Creating Software and Culture at Your Agency with Zack Spear from ICS Creative Agency

Should your agency create a product? That's the question that we dive into on this episode of Agency Journey. I'm excited to bring on Zach Speer from ICS Creative to talk about their journey and how they got up and got started. And Zach's at the early stages right now of thinking about launching into a product to kind of help scratch one of their own itches and help the rest of the agency community. So tap into this episode to learn how Zach got to where he is today and how he's going to make decisions about moving forward with this new product idea. Check it out. How do you build an agency that allows you to live the dream that you have for yourself, for your family, for your community, for your team, while at the same time helping your clients knock it out of the park and doing it all profitably? These are the big questions that we tackle here on the Agency Journey podcast. I am your host, Andrew Demske. Now let's get to it. Hey, Zach, welcome to Agency Journey. So excited to have you here today. Do you want to just say hey and introduce yourself to the audience, share a little bit about your background and how you got to be where you are today?

Yeah, man, thanks for having me. First off. So, yeah, we are a Canadian marketing agency, full service. We're located in New Brunswick, Canada. We've been in business for eight years now and we serve small to medium sized businesses, government, basically anything that you kind of think of that's looking to increase their digital presence.

Nice. Do you have any business partners?

Yeah, so I do have a partner. We're a 5050 team here. Pretty similar to you, I think. And yeah, we've been in business since the start. I actually knew Mike from university and high school and we were in university together, taking a lot of the same courses. And yeah, we just kind of clicked. And then as we were finishing up our degree and everything, I finished a year before Mike. So I went and I worked at a software company kind of doing marketing, and I actually got him hired on that company. We kind of worked together there for a bit after he graduated as well. And then we were just kind of looking for opportunities and trying to figure out what we really wanted to do. And then there's a time in my life where I had a hard time. I lost my dad. I was looking for ways to kind of spend my time wisely and kind of keep my mind off of things. And so I told Mike that I'd really like to kind of do something different and kind of start something here. So we ended up doing a few websites just for friends who had their own businesses, like Realtors. And then it just kind of took off from there. We started getting referrals from those people and it just kind of skyrocketed for us. And it was really cool because we were able to kind of make that decision, like, do we want to continue doing this where we're doing part time and full time, like at another job? And I think that's a question that every agency or every business owner has, right? Yeah, half and half. Like, when do you kind of make that leap? So there's a point where I was like, you know what? Like, my contract is done with this company. They want to extend me, but I think now's the time where I kind of take that jump. And Mike kind of, he was on board, but he wasn't ready yet. So he stayed with that company for a few more months and then the workload just kind of increased and it was, it was just a very direct conversation, like, I need you to leave there and come with me time to.

Time to get serious, man.

Let's go. Yeah, like it's. Now's the time. So you in or out?

Nice.

And yeah, we kind of, we went all bored. We, you know, started like most startups do, in the basement of a house, an apartment. And then we were lucky enough that we got approached by a print shop who was running a magazine, and they wanted to hire us just to do their kind of their graphic work and web presence. So we took that job. But then it ended up that they had extra office space and they offered it to us and said, you know, you guys should just be here. Like, you guys are doing so much work for us. Why don't you just take this office space and you can run your business out of here and kind of help us and just a win, win. So we just, we started getting even more leads from there and then it just kind of took off.

What kind of challenges have you guys seen when it comes to staffing and kind of putting a team together?

Yeah, like, obviously staffing is always very hard. It's hard to find good people. But you know, honestly, we've been very, very lucky. Our first hire was an older guy who he kind of approached us and he said, you know, I'd like to do sales with you guys. So that was. Our first hire, was a business development manager. And that worked out fine because it was low risk, the way we structured his deal for compensation wise. So that was low risk. And then after that, we started to pick up more. So it was like, okay, well maybe we should look at hiring somebody to kind of help us manage, you know, the actual work that we're doing. So we ended up hiring a friend of ours at the time. He worked with us for five years and during that time we were able to hire a few more people that kind of had the same skill sets. But every time we did hire somebody, we didn't want somebody that could just do one thing. We wanted to have somebody that could do multiple things. Good. So our team right now, it's really. We don't have a person who has a very defined role and that's all they do. Everybody on our team can do multiple things. So our content creator, she can actually edit video and she can do video production. She can do a little bit of graphic design, a little bit of web editing, like maintenance. Our business development guy, he knows a lot about marketing and actually the strategies around that myself, like I can do web development, but it's not what I do anymore. That's where I started. Now I'm more so into the marketing strategy, but I can still do graphic design stuff like that. My business partner, he is an award winning photographer and videographer. He's been published nationally and globally for some of his work. Then he's just an amazing lead developer too. Our creative director, same thing. He's not just a graphic designer. He can do video editing, he can do photography. So yeah, we have a wide range of skills for every one of our employees and that's what we kind of look for. And I found with that, when a person has that many different unique sets, they're kind of a unique individual too. So it just makes them like a good fit because that's what we want to have. We want to have creative individuals are a little bit different.

