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Building a Data Visualization Firm with Francis Gagnon
223 Plays4 years ago
Francis Gagnon, founder of the information design firm Voila:, visits the podcast to talk about building his own information design company.
The post Episode #196: Francis Gagnon appeared first on PolicyViz.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Guest
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome back to the Policy Viz Podcast. I'm your host, John Schwabisch. Spring is here. Blue skies, cut grass, warm weather. My allergies are out of control, but I hope you are well and safe and healthy. I am very excited for this week's episode of the podcast. I have my good friend Francis Gagnon here. Francis founded the information design company Voila back in 2013 in Montreal.
00:00:41
Speaker
Francis and I go way back to when I was first getting started in teaching data visualization and presentation skills and we've worked together for a number of years and it's really been an omission on my part not to have Francis on the podcast prior to this week. So I'm very excited he was able to take time out and talk to me about his company and his work.
Focus: Building an Information Design Company
00:01:04
Speaker
As you're going to hear, it's a really interesting conversation that we have because we're not going to focus so much on the actual process that Francis and his team go through in creating visualizations, in creating both the print and online products that
Francis Gagnon's Journey to Founding Voila
00:01:19
Speaker
they make.
00:01:19
Speaker
We're actually going to talk about this concept of building an information design company. I think as we all know, there are lots of freelancers around in the data visualization space, but there are not as many companies in the data visualization space. And so Francis talks about his evolution going from working at the World Bank to starting
00:01:40
Speaker
his own firm freelancing, and then building up a team behind him. So I hope you really enjoyed this week's episode of the show. So Francis worked for a long time at the World Bank, as you're going to hear. His work has been cited by The Economist, cited by Fast Company, and he's appeared several times in the best of the visualization web at visualizingdata.com run by Andy Kirk. He's also one of the founders of Visualization Montreal, which is a meetup group that has almost 2,000 members now. And as you'll hear,
00:02:10
Speaker
he really reached out to people in the Montreal community to sort of build out that data visualization group. So it's a really interesting conversation. I think something that we haven't really discussed so much on this show about building out these firms and these teams. And I think you're really going to enjoy this week's episode of the show. So here is my interview with Francis and I hope you will enjoy it.
00:02:36
Speaker
Hey Francis, good to see you. Welcome to the show. Looking dapper as always. Hello, Mr. Schwabish. Nice to be here. You really, you really do class up the joint. I got to tell you, we should be doing this as like a video podcast. I get that a lot. Thank you. How are things in Montreal? How is business? How is everything?
00:03:00
Speaker
Oh my God. Well, first it's spring in Montreal and you really have to go through a Canadian winter to appreciate spring as much as we do. So of course it's probably like what 10 Celsius here. So everybody's wearing shorts and t-shirts because we're celebrating. This is the joke of the Northern people.
00:03:18
Speaker
But yeah, things I mean, I would say with confinement and third waves and all, I think it's very much on our mind and we've been reopening maybe too much or maybe not enough or like this is really what's going on. It's a universal, it's a global story right now for us as well in Montreal.
00:03:36
Speaker
Right. So I want to talk or focus our discussion on your information design company. I think there are there are several of these around but I think folks would be interested in hearing more about how you actually found
00:03:51
Speaker
in the company and how you manage it.
Discovering Information Design as a Career
00:03:54
Speaker
I think there's a lot of freelancers, as we both know, doing terrific work. But when your freelancer is just you, as opposed to your company where you have a staff and you have to manage the staff, you have to pay the staff, you have to do the HR part. So there's a lot to it. So maybe we can start by having you just talk about, you know, you started it, we met when you were working at the World Bank, which is thousands of employees.
00:04:15
Speaker
and then moved to Montreal and started this company. So maybe you could start by talking a little bit about that change from working from a huge company to starting your own. Yeah, well, I should start by saying that I always wanted to have a company, but I didn't care to have one that I didn't know anything about, you know, selling nails and screws and these kinds of things. I really needed like, I'm not this much of an entrepreneur that I would do anything. I have a mentor here, a business mentor, and
00:04:43
Speaker
He was in online gaming, then in glasses and sunglasses, and then in accounting. He doesn't care. He's an entrepreneur. That's not my profile at all. I was always curious to be an entrepreneur, but I needed to have my own idea actually to have something that I really believed in. This was dormant for several years, and I really only discovered information design.
