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Episode 71: How We Built Another Business Quickly
145 Plays5 years ago
Today I am joined by my Till Agency co-founders, Ryan Akins and Jesse Morquecho. I have mentioned it before on the podcast, but earlier this year I helped co-found Till, an advertising agency.
These guys are a lot of fun and I hope to have them on the podcast more frequently. I've actually recorded an episode with them before that I never released. And I didn't release it, because…well…I'll dive into that a little in the episode.
We have grown a lot in the past year so we thought we would take some time to review some of the elements that helped us grow quickly. It seemed like a good end of the year episode anyways to reflect a little bit on 2019.
A quick note before we dive in, this is not a proclamation of success. We had a great year, but we are still very much a start-up. This is simply a reflection on what went well this year, which we hope is helpful to you. But, e have a ways to go to get this business to where we want to take it.
Christmas and New Year's fall on Wednesdays this year, which is typically when we release new episodes, so this is the last episode before 2020. Have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year's Holiday!
For the show notes, go to https://www.daveyandkrista.com/btb-till-agency-episode-71
Recommended
Transcript
The Importance of a Core Product
00:00:05
Speaker
You know, you want to have a really great core product before you start branching out, trying other things, trying to perfect your product, just see if your product will even sell at first.
The Value of an Email List
00:00:16
Speaker
An email list is not going to do you any good if you don't have a product that sells.
Introduction to The Brands That Book Show
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome to The Brands That Book Show, where we help creative, service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:35
Speaker
Today I am joined by my Till Agency co-founders, Ryan Akins and Jesse Marcheccio.
Growth and Success of Till Agency
00:00:40
Speaker
I've mentioned it before on the podcast, but earlier this year I helped co-found Till, an advertising agency. These guys are a lot of fun. I hope to have them on the podcast more frequently. I've actually recorded an episode with them before that I never released and I didn't release it because
00:00:55
Speaker
Well, I'll dive into that a little during the episode. We've grown a lot over the past year, so we thought we'd take some time to review some of the elements that helped us grow quickly. And it seems like a good end of the year episode anyways to reflect a little bit on 2019. A quick note before we dive in, this is not a proclamation of success. We had a great year, but we're still very much a startup. This is simply a reflection on what went well the past year, which we hope is helpful to you. But we have a ways to go to get this business to where we want to take it.
00:01:25
Speaker
Christmas and New Year's falls on Wednesdays this year, which is typically when we release new episodes. So this might be the last episode I release before 2020. Just in case it is, I hope everyone has a great Christmas and a happy New Year's holiday.
00:01:40
Speaker
Be sure to check out the show notes at davianchrista.com for the resources we mentioned during the episode. And I want to hear from you. Let me know what kind of content you'd like to see on our brand set book podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, head on over to the Davian Christa Facebook page and send us a message.
Engagement and Feedback Mechanisms
00:01:54
Speaker
You can also send us a DM on Instagram at Davian Christa. Now onto the episode.
00:02:04
Speaker
Welcome back to the brands that book podcast. For those of you tuning in, this is actually the second episode that I've recorded with my till co-founders, Ryan Akins and Jesse Marcheccio.
Contributors to Till Agency's Success
00:02:15
Speaker
But you've never heard the first one. And that's because we just simply didn't bring the energy in the first one. So welcome.
00:02:24
Speaker
See, this is the problem. This is a conversation. This is a conversation and you need to contribute to the conversation or it's just me talking. I don't mind that. So who wants to say that last episode was really bad. So hopefully this one's better. That's right. That's right.
00:02:39
Speaker
You know, I think these conversations are a little bit more challenging because it's not a interview, so to speak, right? We're just having a discussion on a given topic. And I think that's harder in some ways, especially when you're not in person having that conversation. So we're going to do our best today. But today's episode, we're going to actually be talking about till agency. And for those of you who have never heard of the till agency,
00:03:01
Speaker
It is a paid advertising agency that we started, I think the official start was late last year, about this time last year. But we really didn't open our doors, so to speak, until early this year. So we're about a year into it. And it's one of the fastest growing or the fastest growing service based business that I've been a part of personally, I can't speak for you guys. But we're just going to chat about some reflections on what has made this year successful.
00:03:31
Speaker
you
00:03:31
Speaker
So each of us are going to tackle a few different points. We didn't come in here with a really strong plan. Now I'm thinking maybe we should have, but we have about nine things that we have identified that have contributed to us having a pretty good year. So we're going to dive into those. We might not necessarily go through them in order. We might jump around a little bit. I think some of the points are related for sure too, but hopefully we'll have a better conversation than we did the first time. And one that people actually hear, what do you guys
Key Partnerships and Team Dynamics
00:04:01
Speaker
think?
00:04:01
Speaker
I'm all for it. Yes. They can't see it but I'm positive. That's right. Ryan the emoji king. Yeah Ryan the entire podcast Ryan's just going to respond in emojis that nobody can see. Thank you Ryan.
00:04:17
Speaker
So I'm going to put you guys on the spot here. Ryan, I'm going to start with you. If you had to choose one of these points and say that this is really the key element that was present within the last year that has made till agencies launch successful, what do you think it is? The cherry pickings, this is
00:04:36
Speaker
Great. So if I had to pick one of them, I would say it's the pick partners that you work well with. I think we've all come from partnerships in the past that have either straight up failed or didn't go as well as we wanted them to. So I think we all knew coming in that this was something that we really wanted to make sure that we worked well together personality wise where we were in life and that we wanted the same things out of this business and had the same expectations going into it. Not that we align on every single aspect of everything.
