going to be huge this year”, all you can think about is repeatedly punching his corpse while you take beasting from the Americans because THEY know how you SHOULD have launched that product in Italy last month (but, strangely, didn’t mention anything until it failed).

So, apart from the personal therapeutic value in venting my spleen, what’s the point of this?

The point - you ass clowns - is that if you want to appeal to the Marketing Directors you want to hire you, act like they do, not how your peers do. If creative agency #317 are doing ‘hilarious’ videos on LinkedIn and racking up tens of comments, take a look at how many ‘buyers’ are in that list of likes. Any Heads of Marketing in there? Any Marketing Directors looking for a new agency (and making the decision based on some middle-aged prat in an overly-patterned shirt juggling cabbages)? No. Don’t be fucking stupid. Professionals want to work with professionals. Otherwise they’d be teachers.

When you’re a proper Marketing Director your life mostly sucks. They try to compensate by paying you lots of money and letting you fly Premium Economy, but ultimately that’s not enough. Pity the Marketing Director, empathise with the Marketing Director and - for god’s sake - don’t breakdance during a pitch to a Marketing Director; we WILL kill you.

One final thought: “Monttocks”.

Care about what your customer cares about, not what you care about

Not the punchiest title ever, but it saves me writing a long blog.

IN A NUTSHELL: Never forget that when you launch you own company’s third ‘new’ rebranded website of the year… or unveil the new version of your logo (that took months but is effectively much the same)… etc etc. NONE of this matters to your customer, so don’t make a fuss about your own housekeeping. ALWAYS make a fuss of them.

Companies get bored and do things to feel like they are moving forward (we had a client who spent a month ‘refining’ an About Us page that almost no one will ever read!) Don’t try to ‘present’ these things to your clients. They mostly just want your best work at your best price in a timely fashion.

Focus on that and you’ll have the resources to rebrand yourself every month while the rest of the world gets on with some proper work.

Cold outreach - when when when

I was going to headline this blog with “quando quando quando” but realised it would ruin our SEO so thought better of it. None the less, a big question in new business is often “when?” and the answer is - always, and without exception - “now”.

If you’re thinking about initiating some cold outreach, do it “now”. If you’re wondering what month to schedule it into your 2022 plans, go for “now”. And if you’re looking back at 2021 wondering if you should have done some cold outreach, the answer is “now” (even though I appreciate it makes no sense in that context and “yes” would have worked much better).

The truth is, there’s no ‘perfect’ time to initiate cold outreach; you just have to do it.

Obviously summer holidays and key celebrations are quieter times, but you’ll always be able to find an excuse to NOT do some cold outreach, so just get on with it.

Success in new business comes from tenacity, having an organised approach, and putting in the time it takes (which is not inconsiderable). January too early? February still too early? March too near the end of the quarter? April too Eastery? May too late into Q2? June too near the end of Q2? etc.

See how easy it is to do nothing?

Seriously. There is no perfect time to start your cold outreach, but the worst time to not be doing some is right now. So stop reading this excellent blog and get some work done (the colder, the better),

Your job title says it all

I’m going to trust that you’re an intelligent person because you’ve chosen to read this excellent content. Because I trust you’re an intelligent person I almost don’t need to write the actual commentary for this blog. Let’s just say that it’s about stupid job titles people give themselves in the world of agencies. Here are some 100% genuine and real ones I’ve encountered of late. Take a look and then we’ll talk:

SEO Ninja, Magic Maker, Digital Overlord, Director of Storytelling, Social Media Ninja, Brand Strategy Guru, Web Alchemist, Wizard of Light Bulb Moments, Brand Warrior, Head of Chaos, Community Data Guerrilla, Idea Inventor, Social Media Rockstar, Online Community and Social Media Czar.

I could go on (and I’m sure you’ve encountered some real tools yourself) but let’s leave it at that ridiculous list.

I’ve had a number of job titles in my career, but all of them just described what I do.

