Power of Reflection | The Narrative Group, President Rebecca Coleman (Podcast 224)

My creative director, who's been with me for nine years, used to do this thing where I would ask him about something and I've worked with creatives my whole career. I used to ask him about something and he would say, I want to sleep on it. And it would drive me crazy because I'm like, you just don't want to make the decision. I felt like it was just deferring the decision. What I realized was, wow, when he's eventually after I stopped letting it bother me, is that when he slept on things, he actually did come back with a more thoughtful response and a more considered approach. And so much so, because at first I would just push him and I'd be like, you can sleep on it, but tell me what you think right now.

Exactly. Yeah.

And when he tells me what he thought right now versus sleeping on it, it was very different.

Interesting.

He had, I realized he doesn't have the capacity to, you know, think through all of the parts right in that moment. The way his brain works is that he needs to think. Give it a break. Wake up, think again.

Today is the Narrative Group's president, Rebecca Coleman. Rebecca holds over 20 years of experience in building great relationships with clients and even better campaigns for their brands. Currently, she's president of the Narrative Group, an award winning creative agency that specializes in people centric and earned led brand experiences for some of today's biggest brands including McDonald's, Harmless Harvest and Universal Pictures. Prior to the Narrative Group, Rebecca founded something massive, a strategy led advertising agency and video production company behind the ad creative and campaigns for brands like Plum Organics, Oikos, Kind and Bolthouse Farms. Rebecca, thank you for joining us on the Second Command podcast.

Happy to be here, I appreciate it.

So when people name some of the brands that they do work for, I'm often curious, like how deep those relationships go. So you know, when you're doing work for, you know, McDonald's and Universal Pictures, is it like a franchisee of McDonald's you're doing work for? Is it like all of McDonald's us and how deep are you working with some of these brands?

Well, when it comes to McDonald's, we actually have worked on a global scale and it is mostly us day to day, but we have launched global campaigns. I'm sure you're familiar with the Travis Scott campaign that came out during Pandemic and that was a campaign that we played a central role in, including doing the deal with Travis Scott and planning his surprise experiences, the merch, doing strategy for the rollout, et cetera. And our success with that led to quite a few meals. And the beauty of that program and the thing I love most about it is that we took existing menu items and put them together based on the order that these famous people make when they go into McDonald's. So the reason that that really worked for us and for the brand is because we. When we work with McDonald's, it's always working off of this idea that no matter how famous you are, everyone has a McDonald's order. And so, you know, it's funny, you could have gone and ordered the hot meal yourself at any time. It's not, you know, it's not like a limited edition item. You could go in and order it. That's the idea. Is that. Remember People magazine or what was it called? Was it People or Who used to do, like, stars? They're just like us. It's sort of that idea totally humanizes the experience. So the success led us to do a global campaign, and. And we did that global campaign with BTS, the Korean pop band, and that was in 50 countries.

Wow. All right. So. So pretty deep integration with some of these brands. It's not real surface stuff. And you're right. Everybody does have a McDonald's order. So what was your. What was your McDonald's order?

My McDonald's order is fries and a Coke.

Okay. The fries are pretty damn good.

They're the best fries in the world.

Yeah. They are the best fries in the world.

Yeah.

I. I was. Was invited to speak to all of the female franchise owners of McDonald's a few years ago. There was about 450 of them, and I was. I think I was the only guy in the room. And it was a really. It was a cool opportunity to get to speak to them. But my McDonald's order, I had two. One was a quarter pounder with cheese and a medium root beer. And I would get that every time I drove back from the airport, which, thankfully, I stopped doing that every drive. And the other one, when they had these hash browns, but I used to dip them in maple syrup, so I would. I would get, like, their hash browns and coffee and dip them in maple syrup, and that was pretty damn good too.

I love that food hack right there. I also love. I am a big, big fan of an egg McMuffin, no meat. Oh, that's my. That's a breakfast order that I love.

Yeah. I like their sausage McMuffins. So there you go. So we can put us on that. We can be on their menu now.

