Small And Loving It
If you've followed us through the years, you've probably watched TIV working to find ourselves. It was originally just me. Then Christy. Then Britta. And Blythe. And shortly after Adrian and Beau joined us, we moved into the zentiv building and took a swing at the full-service agency thing with Zenergy Works. The number of butts in seats took a quick turn upwards and I honestly don't remember how many we had at our largest. What I do remember is that it was too many for me.The thing that never changed for me was our values. Our belief system and character hadn't changed, but the ability to maintain them did. With that many people, the chance to not do things the TIV way became very real. This wasn't because we didn't trust people to represent us properly, it was because it put a layer between us and the clients. Sometimes two layers.The decision to be small and remain that way wasn't taken lightly. We spent a lot of time developing our strategy for keeping the head count low, but the quality of work high. The challenge with a small team is that the partners end up doing more of the stuff that would be handed off to the support staff at a larger agency. But in order to support the support staff there needs to be more billable hours. And that's what motivates a lot of agencies to make bad decisions.When it came down to it, we had to make a decision to wear a lot of hats as partners of TIV Branding in exchange for more control over our business. With the smaller structure we have the ability to be pickier about the type of work we do. We are also the type of agency that has to connect with our clients. We find additional inspiration and motivation when we really care about the brands we're building and the people we're working with to do so. We just can't help it.So, we're small and loving it. As long as we can maintain outstanding quality and continue to grow in our abilities, we see no need to grow our team.
Brandt Hoekenga is the Co-CEO and Creative Director for TIV Branding–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––TIV Branding is a boutique branding firm in Sonoma County, California. We specialize in building brands by using traditional, social and digital channels in unison. If you would like to discuss a project or find out more about how we do what we do, please email us at info@TIVbranding.com.