Humble Experts, Partnerships, and Managing Creative Work with Arianne Foulks

All right, welcome back to Agency Journey. I am your host, Gray MacKenzie from Zenpilot. And this week I have the pleasure of bringing on Ariane folks from ao. Lydia, an incredible Shopify. Well, you do more than that, but shopify at the at the core. Ariane, welcome to the podcast.

Yeah, nice to be here. Thanks, Gray.

Yeah, I'm excited to dig in. So can you give us the quick overview of Aeolydia? Who do you help? How do you serve them?

Yeah, the quick overview. I have been doing this for 20 years now. It used to just be me sitting at my laptop, but now I have a whole team. There's usually about 20, 20 of us, including our longtime contractors. We work with businesses where usually the owner is the designer or an artist. So when I started out, I was working with Etsy type businesses and now we work with people who have outgrown Etsy and maybe they've got like a factory or a warehouse or a whole big team, but still usually a product designed by the founder. So we do like jewelry, we do some bath and body, we do a lot of stationary, home goods, kids and toys, clothing. But that connection is just the people that we work with are really invested in what they're working on because it's something that they came up with creatively. So lots of creative businesses, which is a fun challenge for us because creatives are very particular about every little thing. So we've gotten really good at being creatives, working with creatives and getting everything just as beautiful as everybody's imagining it. So the main thing we do, like you said, is Shopify design and development. We support that with brand identity design as well as brand strategy. And we have been doing a lot of email marketing using Klaviyo over the last few years.

Yeah. How were you resistant at all to adding in the email side?

I don't think so. So Helen on our team, who's our E commerce strategist, was thinking, hey, we should really get into this. We don't consider ourselves a marketing agency, but we feel like email marketing is kind of the same messaging as the website. It's telling the story of your business. It's your own content. It's just kind of an extension of the website. And so we put together a whole strategy for doing that. And it's a great project because you can see the money come right back in. It's a nice one for being like, hey, you weren't doing this before. Now you are, here's the money. It doesn't feel as nebulous as Maybe branding something that email works. Yeah.

It's so funny. You go from branding, which is like the hardest to measure, ROI on service, to like the most instant gratification type of services with Shopify sites and E Comm. Email marketing.

Yeah.

So that's, that's kind of funny. So in the day to day with 20 folks, what seats are you sitting in? Kind of what are you responsible for? And, and we'll just kind of walk through what, what your day to day looks like right now.

Yeah. So I stopped designing and developing roughly when my children were born and they are 13 and 15 now. So I don't know how to do any of that anymore. If you sat me down and said, make me a website, you would be in big trouble. So I've hired a team to do all of that and my main role is to get us new clients. So I do our marketing, I write the newsletter, I have people helping out with blog posts and social media and things like that. But I guess I would say I am the manager of that department and I'm also the one that does networking events. So we do quite a bit of speaking and teaching both online and in person. So I did a lot of business travel this year and taught some classes and things like that. Um, I'm also in charge of ideas, but sometimes I have too many ideas and the team says, could you please take a break on ideas until next quarter? Then I need to find something else to keep me busy.

Do you have that one? Go to person internally who has to be the Ariane Filter.

I do. That is Sam on my team. Um, so we read that book many years ago called Rocket Fuel about how great businesses have the visionary and the integrator. So I do the visionary stuff and Sam goes, that is a very nice idea. However, here's what we're focusing on right now.

How did you and Sam get connected?

Originally I was looking for a project manager and I think I just put out a job listing in my newsletter and maybe told a few people on social media. And she is one of the many people who applied and I went through my first like professional hiring process. That was over a decade ago now. She celebrated her 10 year anniversary.

Yeah.

So yeah, I just found her out in the world. And the cool thing about my team is a lot of them are in that creative designer crafty space as well. So Sam used to be a block printer and she got pretty famous and she was featured on design blogs and things like that. She was spending a lot of time just block printing in her own home and she started to feel like she was running a one person sweatshop. But a lot of our team, like, I have a soap maker on staff and I have a couple knitters. So when our clients come to us and they think they're going to have to explain something like, here's how you sell fabric. We're like, we know how to sell fabric. And in fact, here's some extra tips. So that really works for our clients and our team.

