These are pillars that help drive our success. Combined, we have worked for and supported clients and employers in education, consulting, manufacturing, retail, and professional service industries. We have even worked along side agencies from all over the world. During this time, we have had plenty of opportunities to witness and learn from others, and our own, mistakes. We have learned that aligning to our clients needs and taking the time to listen what their struggles are is crucial. All of the skills and experience in the world will amount to nothing if it still does not produce a viable solution. Being agile enough to adapt to changes on the fly and adopt the latest techniques and trends only ensures that our capability to produce what we promise and stay flexible in an ever changing world remains relevant and sharp. Whether it is exchanging ideas, sharing feedback, directing, or negotiating, communication always seems to be a struggle with companies and individuals. To this day, we do not understand why so many struggle with this. It either is important to you or not. Our measure twice and cut once mentality means we place extreme value on communication efforts, no matter who we are working with, as we have witnessed first hand how poor communication can cause even the mightiest companies to crumble.
We combine these pillars, our ethics, and experiences with our technical skills to achieve best case scenarios for our clients. We constantly refine our workflow and reinvest in ourselves and our systems to make sure our efforts and time are being efficient and effective. This is important as it allows us to produce results very quickly, not waste resources, and keep our rate at extremely competitive levels.
Large agencies are more motivated to bill time and are unwilling to get creative with their outrageous rates. Extra people would be packed into meetings and a lot of hours would be spent creating elaborate PDFs, wireframes, and white papers on research and theory instead of actionable work that would get results for the client(s) quickly.
“I have great respect and admiration for Jesse as a teammate and a manager and would work with him any day on any project. He is a fantastic problem solver, planner, great at providing feedback and encouragement, and all of it done with a smile!”
The agency model seemed to create a wealth of knowledge and expertise for the agency, while the clients basically paid them to learn. They could then go and repackage this knowledge and resell to acquire new retainers while the brands themselves were left with people who “manage” the agencies, but didn't have the expertise to do it themselves.
Another issue we have with large, traditional agencies is that they are all hype machines. There’s always a new traffic source, a new software and millions of “Shiny Objects” all over the place. All this hype helps agencies continue to bill more hours and shuffle in new clients at a faster pace but there is no universal “Yelp” review system in place to determine which tactics and agencies truly get amazing results for their clients.
“Jared is a unicorn - very few creative people excel on as many fronts as he does, and without a traditional traffic or project manager at his side. This quarter we set the bar high and had projects with many moving parts and parties. The items fully within Jared’s control were completed on time and with quality work.”
On the other end of the spectrum, using independents can be a great cost saving measure but it is hard to find the perfect blend of cost, available resources, talent, and time. In most cases, we have witnesses or personally been promised great results but lack of know how to generate results without access to any of the proven systems and architecture that would actually deliver.
Solution
We have been watching, listening and learning. We understand the pain points as we have been the independent free-lancer, consultant, skilled corporate associate, and director in charge. We have taken everything we have learned supporting others and started 2point4ward as a solution to combine affordable creative content production, marketing services, lead generation and nurturing systems, and customer relationship management implementation. Our solutions can be scaled to any industry and we can target the most diverse audiences. We are extremely proud of what we have created and are excited to have an affordable option that addresses the most crucial pieces to an organizations growth.
If you would like hear more about our experience, skills, or processes, give us a call today so we can help you get moving 4ward."
