Challenges of a fast-growing service company and how we overcame them

Growing fast should be so great! Would say anyone not seeing fast growth. In the recent year, ForwardMedia revenues grew x4 compared to the previous year. And that brought challenges, especially in the times of skyrocketing price increase for everything, globally.

ForwardMedia went through a transformation in the recent years, going from video production for ads, online content, representative needs, to full-stack digital marketing content creation for SMEs and startups. UX-agnostic and sales-funnel powered websites and e-commerce sites, integrated CRMs, inbound marketing content as blogs, newsletters, social media content, Youtube, Insta and Fb videos and representative videos, photography and graphic design, aerial videos and 360' virtual tours, etc. Everything that supports non-paid database development and audience engagement for future customer acquisition.

Growing in such speed has been fun and inspiring experience but also challenging, especially when facing the burnout and "I do not want to work at all" era. Some challenges and takeaways of how we overcome this are listed below. Really appreciate our CTO Valdis Krumins persistence and creativeness in the process.

1. Lack of content creators.

ForwardMedia started using ChatGPT by OpenAI actively. I was not a huge fan of the tool, and am still not, but when used smart, it helps to save countless hours and is a great tool to assist in the initial content creation, to then remake and improve it. Don't try to publish what it creates without rewriting - you'll get really bad content!

2. Shortage of in-house, full-time employees.

Someone leaves, someone brought on board by a client, someone else just does not want to work more (which is fine!), so you have to ready to be creative in hiring and engaging new employees. Prepare to be very flexible! Part-time, night-shift, remote (think Bali, Spain or Serbia), 5h a week workers etc. - that is the new reality especially if scaling fast!

3. Manual work vs automation costs.

ForwardMedia invests in paid tools, from e-commerce solutions to translation services. Machine translation has gone far and, if you are ok with paying for that, you get pretty quality results. You still need proofreaders and sometimes professional, industry-related translators, to make specific texts. Fiverr helps connecting you with qualified people. Not a huge fan of Upwork as it seems not to be filtering freelancers that well and fails providing trustworthy service.

4. Focus, DIY vs Outsource.

While as a boutique, small agency you could be used to doing everything in-house and with a help of freelancers, and saying YES to all customer needs, to get more cash and keep it within the firm, it is not that good idea when growing fast. ForwardMedia said NO so many times when clients or prospective leads asked for services that the agency has no capacity of executing, and we also have a great network of partnering agencies which we were keen to involve in the execution, by outsourcing partially or in full, or just referring to them. You do what you are best at, and allow others to do what they are experts at. That saves time and efforts to everyone, including your client.

5. Employee motivation.

When engaging young professionals in your operations, be ready to be thrown into new challenges. Someone unwilling or unable to work on a project just because he/she does not feel like the client's business does any good to the world (but not necessarily harms it) is something you have to be ready to face. No solution here. You just have to be prepared to juggle with assignments and those working on them, and spend hours talking through individual issues.

6. Burnout risks.

If the team is motivated enough, it will work hard. Still, having an almost neverending pipeline with projects planned means you can't just work. A few sleepless nights to finalize a project is one case, while it is totally silly to operate in such way in long-term. At ForwardMedia, noone ever forgot to sleep, keep the active lifestyle, and even travel, even if it seemed a bad idea in short-term when deadlines are knocking at your door. Everyone has to remember that working long, stressful hours does not land results in long run.

7. Growing hardware requirements.

Especially when shooting videos, photos, or creating virtual tours, you might want to be up to date with all the technical possibilities, so that your clients see that you really execute. Even if noone is able to watch your 5K or even 4K videos, you really need them. Don't fall into the trap of buying all the new, trendy pro equipment you might find. Rent it, look for freelancers having one or another piece of equipment you might need, and sometimes look for a replacement amateur or daily use devices that have the features the pro equipment has.

8. Software requirements.

While I suggested above in the article that ForwardMedia invests in paid tools, you should be critical about buying or subscribing to all the possible offerings, especially those allowing for unlimited use. I know that fast growth inspires for bright future thoughts, but consider that things do happen and you can always upgrade if there is a need. Don't waste money, even if you might have more in the account.

9. Messy project management.

When having less clients and projects, it is fine using email, whatsapp or slack, or google spreadsheets to manage the work. As soon as the agency's daily life gets hectic, it is a good idea to employ simple tools for client, project and task management. Even if it seems that there is no time to set up and start using them. ForwardMedia is an active user of Todoist and HubSpot. While Hubspot is sometimes horrible in making connected sites slower, which then leads to Google search punishing the site, it is really a good tool for managing your clients and integrating with marketing and project management tools.

10. Short-term view trap.

When being thrown in an almost neverending path of project execution and client acquisition, it is easy to forget about the future and long-term path. Do not forget to invest in your employees professional growth and development, future customer acquisition or automation tools. And the firm itself. ForwardMedia is going through brand refreshing and new website is being developed. The old one is old. It does not even show all the services the agency is providing now.

If your firm, especially a service company, is facing similar challenges, I'm happy to talk and try help you. While I am not the biggest automation expert and my most valuable quality is ability to zoom out and see the big picture, as well as transform custom services into scalable products, by applying design thinking and business modeling practices.

P.S. Just to clarify the confusion, I took over ForwardMedia years ago as an online video series production startup, and turned it into digital marketing content services agency. It has been a simultaneous process while developing enriga, training and judging at acceleration programs, teaching at a university and consulting young technology firms on their strategic growth.