Transcript
Speaker: um There were layoffs all the time. um I was laid off probably four or five times in my career. And what that did was it it put me back into a position where I have to decide what I want to do.
Speaker: Each time i was you know sort of the universe asking me, like, well, what do you want to do? And then each time I would go go back into the belly of the beast and and wind up you know in a situation that I wasn't happy with.
Speaker: um So I guess the tumult actually helped me. you know It sort of pushed me in the direction of starting my own thing because I felt like if at least I had control, I could have maybe a little bit more stability.
Speaker: Welcome to this week's episode of the Ages and Survival Guide. As I promised you, I've got a business founder on this week's episode.
Speaker: His name is Todd Anthony, the founder Pinwheel Content, a marketing agency in San Francisco. And we're going to dive into how he came to the decision to form his own marketing agency.
Speaker: his history in in marketing, and he'll tell you all about that. And then we'll talk about some of the challenges that he's encountered running his own businesses. This is exactly what I promised to you, the listeners, that we're gonna get right down into it and help you make your decision on starting a new business or not.
Speaker: So first of all, Todd, welcome to the Ageism Survival Guide. Hey, John, thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk to you about this. Great. Really appreciate that you're here. I just want to point out to the audience that we're 14 time zone hours apart. I've got late evening and you've got early morning. So yeah we have different perspectives just on the on the day at this moment.
Speaker: I'm still waking up.
Speaker: So let's let's get into your background a little bit. And ah you spent 35 years in marketing. You've worked in number of you know agencies that probably anybody will recognize the names.
Speaker: And you at some point made a decision to start your own business and and start your own marketing agency. Tell us a little bit about your background, your story, and and how you made that journey into where you are today.
Speaker: Sure. Thank you, John. um so I started in advertising after having a whole bunch of other jobs back when I was around 25. And i started work for McCann Erickson in Prague. I had a been in Prague for about a year at this time, and I'd been selling business phone books door to door, which was which was super fun. I met a ton of people. I walked a lot.
Speaker: um And I just heard about a job at McCann Erickson for an account executive. So i i went for it. I got it. And I was there for about a year. And when I came back to the States, um i was i i got another I got a job at McCann in San Francisco.
Speaker: And thus it began. i you know initially was working on accounts like Coke and Johnson & Johnson and Gillette and you know big global brands. um And i learned it I learned a ton.
Speaker: um and you i i decided at one point that i was better at the creative side than i was at the account side because when you switch from europe europe's the account side is very much about strategy um and when you go to the us the account side is really more about sales and project management um and that just kind of wasn't what i was into So I got into the Portfolio Center, which is a communication arts school in Atlanta, and I put my copywriter book together there.
Speaker: And I got a job pretty much now right out of school with my art director partner from school. We worked at J. Walter Thompson, which became J.W. to see later on. And now is no more like many of the big agency names that we all know. um worked to work at Young and Rubicam. And then I had a stint in-house at Yahoo for five years as a creative lead there.
Speaker: and um and then i had a creative director role for the brand side at cbs interactive uh cbs interactive had a lot of um had a lot of websites like cbs.com and te.com and um chow.com and And then I went back to the i had a brief stint with Ogilvy and then went to a startup.
Speaker: And at the startup, I got kind of got the startup bug a little bit. um It was. It was a really exciting environment. um It was very fast paced. Everybody was being challenged to wear multiple hats and learn new things very quickly um to take advantage of the opportunity that the brand had in the marketplace. And the brand, by the way, was TRX, which is a which is a training company that was started by a US Navy SEAL.
Speaker: And while I was there, became ah around a $100 million dollar company um And it was it was exciting, I was head of content there. um So with that, and at that point in my career, i was interested in doing something different, but something that I knew how to do. And so I decided to, ah ah basically decided to start my own my own agency.
