What 16 Years Running a Creative Business Really Teaches You

So I'm doing something new that I've never done on the podcast before. You all have been telling me that you want more behind-the-scenes content of what I'm working on. And so I have my good friend Franny, and what we're doing is I'm interviewing her for the book that I'm writing. It's called The Ladders of Wealth. I'm trying to publish it next year sometime, and I'm talking to all of these great creators and entrepreneurs who have a really interesting wealth journey and just understanding the key skills that they learned throughout their journey so that I can help share those stories and unpack them for you in the book. So rather than doing that behind the scenes or over a cup of coffee, I thought, why not hang out in the studio, record the whole session, and share it for you? So I hope you enjoy this episode with my friend Brandi. LinkedIn is not normally where I start an episode, but I pulled up your LinkedIn.

Oh no. Oh no.

And, um, I, I'm not criticizing your, your LinkedIn in any way. I just thought that the job history was Interesting. So first, you and I were going to school at the same college at the same time for the same degree.

Weird.

So in 2006, I was going to Boise State for graphic design.

That's crazy.

And you were there at the same time for graphic design.

Weird. We must have had some overlap.

Well, I only lasted one semester in the art department.

That makes sense.

But then that wasn't the main thing I was getting at in your experience. You have 16 years and 5 months of running your own company.

Damn.

And that's the entirety of your, your work experience.

It's not very diversified, is it?

But it doesn't have to be.

If, if only I had updated my job description every time that my business model has changed, it would look a lot more exciting.

So before we dive in, first, um, what is Ampersand and what do you do? We'll go with today.

Today. Yeah. So we are a full-service branding agency for small businesses and we focus on social media being like the main place where that's all going to land. So it's all about helping businesses tell their story with a cohesive brand voice and visuals.

And you do work for a lot of our friends. You've done a lot of work for me, like all of my headshots that you did.

Yep. I know. I love every time I see your, your headshots pop up and, um, I feel like I kind of pushed that on you. I was like, Nathan, you need new headshots.

And you were 100% right. Okay. So. That's the offering at its core, the, the core target. But give me a sense of the business. Anything you wanna share on revenue, number of employees, that kind of thing?

Yeah. Okay. So things have changed a lot over the past 16 years, but right now in the, where we stand right now, I am in a total reinvention phase because as of January I bought out my business partner and I'm now the sole owner.

And you two were partners for 15 of those 16 years?

Very long. Yeah. So what I thought that, like, last time I was here a year ago, I think it was July, so a little over a year ago, we recorded on your podcast about launching a program, a membership program. We were launching this membership program, me and my business partner Nicole, and that was this whole new side of the business. Like, we had our agency, like, helping people, services, one-on-one services, and then we had our online coaching creator business. We had a podcast, the works. And that was July. We launched that program. We sold a bunch of annual memberships to it. And then in October, she came to me and basically was like, I don't know if I can do this anymore. And I was like, that's okay. It's okay if this is the end of the road for you, if this chapter is over. There was no big crash and burn or anything. She just was kind of realizing that her life was taking a different path and she wanted to homeschool her kids and just be home and she didn't wanna be a business owner anymore. And so I took a step back, I hired a coach, I've been really trying to figure out what, like, okay, now I get to make all the shot, like all the decisions, call all the shots. I can do anything I want, which is a little kind of, it's like exciting, terrifying, and terrifying.

Mm-hmm.

Um, because she was always my, grounded one. Like, I, she was always the one that would poke the holes in the ideas and feel like, well, we didn't think about this and that. And, um, I was a little more risky. And so anyway, I didn't really know what I wanted. I wanted to be able to start with a fresh canvas. And so we decided to take a step back from the membership and I've been focusing on really trying to figure out how to scale the agency side of things this year. What I've been really focusing on this year is pouring myself back into like, hold on, what are we doing here and who are we serving? So I, um, also parted ways with my director of operations at the same time, and I jumped all in, like elbows deep into— I do all of the sales calls now. So same thing that you're doing here with me was my reasoning for it. I wanted to be actually talking to the clients. I wanted to be really understanding what it was that their pain points were and where they were in their business and what they were looking for to, to solve that. Um, there's a difference between just like getting a brand photo shoot, a one-off, you know, having a, coming into the studio and getting a photo shoot and then having somebody that really feels like a partner that's ongoing. So I have just been doing a lot of asking questions and trying to figure out how I want to tweak our offers and build something that is really replicatable.

So is most of the revenue now like recurring agency services or one-off?

Not yet. It's, it's about half and half. So we do full, full management, social media management. Um, that, but you know, kind of the thing that's different about us compared to other social media agencies is that we have a full photo and video team in-house. So we are able to create the content and deploy the content and strategize with our clients all within our small team. So it's not all getting like, um, farmed out. And not that there's anything wrong with that, but that's kind of why people like working with us is very boutique experience and they, we feel like an extension of your team.

Yep.

Um, so about half of our revenue is recurring, um, social media management clients and the other half is just one, one-off projects. And that's where I have gotten stuck cuz I'm like, okay, I have to be selling my ass off, which I did quarter one. I like crushed it. I was like, oh my gosh.

And there's also this feeling of like, okay, it's just me.

Yeah.

Like, can I make this work on my own? Like, you have—

It was a feeling of watch me make this work. I was like, I have to back myself into a corner. And I did. And I sold my way out of it. And I sold my way right into fulfillment of having to fulfill all the stuff I just sold.

Okay.

So I got into a little bit of a pickle in quarter 2 where I wasn't able to focus on the sales as much. And now we are working on Taking all of this information that I've gathered over the past 6 months and creating a new sort of like hybrid offer between our agency services and the social media management that is more recurring revenue, but without people having to commit to full management. Yeah. So it'll be like ongoing photo shoots and video shoots where then we just deliver the content to them. So same thing we always been, have been doing, just a reframe.

Okay. So I'm gonna show you in my Ladders framework. You know, we've got time for money and then diving into your services businesses and productized services. So you really sounds like spent a lot of time in the charging by the project.

Mm-hmm.

On your own services business and then are really like halfway into recurring productized services. Is that right?

Yes.

And then as you moved up through it, right, be originally it was you doing a bunch of the work, but then you've gotten into like the, the team providing a lot of the work. Like how, like in the fulfillment side, how much of that is you versus the team now?

The whole like who does the work thing has been my biggest challenge. And I work with Barrett, my coach, and he's like, I swear if he were here in Boise, he'd be like at my house, like pulling the laptop out of my hand.

Oh, 'cause you're like, oh yeah, I'll just fix up this campaign. And he's like, no, you're not. We have a whole team for that.

Yeah. He's like, I'm sorry, who did you think was gonna do that? And I'm like, I guess I'm gonna do it. And he's like, what do you mean? Um, so it's been really good to really look at that and think about, um, you know, just because I can do it or I can jump in and maybe, uh, you know, save some profit or, you know, make some more profit happen that month because I don't have to outsource something, right? To really be able to think about how it's taking me out of the roles that I need to be doing. And it's like, I've heard this a gazillion times in a million different ways, but until it really clicks for you, it's like, oh, I— and for me, it's never been a nobody else can do it as good as me. That's not it at all. In fact, I think most of my team does a better job at stuff than me. So what happened this year, one story was, um, related to this. I have two employees, so my team is small. There's six full-time employees and myself. And I have a photo team, which is a producer, a retoucher, and a photographer. My photographer let me know she was pregnant and then my retoucher let me know she was pregnant. And so, um, I had two maternity leaves coming up.

You staggered this a little differently than you did.

