London : Los Angeles

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the founder of a boutique executive coaching and consulting business.

For what projects/services did your company hire London : Los Angeles?

I partnered with LOLA to refresh my overall brand, including new logo, capturing the essence of my work to publish on my website, full website design and overall brand consultation.

How did you select this vendor?

I've worked with LOLA before on another branding and website project - their work is top notch, they're always fun to work with and approach problems so creatively. I'll continue to use them for any branding work in the future.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

We went through a couple of working sessions where Nick helped me to articulate my brand point of view - differentiators, service offering, etc. He brilliantly captured my stream of consciousness into a coherent branding document that represented my business extremely well.

I've been trying to capture the essence of what I do and how I do it for 4+ years and Nick was able to do it in a couple of meetings. He and the team presented a few options on a website design and logo refresh and captured my feedback and edits perfectly. They designed the new logo and website and supported me through to website launch.

What was the team composition?

I worked very closely with Nick and Robert on this project.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

In my business, work is sold based on chemistry and style - I've been able to sell several new projects as a result of clients understanding my style in large part because of how we've been able to capture that on the website.

I'm always so happy to hear when a prospective client says "I love your website and how you've captured your approach" - this is really difficult to do in a business like executive coaching and I give all that credit to Nick and his team. They knew the right questions to ask me that helped me get to the right description.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Our partnership was fantastic - Nick helped keep me on track, even with several delays on my end. He'd check in with me frequently, toss new ideas to me and was always clear about what was coming next, what ball was in my court vs. theirs, etc.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their incredible creativity is matched with their ability to listen effectively and execute flawlessly. I rarely see this with creatives - they have brilliant ideas and are able to bring those to light quickly. To do this I assume there is a lot of project management happening behind the scenes. I'm very impressed with the quality of work they turn out.

Is there any area for improvement or anything that could have been done differently?

Honestly, I can't suggest anything in terms of improvement. I love working with LOLA and will continue to use them for future work - especially where it comes to capturing the essence of a brand and designing how people interact with that brand.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of marketing at a Pizza Restaurant.

What challenge were you trying to address with London : Los Angeles?

We wanted to improve on our branding.

What was the scope of their involvement?

London : Los Angeles did branding work for us; they defined our concept, established our identity in terms of who we are and what we stand for, and developed our positioning and mission statements. We had a series of work sessions in person where we did various exercises to help them understand our values so we could visually present that to our customers.

What is the team composition?

We worked with two members of their team, including Nick (Founder) and Natalie (Head of Strategy).

How did you come to work with London : Los Angeles?

I’ve worked with Nick for about ten years, and I’ve always seen them as the best agency for brand definition work. When I took my current position in my company, I immediately decided to partner with London : Los Angeles.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent around $25,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from October 2021–February 2022.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

They crushed the projects! Their team did great work capturing the essence of our brand in works so we could describe our company to other people. They articulated our mission in a way that made sense to everyone — one of our founding brothers cried when we presented London : Los Angeles’ work to him!

Overall, our team well-received their work and was thrilled with what they did.

How did London : Los Angeles perform from a project management standpoint?

They were great communicators, timely, on budget, and swift — they did 18 months' worth of work in only 90 days! In terms of communication, we used email, phone calls, and in-person meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their branding work is what distinguished them from other agencies; every firm has its own strong point, and London : Los Angeles’ team is the best in class when it comes to brand definition framework. The work they did for us was the best in the business.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could involve more people with their clients because the more heads, the better. Other than that, I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on — we had a very well-oiled machine, and they knew how to deliver according to my needs.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you're looking to define your brand's vision, values, and equities, London : Los Angeles can deliver on that — I consider them the best in their class.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a wellness center.

What challenge were you trying to address with London: Los Angeles?

We needed help with our business’ rebranding; we looked for a new look and feel for our products, retail store, and online presence.

What was the scope of their involvement?

London: Los Angeles provides rebranding services for us. They’ve implemented their work among our platforms, including our website and app, making everything uniform in terms of colors, videos, and so forth. Their efforts have also included photoshoots, voice-overs, editing, and overall production of the promotional material that we put on our site.

In addition to that, they’re redoing our labels and logos and managing our social media channels, where they put together slides that also help us promote our new locations. In that regard, they come to those new sites and implement all of our brand identity in the rooms.

London: Los Angeles’ team has also put together our membership’s menu of services and a full brochure that we can use as an investment deck to go out and raise capital for our company.

What is the team composition?

We’ve been only working with Nick (CEO).

How did you come to work with London: Los Angeles?