Yeah.

So when with your team at the Narrative, what's your team look like? Walk us through. Who kind of reports into you and what your focus is on day to day as president.

Yeah, so we have this moniker that is Earned Led creative Agency and really that came to be because I had a creative agency and I met the founder of Narrative who really had a PR and experiential agency. And we met through a women's entrepreneur group and we met very regularly about what it was like to be a female leader in a male dominated industry. And then the Pandemic hit and we were talking all the time just about how much things had changed and really the unknown day to day and what was going to happen. And during that period of time, as many people did, we had really this constant conversation about how she was being asked for creative all the time and how I was being asked for earned led ideas all the time. And eventually I decided to leave my agency and I called her up and said this seems like a good partnership. And so we partnered together. And so really a big part of this coming on as president, so much of it was figuring out how we integrate these two ideas. So the company already had a PR team and an influencer team and I brought a creative team along and we had a very small experiential team because it had been a very big team. But during Pandemic it shrunk quite a bit. So we had to figure out how all of those things came together in a way that was very different from any other agency because most agencies really aren't a combination of creative and priority. Those are usually separate. And so we had to really figure out how we were going to do that. And that is really what I've spent the better part of the last 18 months doing.

Very cool. Okay, so you were both leaving your own agencies and what was it that had you? And by the way, which women entrepreneur was it? Women's Presidents Organization? Which group were you a part of?

Or was it Chief actually called hey Mama and it's for moms who run companies.

It's amazing. My, my sister was in that world in Toronto. She had 78 employees and had three kids and was pulling her hair out, started her own company and she was looking for something as well and that one didn't exist. That's a, that's a really cool opportunity. So you were. So I was a part of the entrepreneurs organization and part of YPO and like around these entrepreneurial groups and when you're an entrepreneur, it's a very different DNA than now partnering with someone or being president of an organization or what, what got you to change that? Was it to have a, a partner or to have a counterpart or what was it that got you to shift?

That's a really good question. And I think that I had, I felt like it was my third act. I felt like I had worked for an agency, worked my way up to president at that agency, sold the agency, and then stayed on for two years as GM for this, you know, very big organization. Then I left and started my own agency and I had that agency for more than 10 years. And I felt like I was a mom with two kids and that my kids were at the age where they had become more self sufficient. And I was trying to figure out what my third act would be. And I thought that I had a unique perspective because I had run my own agency before. So I thought that I could come in and have an understanding of what it's like to be an entrepreneur and, but also be able to contribute in a way I hadn't contributed before. And that has been a lot of the joy that I've gotten out of this job.

And why do you think she was willing to partner with you? Because again, it's now an entrepreneur looking at another entrepreneur. And what was it that made her say, yeah, this would be a perfect fit?

I think we had years of meeting up every six weeks to talk about how our organizations worked. And I think she kind of understood the way I, I think. And she also understood that I had an expertise in something that she didn't.

Yep.

And she felt like we could add that into the mix and be successful quite quickly.

Yeah, it's interesting when, when you said, yeah, you had a six year interview process when, when I went in as the second in command for 1-800-got- junk. Brian and I had been in a YEO forum together for four and a half years. So he'd seen me build two other companies, he'd been my best man at my wedding, and then I joined him as his coo. Yeah, you already had the trust, you already had the relationship. So you guys really hit the ground running then.

Yeah, it's so funny to be an entrepreneur, looking at other entrepreneurs and being able to have perspective. So one of the things that I worked on quite a bit when I got here is getting everybody to sort of uplevel their participation in the company. And when you're an entrepreneur and you start doing everything, sleeves rolled up, hands on, you feel there's a lot of value in what you do, in being involved in so much of what's happening. And when I got here, you know, they had never had a president before, so I was taking on some of the things they were doing. And so much of my first, I don't know, six to 12 months were explaining to them how much value they brought to the company that didn't have to involve day to day elements, that we would be more scalable, better equipped to take on bigger clients and grow faster if their expertise, of their experience is what they contributed and their understanding of clients and their relationships is what they contributed more than being in the weeds.

