#153: Inside Exit Five | How to Actually Pull Off a Rebrand with Eli Rubel of No Boring Design

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One, two, three, four. Exit. Exit, exit.

All right, we're back.

Exit5 podcast. America's favorite. I know not America. Sorry, Dan. Dan wants us to expand globally. 30% of our customer base is global. The most popular B2B marketing podcast on the planet. Dave Gerhart is here. Dan is here. Eli is here. So this is a little bit of a. Inside exit 5. We want to do something where recently we went through a full rebrand, full redesign, website, visual identity. And we know that this is something that you listening to this, maybe you've been through this, so maybe this will be like a therapy episode or you're going to do this. And so we wanted to have Eli on to talk about this process. And then also in, in full transparency, we did something cool where Eli and his team were like, hey, we'll hook you up with this. We will kick ass for you on a rebrand. If we do a great job, will you talk about no Boring Design? And I said, absolutely.

Good deal.

Game on. They blew us away. And so I wanted to have you guys on to talk about it. So first, let's just rewind at the beginning. Let's start. Eli, just introduce yourself and talk about no Boring Design to this audience.

Yeah, absolutely. Dave, thanks for having me on. This project was a blast. And I'm so glad that you and Dan were. Were down for the crazy pitch, which I'm sure we'll get into the backstory of how it all came to be later. But yeah, at a high level. Founder of no Boring Design. I created no Boring Design actually while I was running a marketing agency and just realized that so many of our clients were struggling with creative like whether it's organic, social or paid ads like PDFs, all the creative required to run a comprehensive marketing program. Creative tended to become the bottleneck. Design tended to become the bottleneck. And so decided to spin my creative team out and offer that as like this on demand design service and creative service for fast growing companies.

So we, we had initially connected like a year or two ago, you're running a different company. You had reached out to basically. We did some sponsored stuff with Exit 5 and then I had you on the podcast because you have an interesting backstory, advising some high growth B2B startups on brand, on marketing, on go to market. And we had initially we did this podcast and then at the end of the podcast, like I never know what it's going to be like when I have somebody on the podcast because oftentimes it's the first time we've met and we, the chemistry was great. We were riffing on things very much like, you know, on the same page was a bunch of things. And I think towards the end of the podcast this maybe was like this fall, Dan was just about to come on and I was really starting to think about like going harder with Exit 5, growing the business and I wanted to level up. I wanted to grow the company a.

Little bit, grow up a little bit.

And I wanted to keep the same. I wasn't ready to do a full investment in the rebrand and redesign. And so I said to you, I was like, hey, I actually have this funny idea. I want to move like, I don't want Exit 5 to be so tied to my name. And I have this crazy idea of like coming up with a mascot like the Fiver or something like that. Do you think you could come up with a mascot for us. And that was kind of what led. Led to you actually going back to your team and being like, no, but here's what we're going to do. We're going to use this as an opportunity to create something interesting, right?

Yeah. That was super fun. I remember you being, like, very apprehensive to putting anything else on your plate. Rightfully so. And I was like, yeah, sure, we'll come back to you with the mascot. And then the brief to my team was like, all right, we're going full bore, full rebrand, full website presence, and we're just going to present it without having asked permission and see if we can blow Dave's socks off.

