As a business owner, I have to confess that I was rather excited when I watched 'The Social Network' and saw one of Mark Zuckerberg's early name cards. It was brash, arrogant and sent a message that he had every confidence he would succeed no matter what others believed or what challenge was faced.
Whether he eventually succeeded or not was not the point. It was that there was a strong self-belief which would not be cowed and intimidated by doubters around. A self-belief which is needed when someone wants to significantly cause a big enough disruption to an industry or provide an innovative enough solution for others to sit up and take note.
It made me think about when the side business started up and all the partners sat around a table in McDonalds (we didn't even have an office in the first year of operations!). We were talking about what to put on our name cards and evaluating the pros and cons of different titles.
The initial idea was to give ourselves high level titles. After all, we were starting up our own business where we would be top management, and we could hold job titles which we would not even hope to be at for many, many years in our current full-time companies if at all.
CEO, Managing Director, Managing Partner, General Manager, COO, Business Owner...all lofty titles which we could use to boost our fragile egos. And to be honest, I've seen it work in different situations.
I encountered a stranger recently who was probably around 30 years old and when he gave out his name card, it said "CEO". I saw my group of friends pass it around suitably impressed. Although they realised that he ran his own business in order to give himself that title, he was very well-spoken and drove a nice car so the impression he was trying for worked. The single girls were already considering his eligibility for a life partner whilst the ones who already had partners were thinking of which of their friends they could introduce to him.
In networking and customer relationship building for major accounts, a high level title can also be a positive thing. People tend to appreciate it more when they know they are talking to 'the big boss'; they feel that their time is being valued and are particularly grateful if their needs and wants are sincerely heard and responded to.
But to cut a long story short, none of us partners opted for a high level job title. We were just starting out without an office and without full time employees. Imagine being a CEO of a company with no staff - there would be no point.
At the same time, we were starting out with cold calls and a lot of small clients on a project-by-project basis. These were customers who did not understand the amount of work required for digital execution and who thought that making changes constantly up to launch date could be done at a snap of ones fingers - they squeezed us at every opportunity for discounts, extra functionality, maintenance and anything else they could think of. In these cases, it was practical for someone to be able to go in with the excuse that he had tried his best but the top management could not approve more changes or discounts because it would mean completely no margin for that project.
The job titles that we decided on were: Senior Account Manager, Business Development Manager and Project Manager. Although they still have the word 'Manager' in them, it didn't indicate that we were part of top management and gave flexibility in how we could approach customers and business relationships.
Now a couple of years later, we have a respectable office space, seven full-time staff and don't focus on small clients anymore. Opportunities for projects no longer come from cold calls but more from long-term relationships with larger agencies and competing with other companies in open pitches.
Maybe it's time to look at how our roles have evolved along with the company's progress, assess what would most accurately represent what we currently do, and what would provide the most impact for future business relationships. It will be exciting to revisit the design and job titles on our name cards for 2013.
Let's see where this takes us.
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