Starting off your career in one field and building your personal brand like I did in social media, you find yourself marked with that area for a long, long time afterwards. Which is not bad, not bad at all, but tends to be limiting, especially when you feel there is so much more you want to do.<\/p>\n
When I decided to open my own company and did it back in 2013., my goal was to use all of the knowledge and experience I have gained so far in my previous work that focused heavily on social media and digital marketing and grow one step up. At that time I was alone, cashless and ready to start working on anything just to start warming up the engines.<\/span><\/p>\n Few months after, I found myself in a\u00a0<\/span>joint venture<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>with local branch of an advertising giant Grey Group, working with clients on digital campaigns and managing social media creative and implementation. The engines have started which was great but my dream was stagnating. I was stuck doing the same thing again, just with less people and bigger responsibility on my shoulders. Bravo Ida, you fool, I thought to myself, desperately trying to keep the motivation up. Then, a friend told me once:\u00a0<\/span>keep an eye on the end prize<\/b>. In my mind, the end prize is to do what I love, to work with people that inspire me, to create big things that\u00a0<\/span>make impact \u2013 on a global scale<\/b>. More than ever, I knew I had to be patient, take things step by step and learn along the way.<\/span><\/p>\n Since I find that episode of my business life very important I will state the things I have learned during our time of joint venture partnership with Grey Group which ended January, 1st 2016.:<\/span><\/p>\n 1. TVC copywriting, ATL, BTL, production, pricings on certain offline services, graphic design, big ideas, long ideas, difference between art direction and creative direction \u2013 yes, I had no idea what that meant before People were always the ones that made all of the difference, especially in a smaller organisations. Just think about it. You bring one designer and your firm goes in one direction. You bring one developer, the focus is on sth else. You bring a PR person, it\u2019s the third thing. In the end it may all turn out the same but the path you take is completely different.<\/span><\/p>\n So, when I was hiring people into my team I had few crucial criteria that I tried to hold on to. The most important one is to trust my gut, my inner feeling. Why? Because if I were just to trust numbers and facts that would enable me to hire when the time is right. And the time is never right when you are an entrepreneur.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s why I decided to trust my feeling and create the right time when it comes to bringing right people on board. And in order to do so, when I felt that moment, I asked myself few things:<\/span><\/p>\n 1. is this person somebody who knows something you don\u2019t from who you can learn and grow in new segments? In the first 1,5 years I managed to bring in few important people into team that helped\u00a0<\/span>agency to grow in digital marketing field<\/b>, grow some reputation and set out the right roots: Filip, Ivana, Tomislav, Denis, Ivan, Silvija, Stjepan, Luka. Filip, Tomislav, Luka and Stjepan are not with ENTG anymore but they are finding their purpose in other companies and their own businesses which I am also happy about. Ivana (content manager), Denis (lead design), Silvija (designer), Ivan (senior account executive) are still very much part of our common purpose at ENTG.<\/span><\/p>\n And then something happened in 2015. when I knew that the time should be made right for a tipping point decision, because it would mean that we would take a whole new direction which I was, trust me, dying to take. Velimir was working for another digital agency and we collaborated on some projects. One day he invited me for a lunch and told me that he is thinking about changing his job. He was a real tech guy, also very experienced and that\u2019s when, for the first time I knew \u2013 here is a person that fits all 5 criterias that I wrote above and we need to get him in the team. Plus since we collaborated before I knew that we had a great joint energy. A month after our talk, Velimir joined as our\u00a0<\/span>creative tech director<\/b>. And the firm started shaping more in that direction which I felt strongly is the right way to go.<\/span><\/p>\nLEARNING FROM PARTNERSHIPS<\/span><\/h5>\n
2. big agency networks operations \u2013 I have learned how big ad agencies work on an international level, how to setup and track a complete PnL
3. what it means to make a collaboration and partnership with different mindsets \u2013 coming from a fully digital perspective, I realised I lived in a bubble and that in order to dig deeper in the field I love, I need to go wider \u2013 though it sounds like a paradox<\/span><\/p>\nBUILDING THE RIGHT TEAM \u2013 INTUITION DRIVEN<\/span><\/h5>\n
2. is this a person who can move the company forward with his\/her thinking, knowledge and attitude?
3. is this a person that will make a positive impact on others?
4. is this a person who is ready to disrupt herself\/himself and learn along the way?
5. is this person caring, respectful, honest and good, maybe even little bit crazy but crazy good? is the energy I\u2019m getting from the other side right?- this being my most important criteria (I will write about this one in some other article)<\/span><\/p>\nCREATING THE RIGHT TIMING INSTEAD WAITING FOR ONE<\/span><\/h5>\n