Yeah. And this, at least they staggered it. Like one came back and then the other one left. So that was good. They weren't both out at the same time. And I have never dealt with that before. Like, I'm a very small company. I don't have big policy. We do have a maternity leave policy, but I've never had to use it. Right. And I was like, yeah, whatever, it'll be fine. Don't worry about it. And then, um, Barrett kept asking me like, okay, what's the plan for the maternity leave time? You know, cuz he knew it was stressing me out, like that I knew it was coming up and I was subconsciously putting my foot on the brakes with selling photo shoots because I didn't really know exactly how we were gonna fulfill. When the photographer was gone other than me doing it.

Yeah, so the balance between sales and fulfillment. Yeah, that's another case where it pops up.

Another case where it popped up. And, um, he said, who's gonna do the photo shoots when Katie's on maternity leave? And I was like, I guess I'm gonna do them. Like, I don't see anybody else here, you know? And he was like, well, okay, what if Well, like, what if that wasn't an option? What would you do? And I was like, I guess. He's like, what if you absolutely just could not physically do it or you were sick or something? Like, what would happen? I was like, I guess I'd have to have somebody else come in and shoot it. And like, they would still get our process, like, and our producer and our retoucher and our studio and like, right? It's like, well, could somebody else do it? Yeah. Well, how much would that cost? I don't know. Let's do the math. And once we really broke it down, um, of course our profit margins would be less for those months, but it would at least bring in enough revenue to cover the salaries of the other people on the photo team and keep them going and keep the business going until she got back. Like at the worst case scenario, we're not going to lose money. We're not going to lose money, which if I just completely halt photo shoots and I still have two other salaries to pay, we would lose money. Um, so that was like kind of nice to just do that math and look at it that way and go, Okay, so I found a couple of other photographers that we talked to. They came and chatted us on some shoots. They were already super talented, experienced photographers. And I was like, oh, we can have subcontractor photographers? This is like something I've never thought about before. And it kind of cracked open a whole new way of looking at delegating. I now have this like little arsenal of contractors that I can call on anytime because they're all integrated and set up and I have their Direct deposit ready to go. I mean, it's just like ready to go now. So now I feel like I can sell as much as I want because I can deploy a team that was bigger than my full-time in-house salary team.

Right. Oh, that's interesting because before you couldn't outsell what one photographer with maybe you as a backup could do.

Yeah.

And then now you're going, oh wait, I can, yeah, I can sell significantly more. I could sell triple that. How is, how does that change the mindset for you and In sales, like, has that, have you already started to show up differently in the sales process?

Yeah, it's, it's changed the way I think about how I'm building a new offer. So I'm not thinking about what is our capacity anymore. I'm like, what if we could serve an unlimited amount of people? What if, what if we had 100 people on this? Could I make it, like, could I bring that together and make it happen if I had airtight systems and workflows for it? And I could. Like it would act, you know, maybe we do an average of like 12 to 15 photo shoots a month, but like what if I wanted to do 100? I mean, that's a crazy number, but what if then all it would take would be like 4 more subcontractors?

So I'm just, I'm thinking about a bunch of things here, but like the core skill that I feel like is really important in going from ladder 2 of like time for money, we're getting a team in there. And all of that. And then as you're productizing it and you're moving up on ladder 3, you have this blessing and a curse. And it's the way that I've operated my business as well of like, I can do most of the jobs in the business. And so then you're like, wow, look at this superpower that I have. I can— any of your jobs I can do to some extent.

Yeah.

But then realizing like, if you let that get out of hand, that is probably what the biggest thing holding things back. So like the, the core skill in that that I hear you learning is to not do the fulfillment yourself.

It's don't do the fulfillment yourself. Like, was I at a photo shoot last Thursday shooting? Yes. It's still, it's baby steps. Right. Um, but, and I am helping out right now still a little bit because Lauren's out and we're still trying to, the retoucher's out, so I'm kind of jumping in and helping out. My team is also trying to hold me accountable because I have declared that this is my new commitment.

How did you state that to them?

Um, well, again, back to lots of kudos to Barrett in this episode. I think people know, a lot of people who listen to your podcast know who he is.

He was on a few episodes ago.

So he, when you're working with Barrett, you have, you have to make an actual commitment that you stay with for a while until you graduate from it, basically. And then you come up with a new one.

When I release you, then.

Yeah, it's like, do you feel like— so when, when he started working with me at the beginning of the year, my commitment was that I commit to trusting in my creativity and being open to opportunities that challenge me.

Okay.

Because I was feeling some imposter syndrome, like, can I do this on my own? Um, doing all of the strategy for clients, like, what if I can't come up with something, like, by myself? It was just— that was happening a lot. So trusting my creativity was, like, a big one. That I needed to overcome and being open to opportunities that challenge me. Anyway, a couple months ago, I was like, or maybe a month ago, I was like, oh yeah, I've got that. Like, I'm good on those two things now. I don't feel any resistance there. So it was time to come up with a new commitment. And as we talked through it, this visual of me being in the doer seat, you know, we talked about how I can't, like, I have to be in— you're either in like sales mode or, or fulfillment mode, and you can't really be in both. Or how he talks about being in growth mode or profit mode too, which is like actually a different conversation, but it was all making sense to me. And I was like, I had this visual of a grocery store CEO, okay, like working at the register and cashing out people and filling up their bags. And I was like, that's what I'm doing when I'm, when I'm getting in there and getting in the weeds and doing the work and doing the fulfillment. I'm having fun. I'm, I get that interaction. I get that payoff and those like back and forth and I get to see the happy customers and I get to like hand them their bags and say, have a great day. And it's like fun. And that's, it's not that you're below doing those things, right? It's that if you're doing that, then nobody's the CEO, right?

You've abdicated the CEO job.

Like, there's a lot of cashiers. We are good. Like, go, go, somebody pay attention to like what's happening big picture. And so it was that sort of realization that I was like, okay, I am committed to being the CEO, not the cashier. And I told that story to my team. And I was like, I realize I have to be in this. Um, I also just got back from a mastermind retreat with Jasmine Starr, and my biggest takeaway from that was, oh, I don't actually really know my financials very well. Yeah, a lot of the women in the room have these huge businesses, and they— it was like going to Shark Tank, like they could just recite, um, their profit margins and their profitability in each department. And I have kind of the bare minimum, like, bookkeeping organization happening, but not a lot of—

You're running profitably and you're paying the right taxes and all of that.

Yeah, exactly. And everything that gets reconciled, and then I see a P&L and I go, oh, bummer.

Lower, higher than I thought, you know.

Department didn't do as much as it did last month or whatever. And then I think, how do I bring in more business? And I focus on bringing money in. I'm good at that. I'm good at selling and bringing more in, and then I don't pay attention to like where it's going as much. So when I got back from that, I also made the decision to hire my husband actually as our CFO, and we brought him in about 3 weeks ago and it's been awesome. So that's kind of where we're at now with the changes that have happened and what we're focusing on, and we're just really trying to understand How much time are we spending on things and how much does that cost?

Yep.

Something I've never really done, honestly, embarrassingly.

Well, I mean, there's, there's so many aspects to it and there's other people in their businesses who have like gone super deep in the numbers and the unit economics and all of this is profitable and they're like, but you don't actually have a customer pipeline. You don't actually have all these other things. And so in all of the skills to learn, like you have to pick them and sequence them.

Yeah.