Speaker: And that is how that is how Pinwheel was born. I just wanted more autonomy. I wanted to do things the way that I wanted to do them because I felt like I had a. Sometimes I had a better idea than than I was being told to do. you know, you're instructed to do one thing and you're like, yeah, but if we had just do this.
Speaker: um And I guess I had 30 years of that and I was a little tired of it and i just kind of wanted to do it the way I wanted to do it.
Speaker: so I mean, marketing, I worked in the auto industry for 30 years, so I always had a lot of exposure to marketing agencies and they always seemed anything but stable.
Speaker: Yeah. Constant change being bought and sold, um you know being on an account, off an account. how did that How did that prepare you or or what did that do do to you um when when you had that constant sense of of change and and tumult in the agency world?
Speaker: Yeah, that's a great question because it did prepare me for for what i eventually wanted to do and am doing now. um There were layoffs all the time.
Speaker: um I was laid off probably four or five times in my career. And um what that did was it it put me back into a position where have to decide what I want to do.
Speaker: Each time I was you know sort of the universe asking me, like, well, what do you want to do? and then each time i would go would go back into the belly of the beast and uh and wind up you know in a situation that i wasn't happy with um so i guess the tumult actually helped me you know it sort of pushed me in the direction of starting my own thing because i felt like if at least i had control could have maybe a little bit more stability um i also
Speaker: created the agency in a way i basically structured it in a way that that it was more stable when it came when the market dips and clients leave and um volatility, you know, visited us.
Speaker: ah So the the model being that you know we bring in some full-timers, but the majority of the work is being done by contractors. So if the work goes away, so do the costs of doing that those that work.
Speaker: So it made us a little bit more more durable in the downtimes. and Yeah, that that's something that I did address in the... um starting your own business episode where I mentioned the three different tiers of having employees, right? From having contractors um or having part-time or having full-time. And I think you're you take taking a very prudent decision, right? to To manage your costs and not being out there too risky or too committed with fixed cost of having full-time employees.
Speaker: yeah i mean if you talk to any finance person they'll tell you you should convert those contractors to full-timers your margin will be better and they're right but um they're not accounting for the fact that there there is volatility and um you know cost hard costs are hard costs um so try to keep our hard costs as minimal as possible and we have one of the lightest ah lightest models I've i've come across.
Speaker: And making that step, I think the the hardest part of of of taking the step to starting your own business is is that financial aspect, right? Do you you know what a salary is like through thick or thin, the salary is coming at the end of the month or every two weeks and you it's predictable.
Speaker: And then when you get ready to start your own business, you you don't know, number one, when is the revenue gonna start? When are you gonna get to break even? you know How is that gonna develop? how did you How did you get past that or how did you get through that?
Speaker: um Well, that's that's really the crux of of the issue right there a lot of times i i speak to people who want to start their own agency and and that is really the biggest blocker is how do i maintain sort of um cash flow through through this process and and the answer is that you have to take a leap um and unfortunately you you have to weather the times that you don't have any income coming in that said
Speaker: Um, you know, when I started agencies are, are great models and everybody's telling young people to start agencies right now because you can start it with no money. Um, basically it's, it's easy to start, but, um, the way that I started was basically just as a contractor myself.
Speaker: Um, and so I was selling my services first before I was selling the agency. and so eventually you know i was i set up the llc right off the bat but um i wasn't actually pitching us as an agency solution until i was able to get ah enough volume to where i had multiple people working on multiple projects across multiple accounts so that's how i did it and that's how um you know agency owners often do it
Speaker: So that was that was easy. i think it's certainly i mean it certainly behooves you, of course, to have some savings up front. right you need ah You need a certain runway that that you have to ride on until you get that revenue stream to a ah certain consistent level.
Speaker: Yeah, I was lucky in that my my wife, my lovely wife is a ah HR leader and she's you often had very stable position of jobs that pay well and provide you know benefits and things like that, which in the United States is um it's kind of critical because we don't have health care for free.
Speaker: But but Yeah, that that is one lucky thing. And I've talked to people who don't have that, so it's a little bit harder for them to make that make that change.