They were referred to us by a customer. We had other options, but we chose them because they seemed to understand our brand and were very personable and easy to talk to.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $50,000 with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Our team has been providing positive feedback on their work.

How did London: Los Angeles perform from a project management standpoint?

Their responsiveness is outstanding — if I need something, they get it done quickly. In terms of communication, we’ve been using email, phone calls, and meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them? 

Their creativity is excellent.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on.  

Any advice for potential customers?

Have a clear idea of your needs and goals. Also, have the proper budget for your project; that’ll allow the process to go smoothly.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a nonprofit volunteer center situated in the southwest of Los Angeles County.

What challenge were you trying to address with London : Los Angeles?

We needed their team’s branding skills.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were looking to rebrand our organization to effectively promote our projects to the public and appeal to our donors. London : Los Angeles devised branding strategies based on our project scope and discussed these with our stakeholders.

Their team used Canva Pro to create marketing templates and a complete marketing playbook for us. They then re-envisioned some panels from our website based on those, including our landing page and the overview of our organization. London : Los Angeles also incorporated these templates into our standard marketing materials to unify our rebranding efforts.

What is the team composition?

Our main point of contact was Nick (Owner) and two other branding specialists who worked on our social media and landing pages.

How did you come to work with London : Los Angeles?

They were recommended to us.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $59,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The rebranding project ran from July–September 2021.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We haven’t launched all the deliverables they produced yet since they’ve only recently handed out the templates — however, I could confirm that our internal stakeholders were pleased with London : Los Angeles' rebranding work.

How did London : Los Angeles perform from a project management standpoint?

We mainly communicate via email and Zoom. London : Los Angeles was an assertive and proactive partner — they kept things moving forward and met our timelines without much supervision from our team. They also communicated well with our stakeholders, which was an integral part of the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

True to their company vision, London : Los Angeles made all their deliverables with love and remained receptive to our feedback. More importantly, they delivered cost-effective solutions and innovative ideas that evidently improved our brand.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We had to deal with tight deadlines, so there were no write-ups in the templates they delivered — however, this could have been avoided if we were clear in outlining our needs from the start.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have them communicate with your stakeholders and give them access to your existing templates to help them get to know your business thoroughly.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of BKKB Ventures LLC. We represent an alcohol-alternative cocktail line, with a low dose of cannabis in it.

What challenge were you trying to address with London : Los Angeles?

We went to them for foundational branding, specifically with look, tone, voice, and packaging.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The major deliverable was the production of a brand book to include the fundamentals of the brand. Specifically, this was the look, the feel, the color palette, the voice. LO:LA helped us refine our personas as well, and the packaging — the design of the actual bottles.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a total of four people: an account manager, a creative lead, the creative director, and the copywriter.

How did you come to work with London : Los Angeles?

I got a reference from an industry contact. With that referral in place, I put a lot of weight into the chemistry between our companies. I looked at whether LO:LA was willing to be agile and intuitive and take feedback in the right way. We’re a startup, so we needed someone who would be scrappy and flexible. We felt we could trust them to be agile enough.

How much have you invested with them?

Over the course of the project, it was probably around the $75,000 mark.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from June–August 2019.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

We’re currently pre-revenue, so the only metric for us right now is investor interest and reaction to the brand via our supply chain. Our supply chain partners find the brand to be very distinct, that it stands out from the crowd. The feedback we got from the people who were important to us was good. They thought the brand stood on its own.

How did London : Los Angeles perform from a project management standpoint?

They were great. Our account manager was fantastic and did a really good job of staying in touch and in regular communication. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m most impressed with their ability to pivot. I’ve worked with multiple creatives and sometimes it’s hard to get through to them that their idea isn’t the best. With LO:LA, they genuinely listened, and there was no ego. 

They expressed their point of view, and if we disagreed, they were more than happy to pivot. As a startup, that was key, because the quicker we can move past that kind of thing, the more efficient everybody is.

Are there any areas they could improve?

With cannabis, the environment is quite regulatory. We found we had to remind them of that a couple of times. Aside from that, they were fantastic communicators and the response time was excellent.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

LO:LA is more creative output-focused than strategy-focused. That’s not to say their work isn’t strategy, but they’re really good designers, creatives, and brand-builders. Any company looking to either launch or reimagine their brand will have an excellent partner in LO:LA.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the chief marketing officer at Sprocket. We’re a screening tool for hourly applicants/employees for industries like food service, home health, manufacturing, and more. Our product helps organizations hire more people like their current top-performing employees.

What challenge were you trying to address with London : Los Angeles?