And so I think that makes sense. So we talked about the skill of not doing fulfillment yourself, knowing your financials really is the thing that you're working on most actively right now. Let's back up in your career, because those are some of the, like, what's going on in 2025. I'm curious, is there a skill or something that you've learned that, like, you think of it was a big inflection that once you mastered that or, like, got it to a good level, then it really led to this big unlock? Over the last 16 and a half years?

The people issues has been probably my biggest learning experience. Um, yep. You think, oh, like, I'm— everybody's always, my whole life, like, oh, you're so entrepreneurial. It's like, okay, cool, I'm gonna be a business owner, I'm gonna start a business. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know anything about human psychology or like what I— I've never worked anywhere, like I've never been on a team or worked at a corporate place. I had to learn some hard lessons on, like, I don't know, setting expectations. First of all, I think is a big one for setting expectations and also creating a very clear path to growth for team members. In my earlier years, I didn't do that. It was like Hey, like, I'm gonna hire you for this thing and then we grow together, right? And someday maybe you make more money if we make more money. And there wasn't, um, a super clear, like, path to that. And that is another thing I'm working on right now is, like, really trying to define, like, okay, if we get to these certain numbers, what does that mean for the team? And how can I think about a rev share bonus structure or something like that to make sure that I'm, you know, keeping that front of mind? But at the same time, even just the day-to-day people stuff, we were having like some drama, some toxic weird stuff going on as most workplaces experience. And it was, I had never felt like that kind of anxiety around work before. So this is probably, I don't know, 5 or 6 years ago. And it kind of followed us for a while. We would get rid of somebody and then hire a new person, kind of the same problems would start happening. And I'm like, okay, this is me.

Can you share what kinds of problems?

When you're, when you're a really small team and you bring on, let's say you're, you have a business partner, there's two of you, and you bring on a third person, they feel very close to you as the owners, right? So you're like almost like a three-person, like a three-legged stool. And, um, so they almost feel like as another partner And then when they are left out of a decision, something like that, the weird feelings start coming up, which makes sense, totally makes sense. But you don't really think about it. You're like, wait, you're just an employee. Why are you getting upset that I didn't run this idea by you or whatever? And they're like, no, I'm fully invested in this. Like, I'm one of you, right? And you want that ownership.

7 years ago you didn't co-found the company with us.

Yeah.

And yeah, that's a very hard balance.

It's— and, and it's like a— yeah, it's a weird nuance, especially when you get to know people super well and you care about them and you love them and you want— and you're friends with them and We do all this stuff and then all of a sudden they start like, um, having these really strong boundaries that they didn't have before and things start getting weird and then you hire another person and then there's like a new sibling in the house. Those are some of the things that kind of happened and we weren't ready for growth with like the people and we didn't know how to make them feel included and be transparent with them without giving up too much of the like ownership of the business. And the decision-making.

Is that a problem that you're still facing today?

No, absolutely not.

And so there's, there's a pretty stark difference. Like, what's, what's different in how you operate today versus how you operated then? Or if you were trying to teach someone else to like overcome that?

Now it's a conversation. Well, actually, I have everybody on my team has been with us for over a year, and then some of the people have been with us for 3 to 4 years. And the people who have been with us the longest have kind of gone through some of that with us, like some of that transition and us learning. But when we brought in EOS, the biggest shift for me was Jennifer, who was our EOS implementer, had us do a values setting, a values creation activity. And we had company values that were forward-facing for our clients about how we deliver and how we like care about our projects, but we didn't have like internal set of values for our team. And she had us create, like, the EOS way of doing it is you think about the people that you just love on your team, that you're like— she said if, if you could have 100 of these people, you could go to the moon. Like, who are those people? And then what is it about those people that makes them so great for your business? Um, so we came up with all these traits, and then we created 5 core values out of those traits. Like, we combined them all and consolidated them into little buckets. and then we named them fun names and I wrote a value speech and it's like the best. And we have these really super custom values now that are, we use as a people analyzer to score people against. Okay.

So what's an example of?

So one of 'em is, um, one of them is full hands in, full hands out.

Yeah.

Which is from Nicole and I both came from being servers in restaurants before we were, it's not on my LinkedIn, but yeah. I worked at many restaurants before. I've waited tables a lot, which I think service industry is like an amazing start to entrepreneurship. Anyway, one of the things they say a lot there is full hands in, full hands out, which means if I'm walking through the kitchen back or through the restaurant back to the kitchen and then walking past a bunch of people's tables, they're not my section, but they have dishes to clear, trash, the table needs something. Um, you fill your hands before you walk back into the kitchen. You unload their dishes, and then you don't leave the kitchen without your hands full either. So, there will be an expo standing there saying, yelling at you, full hands in, full hands out. Like, you get ridiculed if you come back with empty hands because you're not being a team player. And when we pinpointed that, our team members that were really making things work well were doing that. They were looking around and just jumping in, just basically like going—

Whatever needed to be done.

Yeah, you notice what needs to be done, you do it. It's kind of a more specific take on integrity. You can just have a value called integrity.

Yeah, because I don't know how to implement integrity specifically in day-to-day other than some big, like, well, don't do that. But full hands in, full hands out, you're like, okay, I can totally understand that.

And that might not be a value that applies to another company. For us, what it means to me is that one thing we also did was the people who we didn't want to have on our team, and we identified the traits that they had as well. And one of the things I don't ever want to hear, like you will not have a job at Ampersand if I ever hear somebody say, "That's not in my job description," or, "You didn't hire me to do that." And I have heard that before, and that is like the biggest red flag to me. I understand where in some places, that's important that you have a clear job description and a set of roles, but in our little small team, it can't.

In a 6-10 person company, it's not going to work.

So, that's what full hands in, full hands out means to me. Nothing is below anybody and we jump in. So, that's an example. So, we have 5 of them and there's this little chart and when we do one-on-ones with the team every quarter, they self-assess plus, minus, or a plus/minus. And it's like, okay, how are you doing on full hands out? How are you doing on make it look easy? That's another one. How are you doing on act like you own the place? These are, if you are scoring more than 2 minuses, you're probably not a good culture fit for our team anymore. And that's a tough conversation, but it takes the emotion out of it and it goes, it's like on paper. So it's awesome. Yeah.

Okay. What are the other 2?

Okay, so you're quizzing me. Okay, act like you own the place.

Yep.

Full hands in, full hands out. Better than yesterday, which is basically like a growth mindset, 1% better kind of idea. So be better than yesterday. And what competition?

Ooh, okay. Tell me about what competition.

What competition to us basically means that you have a lot of pride in where you work. Like you're excited to tell people that you work at Ampersand. Um, you believe that we're a category of one and that we, we don't, we aren't, we aren't like competitive in a way that we're trying to beat somebody else because nobody else does what we do for who, for the people that we do it for. We're the best option for them. Um, there are sure there are other brand photographers or other social media agencies. Um, but we're friends with all of them and we like share everything openly with, with them. Um, because we know that they're not actually our competition.

It's an abundance mindset.

Yeah.

I love that. So in working with the team, what I'm realizing is there's a shift that you made, and it's really the same shift that you made with clients of going from everything is bespoke and one-off to you've systematized it. And so it's exactly, I mean, it's productizing a service, you know, and productizing a team where you're just like, cool, here's the standard scorecard and, you know, the self-assessment. Everyone can know, hey, what should I work on? And all that. It's like, well, we had that conversation, you know, last week. Like, yeah, what came up from that? Are there any other similarities between prioritizing the service?

