#old hat creative

HuMAYliation is back, my friends.  And boy am I excited.

What is HuMAYliation? 

Glad you asked.  Every year, Old Hat dedicates the month of May to raising money for the prevention of child abuse.  This will be the fourth year in a row that we have launched an effort to raise money for this cause.  Money raised locally is given to The Abbott House and donations that come in from around the country are given to the National Children's Alliance.

2 years ago, our May was spent in utter huMAYliation.  Last year we used a different method for raising money but our fans and our staff wanted to bring back huMAYliation because it was so much fun the first time around.

During the month of May, all members of the OH staff will commit to performing a humiliating act of their choice.  Honestly, these tasks range from humiliating to embarrassing to just downright disgusting.  And you can view what we did last time around by visiting humayliation.com.

Last time around, if we reached our goal of $3,000, I personally committed myself to running down Main Street in Norman wearing a speedo, swim fins and a swim cap screaming, "Where's the pool?" and playingMarco Polowith passers-by.  This year, we're adding a little twist.

I'll Do What YOU Want Me to Do!

This year during the month of April, we are soliciting ideas from YOU for what the grand finale humiliating act should be.  Send in your ideas to info [at] oldhatcreative.com, tweet them to us, send 'em on facebook, or whatever.  We'll pick the top three most feasible and most humiliating and if we reach our dollar goal, I will perform that humiliating task.

... but I like listening to records.  I'm not old enough to really remember when that was the only way to listen to music.  But I do remember my parents huge collection of country/western albums.  I had a record player in high school but it broke so for a long time I've held tightly to my vinyl collection and finally received a new record player for Christmas.  I love the act of selecting a record album.  No playlists... No mixing songs/artists.  I select an album and I'm committing to THAT album.  I like the act of carefully removing it from it's sleeve so it doesn't get scratched.  I like the thought that if I'm not careful, I can't listen to that album anymore.  I like lightly placing the needle on the record.  And I like only getting a few songs before I have to go flip it over or select another album.

Music is important.  Music is delicate.  I enjoy the notion that if I'm not careful with it, I can't listen to it anymore.  Don't get me wrong... I certainly enjoy the convenience of my iPod.  Last time I tried to take my record player on a jog with me, it didn't work out too well.

I think there are many parallels to this and running a business.  There's nothing easy about starting a business, marketing it and maintaining the relationships that make you successful.  You can't simply create a "playlist" of how you're going to operate on the first day you open your doors and let it play.  You have to choose it carefully, you have to apply it delicately and chances are, you're not going to get very far with it without going back and re-visiting it.  You might have to flip it over.  You might have to choose a different one altogether. 

Client relationships are the same way.  Getting the client is the easy part.  Just like purchasing the album is the easy part.  Keeping that relationship in pristine condition so you can go to it time and time again is tough.  If you want to be able to rely on that client time after time, you have to treat them with respect every time you deal with them.  You might have 5 years of daily contact and great collaborations.  But one slip, and you could scratch that relationship badly enough that it might never play properly again.

Growing up, my father instilled many things into my character.  But the one thing he drove above all else was the importance of saying "Thank You."  I remember the embarrassment I felt when I'd go stay at a friend's house and I'd forget to say thank you to their parents when my dad showed up to pick me up.  He'd make me get out of the car, go ring their doorbell and tell them thank you.  It was embarrassing but it also prevented me from EVER forgetting to say thank you for things.

Eight years ago, on this day, I opened Old Hat's doors for business.  As I've mentioned many times, it was me, all alone, it a 10 x 10' office space on Campus Corner in Norman.  What Old Hat has accomplished since that date is no less than miraculous considering my lack of experience running a business, our location (Norman isn't a hotbed for creative activity) and our relative obscurity in the market.  And those accomplishments are due to countless people and their contributions to our success.  I wish I could mention them all by name.  But you know who you are and you know what you've done for Old Hat.  And for that, I offer my sincere and humble gratitude. 

So thank you to everyone that works at Old Hat for the sacrifices you have made to do amazing work.  Thank you to everyone that used to work here for the contributions you made to our success.  Thank you to every single one of our clients for trusting us with the responsibility of assisting you to achieve your goals.  Thank you to everyone that ever recommended Old Hat.  Thank you to our competitors for pushing us to be better.  Thank you to our families who have also sacrificed time with us so we could make Old Hat great.  Thank you to the book writers who gave us all great ideas on how to make Old Hat better.  Thank you, thank you, thank you to anyone who ever had a positive impact on us. 