Wow.

And, you know, I don't know if I could have told myself that in my own company, but being at somebody else's company, I was able to step in, know what it feels like, really have empathy for being an entrepreneur, know why they have that feeling.

Yeah.

And also have a different perspective and be able to explain to them, you know, you have value outside your hands on participation in the company. And that has been the best part of our partnership, is because they've been able to grow and step away and do more and contribute in a bigger way because they feel confident that the work is going to get done because I'm here.

That's really cool. All right, so your first act when you were the president of a company and you helped build and sell the company, and then you stayed on as president for a bit, what do you think you learned in that first act that you carry with you today? What were some of the skills, the leadership skills, the wisdom that you now have as leaders?

We're in a very different place than we were when I started in my 20s. And the reason I say that is that we used to be very focused on the bottom line. Right. It was very business focused. There wasn't as much mixing of what's going on in your personal life, in your emotional life as there is today. And so I think having come up in my 20s, at a time when it was harder for women to make it to a C suite, it is still not easy. But, you know, I've told this story many times. I had an employee who reported to me that made a Rebecca ColemanSucks.com website. And I was very tortured as a female leader.

Sure.

You know, for the same thing that men were considered bold with big ideas and smart. I was, you know, bossy. And so I think it really prepared me for this new wave of leadership because the new wave of leadership is so focused on empathy, so much about understanding who your people are, what their life expectations, experiences have been like. And how that comes to the table and having. I can't claim to have the same experience that marginalized groups have had.

Right, but you have yours.

But I have an experience being an outlier in an industry and figuring out how to gain respect and how to have a thicker skin and how to, you know, find my way. And so I feel like that's what I bring most. I try to think about what that experience and hazing was like, and I'm bringing it every day to my job that I'm in right now.

I love it. All right, so first off, I'm extraordinarily jealous because no one's ever made a CameronHeraldSucks.com website. And that would be just. I think you, that's like a you, that's the next rung of a ladder that you made it up. I don't think you're old enough to remember, but did you ever see Fucked Company? Do you remember that?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

That was amazing. That was like 1998, 99, the rise of the dot com era. And I just remember, like, it was kind of like a real bad version of Glassdoor. Like, it was like the flip side, it was like how bad the company was. So I need you to pretend for a second. But the person who did the Rebecca ColemanSucks.com website was right. What were the. What was one thing that they were right about? That you've changed.

I think that the number one thing that I've learned is that not everybody has equal capacity. And what I mean by that isn't skills or ability to be developed, but just capacity to take on the stress of day to day work. And that means that you have to adjust expectations. And I think I had the expectations that I had for myself, for everyone. And I think that I determined they weren't good if they didn't have the same as I had.

Yeah.

My creative director, who's been with me for nine years, used to do this thing where I would ask him about something and I've worked with creatives my whole career.

Yeah.

I used to ask him about something and he would say, I want to sleep on it. And it would drive me crazy because I'm like, you're just. You just don't want to make the decision. I felt like it was just deferring the decision.

Right. Well, you're.

Yeah. What I realized was, wow. When he eventually, after I stopped letting it bother me, is that when he slept on things, he actually did come back with a more thoughtful response and a more considered Approach. And so much so, because at first I would just push him and I'd be like, you can sleep on it, but tell me what you think right now.

Exactly. Yeah.

And when he did what he thought right now versus sleeping on it, it was very different.

Interesting.

And I realized he doesn't have the capacity to, you know, think through all of the parts right in that moment. The way his brain works is that he needs to think, give it a break, wake up, think again. And he has a much more, you know, interesting take than he would have had earlier if you pushed him. And I think that that that's a really important lesson. And I see it. That is the thing I see most in young managers today. So they have people that report to them and there's all this work to do because remember, our parents waited for a return phone call, sometimes for days.

Right? Totally.

And we have clients that get frustrated when they. They emailed us in and they haven't heard by noon.

Right.