I love a good framework and a system, and if something can get me out of my head and get me out of like spinning out on why, like, why is this happening, or why is this person not fitting into the culture or whatever, and then being able to just look at this on paper and make it objective. It's huge. So the similarity, I guess, is with the one-to-one services, like when we're doing these constant project-based things and I'm doing these building custom packages for people or these huge branding projects that we've done a few of, we have never really, you know, like your guys's kit brand rebrand. Like we don't do massive rebrands like that. We work with smaller businesses and we do create like brand guidelines and all that for them. And it's really fun to do a full brand, um, rebrand or a brand from scratch. But we're, whenever, if I were to do something like that for a big company, which I have before, it's so, every time we do it, it's like recreating the process just for that project. And it's just so much time and energy going into, uh, the, you know, breaking it a million times in order to get it right. And then you're like, wait, I can't ever replicate that because it was so custom, right? And that's the same thing with the people. Like, if you are— if you're bringing people in and you're going, okay, well, for you, because your work style is this, we're going to let you have these different— we're going to build a position around a person then they leave, you can't pop somebody else into that spot.

A principle or a skill is you can't build a position around a person.

Right.

Yeah, everything themes around them and you can't—

Yeah. And same, you can't build a product around a customer.

Oh, you can't build a position around a person, you can't build a product around a customer.

I mean, that's the similarity I'm kind of gathering here is because, I mean, you can, but then you just put all this time and energy into one person that goes away.

Right. And so, like, you could have individual takeaways from a customer.

Yeah.

Or a team member, even though it's like, okay, this is the role or this is the product that I want to create.

Yeah. I mean, I think in the beginning it's part of the process with the product building thing, but like what you're doing, I, what I've been doing lately is just, I think I have an idea for a product. Now I'm going to run it by people. I'm going to talk to people, ask them what their pain points are and get their reaction before I launch. I'm not just going to Mm-hmm. The, a past version of me would've come up with an idea in the morning and like launched it that night.

Yeah.

And then wondered why it didn't work.

Right.

You know, so now I kind of really let that marinate and go through that process before I, or, um, I launch it like quietly to a few people and then iterate from there. Make sure it's, make sure it's gonna work for like the majority of people.

So I've got a lot of good stuff on building the right team and there's a lot of parallels to experiences I've had. Is there anything else on building a team that's really stood out to you or like a key skill or tactic that you've implemented?

Something new that I'm going to, I just tried it the first time and I'm going to keep doing this was we were recently hiring a new social media manager and instead of just putting out the job description and getting applications and resumes and doing interviews, I asked, I gave a very specific prompt. To make a reel, an Instagram reel to send us. And I gave them like a Dropbox folder to put it in when, and through, it's a Typeform and it said upload your reel here. I got like, I'd say I probably got like 55, it was a local looking for a local person, applications, like 55 applications. 4 people made the reel.

Okay. And so you already eliminated 90.

5%. Okay, a bunch of people had the audacity to email a follow-up. When are you going to be doing interviews? Like, would love to check in on my, on my application. And I got a little salty and I went on Instagram stories and I was like, look, if you applied for this job to be a social media manager and you can't make a reel for the application, and then like you're not getting an email back, right? You're just not. Um, and so we The, the people that did submit the reels, there were some really good ones. Uh, and we went through the interview process with them and I was like, this is kind of wild. It just eliminated the whole process of having to interview all these people that can't even follow instructions on the application process. I was like, well, they must not really want the job that much.

Right.

And I was able to see firsthand, like, okay, if you're proud enough to send this in as your job application, this is the level of work that you're going to create for our clients. and I could see a sample of their work. So I know that sometimes it depends on the, on the, um, role that you're hiring for, whether or not you're paying for a sample project, like paying for their time. Um, you know, I don't ever want to like put out spec work or something like that. I wouldn't have them do a project for a client or something.

Um, you're like, here's the client, I need 55 samples and choose the best one.

People do that.

They do. It's true.

Um, so I'm not here for that, but getting to see a sample of their work before you even go into the interview process is probably going to be something that I do going forward, even if it's for like an operations role or something. I'd say, hey, here's a problem. How would you solve this problem?

Right.

Um, and just get an idea of how they think. And I think that's, that's going to be— I don't have a lot of experience with it yet, but it felt really good to just feel like I was really in control of like the hiring process and not feeling I don't know, it's so, it's so hard to have to go through all those interviews and stuff.

Yeah, and so it filters so much, you know, and if you're hiring, hiring always is a ton of work. And then, you know, if you're hiring a remote role, then you can just get crazy number of applicants or all of this stuff. And so filtering it down, and so many hiring managers will take on the entire burden themselves, and they're like, well, I guess I'm reviewing 700 applicants this weekend. And A couple quick things that I do. One, I email if I ever put out a role that gets way too many applicants. I just email everyone one quick question like, hey, would you mind, you know, just ask them to do something simple that should maybe take 5 minutes. And I would say about only half the people ever reply. And so they're like, cool, if you can reply to an email within 36 hours during business days, like you've at least earned me looking at you know, an application, right? So we, we eliminated a lot, but then test projects make a huge difference. So like one that I did was, this was years ago now, this must have been 2017 or something. I was hiring an executive assistant. I'd never had an executive assistant before. We put out this role and I got 1,000 job applications.

Oh my gosh.

And I was like, oh boy.

For, and you were okay with that being remote?

Yeah, I was.

Okay.

I ended up finding someone locally or who was planning to move, already planning to move to Boise, but I gave you know, a sample project. So I'd send out the, whatever the filter email question was, like basically, are you still interested in the job? You know, is this a, is there a human on the other end of this app?

Right. Or did you just like spray your resume to a bunch of places?

Yeah. So I did that, narrowed it down to maybe 500 people or 300 people or something. And then I sent out my sample project and I said, hey, please don't spend more than 20 minutes on this. Um, but in a few weeks I'm going to the Everything Food Conference. In Salt Lake City, and I would like to take a handful of the speakers out to dinner. Give me a suggestion of 3 restaurants that I should consider. You don't need to call the restaurants, like, you know.

Yeah, don't actually book it.

Yeah, I don't need 500 reservations. And like, the goal was to scope it down really tight because I, like, on one hand, this was a real thing, but I didn't need, you know, I didn't want to be asking.

That's a great test project because it's I was like, how are they going to approach this? Like, are they going to ask me a bunch of questions back first?

Right. So there was a bunch of things. A lot of people asked like, cool, what's the venue for the conference? Instant out. Because a quick Google search would tell you. I gave you the conference name and the city.

Yeah.

People would ask the dates. You're instant out. But then there was other things like people who would say like, okay, great. It's on these dates. So, you know, here's who has reservations available. I'm like, okay, you went to— I just asked for the restaurant. You said who is actually available. So that was good. But other people would be like, um, you know, so we've got Olive Garden and Cheesecake Factory. And I'm like, this is a food vlogger's conference.

I'm like, can you imagine?

And you should become a client. And, uh, you know, so this thing's like, okay, well, you didn't— whether or not we're not going to debate whether Cheesecake Factory is—

that was one of the restaurants I worked at.

Yeah.

It's great. Great place, but not where I'm taking clients.

My 11-year-old loves it. But it's exactly that thing of like, can you read the room enough to be like, oh, for this group of people, we're going to need, like, I might be thrilled about Cheesecake Factory, but I'm not going to take food bloggers there.

It would be memorable. It would be.

I should do it just as a joke next time. Hosting this exclusive dinner.

Oh, that's fantastic. Just around the corner. Can we get a prosciutto?

But the, the, a long way of saying that those test projects have been really, really meaningful.

Yeah.