00:05:10
Speaker
Like in my late 20s, early 30s, actually, I think I was probably 30 years old when I discovered, like many people, Edward Tufti and PowerPoint is Evil and these kinds of things that made me realize that this field actually exists. But I did not decide to start a business right there, actually. It was more like a hobby in my perception or like a skill maybe that I would have. And so soon after that, I got this job at the World Bank. I was not in this field at all. What I was doing is called donor relations.
00:05:40
Speaker
not very important, but I did this for six years while developing my own information design skills. I went to trainings. I was reading about this, and I was developing this, but it was not really a skill that was in demand from my employer. It was just like, well, your graph is nice, but have you finished this report, please? I'm waiting, or organize this meeting, or give me the minutes of the meeting, or whatever I have to do.
00:06:06
Speaker
for this so but then i really had this breakthrough moment where uh after some sort of management meeting to which i attended it was all powerpoint slides and you can imagine you know i don't think you can imagine how bad the graphs were like seriously it was
00:06:21
Speaker
like now I cannot like you would have like a bar graph one column is like this high it says 28 percent there's another column identical next to it it says zero percent in it go figure that about the same height one is 28 the other one is zero it looked like this the whole the whole thing and I was in the back just fuming and redesigning this thing and you know on my own personal time trying to think how can we present that and I had been trying to switch job internally for quite a while
00:06:50
Speaker
And one day I was very lucky, I was with one of the higher ups in Paris actually for like one of our events there. And so, you know, you're in the smaller teams, you have more like personal time with those people. And I told her like, I want to switch. I want to do something different. I've been in the same position for six years by now.
00:07:11
Speaker
Actually, in the course of that discussion, I said, well, I have something I can show you. I pulled these graphs that I had started making and she literally grabbed me by the ear and said, come over here.
00:07:27
Speaker
We're going to do this now full time now. I need this as a manager here. I need to see my data much better. And so this was my first, like they created like a special position that's called a developmental assignment. It's, it's for a determinate period of time. So for two years.
00:07:45
Speaker
I was in this position to redo management reports internally. And so this is how I became an information designer after some sort of personal training, doing it myself, and then finally getting noticed by someone that was high enough to actually create that position, to see the needs, to see the value, and to create the position.
00:08:08
Speaker
So I spent two years doing this, and then I was told, great, now go back to your former position. And I was, you know, when you know, you know. So I just decided that this was the time, actually, my oldest daughter was about to enter school. I had been abroad for 10 years by then. I sort of wanted to be closer to my family. I wanted to keep doing this. I wanted my kid to go to school in French.
00:08:36
Speaker
And what you hear is not a British accent. It's actually French. So we came back to Montreal to start this business actually.
Starting Voila in Montreal
00:08:46
Speaker
So I left my job and I know that for a lot of people, that's the hard part. Like how do I let go of my stable? This was not a worry for me. I think I'm like overly confident when it comes to the job market. I'm just like, I cannot imagine ending under a bridge. Like, you know, like.
00:09:03
Speaker
like sleeping under a bridge, I will figure it out for sure. I left that job and came here. But at the same time, and this is important to know for people who want to become freelancers or start a business in this, I have the connections at the World Bank to do this. They gave me my first contracts as well as I was leaving. My department gave me my first contracts.
00:09:29
Speaker
my connections then across the World Bank started to see with me. So this is not something to be neglected in my story of grit and courage and hard work. Was there an information design industry in Montreal at all? Was there anybody doing this when you moved out there? At the time it was function, F function. Oh, F function, right.
00:09:53
Speaker
that you may have heard of them. The funny thing is, I first met them in New York at a conference, I forget now in 2014, and there were speakers, both of them the founder, Sebastian Audrey, and so I went and introduced myself, and it turns out that we worked in the same building. They were in the second floor.
00:10:12
Speaker
Explorer, yes, in Montreal. Wow. I was a big admirer of their work as well. At the time, they were showing what they had done with HP and Conservation International to show pictures that were taken around the world, and so pictures of wildlife. I've always followed what they were doing. We founded Visualization Montréal as well, so there's a meetup. We have 1,800 members by now.
00:10:38
Speaker
So, but it's like I came to Montreal and I was looking for this community. I was like, where's the meetup?
00:10:44
Speaker
There were no meetups. So I contacted a few of those people. In Montreal, we also have Plotly, which is a tool, actually. It's not like a design business like us. We are much more like function, except that function had a lot more technical skills than we have. Like, Sebastian, one of the co-founders was a programmer, and I'm the opposite of a programmer.