Someone once referred to me as a “whizz kid”, someone else a “proper legend” (which was nice) but I’m not going to adopt any of those as my actual job title because it’s stupid. There are no ninjas in social media. To manipulate social media to its maximum potential you need to analyse the data, track trends, deploy smart, targeted content... etc. There’s nothing ‘ninja’ about it.

I’m only just starting to accept the word “ideation” (such is my distain for BS) but calling yourself a “Wizard of Light Bulb Moments” just ensures I refuse to connect with you on LinkedIn and will definitely never work with you because I’d be too embarrassed to introduce you to my colleagues.

Stop trying to impress me with your ‘creative’ job title; impress me instead with your business acumen (I’m pretty sure I’ll come up with my own nicknames for you as we go).

Awards and New Business

And the 'Meh' award goes to...

Yes, it’s time to dust off your tuxedo (along with my cynicism) because award season is upon us. Worried about the cost of hiring a new business agency? Why not blow it all on the pursuit of meaningless awards instead! All you have to lose are the entry fees, all the time you’ll waste filling in forms and submitting material, and the cost of a prestige table on awards night (why not sponsor the coat room too!)

But just think of the gains: You might be one a scant 100 or so companies that night (that week) that get to put an award logo on their site that 1) is lost in the sea of other meaningless awards on EVERYONE’S sites already, and 2) brings in no additional business because NO ONE chooses an agency because it’s won an award (primarily because there are apparently no non-award winning agencies out there anyway).

ANY NEW BUSINESS?

I will vaguely tip my hat towards the value of being yet another award-winning agency when it comes to attracting staff. Ego is as ego does, and who doesn’t want to work for an award-winning company?

Whether you’re struggling to find a new business professional to look after your outgoing pursuits (there is a serious lack of them right now) or just want to attract fresh, hungry talent, perhaps the odd award logo does tip the scales for those envisioning themselves in one of those group “winners on a stage somewhere waving a plastic statue” photos.

I’ve asked before… what is it you do in your day that moves your company forward. If you can think of anything more valuable than filling in awards submissions and booking Travelodge rooms for the night after, do that instead.

Oh, and good luck (because we all know you’re still going to enter, don’t we).

The language of New Business

The language of New Business (a.k.a. the importance of manure)

When you’re about to hit ‘Publish’ on your latest website update, do me a favour - participate in a little role playing (before you reach for the PVC mask, let me explain…)

Imagine you’re a really stressed Marketing Director whose American counterpart is really pissing him off by putting the Q2 budgets under a biased magnifying lens. Can you do that for me?

Ok, great. Now imagine you’re about to receive the fifth email of the morning from a brand/digital/marketing/design agency, and try to imagine the voice he hears in his head as he reads about how you “really get under the skin of your customers” or “bring brands alive online”. What’s that you say? you “…move at pace, act with integrity and collaborate relentlessly”? Well that’s smashing.

You know how perky and impressive your statements all sounded when you read them out in your proud voice? It doesn’t sound the same at all when you simply don’t care does it? Instead it sounds like a dullard spewing tired clichés into a tin bucket.

Now that you know the recipient’s frame of mind, why not write the next email without trying to impress him. Instead, HELP him. Don’t tell him you’ve “built a frictionless design ops platform”, tell him (brace yourself) that you can help. Tell him how you’ve helped people just like him and are going to make his day better.

Don’t talk crap, just talk.

In it for the likes

“Please like and subscribe” has become the modern day deal with the devil. “If you want to look at this THING, you have to become one of the stats that helps me monetise the THING”.

With something like YouTube, there’s a very simple and obvious monetising mechanic. However, don’t think for a minute that your heartfelt post on LinkedIn about returning hostages, invaded countries (or whatever’s the topic du jour) is just you sharing your inner thoughts because you’re a profoundly deep person and simply “have” to tell your audience how affected you are.