Another one that—

Wait, what was, how, what did the winning person do? Did you get an amazing—

Yeah, I got, I mean, it was a fairly simple task, so I got great recommendations and—

I was waiting for you to say like, they looked up like what speakers I should invite and then, then they went to their socials and they found that they love sushi and then they recommended—

Because it actually wasn't, I'm going to find the person to hire out of this. I was trying to get down to the 15 people that I want to interview, you know, or the 50 people that I want to look at their resumes in detail.

Yeah.

Um, and so it was that, that screening step. But another one that we do is we'll just ask people to submit a video and just say, hey, will you send in a 2 to 3 minute video explaining how your background is relevant for this role, or just anything, you know, where you're like I'm not asking you to do a huge amount of work. Now, people want to take it seriously, so they'll often spend an hour to make, 'cause they'll think about what do I wanna say?

Well, yeah, if you really want that job and you're applying for a company that specializes in creator economy, a nice video goes a long way or a well-thought-out video. I think the video thing is huge. I think I'll do the same thing even if it's not a social media role. I want some video. You get to see their enthusiasm.

Communication skills.

Yeah.

All of those other things.

I feel like then there's a little bit of a, like, accountability for them to continue showing up that way. It's like, if I applied for a job and I made this killer video, I'd be like, wait, this is like the standard now that I have to live up to.

We've had a whole thing though, like with the reel example, we had a whole phase in building Kit where I think we got too far into It's not hiring managers in the sense of like people managers, but hiring managers who wanted to like strategize the work and all of that and then outsource the actual doing of it. So it was like, oh no, I don't actually make— it wasn't in this case content, but the example of it, like I need to know what makes a good reel. I don't need to be able to make a reel.

Right.

And a learning and kind of a reframe that I have is very similar to yours of like, No, but you've got to be able to do the, like, the core job. And I want to find out, like, at day zero, not day 90, that you can't actually do it.

Yeah, that's great. Let's say you have a team of, of VAs that are doing actually editing it. And then at the last second, a client's like, hey, I need this change. You're gonna have to go in there and do it, right? You have to be able to, and you have to be able to speak the language to give feedback to your team, you know, if you are managing people.

Yep.

So yeah, I totally agree. I mean, something kind of like going off of test projects is like a trial period where, you know, like a working interview time period or a 90-day reassessment at the end of 90 days. I don't know. I haven't ever had anybody like not make it past the 90 days or anything. I have. Again, I'm only a small, you know, small team, but I think if I were a bigger scaling and hiring more people, I might be able to hire, make decisions on hiring a little faster if it was like very clear. Like, okay, if you don't hit these KPIs, we're going to be—

We had a web designer who we let go after 30 days and he was so confused as to like, how am I being let go? All of that. And after all of the feedback, that was another thing. Like people often, no matter how much feedback you give, will be like shocked that they let go. Um, but it was like, you haven't done anything in 30 days. You know, there's always another excuse or whatever else. Anything else on building the right team before we move on to, uh, landing?

Oh, I'm sure I could come up with more stuff. Have you ever heard of the Culture Index?

Uh, yes. Not well enough to articulate it.

So it's, it's a, it's a little bit different than, you know, all the other, the Myers-Briggs and the DiSC and all that. It, it shows you on two charts who they're, who they are as a person. And so you get the top chart and then you get a bottom chart. And they're a series of colored, like colored letters, color circles that have letters attached to them and they mean stuff. So you have to basically work with somebody like an expert to help you read. It's like reading tarot cards or something. I've kind of learned how to look at them and get enough information out of it. But basically it assigns you to an archetype. There's like 12 different ones. So for example, I'm a Trailblazer. Yeah. And I'm in the entrepreneurial category. There's like 4 different profiles in that one. So if you look at my chart, you'll see the— my highest trait is like the red one, which is drive, competitiveness, like wanting to win, assertive, being like knowing what you want and going for it, right? And then the yellow one is the next one, which is like personal relationships and sociability. Like, how much do you like being around people? How do you care what people think about you? So they, they all have positive and negative traits associated, the all, every color. So it's like, you might, if you're high on the red like me, you're very driven and, um, like a go-getter, but you can also be a little intense, maybe like too much. Okay. And then there's the next color, which is blue, and that is your speed slash efficiency slash patience. So if you're really fast, you're probably not very patient. And so there's the pros and cons. So I'm very fast and not very patient. And then your last one is the green one. I can't remember what it's actually called, but the white, what I associate it to is follow through. So when you, it's kind of wild when you look at these for your team members and people, you know, really well. And I've, it's been highly accurate for us to be, be like, okay, depending on what type of role they're going to be in. So like the web designer. He might be highly creative and, um, like really methodical in the way he thinks, and he might be technically skilled, but maybe his follow-through just is not good and his speed is really slow. So he could, he could be the type of person that would do well in middle management where he's like strategizing for the site, doing the site mapping, but then he has like developers underneath him to actually bring it to life. Yeah. And so you can actually look at this and see Okay, is this person— so like my retoucher Lauren, her, her, uh, chart literally shows you on paper she loves repetitive, doing the same thing over and over, like having high predictability and like a— like not in a bad way, but like a factory worker type of person. Um, very high standards, attention to detail, like Type A, the lists, everything. She can spot like a you know, color difference.

You're like, these are the same, and she's like, they are not.

Exactly. Yeah. So she's a perfect person for that role. And when you look at their top chart— so their top chart is like who they are as a person, and then their bottom chart is how they feel at work. So the top chart will never change. Every time you take the test, you'll always get the same result. But the bottom one will change, um, just depending on how you're feeling at your job. So you can look at these and tell if somebody is overworked, if they are completely turning their personality inside out for the job because of how they think they're supposed to be showing up.

Yeah.

So it's like, you think that you need to be less assertive, so your red dot will be over here instead of over here. Or you think that you need to be faster, or you need to be doing— having more follow-through. And so when you look at mine, they're often very different from each other because I'm operating— I'm not operating in my zone of genius. I'm working too much in the fulfillment.

Okay.

Because I'm not built for that. Like, I would be a terrible employee. I think. I don't know.

Besides the Cheesecake Factory, no one will ever know.

Tempting as it is sometimes to go apply for a job, I'm like, I know I would get fired. Yeah. Like, I'd be like, what if we changed everything? And they're like, no, just do what we asked you to do. Like, that would be me. And so it's kind of cool. We, we do use that and we look at it, you know, a couple times throughout the year to assess. So I can go to somebody and be like, hey, looking at this, it, this is telling me that you are, you know, near or over capacity. You're putting too many energy units toward work.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and you can correct things before they completely explode. So that, that's a cool tool that That I really like and understand.

I like it. Okay. So the next thing that I want to dive into is landing and keeping clients. I did agency work and client work back in the day, but I'm, I'm a little out of it. And so now, you know, just been selling software for a long time. And so I'm curious for you, sales is such an important thing for you and you do it in the least salesy possible way ever. Like everyone I talk to who works with you is just like, Franny's the best, like so thrilled about it. And so I'm curious, was sales always really easy for you or were there times or things that you had to learn along the way?

Oh, what a great question. And that's cool that people have told you that. Um, sales is easy if you believe in the product that you're selling. Yeah. And if you're excited about it, you don't wanna buy something from somebody who's like, all heavy and dreadful about the thing. Yeah, like, clients are already heavy and dreadful anyway. Like, every single client says, like, I hate having to do social media. I, like, absolutely despise it, but I know that it works, and I know that my business needs to be online, and I need to be creating. And they're like, I can do it, but I just won't stay consistent. I need— right, I need I need some accountability. I need like a partner. Or when I do it, I don't feel like the quality is good enough and I don't really think it's representing my brand well. I don't know where to shoot it, whether the lighting and, you know, they just have so many mental blocks. And as much as you want to try to tell somebody like, hey, it's okay, just post, just, just get on there and talk. Like you'll build a personal brand. It's going to be, it might take time, but you'll figure it out. Be like, no, I want it to look perfect and sound perfect from like day one, you know? And so I don't know, I just ask questions. I will get on a sales call and usually within the first minute or so I can tell if it's somebody that's going to be a good fit and somebody that I actually want to work with.