We had a different organizational name when we worked with London : Los Angeles (LO:LA). The name put us in an indefensible position in terms of doing trademarking for our brand or product. The word was overused in the technology sector from a naming standpoint, so we needed to choose another name that was both unique in the marketplace and effective in aligning us with what our product does and our audience. We wanted to reimagine how our product was represented in the marketplace, as well as take a fresh look across the board at how we describe ourselves.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We engaged LO:LA for three specific items. The first was a complete rebrand of the organization, including a name and a style guide with new colors, iconography, and typography. This established a new written, linguistic, and visual identity. Then, in the second stage, they translated all that into the relaunch of our website, using the new style components they developed. Finally, they’re now building an explainer video for our product. These were the three deliverables we engaged them for. In terms of technologies, the original site was on WordPress, and they rebuilt it from the ground up, also on WordPress.

What is the team composition?

We worked with around six people — a combination of strategists, design-focused individuals, content-focused individuals, and developers. There were probably more resources behind those I was seeing in meetings, but we had a representative from each facet of marketing that we needed.

How did you come to work with London : Los Angeles?

We were referred to them by another vendor that was recommended to me. We were too small an organization to work with the first company, they recommended LO:LA as being the right fit for us. From the initial phone call, it was clear by the way they presented themselves and their body of work that they were the right team to go with. Additionally, they were willing to change the way they usually worked to meet our timeline, which is extremely rare. Far too often I’ve gotten frustrated with third-party vendors and their lack of flexibility.

How much have you invested with them?

All said and done, this will be out the door for $53,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since October 2020. They’re still working on the video.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Our C Suite and board of directors have loved it. They did the rebrand and the website in two months without sacrificing quality. I never felt like I was giving up value for expediency, which is rare with third-party vendors. I’ve given three vendors out of my 15-year career a review, and I’m doing this review for LO:LA because they’re that good; I’ll stake my success on them — put my name next to theirs.

Nick (CEO & Founder) is brilliant. He’s super smart, he’s experienced, and he gets it. I felt like I was working with people I could learn from. They were genuinely smarter than me, and I was blown away by what they were doing.

I’ve worked at organizations where both the board and the CEO are the bad parts of Steve Jobs; everyone has an opinion, and they love to tell you about it. When I delivered LO:LA’s work, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop but my board and the CEO have been overwhelmingly positive. LO:LA is making me look good.

How did London : Los Angeles perform from a project management standpoint?

Their point person for our project was Bret (Senior Project Manager). I couldn’t tell you how he organized himself, but I can tell you that he was very organized. There hasn’t been a moment where I’ve been unsure about what to do next or about what they were doing. When you’re running projects concurrently like we did, you can’t pass anything over to design until we developed a brand, colors, or a name. Their managing of the sequence of events was thoroughly impressive. LO:LA was the human alarm clock that I needed and signed up for. We managed everything through Monday.com. This ensured our internal folks knew what we were doing when, and who they needed to communicate with at LO:LA.

What did you find most impressive about them?

This is my third rebrand — and I’ve built numerous sites — and every developer will quote you three months; it’s like they’re all coordinating with each other. A new website can be done in under a week with the right conditions, and we needed to move that fast. LO:LA reimagined their usual process, and thanks to some guarantees from me about responsiveness on our side, we worked as true partners; there were no delays. If they needed something, they got it from me and vice versa. They told us that they didn’t even know they were capable of running as fast as we did; they took a risk, running with me as no other agency has.

Furthermore, the website build was run concurrently with the rebrand. Usually, you’ll spend three months on a rebrand and then another three months for the website. They were able to launch it all simultaneously, however, in two months. I was more than impressed with them. At no point did I feel like I was one out of 100 clients they had. They constantly listened to my needs and acted as team members.

Product founders treat their product like a baby, and they take it personally when someone says something critical about their baby. Our CEO came to me and said that when you put people who have expertise in a certain area to work for you, you get a far, far better product. After four years, he thought he already knew the absolute best way to describe our product to others, but when he read LO:LA’s first draft he knew there was a better way to describe it. It showed that LO:LA really understood our product.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’m trying to remember a moment where I was irritated with them, but I cannot, and I’ve already gotten irritated at two of our other vendors already today. My baseline is to have vendors that aren’t meeting my expectations.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be absolutely honest. You may not like what they say back but be open and honest. I didn’t apologize for my budget, my expectations, or my timelines, and what I got back was LO:LA saying that they would rise to make it happen. If I’d made excuses and hedged, I don’t think I would have gotten what I really needed. LO:LA can be a trusted advisor. They’re going to do what’s right by you so don’t hold anything back.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder & CEO of FlowPatterns. We create and deliver a SaaS model—a platform to help standardize and improve workflow processes for small businesses in a specific industry.