So I want to talk about what goes into that, But, Dan, you and me have worked together at a couple companies now. You've been involved in the design, like, either in your role in a product marketing capacity or just kind of owning the website. We've traded lots of messages over the years about the pros and cons of doing an activity like this. Just in your experience, like, what usually goes wrong? What are some of the negative experiences we've had in the past? You know, I'm trying to get, like, the apprehensiveness around, like, ah, is this going to be like, I get it. I get looking cool. Like, I get having something that looks better, might perform better, but that comes with this. We don't want to do this. Takes time. Like, let's dig into that a little bit. Some of the objections, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, the. The scope always increases, right. Whenever you start a project like this, and, like, it happened with us, but I think we handle it really well. But, like, it happens with every project, right? Like, you want to start with, you know, the core five pages, and then you realize, wait, there's like, three different platforms here, and we got to build this, we got to do subdomains. And so I think the scope creep is always the thing that, like, most teams struggle with going into it and then when they're in it, you know, like, how do we. How do we handle all this stuff? I think we made some sacrifices and we made some. Like, we were also small enough we could do it really quickly, which is great. So I think that worked out fine for us. And then I think the other difficult part with the redesign that we've struggled with numerous times is measuring the roi, right? Like, how do you. Do you measure, like, conversion of landing pages? Do you measure traffic? Do you measure time on page? I mean, there's all these different rate like, we can go to our Google Analytics right now and there's like 15 million, you know, data points we could use to measure the success. And none of them solely are correct. Right. For measuring the success for us in this case, it was super obvious after we did it, we're lucky to be in the middle of, like, a community of B2B marketers. And so we went and we launched and we posted on LinkedIn and we posted our community. And the response, what people said, the comments were just amazing. And we felt it, right? So, like, we were big on feeling it and so we felt it. But, like, that doesn't always happen with a redesign. It's really hard to measure, and so a lot of teams definitely struggle with that.

Well, I think you also have to, like, why are you going to do it? And I think sometimes you can be. It's easy to obsess over the measurement and versus, like, it's something should just feel like, can we do it because we want it to be better? Like, I don't know, I want to redesign this room. I don't know how I'm going to measure. I want it to be better. And so I felt some of that. But I think my biggest hesitations were like, is this really the best use? Like, should we be doing this as a small team? And then also just in having past experiences with designers and creative agencies, it can be super frustrating. You do a lot of work, like, you spend two weeks on a ton of calls to come up with a brief and to give examples, and then they come up with something that you don't like, and then it's hard to give that feedback. And then how do you blow up this work? And then you kind of got to start all over again and it just becomes a process. And I want to hear from Eli on, like, being a partner with a marketing team on this. Let's talk through the, like, what you all did for exit 5. And then let's talk through, like, how do you set yourself up for success? I've made the mistake, like, anytime with hiring or working with an agency. I have realized that even if the agency, like, didn't deliver on the right work, so oftentimes I'm the reason for that. And I think we don't spend enough time, like, on what goes into the brief and being able to articulate what good looks like. So what is your process in working with a company? What does it look like to work with a good marketing team on something like this? And where do you even start?

Yeah, so I Mean, there are a couple ways to go about answering that, but I'll just dive right in. I think the difference between a great engagement, between a creative firm or even a designer individually and a client or a marketing team, a lot of it has to do with really being transparent upfront about what the goals are. And specifically, I'll give you some examples. So, like, sometimes the goal is, hey, I'm a new VP of marketing. I've been in the seat for two months. I know that this needs to happen. My goal is to, like, satiate my conversion needs, like, make sure that the site performs better than it currently is. But really my goal is to impress my CEO and like, make sure that all the other stakeholders are happy and that I don't burn any bridges through this process. And so that level of transparency really never comes through. And you always find these things out, like, down the road when all of a sudden the CEO steps in, has opinions, and it blows the entire project up. And so that's like such a little nuance. But that's how a project can go from being like, oh, we could. What we did with you guys, what was it, like a month, month and a half? It was insane. The speed and the timeline and it's super abnormal because you guys were just like, we were all very aligned from the get go. You guys are very decisive at every step. You gave feedback live on our touch points. And so there was no hemming and hawing. There was no sudden grenade gets thrown halfway through the project and you start all over. So I think that's a big piece, is just being clear up front on what everyone is after and who the actual stakeholders are is something that many times gets messed up.

So for a project of this scale, are you saying like, early in the process, like, do we need to bring the CEO into this process or do you have full control over this?

Like, exactly.

Is someone going to blow it up? Like, how do you handle that upfront?