I have. It's so funny the, like the filters that you get to figure out once you figure out who you really are. Like, that's what I love about your story is like you've kind of figured out who you are and gone hard after that market. Because we are like the process people and we're the ops nerds and project management nerds. Everybody. Who's going to be a good fit at Zen Pilot? I don't know. I'm sure this isn't maybe universally true, but one of my favorite questions to ask people is like, what's the nerdy, like detail oriented or organized thing that you do that your friends know about you, other people wouldn't know and they make fun of you? And it could be like, you know, I keep track of my finances in this specific spreadsheet every month and I have all these, you know, like vlookup things that come from it. Or I organize my clothes in the closet, like where I've got my outfits picked out for the next four weeks or something. Like there's so many funny examples that everyone has. But yeah, come once you figure out what's, what's your thing, what do your people have? It's cool to see that pattern emerge. What I should ask Sam this question, not you. Sam's not here, so I'm going to point this at you. But I had like the best interaction the first time I ever talked to Sam and then connected with you. And I had a ton of appreciation for it. And what stood out to me right away was there's just a very high level of trust between you and Sam. And obviously, you know, you've worked together for a while now. But the question I would ask Sam, and I'm going to ask you, if you can kind of assess this as unbiased as possible, would be like, what do you do that creates that level of trust or empowerment for other people on your team?

That's a good question. Okay, my best guess, and this is a thing that is both a blessing and a curse, is that when we hire employees And Sam does this as well as me. We're kind of like, here's the job, here's what it's all about. I know you're perfectly capable. Have a nice time. We kind of drop them in the deep end. So we don't really do a lot of micromanaging. And the other thing that I would say is we. So we developed our core values together as a team maybe six, five or six years ago. And I forget exactly how we got them all started. Maybe we did a brainstorming session, then I wrote them out, and we adjusted them and whatever. But one of our favorite ones is that we all consider ourselves humble experts, so we all know that we're good at what we do. But ego does not get in the way around our workplace. And I've noticed if we hire somebody and they come in and they feel like their ideas are very important, other people's maybe are not as important. They're not a good fit, and they don't stick around for long, or sometimes we will find people where they never take responsibility. Like, there's always a reason something went wrong or it was somebody else's fault. And that sort of person doesn't fit in on our team either. So I think just having that atmosphere where everybody recognizes that the other person is really great at what they do, but we can also be humble and curious and open to learn is what makes our team work really well together. Yeah, my team is, like, perfect right now. They're perfection. They're all the very best people. I wouldn't trade any of them for anybody else. So I think it's just having that whole atmosphere together where we just trust each other and we know we can do a good job, but we're always open to learn something new.

Right. You get that, like, swagger confidence of an expert with the humility. Like, hey, to our clients, we've solved this at a 10 out of 10 level. Like, we are the best, you know, the best of the best. But what we know about the problem, because we're so deep into it, is how little, like, how much more there is to do. Still at it. And when you get a team together, you've got, like, I call them the problem spotters or the problem finders versus the problem solvers. And you got, like, one group that's pointing fingers and be like, there's the problem, there's the problem. And the other group that's like, hand. You know, hand raising. Like, I will solve this problem. I see it. But it's not just that I see it and I like pointing it out to you. It's like, no, I see it and I'll take care of it by myself. That's a, that's a really powerful thing.

Love that.

So you were just showing me this spreadsheet. Let's, let's transition a little bit. The, the. Maybe I should tell the story very briefly. So you all found us. I actually don't remember. I didn't. Should have looked up where you found us a couple years ago as you were looking to make the move to ClickUp and we're looking at different options and somehow came across in pilot. I talked to Sam and we were substantially more expensive than other options that you were looking at. I think if I'm remembering this right, you were. It's kind of funny because today it's about twice as expensive as, as what you paid then. But we've also learned a lot, like back to the humble experts thing that we've learned a lot and, and grown a lot since then. Talked to Sam. I had a really good conversation with her and loved what she was all about. Like she was efficient. She's exactly my. I just did a talk at Inbound with Peter Cobinger, the CEO of Teamwork and we were talking about his communication style and he's got this saying of be brief, be brilliant, be gone. That's like how he wants to interact with people. He's. I want you to be here, be, be quick, have good ideas and then let's, let's move on. Mm. And without the be gone part. Sam was kind of like that. Very efficient in communication. Hey, here's what, here's what we need. And very like quick to interact with. She went back. I don't think that you and I, I don't even remember if we talked before you guys said yes. But it was one conversation, very decisive. Like, hey, we are going to do this and we're going to invest. We're going to get, get this right. Um, and so that was kind of my interaction. We're like, whoa, there's a. That is not how most teams operate. Most teams want to have, you know, hey, we need to have a follow up conversation now. Ariane needs to know that have the exact same conversation that Sam already had. So there's obviously a high level of trust. And then you just dove into the project and like crushed. Crushed out the project, which was awesome. Um, so you've got this, this like high level of trust and then you have pushed the ball forward on that. So we work together to implement ClickUp and get your systems and processes into the platform and sort of everyone running on it. And now you've taken things to the next level. And you were just showing me this spreadsheet that you've got, that you've built on top of ClickUp, and I'd love it if you could share, kind of, how did that come about? Who owned that? What's the. What's the outcome? If you could just describe what that looks like, I'd love to have a conversation around that.