What challenge were you trying to address with London: Los Angeles?

We were looking for a new company to help us dial in and unify our branding.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped us develop messaging for our website, dialing in and clarifying the existing messaging and brand identity of the company. They did a deep dive into our personality to align messages across digital, print media, and advertising.

They also did design work, coordinating video production and messaging and creating visuals across different media, from video to website.

What is the team composition?

I worked with Brett (Sr. Project Manager), Nick (CEO/CCO), and Cyndi (Business Development/Marketing Powerhouse & Relationship Broker).

How did you come to work with London: Los Angeles?

They were recommended by another company. I reached out to start working with them and they exceeded my expectations from the start.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $150,000 with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in July 2020, and it is an ongoing partnership.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

They created a personality for the company and wrapped it around our purpose, bringing it to life in a positive manner. The feedback has been extremely positive.

How did London: Los Angeles perform from a project management standpoint?

It’s awesome. They’re flexible, very receptive to change requests we make. They also work within budget and consistently meet deadlines. We are in constant, as needed, communication to keep things moving along, using Basecamp, InVision, and even WordPress briefly.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team is passionate about bringing a positive, human-centric feel to their branding work. It aligns with the purpose of our company, making them a great partner for us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not that I’ve seen.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Bring them in as early as possible and communicate openly.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the senior vice president of Cycle Gear. I am the head of all marketing. Our target audience is motorcycle enthusiasts, which are only about 3% of the population, a target audience of about 10 million.

What challenge were you trying to address with London : Los Angeles?

I did a brand evaluation. Motorcycling is a lifestyle activity and you really need to be in the club. The brand evaluation showed that a lot of the market considered us to be the Walmart of motorcycle care; low cost and low quality, and not really enthusiasts. This was not true.

We have been in the business for 40 years. Over 95% of our store employees are experienced riders themselves and the people at headquarters clearly knew what they were doing. We were not getting credit for our specialist expertise or for the fact that we were being compared on price and not on other areas. We were talking to our older customers and not broadening our reach into the community.

I took all of this to Nick (CEO & Founder) and told him I need to be able to break out and use digital media for video, and that I wanted to try a whole bunch of other media. We started with billboards, and I needed to be able to position ourselves as motorcycle enthusiasts.

We had previously done some branding work, but what I needed was a big idea. I needed something that would cut through the clutter and make us stand out. They gave us all of the campaign elements and how to piece it together. They came up with the concept, they did the key initial creative work, and then they positioned us in a way where we could execute that through all of the detailed stuff like emails and all those other things.

What was the scope of their involvement?

It was way simpler than it really should have been. I wrote a crude brief, but mostly we had a couple of conversations. One of the outstanding things about this is that Nick doesn’t ride and there was only one person on their team that did. They went and watched hundreds of hours of motorcycle videos and they got a sense of what it was all about on their own. He had a couple of ideas, but the first concept that he came back with made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Without saying we are motorcycle riders, it said we are motorcycle riders.

The key concept was next. We are the biggest retail network for motorcycle accessories in the country by far. Nick came up with an idea that was intelligent in that it played on a couple of different points.

One of the reasons we ride motorcycles is because it is really fun, and it is more fun than in a car. The biggest difference is how you take corners. It is fun because it is unlike anything else in that it is technical but there are also horizon changes. When you go through a corner, you are leaning over, and the more you lean over, the faster you can turn. Nick picked up on this and that became the key visual element throughout. We used it from the rider’s perspective as opposed to doing from a third-party or second party looking at someone taking a corner which is what everyone else would do. That is a perspective that only a rider would understand. That really broke through. I had critical people internally and also the private equity people on the board, and it really stood out to them.

In the initial program, we had already bought media space and we needed to turn that around in three weeks. Luckily, it was digital execution and we didn’t need print so that went through very quickly. Then, for the follow-up campaign, we were late coming to them, but we executed a series of videos which were three days-worth of shooting that was done on a shoestring budget. We took the original billboard campaign and then we ran it as an online video campaign and TV commercial.

What is the team composition?

My main point of contact was Nick.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in December 2018, and we had completed production and were ready to go by March 2019.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We saw a significant jump in direct traffic to the website. Because we were trying to reach out to people, we weren’t measuring online sales, but we did see that increase in direct traffic. We beat our CPM targets. We used YouTube and video advertising on Facebook and Instagram as well as on Google’s network.

