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FROM THE FOUNDER
The year ahead
A t this time of the year in prior years, I often made my predictions in The Zweig Letter for the year ahead. But it seems to me that now the world is too dynamic and unstable and too much is out of our control, so I thought I would skip that this year. What owners and managers of AEC firms should be thinking about and doing as we plow headfirst into 2024.
Instead, I thought it might be more valuable to share my thinking about what owners and managers of AEC firms should be thinking about and doing as we plow headfirst into 2024. Here it goes: 1. Growing revenue. The longer I have been part of this industry – and this year marks my 44th year in it – the more convinced I am that committing to revenue growth every single year is an absolute must. Being profitable is easier when your revenue is growing than it is when it’s declining. Your firm is more valuable when it has a higher revenue growth rate. The opportunities for your people and yourself are increased through having a growing revenue stream. The alternative is cutting costs (because expenses WILL go up), and we all know that is NO fun! So grow. 2. More new services. Growth does not just come from better marketing and more capacity. One of the keys to growth is having new services
to sell. It’s also one way to build a competitive advantage in a sea of undifferentiated service providers. So what are you going to do new in 2024 that you haven’t been doing? Can you package up something you do now differently so your offerings seem different from what everyone else does? Do you have to create some new roles or move people inside the company to dedicate resources to the new stuff? Do you need to hire one or more people with different skills and backgrounds than you have now to be able to do something new? Do you need to buy or merge with another company? Do you need to make accounting changes so you can track the new revenue versus the old, and show everyone in the firm how important it is? How can you get your team behind the “new?” 3. Marketing experimentation. Again, the longer
Mark Zweig
See MARK ZWEIG, page 6
THE ZWEIG LETTER JANUARY 8, 2024, ISSUE 1519
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