Sunday Letter-Mar 16/'25 || A Split in the road

- Getting new projects - How to confuse yourself - New work

I will give a little bit of background—The generalist vs. specialist debate feels as big as the free will vs. determinism debate. However, here are my 2 cents from selling to both kinds of clients.

If you are a small agency/studio, there are 2 paths that lay ahead of you. If you have a great network of people (maybe because you worked in big tech, etc.) and you live in a place like SF or NY, you can 100% start and be known for one thing only—let’s say you do Webflow websites, and this would work just fine. Because then people would know you for that one specific thing, and you can rinse and repeat it. However, if you do not have a big network,

your option is to start small and possibly build your portfolio, your reputation, and then eventually, since you have been in the game for long, you can approach those fat projects that actually have the budget to be creative on them because they understand the value.

Now, the problem is when you start small, your ICP is SMB and local businesses, and they don’t know the difference between one field and another. They don’t care if it is Webflow or WordPress or if your branding includes marketing collateral or not because they want a “GUY”—someone who can get the job done in the digital or tech realm. So you have to be a generalist, and the only path for growth then for your agency or studio is to slowly turn into a marketing agency. That’s the harsh truth because this ICP wants more customers now, not in 2 years because of great branding—now. And that’s the job of marketing. That’s why you see all the local agencies turn into marketing agencies offering Google Ads, SEO, etc. And I have no problem finding those clients, but the cost that you pay from your end is that this is only scalable with people. You pay for this growth with your time, which is what I have been avoiding all this while.

but this is the price that you have to pay for niche-ing down in design and not having a large enough network.

And this is the reason I started posting content where I could attract the type of clients that actually use and understand that value, which in turn would mean more creative freedom and the ability to get bigger projects.

So the decision that lies ahead of me is: Should I reduce my load of local clients and take the risk of a few months to focus 100% on content, or should I do what is already working?

Will let you know next week.

Now, the work—I was working on a really interesting project for a marketing company, and this is the kind of work I would like to attract, with both budget and creative freedom to produce sheer quality. Since its wrapped up(almost), I can share it now.

Whenever I create a direction/Moodboard. I have a very clear, crystal clear image of how that brand would look like at the end of the project, which I almost all the time convey to the client in a meeting or with an explanation of each direction.

which is to say I should improve on presentation of my work and creating the ability to present it well. My directions should just be clear from visuals/without words.

For the next week I am working on wrapping some work, shooting 4-5 videos and getting in touch with few prospects that wanted some work around summer beginning. After this I would have to pick my direction and adjust my overall strategy accordingly.

Gracias for reading. See you next week. Hopefully on a Sunday.