We ended up with a CPM of $1.45, and we were paying $20 to $22 per $1,000 and our target online was $5 per thousand — so we beat that by far. In the first four weeks of the campaign where clearly it was new and our frequency was very low, we did completion rate on the viewing for our 30-second commercial which is incredible. It had the best completion rates and also had the best clickthrough rates. Over the total campaign, we still kept our frequency pretty low, but by the end of the campaign period which is the riding period from March to September, and at the end of that, our completion rate on YouTube pre-roll was still at 56%. We knew that the execution was engaging our audience.

How did London : Los Angeles perform from a project management standpoint?

It was really nimble. It is a small team, so we got a lot of Nick’s time. His account director was really on the ball and really thorough in prepping for discussions, the planning, timelines, and all of that good work so it went really smoothly. It was on time and on budget. They did us a lot of favors on the cost as well.

They clearly communicated what was happening and provided us with updates. They were flexible and proactive in terms of making sure we knew what had to happen for the project to happen on time. They were very transparent.

We are all used to using Atlassian Suite, Asana, and all of those things but we didn’t need to for this. We are pretty old school and just put the timeline out and everyone knew what they had to do, and they constructed that.

What did you find most impressive about them?

You are getting big agency thinking at a small agency cost. Their creative execution and ability to come up with something different are incredibly impressive, so we didn’t look like everybody else in our sector.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. There is nothing that I could say that would be a fair reflection on them. It is more things that happened with our team that maybe didn’t make things go as smoothly as possible. There is nothing from them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be really engaged and be very open to working through what your business problems are and explaining it clearly and spending time explaining who your customers are and how they think. It is all the stuff you have to do with every agency. Focus on giving them the information up front because they will be able to sort through it all and don’t be scared to share. Overshare with them. You will get a lot more out of them and a lot of enthusiasm from them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the creative director of a large big-box alcohol retailer.

What challenge were you trying to address with London : Los Angeles?

We had a brand book but needed an agency to help us articulate who we were as a brand. This involved determining key customers.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’ve developed a framework that guided their brand development process. That started with a series of discussions around different consumer sessions. Then, they connected with members of each of our internal departments, taking us through workshops together to better understand our identity. That allowed them to put together documents that helped define our brand. 

What is the team composition?

We had a senior account representative, a strategist, and a creative director. They, along with a few other members of their team, conducted and coordinated the workshops. My main point of contact was their account representative.

How did you come to work with London : Los Angeles?

We determined that we would need this work, and someone on our team recommended their services based on a past experience. From there, we invited them and several other companies to submit proposals. We loved their approach. They were a small, nimble team that looked like they could get the job done. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since the end of 2016.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Since collaborating with them, our business has continued to thrive at a record pace. Our biggest campaign that came after starting our partnership broke company records. Our sales were off the charts. Since then,  we’ve been using that campaign during the fourth quarter of every year, and we continue to grow and improve. 

Some of that success can certainly be attributed to their work on creating engaging photography and typography. They shaped the way in which we go to market, which was very important.

How did London : Los Angeles perform from a project management standpoint?

We receive reports and updates daily. They were very thorough with communication and project management. We communicate through phone calls and emails. However, they also shared tracking information with us and were responsive to our questions. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Our relationship felt very collaborative, and they worked hard to understand our company well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I felt like I had a pretty good pool of resources partnered with them. It would be nice to see some of those teams being built in-house. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Allow them to integrate with your creative team members. The workshops they lead are super important to us, and we were all satisfied with the output.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder & CEO of MTM Choice, LLC. We are a small company with offices in Milan, London, New York, and Shanghai.

What challenge were you trying to address with London: Los Angeles?

We purchased a media group and needed some branding work done.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They created a new look, feel, and style for the media group we purchased. We requested an online presence from them, which they built our through our frontend UX. Currently, they are working on the look and feel of a piece that tells the story of our company.

What is the team composition?

Nick (Founder & CEO) is my main point of contact. I also interact with a couple of the production team. 

How did you come to work with London: Los Angeles?

I worked with Nick in a different organization. I wanted to work with someone I knew and trusted.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $100,000 - $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them around December 2019, and it’s ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

They collaborated with us well, sharing ideas and implementing them. I enjoyed working with someone I already knew; it helps the projects flow smoothly.

How did London: Los Angeles perform from a project management standpoint?

They are amazing at delivering on time and within budget. We communicate via email, Zoom, and occasionally phone. They are communicative and accommodating.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re flexible and do everything we ask of them. They keep their promises and are proactive, notifying us of problems that arise. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they’re good.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Don’t give a brief, share a brief. Allow them to dialogue with you. Be very clear about what you want. Clearly define your budgetary constraints.