It's very different. So you have employees, young managers, they're managing talent, and they're frustrated the talent hasn't responded by noon. The email comes in, they're frustrated they haven't responded by noon because they would have responded by noon, but the manager, you know, the subordinate didn't respond by noon. And it's the same kind of thing where I find myself teaching that lesson often, which is that sometimes they're not quite there yet in managing all the parts. They just don't have the experience or capacity. And they have to build capacity. They have to figure out the way to manage all of those items. And that comes with experience. That isn't necessarily. There's. People can be very black and white. Like, they're not good. They're not responsive enough. Well, you can learn to be responsive.

Yeah, you can totally learn to be responsive. But it's funny that if I think back to that, I remember my old business partner years ago said to me, like, why would I need an email? Like, forget about getting a response back. And now it's like a $900 million company that it was a huge auto collision chain. Like, why would I even need an email? Yeah, there's. They're a different breed right now for sure that we're having to work.

My first agency, we worked in entertainment, and we would have to film what the Internet looked like on a computer to show entertainment executives on tape because they didn't think they needed the Internet on their computers.

That's hilarious.

Yeah.

Yes. You get to video it for them and send Them a video cassette tape. Yeah.

Yeah.

All right. And then Covid hits. You're running your second. Your second company, your second act. And you were running an experiential marketing agency at that time.

No, that's what they had. They had a PR and experiential. We had a digital creative agency.

Okay, okay, okay. So. So her business got slaughtered on the experiential side then.

Slaughtered.

Why the hell would you want to join somebody whose business had gotten well? Because you knew her and you had the six year interview and you saw what you could pull together. So what was that like then, doing the merge during COVID I mean, you'd gone remote. You weren't remote before that, were you?

No, no. We had big office space and a like 10,000 square foot studio to shoot things. We had. We were very much based in like physical location. Yeah, it was probably easier. It was probably easier. That's the best way to say it. You. You know, there's people say that even good stress is hard. Right. So getting married, even though you're excited, it's still really hard. It's stressful. Moving, even if you're moving to a new house that is your dream home that you could have, just the physicality of it is very stressful. I think working in a remote environment allowed for us to focus on how we were going to work together and really over communicate because we weren't thinking that there would be non verbal cues. We weren't thinking, oh, I'll see you at the office. We were thinking, how are we going to do this in this distributed way? And I think it made it easier.

Do you think companies are planning differently now that we're, we're all remote? Like, what do you think has changed for the better with working remote for your business?

So one thing I know for sure, and that is we always had a New York office when I had my own company. And the New York office always felt like they were on an island. And they were, because New York is one. But they often would be on that little triangle in the center of a room and we would be swirling around, especially with an idea agency. And that's why creative agencies have always typically been together. We'd be swirling around these ideas.

Yeah.

And the little voice would come out of the box, a little squawk would come out of the box. And sometimes they'd be heard and sometimes they wouldn't. And you know what, let's be honest. Sometimes they gave up, sometimes they didn't. They didn't. They stopped talking. They just Took notes.

Yeah.

And this is exactly why I thought this will never work for a creative agency. It's fine for other things if you're in performance marketing, fine like other industries within marketing. But I thought it would never work. But I realized in Pandemic that we didn't orient ourselves around it working. We worked the way we normally did and then dialed in a couple people in another location. Those people were always the outlier versus everyone being distributed. I think it really forced us to figure out how do you brainstorm where everyone can contribute? And I mean, what we're doing right now, being on Zoom versus being on the phone is one of the big factors that helped us get there. You know, everyone being in the room.

What tools are you using? What tech tools are using to collaborate and brainstorm? Are you using stuff like Stormboard or using any like, virtual whiteboarding software or like, what are you doing to actually like tactically brainstorm creatives?

The thing that I.

That.