Speaker: Right. that's That's one thing I do talk about in that past episode, which is another consideration, right? You have to have $500 to $1,500, even just for one person, to have medical care um on on a monthly basis.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. Yeah, um yeah ah the ACA made it a little bit easier for for individuals to get healthcare, but it's still so expensive, it's insane.
Speaker: So we talked about you went and and you started an LLC right away, which is a great move. I did the same. How do you handle, for example, for for the listeners, how do you handle your accounting? Because you're a marketing expert in creative. I'm going to take a guess. You're not a born accountant. Neither am i So how do you handle that one?
Speaker: Yeah, my dad told me he's not he wasn't going to pay for college unless I took an accounting class. And I took it pass fail and barely passed. So no, I'm not very good at it. um I'm not very good at math in general.
Speaker: First thing I did when I started an agency was hire a bookkeeper. So that's how I handle it. is I hire it out and I hire it to people that I that i trust. um Our first bookkeeper was awesome. um Now we have a um ah whole firm that specializes in creative agencies. Their name is Upsourced and they're out of Ohio. They're fantastic.
Speaker: Had them for three years now. No, I think that's ah that's a great solution. um Whether it's remote or or it's right there in town, it's it's a great solution to have that outside. Yeah, I think the larger the larger thing, John, I would say is that if you don't have a skill set or you are deficient in a particular skill set, don't be afraid to hire that out. Don't try to struggle through it. It's going to take you a lot more time.
Speaker: It's going to constrain you as a business owner. It's going to eat up all of your resources so that you can't do the thing that you're actually good at. So definitely be okay with giving things away and paying for them. It's an investment, but it'll it'll pay out.
Speaker: Right. I fully agree with you on that one. to that The core business activity needs to rest with you, you know not not doing all that tangential stuff in your spare time. Yeah, indeed.
Speaker: Exactly. So i'm going to i have I have two questions. I'm going to start with one that's going to take me to the other. Okay. So marketing, again, going back to marketing agencies.
Speaker: Yeah. you know you had a journey of 35 years in marketing and you know clearly you were younger when you started and not so young when you when you left the agency world, the the big agency world.
Speaker: And how did how did ageism play itself out? Because I know that ah agencies, they they tend to be you know moving fast and and and fresh ideas and and all of those keywords that you always hear related to young people.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So so the agency the agency world's little secret, John, is that that is a big pile of bullshit. um that's That is the story that they sell.
Speaker: The reality is this. um they They parade around senior level people in the pitches. And then um when ah when they win the pitch, they turn around and they give the day-to-day task to juniors.
Speaker: And the reason why they do that is because they can, first of all, load them up with tons of work, their time and materials. So the fact that junior people take longer to do things great, that works for us.
Speaker: um you know, so they're they're fundamentally built on selling that idea that younger people are the ones that come up with, they're in tune with the culture, they come up with all the ideas.
Speaker: It is not true at all. Yes, there is some benefit to having to having young people on accounts. and And I love bringing young people along and teaching them and you know but my model isn't built on that in fact my model my model actually would um would suffer a little bit from doing that though i think it's worth it in the long run because you know i believe in i believe in young people but um you know ultimately our agency runs better and faster and smarter with uh senior level people
Speaker: And you have just walked straight into my next question that I wanted to ask because you've you've told me that you have a unique business model and you've taken a very conscientious decision about whom to hire and and why you hire that particular type of employee. Maybe you can tell us about that.
Speaker: Yeah, so when I was just starting at that point where i had more work coming in than I could take on myself, I started to bring in other people that I knew from the industry, people that I respected, people that were senior and very, very good. um And I remember thinking, okay, well, I could hire a junior level person and and go out and find that person because I don't know them right now.
Speaker: um or I could hire Laura Scholes, who is a great writer. she is She's from the editorial world originally, but she's also really good at copywriting.
