Why You Should Have a “No-Asshole” Policy

I apologize for the language. I am going to go ahead and assume that everyone on LinkedIn is a grownup and use a cuss word. LinkedIn is actually the only social network on which I can use a cuss word, as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have all been appropriated by my nieces and nephews.

At our agency, we have a “no-asshole” clause. It’s part of this bit in the proposal:

We take our work very seriously. Seriously enough that we won’t suffer fools. If you’re in the market for effective marketing advice, help, implementation and working with awesome people, you’ve come to the right place. Read no further, just act now!

If, on the other hand, you are here because:

• you can’t make up your mind

• you evaluate marketing plans on a monthly basis

• you keep firing (or losing) marketing help

• you want cheaper stuff and happen to know that we’re in Omaha

• you need someone to blame for your dismal sales figures

• you have a product to market…in your head

• you are an asshole

If any of the above apply to you, we can still be friends (except the last one, you should probably seek help) but Red Branch Media is not the place for you. We highly value what we do, and we do it better and for far less than most.

The reason for this, is that as my friend Jessica Miller-Merrell said this morning, working for yourself is exhausting. There is just no TIME to work with people who don’t live up to their end of the bargain or who are frankly, out and out jerks.

I know this seems harsh, but let me show you what happens when I ignore my own policies.

We entered into a relationship with a high-maintenance client that was heavily discounted, for the buzz I knew such a position would generate. This company was well placed in an industry, had tons of media contracts and was positioned to pull in the kind of prospects I wanted to market to (not competitively). We hammered out the goals and deliverables (on both sides) and my team got to work. We were a little cautious as they seemed to be abandoning their old marketing contact in a hurry and within a week, our inboxes were filling with messages for just this ONE client.

I shook it off. No matter, we would avoid the micromanagement and crush the goals! I encouraged my team to press on and they did. Working weekends, setting up automation structures and slaughtering the goals we set in 3 months (as opposed to 6). Still, I’d get a nagging feeling when friends would call and express concern that I wasn’t going to get paid or a worry that by working with this client, I was potentially losing credibility industry-wide.

But I’d made a commitment and I figured when the client held up their end of the bargain, I’d be the one who had the upper hand.

You can probably see where this is going. When the six-month contract was up and it was time to bring our rates in line with the traffic increases and ad revenue that had been achieved during our tenure, they found a new firm…like they had six months ago with us, and six months before that. In fact, if I had listened to my intuition, I would have realized that we were complicit in this, as the leadership had very obviously shown a pattern of behavior.

All of their former marketing pros/agencies:

• weren’t scalable
• had quality control issues
• weren’t reliable
• were going in a different direction

What’s more, the job I had taken in the hopes of generating goodwill and publicity did the opposite. You know that old saying, “If someone is gossiping about others around you, you can bet they’re gossiping about you when there’s no one around.”

But I can’t blame this ONE company. As Maya Angelou says,

When someone shows you who they are believe them; the first time.

I failed my people and my team.

I showed them it’s okay to violate policy because “the ends justify the means”. I proved to them that one person thinking they are right has more value than everyone else saying “Wait! Don’t do that!” I pushed aside experience and intuition for the lure of cheap popularity.

In the end, we’re keeping the “No-Asshole” policy and probably will add to it in the end, because the right clients LAUGH when they read it. They delight in being the people who agencies and consultants WANT to work with. When you stick to your guns about something that’s important to the culture of your firm, not only do you avoid working with assholes (yay!) but you help the RIGHT clients self-select into your organization.

Have you ever messed up and violated your own policies (written or otherwise)? What did you learn from the experience? Did it change the policy in the end?