So this company that I joined is owned by a small holding company based in Canada. Actually it's called Plusco and they own Cozette, which is the largest agency in Canada. And they're very small compared to us advertising holding companies in Lovely. And there is nothing that we fought harder for, nothing that we fought harder for than Slack. Slack. Slack is our main tool. And the reason Slack is our main tool is because so much of what we do is based on what's happening in the Zeitgeist. And So it is 110% essential to our business and not only internally, but also in dealing with clients. And it has a lot of tools. Well, first of all, obviously the immediacy of it, but it allows us to huddle very quickly and also allows us to attach documents but not have to sift through email. And obviously it's almost got its own file system because it's separated by client. And so those client groups join those channels and you always know what's going on. And you did ask me earlier about Universal and we launched the minions brand on TikTok about 12 months ago. We are about to this week hit 3 million followers. And we got there with the help of Slack. And this is not a sponsored ad.

Yeah, no kidding.

Yeah, we really got there with the help of Slack because we pride ourselves on understanding the velocity of trends. And so to hit a trend at the exact right moment, you have to have people being responsive immediately because if you. You can jump on a trend at any time, but if you don't get it on its way up, you're not. You're going to miss the wave and you'll just be another brand that jumped in, but not get the momentum that you want to build.

All right, I gotta, I gotta go back to where I want to go with the marketing side. Like, how. Here's a question for you. How do companies select the marketing agencies that they should work with? And that's a really broad question, but what do they look for? How do they decide? I was just asked by, By a client today who's looking for. Not the kind of stuff you do, but, you know, more. More on paid search and some. Some video stuff. And. But, but I'm like, I don't know. Your budget's not big enough. You're 50 grand a month. And the people I know are like 80 to 100 grand a month minimum. Like, how about selecting agencies if their budgets are bigger or smaller?

I mean, most of the time they issue an RFP and it will ask, you know, overall questions. And then in our case, it's going to ask you, like, sort of give you a sample challenge or initiative and ask how we would approach it. I think a lot of what we do in our response. So that's how they. That's their process for selecting. A lot of what we do in our response is say no to things that we think won't work, which is, I think, a part of what matches us with the right. With the right clients for us.

Yeah, because that, because if they trust you and they're okay, then we won't do those things. And they're deeper down to your funnel already of what they're starting to listen to you as an expert.

Then I think what happened is people really love earned media. People love earned because it feels, and I'm going to say it for lack of a better term, free. Right. Because it's earned. You're not paying for every impression you're getting. But earned has changed so much. So where we used to all read newspapers and magazines and consume these sort of more physical publications and TV used to be more consolidated. Now, as you know, there's like a million streaming that don't really even have commercials. And then there's skippable commercials and all of these things. And even in digital, there are fewer places that have mass audiences than there used to be.

Yeah.

And so people come to us. Let's say you have a product and you come to us and you say, you know, I'm really coming to you because I want earned. And you guys say, you're an earned led creative Agency, let's say it's a product that has technology. No one really wants to write about products and their technology. When you go out there and pitch earned, like, sure, you could get a couple articles if there's like a differentiator, but that's not the space that earns in anymore. So we have to say to them like, you know, we could even if they came to US with an $80,000 a month budget like you're talking about, we, we have to say to them, you know, we could take your $80,000 and tell you that we're going to get you earned. And then in six months you're going to say you didn't get us enough earned. We have to say to them, earned works differently. Now what you're getting earned media on is creating programs and earn LED campaigns that you use to build amplification. And the amplification is a combination of pitching those stories based on what you've created and supporting it with, let's say influencer or social or other elements that help create that sort of groundswell of amplification that we're trying for. And if they come back and say, no, no, we really just want pr, we oftentimes say, we don't want to take your money. Like, we really don't want to take your money.

It's interesting. I've got a friend of mine who owns a PR agency in Vancouver. She's got about 80 or 90 employees right now. It's called Talk Media. And she used to ran my PR team at 1-800-got junk. And she's been telling me the same thing. That PR as I knew it is completely changed. It almost doesn't even exist anymore. Pitching journalists.

Yeah, exactly. It's such a small part of the job. So small.

All right, talk about what you're focusing on day to day. Then how do you and you know, your partner at the narrative group, how did you divide and conquer? How did you decide to split up tasks?