So I'm to a point now where I own two agencies. I've seen a lot of, like, happy clients. I've seen a lot of clients that light on fire and you have to, you know, problem solve. And at this point, what I've learned is the more blunt you can be upfront and just straightforward about your needs, and the more you can advocate for your needs as an agency, the better it is for the client and the better the outcome for the client will ultimately be. So the how is like, I'll just literally say it, say it flat out, be like, hey, like who could screw this up for all of us? Like, who's going to be the one who has strong opinions that gets clued in late in the game? Like, what does that look like? And I find that folks react really well to that. They appreciate that kind of, we're all in the same race. We all want to get to the same outcome. Let's help each other get there.

How do you come up with a brand? How do you come up with a new brand? Like, obviously, in our case, usually you're going to have something to work with, Right? But what are the actual steps? You just go off into a room and, you know, throw a bunch of ideas around, or do you have some type of framework or, you know, system you like to use to, like, go through the ingredients and come up with some initial concepts? How does that process work?

Yeah, so to some extent, too much process can stifle creativity, as you can imagine. I'll tell you how it typically goes. The average client company comes to us and they're like, hey, you know, we just raised our series C and we really want our site to be better. We really love Stripes website. And, like, they'll name three other really commonly referenced websites and they'll be like, can you just do something, like, really fresh? And like that. That stands out and it's unique. And so the first step is like, again, back to expectation setting and understanding what the goals are. If someone wants something that looks like stripe, they're basically asking us to put camouflage on them. Like, because almost all B2B SaaS companies want to look like stripe. I don't know why, but they do. And so, you know, big successful company, then all of the companies end up looking like stripe, and therefore nobody stands out. So part of our job in that early stage of incubating a brand or creating a new brand that hopefully becomes this iconic standout entity is to help dispel some of their preconceived notions or understand if that is truly what they want. And they're okay with blending in and looking like all the other B2B SaaS companies. Obviously, with our name being no boring design, we're pretty big advocates for how can we do something fresh? How can we do something crazy that the industry hasn't seen before? An example of this, we're working with Adam Robinson from RB2B right now. And, I mean, that guy, his whole thing is like, contrarianism.

And, you know, the homepage is just him with two middle fingers and it says, screw you, Sixth Sense.

Exactly, exactly. And so when you imagine, like, imagine talking about what a brand for that guy and that company should look like. It's gotta be so different and so out there. So, yeah, it's a little bit of a dance up front. And then usually we hone in with mood boards and putting reference imagery in front of them to really hone in on, like, what is the vibe that you're feeling. How far is too far. That's another important one, is like, folks a lot of time think they want to be creative, and then you put something really creative in front of them. They're like, this is crazy. We could never do this. You're like, okay, all right. So like, that's our parameter. That's like the end point on crazy and creative. Now let's go. Like, what would be so boring and dull? Like, let's establish this kind of max and min, if you will.

Yeah. So it's interesting to like to work with you all. It was definitely much more how. How I think we work, Dan and I, which is like, I believe there are frameworks that can help, but oftentimes we'll get an idea for something. And there wasn't a framework, but we just had an idea and we said, oh, let's do it this way. And I think you all had enough experience in the space to come up with that. But I actually worked with an agency one time, and there was a really interesting exercise where basically they had me go through and kind of answer all these questions and, like, move a knob on a slider of like, where I, you know, my kind of like, it's almost like your risk tolerance profile if you're setting up like a online, you know, retirement savings thing. And I thought. I thought that was interesting because it does help. It helped me articulate that. But this is one of the reasons why I actually am obsessed. It's one of the use cases that I love for, like, chat, GPT and perplexity and like, AI tools is I. I'm not a designer. I don't really know. I can't articulate the words in, like. We used to work with this guy Drift called Matt Gemple, and he's a creative director and he was like, tech. You know, he'll probably listen to this and smile, but, you know, he'd use all these, like, you know, design team words. And I'm like, man, I have no idea what that means. And he's talking about, you know, can't. This isn't a design word, so don't roll your eyes. But like, you know, camel case and padding and all this nonsense. Like, dude, I don't know any of that. But what I do now is I go to ChatGPT, or I can't get ChatGPT to work right now. So I'm using Perplexity. But I asked, I grabbed Stripe's website and I put it in there and I said, can you describe the elements and the style of this website? And that is super, super, super helpful because now it explains this site to me. So just, I'm going to use Stripe.

