The benefits of being a person

or About The Human Half

In January 2018, I started a company. It has a name (The Human Half), and even a logo! But it’s mostly just me, Andy. I’ll explain why I created the company in a minute, but really it’s a distraction from this post. This post is about the benefits of working with clients as an individual, or collective, rather than as an agency.

I provide services like ‘brand strategy’, ‘user experience’ and ‘content marketing’. Although I try not to say those words much. I prefer to tell clients that I can help with:

• The stories they tell
• The experiences they design
• The ways they communicate
• The ideas they want to spread
• The documents they use

You know, normal-person words. Because I’m a normal person. And so are you. We just let the silly, tired words take over sometimes and we have to have a cup of tea and hug someone to remember what real life is like.

I’m currently working with companies that are both big (Expedia) and small (Biteable), in the capacity of being a person. And it’s struck me how different the dynamic is, how much easier it is to do good work, and how much more enjoyable it is.

This post isn’t an attempt to bash agencies (there are advantages to agencies in the right circumstances). It’s just a comparison. And the points below are also relevant to collectives, because collectives are basically individual persons who assemble a team only when required. (Hi Fawnbrake!) This is how I’m working with Biteable actually, teaming up with talented buddies, Anup and Sam to create a new brand for them.

Anyway, here are five things I’ve noticed in 2018 about working with companies as a person:

1. Trust comes quicker

I only have one mouth to feed. Well, three if you include my wife and son (four if you include my dog). But I don’t have any staff, or an office. So I don’t have the same pressure to bring in work to occupy dozens of people at a time. This means I don’t have to be a salesman. I can have honest, relaxed conversations with potential clients. If I’m not right for the project, or vice versa, that’s a perfectly okay thing to realise and there’s plenty of work around to sustain myself. I find that this establishes trust much more quickly than in my agency days where there’s an expectation from clients that they’re going to be told whatever it is the agency thinks they need to hear to win the work. As a plain old person, it’s just far easier to have normal conversations without agendas clouding things.

2. There is only ‘Us’

Working as an individual means I can become part of the team at the company that hires me. I can work from their office, get an email address that looks like theirs, and partner much more naturally with other team members there. Agencies tend to (for good reason) take a project out of the building, which is okay for self-contained campaign based work, but when you’re developing a company’s core brand or products, they usually like to feel that the project remains inside their building, and part of the business. Especially at start-ups, where they’ve built everything themselves from the ground up. Teams feel reassured that the work is theirs; you are helping them and it’s far easier to actually collaborate. This all might sound very simplistic, but it really changes things. You just don’t experience the same us-and-them tension as an individual. There is no us and them—only us.

3. No bloat

Since it’s easier to have a normal person-to-person relationship with smaller budgets and less process, the need to ‘service’ (shudder) your client goes away. The bigger the budget and team-size, the more agencies feel they need to create lots of stuff: fat documents, lengthy processes, detailed project plans. And have long meetings. And clients slip into the same patterns. It becomes a weird sort of game where everyone feels like to justify the money and time being spent, the deliverables need to be as extravagant and detailed as possible. I try to to the exact opposite: I make documents as short as possible, I simplify processes, and I work fast. Because I’m, well - you probably get it by now - just a person. More stuff doesn’t mean more value. And it’s far easier to get people on board with that idea if nothing gets bloated. I’m even a fan of shrinking projects if that seems like the thing to do. I’d rather have a productive two weeks that accelerates progress than a sluggish month.

4. The Directors stick around

It’s not uncommon for an agency to win pitches by using its most senior people, only to put a mid-weight team on the work itself. It’s just how things work, for obvious reasons. An advantage of being a Director-level person with no overheads means that when I work with clients, I do all the strategic work myself. And bring in other Director-level people (Design Directors for example) when needed. Because we can minimise the budget to reflect only our time (no project management or margins to cover overheads), clients get more experience for less money. And for people like me that enjoy doing the work far more than just approving it, it’s really rewarding.

5. Teams are perfectly tailored

I enjoy keeping the work as varied as possible. And because I can pull in people who suit each project perfectly, there’s never a team member who’s only on the team because they were available. This is better for the morale of the team and better for the client. This is a reason collectives are becoming such an appealing prospect for all sides.

Ah yes, so my company…

I mostly created a company for practical reasons. It’s a smart way for me to bill, and it’s useful if I need to assemble a team. But it was also a good way to hang my hat on something I wanted to stand for.

I named my company The Human Half because it’s the human half of things (rather than the spreadsheet half of things) that I can help companies get better at. But it’s also a nod to a more relaxed, honest way of working. I think we’re moving away from the era of over-servicing. At best it’s a distraction from the work, and at worst it’s actually destructive. Because bloat, complexity, jargon and salesmanship are like a fog that stops people seeing the stuff that matters.

If you’d like to work with me, in any capacity, do drop me a line. My domain is thehumanhalf.com and my name is Andy. You can probably work out my email address.