00:05:06
Speaker
but I think 99%, maybe 90%, we agree on in general, especially when it comes to big picture things, life values, things like that. I think the value in that is just, it's hard to put words to, but it just plays into all the day-to-day interactions and just having that level set expectation that we all have for each other. I think that's my number one.
00:05:30
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. What do you think about that, Jesse? Yeah, I would agree with that. I think, you know, probably wouldn't have been the one that I picked for number one, but coming from past partnerships that kind of fizzle out due to the think about incompatibility of whether it's values or like expectations.
00:05:46
Speaker
You know, they just don't continue on if those things don't match up because someone just stops putting an effort because they don't feel like other people are putting an effort or because they want to take the company a different way. You know, those can be like business halting, business closing potential, you know, business closing issues. And so I think that.
00:06:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's obviously super important if that's something that's going to cause your doors to close. That's something that definitely contributed to other relationships and partnerships that have had in the past.
Team Roles and Client Management
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think our past experiences really helped inform our early conversations around starting till
00:06:20
Speaker
And I also think that one thing, and there's a blog post that will correspond with this episode, and I'd be interested in what you guys think about this, but while I was thinking about kind of the elements of that relationship that really contribute to us working well together, one of the things that I did not list as kind of an important factor of forming this partnership was that we were friends. Now, of course, we are friends, and we all, you know, I think
00:06:47
Speaker
Hopefully, yes. I think we enjoy each other's company. I certainly enjoy your guy's company, but I didn't list that as a factor necessarily. I think that in some ways, it's almost a reason to be more cautious going into a partnership. I don't think it's necessarily a reason for a business partnership. What do you think about that?
00:07:06
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with that. I think that it made it infinitely more important for us to include a lot of those details in the actual operating agreement that we put together, the documents you have to put together to form your LLC. And there were things that was like expectations as far as, hey, we plan on working a minimum of this many hours a week and if you don't,
00:07:28
Speaker
you're basically going to get the boot out of the company with very little to show for it. So I think that like spelling all of that out was really, really important. And that was something that in my previous stuff that we didn't do, which looking back at it now, I'm like, well, that was dumb. Like, why didn't we think about that? And just cause we, you know, we were like, Hey, this idea, let's do it. So I think that that made it super important and was, you know, just even setting that in writing, I think helped a ton.
00:07:52
Speaker
Yeah, and I don't necessarily think that you absolutely have to have a complimentary, I guess, personalities or skill sets with co-founders. So, I don't think any of us are saying that's criteria for a business relationship. But I do think it's been really helpful when it comes to the three of us defining kind of what our
00:08:12
Speaker
what areas of the business that we're going to tackle and take responsibility for, even though that's switched a number of times now. We've reassigned responsibilities and we've revisited workflows and different tasks have been put to different people at different times throughout the last year.
00:08:30
Speaker
But maybe be helpful real quick, just to talk about our our personalities and or in skill sets. And I think how they compliment each other. Ryan, you take care of most of the and by most of I mean, really all of the reporting, which is good, right? I mean, and is it fair to say that you enjoy that? I do. I love Excel. Now Google spreadsheets.
00:08:51
Speaker
Any spreadsheet. Which is weird. That's a weird thing, right? But I don't like spreadsheets. I like looking at, I like the data that comes from a spreadsheet, but I don't actually like, I think it would drive me crazy if I had to put together those reports.
00:09:07
Speaker
Yeah, Davey's like, hey, tell me what this means and make it easy for me to find it. That's right. That's right. I'm like, hey, guys, I want to know this. How can you put together a report that shows me this? But the actual process of going through putting that report together, I could never do that. Jesse, I'd say that you also have a technical background as well, though, having built an app before.
00:09:30
Speaker
Do you enjoy the whole spreadsheet thing? Yeah, for me, it's more of a problem solving thing. I just love being able to jump in and solve problems. And honestly, in pretty much every business I've ever run, I'm almost always the
00:09:43
Speaker
the all around player that's kind of like has my hands on a lot of different things that that can like I understand a lot of the pieces I wouldn't I'm like nowhere near the Excel expert that that Ryan is but he'll who like put something together if I have a question about creating a spreadsheet I'm like hey Ryan how do I do this and he's like oh you know here's something to get you started I can take it and run with it from there but you know so as far as like the technical side of things that go I'm usually okay at some of them I wouldn't say that I could like
00:10:10
Speaker
you know, go in and do everything that Ryan does easily by any means. But I definitely can hold my own, I guess is a good way to put it. Yeah. So basically what we're what we're both trying to say is Ryan is indispensable.
Strategies for Client Acquisition
00:10:22
Speaker
So I feel like we're just giving Ryan a lot of weight to throw around. Yeah. Next time we're in any sort of negotiation with. Yeah, that's right. So Jesse, though, I do feel like you are you definitely want to be organized.
00:10:34
Speaker
you definitely want to make sure that eyes are dotted and T's crossed. As a result, you've handled most of our client communication and made it an effort to streamline that communication. I do think that you have the side of you where you want to be relationship oriented in addition to this tech background you have.
00:10:54
Speaker
Yeah. So not that we want to talk about the Enneagram, but my wife would be dying, laughing, hearing the conversation right now because I am like full on seven full on like ENFP for you Myers-Briggs people.