Because you mentioned it.

Stripe is characterized by a clean, minimalist aesthetic with ample use of white space, sans serif typography, and flat design elements. This style is often referred to as modern or contemporary web design. Here are some examples and descriptions of the of companies that also have this style. So Slack, Dropbox, Airbnb, Squarespace, Mailchimp, those are all, you know, SaaS type of companies and examples. And so, sure, if you want that and you want to look like Stripe, that's great. But I also think what's cool is you mentioned, like, just the positioning of your company is like, what is attractive. Also, like, all right, if you just want someone to go build you Stripe, like, there. Here you go. Just use ChatGPT, come up with your version of Slack, Dropbox, Airbnb, Squarespace, mailchimp, and Stripe, and put your company logo on it, and you got the product screenshot on the hero, you got the logos, you got the social proof. You got something about being fully integrated and all in one platform and you're good, simple, that's fine. But I think that the real design opportunity, and I learned this, like, deeply with David Cancel, who's the CEO of Drift, who was, like, the first person that really blew my mind on this. He was obsessed with design and how design could make an impact on your marketing. And that was the thing that unlocked that for me. And I know, like, this is something that you're. You're passionate about, but basically, like, how your creative strategy is typically an underinvested thing. You know, we beat our heads looking for all these little growth hacks, and it's like, actually to be different, to look different, to say things differently, to be better through the visual identity and to not look like everyone else is actually the opportunity. It sounds like that's what you're going to do with Adam, but maybe that's just something I can, you know, hear you riff on for a minute.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's like, when I'm advising companies and thinking about, you know, with marketing Brain hat on design is usually seen, I think, by marketers and especially by non marketers, like other folks on leadership, whatever, as this, like, very soft, nice to have thing that we'll get to it when we get to it and like, it would be cool to do, but is that really a big priority? And like, where are our leads? You know, like, where are the good leads? And at the same time, like, let's take an example. So my other agency, Mattermade Performance Marketing Agency, we work with a bunch of companies in tech and let's say our average budget that we're managing ranges from $50,000 a month to a million dollars a month in ad spend. So let's just call it $250,000. Let's go somewhere in the middle. So $250,000 they're spending every month across paid social, paid search. And they're pushing them to. Well, first, depending on the platform, they're seeing an image, right? The ad itself. Then they're getting pushed to a landing page, right? And so each of those are two massive conversion points where someone's deciding if they're actually going to trust this company to put their website in their information on into the website. And so in this case, design is not a nice to have. Design is like mission critical for driving conversion and optimizing conversion. And so this is one of those spaces where I ask the marketers, and a lot of times I'll Even ask the CEOs, like, hey, what do you care more about? Do you care more about being on brand with your ads, or do you care more about that $250,000 a month that you're spending converting at 5% better than it did previously by making some bold design decisions. And sometimes it can be much greater than 5%, right? Like, it's just, it's crazy how human beings are, whether we like it or not or admit it or not, like, we're very driven by aesthetic. It's why Apple was so successful early on. It's why, you know, Nike has been so successful. It's like, people like nice, pretty things and a lot of people might not be able to describe them, like you said in designer speak, but you can see it and be like, ooh, that's really nice, I want that. Or, ooh, that's really nice. I trust that. And so design, to me, is this very inexpensive lever many times relative to the spend these companies are putting out every single month to bring folks in the door.

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Dan, what do you got to say about this?

This is Fascinating. I mean, I. Behind the scenes, I mean, I'm kind of nodding my head here. I guess I'm actually on camera, so I'm not behind the scenes, but I feel like I'm a front row listener to, like, you know, like, we've been in those shoes, Eli, like, spending that kind of money and thinking about design as an afterthought. I think the thing we did differently here because of you, as we kind of put it, you know, like, earlier on, like, honestly, we would not have done a redesign this year with three team members with the stuff we have on our plate. We have five now, but we had three team members when we greenlit this. And so I do see already, Matt, and our team is thinking about we're not spending $250,000 a month on ads, but we are spending some money on ads. We're trying to spend it well.

