Bunny Blog

If you received the December issue of SHOOT Magazine, then you might have caught an article that I wrote for them about recovering from a financial nosedive in the face of woeful economic tidings.

The article I penned for them was a summary of some good lessons of business we learned the hard way in fall of 2007 when we faced a terrible recession in our own business a year ahead of the worst of the world going to the hot place in a handcart. Since 2008 actually marks Psychic Bunny’s most successful year while everyone else seemed to begin a decline, SHOOT was interested in what we did and why it worked. Honestly, we’re more than happy to share what we’ve learned with as many people as possible and we’re open to any discussions that rise as a result.

Here’s the press clipping for those who like seeing things in print (and for my mother). Full text after the jump.

In FACT, since this is the Internet and since we like giving you more bang for your buck, I’m going to post the full UNCUT version of the article the way I intended it to be read before 200 words had to be trimmed out of it to makeroom for that Grey Box O’Stuff by editorial. UNEDITED and UNRATED! Herewith:

It’s times like these when being psychic is a mixed blessing.

Let me explain. You see, we run a hybrid media studio called Psychic Bunny. It was founded by four guys who saw a niche for a new kind of production company that did more than just shoot and edit. We grew steadily, from part-time out of a living room to full-time with offices in downtown Los Angeles. Each year was better than the last both in terms of revenue and the caliber of our client work. And then the financial meltdown happened.

The reasons should be familiar. We grew too fast, the company lacked clear direction, and we trusted that work would continue to appear the way it had dependably done in the past. We knew we were in trouble in late September, but the nose dive continued through December.

Here’s the catch – that was 2007, not 2008. As I write this, we’re not only in recovery but celebrating the best year we’ve had.  What follows are a few lessons learned from a Bunny that, true to namesake, witnessed near disaster a year ahead of the rest.

First: a creative company is still a business, but use it to your advantage and think creatively about your business. As a hybrid studio our work extends through film, TV, new media, interactive, and for a diverse range of clients. Being multidisciplinary makes us stand out as creatives, but it also saved our hides. When the WGA strikes happened last fall, we took a hit, but being able to focus on other media meant we weren’t KO’d.

We’re also highly scalable. We rent localized rooms on the same floor of a downtown high-rise. When times are bad, we can easily give up a room or two on the floor to another tenant without having to shut down the whole operation and relocate. Likewise, we keep a very small permanent staff, bringing on a lot of freelance contractors for a big job. This lets us hire top-dollar people only for the time when they’re needed without draining the coffers while talented people sit idle waiting for the next job. Normally this translates into low overhead, a savings we pass on to clients. When it got bad, this became also a major reason we were able to last long enough recover from the dive.

In crisis, take the time to refocus on essentials. We spent a good month just distilling what we were about, what made us unique, where we were most deadly, and then we rebuilt the business from the ground up to exploit that. The best tool you have for this is brutal honesty. Self-criticism is hard for creatives, but now’s the time to think of it as a crucial survival skill. If that’s not enough of a reason, we’re also turning out a far superior product as a result of this new honesty.

Finally, we were struck by genuine anger when we read recently about the Big Three taking their private jets to Washington to ask for an unprecedented bailout for the auto industry. This is what got us into this mess – the mindset that executives are beyond reproach.  Bogus. The problem starts and stops with management. Lead by example. On the brink of closing the doors, the Bunny’s four founders  were the ones up all night on graphics workstations and writing spec pitches and taking meetings with every important client we’d ever worked for.  When we ran out of money, our employees got paid on time. We didn’t.

Like it or not, the world is changing. Of course an economic downswing is bad news, but we’ve learned how to turn it to our advantage. As I said at the beginning, being clairvoyant rabbits is a mixed blessing. It’s terrible that what we went through was a preview of a global disaster, but at the same time, it gave us the foresight to change some things just in time. Our unique company ethos deserves a lot of the credit, but we also believe that all of this signals a paradigm shift for the industry. And as for what that new paradigm might be, well, the Bunny’s been spending a lot of time with the crystal ball lately.