Here's to a great eight years... and hopefully many more.

I was recently talking with a friend about the issue of being nice versus being fake.  A comment had been made that being nice to people you don't necessarily like is being "fake."  I disagree whole-heartedly.  Being nice to people you don't like is the sincerest form of being nice.  Anyone can be nice to people they LIKE.  What's so difficult about that?  Who in the world says, "I have such a hard time being nice to all of my really close friends that l love dearly."?  People that are labeled as nice and sweet are the people that are nice to everyone.

The Used Car Salesman

Considering that 90% of my job requires that I'm nice to my clients, I've struggled a lot with the whole idea of being fake.  I don't want to be like a used car salesman or be perceived as someone that's just being nice to people in order to make a sale.  And it's sometimes hard because I have become really good friends with some of our clients over the years and I'm always scared that they might think that I'm only doing it so I can get their business.  But the thing is, I'm gonna be nice.  I'm gonna be nice to people I like and people I don't like.  I do it every day.  Not because I'm trying to make a sale.  But because it doesn't do anyone any good to do otherwise.

The Pro-Active Solution

Taking it a step further, one can be pro-actively nice or re-actively nice.  Again, it's a lot easier to be re-actively nice.  If someone walks into my office and needs something, I'm going to be nice to them. No matter who they are (probably).  If someone says, "Good Morning," I'm going to respond.  But being pro-actively nice... that is, going out of your way to be nice... is more difficult.  Sometimes I just forget to do it.  So what did I do to solve this problem?  Ashley Cross knows.  I put a reminder in my computer so I get a pop-up that reminds me to "do something nice."  Does that make my niceness fake or insincere?  Heck no.  Everything I say or do after that reminder is sincere and from my heart.  It's just that without that reminder, I'd just forget to say it or do it.

So initiate the "Good Morning" statements instead of just responding to them.  Smile when people walk by you rather than ignoring them.  And if ya gotta... rely on your calendar to remind you to do something extra nice for someone.

Sidenote:  The best way to disarm someone who isn't nice to you, is to be nice to them.  I read a book that talked about how psychologically, people have a hard time being rude to those that are nice to them.  If you're rude to someone that's nice to you, it makes you feel poorly about yourself.  So you stop doing it.  The book also recommends that if there's someone you have to deal with that is really rude or difficult, one tactic you can use is to ask them for advice on something or ask to borrow something insignificant.  Say, "Hey... I'm in the mood for Italian food.  You know of any good places?"  Or, "Mind if I borrow your stapler real quick?"  The request is too minor to turn down so they oblige.  And then they have to justify to themselves why they just did a favor for someone they don't like.  They don't want to think that they'd do favors for someone that they think is a scum sucking pig, so they look for good qualities in you to justify their own behavior.  --  This may seem like a manipulation.  But I would disagree.  You're not trying to sell someone a crappy used car.  You're just trying to improve relationships.  You're just trying to be nice.

I've been playing a lot of Words with Friends lately.  It's pretty much the only game I play on my iPhone and I'll be honest, I refuse to play with people that I can't beat at least half the time.  I stopped playing Old Hatter, Robert Smith, because I could never win.

One thing I have noticed when playing is that when it's my turn, my first thought is to figure out what the longest word is that I can spell out.  I want to cover a double or triple-word if possible... I want to put a Q on the triple-letter spot.  And I want to use a lot of letters.  Sometimes I'll stare at the "board" for a while and get so frustrated because I can't find a long word to create.  And about that time, I'll happen to see a triple-letter spot that has the letter 'i' next to it.  It's at this point that I slap my forehead, place my Q and end up with 31 points rather than the 12 I probably would have gotten if I had been able to play my 6-letter word somewhere.

We do this all the time.  We "walk over dollars looking for pennies."  We look for the most complicated answer to the question because we assume that since it's a complicated problem, it must have a complicated answer.  And sometimes it IS a complicated answer.  But why start there?  Why not start with the simple answer and work from there.  You might find the perfect answer somewhere in between there and the most complicated one.  You'll save yourself a lot of time, a lot of stress and you'll be a lot more satisfied with your simple solution if you arrive at it toward the beginning rather than after having exhausted every other option.