So there are two founders at the narrative group. I met the second one when I was sort of brought into the fold when this idea came to be. And they each have sort of an expertise that I don't have. And that is probably why this works so well. So one was a PR expert and the other was an experiential expert. And I'm the one that came with creative experience. And so we sort of each have our ability to contribute in a way that is, you know, very identifiable for the entire team. That said, probably the best part of coming on board was for me to learn those two parts of the business that I never knew I needed. But now I really, really love and I love integrating into the work that we do in terms of day to day right now. I mean, I don't know if you've heard this from people, but I feel like so much of my time is spent on what is going on in the world and how much it affects people and, you know, the brain they bring to work. You know, I send a lot of all company emails and have a lot of forums for talking about those things that are affecting the people that work for us.

Wow. It's really. It really has become that relevant, hasn't it, for leaders to have that eq that people are just human and we're going through this human condition and struggle and none of this actually matters. Like, if you're not completely in tune with that, they're not bringing them their best selves. So how do you. How do you balance the need for being aware of what's happening in the world and what's happening in their lives and being there and supporting them and making sure that leaders are aware of that and getting shit done. I agree.

It's really hard. I think the. We have two things happening right now. I think we have a. We have our own version of long haul. Covid. Right. We have been in this. It is. There is a wide spectrum of feelings about it. There are those people who want to get back out into the world and are very bullish about it, and there are those who are very frightened still of human interaction and feel that we're not, you know, over the hump. And on top of that are all the things that are happening in the world. And you know, mass shootings and, you know, the racial reckoning that's going on in our country and continues. Roe v. Wade decision was both the leak and the recent Roe v. Wade actual decision. It's. It's catastrophic for many.

Yeah.

And they, you know, have a hard time working.

Yeah.

So.

So how do you balance that out with the whole, like. Because I'm a very empathetic leader. I used to say that the hardest thing for me with, with running a company was people, because I like them too damn much and care about them too damn much that I had to do all my work at night because I was there caring for people. How do you. How do you help them compartmentalize or. Or is it just because you're empathetic? Then they. They can have a voice and they can then get to work. Like, is that is that the balance, Is that the lesson here?

I think what, what we've shifted to and I think it's, it's not there. I don't have all the answers. I'm still learning. In many of these cases, there's two main factors. One is listen, being a great listener because sometimes people, as I said with my story about sleeping on things, sometimes people have a perspective that you didn't think of. But I think the second is action. So I don't send emails anymore or have forums for discussion that don't have an action element involved. So when there's a mass shooting, it isn't, this is really tragic. Our thoughts and prayers go out. What we try to do as an organization is say we want to offer opportunities for us to make a difference as an organization. And it's a lot, it's a lot of work because just saying thoughts and prayers is easier. As a leader saying, I'm empathetic, I know this is going on. I know you're thinking about this. What we want to do is offer information, ideas, the opportunity to contribute and something action oriented. So, you know, there was right immediately after those two back to back shootings and which ones am I talking about? Because there are so many in America, but I'm talking about the one that happened in New York and Buffalo and the one that happened in Texas. In the school. There was a coincidentally coming right up National Gun Violence Awareness Day. And as a part of that day and weekend, there were events that you could get involved in in almost every state in the country.

Of course. Yeah.

And so we offered to help people find events. We offered people the day off on the Friday, which is the day it kicked off, for participating in those events. And we asked, and you were supposed to wear orange on the first day of it. To build and drive awareness. We offered every, every single employee could get either an official T shirt or an orange T shirt of their own, and we would reimburse them. And so it's very small. We're not making as big of an impact as we want to make. But we have decided that taking action makes people feel empowered to take their own action and not just helpless in this while the world burns around them. Similarly with the Roe v. Wade decision, we assured our employees, and we do have employees in states that are affected, that that our coverage covered therapeutic and elective abortion, that they were covered to fly to another state for medical procedures, and that as a part of the holding company, we had made a $30,000 donation to planned Parenthood to really try to help the marginalized groups who don't have a company who's saying, we'll fly you to another state. And again, 30,000 is a nice size, but very small in comparison to how much is needed.