Yeah. So how do you begin, like, how do you begin sourcing people like this? Is it a lot of like relationships and working your network or you posting? Because I know people listening are like, okay, Zach, how do you find the unicorns out there? So what's worked with you when it comes to filling new positions?

Yeah, with us we do a lot of like testing. So we do. It's not like the standard. Like we do a job posting and see what we kind of get. Obviously we do that because we're going to be reaching out to try to find as many people as we can, but we do a lot of different social ads to get more people. And then actually we kind of like narrow down that list and we see we kind of Check off and look at like, okay, this person can do this, this and this. And then obviously we're looking at their experience and then it's kind of doing ongoing testing with them to see if this is a good fit. So we'll invest quite a bit of time. We usually pay those people for the time, like, you know, even before they have a job to kind of do the testing that we want to make sure they actually can do what they say. I think that's the biggest thing. Like I find a lot of other businesses, you know, they say they hire somebody new and then, you know, they're like, well, I don't really know if this person's gonna be good or not. Like, I need like six months to kind of evaluate. Yeah, we do a lot of evaluation. Like, well before, like, I don't want to spend three to six months finding that right person and like thinking I had them. And then six months and be like, yeah, like, I should have done my homework more on this person to find out what I am now. So we spend a lot more time like before we actually make that hire to make sure they hire the good fit.

Okay, so you're talking like when you come in, put a test project together, they come in, they do that work, you pay them for it. Is that typically client work or are you having them do different elements for the agency? Or how do you structure that kind of scope of what that test project looks like?

We never actually give them client work because we don't want to have them do something and be like, oh, we're actually going to use this kind of work because I just don't feel like that's fair. What we'll do, say, if we're looking for a developer, I'll actually have our creative director make up something completely random and unique. But I tell them, make it hard for this person to develop this so he'll like PSDs. And then we'll send them, just be like, alright, like here's what we want you to build this off of. Like it's going to be a WordPress build. You're going to start off on this theme, like, let's see how you do this. And then we kind of like taking a look to see what they've done and then kind of give them feedback, see if like they can understand the feedback, because that's the biggest thing, right? Not everybody can. And then just kind of like we ask them to track their time, kind of get an idea of like how long it's taken to do things. So we can get kind of a gauge on that. And yeah, we just want to see how they handle it. When you say, like, oh, this is not the way we should do it. You should kind of do it this way or this way and just kind of gauge off of that.

Gotcha. I like that. So you're getting a chance not only to see what are their creative capabilities, but also what's it like to work with this person, how do they handle feedback. And those are big indicators on whether or not the relationship side of things is going to be healthy when they come in.

Yeah, exactly. That's the biggest part, right. If you're going to be working with these people, you know, eight hours a day or whatever it is, you want to make sure you guys kind of get along. And there's no, like, kind of confusion or anything like that, obviously. But yeah, like, we just want to make sure they're a good, like, personal fit and work fit. Like, your work's going to be good, but we want you to fit in, like, have fun, you know, actually care about what you're doing. A lot of people are kind of looking for that job. Say, like, I need that paycheck and this is what I need to make and this is what I want to do. And that's it. That's fine. But that's. That's not what we really want. We want you to have fun, like, really be proud of, like, and take ownership of what you're doing.

Definitely. That's awesome. And so is everyone that you guys hire, is everyone coming into the office full time or do you have a remote team or remote side of the team as well?

Yeah, we have both. So we have six in house and then we have another company that kind of works with us that does more of like the security IT side, and they have four, and then we have two remote.

Awesome. Okay, have you guys found. Have you, like, learned anything around kind of bringing different groups of your team? Because it sounds like you got the people who are in the office, you've got the people who are remote. Then you got kind of like this partner agency. But I imagine everyone feels like they're all on the same team. Any tips or any lessons learned on how to kind of foster healthy culture with those different dynamics?

Like, honestly, Slack is like the game changer. Nice.

Okay.

