In Business, Change Is the Only Constant

In the early ‘80s, my dad owned a bar in Sleepy Hollow, NY.

This place had been in our family since prohibition, and it was just up the street from a General Motors assembly plant.

Four times a day during the shift change, thousands of workers would come streaming out, ready to kick back with a cold one.

The place was packed wall-to-wall with customers around the clock for decades.

But in 1993, General Motors started cutting shifts.

Fewer people came.

So to make up for lost revenue, my dad started serving food along with alcohol for the first time.

GM kept cutting workers and shipping them off to other assembly plants, and the bar slowly evolved into a bar and grill.

Then, in 1997...

GM shut down the plant entirely.

This was a gut punch to Sleepy Hollow’s economy.

My dad adapted by adding takeout, delivery, and catering, eventually turning the bar into a full-on restaurant.

I think about this story a lot, because it reminds me:

In business, change is the only constant.

And, because it mirrors what’s happening at my own agency.

We do digital marketing and SEO for law firms.

When we started in 2013, we offered free website audit videos.

Most law firms didn’t know much about SEO, so we were signing clients at a good pace.

But over the years, other agencies caught on and saturated the market with the same offer.

We adapted by integrating audits into our cold outreach, sending videos of SEO-boosting website tweaks prospects could use.

Then other agencies started copying that, too!

Prospects are getting hundreds of these emails a day now.

To make matters worse, law firms are fed up with SEO agencies underdelivering. They’re jaded and starting to give up on SEO as a strategy.

They still need it, and always will…

But law firms get their hackles up if they even hear the word “SEO” these days.

So we’ve been working hard on revamping our offers and repositioning our agency.

It’s not as grim as it sounds, for two reasons:

1. We’re actually ahead of the curve. I only know of one other agency in our space that’s starting to pivot like this.

2. Big market changes are inevitable in every industry.

Just like my dad’s bar, every business has to adapt to survive.

Which is why in my own agency, Open Book Management has been absolutely vital.

We implemented OBM and The Great Game of Business in 2022, and it’s no exaggeration to say it’s been life-changing.

High-Involvement Planning and forward forecasting empowers the whole team to be proactive, instead of scrambling to play catch-up with market trends.

And it’s how we’re continually boosting our profits in a time when most agencies in our industry are struggling to stay afloat.

If you’d like those kinds of results:

Book a strategy call with me here, and let’s chat about implementing OBM in your agency.

More to come in the next issue!

— Nick Kringas
Founder of Open Book CFO