Yeah, absolutely. So we have two magical spreadsheets. They're not magic, but I was not involved in making them, so they feel like magic. Our accounting and bookkeeping team are extremely big on utilization rates and time tracking and profitability and all that, as they should be. And they have talked us into tracking our time for many years, which is the one thing we do that feels unai Lydia to me. Like, it feels a little corporate. It's not fun, it's not relaxed, it's not creative. It's like I'm sitting here and punching into the time clock. So nobody loves it, but we all do it. And we've been getting really good data for a while. And so one of our project managers, in her spare time, which she has almost none of, Melissa, she spent, I don't know, six months maybe, just kind of pecking away at this in her spare time. Um, and then she came to us and she's like, I've put together this spreadsheet, and it tracks our utilization rates, and it also has profitability per client. And so now we can look at the spreadsheet. We can see exactly how busy everybody on our team is forecast to be in the future. Because in ClickUp, we've got all those task estimates put together. Um, and we can see how busy they are this week and next week and all through the next few months. And we can decide where to schedule projects. We used to have a more manual way of doing that, but at the time we had bigger projects, so it was easier to do. Now we're doing quite a few more small projects due to just what's going on. With the possible recession in the economy and everything, it was getting really challenging for Sam to schedule projects, but now she can see exactly where they're going to slot in, and we can see how much time each person has been spending on client work versus internal work. And then we can also look at every single project that we have, and we can see how profitable that project has been. So we can see the exact hourly rate we have made on past projects and try and figure out if there's a type of project that's working well for us and a type that's maybe never profitable. And we can also check ourselves midway through projects and see if we're already over time on somebody or if maybe we're whizzing along really fast and we could give them something extra. So that's super helpful to have.

So in a situation like yours where you're out of the client delivery, you don't do any of the services work anymore, that ability to quickly see when you're talking to somebody, hey, where could I actually pencil you in? And where could we start a project or not start a project? Yeah, I assume is very, very helpful for you. What are you doing with that data? How often are you looking at that data and saying, oh, based on this profitability or this utilization or whatever, we are going to make these tweaks.

So I am. Sam is our director of operations.

Right.

I am more the ideas person than the marketing person. So Sam is one taking a look at that and making decisions. However, we do have a quarterly leadership meeting and we've got one coming up next week. And I think that spreadsheet, now that we have it going, is going to factor heavily because we are currently rethinking our pricing, we're rethinking the projects we offer, we're trying to figure out what the minimum should be for working with us because right now we are definitely doing too many smaller projects and we need to figure out how to get our team a little, a little less overbooked. Because right now our PMs have a lot to keep in their minds. So, yeah, having all that data is going to make that decision less of like a hunch or a gut feeling and something we really can just take a look and say, here's what we should do.

So you're hitting on like the. And the reason I asked the question is this is the main thing. Like, everybody hates time tracking. If we don't have a way that we actually extract more value from it than the effort that we put into it. Um, and so until we turn the corner and actually start using that to make better decisions and the team can see, hey, if I track my time, like there's a commitment from leadership that we're not going to consistently be overburdened and it's going to be objective. It's not, you know, person A says, I'm too busy. Person B is like, no, they're not really that busy, but I'm not going to complain. There's like the, you know, the un, you know, unfair like outcomes that happen in so many areas where things happen off of hunches. Um, so it's super cool to see use that and you showing that spreadsheet. I have a, like a feeling inside at the same time of immense failure like, oh, Ariane, we have built this entire suite to just sit on top of your. We've built this entire tool called ZenPilot reports to just sit on top of your ClickUp API. We suck out all the data, we do the calculations to give you profitability, utilization and all the metrics. And now it's even easier than Google Sheets because you can, you know, time box it and filter it down and do whatever else. So that's a failure on our part for not going back and communicating that to folks. So that'll be a big push and immense like pride and admiration for you because of course a Lydia is the company that's built out this like really robust spreadsheet and hacked away and, and built the solution that for most teams is like, hey, this is, this is a lot of work to, to pull and build a cool automated solution. So major hats off to you guys for, for building that. And I think that's a testament to the type of team that you've built and the type of team we should all want to work with and be a part of. And speaking of that, I know that you have done work with other agencies as well, and agency partnerships is an area that might be something that you're looking to lean into more and more. So if you think about agency partnerships, like what makes a great partner for a Linea.