We're spending $1,000.

Okay, fine.

Dream big.

Slightly smaller than your average client, but.

Right on the amex.

Part of the thinking was, all right, let's get on webflow. Let's give Matt the reins to be able to go make decisions there and then. Now, like, one of the things we're doing is we're working with your team after the launch, and we're working on a website plan right now to go figure out, okay, what are the things you want to do on the website now that we have the new brand in place, now that we. We are spending some money on ads, and we need to convert them. And so this is where, like, I think what you've done is you painted a really nice story for us. And I think for all of our listeners of, like, this is really where design can be.

Performance marketing.

Right. And I can see why you went from a performance marketing agency to a design agency, you know, and added that onto your portfolio there, because, you know, there's huge overlap there. And so I'm excited about what we're going to do in the future here, too.

I also think, like, some people, like, I think you got to know, marketing, to me, is a game of attention. And I think you have to know that now there's multiple ways to get attention. And I actually do see some people write on LinkedIn about this, and they're like, it's not a. Like, they're like the holier than thou crew is. It is. I'm playing a game, and the game is to get your attention so I can get you to know, like, and trust my business. So hopefully you'll buy something and tell your Friends, right? That. That is period. Now, you. You could do that. Like, you ever seen. I don't know what they have out where you're at, but, like, you ever seen, like, around tax season or a new car dealership, they got like, some. They got some guy dressed up in, like, a Statue of Liberty costume, like, flipping a. Like a Liberty Tax, like, sign up in the air, jumping up and down the side of the highway. That's one way to get attention. You don't have to do it that way, right? There are, like, classier and more thoughtful ways to get attention if you want to do that. But our audience of this podcast is mostly people that work at B2B companies and particularly with advertising, right? And actually, I would put Organic Social in this bucket right now, too. Organic Social is essentially a free advertising channel. Every post you write, like, you've been really going hard on LinkedIn lately, Eli. Like, everything you write is an advertisement for your name and your brand and your business. It's not overtly like, go buy my stuff, but it's an advertisement for some reason. When you go and design your site, like Stripe and Squarespace and Slack, then you go and make these ads, like, these LinkedIn on LinkedIn right now. So I'm seeing it. We make these ads that literally just look like the most on brand pieces of creative ever. And that's never gonna get someone to stop and click and interrupt the feed. Now, you don't have to do that, but, you know, you can find ways to, like, interrupt the pattern of scrolling and to earn that click and to get somebody to get your attention. And so I think that's what drew me to you all doing the Exit 5 thing. I was like, yeah, what we're gonna get from this is like, we already had product market fit from a content standpoint and a community standpoint. It was like the perfect storm of ingredients that I. I didn't see at the time now, but I get it, because we went and invested in this brand, and now we have a visual identity that is very strong and very recognizable. It's like putting those two things together is like a gasoline and a match. And it's like the way that that creative change, like, help us change the trajectory of our business and made us feel more legit and helped us get people's attention. That was so important. Like, I kind of just mashed 2 thoughts in this rant, but one of them is like, man, why do we. Why do we just make this ads and creative that stand out and, like, blend into the feed? Well, because we run this process of like, they have to be on brand. And I don't think that's right at all. And the other thing is, like, really thinking about how this design helped us level up. We went and we redid the website, we took those brand elements and we like reskinned our whole community. And that's essentially our software product, our community. The engagement and quality that has gone hand in hand with this. We made some changes, like as the organization and structure of the community at the same time, but it just feels more pro. We have something that we charge people for. Before, this thing used to be on Facebook. So I went from calling it Exit 5 with just like regular branding to being on Facebook. Now we invest in brand. It's on a different platform, it's highly designed, it looks amazing, it looks pro. That just like leveled us up in a big way that I think you can't underestimate. And so we're, we're always searching for these growth hacks. I would do two things. I would do design that stands out. You can do something different for your website, but if you're going to publish like ads and creative, why would you not do that in a way that's going to stand out? And then the other thing is just like how the creative can be the thing that levels up your brand and gets you in more conversations.