00:11:09
Speaker
So like my personality doesn't necessarily go with like being organized and all that. That's simply become a product of things falling through the cracks, given my personality. And so, you know, it's so funny. Like you look at like my computer and my computer is like so organized and you look at every other area of my life or like my garage, for example, and it's like disaster zone. These things are not the same people. And so, but yeah, you know, that's something that for in business and with the team,
00:11:38
Speaker
you know, Davey and maybe not as much Ryan, but Davey's probably like, all right, like, we get it, Jesse, like, and we know you want to follow this procedure. You just get it done. So, you know, it's definitely something that I wore with, but I think it's just more of a necessity because if I know it doesn't happen, then things will fall through the cracks. And Ryan, you are, do you know your Enneagram or your Myers-Briggs? I've been told I'm at a nine or a five. What those are? I don't know.
00:12:07
Speaker
you but I have an idea like I feel like you're a more organized personality type. Probably a little more organized but when it gets I think we had a conversation about finances one time and I was like, I don't know if we were balancing our accounts or whatever and it was coming within like, you know, five or $10 of being right. I was like, Oh, that's good enough. I think Jesse's ever like, no, it's got a Mac. Just like, go for it. So whatever personality type that is,
00:12:35
Speaker
This is this is really interesting to me. So you can see that even on this call, we're discovering a little bit more about each other. I think in part we all are maybe like for me within Davey and Krista, Chris is definitely she's like type A to the extreme. And so I feel like within the context of Davey and Krista, maybe I don't have to be
00:12:52
Speaker
quite as organized because she's so good about doing it. Whereas you come into TILL and there's three guys running the business, I think maybe we all overcompensate on the side of organization just because we know that there's no one else here that's going to keep that or get it done for us, you know? Yeah. And maybe we're more scared of letting down our friends than potentially letting down our wives, which maybe isn't a good thing, but I think that that plays into it a little bit too.
00:13:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess that's there's probably an element of that too, just being responsible to probably the responsibility we feel to one another is a little bit different than the responsibility we feel to our wives within the context of work. And so just to give everybody a little bit of context, Jesse and his wife run a business coaching business and Ryan his wife along with another partner. Can I mention the other partner's name? That's that's
00:13:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. And Caroline Logan run Lightnary, which is a preset company. So we all have other businesses where we work alongside our wives. So that's a really interesting point to start. I, again, I probably wouldn't have chosen that as our number one. I think it has been an important element. I think especially as we tackle things through the context of how we view the world, I think we have very similar worldviews and very similar values.
00:14:09
Speaker
Even our families are in very similar places with young kids at home. And so I think because we order the world in a similar way, it's really easy if there is any conflict or if there is any disagreement for us to, I mean, certainly understand that we all have each other's best interest at heart.
00:14:27
Speaker
you know, and kind of understand where we're each coming from, which I think makes it easier to have tough conversations, which is another point that I want to talk to. But Jesse, I'm going to throw the ball on your court. What do you think was the number one factor if you had to choose from this list? Yeah, I mean, I'm going to come back to the numbers and just say, you know, just like any business, growth is usually determined by revenue number of clients. And I think the biggest factor in us being able to grow so quickly in those regards
00:14:56
Speaker
have just been the fact that when we got started, we weren't shy about leveraging the relationships and networks that we have. I think that in previous businesses, you talk about it, but you talk about it in a way that's very circumspect and
00:15:08
Speaker
and a little bit like shive just because you don't wanna feel like you're pushing an agenda on someone or like that because they're friends, they have to talk about it or whatever for this business. We were like, hey, let's just tell everyone what we're doing. And I think that we did it in a very organic way that made people feel like they were in on something that was exciting for us and not necessarily just something that we're trying to use them to book clients or to help get people to talk about us.
00:15:36
Speaker
And I think that that, I mean, we can probably contribute or attribute, you know, a good chunk of especially those early on clients, just like a single email that we drafted up together and sent to, I think, Davey, you drafted that up and you just said, hey, let's send this to everybody we know. Just telling people, hey, this is what we're up to. And if you know anybody who might be interested in these services, like please send them our way. We'd really appreciate it. And I think that, you know, that was just the beginning of those conversations. And then, you know, taking that a step further as time went on, I think, you know, 100% was
00:16:06
Speaker
Probably the only reason why we had any clients to begin with. Yeah, I would agree. I think I was really wary of that if you build it, they will come a trap. Just like this idea that okay, you start a business, you have a great idea. Okay, I'm going to put
Handling Business Pressures and Growth Challenges
00:16:19
Speaker
up a really slick website and then all of a sudden people are just going to find me and things are going to start growing organically.
00:16:24
Speaker
And I think in part, just the sheer number of interviews that I've done on the Brands at Book podcast, it's very clear that people who are willing to speak up and speak boldly about what they do, and people should, right? Like if you're running a business and you believe in what you do, you should want to tell people about it. And I think we did a good job of that. And I would agree with you, I think we did it in a very organic way. And so we really just drafted an email, sharing with people what this new business was, this paid advertising agency at the time when we started, we were just running Facebook ads.
00:16:53
Speaker
And we explained what we were doing, who we were doing it for. We introduced, you know, so Jesse, I'm sure you introduced Ryan and I in the emails that you sent. I introduced you guys in the email that I sent, talked you guys up, and then shared the results that we were getting. At the time, we had one client. And so really, we were forced to share one client's results. And so it can be tricky, though, I think in the beginning of a business.