Yeah, we love partnering with other agencies where we have maybe complimentary services because like I said, we don't directly do marketing or paid ads or things like that. We're more about the content and the website. So having somebody great to refer people to there is super helpful. I hate to not have an answer. Like if somebody comes and asks me if I can do something and I can't, I want to be able to refer them to somebody awesome. Um, and then it turns out a lot of marketing agencies or branding agencies maybe don't have a really great Shopify developer that can solve a lot of comple problems. So we have seen, oh my gosh, we've worked on over 700 projects at this point. I counted out our Dropbox folders recently. We have a lot of experience solving tricky problems in Shopify and doing things that it doesn't seem like you could do with Shopify, especially for creative and crafty shops who have some unique need where it doesn't work out of the box. So we love to be people's go to Shopify team as well.

Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna say something that we can cut out afterwards if you're not comfortable with this. I'm gonna say it, I'm gonna say it anyways. I've seen the quality of your work and I've seen the like average hourly rates, what projects wind up turning out to, and the quality to cost ratio of working with A Olidia would be like very advantageous to most agencies who are looking to partner. Not that they're gonna white label or whatever, but I think you've got agencies who say like, we want to do partnerships, but it's freaking expensive to have like a junior level or a early stage career person, you know, knock out something that like is, is mediocre or is like passable, but it's not great. And that's not, from my perspective, that's not at all the A Lydia experience. So if I was sitting in an agency seat or someone was asking, in fact I've, I've pointed people to A Lydia in the past when they say, hey, I, you know, I'm looking for like budget. I want high quality. I want someone who can do the work and like execute and interface with us really consistently. But I also don't have an unlimited budget here to be able to work with. Like I've got to be able to make, make stuff work. So from my perspective, I think the value of A Lydia is, is really high. So I'd compliment you on that and I would share that with folks who are for whatever my opinion counts or doesn't count. And the reason that that might make sense to cut is you never want to like, I'm not saying this is the cheapest option on the market. I'm just saying the value for what you pay versus what you get is really high with A Lydia.

Yeah, well that has changed quite a lot over the last few years since the pandemic started because we were doing only custom and high end stuff. But in the last few years people have been in a hurry and their budgets have been low. So we came up with a website in a week project that we've been doing. So we have like a wide range from just starting out to Shopify. Plus we're able to meet you at all those different levels. So we can do a complex long term project or we can just like quickly get you set up with all of our best practices, which has been huge for people these last few years.

Yeah. That's amazing.

Yeah. You know, I was thinking that about Zenpilot as well, because when you were telling the story of how we got started working with you, we were actually. We had a wide range of ideas. So that I think the two things we had it down to, we were either going to work with Zenpilot or we had this freelancer we were going to work with. And I was thinking about it and I was like, you know, I have not had a lot of luck with freelancers since my business got bigger. And I think we are too big to just work with a freelancer now. We kind of need a team because our needs are more complex. So I think of that for a Lydia as well. Like, if your business has grown quite a bit and you're used to relying on freelancers but disappointed in the results, it might just be the time that you need an agency who's got a team of experts to help you with things like that.

Right, right. Step up seeing the problem enough and can lead more.

Yeah.

Then maybe react. Yeah. I think there's certainly cases where freelancers make a lot of sense and there's cases where going to the next level makes. Makes a ton of sense as well.

Yeah.

All right, let me bug you with two other questions here. How do you learn fall? Like, you're the visionary. Very clearly the visionary. Where do those. I. Where do all the ideas come from? Is it reading? Is it podcasts? Is it, like, what, what. What people are you following? What's. What's inspiring to you?

I read a lot, I think mostly books. I used to do podcasts, but I don't know, I think it was when I was traveling or like on public transport. But since I'm at home now, I have no patience for podcasts. But I do read a lot. We've gotten a lot of our ideas from books I have on my shelves. Like, profit first was really big for us. And then what I just read recently was a book called Clockwork about how to make your business run by itself. So my, my next big goal is to get each of us on our leader tip leadership team. There's three of us to be able to take that four week vacation that he talks about in the book. Not just because it's fun, but because it shows that you've got a strong company and you've got some backup for different things. And if somebody, like, if something happens to somebody Your business isn't destroyed. Um, so I'd say I do a lot of reading. Another thing that I would mention, like my. My new thing I'm really big on is I read this book called 4000 Weeks and it's. It's not exactly an anti productivity book, but it kind of is because I feel like productivity is about cramming as much as you can into your day and your week and just getting a lot of stuff done. And this is more about, you only have so much time, you're never going to be able to get it all done. Why don't you just decide what's important and do really well at that? Which is what I've been thinking about lately.

