Welcome to our first post in many years. A do-over of sorts. A chance to make this space about more than just Catapult news and events. For our first article, I thought it would be interesting to revisit our first blog post ever, a post that keeps the spirit of what we want our blog to be. That was “The Top 5 Mistakes We Made Starting A Creative Agency.”

The original blog post was something of a hit. For our first three years that article was the most visited page on our website, and culminated in several hundred thousand views in total. We ended up writing more than 20 posts, but none of them generated even a fraction of the interest that that first blog post did. After two years of writing them semi-regularly, and another three years of stagnation, we decided to kill the blog entirely. No one had the time to write for it. We were so busy with work that was making us money, it seemed to no longer make sense to maintain a now atrophied limb of our website, just because that’s what a business is supposed to do. So it died… and none of us wept.

So much has changed for us (and for the world really) in these past years, that I began to wonder how these Top 5 Mistakes would resonate with me in hindsight. Our staff is larger, our office is bigger, the relationships we’ve made are more valuable, and the projects we take on are 5-10x the scope and cost that they once were. We still make mistakes, but we know how to navigate the consequences far more efficiently. Plus, wouldn’t it be great if our first post for this new blog could do as well as our first post did nine years ago? Absolutely. So let’s do this. Here are my current reflections on our original “Top 5 Mistakes We Made Starting A Creative Agency.”

This mistake still applies as a worthy lesson for us to remember in 2022, but for very different reasons. While RFPs are still something of a long-shot for any agency choosing to engage with them, we now have someone dedicated to proposal writing on our staff, which makes a huge difference in terms of time investment. Those huge projects we knew we were not fit for early on are now what we seek out and prefer. Today, it is less about not being able to “jump at every opportunity” than it is about “not being able to help everyone we’d like.”

We built Catapult on our ability to offer small businesses excellent work at a rate they could afford. These days, however, when we work with start-ups or mom-and-pop shops we have to be more selective. Is the project going to be exciting and give us the ability to produce great creative? Is the client fun, and easy to get along with? Do we have the time, right now, to take on a project we may not break even on, let alone make a small amount of profit with? These are all things we consider when the work starts chasing you and not the other way around. I am not going to lie, working with a corporate client’s marketing department can be a lot easier than working with a new CEO whose life is entirely wrapped up in their new business. You don’t want to turn clients away, but we have to find the right balance that keeps the lights on and keeps us fulfilled. We still love working with small businesses; they just have to be the right fit for us.

That first year of navigating who we were and who we wanted to be went through many tricky transitions. We had clients and we were executing work weeks before we selected our first business name, Thumbprint Creative. That lasted three days. Thumbs down. Next was Catapult Creative Collective, thinking that everyone we employed would have some sort of partner-like stake in the business, since four of us already did. We all really liked it. It gave a strong impression of what our business is about with just our name. And who doesn’t love alliteration? Thankfully we abandoned the “collectivist” idea fairly quickly. Four co-founders were already too many cooks in the kitchen. We shortened it to just Catapult Creative by mid-year.

In hindsight, our concerns over brand focus had little to do with our association with Pure Web Results or expanded service offerings, and everything to do with having so many things shift and change so quickly and in such a short amount of time. It was hard to see straight, let alone focus. Who we were was changing by the day. By 2014, we had moved our office downtown, doubled our staff, let a business partner go, gained another, and won some of the key projects that would put us on the map. Today, we are no longer associated with Pure Web Results, and in the past 5 to 6 years the primary components of our brand identity have really not changed much. It would seem that our brand focus was achieved simply by letting it develop more organically and by not “focusing” so much on boxing it in.

Today, I would retitle this mistake to “We Stopped Building A Network of Specialists,” based on the subject matter. But whether we are talking about “professional networking” or a “network of specialists,” the idea of building relationships to build your business still resonates. I would estimate that more than 50% of our new business comes through referrals from either clients, or just professionals who’ve gotten to know us over the past nine years. While we have become far less reliant on that “network of specialists,” our reliance on “professional networking” remains paramount to our success. We started engaging with some of Dayton’s top business leaders through our volunteer organization, Dayton Inspires, and our CEO, Matthew, sits on numerous boards of directors in the region. Heck, I’ve even sat on a couple of boards myself.

Of course, with the sudden onset of the Covid pandemic two years ago, nearly all of these opportunities came crashing to a halt. And boy did we feel it; as I am sure nearly every business has. All of our plans to start hitting trade shows and building our professional network out beyond southwest Ohio were vanquished. We suddenly became entirely reliant on Zoom call related word of mouth, and our website to help us bring in new business.

These relationships are really just so important to our success it cannot be overstated in any way. As Covid wanes once again and begins to become more endemic than pandemic, we are ecstatic to begin once again getting out there and being amongst our peers, meeting new folks and reminding old friends we are still here and going strong. A simple handshake can lead to so much more. But you have to get out there.

Now here is one mistake we never made again. There really is not much to reflect on here aside from just how naive and eager we were at the time to do something we all already knew was a bad idea to begin with. So I will say once again: Never Do Work Without A Contract.

This mistake feels more personal to me than any of the others do. It also feels like less of a mistake and more of a reality that I would eventually have to come to grips with. I still am not always having fun helping to run Catapult. And that’s ok. I am having a lot more fun now than I was at the beginning.

Generating creative concepts and designs really requires a relaxed mind in a playful state, and in our first two years of business we were overextended, underpaid, and stressed out to the max. We were barely scraping by and little did I know that three months after this post things would get even more dire, and we would come inches away from having to close Catapult forever. We all were wearing too many hats. I personally was trying to do everything I could to keep our expenses down such as managing our books and taxes, helping out with sales and proposal writing, playing HR representative, and taking out the trash. Little of my mental space was focused on doing what I was supposed to be there to do. Lead a team of creatives and execute great work. Was it even possible to do solid creative work under those conditions?

In the end we got through it. And now, I actually get to be a Creative Director, instead of a jack of all trades trying to plug holes all around me in what felt like a sinking ship. Our team is incredible and our efficiency in both landing work and getting it done to our standards has never been higher. Yes, Covid definitely took a toll on the fun. We are still not back at our office full time yet, if we ever really go back full time, and I miss playing ping pong and just hanging out and shooting the breeze with our staff. But, even through the most stressful parts of navigating our way through the pandemic, we never once felt as overwhelmed as we did during those first two years. It always felt like we’d get through this. We are surrounded by great people, talented people, people we can rely on, people who can make an hour long Zoom meeting fun and entertaining. Even during the lowest lows of the pandemic, we always kept our spirits up because we knew we would turn that next corner. We had already experienced the worst. And the worst was far behind us.

By Daniel Rizer
03/04/2022