Episode 267: Scout Driscoll: From Solo Freelancer to Innovator in the Branding Arena

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is your host, Stacy Lauren. Well, you guys, I am so excited because I love when I get to meet my guests through other podcast guests. And I met my next guest through this amazing company, Pinpoint Collective, when I did their interview. And they introduced me to Scout, who has an incredible branding agency. And the minute that we got introduced and I got to look over all of her staff and the amazing work that she's doing by helping people really tap into their message and who they are and what they're wanting to do with it, I knew we'd have an amazing time getting to talk about her do the Thing story. And in the minutes that we were talking right before this started, there's even more to it that I cannot wait to talk to her about. So I am so excited to welcome Scout to the show. Hi, Scout.

Hi, Stacy.

Hi, everyone.

Thank you so much for having me today.

Yeah, thank you so much for coming on. We were talking right before about how you even started your company and the age and just all the dynamics between that and. I can't wait to dive into that. And I'd love to just have you start off just sharing about you and your story.

Yeah. Yeah. So I am Scout Driscoll. I started my business 21 years ago, which means in the land of entrepreneurship, I've now had, let's see, three existential crises. I feel like anyone who's been in business for a long time knows you have your five year anniversary, your 10 year anniversary, your 15th. Oh, no, 20th. So four now. But I'm coasting through to my 21st year and it's been great. I started my business when I was 23. I was a little baby and I had just this very much like, if anyone can do it, I can do it attitude. And started out as a freelancer, got a few more clients, got busier, eventually hired my first couple employees, and now there are nine of us at our studio in Chicago and we focus on branding and design. We're a full service studio as well.

You said when you were 23, you had that if they can do it, I can do it mindset. But how did you really do it? Was there a fears that you had to overcome in order to get started or what was that process like for you?

Yeah, for me, I was freelance designing and I realized that I could do it all myself. And I was working in house freelancing for a couple different places and just felt like it was such a low hanging fruit as a designer, you know, a Laptop and a table. It's kind of all you need with some decent Internet. And I was really part of the design cohort of people who are the very beginning of digital design. And when you could, really could for the very first time, have your computer and some Internet and start a business. And so it was, all things considered, it was actually pretty low friction to dig in. But then it was, how do you take one or two clients and grow, right? How you take a few people that you work with and turn it into. In the past, we've worked with over 350 clients, so that growth has been really fun. And to me, it's also a really simple formula, right? So the very beginning, I just thought to myself, work hard, do what you say you're gonna do, and treat people well. And if you can follow through with all of those things, then you're gonna get the referrals that you want. Especially as a service based industry, I mean, quality work is the output, but it's really about those relationships that you build. And really, until Covid, we were 100% referral only. So I'm kind of new to marketing my own business or marketing myself as a personal brand. So it's been a great ride. So at our studio, there's nine of us. We have myself, my number two, Amelia G. She's been with me for 15 years and she's really our head of operations. I hired her on a handshake. I met her for a data entry position, and within five seconds of shaking her hand, I said, you're absolutely hired full time. I don't care what you do. I just know you're gonna make my life better. And she's now with me for almost, you know, for 15 years now. And she really runs the studio. Besides that, we've got Dana who runs hr and then the rest of our team is just designers. Should say just designers, stellar designers and branders. But our studio is not organized like a lot of creative agencies. We don't have any accounts people. I have no sales team, I have no in client management. It's really just a very efficient, organic, and like incredibly relatable experience, which I find the creative industry is just replete with ego and bloat and a lot of project managers don't need to be there. And so we keep things really trim here. And there's a lot of benefits to that.

And we were talking a little bit before, and I loved this because I feel like you spoke to what happens to a lot of people when they're doing something New is it's really easy for you to get stuck in that trap of seeing what other people do and following that, or a lot of people wanting to give advice and then people will actually follow it. But it sounds like you've been able to really stick true to your own values and what you want for this company and then been able to sort of make it be what it is today.

Yeah, I mean, the reality is I never had a job. I mean, don't get me wrong, I waited tables most of my life before my business, but I've never worked at another creative agency. And to some people that might be kind of an Achilles heel in that I don't understand the exact process the law of our competitive set follows. But I've proven time and time again over the last 20 years that our instinctual way of doing it is not only efficient, but really incredibly rewarding and effective. And we've really tailored our process year after year after year. But there are those moments where you look on the industry and you say, oh well, this people, this team is doing this, or my client sent me a deck from another agency or I know there's this big bid out for all this work and all these people are doing these things in these very specific, industry conforming ways. And it's tempting to say, oh wow, maybe we'd be more successful, we'd have even more clients if we did it this way. But it's, you know, time and time again it's proven that following our heart and following our real beliefs in terms of how we should work, how many hours my staff should work, how quickly we should respond to clients, the process of how we pitch work, all of that is really honed very organically and it's been really, really effective and, and it's kept our lives fun and we all love working here. So it worked.

How do you think you were able to be convicted in terms of how you were able to run the business and not kind of get stuck in that, listening to other people and getting into self doubt around comparison between what you were doing and what you were hearing or seeing out in the market?

