So you started your own design firm, right? And then you built it. Let's go through that. Like what was that process like? Did you scale it beyond yourself? Did you have a team? Was it a full blown studio agency? Like where'd you go?
Steve Guberman (00:50)
Yeah. So it was modeled around the boutique design shop that I interned at. Because after leaving that internship, every other place I went kind of sucked. And I was like, that dude knew how to run a business, he knew how to build a team, he had great clients, not without stress, but and so I wanted to be like Alan Brooks was his name when I grew up. And so five doors away from where I'm sitting today in the house around the corner, I launched my business. We started in the basement of the house. It started with just me. Then I had an intern who thought he was gonna be a designer who sucked at design and turns out he knew how to code like in his sleep.
So we turned him into a web developer and he was my first full time employee and grew it over years into a team of twelve. The sweet spot was like six or seven. That was like the ideal size that we operated the best at. Twelve was a little heavier and had too many layers that I didn't want, or it was kind of like a sticky spot. In year two or three, we did an acquisition and bought a book of business from a friend and bought her employee and that was a really good growth jump for us. Brought on some clients that lasted for ages. And so that was a really sweet thing.
So yeah and it ended up in my tenth year realizing I don't want to run this thing anymore. What do I do? And it wasn't like a life changing money exit, but it was life changing opportunistic exit. And I was burnt out and needed to do something different. And so I shopped it around to a handful of agencies and ended up selling it.
Doug Logan (02:23)
That's cool. There's so many similarities in our story. I know exactly what you're talking about. We got to a point where we were about twelve people interestingly enough, we're right at like seven right now. There's a point where it feels really good at this size. But I didn't love it when we were, at twelve people… There was an actual org chart...
Steve Guberman (02:42)
It felt too much like a business, right?
Doug Logan (02:44)
Yeah, and it's hard to stay connected to the work and be as involved with it and with clients, which I love. But you're a coach, right? Is that kinda your day job now?
Steve Guberman (02:57)
Yeah.
Doug Logan (02:57)
I'm I feel like I'm a coach to our clients occasionally. or actually maybe more a therapist, but you know.
Steve Guberman (03:04)
But that's a great position to be in because you build that trust and you know, a lot of I think a lot of agencies strive to be seen as the conciliary for their clients and be trusted upon. And if you like to forge those kinds of relationships, those are really strong relationships. They lean on you for shit that they can't lean on a coworker for or a vendor for, you know? So I bet those are long standing relationships.
Doug Logan (03:31)
Yeah. No, for sure. next year's twenty five years for us.
Steve Guberman (03:34)
Awesome.
Doug Logan (03:35)
But one of the things that yeah, has come up consistently is that idea of that role between like, right, we're an agency, but we're also and I hate 'cause a lot of shops will talk about like we're we want to be a partner and not a vendor, and it's like that's a like show it, don't tell it type of thing for me. You know, it's kind of like saying like, hey, we're creative. Like, yeah, nobody says we're creative. So it to me is like how do we really kind of add that into it? And I think a lot of the cases we're looking at is like I in every every case study, every client that we're working on currently, and most of the clients we've had historically, we've been able to go deeper and into the weeds and into like beyond just stopping at some metric but actually getting in and getting into the spaghetti, the mess, whatever it might be, and making sure that we're having actual business impact, not just, you know, signing the dotted line and saying this is you know, we did what we said we're gonna do and nothing more, right? And that I mean that's a risky position in a lot of ways, but it 'cause it's like, well, that means like we get in there and find out that we failed. Right?
Like we could get deeper into it and be like, we're not able to affect change, do this, drive revenue this way or that way for whatever reason. And we might be, you know, the ones that are calling ourselves to the carpet, if you will. But I I don't think I'd have it any other way. Like I'd rather be in that situation than then on the other side of it where we're like we're hiding behind metrics and saying we're doing a great job and and not really doing a great job. I can't stand that. And that's a surefire way to get yourself fired, you know.