00:11:10
Speaker
But they have, I don't know if close is the right way to put it or suspended, but Sebastian has moved out of Canada and Audrey has taken up a job in industry. Now, we also have Chris Vio who's well-connected. He's a D3. He has a big Twitter account with over 10,000 followers on this. He works in the Silicon Valley.
00:11:36
Speaker
I'm going to forget a lot of people, but at Plutli we have Nicola Krusten, who's fairly active on social media as well, and a few individuals as well in courses and all. And some of the media are developing this increasingly, but we're not at the stage of the US media. But yes, there was a bit of a community, and my goal is to put
00:12:01
Speaker
like literally Montreal on the map and when I say on the map I'm trying to see something else than maps of Manhattan always when people are testing data, it's always New York, it's always Manhattan. I'm very keen on getting maps of Toronto and Montreal and Vancouver or whatever if it's Paris or London but like literally like
00:12:24
Speaker
both bringing information design to Montreal, making people realize that this can be a job, and making people talk about Montreal as like a source. I mean, it's funny because when I arrived, I knew that Montreal was a city of design according to UNESCO. I was super enthusiastic about this. And then I read about it and it means that it has potential.
00:12:46
Speaker
It just needed you. That's all it needed. It needed you. You were the potential. This is the community that was here.
00:12:57
Speaker
So, um, okay. So this is around 2013 or so. Um, so you, you move back up to Montreal, you're building this community or finding, really finding the community and getting in place. So tell us a little bit about the early stages of the, of, of voila. And then how has it evolved over the last, what, I guess eight
Transitioning from Freelancing to Business Building
00:13:20
Speaker
years or so?
00:13:20
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I remember fondly the first year, because I had much less work than I do today. And I had time to develop material, I had time to set up my website, and I had sometimes now I'm like, Okay, I need new material, but this client is expecting this. And I'm meeting the team at that point. And when am I exactly going to do this? And the kids want me etc. And so,
00:13:43
Speaker
The first year was much more calm. I had those first few appointments from the World Bank. I was working by myself. And one thing that I should clarify is that I always wanted to build a team. Like, I did not set out to be a freelancer forever. I mean, this is why it has a name of its own. You know, voila, it's not attached to me. I'm trying to build something bigger than me because
00:14:10
Speaker
I do not have a lot of technical skills. So I want to be able to do more of what I envision, but cannot do myself. And I want to do it better than I can do it myself. So I always wanted to build this. And there's the entrepreneur as well. I'm very interested in, and I'm talking more to the entrepreneurs here on the line, but building something that
00:14:32
Speaker
like a system, like a machine, like something that works. And think of any business that you go through, they have processes, they have standards, they have knowledge and all. And I'm super interested in that part of building a business. We have a new project that comes in and we have a process. It's going to go through, even if it's creative. And it's very hard to build a process around something so creative and so hard to anticipate even. Right.
00:15:00
Speaker
But you look at the big four of the consulting businesses, and that's what they do. They never know exactly which companies can ask them for which business strategy or what. And if they can do it, we can do it. Yeah. So when was the point where you said, I need now to start hiring people?
00:15:19
Speaker
And it was, honestly, it was after one year that I decided, so in 2014, I said, okay, I need to start associating and maybe not hiring, but you know, at first like collaborating with others, maybe working together. And then it was more like personal setbacks at the time, stuff more in my personal life that delayed this and I had to put this more on hold and keep the freelancing business going. And it actually took me
00:15:46
Speaker
quite a few years to get back to it because it's only in 2019. So like five years later, that really, I mean, I had associated with a few people to deliver some like specific stuff, but fairly rarely, honestly. And then in 2019, I realized that I guess I realized I was getting old.
00:16:05
Speaker
And so I was getting exhausted of clicking. That's how I call it. You know, doing a lot of the things that are mechanical to me that are like, I know how to do them. I could delegate them. And I had this like long-term vision of myself and like,
00:16:22
Speaker
do I really want to be doing this in 10 years? Where do I want to be in 10 years? Do I see myself engaging the client alone, doing the negotiation, the invoicing, fixing the printer, and doing everything, the conceptual and the clicking, as I call it. And I said, no, I'm
00:16:42
Speaker
I was afraid of being exhausted before the finish line. I felt like if I keep doing this, I'm going to snap at 52 or something like this, way too early for it. And so I said, I have now, while I still have the energy to drive, I really have this interest to really step what I'm doing and assemble a team.
