Comfort Is A Red Flag

By Casey Schultz, Agency Partner

Comfort can be a killer.

Most people would like to live a ‘comfortable’ life. You know, a life without too much stress; nothing too heavy weighing on their mind and a relatively calm and predictable schedule. Fair enough. Sounds good to me as well. But in business (or at least here at Caliber), comfort is a red flag.

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m no expert at running a business. But after nearly 8 years of being a partner at our agency, I’ve seen how getting comfortable can cause our company to stray a bit from our goals, mission, etc… As a leader of this team, part of my role is to keep our team teetering on the fine line of comfort and crazy. That might sound a little scary to some people, but those people aren’t a part of our team; and quite frankly, they probably don’t work in the world of advertising and marketing at all.

Our creative team thrives in that gray area between comfort and crazy. Most of the time, our team’s initial ideas, concepts, designs, etc… are fine. But we never settle for fine or good enough. Settling for anything that is ‘fine’ is falling into the comfort zone and that’s not a good thing. Generally, when we get to this point, our team is just getting started and now it’s time to flex our muscles and turn fine into amazing. Most people in the creative field will always want to tweak, refine, and perfect whatever it is they’re working on until the very last minute. This is never surprising simply because as a creative we always want to explore new ideas, new ways of creating something, new solutions that none of us saw coming. Those are the end-results we strive for on a daily basis for each and every project we’re working on.

On the other end of the spectrum, our client-service team also needs to make sure to avoid getting too comfortable. Daily routines, mundane client discussions, stale meetings, re-purposing ideas between clients; I could go on… after all, getting comfortable is easy. Staying uncomfortable and challenging our clients is what takes the extra effort and some refined skill. Pitching new ideas, helping in unexpected ways, offering support that might fall outside of your normal role; again, I could go on, but there isn’t a secret formula since each client and relationship is different. Each requires special attention and unique treatment and considerations. By keeping the client relationships fresh, entertaining and energetic, we’re fortunate enough to have developed some great connections with a group of great clients that we genuinely care for.

There are plenty of people that think we’re simply making things harder than they need to be. Part of that might be true, but our team is hard to please and we have very high standards. If we ever lose sight of the fact that we’re striving for perfection in everything we do, then we might as well close up shop. What’s the point? Where’s the challenge? What makes us different than any other agency? If we find ourselves asking these questions, then it’s pretty clear that we’ve fallen into the comfort zone, and that’s just not our style.