Speaker: She's been doing it for 30 years and I won't have to manage her. So again, managing people is it can be time consuming and it can be fraught and you there could be issues and there's every time you have an issue in a service level business, you know, that's something that the client feels as friction. So you don't want that.
Speaker: Right. um So I brought in senior level people to basically free me up to build the business while also doing a better job of delighting the the clients.
Speaker: with the work so and there's a few reasons why as over time what I've discovered is that senior level people there's just more and it's hard to quantify.
Speaker: There's no logic behind it, but there is a certain amount of synchronicity that you get from people with 20 or 30 years experience. Projects just move like a dance. you know They are a thousand times more efficient.
Speaker: um They're better results. Clients are happier. They're ego free. They're at the top of their game. They have so much wisdom. That that Lots of frames of reference.
Speaker: A client might throw them, ah you know, throw them for a loop. um There might be a badly behaved client somewhere. They've seen it before. They know how to handle it, you know, whereas a ah junior and believe me,
Speaker: I was that junior at one point would have a ah little tantrum about it and maybe do something that causes even more friction on the client side. Whereas the senior level person is like, yeah, I've been down that road. I don't need to do that again.
Speaker: but But Todd, ah if if I go into any corporate ah accounting department, they're going to tell me that that all of those senior employees that you're hiring are much too expensive.
Speaker: how how do you How do you justify all of that expense? And I'm saying this with some sarcasm. Yeah, of course. Yeah, you know, um ultimately, they they are cheaper.
Speaker: um And from, you know, somebody who's running a time and materials shop, that's not always to my benefit, right? um But it is to the client's benefit. They're getting better work faster, and it's less expensive than it would be if we hired junior level people, ultimately.
Speaker: Right. um the I do. You know, one of the things is that I'm not greedy. um you know, my my wife probably would love it if I charge for for what we do.
Speaker: But um ultimately, I'm OK with yeah a margin that's probably a third or less, probably less than a third the size of the big agency margins.
Speaker: um because i'm not trying to get rich i just want to have a good living i want to enjoy my life i want to have enough money to do what i want to do and i don't need to be like a multi-millionaire although you know that would be nice i i think nobody is going to disagree with you on that point yeah yeah plus i don't really love the activity of of holding people's hands You know, um it's just it's just not not fun for me.
Speaker: That's not what I want to do with my time. And and given that um so many people are being ah pushed out nowadays simply because of their age, I mean, there has to be a certain i don't know how to put this, but like a certain psychological satisfaction for you that you're helping people also. right? They don't necessarily find new jobs in today's job environment. and And you're providing an opportunity that that might be very unique for them, you know, that that they might not be able to find otherwise.
Speaker: Yeah, and that does feel good. um i I love hiring people that are in ah in a situation that they're like, I'm a little nervous about what's happening right now. i don't know what I, you know, what I'm going to do to make my next payment on my house.
Speaker: um and to be able to bring those people in and say i i think you're incredibly talented and valuable and um and i think we can we can both benefit each other ultimately i think that if you were to take industry as a monolith the people making the decisions are probably right about one thing in that there is this one tiny little band where somebody is more valuable because their experience is at a certain level and also they're relatively young so let's say 35 36 years old right and then the the quality to to cost ratio is probably pretty good for them but
Speaker: it's hard to find those people and they're in high demand so if you go lower and you're hiring people that are younger and trying to you know pull them up that's cool but um also that's that's going to be fraught with issues um and if you hire senior level people you're paying a little bit more but you're also getting a lot more, I think.
Speaker: um So maybe the margin is less than that 35, 36 year old, but um you know, it's, it's a, it's a great stable model to build a business on. So as a, as a business owner with, with employees, you know, not necessarily direct employees,
Speaker: what what would you say was like the biggest challenge that you had to overcome? I mean, what what what was the thing that kept you awake at night the most? Or what's the most challenging thing day to day that you have to face?
Speaker: Well, right now, the most challenging thing that we have to face is, you know, listen, we have great clients. um We have Stripe, we have Experian.