But it's something.

But again, and I want to be clear, I'm not trying to get accolades with you or the people I'm sending these emails to. I'm just trying to have people feel like we're not just in this swirl of feeling helpless and just giving us an opportunity to try to make even some small difference in the cards we've been dealt.

Yeah. All right. I have a feeling like you're an amazing leader to work with. I want to pretend that there was another blog post that just came out on the Rebecca ColemanSocks.com website today and there's a new thing that you suck at. What's the. What are you working on? Because we're always working. Right. I think it was Ray. Well, Ray Kroc from McDonald's said, when you're green, you're growing. When you're ripe, you're rotting. So what are you working on today as a leader that you're trying to get better at?

I am continuing and I don't know if this job will ever be done, but I am continuing to try to better understand how to be an inclusive leader, especially as it relates to dei. We are working very hard to and have committed to have 50% of our staff be from historically underrepresented groups by the year 2024. So we have made a commitment to get there and we are doing our part. And, and obviously, though, hiring people and having a staff helps because they can contribute to the efforts. But that's only step one. People need to feel like they are heard and are developed and have growth potential and belong.

Yeah.

And I'm working on that.

You know what I love about what you just said though, as a goal that your company's working towards is the timeline on it is only two years out. And it drives me crazy when I hear government officials say, well, by the year 2035, I'm like, Dude, you're going to be fucking dead. Like, that's 13 years from now. Like put a goal in place that at least is close enough. So I love that you actually have an initiative that you're focusing on that the window is not that far out too, in terms of the operational day to day. I've always believed that the leader's job is to grow people. Right. I launched a course called Investing Your leaders. I've always been there to try to grow people's skill set and grow their confidence with the people that you're working with that are your direct reports. Let's just say that you know, you've got your management team. Where do you find yourself working with them the most? Have you got like core areas or skill sets that you focus them on or are you just very situational?

So I have to tell you something about me that sounds like is similar to something about you. So our head of accounts and strategy has worked with me for 20 years and I'm only 29. So I told you. Our creative director has worked with us for nine years. Our head of brand experience, which is where experiential sits, worked for me for quite a while, left and then came back to work with us again. And we have a small media practice and the person who runs that is on year seven of working with me. I brought, I brought people with me who I think in this world it is rare to have that much loyalty and that close of a connection of people. I balance that humble brag with what I'm about to tell you I'm working on, which is the turnover is insane right now for all companies, especially in our industry.

Yeah.

And it is really hard because it used to be if you gave people opportunity, if they had cool stuff to work on, if you were a good leader, if you were empathetic, it that meant people were staying.

They were, that was five to ten years for sure.

Now we have people quite literally crying saying this is life changing money. I love it here. I gotta go stockpile, maybe I'll come back and we've had a couple of boomerang employees. We've had people leave for the money.

And come back and come back. Sure.

But I honestly, I don't ever, I never tell a person not to take a role. I might make an offer, I might say, is there anything we can do to keep you? But I don't. I need to put myself in their shoes. Is this life changing money for you? Is this going to fundamentally give you an opportunity that fundamentally changes the way that you live? Which I guess is the same as life changing. I just said that in a different way. I mean, if it is, I get it. When you have an employee being offered $50,000 more, the books just don't work that way here. I can't just make 50,000 materialize and I can't make it materialize for the number of people coming in and saying that, yeah, I a one off is A one off. But that's not what's happening right now.

So, so yeah, and I like your approach of just saying like we can't really stop them. And so you just have to kind of understand and sometimes let them go and come back.

I think what I'm working with my managers on is like first of all not being too hard on themselves about it because where it you, you know, you've seen all the LinkedIn posts, like people don't leave good companies. That was the mantra and that's just simply not true anymore.