I think a really good example of that that folks who have lived in the Bay Area call it the last, like five to seven years will remember. Do you remember the first time there was a billboard that used the poop emoji in an in ad copy?

No. Who was it?

Okay, I'm going to space the name of the company that did it, but it was like the talk of the town. They were like, interesting. There's something about like, I can't even remember the copy, but they use a poop emoji basically. Like, don't let your code base go to shit or something like that. I don't know exactly what it was, but it was so like fresh and bold and no one had done it and let alone on a billboard, you know, like, it was just everything about it. And it was buzzy and people talked about it and says, or mailchimps their website. Like when they made that website solid yellow. You guys remember that? Like, no one had seen that before. The entire site was yellow everywhere.

Well, that's why I wanted a mascot. I wanted a monkey. You didn't deliver on that, which, you.

Know, well, we gave you clippy and you didn't like Clippy or you like Clippy?

Dan?

Like, I didn't like Clippy.

I think he's too corporate. That's right.

But I guess the point that I'm getting out there is, like, to stand out, especially with ads, you have to do something a little bit uncomfortable, Right? And that's why if we go back to, you know, talking about Adam, like, that's why his stuff works so well, is because he's doing some, like, saying some slightly uncomfortable stuff or sharing slightly under. Like, even the stuff I'm sharing, like, I'm over sharing a little bit on purpose. And that's the reason that it gets attention.

All right, I got some questions for you for our audience of B2B marketers, what advice would you give them when considering a rebrand of their own?

I would say you will 100% end up with a much better work product. Like the end result, if you trust the creatives to be the experts in the room about the creative. I think a lot of great creative gets suffocated and then the end product is like, it's just okay, it's better than it was. But like, if you really want something that stands out and this. Could you say this about basically any agency that you hire, like, if you're going to hire an outside expert and pay a premium for them to come do work, let them do that work. Like, set them up for success and let them deliver for you.

Well, that also speaks to, like, who you should be looking for, right? If you're looking at a agency, like, for you, all your best marketing is your work, right? And so you have to show that. And so I think, like, when you're shopping for an agency, I want to see the goods, I want to see the sandwiches that you make, right? And so, like, I want to know. And then if that is true, then I need to shut up and let you do your thing, right? Otherwise then I would say there's plenty of agencies in the world. Go find someone whose stuff that you like and maybe you want the more stripe looking style and go find an agency who's going to do that completely. Okay, what else? Any. That's your only advice?

Come on, let's see.

I'm giving you the microphone on the Exit 5 podcast. You got to give me something.

You're teeing me up.

Can I give you advice, Eli? Actually, just send me off that last one. Yeah, I think one of the best things you guys did in the process, and maybe this is because I jumped into it after you had kicked off with Dave. But, like, my first meeting with your team, you already had branding guidelines for us, even though it wasn't the final thing. Being able to jump in and have a starting point of, like, you took the concept, you took Dave's story. I think you did, like a 30 minute conversation. Just heard about the background of Exit 5 in Vermont and the highway and the exit and all that stuff. And then you took that and you brought it to life. And so maybe it's simple, maybe it's stupid, maybe it's not possible because it's hard to do that for every client. But showing up on day one with you guys and having, like, here's. I think you gimme three options or four options, right? Because I jumped in and took over a day to go handle this project, and you had those options. That was such a better starting point, I think, in terms of working with us. Okay, you already thought about us. You've already thought about the story. Like, it made it much more easy. Like, all right, we're going to do this. Let's just figure out when we're going to do this right? So I know you can't do that for everyone. Every agency can do that for every client.

But. No, but there's something in there that actually, you're bringing this. Like, I think this is a great. I think you did a really good job of the delivery, and it was almost like some Don Draper type of shit, which is like.