00:17:15
Speaker
But we could also lean heavily on the results that we're getting for our own businesses while running Facebook ads as well. And I think that there's a level of trust that's built in there because we've run successful businesses previously so that people kind of knew, okay, we're at least competent. We still had to prove to them that we get results for them doing what we're doing now, but people knew at least that we were competent.
00:17:39
Speaker
And then we just asked for referrals. We simply said, hey, if you know of anybody that's interested, let us know. And if you're ever interested in running Facebook ads in the future, we'd be happy to help you. And so there wasn't this like ask. I think that would have turned people off a little bit if it was like, hey, can we run Facebook ads for you?
00:17:54
Speaker
or maybe it feel like we're exploiting those relationships a little bit. So we definitely don't want to do that. But the flip side of that is that there is more pressure. I don't know. I mean, do you guys feel that way? For me, a lot of our early clients were friends of ours or at least acquaintances within the industries that were working. And so there was this pressure like, okay, well, they're signing a contract with us, we'd better be able to get them results.
00:18:19
Speaker
Yeah and I think that us being bold and kind of going after clients like that given I mean like there's like a Calvin and Hobbes like cartoon or film strip or whatever it's called or you know it's saying like you know like you work best under under pressure and it's like no I only work under pressure you know because you know you procrastinate or whatever and I think that for us like we kind of forced ourselves to say hey no we have to perform to prove this thing out and
00:18:42
Speaker
You know, for us, for all of us, like we all had other things going on in our lives. We have new, new kids, you know, we have wives, we have a lot of, a lot of other stuff going on, especially at the, at the beginning. And it was kind of a good way for us to be like, Hey, well, is this thing going to work or not? Are we going to be able to get this off the ground or not? Because I think that, you know, it was something where six months in, if we weren't making progress, we were ready to wash our hands of it and say, you know, see you later. We don't have time for this. And so.
00:19:05
Speaker
I think that us being bold and going after it and saying, hey, no, we believe we can do this and we believe that we can do this better than anybody else for you and your business in particular, I think played a huge role in not only us being able to grow and build clients, but, you know, have those people as acquaintances, you know, be able to say, okay, like I trust you in the fact that you're not just making like bogus claims because I know you or I know over you in the industry, I know of your reputation.
00:19:30
Speaker
and kind of capitalizing on all of that by then putting the pressure on and by saying those things, having to follow through with that, I think made a big impact and made us, even though we were busy, really put in the time because we didn't want to let these people down. Yeah, absolutely. Anything to add, Ryan? You look like there's a thought on the tip of your tongue. There's always a thought. It's just like... I could express and soften emojis.
00:19:55
Speaker
That's right. Emojis only. No, I think there is definitely some pressure there, I think, to perform more than if it was just an unknown client that we were dealing with, being the fact that a lot of them were friends that we were working with initially. But I think we've also seen the benefit of that because we delivered for those friends. And so you're not going to have
00:20:16
Speaker
anyone champion you more than your friends are going to champion you when you do deliver for them. So I think it was a obviously risk reward, if you will. Thankfully, it's paid off and we're continuing to grow. So I think it just really highlights the importance of relationships in business internally and then also with your clients and externally.
00:20:39
Speaker
Yeah, 100% agree with all of that. And I think to me, when I think of the, if I were asked that question, what was the number one factor, I'd say the relationships were, were probably it, you know, of course, there's never, it never comes down to just one thing. But I think relationships are a big part of that. And I think that there's really practical value in building relationships in business. And I think that's something that people talk a lot about in business. Like you hear that advice, like, oh, go build relationships, but it sounds kind of woo woo.
00:21:06
Speaker
What's the practical benefit of this? There's this great book called Give and Take by Adam Grant on basically how giving to others benefits you in business. It hands down one of my favorite business books, but I think it really puts into context the value of relationships, especially within the business setting. But since if I had to answer the question and I can't choose what you two were going to choose,
00:21:29
Speaker
I think that the next thing I would say, or at least something that I am sort of proud of us for doing, was that there's not a lot of excess in this business.
Starting Lean and Scaling Efficiently
00:21:39
Speaker
And so what I mean is that I feel like people will typically say when you're starting a business, like, what do I need to have in place? And you'll hear things like, okay, you need a website, you need a social media presence. Have you started your email list yet? And we have done none of those things.
00:21:56
Speaker
And we have still built a good business. And just to be clear, I'm not saying that those things aren't important. I'm not saying that those are things that we won't eventually invest in. But I don't think that they are necessary for starting or starting to scale a business. Especially a service-based business.
00:22:14
Speaker
Yeah, especially service-based business. I think you need less than you think you do. And I think that's where people get stuck is they think they need all of these pieces in place in order to start and run their business. But they really, they need a concept. They need somebody that's willing to help them prove out that concept. And then they need a way to get in front of other people to share about it. And I think it really comes down to those few things. And I don't necessarily think you need something like a website in order to do that. Now, with that said, we have launched a website since then.
00:22:42
Speaker
We do have plans on having more of a presence on social media. That's probably a 2020 thing though. That's probably coming up here in January. We don't have an email list, even though we would all 100% say there's a ton of value in building an email list and it's something that we are going to do.