00:17:03
Speaker
And at that point, actually, I did something that I never wanted to do before. I did not have the courage, I guess, to do it. I said no to work, so as to free up time, because I wanted to start this business and assemble a team before. But I always thought I would do it in parallel, you know, like I accept the work and I do the work. But it requires so much mental energy to do this, that
00:17:28
Speaker
Like you know doing it in the evenings doing it on the weekends or like just with the parenting and then trying to rest maybe who knows. I just couldn't do it so I had to say no to contracts I had to really take a hit in my in my income.
00:17:45
Speaker
And just say now, my project this week is finding myself an office because I was working from home at this time. And then my project is really to think of who do I want to hire and what is the profile and how do I go about this? And my project is to redo completely the image of the company so that people get it, that it's not like before and that they engage us as a business, not just as me with a business name.
00:18:11
Speaker
So I really had to put a lot of things on hold to be able to build this business support. I had this image in my head. What I was doing before that, it was like I wanted to open a restaurant, but every day I was going to sell hot dogs on the street. And so now I had to give up on this hot dog income.
00:18:30
Speaker
and say, okay, I'm going to have to write a menu, I'm going to have to hire staff, I'm going to have to renovate the space, I'm going to go without much of an income for quite a while, and then we reopen, and then it's a business. So that's what really was difficult for me. I would say that I had probably been trying to do that for a couple of years before I decided to suspend the work.
00:18:55
Speaker
And so for freelancers who are listening to this and who are maybe considering a similar path, in your experience, what should their expectations be? So if they're going to follow this path of, I need to stop work, I need to pause on the work and just focus on the space and the hiring and the technology and the HR. In your experience, what does that time frame look like? And then how long does it take to ramp the work back up?
00:19:22
Speaker
That's a good question. I remember really like starting to suspend work in March 2019 and my first staff arrived in August 2019. I had an intern before that which was very useful especially as an experience for me. Someone was supposed to come for six weeks
00:19:42
Speaker
And she was very good and very easy to manage, you know, like autonomous and this kind of thing. So it did help me to like before making a commitment to someone to see how I was feeling with someone. But she was really an intern in that she did not have a lot of information design expertise. I really had to teach her stuff. But it was great for me to like get out. I had no choice but to rent an office for that person so that we would work somewhere together.
00:20:10
Speaker
the first staff really arrived in August. And then in October, we had a party to sort of really highlight that, okay, now we're a business. I want to introduce you to my staff and our projects and our products. And we had like printed stuff on the walls and I had like halfway clients or collaborators. The other half were just family filling up the room. Thank you for coming. It's just embarrassing.
00:20:38
Speaker
But I always felt that this party actually for me was like a milestone. I needed some things to be done to have a party. And so it forced me to actually think through a lot of things. I didn't need the party itself. And they were not a lot of clients, but it was a motivator. It was a milestone for me. So now we're in October. And if you ask about ramping up, really, I would say like within a year, it was probably back
00:21:06
Speaker
Yeah, maybe even less than a year. Honestly, I've always been very lucky with work in that it just, you know, I built it and they came. The related question, when you decided to say no to work and to focus on building the initial staffing in the office and all that,
00:21:23
Speaker
Did you tell your clients, I assume a lot of these were clients that you've been working with for several years. Did you tell them I'm pausing on new work for this particular reason, but in X number of months, let's reconnect. So again, for those freelancers who are listening, is that that sort of strategy of like, Hey, I'm not shutting everything down. I'm just kind of retooling and let's talk in five months or something.
00:21:45
Speaker
Well, it was both better and worse than this better because I did not shut down everything. I was still doing some work during that, but I was much more selective about it and worse because I was a consultant at the World Bank. That's how I was getting business from them.
00:22:02
Speaker
And I needed to become a business to them, not an individual. And so a lot of places, you know, they differentiate between the two and it's very different. And to go from one to the other, I had to do no work whatsoever for them for one year at least. So I literally had to tell all of them, I am not doing anything for one year and hope that they're going to be there a year later.
00:22:25
Speaker
And even to become a business, it's fairly complicated. They need to invite you. They need to fill a lot of paperwork. They don't like doing this. So you need to find someone who's motivated to actually do this for you. So it was a big risk. And I remember people around me being like, are you sure you want to do this? Can't you find another way of keeping this relationship but delegating the work? And this would have been like skirting the rules. And this is not really my profile.
00:22:55
Speaker
I wanted things to be really clean. I wanted also to develop more outside of the World Bank. I mean, it already had a business outside of it, but I did not want to be dependent on a client like this. And so I used that year really. I think in March, I made my decision. In April, I started telling my clients that as of July 1st, I was not doing any more work for them.