Okay.

And that shapes the whole rest of the conversation and everything.

Do you ever just hang up? Or like, thanks so much for your time.

I haven't ever hung up on somebody.

I've gotta go pick up the kids from a thing they're at that I forgot about.

I had one that made my blood boil. Like, I actually wanted to hang up on her because she— oh my gosh, it's gonna bring back the feelings. We don't have to get there. Oh, but it's kind of funny. I don't know. Maybe this is a good story.

Yeah.

So we have, we do have a digital product that we sell that's like, we run ads to it. It's a brand guide Canva template. And what's cool about it is it's a SLO offer. It's a self-liquidating, like it pays for itself and it has like some upsells and stuff, but it's not optimized. Like we're not paying attention to it that much, but it just runs all the time. And I have an ads manager that handles that. So single digital product and What's funny is people will see that and they'll go check it out and they're like, oh, I need brand guidelines for my business. Maybe I should buy this template. And then they're like, wait, I don't have stuff to put in this yet. Right. So they are like, maybe I should just hire this company to help me do that. And they book a discovery call. So I get a lot of discovery calls from people that found us from this ad, and those are not always the most qualified leads. But I have gotten some amazing clients from that too.

So it's, I think you don't want to shut it off, but you got to think about how to qualify leads.

Usually when I get these ones that are, that are nos, it's because that's how they found us. If they, if they're local and they've been following us forever, or they were referred by a friend, it's like what you said, they're, they already are sold before they get on the call. These people are brand new to us, pretty cold audience. Like they've seen this ad, maybe they went and checked out our website or something. And anyway, this one person was like, I just need to go viral on social media or whatever. Like, she was telling me her— what she needed us to do for her or whatever. And I was like, oh, um, what platform do you think your audience is on? Like, are you— was it Instagram? Is it LinkedIn? Like, what—

where are we going here?

And, uh, and she was like, Well, I don't know. And I said, just what's your hunch? Like, if you had to guess, because you know your audience more. I mean, if you hire us, like, we will learn your audience really well. But right now I've been talking to you for about 30 seconds. I don't know that yet. What's your hunch? Like, where are they hanging out? And she goes, well, I, I, why would I know that? I'm asking you. You're the expert. And I was just like, I said, okay, um, I think I said that just like that. Said, um, well, you know, after about a minute of talking to you, I don't know that yet. We'd have to do some discovery to figure that out. I'm just curious, but let's just say it's Instagram because that's where you found us. I'm guessing that's where you're most comfortable. We'll kind of go with that, you know. And I started asking her some more questions and she said, I've just realized I need somebody like you that says like every other word.

So maybe your client is belittling you from the beginning. It's not gonna work.

Then I'm all of a sudden super self-conscious. I'm like, okay, I know this is a problem. I've listened to myself on podcasts and speak, you know, and I, I, I, but I just talk and I don't, I talk, I don't think before I talk. It's part of my whole culture index thing. And I just said, you know, I don't know if this is gonna be the right fit. And she's, oh no, no, no, never mind, I'm sorry, it's okay, like, we'll just keep going, keep going, keep going. So I stayed on this call and she just kind of kept irking me. And finally I was like, you know what, I have a hard stop in 2 minutes, I'm gonna send you an email with a proposal and we'll go from there. And of course never heard back from her. It's— that was an extreme one, but most of the time at the beginning of the call I can just tell from if they're coming from a place of desperation, like, this has to work for me, I've tried it Like, I want to hire you and I need a guaranteed ROI and I need it to like, I'm like, hey, look, we can do our best to share your brand, get you visibility, bring people, get more reach. But ultimately your product has to be awesome. Your sales pages have to be good. You have to have a good conversion and sales process to go along with all the marketing. So that's out of our hands. If you don't already have a proof of concept. And demand for your product, adding social media isn't going to fix that. Yep. So I can, I can kind of usually suss that out at the beginning. Um, but when they say things like, I, I know it works, but I just don't have time, those kinds of things, I'm like, oh yeah, this is perfect. Like, let's go, right?

Yeah, there's a lot of material there.

Yeah, because they already have seen, they've probably done it themselves, they've probably turned on the machine before and really dialed in like the strategy and the batch created some content or had a photo shoot a few years ago and now the photos are just old and they miss having that fresh library of content. They, they have felt that before.

Yep.

They know how to tap into that rather than somebody who's just living in like a, like, my business is never gonna work for me, you know?

Yeah. One thing that I'm wondering is, you know, we, we got to the checklists in, in like process and client fulfillment. And in culture and working with the team. Do you have a checklist in that, like, first client call where you're like, okay, they're working from a place of abundance, not desperation? Yeah, we're vibing right off the bat. Like, these things—

I don't have a system for that, but I'm gonna make one now. I have like a— yeah, it's more of like a vibe check with me where I get off the call and I'm like, yes, I—

but it's probably the same 5 things that you're actually probably checking on. And if someone doesn't check at least 3 of the 5 or 5 and the 7 or whatever, you're like, I'm actually, you know, the follow-up emails. I'm very against— I don't do well with confrontation on calls, so I rarely tell someone like, this isn't going to work out.

Like, but ChatGPT.

But yes, but I would totally send the follow-up email and be like, hey, thought it over. I, you know, I said I was going to send you the proposal, but I thought it over and like, it's actually not going to be a good fit. Check out these other resources or go this other direction.

Yeah, I, I haven't Yeah, that's a great— I am going to make the checklist. I'm going to do that tomorrow because that would be really cool to be able to just look at a piece of paper and go, okay, or go back to some of the ones that maybe I thought felt really good and then they didn't end up hiring us and run them through that same lens.

Or the ones that hired you and ended up being bad fit clients. and then see like, oh, could I have known that?

Yeah.

And could I have saved a bunch of pain?

We don't have any. I don't have like, we don't get that kind of clients. It doesn't happen. I, we attract, because I'm like this on my calls, right? I'm not a person that you're not going to actually get. Yeah. You know, I'm pretty, I mean, I've even gotten on calls before and been like, wow, I probably should have been more professional.

Tone that down a little bit. No, but it, I mean, it works. You're looking for a, you know, a client agency fit.

And so, so I probably turn people away sometimes if they're really buttoned up, you know, and I'm just, I could just talk to them forever. We'll just go on, we'll tell stories or whatever. And those are the people that, that we click with and they're like, I already feel comfortable with you. I'm excited. I know that you'll be able to, and even though they're not going to be working directly with me, they still feel that trust in my team by way of, people are also really surprised to be getting on a sales call with the owner of the company, a lot of times they're like, whoa, seriously? You know? And I'm like, yeah, isn't that like white glove service here? You know? But I'm like, that's not the plan forever. But it does help, I think, being business owner to business owner, really being able to relate to the struggles that they're having.

Are there any friends of yours or maybe businesses that you've become clients of where you just want to like pull them aside and be like, okay, so your product is good, but like, when it comes to landing clients, like just like if you could give unsolicited feedback or something like that, and we don't have to call them specifically, but just that sort of thing of like maybe some of these things that you do really naturally that, and, and skills that you've developed that don't come naturally to other people, but you're like, this actually really matters.