If you were really affected by something, you’d be off work talking to your mum or best friend about it, not broadcasting to a bunch of agency people you met at a conference in 2019 (who then joined your network in case you had some work for them and/or they had some work for you).

The fact that you’ve chosen to talk about non-business matters on a business platform can come over as a tad opportunist. If you’re thinking that’s a harsh appraisal, ask yourself how many times you checked to see the number of ‘likes’ you’d racked up on your latest earnest post. Why would you care about likes unless you’d hoped to boost your profile? People don’t talk to therapists to be told they’re great story-tellers…

Anyway, I’m being overly-mean because I’m trying to make a point, but why not impress and inspire people on LinkedIn with your business prowess, not by looking deep into the lens and tearfully sharing your thoughts on a plight that barely impacts on your life.

Point made (now LIKE and SUBSCRIBE for more tips on HOW TO DO NEW BUSINESS).

New business agencies. What's it all about?

New business agencies are far less rare now than when we started. In 2004, there were probably fewer than 10 of us. There were a few good ones (us, Icebreaker, Teeming, a coupla others maybe) and few okay ones and a few dreadful ones (one was investigated by the OFT!). There were also some really great business development consultants out there doing great work. And some naff ones bashing out bad phone calls. Most of the new business agencies targeted London advertising agencies. A few of the business development agencies were headed up by former agency directors. It was all a bit....close. Then came Sponge NB.

Sponge NB

I'm Steve and I started Sponge in 2004 after deciding that my employer wasn't as good as me. To this day, I'm probably the least sociable of the new biz people. I really don't want to go and have a beer with my competitors (apparently they do that, but it's just not me). Quite quickly, we annoyed a few people (one of our biggest competitors sent a snotty email to an agency boss because they'd hired us over him. Mostly we did good work, though a few dodgy staff members did our reputation no good. Someone who shall remain nameless but will recognise himself if he's reading this was literally the laziest person I've ever encountered. We had some stars - Katie Butterworth who has gone on to be a proper marketing lady at M&S. Kim Peatling, who is now a business development director at a huge agency, reaping deserved success. Of our current team, Jon is a long-serving and effective business developer - and he's surrounded by some of the best we've ever had. But being good at this isn't always a guarantee of success. And sometimes it's not even a guarantee of courtesy.

Bad clients

Look, we've screwed up over the years. It happens. It's never been through lack of effort, endeavour or skill. Sometimes mistakes happen - or the fit is just wrong. And then there's the time I had an agency boss threaten to throw a cup of tea over me for not hitting an imagined target. Or the time the Deputy MD of a PR agency was so rude to a team member that we decided to resign the account with no notice. And then they fired us, giving full notice. So I kept quiet and we toasted their departure with a good beer. And the one who refused to pay because they didn't like one of our emails. I could go on. A recent client swore at me in our briefing day and then tried to bully us into accepting zero payment for months of work.

Good clients

We've had some true gems over the years too. Current and past clients including thehouse, Tannahill Reay, Chase & Co, Tangerine, Patter, Sparekeys, 20:20 London, Vine Insights and a long, long list of others have been supportive, patient, collaborative and helped to develop a mutual respect that made projects fly. We've helped clients win business worth £800k and others win a £300 t-shirt design job.

18 years later...

We're one of the established business development consultancies now. We're still relatively small (we got a lot bigger a few years ago and I hated it) and I like that I'm still involved in our clients' projects every day. We're more consultative than ever and we have a huge asset in Matt Broughton - our former Atari Marketing Director. He's horrible to our clients. That's not true. But he's brutally honest about their cold outreach collateral. It's like having a tamed prospect on your team. and our research capabilities are first class. We don't buy in bulk lists - we create targeted databases of qualified prospects. We're worth our fee, more than ever before. There are far more players in our game than when we started - for good and bad. Some of the dreadful ones are still hovering around. And some of the scarily good ones (Treacle, The Advertist, a few others) are breathing down our neck too.