00:23:19
Speaker
Basically, I came back after a year and already before the year was over, I had former clients coming back saying, are you ready now? Are you ready? I said, yes. It started again. What's great is that as a business, we do more ambitious work because there's more of us and so we get even more visibility. We get more capacity and also it was totally worth it to take those chances.
Strategic Business Decisions and Growth
00:23:45
Speaker
As I said in the beginning about leaving my job, I think I'm fairly risk-prone compared to some people. It's hard to say no to work, but at the same time, I find that it's been some of my best decisions to say no sometimes and to really focus on what we're good at. In this case, saying no to clients for a year, it was a bit like when you go to school, yes, you delay when you're going to make money, but it's really going to make a huge difference. It pays off the end.
00:24:14
Speaker
So, okay, so now you are hiring people, you have an office space, you've ramped back up. What does that mean for you now as not being the principal designer doing the work, but you're doing, I mean, well, first off, I guess, what is the share now between your management responsibilities and your actually creation responsibilities? And then I think the more important question probably for most listeners is what is your day-to-day like now as the, you know, principal of the company?
00:24:43
Speaker
Yeah, I think I'm going to give you the easy answer, which is 50-50. And that's when you don't know what to say, you always say 50-50. So, a boat.
00:24:57
Speaker
And in this case, like really, I have much more management responsibilities, of course. And I mean, at the same time, some of it is no longer on me because I have a project manager. So she takes care of invoicing and, you know, proposals for clients and all and she does like 90% of the work I come back, I come at the end to like,
00:25:17
Speaker
approve, polish, comment on it, if you will. And then the other 50 is still in production. It allows me to be really at my point of highest value added, which is, in my opinion, at the very conceptual stage, like really cracking the thing, like what is the visual going to look like?
00:25:39
Speaker
And what is the data? And so really, and I'm the only one at the moment. Well, no, we just hired someone who has a sociology degree. But until recently, I was really the only one with this substantial studies. I studied international development, economics, and environment. So I had to embrace the work and to do the analysis for the team. And I still do. And it's a part of my work that is extremely challenging.
00:26:04
Speaker
because it's this creativity part and you have no idea if you're going to crack it in five minutes or in five days. But I love it because it's so satisfying when you do. There's a moment like, I got it. And the client is like, wow. I'm like, yes.
00:26:21
Speaker
Yes, this is why I do this job. The other part of managing the company and the team is surprisingly pleasant to me. First, we have an A-team really. Recruiting is very difficult, but if you have great people, it's such a pleasure to work with them and to just delegate and trust. This part is pleasant.
00:26:45
Speaker
To go back to what I was saying earlier, I love to build a system, a machine, a process. I love that part and then seeing it activate when something comes in and just like, oh my God, this is going to work. We're going to end up, it's not a good example, but we're going to end up with a Big Mac. There's all those suppliers and there's this process and then at the end, oh my God, I can repeat that thing. It's almost like the cartoon machine that goes,
00:27:14
Speaker
who comes out as you or whatever. I love building that thing and I love that the whole team is very involved in this and what can we do differently? What should be our process? Who should do it first? And how do we decide that or how do we create? How do we manage? How do we propose?
00:27:33
Speaker
everyone is very much into this like I am, and I really like this aspect. And because I was so keen and eager for a long time to start a business, even the very boring admin stuff of like government permits and whatnot are rewarding. I don't want to say pleasant, but yes, you know, I get this form filled, you know, and this is a form for businesses and entrepreneurs. You know, I am one now. You're part of the club, right?
00:28:01
Speaker
Yeah, it reminds me of the very first time I identified myself as an information designer was like, just as I started business, I went back to Washington to talk to the, to the, the work bank. And I met this custom officer and he asked me, what do you do for a living?
00:28:17
Speaker
Sir, thanks for asking. I'm going to blow your mind right now. This is my actual passport. This is how I would redesign it. Just so you can see. Don't tempt me. Now I feel the same rush about being, oh, I'm an entrepreneur now. I feel boring forms. It's great.
00:28:39
Speaker
I think this is what I was saying, that I had reached that point where my motivation for doing everything, which had been there in the beginning, I was like, oh, I can't believe they asked me to do their report. I get to do this design, I get to do graphs, and I was super motivated. But after five, six years of doing this, it was repetitive. I had done this before, and now why is InDesign not managing the footnotes properly?