When, when you said that, the only thing that comes to mind for me are the people who are using these like really hard-hitting sales call tactics. That work, but I don't think they breed loyalty with people. Like these sales scripts that are— I've been on the receiving end of those, and I know I'm being like having like psychological warfare done on me.

Yeah.

And I like could tell the whole— do the whole script start to finish. And I'm on that side of Instagram with sales gurus saying like, here's what you should say and here's how to like get, like handle objections and all this stuff. And I, and I understand that and I understand, you know, I've written sales pages and done copy and, and I, and I think there's a place for that. But when you just really listen to people and ask them questions and you don't try to sell them something they don't need, you build so much more trust with them.

I've heard a phrase is like, if we're across the negotiating table, like, how do I come around and sit on the same side of the table as you? And then like, we're both looking at the product and being like, should you buy this? Like, let's figure it out together. And the more you can say like, oh no, you actually shouldn't. And here's why. You know, either you're not ready. You know, these other things. That stuff is really good.

And I mean, it is a skill and I guess it is sort of a tactic as well. But it's not, the sale isn't the end goal. Like the end goal is that I'm trying to build a brand and a company that attracts the right type of client that I don't have to sell. Yep.

I like that.

You know, so I think when you're, when you're doing a launch or whatever and you're doing ads and things like that, it's all good. Like you, we gotta get that urgency and the scarcity and, and all of that stuff going in order to help people make a decision quicker. But when you're selling as an agency and you're selling like a high ticket or ongoing retainer relationship, I, I need, I personally, I want my people to feel like really, really good about that decision and almost have already made it before they get on the call and it's just talking logistics at that point.

So you talked about like the hard-hitting sales tactics, you know, that doesn't breed loyalty. So getting into the other side of it, like, okay, keeping clients.

Mm-hmm.

Are there any, Well, first, are there any like painful examples of losing clients from, and then like learning the skill later so that doesn't happen again?

Mm-hmm.

Or anything that you do in particular in order to retain clients?

Uh, my biggest reflection on that is for us, the business owner needs to be at the table. We are working, we are, we, the, our ideal client is a company where the business owner is part of the conversation with us. Mm-hmm. Not like a, marketing team full of a bunch of employees that are like 3 levels down from the owner. So that, that would be a company that probably needs to bring it internally or maybe outsource little pieces and parts, but they're not going to hire an agency like us to do it. Um, so which is we also why we love doing helping people with personal brands because it's like the person, right, who's building it is the brand and The only clients that we've lost, usually it's because of that. Usually it's because the person that we're working with is not the person who—

like the marketing manager has buy-in for it.

Yes.

But the actual decision maker is someone else who's not involved.

Yeah.

And then becomes involved.

Someone, they all of a sudden jump in, they don't know what we've been doing, and then they say, why haven't we gotten results faster? Or, uh, what are you doing? What the hell is this? You know? And it's like, hold on, we, we all had this plan, but you weren't part of it in the beginning. And so that's the only time that we've had any kind of issues like that, um, or working with fractional marketing people that are helping the company like as a third-party person and they hire us. It's like too removed. Oh yeah, that is, you know, but usually if we are sitting at the table with the the person that owns the company, uh, we are able to create a trustworthy, loyal relationship. And if they leave for some reason, it's usually either like a major budget issue, then they are like, or we're coming back. Yeah, or something. Or they like are completely shifting or yeah, bringing it in-house or something like that.

That kind of— that makes sense.

And oftentimes in that situation, they'll bring us in for a few months to help train their team or pass it off.

And then is there anything from companies that you've been a client of or that sort of thing where if you could pull them aside, you'd be like, let me teach you this skill related to keeping clients?

Something else that comes to mind is this kind of is in both worlds, like watching the friends and also being a client. I've always had this philosophy of, I think this is one of the reasons why I'm still standing. And why I don't have, I have seen friends have businesses that just crash and burn or like they end up having their reputation just shredded online.

Yeah.

And knock on wood that we're, yeah, we're thinking we're not dealing with that. But if you have a pissed off client or somebody who doesn't feel like they got what they paid for, yeah, absolutely. Here, take your money back. Like, I'm not gonna fine-tooth comb through that contract and hold you to a payment or take you to court or something. It's just not worth it. And I'm gonna do whatever it takes to make it right, even if I lose money. And that has maybe happened once or twice in the whole 16 years.

Yep.

I mean, one time I had a, when we shot weddings, I had a client, client say, Um, the wedding was canceled like a week before the wedding and they wanted all their money back. And we were like, what the heck?

You've got the weekend blocked. There's only so many weekends in the summer. You're like, no one else is gonna book a wedding 5 days out. Or yeah.

And I'm like, do I want to deal with like a ticked off bride that just got broken up with? Like, no, I don't. And I feel bad for them and I just like whatever, as a business decision, like, it makes more sense to me to give grace and then know that that's going to come back to us. And it's just always, I don't know, I'm not gonna be petty over— hopefully I'm not ever in a situation where, like, I don't know, you needed that to pay rent. Yeah, I'm like, I'm saying, I'm like staking my claim on this, and then it's gonna come happen to me. You were on Nathan Barry's podcast and you said, um, but really, like, I I would much rather feel like somebody is just super happy with what we did for them. I don't want— I don't want to take somebody's money if they didn't feel happy with what we did.

When there's an abundance mindset in that as well, where you're not— you're not like, this is the only client I'm gonna get, or this is the last money, or— and yeah, I mean, there are circumstances where you're like, I was very much counting on that and I need this to work, or that sort of thing.

Oh yeah, I've been in that place where it's like, oh This is gonna really hurt, or if something were to go wrong, like with a big project or something, you know, and we have those things in place to protect us. And usually just knowing that that's in the contract will kind of prevent people from trying to take advantage of you or trying to go back on what they said. You know, we do have policies, like if somebody has to reschedule their photo shoot a bunch of times, at some point there's going to be a fee. Stuff like that. But they know that before they request the reschedule again. And we're cool about it the first time. And they're like, this is really expensive for us. We can't keep rescheduling. And they're like, yeah, no, I know your policy, but we have to reschedule. It's like, great. Here's the fee. That's not what I'm— I'm not saying you should just not charge people for stuff. But if you have the boundaries in place, but then yeah, if it's somebody actually upset, I mean, we used to, the side note, we also owned a stationery store in the village.

I remember that. I didn't know you at the time, but I remember the store there.

And I was always like, I think this also comes from my restaurant experience where like the whole like customer's always right thing is like not true, but it's embedded in me. You know, if there's an upset customer, like call me. I don't care if I'm on vacation, like whatever, get me on the phone. I'll talk to them. I get the, I don't expect my team to handle that. I want to be the one like actually addressing it so that the client understands that I care about that and that I'm not just passing it off. So Nicole and I both were always very passionate about that. We're like, if anybody feels like they were misled or they didn't fully understand the expectations of what they were getting and then they, you know, it's like, Yeah. Okay. You're so, we're, we're going to take care of this. How about we do this? What about, what if we did this for you? What if we throw in this extra thing or whatever? Um, and it usually not only saves them from going around and writing Reddit threads and slandering you, it actually will save the relationship and they can end up being a great customer going forward.

And often a big, a big promoter.

Yeah.

I love that.

It's an opportunity to surprise them and show them that you're going to react differently.