And we still enjoy getting our teeth into an agency's value proposition, creating seller and buyer personas, writing smart emails and building outreach strategies. We can do those things (and more) for you, if you like. We'd like that.

Agency new business emails

You’re using email to approach potential new clients (aren’t you?), but knowing what to put in them is hard. So here are some simple strategies and tips to help you.

Research

If you’re going to hit someone up using email, research them and their company. Use the info you find to truly personalise the outreach. If you’re automating, make the entire first paragraph a content field and tailor it if you want to make an impact.

Use your research to guide your subject line. Everyone hates cheesy subject lines and they can spot a “Hey [firstname]!” a mile off.

Use simple tools to find the golden nuggets of inspiration. Google News is great, newsnow.co.uk is great - there are hundreds of resources to make your emails pop.

Design

You’re gonna hate this, but ditch the flashy templates. If you want to seem like you’ve just tapped out an email to someone individually, it needs to look like that. So design it by not designing it.

Opening lines

Make it about them, using that research you’ve now done. If you can’t figure out how to phrase it without sounding false, try something like “I was supposed to be doing detailed research into [COMPANYNAME] but I ended up nerding out over your new range of [NERDYPRODUCT]”. Human tone beats polished copy every time.

What to sell

Nothing. Don’t just describe services at them, as if they’re someone who really needs a creative agency but has forgotten how to use their search engine. Focus on outcomes - these are not always numerical - and you can work backwards to the process proposition. A paragraph that basically says “You know how keeping your best team members is tough but worthwhile? well we make it a lot less tough - look, here’s us doing it for [IMPRESSIVECASESTUDY]” will beat a load of patented processes any day.

Calls to action

Ask for what you want, simply and directly. “Can we have a conversation next Monday afternoon - I think it’ll be more than worth 15 minutes of your day and I’m not going to turn salesy?” will do it, as will many other simple and direct CTAs. As long as you have one and it clearly asks for a thing to happen. Never send cold outreach without telling someone what happens next.

Stages

Create follow-up emails but maintain the human tone. With any email copy, if you can read it in the style of a DFS advert or it’d slip easily into your creds PDF then it’s wrong.

There’s more. There’s always more. But the above will keep you in the right zone. Imagine the sort of email you’d respond to. Bet it’d be simple, direct, personable and I very much doubt it’d be in a gorgeous HTML template. And I bet you’d be more likely to respond if the person had done you the courtesy of doing a little research before crashing into your inbox.

Steve Fair can be found writing all sorts of business development content on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/spongenb/

Avoid fun; stay focused

No one seems to mention ‘time and motion’ studies anymore, but in “the old days” they were all the rage. Many of the processes I was forced to go through to establish just how effective I was being have (fortunately) stayed with me throughout my (depressingly long) career.

Though time and motion studies were all about the search for “the most efficient method of doing a task” they’re still worth bearing in mind now, especially if you consider keeping your business alive as “a task”.

Ask yourself this: What is the single activity that keeps your business alive?

Is it maintaining a client base that’s been unchanged in 10 years? Is it bringing in new clients because you only ever do project work so have no retainers? Is it reading blogs because they’re so darn interesting?

Chances are, a lot of the things you do every day aren’t things that really have an impact on your success; they’re just things you like to do (and you’ve become very good at making seem reasonable and legitimate so that you can keep doing them).

“Networking” is a CLASSIC way of doing something fun by making it sound legitimate, but anything that takes you away from activities that genuinely matter to your business will - of course - slow your progress.

You could argue that doing ‘fun things’ benefits your company because it’s good for your mental health - and that’s a BRILLIANT card to play - but at least be honest with yourself. Have some fun, don’t pretend it achieves anything, but then get stuck back in. At the very worst you can see the ‘real work’ as earning the brownie points required to allow yourself the next fun thing.

Now stop reading blogs and go do some real work!