Like, we use Slack. It's like, if you're gonna work for us, it has to be on your phone and you have to have your notifications on for starters. And you're logged into Slack, you know, every Workday because we want to. We communicate so much on Slack. That's how we. Like, we have all these people in house, but we're talking on Slack more than we are in house, which is kind of sad. But it's such a game changer and we love Slack. That's one advice piece I tell other businesses who aren't even doing what we're doing. We just told our accountant, He's, I think 20 staff members and they're all in the same building. I was like, well, how are you guys talking to each other? He's like, oh, we just go down and talk to them and do whatever. I was like, that's cool. But what if you want to remember what you said or have a note of that or send files? Why aren't you using a communication tool like Slack? He's just like, what's Slack?

That's awesome.

Like, oh, man, come on.

Yeah, that's a big push that we put on is to even within Slack, pull conversations out of kind of the one on one streams. And whatever you're talking about, put it in that channel. If it's marketing, if it's design, if it's sales, wherever. Wherever that conversation fits. Like, putting it in a public channel is a great way to just loop in the whole team because it doesn't matter if you're across the desk or across the world. Like, you can still kind of keep everyone up to speed on what's going on by having those public conversations, but in a way that's not like disrupting everyone's workflow at the same time.

Yeah, like, we obviously, like, we have like the general chat, but then we also have like a mildly interesting kind of like take it from Reddit, where it's just like we're just posting random things that are just like, Michael, like this or kind of thing, reaction to them. But yeah, no, I definitely agree. It's all about keeping everyone in the loop. I find that's like the easiest way.

That's awesome. I think that's a really tangible thing that people can take away. And we've even seen people bringing clients into Slack and kind of using different channels to manage projects. We've done some of that at Guavabox and that's been really helpful for the. I mean, it's like the right kind of client. Right? Like, not every client is going to communicate comfortably in that space. But, you know, it's a really good way to get feedback quickly and to just kind of keep lines of communication open. So definitely something to check out Depending.

On the actual client. Yeah, like, having them actually in that single channel user is definitely helpful, but obviously, like the kind of client that you have there, they likely have like a marketing department or marketing person that kind of understands it right away. Yeah, that can work. Definitely.

Nice. Okay, one thing I want to talk about is we like to chat with agency owners who are into products, obviously, because that's our story here. And a lot of different people are curious about that. And you guys are kind of in the early stages of a possible product and you haven't really talked to anyone at this phase right now. So I wanted to know, first of all, can you just introduce what you're thinking about and maybe start with the pain side of it? Like, what caused you to start thinking about this itch and start searching for solutions and yeah, bring us up to speed.

Yeah, like, that's. That's been like an ongoing thing for us. Like, people would probably laugh the amount of different times types of software that we've implemented to try to like, you know, help with productivity. Like, we've gone through so many different project manager tools. Like, we're happy that we got one right now that we're pretty stoked on.

Oh, what's that?

Do Inbound Shameless Plug. So that's do inbound dot com. But yeah, but like, we. Honestly, we've tried so many different softwares and my big goal for a while was like, I'm tired of paying all these different software fees to have, like, I just want everything in one spot. And I thought I did find it with a different product and it didn't fit our needs. But right now we've kind of like simplified it and we're just sticking with like doing BAM for project management and then obviously like QuickBooks for, like, accounting. But one of the things I've been trying to find and I haven't had a good any luck with, is trying to find something that can kind of manage our staff's like, almost like our HR needs because we don't have an HR person. We're a small team, obviously, and to like, hire somebody to do strictly HR doesn't really make fiscal sense for us.

So you can head over to doinmun.com podcast. We'll have the show notes linked up over there with all of Gozak.