And I think there's, I'm not sure how to articulate it, but it's almost like operating on a different level where when things go wrong, people want you to be right down in there with it and fighting it out and all of that. And so you go down there with them and then don't fight about it. And you're just like, okay, that sounds good because you're also operating at this much higher level where you're like, look, I'm I'm not on a 1-day, 1-week time horizon. I'm on a year, 10-year time horizon. And so I'm like, what's going to make this so that I can make it right and go on to, you know, the vision that I'm trying to create long-term. And so I often think about that of like, okay, I want to move on to the next thing. And so to just make that happen, you know, a refund can end up being really, really cheap. You can get all of your time and emotional energy back too.

Oh yeah. Like my sleep is worth so much money to me. If I'm losing sleep over something like, no, there's no amount of money that that's worth.

Mm-hmm.

And I can't operate on no sleep.

So, very true.

You reminded me of that. Have you seen that? Okay. There's a TikTok or a reel where a skit where this woman walks into a cheese store. Or something.

I haven't seen this.

And she's like, this cheese had hair on it. This is disgusting. I want my money back. And the lady goes, the worker goes, do you have a receipt? She's like, no, but it has the logo on it. I got it here. She goes, okay, here's your money back. She's like, what? Oh, and the cashier goes, oh, did you want to fight about it? And she's like, kind of. And the cashier is like, no, we're not giving you a refund. And they go through this whole like screaming match and she storms out. And she's like, thank you. That was nice. You know? It's like, yeah, sometimes people just wanna fight.

Right. Did you wanna fight about it? Yeah. Cuz it's, you're just like, someone comes in and they bring in all of this other energy, right?

Yeah. Who knows what else they're dealing with. Yeah.

It could be all kinds of things. It's not about you in any way. And they're like, I'm here to have a fight. And then you're like, I'm not here to have a fight. Like, yeah, there you go. Yeah. That makes sense. Well, I can talk to you for a very long time about all of this. There's a few things that we covered that I just wanna recap. The first thing that I think is really important is the skill of not doing fulfillment yourself. And so I, I appreciate like you diving into the one.

I can't wait to come back and tell you that I've mastered that one.

Cause you're seeing how like in the ladders, how it's mandatory to get like productized services dialed in.

Okay. Did you just always know that? Have you been good at that from the beginning?

No. Oh, absolutely not. If you ask my team, there's still things that I'm like actively doing and they're like, did you really need to send that customer support request? Did you need to, or not request, answer that ticket?

Yeah.

Um, or designing things. It took me a long time to get out of a lot of those things. Um, and there's still areas that I'm—

Do you think sometimes it's good for you to get back into that a little bit and like answer a couple of requests or, or do those things like just as stay in touch with it? Like, what's the healthy balance?

Well, I think that your analogy of the grocery store CEO is a really good one because the CEO showing up to fill the gap, you know, because someone called in sick is a terrible idea, but the CEO showing up to work the line, talk to customers and observe and learn and doing that one day a month is a fantastic idea. Because it has an entirely different purpose. And, you know, it has the purpose of setting the culture and understanding what is actually happening, not in the spreadsheets or whatever else, but what's happening in the stores. And like, that's so, so different. And so it's all about the intent. If the intent is to learn, then absolutely. But that's like, it's very easy to step in and out of, and there's no necessity there. But if the intent is to close the gap, then it points to a much more serious problem.

Yeah. Wow. I love that. That's so, that's like, thanks Nathan. It's, it is a really important distinction because I'm like, well, I can't say I'm never gonna, you know, jump in and handle a customer or ticket or whatever. Uh, a friend of mine, Jess, CEO of Lovevery, she's known for this too. Like she will see, like somebody will comment, like a negative comment or a question or like a suggestion or whatever on like an Instagram post. And the next thing you know, she'll like cancel her appointments for the day and be on the phone with that customer for like 2 hours. And then all of a sudden she's like, we're going to shoot a book with this family. We're going to do all this stuff, you know? And the team's like, oh my gosh, like, what are we going to do? And, but I just love that about her and that she wants to, she really wants to understand the customer. But it's not out of a necessity of like, we don't have enough customer service reps. Right.

Because you didn't solve that with a system.

Yeah, that is the difference. And I'm doing it because there's the gap.

So it's a, it's a capacity problem.

Okay. I really like that.

Um, the other one, you know, building the team, but basically you can't build a position around a person. You can't build a product around one customer. That really stands out. Like the similarities between building a team that can really execute and building a product and service are very similar. And then diving into like the core values. And the internal-facing core values, because I think everybody gets that wrong where they do even, not even the generic external core values, but they do like customized external core values and you still can't use them as a scorecard in the same way. Like Kit has them, but they're not as actionable. There's gaps in them. And so like one thing that I'm going to do is sit down and be like, okay, you know, what are the gaps on this?

That whole thing about the customers and the team, that was good.

I think so too.

I would have to—

Well, like the full hands in, full hands out is so clear that you, someone's like, what is that? You explain it and they're like, cool, I will never forget that visual.

So then another piece of that that we didn't talk about was she had us write a values speech from them. So I, we did the thing on the whiteboard. They didn't have names yet. It was like a bunch of words circled, like these words kind of all go together. What does that look like? What does that mean? It means teamwork and all these things, whatever. So once I really started thinking about it and kind of writing and stuff, I came up with Full Hands In, Full Hands Out to be the title of that one. And then there's a story that goes along with it of the working at the restaurant. And then there's an example from somebody on our team of how that was implemented. And so when I read the speech out loud, which actually I made a video, like a little animated video of it. and we send it to a new team member when they onboard and stuff. And it's super cheesy, but it's awesome. And it's like, oh, with the what competition, there's a story about how Grace, who's on our team, went and she came back on a Monday meeting and she told us how excited she was to show the project that she was working on to her grandpa. And she had her iPad at the family dinner and she was like, I want to show you this project I'm doing for work and telling her family about what she does, like her family that's like totally in a different, you know, uh, generation that doesn't really understand social media. And yeah, like that's what I'm looking for. So that, that story is in the value speech. So having those really specific things that people can really sink their teeth in is really cool.

Yep. I love it. Last two things really quick that I loved the test project. Mandatory. I forgot, I mean, we do that, but it's not something that, that stands out. But everybody who, like, we are hiring, you just have to do it. It's so important. Uh, and then also the other thing I'm thinking about is just the system for in the sales process, like that checklist of, hey, are they, are they fitting, you know, a good fit client, you know, for us? They might be a great client for someone else, but even to be able to standardize that. Cause then what I want for you is getting to that point where a portion or eventually all of the inbound calls are being handled by someone on your team so that you can be tackling the next big problem.

Yeah. My plan was to do the sales calls for 6 months and here we are in September and I haven't offloaded those yet, but it, it is the, the plan to eventually offload that too. Yeah. So I can just do stuff like this all the time.

There you go. Yeah. We can just hang out and record content.

Yeah.

What's your team's like? What'd you do today? I was at Kit Studios all day, just Hang it out.

That would be, that would be a great indicator that I had the level of team working that without needing me to be there. Yeah.

Oh, that sounds good. Well, Franny, congrats on 16 and a half years.

Thank you.

Running your own business.

It's a really long time.

Having exactly one job. Uh, where should people go if they want to check out your work, Ampersand, all of that?

Yeah. Uh, Franny Pack on is my personal Instagram where I I do the most like, you know, this kind of thing. And then ampersand and underscore studios on Instagram. Instagram is our spot.

Sounds good.

So find us there.

I love it. Thanks so much for coming on.

Yeah. Thank you.

If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search The Nathan Barry Show. Then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also just who else you think we should have on the show. Thank you so much for listening.