00:29:08
Speaker
Is this really a good use of my time to fix the footnotes here? Couldn't I ask someone to do this? Actually, that's one of the reasons why the first person I hired was a graphic design. I felt that this was the thing that was easiest for me to delegate as a bunch, as a developer ball and say, okay, this is a lot of work. You can set up this report entirely for us. I was so lucky. We had such a good match.
00:29:35
Speaker
My graphic designer is also a scientific illustrator. So it's someone who is used to get into the substance and understanding something that is complex, which is not always easy to find and an illustrator on top of it. So, you know, can do the graphic design. So I'm going back to this, but the HR and like the recruitment, building a good team is really, it's what it is. You know, we sell time and expertise. We don't, there's nothing physical for sale.
00:30:04
Speaker
So how many, how many employees are you at now? Oh, I'm glad you asked, Mr. Fauvish.
00:30:11
Speaker
I have four employees. That means five of us in less than two years. I'm very, very pleased. It's amazing. It's actually the fifth one, and I count myself now in those five, but the fifth one is coming on Monday as well. It's great also. I think I wanted to have a business because I wanted friends at work, colleagues, and just to work along with my clients whom I met.
00:30:35
Speaker
And it's just like, I often have this moment where when we go on a video conference for our meeting, of course, everyone's working from home now. And I see those faces. I'm like, this is the business, you know, this is our team. And right. It's your team. And you brought it together, which is like, that must be a source of pride, right? That, you know, it's not just a meeting on Zoom with random people. It's the team that you brought together for a common purpose. Yeah.
00:31:00
Speaker
And sometimes it's the details of like, someone's going to say, yeah, about a bicycle. I'm like, yes, I'm glad you're earning a living here. And you know, you can buy a bicycle with this. Or you went to do the groceries, just this pride of, I mean, I do not like an over developed sense of like, how do you call it in the US, like the job creators or whatever, you know, there is something to me about creating this business out of thin air.
00:31:28
Speaker
Like out of, and even in a field that is not very well known at the moment too. And, and just having it like suddenly like voila couldn't survive without me at the moment. And I say that without any pride, actually it's the opposite. I wish that I could build something that could survive without me, but very soon. And I see, by the way, I see the difference between my old and my new clients, the old ones, the right to Francis, the new ones, the right to voila.
00:31:57
Speaker
You know, they're really, there's Chloe, our project coordinator and client coordinator who was like, and, and it just feels like, okay, for them, this is a business. One of the person that I hired was a replacement for someone who left. And, you know, it's just smooth, you know, there's someone like the client is just, that's fine. As long as you deliver, no, it's, it's fine with us. This is what I like about it to, to create something that has an identity in itself, apart from me.
00:32:24
Speaker
because I won't be able to do this all the time and I want to be able to move around the business as well. My vision is that I have no idea how it works, but of an architecture firm.
00:32:36
Speaker
I have this vision that the head architect has a vision, is involved in every project to a certain extent of where this is going, but not necessarily in drawing every staircase and these kinds of things. This is where I would like the voila to be, but I want to give a lot of room to people and their expertise. That's why they write on the blog in these campaigns.
00:32:58
Speaker
That's great. That is terrific. Congrats on all of that. I mean, that's amazing.
Future Plans and Episode Conclusion
00:33:04
Speaker
Five people in the lab and what not even, not even two years. Well, fine if you can. But really once you decided to really, you know, do it really less than two years, it's fantastic. Congratulations. I'll put links to
00:33:21
Speaker
Tuvala and your other social media places and the blog on the show notes so folks can take a look and visit the website to see the work and to check out the team. Francis, thanks so much for coming on the show. It's always a pleasure chatting. Thank you, John. Talk to you soon, Ben. Okay. Bye.
00:33:43
Speaker
And thanks to everyone for tuning into this week's episode of the podcast. I hope you enjoyed that. I hope you learned a lot. I'm sure if you're interested in learning more about how to start up your own data visualization or information design company, Francis would be happy to chat with you and you can reach out to him on any of the different links that I've included in the episode notes. So until next time, this has been the policy of his podcast. Thanks so much for listening.
00:34:06
Speaker
A number of people help bring you the PolicyViz podcast. Music is provided by the NRIs, audio editing is provided by Ken Skaggs, and each episode is transcribed by Jenny Transcription Services. If you would like to help support the podcast, please share it and review it on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. The PolicyViz podcast is ad-free and supported by listeners. If you'd like to help support the show financially, please visit our Patreon page at patreon.com slash PolicyViz.