Thanks so much, man. I appreciate it. Well, Mork, sometimes I get a little overwhelmed when I find a new podcast. There are so many great episodes and great guests, it's hard to know which ones to listen to first. That's why we Put together a list of the top 10 most downloaded episodes of Agency Journey and you can get a copy of that list plus all of our notes and takeaways just by texting the word do inbound to 44222. Again that's due inbound all one word to 44222. Standard text rights of now dates coming up. Like maybe, maybe it's Andrew's birthday and we want to make sure that we know about that. So we have that in like the important dates and see all their like pay stubs and just like a bunch of other things that we're trying to pull together. That if I'm an employee, what do I want to see right away? That I'm not going to easily see any results. Everybody can put it in Google Docs or Google Calendar, but that's not really streamlined. It's not very user friendly. And for something like that, that's kind of where our head's at right now. So we've been trying to reach out with different agency owners and different business owners to just see if this is an ICS and a Zach problem. Can we not figure out or is this something else that other people are kind of dealing with? Yeah, we've had some good feedback on it and people have been telling us we just track that in Google Docs or Google Calendar. And then to me that's not really a solution. So we just built wireframes for it and a little bit of design and then we're just going to start getting feedback from more individuals to see if this makes sense and then take it from there and try to develop a product, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a. Anytime you can look around and see people who are using spreadsheets, they're using Google Docs, they're using Google Calendar, which are all phenomenal tools, all tools I use every day. But they all, they obviously have their limitations to them, especially when it comes to streamlining a workflow. And so I think that anytime you can sniff out a problem where there's people patching together a solution like that, that's a good place to start to say, okay, maybe there's a need here that we can zero in on a little bit further. I remember when we were getting, when we were getting do inbound up and running, I kind of walked the same journey that you're walking right now. I was like, is this just an Andrew problem or is this something that like other people are trying to figure out too? Like why doesn't like I log into these project management tools and everything's just blank. There's no framework, like, to fit to help me run what I'm doing here. Like, is there something I'm missing? Am I stupid? And so to have like those early conversations with people just like, hey, have you ever felt this way? How are you solving this problem right now? That was really, really good and really obviously valuable to get do inbound off the ground. And so when you share this model right here, like, that's another pain that I have or that, like, I know people have is just like setting clear expectations and being as transparent as possible with teams. And because I feel like we're in this space where we want to be flexible, we want to have like a healthy work life balance. Like, these are all phenomenal things. But there's people who can push that. And maybe even they don't even know they're pushing. Maybe they don't know how many sick days they're taking. And that's giving them the benefit of the doubt, obviously. But having a simple interface here where people can just see, okay, how many vacation days do I have left? How many sick days do I have left? And then giving you guys the opportunity to say, like, okay, you know, what are the. How can we make our team feel, feel more at home, feel special? By remembering, you know, their birthday, remembering their spouse's birthday, their anniversary, stuff like that, where you can send a card or flowers or something and just kind of, you know, go that extra step to make them feel like you care. I think that's. That sounds really, really intriguing. So, yeah, how did you guys, like, as you were putting the wire frames together right there, did you. Are you just thinking, like, how, you know, what do I. What would be helpful for me right now? How did you kind of start even getting into that process?

Well, I've been like, it's been something I've been thinking about for a while and I know myself, like we want to have like a relaxed environment. Like you say we're flexible and like people working certain times and stuff like that. But then you kind of like wonder. You're just like, oh, this person just said, like, I have five days off. I'm sure they do have that time banked, but I have no idea. Like, I'm just. It's a hundred percent trust and like, that's fine. Right? But it's good to also be accountable. And I think that's important on the employee side as well. Like the, like, you know, the manager side. Just so they know as well, like, Because a lot of them, like, maybe they're asking for time. Maybe the time's gone. They didn't even realize it. Like, you know what I mean? So I just think it's a good idea to have that accountability. And then I kind of tried to put myself in, like, so if I was an employee of ics, what would I like to see? I like to see how many days I have left, how many sick days I've used. I'd like to be able to see important dates that are coming up. I'd like to be able to see my pay stubs and get those anywhere I'd like. I'd like to be able to see if I've actually done a good job. Because what we want to build into this, too, is it's not like this. This is tracking you, and this is a bad thing. We want to reward you too. Right. So if you're doing a good job, we know, like, we want to make sure you do get rewards. We're gonna set up, like, a reward system where, like, we're sending, like, a $50Amazon card or, like, you know, hey, man, like, thanks so much for doing that extra work last night. Like, go out and buy lunch, like, down the street, like, here you go kind of thing.

Yeah, that's really cool.

Yeah.

Awesome. Well, Zach, thank you so much for coming in and sharing your story. Kind of feeling how your team has grown, the challenges you've seen along the way, and how you're kind of in the early phases of scratching that itch there. If listeners want to learn more, they want to check this thing out. They want to share their experience with you. What's the best way someone could reach out and get connected with you?

You can always find me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active there. I'm super active on Facebook. And then you can always just check out our site, icscreativeagency.com we're actually in the stages of redeveloping it right now. It's actually pretty old, but we should have a new site up there in a few weeks. But, yeah, definitely reach out, ask questions. If there's any, like, agency owners who'd like kind of give me feedback on this product that we're thinking. I'd love to hear, like, your thoughts. Yeah. And even if you want to see what we have now, I'll gladly send that out and kind of get some feedback, too.

Fantastic. Well, Zach, thank you so much for coming in, sharing your experience, sharing your story. Folks, if you want to learn more about that.