Yes.

And Dan and I have learned this, and he knows that this is what I'm good at. But if I just show you the things. If I just show you. Hey, Dan, I wrote new website copy. Here's a copy. I have not framed you at all. I haven't framed you at all. I haven't pre sold you at all, like, what you did. And I think I'm saying this because I think the marketers listening, we talk a lot about internal marketing and so how. Let's say you work with the agency and you're going to roll this out, and you need to get the CEO bought in. You need to get the company excited, right? You have to be a storyteller. And so what you all did was, like, you made this presentation that showed you understood exit 5. You created a story like, it wasn't just like this, like, neonish green and these, like, wavy lines and arrows. It was like, okay, exit five is, you know, this destination. And we're going to tell this story about how, like, Exit 5 is your guide and your career and there's the community and It's a stop on the road. And, like, you know, you deeply understood the brand. And then you. You use that as a story to that. And then it was like. And so let me show you what that can look like. Like, you have to do that. That is the internal marketing of this. If you just showed up on the call and you're like, all right, Dan, here's what the design looks like. He'd be like, all right, this is cool. But you had that build up. You had the setup, conflict, resolute. Like, you had the storytelling component in there. I think that the brand is not just a set of visuals. It's the story that goes with it. And now when you pair the Exit 5 story with that visual identity, now we have the ingredients, and as an agency, now you've armed us with the tools we need to go back to tell our company and to get them excited about this, right?

Totally. I think another thing too is, like, a lot of companies aren't ready or the timing isn't right to go through a full brand refresh, full website. But I still, I would challenge, and the advice that I would give is like, ask yourself the question, what is stale creative for your ads or for your organic social, whatever. What is stale creative costing you? Like, look at your ad spend, look at your effort, the amount of time and money that's being put into all of that, like, the marketing department. And would it be beneficial to experiment, right? Like, experiment with fresh creative. Try different things, try some bold stuff and see if it actually drives an impact. Because that, you know, like, the majority of our business is helping companies do that. We talk like, brand and website is super fun to talk about, but we only end up doing four of those every month. Like, it's very limited. But the rest of it is like. And you guys saw this. We did this for your community. I think you're gonna publish that video soon. Of the before and afters. Like, people who came in, they're like, yeah, our ad creatives, like, blah, blah.

Our.

You know, our.

Our.

Our organic social is blah. And we did, like, a full reimagining. It's like, that's relatively cheap for companies to do and then to keep rolling with. So I think that's another piece of advice that I'd give.

Okay, what role do you want marketing to play? Like, as a partner in this? You said, like, get out of the way. Let us do their job. But what role should the marketer play in bringing this to life?

They're like, man, this Eli guy is kind of a dick. Like, just let me do my work.

As long as it's the creative genius, right? Like, you know, the guy at my meat market is crazy, but his meats are amazing. So I'm going to go get the meats from it.

I had to censor myself there real fast.

No, no, you don't. Not here. This is explicit, explicit content.

There you go. For future. No, I think honestly, the timeliness of feedback and decisiveness of feedback, number one thing. Like, you guys crush that. Anytime a client can come to a call, see something, react to it, and then give us a go, no go. Or give us even more than that. Like, take the time to think through why you don't like something. A lot of the time, one of the biggest bottlenecks in design is you'll get a slack message from the client and they're like, ugh, this is so far off. I hate it. I'm like, you gave me one mediocre piece of feedback, which was that you don't like it. Nothing else that you said was helpful. And like, we're on the same team. We're trying to create a great output for you. So, like, be better. And that's the kind of thing I wish I could sometimes, like, shake people and say, but it's true. It's like, okay, you don't like it. Awesome. That's not a problem at all. Like, this is a creep. If you read the book the creative act, right? This is a. The creative act. It's going to take back and forth. It's going to take seeing stuff you hate to get to stuff that you love.