And sometimes, the simplest answer can reap the greatest rewards.

Examples

You might not want to read past this point.  Some people will take the above and apply it to their own situations and be good.  Others like to hear examples of where this has worked here at Old Hat.

We had a web designer leave a couple months ago.  Our immediate reaction was, "Oh crap.  We have to find someone immediately.  They have to be really qualified.  They have to start soon."  And so on...  A couple weeks went by and after reviewing some resumes, interviewing some people, etc., we started to think, "Wait.  Do we have to replace this person at all?"  We realized that the client that occupies most of our web design team is an NBA team that won't have much of a need for design until the lockout ends.  We also recognized that our print designers were perfectly capable should the need arise for them to step in on some web projects.  So we went back to the most simple answer to the question... which was that we wouldn't hire anyone. 

Every year at Old Hat, we hold what I have dubbed the "Staff Infection."  It's our version of a staff retreat where we do team building, figure out what we need to improve upon, etc.  We, as a staff, are "infected" with new concepts and ideas that can help us get better.  Usually we do it in April but I dropped the ball big-time and even went so far as to think that maybe we didn't need to do it this year.  But I was wrong.  I think that at least once a year... probably more... every company should hold a company-wide event where everyone can be heard and issues can be addressed.  Everyone in the company has ideas on ways things can be made better and a lot of them are right.  Being the owner, I'm so busy with other things throughout the day, I'm not in the trenches seeing what isn't working well.  And while maybe I once knew where our problem areas were and where we needed to improve, I just don't see it as easily any more.

Some of the things we intend to address today:

Communication

Communication around here is really poor.  Even though we have an open environment where everyone can see each other and holler back and forth, no one ever talks.  And it leads to great inefficiency.  I wish I could put a number on how much money we lose annually to a lack of communication.  A colleague of mine recommended we have a "communication day" wherein no one is allowed to communicate with anyone in the office by email or instant message.  It all had to be face-to-face.  If you had to email a document to someone, you had to let them know ahead of time (verbally) what you were sending and why you were sending it.  So we did that on Monday.  We'll find out today what we learned from that experience.  Stay tuned.

Apathy and Negativity

If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that no matter how much you enjoy what you do, if you're forced to do it and are paid to to it, it turns into an unwanted task.  I worked doing what I loved (design) for my favorite university (Oklahoma) in the greatest environment imaginable (athletics).  And after 2 years, I hated it.  It was nothing more than a job.  So we're going to spend a lot of time today focusing on how we can make this less of a "job" and get things back to where we're doing what we do because it's what we LOVE to do.

Fun

We recently returned from our annual trip to the NACMA conference where we get to visit with all of our clients.  I heard over and over again from them that they wished they worked at a place like Old Hat because it looks like so much fun.  Well I can tell you right now that it looks a whole lot more fun than it really is.  In fact, it's like a library in this place a lot of the time.  We don't look like the most creative bunch of people in the sports world.  And in order to be creative, you have to be in a fun and creative environment.  That can't be forced, of course, so we're going to discuss ways to get back to the "fun" atmosphere we once had... and that we promote that we have.

Faulty Leadership

I think that in years past, I made the mistake of assuming that I had to have all the answers to our problems.  We'd do this staff infection and I'd identify everything that was not working problem, come up with solutions, inform the staff of what we were doing and then do it.  Problem is, I'd usually find that after a few months, some of what I thought would work, didn't work.  So certain things I said we'd do would fall by the wayside and that would create even more problems. 

I'm going into this staff infection with a different approach.  I know what the problems are... and I have ideas on how to steer us back in the right direction.  But I'm going to leave it largely to the staff to help fix it.  They know better than I do how to improve Old Hat.  And it'll be a lot easier to get buy-in on the steps we're taking to improve if they are the ones deciding what those steps are.

I also made the mistake of thinking that I had to implement solutions right away.  One of my staff actually made the comment to me (and it hadn't occurred to me until he said it) that we don't have to roll everything out now.  Do a couple things now, see what works, do some more later.  Basically, we don't have to solve all our problems today.  Let's solve one or two.  Then tackle the others next month or next quarter.

Off We Go