Speaker: We have Lending Club Bank, which just became Happen Bank. We have Experian Health. There's some great clients. um And we've had them for a long time.
Speaker: Getting new clients is is is really the challenge with with agency agency business. It's not like people go... shopping in a agency store, you know, you're not on the ship, you know, you it's a very inefficient um model.
Speaker: And I was I was hoping somebody would create like an an aggregator of sorts that allowed people to shop for agencies in a really efficient way. And some people are trying to do that. But so far, all of the ones that have been created are terrible.
Speaker: um so Yeah, it's all built on trust and trust is not something that um is easy to easy to create. It takes a personal connection.
Speaker: And so a lot of times it's the owner's personal connections that are driving their new business. And so we've tried in many different ways to um hack that.
Speaker: So for example, we bring people in and then tell them that they can make the 10% on any new business that they bring in. um So basically relying on their relationships, their personal relationships. So expanding that that network.
Speaker: Um, we're talking about bringing in somebody who would essentially be a, she would, she would hunt and kill her own food. And then she would bring in a client that we would then expand and she would make money on the, um, she would make money both doing the work and also on the, um, the future work.
Speaker: So I know that business development is, is probably one of the biggest challenges is, you know I'm a consultant and depending on where I am in the cycle of a particular project, I'm either doing more or less business development work trying to find the next project. is that i mean I like what you've done, this hack, by by kind of outsourcing your business development to your team as well. How much time do you have to spend on it versus the actual work of yeah but the different marketing projects that you have?
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's really difficult to to balance that. I'm doing so many different things. So, for example, we're still an agency where I like to be in the work sometimes. So I'm doing client work.
Speaker: um And that is often because it's billable, that often pulls my attention more than anything else, where I probably should be spending at least 50 percent of my time on business development.
Speaker: um maybe more maybe maybe 70 percent of my time on business development and and marketing and business development and marketing are two different things too i mean business development being more sort of um reaching out to my own networks and um networking through maybe going to conferences etc whereas marketing is kind of more about um you know getting our our name and story in front of more buyers, which is also something that we're trying to do. We're also creating ah um a tool, a free tool that people can use where they can put their own ah company ah URL in and get a brand health report that's generated through AI using a lot of externally facing signals like LinkedIn, Reddit, um
Speaker: uh the glass door ah other third-party review sites things that people are saying in the ether to get a sense for like how is your brand being perceived in the marketplace and so that's that's going to be a sales tool that's like ah a door opener kind thing um to get those conversations where we can start to really develop that trust and and show that we know how to help a company But that takes some fancy footwork, quite frankly, because you're going to try to sell to them that they have a problem probably with their brand, a weak part.
Speaker: So you have to do some fancy footwork to sell this in a positive way that you can help them. Yeah, no, that's a, you're very astute. Yeah. That is essentially, there are positive things that come through in that report, but every brand needs help.
Speaker: So, you know, we're going to highlight the things that they need help with and, and yeah, we're going to sell the problem a little bit and sell the solution.
Speaker: Now, I love that you're using, you know, sophisticated tools to to help develop your, your, your business. So given, given all of this, would you go back to the big agency world? If they, if they offered you, would you go back?
Speaker: No, no way. No way. I mean, okay. So I'll just take you through my thinking there real quick, because um if you put yourself in a, let's say they offered a senior level role at like,
Speaker: Ogilvy, New York, ah if there is such a thing anymore. um you know It's tempting for any any creative leader to to consider that. Maybe it's 350K, maybe it's five hundred k um you know that's That's a good salary.
Speaker: You can live well on that. um But those big agencies are incredibly volatile, as you said. um and your job your tenure is going be about two years um you know two three if you're lucky um and and really really talented in the political department so it's it's it's not that tantalizing when you really break it down um running let's say um let's say running a maybe a smaller mid-sized shop
Speaker: A little bit more interesting, honestly, but um I just don't think I just, you know, again, it's too volatile. So it sounds like you're very satisfied being exactly in that place where you are.