No, it's not true. I mean, I built the number two company in Canada to work for. So I, I, I understood what company culture was like and how strong it was. And I, I coached the number two company on Glassdoor. It's different now partially because of COVID has accelerated it. But now we're competing against every Bay Area company worldwide. Like they're now hiring in Iowa, they're hiring in like Florida, they're hiring everywhere. And I think, I think we've, we've got to build way better companies, but I think we just have to also. Yeah. Draw the line in the sand and sometimes let them leave and come back. It's a weird time.

So my approach now is a, of course I want managers to continue to work on themselves, continue to work on their relationships, continue to understand the needs of their employees and develop them, of course, beyond, you know, recognize superstars, know how to stay ahead of their needs. And that's a really big theme that I have is like, how do you stay one step ahead? How do you kind of offer something before someone asks, how do you know where they are in their thought process? So all of that, of course I want all that, but I also want our managers to understand that sometimes this is bigger than they are and that they can't let it bog them down in changing everything they do to try to orient themselves around keeping people.

Yeah, it's destructive for them to think that there's something so wrong with them as a leader because of that past narrative for sure.

And then the other thing I'm asking them to do is to figure out how to build better kind of matrix the work so that one person leaving isn't leaving us high and dry. If we know that 10 years are shorter, how can we plan for shorter tenures if we can't effectively change that? If right now the moment we're in is that people spend, you know, a year, 18 months, two years, then we need to plan for that cycle and be surprised and Delighted. When it lasts longer than that. But how do we plan for that cycle? So how do we have more people touch the work? And I've been banging this drum. More people touch the work because McDonald's is our biggest client. If you have one person touch McDonald's and only one person, and that person leaves, not only are we all scrambling, but McDonald's might leave.

Well, it's not. And it's like you said, it's not if they leave, it's when they leave. Because we know they're going to because they're moving faster.

Right. So we just have to adjust.

You're the first leader I've actually heard speak that way about it as well. It's like, why fight it? If that's. If that's what it is, let's just plan for it and be ready for it.

You know, my dad, and I think you asked, and I did not say this. My dad was. Worked for IBM for 40 years. One job he had. He, he. He went to Vietnam for the US Government because he was ROTC in college. He came home and he worked for. For IBM his whole life.

Wow.

And my father was a person that I talked to all of the time about business all of the time. And my dad died in 2019, you know, right before pandemic. And that's probably part of the reason I made a change in my life, because it was a very big change in my life to have that happen. And one of the things he used to ask me about all the time was turnover and loyalty. It was a thing that was obviously very important to him. He stayed at the same company for 40 years. And I think what's so interesting about that is that it took. Because of that, because I grew up in that way, it took me a long time to let go of that. And I think that's why my thinking is so radically different now, because I'm like, well, I can't solve that piece. I. It's out of my control now. So what is in my control?

Yeah, yeah, It's. No, it's really. It's really super intelligent way to think about it too. Like, you can't. I remember taking. I think it was judo when I was really young. And it was like, if the big person comes running at you, you can't push back at them. You just kind of turn sideways and put your leg out and they'll trip over it. Like, you use the momentum against themselves. And it's kind of what we're doing now. If they're going to leave well, why fight it? Let's just be ready for the trend. I want you to go back to my last question. I want you to go back to like the 21, 22 year old Rebecca Coleman. You're just getting ready to start out in your career in business. What advice would you wish you'd known back then that you know to be true today?

Worry doesn't change outcomes.

No shift. I'm the biggest warrior out there.

I this is a mantra that I have only come into in my 40s, which is you can be the greatest worrier. You can be a prize worrier, Guinness Book of World Records warrior. It will not change outcomes. The worry does not change outcomes.

It's huge. I love it. That's a good one for me to listen to as well because I am the world's worst at it at times as well. I will work on letting that one go. Rebecca Coleman, President of the Narrative Group, thanks so much for sharing with us on the Second in Command podcast.

Love talking with you. Thanks for having me.

And the difference between managing managers and managing people, it's the difference between being a leader and being a manager. For me, when you manage people, I mean, you need a lot of skills. The most important thing on your work is track progress to keep people motivated. Like when you manage managers, you need more work in.