Steve Guberman (05:15)
Yeah. Well, I think clients recognize the effort of how you're trying to show up, even if, like to your point, if we can't affect really systemic change or change in the brand or like whatever the delivery is, beyond the delivery, the surprise and the delight, the impact on the relationship, clients certainly understand that and recognize it, even if there's a gated feature that says it's it can't go beyond this department or this event or this project or whatever the thing is. And so if you and your team continue to show up in that way, you're building. You already said it, you've got clients that you act as almost a therapist for. So you've forged those relationships already, even if there's some like account based roadblocks. You know, and too many people I think shy away from even making the effort to go beyond the deliverables, the QBR, the reports, the whatever the SOW says. And it's just like maybe we say this at every inflection point in our industry, but now more than ever, you've got to do that kind of stuff. And we've said now more than ever a thousand times in the past 25 years, I'm sure, but it now more than ever it's got to happen.
Those relationships have to be bedrock strong, even if it's like get on planes and go hang out with your clients. You know, I love the excuse of, I'm gonna be in town. Can we grab lunch? Meanwhile, you're not in town. You took a plane trip just to meet them. They don't know. They don't need to know. Make them feel special either way, you know.
Doug Logan (06:39)
Yeah. Yeah, I think inherently just by being a smaller agency, we've kind of built that in because we are very selective in the clients we take on. So I don't have many clients that don't have my cell phone number. I don't have many clients where we're not talking multiple times a month. You know, sometimes it's multiple times a week. So in that case, you know the surprise would be like, you don't hear from Doug for a month. And that's intentional because then every time we're talking, we're talking about what matters. We're not letting it go so long that we show a quarterly report or I mean, even on the monthly reports, it's like there's still lots of in-between conversations that are happening.
Like yeah, we might look at some of these things on a monthly basis, but we're gonna be talking about stuff way before that and way after it as well. So I I think that's one of the things I like about it, because there's no opportunity for there to be surprises for me or for them in that case. I had a surprise the other day where a client called was like freaking out because I had been telling them like I is we're not cracking through, we're not getting through. We're not seeing the ROI here. I know things are feeling busier but like the campaigns are just not there yet. We should probably pull back some spend and reevaluate and so we did and then like the next month, like looking at the month over month, it all of a sudden things were just really starting to take off.
Like so we kinda dialed some more things in and then overall the business you know, their sales like quadrupled in a month. And I'm not saying that we're taking credit for all that. And that's what I told them. I was like, Yes, the campaigns are spending less, and yes, they are doing better. But he, you know, he called me saying, like, can we turn it off now or pull it back? Because my team isn't ready. And I'm like, Well, this isn't it. I might have been a first or at least a first in a long time where a client is like, “You're doing too good of a job”, pull back. and kudos to him.
Steve Guberman (08:32)
Yeah, they're not prepared for it.
Doug Logan (08:34)
Yeah, for that and realizing that. But yeah, that was an interesting call.
Steve Guberman (08:39)
So I mean to point back to what you said, like how do I be your advisor and help you? And so you've got their best interest in mind, and their best interest is these campaigns, if we crank them up, you're gonna be drowning. So how do I help you? I don't know how to do sales enablement or whatever it is that their that their bottleneck becomes, can you help guide them to unblock that bottleneck or put somebody in front of them that can help them unblock that bottleneck because we can exceed the shit out of your goals if we turn this thing up and here this is in the way. So best interest in mind, advising them on how to navigate the challenges that are outside of your scope, outside of your wheelhouse. I mean, that's an amazing way to solidify that too.
Doug Logan (09:17)
I hate the phrase that has become I think, you know, the newer generation's favorite phrase, which is just like not my job.
Steve Guberman (09:26)
Now my jaw, yeah. Yep.
Doug Logan (09:27)
I and when I hear that, like I'm like, you're right, you're not gonna have a job if that's your attitude, right? Like that's that's how I hear that. And so I think it in the same way. Like if you're if if we're working on something and in that case of the, you know, example where it's like we're doing too good of a job, I can help in any possible way to get them prepared for that but it's a good it's a good problem. And you gotta hire people and and you'll get through it, it's growing pains, you know.