Speaker: Yeah, I am. i mean, I have lots of other ideas. I want to open a deli. ah i I want to launch my I have a hot sauce. I want to launch that as a company like I have lots of things I want to do, because once you catch that entrepreneurial bug, it's it's addictive.
Speaker: Honestly, you're like, I could do that and I could do that. I could do that. I mean, once you do something, you've done it like I built an agency. We're 12 years inn We're, you know, three million dollars roughly a year.
Speaker: um That's a decent business. Like I could do that again with something else. i think that's I think it's fantastic. I love the hot sauce idea too. um i think I told you the first time we we spoke that my wife and I started hot sauce company during COVID, which once we moved abroad, we shut it down.
Speaker: That's right. I remember that, as we As we kind of get to the end of the the episode, I think the the the most important question, I think, is is what what word of advice would you give to someone who's sitting on the fence right now you know listening to this conversation who doesn't know should they go forward with building their own business or not i mean what what advice do you have for that person i mean john it's going to sound a little woo-woo have to say first off but um the universe
Speaker: does favor the bold. And it's, it's a weird thing, honestly, like, anytime i have taken a chance, and gone and done something taking a risk, and push forward, things weirdly happen for me.
Speaker: And it's almost as if the universe was hoping I would make that move. You know, it's like, okay, we'll reward you with, with this, like, you'll get some traction. Here you go. Here's some conversations that, wow, look at that. And it's super exciting once that happens, but you do have to take that leap.
Speaker: But just know that, that, you know, that maybe it's like a, there's something around the sort of the luck of the first timer, you know, the first,
Speaker: if you're doing something for the first time, something, something happens and things work out. So definitely take some boldness, some boldness. and And I presume also some planning.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, don't, don't be dumb about it. Do, do your research. please ah Another piece of advice, and this is a real solid piece of advice is get some help early.
Speaker: I had a business coach um who's who I started with. My parents paid for it. um It was like, 1200 bucks for maybe six, seven sessions. And um i mean, he he wasn't the best, but he was good enough to where he was giving me a lot of, you know pretty solid advice.
Speaker: um So don't be afraid to ask for help from people who are yeah paid to help people like you. You know, I've had three or four coaches since and it's it's helped me tremendously every single time.
Speaker: At the end of the day, you you don't know what you don't know. And and it's good to have some someone come along and kind of help uncover some of those things that you don't know. Oh, it's so it's so refreshing.
Speaker: to know the things that you don't know. Right. Yeah. It's also scary when you find them out sometimes. Sometimes. Yep. true. So any, any final thoughts from your side as we, as we know wrap up here, just the final say, I love the last one was fantastic. Get help and don't be too, and don't be too proud.
Speaker: Yeah. I would say that, um you know, ageism is a stereotype. Right. And we are living longer, more healthfully than we ever have.
Speaker: And, you know, this is the first time I think in and ever where we have four or five generations in the workplace at the same time. And that that's a that's, and I think that the stereotype is lagging behind the reality.
Speaker: And so just know that What you're facing is a stereotype and you just have to you have to break through. Yeah, just carry on and and and push forward.
Speaker: Exactly. Push on through. Great. Very sage advice. Thank thank you, Todd. and I really appreciate that. And I thank you for again also for um ye spending your early morning here with with the ageism survival guide.
Speaker: It was a great way to wake up, John. excellent this is also a great way for me to wrap up the day then yeah exactly well with that i do want to thank the the listeners for tuning in and just remind everyone that all of the resources that i have available are located at ages of survival guide.com where you can find downloads links to all of the different podcast links video links And I'll also on this episode, drop in information for Todd down in the notes below so that you can use his agency for your next marketing needs.
Speaker: And with that, I'm going to end with what I always say that youth runs fast, but age knows the terrain. See you next week.
Speaker: I like that. And it's a wrap.