Right. If I could challenge the productivity perception. Cause I think that's how I thought about it for a long time as well. And my ch has real. My mindset has really shifted to productivity. Is really that like picking the highest impact. Like productivity is how do we get the most leverage, the most impact with the least amount of time or effort?

So it could certainly mean work smarter, not harder.

Yeah, exactly. Is like it's both the efficacy. Are we choosing the right, most impactful things to work on and are we getting them done efficiently? So efficacy and efficiency put together is like how my mindset has shifted around productivity. But I think that might be my generous interpretation of it, where I think a lot of people have the same perception that you have, which is like, productivity is, you know, if I could optimize my sleep cycle so I could only sleep for five hours a night, I can work more. It's like the very hustle culture.

Turn yourself into a machine. Well, what I liked about this book, I already had the idea that you said, right, you're supposed to work smarter and not harder. But there's always this little feeling of guilt, like, I could have done more today or I could have done more this week. What am I really doing? But I think reading 4,000 weeks just gave me this perspective. Like we're just human and we're doing what we can do. And there's like the amount that we could do even if we did 24 hours of work a day is still very small compared to what there is available to be done. So let's just chill out a little bit.

That's such a good point. Um, and then Clockwork and Profit first, both on Mike Michalowicz are. Are really good how Mike has. Has a good skill. You would not have heard it since you're anti podcast now, but we had him on. He's around episode 200 on the podcast and does a really good job of distilling and just making stuff really simple.

Totally.

It just doesn't have to be so complicated.

And he can apply what he's thinking about to pretty much every kind of small business. That's pretty amazing. You don't have to be any particular type of business to get value out of those books.

Right? All right, final question. This is the one I get to ask everybody and throw at them. What's your number one tip for agency operators?

Okay, my number one tip. I have been thinking about this a lot recently because obviously the pandemic was very interesting for a lot of businesses. Um, so my number one tip is it's fine to grow very slowly and steadily because I had been. Occasionally I would compare what I had built with my agency to some other people where, like, they'd shot way up and gotten enormous, or they had these super impressive clients, or Shopify was calling on them to do all this stuff with with them. I'm like, hey, they've only been around for a couple years. I've been doing this forever. And then I feel like maybe I'm doing this wrong. But then these other businesses did not make it through the pandemic. Like, some of them went into debt. Some of them had to fire their team. It just didn't work out for them. So I feel better now just about very slowly and steadily doing what we do and trying to serve our clients. And quite a few years ago, I definitely was at the mindset when I first started hiring people. Like, I'm going to grow this business. How can we get bigger? Let's add more teams and get more clients. But now I just like to think, like, if we are growing, if we're hiring somebody or adding onto the team, I only want to do it if it's serving our clients in some way or serving us in some way and not just for the sake of growth. So that would be my tip.

I lied. I told you that was going to be the last question. But that was so good. If I could ask a follow up. Do you think this is different? Like, we're. And I feel bad asking this question because I don't mean this to say, hey, look, you're getting older, but I.

Do mean it's kind. I know it.

I'm in. I'm in the same boat. Um, like, is it different phase of life or. And these are probably tied together. Is it a lot more about just caring a lot less what other people think? Or is there a different reason that kind of your mindset around it has shifted? If you could identify what that. What's caused that change?

I think my main reason is the times when our company has gotten a bit bigger. I've started to feel like, hey, I don't know what's going on with everybody anymore. I don't know, like what's happening in their lives. I don't know what projects they're working on. And I like being kind of a smaller comfier company where I know everybody and what they're up to and have a general idea of what we're all working on. I feel like the bigger it got for me, the more divorced I felt from the day to day and what was actually happening, which felt, I don't know, it felt weird to me and it didn't. Like, not in a good way.

Yeah, right.

But I think also I've never really had a. I've never really cared what other people are working on. Like, we really keep our eyes on our own paper and are just working hard on all of our work all the time. Yeah, we just have like those moments where you're like, hey, how'd they get that deal? How are they doing such and such am I supposed to be doing more here? But seeing that that like, looks really cool but doesn't always work out is just like a nice affirmation that being sustainable is more important than being flashy or growing too fast.

Ariane, this has been awesome. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing with us. A com is the website. Is there anywhere else you'd want to point folks?

I guess you could come follow me on LinkedIn. Ariane, folks. But yeah, just our website. And if anybody wants to reach out about partnering, I'm always happy to chat about that.

Awesome. Okay, we'll put those things in the show notes. Reach out to Arianne if you are looking for an excellent Shopify and design and email marketing partner. Arianne, thanks for joining us on Agency Journey.

Yeah, thanks so much, Gray. I could chat business all day long.

That's right.