Steve Guberman (09:58)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Doug Logan (09:59)
Because for me and for you, if we're hired to do something and we agree that like this is the mark here, but then somewhere along the line, like I know that you're judging me by this over here. Like this might be what we agreed to, but I I'm I'm still very much dependent upon, and like my success and continued relationship is very dependent upon how well we do over here. Even if I don't have control over that, I'm still being judged by that. I'm still, at the end of the day, that is what matters most. So I wanna be aware of that. And if I can improve that, or at least just be aware of it to see how it's happening. I don't want to be sitting over here saying, like, we're doing a great job. It's it's fantastic. Hitting all our goals, hitting all the metrics, and then realize someone over here is like, these guys are terrible. They're not they're not doing anything. Like, great, it looks good on paper, it's not going to the bank. Doesn't matter. and that's the kind of surprise that nobody wants.
Steve Guberman (10:54)
Yeah, I think it what's the phrase in the subways of if if you see something, say something applies there, right? So I don't want agencies to hire the unicorn 'cause it doesn't exist that says that, you know, to your to y to use your finger metrics that, you know, if this is my job, I want somebody that can also do over here. No, but I want somebody who's doing the job here and can be able to identify when there's a problem over here and say something.
And we've got the best interest of the entire organization or the entire results in mind. But my lane is here and this is what I'm good at and this is what I was hired for. But I also see that you're dropping the ball here. And you know, very similar, like in most cases, we're charged with marketing. And marketing and sales don't speak to each other usually. And it's usually if a client wants to hold us accountable for sales, but we're only in charge of marketing, we can't be held responsible for that, but we can certainly say, you know, to your client's point, yeah, if we're sending you a thousand leads and you're only closing, you know, ten a month, there's a sales problem, not a marketing problem. Especially if those are like, sales qualify leads or SQLs or, you know, whatever qualifiers have already been vetted through, that's not our job, but we can certainly help you be more successful there because we want everybody to win.
Right. And so that's what a partnership is. And that's what, you know, not a unicorn employee, but an employee that is kind of thinking about the best interest of the organization or the client's results. And that's just being a good person or a good agency or a steward of the brand or you know, however you want to define it, as opposed to your not my job, like, nope, sorry, I'm not looking over there 'cause it's not my problem, you know, not my But I say not my circus, not my monkey.
Doug Logan (12:31)
I would
yes andthat analogy and I would go a step further in saying that and this is I think we're that I don't think and maybe there are other agencies out there that do this I go a step further into that thinking and say, All right, we give you a thousand leads to your sales team and they close ten of Right? If that first off, shame on us for letting it go that long. Unless I was like in a day or a week or something. And there's just, you know, so much time had passed. But if that's the ratio, I wouldn't just look at that sales. Let's try to help sales. I would also look like, well, was it us? Like, let's turn around and look backwards and be like, there's a reason. And to me, this is why some clients don't understand this. I'm like, look, I yes, of course I want to hear the good news. I want to hear about the great leads that we drove or the sales or this, the new customers. I want to hear all that stuff and I wanna celebrate that. But I also want to hear about all the bad ones too. Because if we can find a pattern where we can, of course, get more of the good ones, then great. But we can also get a pattern where we can find more of the bad ones and where they're coming from and exclude them next time.I'd rather do that.
Steve Guberman (13:37)
Yep, there's typically stronger lessons to learn from that, yeah.
Doug Logan (13:40)
Yeah. And again, fast forward when push comes to shove and they're evaluating leads and they're evaluating marketing and sales, you know, holistically and looking at it and they're gonna say, Well, you know, is Doug and his team doing a good job? Or is the sales team that I've been with you, know is my sales team that's been with me for a decade?
You know, who am I supposed to believe? Who am I gonna pick? I don't wanna be seen as opposition. I don't and I know there's you know, there's definitely opposition between departments, marketing and sales, and a lot of times an outside agency comes in and is seen as a threat and it's like it's not. Like I wanna find the people that are doing a great job, I wanna amplify them, I wanna make them the hero inside the organization. I am not gunning for their job.
Steve Guberman (14:22)
Wanna see them win, wanna help them you wanna help elevate them and yeah, I mean that that common thread in in this whole like segment is is really just trying to go the extra mile and help whoever it is on the end on the other end of the stick help them win, help them do better, help them be better. But yeah, going that extra mile and that's the way you win.
Doug Logan (14:41)
Yeah.