00:23:00
Speaker
but we definitely didn't get caught up in a lot of excess. I think it allowed us to stay lean while we started this business because a lot of things change in the first year. I think this is not something that I wouldn't necessarily – I think if you had asked me what this business will look like next year, so you're asking me in early 2019, I think my guess would have been mostly
00:23:22
Speaker
Yeah, it would have been in the ballpark, but for instance, like the type of clients we serve, I wasn't expecting to have so many software as a service businesses and to be knocking it out of the park like we are for them. So what do you guys think? If we had, where we envision the business a year ago?
00:23:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I just think a decent amount has changed. So much so that like, for instance, I think we're probably another iteration of our website. I think even marketing, to a certain extent, we're starting to zero in on, okay, here are really the effective channels that we need to tap into. Yeah, no, I agree. I think compared to like a product, if we were developing a product, you know, you want to have a really great core product before you start branching out.
00:24:03
Speaker
trying other things, trying to perfect your product, just see if your product will even sell at first. An email list is not going to do you any good if you don't have a product that sells. A website is not going to do any good if you don't have a product that sells. Our product, in this case, is running Facebook ads and Instagram ads for clients. Now that we've
00:24:21
Speaker
proven that out, maybe not in the exact way that we pictured it a year ago, as far as what our clients look like, but we've proven that we have a great product now. So yeah, how do we, I think it's really cool to think forward a year from now, even how we continue to grow that and perfect that and what branching out now does look like now that we have this, this really great core product, if you will.
00:24:43
Speaker
So yeah, 100%. Different train of thought, but sort of in the same vein as your question. Yeah, for sure.
Evolving Team Roles and Business Needs
00:24:51
Speaker
I think, you know, core of what we set out to do, I think is, is similar, you know, that the roles that we've, we've had even like the, the team members that we've brought on.
00:24:59
Speaker
You know, if I had to guess who the kinds of team members we were brought on, you know, and you would ask me that a year ago, I probably said, Oh, like they would have been completely different just based on the, the needs that ended up ended up having that. And I couldn't even necessarily say like, Oh, I thought we would get these people. I just feel like it's, it's gone a different direction than I thought. It's been awesome because we've waited that I think that another kind of coming back to then not having access. I think that, you know, it allowed us to also like just double down and go all in on certain things.
00:25:28
Speaker
like Ran mentioned, Facebook ads. With our marketing, we've really doubled down on the relationships and being able to provide a really great core product. We wouldn't have been able to do that if we were trying to get emails out every single week, if we were trying to get social media posts out a couple of times a week or whatever else, building a website even. That was something that was like, hey, we need to get this done.
00:25:52
Speaker
You get a get a slack message from Dave here from from Krista even. Hey, can you guys get me some content for this? Oh, yeah, we'll get it to you in a couple days and then a couple days later, you know, it's just like this this is the cycle of things because we were going all in on the things that we needed to get done to prove out this product and
00:26:11
Speaker
and also just continue to grow, which I think is kind of funny. I don't even know if, I mean, maybe you guys would disagree with this, but I don't even know if we did that on purpose. I think that it was something that it was like out of necessity, we just had to do it.
00:26:23
Speaker
I think it was part out of necessity and part that past business experience for sure, where I think we were all mature enough to say, okay, is investing in this software, for instance, is investing our time into this, is this going to get us the result we're looking for in the short term? That's going to help us meet our goals. I mean, because we all went into this actually, and maybe we should have started the show talking about this a little bit more, saying, hey, basically at the end of this year, if it doesn't look like it's going anywhere, we're going to close our doors.
00:26:53
Speaker
just because we don't have years to invest in something that we don't think is going to go anywhere. So I think we had to do things and make decisions based on what we thought was going to yield impact.
Building and Expanding the Team
00:27:06
Speaker
And then in addition to that, I lost my thought. What do you think, Ryan? I was just going to say that we're year in, we're not closing our doors. We're rolling now. We've doubled our team size fairly recently.
00:27:22
Speaker
which is such a fun and exciting thing to do. I think that's another one of the points that we're going to lead into is building out a team and building it before you need one. I think we cut the line pretty close there as far as building it before we needed it because we definitely need it now. We've got an amazing team in place. If any of them are listening, they're so incredible and have been such a huge blessing and help to tell. But yeah, moving into that point of building a team before we need one. I think that's another just a really critical thing that
00:27:52
Speaker
You know, whether we did it super intentionally or we got lucky with the timing of it. But as far as focusing your efforts on what's important, that 80-20 principle, your team is that 20% that drives those 80% of the results. So I can't emphasize that enough. And I'm just glad that we have done that at this point.
00:28:10
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. And I think the thought that I lost was just that since we're all running other businesses, we didn't have time to experiment with a ton of other stuff or just focus on our time on things that weren't yielding results. And we definitely, we bought a few different pieces of software that we ended up getting rid of after a month. But it took us intentionally saying, okay, have we used this this month? And do we have a practical use for this now and then getting rid of it?
00:28:36
Speaker
But Ryan, I 100% agree with that. I think that maybe if I had to identify the second most important thing that we've done or most critical thing that we've done, and it was probably hiring the team that we've or building the team that we've built around us, not only are they, I think, just incredible fits for the company that we're trying to build,
00:28:54
Speaker
But I think that we did it not too early because the advice that we're not giving to people is like hey just go out and hire people even if you don't have a way to sustain them. That's obviously I mean it might not be obvious but that's not what we're saying. But there is this point where it's like is it
00:29:10
Speaker
Is it worth it right now to bring somebody on? I think we've timed it really well where we've brought on help for those tasks maybe a little bit before we needed it so that at different points where we were just slammed with new work, which I mean that in a way that it was a blessing that we were able to handle it and there weren't these temporary fails in our client experience because we couldn't keep up with demand.