Yeah, it's a game of feedback. It's like, we talk about this all the time with our business and content and social media. It's like, don't overly react and get defensive to the feedback. It's like, okay, this is my job. I'm in a service business where I'm creating something for people. I gotta. Each piece of feedback is hopefully gonna get me creative, like closer. And like, you whittle down, whittle down. Well, then it's like lots of feedback, lots of feedback. Less feedback, less feedback, no feedback. That's like the progression, right?

Exactly. So it's like, I think over communicating there, you know, it's like, oh, okay, I don't like the blue. Why don't you like the blue? Oh, blue reminds me of Salesforce. And Salesforce is kind of corporate, just like IBM and like, okay, so you don't like corporate. That's helpful feedback. Right? And you don't like the color blue. That's helpful feedback. Right? So just as much as people can be specific and almost overshare with details, I think they'll end up getting a much better partnership with whatever creative they're working with and ultimately a better end product.

Yes, sir. All right, before we wrap, I just want to. So what's cool is you can go check it out. Go to exit5.com if you. Everything that you see there is what.

We did for this project.

You can go do that. You can go to no Boring Design and check out all of their. Their work. But what's nice now is that you guys are going to help us with, like, design as a service, as an ongoing basis. And this is something that I wish I had back in the day because I think it's still important to have a creative team in house. But oftentimes they're just trapped doing other stuff. And, you know, we, Dan and I are like, oh, we need to. You know, we need an image to promote this thing for next week, and we need this, you know, we got to do this landing page. I think it's huge. Hugely. A mistake I've made a couple times is underinvesting in creative resources, and it's not always realistic to have two or three people in house that can be your creative team. And so I think what you're doing with NBD and being able to do, like, design as a service is huge. We're excited to get to do that. Obviously, as part of this, you guys were like, hey, if you. If we do a good job and will, you know, will you say nice things about us? And we're going to help you out with this design as a service. So I think there's a couple other companies that do this that folks can go and check out too, but just to see what's out there, to see how much you can get leverage from design, whether you work with no Boring design or not. I learned a lesson from a guy who was much more senior than me. One time I was a new vp, and he's like, hey, man, let me give you some advice. And I was like, I don't want your advice, but I'm gonna take it anyway. He's like, you as the team leader, you have to realize that you don't.

Have to do all of the work, right?

And I had an ego. I wanted to do all this stuff in house. He's like, you get hired to get the job done. You need to deliver on the work.

And do great work.

It doesn't matter if an intern does it, if an agency does it, if the team in house does it. And so I think if you can look to find leverage, whether that's a SEO agency, a creative agency, somebody doing design as a service writing. Your job as the marketing leader is to get the job done. And so it's part of your job as a marketing leader to always be evaluating new technology, new tools, new services, new agencies. All the great CMOs and people that I know that have done that, they have lists, man, they're like, here's 20 tools we could use right now. Here's 10 agencies we could use right now. Like, you have to be doing that as a marketing leader. And so maybe that's no boring design to do your design as a service. But I hate getting stuck.

I hate when we're ready to, like.

Announce something and to do something and then we don't have the creative asset for it. And it's like, yeah, hold on, we'll have that in three days. Because our current designer is like, bogged down with some other stuff. So if you have the ability to get some outside help and get design pretty close to on demand, that's a huge advantage today. And, yeah, that's all. What else? Anything I missed you want to get off your chest before we hang up?

You know, I feel like that was a mic drop moment. You brought it right home.

That's good. You know, I do this for a living. I do this for a living. I do webinars. You. You could hire me for your next webinar. No, you can't actually do birthday parties. MC birthday parties. My son had a magician at his birthday party. Guy was fantastic. I do webinars, I do podcasts, I do in person events, which we're going to see you at in September. So. All right, check them out. No boring design dot com. Check out our site, exit5 dot com. Keep coming back to that. Tell your friends. Share membership with friends. You'll see Eli in the community. He's giving back. He's in there planting trees for the future and answering. Answering design questions for future generations of marketers. So, Eli, good to see you. Dan, I'll see you back in Slack. Okay, we'll see you guys later.

Likewise.

All right, exit.

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