00:29:35
Speaker
So I 100% agree. I think it was so critical building out the team. And I think it's funny because for Dave and Krista, for instance, it took us, it took us years, right? It took us years to build out a team. But I mean, having gone through it with Dave and Krista in the last two years and until this year, I just can't emphasize enough how important and critical that's been to our scaling efforts.
Improving Team Efficiency
00:29:56
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. And if anybody, I was probably the biggest pushback on, on building teams, just my personality is like, I like, no, we can do it. Like we can do it all. We can, we can, you know, do this and the other pushback in this, you know, it's like, Hey, well, if we can have them take on this stuff, we have the opportunity to go do more of this. And I think that I'd have to look back to be 100% accurate on this, but I would be, I think it's safe to, to assume or at least correlate that soon to be brought on new people, like,
00:30:22
Speaker
we significantly had big jumps or I should say those big jumps significantly correlate with bringing in on new team members and handing off some of those things, which it could be somewhat a coincidence, even the relatively small data size that we have with bringing on just a handful of team members. But I think that our growth and being able to handle that is 100% you know, attributable to the team that we built on or team that we built up.
00:30:47
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And that's something that we're still even in the process of doing today. We're jumping on a meeting actually after this to talk about a potential expansion to our team. And that's just been really exciting. I think all three of us, and again, this just comes back to what we wanted to build within a company is that we truly want to build a business and a culture where it feels bigger than the product that we're creating, I think, that people find.
00:31:11
Speaker
their work purposeful and meaningful. And we should probably ask our team before we go onto the podcast and say that's what we've done. But I think everybody has really enjoyed their time with Till so far. One of the things though that I think has allowed us to build a team effectively is that we have built systems and documented procedures from the very beginning. And I think that this is one of the things that you, Jesse and Ryan do really well and that I have done
00:31:40
Speaker
because I think you guys have set the example. But it's been – I joke with Krista that I know – I probably – I know where everything is within Till better than I do over at Davey and Krista. She, of course, responds right away and says, well, you know, I think that's more of just a judgment on yourself than it is at Davey and Krista because the rest of us are organized.
00:32:01
Speaker
So that's true. I don't want to say over at Davey and Crystal we're not organized because we definitely are. But when we started this, we built it knowing that we'd probably be bringing on a team in a somewhat near future. And again, just because we are in two different time zones or in three different states, I think there's probably a need for us to be organized. But
00:32:20
Speaker
We have a great organizational structure in the drive that we use. We use ClickUp for project management, which is something that I introduced to the team. And then I think Ryan took to the next level. Would you agree with that? It was like all of a sudden Ryan decided it was amazing. And then all of us were on ClickUp all the time. I completely agree. But you left out the first part where Ryan absolutely hated ClickUp at first. I basically
00:32:47
Speaker
I don't know if I ever told you all this. I never used the thing. Y'all would put stuff in there and assign it to me and I would be like, God. And then, yeah, it was like an overnight. I think you were like, we're using this thing.
00:33:01
Speaker
I was like, all right, I'm going to jump into it. And I just jumped in. It was great. Yeah, I love ClickUp. It keeps us super organized. Highly recommend it. If you wouldn't have jumped in when you did, Ryan, I think we would have been in big trouble. But now, our entire business is on ClickUp. And it's a great – I mean, I really appreciate it as a tool and just kind of the granular level of organization that allows us to have. And I think that's one thing that
00:33:25
Speaker
has continued to evolve is just how we structure things within ClickUp and how we structure things within Drive. But in general, I would say that we put together a pretty good system. So things mostly operate smoothly. And the things that we found that were maybe dropped through the cracks, I think we're pretty quick at creating some sort of system or patch, so to speak, for that system so that things stop falling through the cracks.
00:33:51
Speaker
Yeah, and I think in general on that, I think we've done a good job of creating systems and processes, but we've done it after we see kind of the natural way of things working. I was trying to find it that there's some.
00:34:03
Speaker
I don't know if it's a case study or what you want to call it, but basically where it was a campus, I believe they, it was a new campus they constructed, but instead of building any sidewalks, they just waited to see where everybody started walking. And eventually, you know, paths got worn in like, okay, that's where we're going to build the sidewalks instead of trying to set these rigid systems and processes of like, you will do this and walk this direction when actually it might just make more sense to cut across this way. So I feel like we kind of followed that as a guiding principle and setting up all these systems and processes.
00:34:33
Speaker
sometimes faster than others, like with ClickUp. But I think at the end of the day, it's resulted in having systems and processes that really work for us and accomplish what we want them to accomplish.
00:34:44
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's such fascinating insight. If you find that case study, you need to send it over, but I would 100% agree. I think it actually segues really well into this next point. Paul Graham, he's one of the co-founders of Y Combinator, which is like a tech accelerator in Silicon Valley. Anyways, he wrote an article called Do Things That Don't Scale. I think
00:35:05
Speaker
Pretty much what you were saying, that concept fits really well into this concept of doing things that don't scale. For instance, in the beginning of his article, he talks about the importance of actually going out and finding customers, not just opening your doors and hoping that customer is going to come to you, even though that it might not necessarily be scalable to go out and find every single one of your customers.
00:35:28
Speaker
Something really similar in there that I think he talks about along the same lines of the case study that you were referring to. He's really looking through the lens of tech startup, but he's talking about building apps. He's saying that in the short term, it's okay if you have to manually automate things for your customers that you will later build to be automated.
00:35:52
Speaker
Obviously, you can't do that at scale because it would take too long and it would defeat the point of probably your customer signing up for your service. But when you go and actually build that process for your app or for your software, for your solution, whatever it might be, you know exactly what you're building because you've done it a thousand times manually. And so I really like how that connects into what you were saying about the sidewalks and seeing where people are going to walk and then building sidewalks there and then you know for sure
00:36:19
Speaker
that people are going to use those sidewalks. That's such fascinating insight. Thank you for sharing that with us in language and not just emojis. You know, the civil engineering stuff comes into play every now and then. That's right. Something else about Ryan, he used to be, I guess, I mean, it's not used to be. Yes, technically, you're still a civil engineer. That's not your current career. Thank God for us because you can't leave us. We've already established at the beginning of this episode that you can't leave us.
00:36:47
Speaker
But, you know, I was on another podcast recently and I was talking about till actually, but I was also talking about, you know, it's just fascinating to me that I think God wastes nothing.
Tackling Tough Conversations in Partnerships
00:36:57
Speaker
And that's a it's a this concept that I read about in another book. But, you know, I feel like I lean back on my education background all the time. You know, I have a master's in multicultural education, which obviously I'm not using directly right now. But I lean back on a team is multicultural. Yeah.
00:37:12
Speaker
I lean back on my experience in education and even my degree in theology all the time. But anyways, if there's anything else that you guys wanted to add along those points, we'd be happy to do that. And then I'm not sure if we have... What have we missed from our list? I think there's one more thing that I'm seeing here and it ties into the team especially is not being scared to have those tough conversations or scared of like,
00:37:36
Speaker
hurting each other's feelings, which I think, you know, being friends, you know, made that maybe potentially a little bit more difficult. I think our personalities just naturally allow us to have those conversations, you know, and Dave is going to say what he's going to say. And which is great. Like, I think, you know, you need someone like that on a team to bring up those issues, not something that's just like, you know, Dave is not, forgive me if I'm speaking for you, Davey, but really I'm hanging on like what you're about to say. I cannot believe he's not one to just sit and let something stew.
00:38:06
Speaker
without saying something like just meeting the issue head on, you know, whether it's a message in Slack that conveniently goes deleted, you know, three seconds later or not, you know, it's definitely something that I think is something that we all like understand, like, Hey, running a business and growing a business with, you know, three heads, essentially, uh, it's not easy and there's going to be conflict and you kind of like just coming to terms with the fact that we know there's going to be things that aren't, you know, we're all going to see eye to eye on.
00:38:33
Speaker
being able to have those conversations and at the same time being willing to like budge on those things. Like there are things where I'll bring something up and they'll be like, hey, nope, like this is what I think a better idea. And even if I don't agree 100%, I realize, hey, this isn't like business or life altering or business altering, course altering, whatever it is. It's not that big of an issue. And so being able to talk through those things and be kind of like reasonable, letting like any egos or stuff like that aside,
00:38:59
Speaker
which I think just speaks to a little bit of like us getting into this knowing like, hey, we're mature enough. People were friends. We know each other well enough that like, you know, hopefully they didn't think that I was just going to start to derail the entire thing based on, you know, not wanting to use ClickUp or whatever.
00:39:15
Speaker
Yeah, I would agree. I don't, for better or worse, people generally know how I'm feeling. I wish I was like, you know, like that picture of just the picture that is generally painted of somebody like George Washington, where it's like, he's very even keeled, regardless, you know, in win, loss, otherwise, whatever. I am not bad.
00:39:34
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Ryan would be a much better comparison for that. I feel like Ryan is very even killed through pretty much through pretty much any conversation, disagreement, whatever. Whereas for me, like everybody or a comparison of I was thinking Alexander Hamilton versus Aaron Burr. So I'll take the George Washington.
00:39:54
Speaker
Well, I think the and just for the record just so that people don't think I'm like passive-aggressive when I delete comments in slack It's not it's not necessarily having to do with any the three of us, right? So yeah
00:40:06
Speaker
But anyways, I do think we do a good job of handling things straight on. I think having those tough conversations in the beginning before we even started our partnership was huge in just setting that tone for moving forward. We do disagree with each other on small things, I would say almost every day. Almost every day, there's a situation in which we have to address something and then we'll each offer up
00:40:30
Speaker
opinions, and those opinions often aren't exactly the same. And again, these aren't big dramatic opinions, necessarily. Like one of them, we were just talking about our team retreat, which I'm really looking forward to. And so they're not really big dramatic things, but they're opinions that differ and we hash it out and then we move on. I mean, even, and I appreciate too, the conversations around hiring the team.
00:40:53
Speaker
Jesse, for instance, you were the primary voice that dissented. Ryan was, I think, very pro for it. And I was like, well, I could go either way. But it was very much like we put it out there. And then I think eventually, you would say, no, actually, we definitely should do this. And it was kind of out of nowhere, even. It was kind of like maybe you just thought about it a little bit.
00:41:13
Speaker
So we have things like that all the time and I think we just deal with it in a healthy way. I think, I don't know about you guys, but being in past partnerships has kind of helped for me because it's less of
Streamlined Decision-Making
00:41:23
Speaker
like an ego thing. It's less of like, okay, well, what's my role? What's my responsibility? And more like, hey, we're making decisions regardless of my visibility in this matter, so to speak. We're making decisions that will hopefully grow the business, which is going to be good for all of us.
00:41:41
Speaker
So I don't know. Ryan, do you have any additional input on that? No, I mean, I think what you said that the big things we've already figured them out. We figured those out early on and the little stuff now we have hopefully a lot of grace for each other and ultimately just make a decision on things and keep moving. So I think those are the big takeaways there. Yeah, I think that another contributing factor to all of it is, you know, and this kind of is more a blanket statement across a lot of things we've already talked about. And that's like that we've like not cared and this sounds like
00:42:11
Speaker
maybe a little bit bad. We don't care about our clients. We totally do. We pour into that so much. But it's not something where we care so much about a specific avenue or a specific thing that we're willing to fight it to the death. And I think that there are very few issues in our business that any one of us would say, oh, no, I'm taking this to Till's grave. And I think that the fact that we have other things going on has contributed to the fact that we just didn't have the time or the energy, especially early, early on, to
00:42:41
Speaker
take those stances and it kind of set a tone for the rest of it where it's like, I could go either way on that, even though we may be leaning one way or the other being open to it just for the sake of like, Hey, like we don't have time to hash this out for two months. And again, it's not that we don't care, but just that we didn't have the luxury of being carrying like so much to spend all that time on it where it was like, Hey, let's make a decision. Let's keep moving on so we can get back to what we do care about, which is creating a great service for our clients.
00:43:06
Speaker
I think it really circles back to though, we just order our lives in a very similar way, you know, so the things that are important to each of us are, you know, relatively the same, I think. So yeah, I think it's that combined with just kind of the maturity of where we are in life right now, and realizing kind of what's important, what's not important. And really, we really haven't had an issue yet, where we perceive it to be so critically important that it's been some sort of standoff, you know, I would assume that one day,
00:43:34
Speaker
And God willing, we don't, but maybe we have such an issue. But I really do feel confident that we've set the tone that we can handle those issues and obstacles.
Strengthening Team Collaboration
00:43:44
Speaker
I think we just did a good job of putting together our operating agreement and just a culture that we built over the last year as well, making a lot of time, too, of getting together in person. We had our first retreat earlier this year. We're having another retreat in January. We'll probably have at least two in-person retreats in 2020. And then in addition to that, we make time whenever we're just kind of in town
00:44:03
Speaker
you know, and around each other, you know, so I think all of those things contribute for sure. And of course, it doesn't come down to necessarily just these nine things.
Humor and Technical Issues
00:44:13
Speaker
But I definitely think that these are the things that come to mind for me. So anything else that we should share before we before we sign off here?
00:44:23
Speaker
This is how the first podcast went. Just so everybody knows, it is technically how this podcast started too. If anybody's wondering why they didn't hear the first podcast, because I would ask a question, then there would be complete silence. Sorry, go ahead, Ryan. This is great. Ryan is mute again.
00:44:44
Speaker
He looks like he's very passionately talking though. This is going to make it into the podcast, by the way. We're not going to cut this part out. So this Ryan's mic just goes out once in a while during meetings, so we'll have a conversation and we won't even know that Ryan's chatting. All of a sudden he'll sign off because he has to fix his mic again. I don't know if he realizes his mic is still off,
Podcast Wrap-Up and Future Plans
00:45:04
Speaker
but... It looks like he's working on it. Oh, here he is. There we go. He's back.
00:45:10
Speaker
This is one of those systems and processes we're still figuring out, so less learned. Yeah, in general. That's it. I mean, we've been using Google Hangouts, and Google Hangouts is the worst. Not for this call. I mean, we're using Skype, but Skype's probably like maybe one level up.
00:45:27
Speaker
Anyways, I hope that everybody out there listening has found this helpful, especially if you're in the midst of starting maybe a partnership or starting a new business this year, and you're navigating and trying to understand what's important, what are the kinds of things that you should be investing on in that business, and maybe the things that you can hold off for now, even though common wisdom might say otherwise.
00:45:47
Speaker
If you are interested in learning more about Till Agency, you can go to till.agency. You can check out our website. You can reach out to us there. Also, of course, we'll have show notes for this episode. We'll actually have a corresponding blog post too that summarizes a lot of these posts so that you can refer back to them if you'd rather consume information that way or you're in a place where you simply can't take notes.
00:46:08
Speaker
Anyways, Jesse, Ryan, thanks for joining me on the podcast. This episode will actually go live and I hope in the future I've been actually trying to convince Ryan that's just immature. Ryan's sending inappropriate podcast, inappropriate emojis while I'm trying to wrap up here. But I'm trying to convince these guys to start in a new podcast that focuses more on paid advertising. So I'm going to lobby hard for that at our retreat here in early 2020. So hopefully you hear a lot more of these two going forward next year. Thanks, guys.
00:46:40
Speaker
This is usually where you say, thanks, Davey. Thanks, Davey, for having me on the podcast. You guys are the worst, and I'm keeping this part of the podcast, too. Thanks for tuning in to the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to daveyandchrista.com.
00:47:12
Speaker
you