I think to say that any business owner who tells you, I never have envy, I never have self doubt, they're lying. There's no box. I've been trying to check the box for two decades of saying, I've arrived, I'm perfect, we did it. But you just have to have that self confidence and that self assuredness enough to keep you going and enough to see the wins and track those goals. That you achieve. And I shouldn't even say goals because I'm a very non goal oriented person, I'm a problem solving person. I just kind of move on to the next problem, which in some ways very ungratifying because you never have that like I did it moment. But everyone has those self doubt moments. Everyone is thinking, if I only did it like somebody else, maybe I would do it a little bit better. But over time you prove what works to yourself and what doesn't work, you change. And so it's really just a matter of giving yourself the grace to make mistakes, to learn from those mistakes, and to keep repeating the things that get the right results. And no matter what business you're in, whether that's a service based business or a product, you have to have those moments where you give yourself that grace and keep ideating and keep fine tuning what it is that you're doing.

What I'm hearing you say is by you doing the thing right and taking action and then being able to see, okay, that worked, were getting more and more confident. So whenever you would hear something from someone else that was doing something or someone saying you should do something a certain way, you were able to believe in yourself because you saw that you'd already done something else. Is that.

Yeah, absolutely. And also when you have a referral based business, there's a lot of that self fulfilling reinforcement where you do a project and someone loves it so much, right? They tell someone else about you or someone else sees your work in the world and they say, oh wow, who did that? I want to work with them too. And then they find out that not only are you talented, but nice and have a ton of experience in that one industry. So there's always so much happening within business and sales exchanges, et cetera, that really give you that little boost of confidence as you grow. But it's hard. There are times, especially when the whole economy fails. Like as a business owner, you're like, oh no, is it me? But you really just have to believe that if you keep doing what you're doing well, and keep always striving to do what you do even better, then the referrals will come, the work will come, and then you become a wise old woman like me.

And so when you're sticking to your values, is that basically what it is? It's really just tapping into just what you know about yourself and being able to follow through or do you have a certain way that you do that?

I think for me, I'm really a boss first and you know, there are a lot of designers who would never choose to move into an agency model or have employees or they have a lot of 1099 contractors. But for me, I think I hired my first employee like two years into my business. And full time employees, Social Security and Medicare, unemployment, taxes, all the craziness behind that. But for me, my values always really come from that mentorship and providing a safe space for creatives and also just treating them the way that I would want to be treated. Both my parents worked retail growing up and they both had really awful bosses from time to time and they worked insane hours. And there's just so much self sacrifice that existed for them to be employed. And I didn't want to create a space like that. I wanted to create a space that was rewarding, that was creatively interesting, that really one of my big values is work, life balance. Our team works 40 hours or less. We have a lot of flex days where folks work from home or they work in the studio. We also just have this space where everyone feels seen. A lot of agencies and design partners, they show the work through a series of account representatives or creative directors. And so the people who are working on the actual designs never get that facetime with their client. And the client doesn't build a relationship with the person who's actually making the work for them or doing the changes for them, or ideating for this new campaign or whatever it might be. And so one of our values is that we don't have accounts people, we don't have those middle people in between us, so that you have an authentic relationship with your designer, but also that designer gets credit, right? And feels seen and feels like so proud and can say, I made this for you. And the client goes, wow, that's great. I love it. And so these are just values I would like to say are kind of all anchored to this concept that people should love working here and people should love contributing their time, right? And it's worked. Our average tenure is eight years. You know, I mentioned my number two spent me for 15, my number three spends me for a decade. Our brand strategist has been working with us for 13, 14 years. So it really is gratifying to me. But also for our clients, it means they've got institutional knowledge, they've got an expert, they have someone who's done this a million times before and who loves coming to work every day creative and refreshed and positive. That's what it's all about.

Okay, so someone's listening and they're like, oh my gosh, that sounds like such a great place to work. I wish I worked someplace like that. What would you recommend them? And just in terms of doing the thing with the job advice, is there anything that you think would help them?

Yeah, I'm gonna say this very carefully because I love and respect men. I'm married to one. Find a woman owned business. Find a business that is under 10 people that has a woman identifying or a female identifying founder and talk to them. Apply to those businesses because I find some of our favorite clients are male driven clients, but it is the women business owners who are doing it from scratch, who have small businesses that are truly in it every day and who put a lot of value into building a community. And much like you mentioned, Faith and Stacy from Pinpoint Collective, they're an incredible team to work for. So that's my advice, is find a smaller business that is no more than 20 people and ideally woman founded.

Which is when you say put value in building community, I love that because that's what drives me. I'm just curious, what's your kind of definition of that with community and being able to bring the value there?

Yeah, I mean, it's so funny because I was so lazy in my early years because everything came to us from referrals and I was a self centered 20 something, you know, I was like, oh, cool, I have work. But it wasn't until Covid, where I really started getting out there and putting my business out into the community so selfishly because we needed more clients. We really had a big struggle during COVID but I immediately was able to flip that into building networks of other women owned businesses, of giving back through mentorship in the community, of finding opportunities to help other founders grow and thrive. One of our divisions in my business is focused on wine and spirits. And so I created a podcast pretty much as soon as I kind of debuted myself within the wine industry. And instead of it being all about us, I made it. All these episodes about how to help emergent wineries learn about marketing and branding. Because a lot of people in that industry just think that your brand is your label. Like, I've got a brand, it's right here. They point to their wine bottle and it's like, that's not a brand. And this is for anyone listening, if you think your brand is your product or your service, you are wrong. Like, it goes so much deeper than that. But yeah. So to me, a community is about really making sure that you're finding other people who want to do what you're doing and. And share the love, build that, those contacts. I just had a bunch of female founders here on Friday for a happy hour and just to share with them so my experiences and learn from them. It's really. It's pretty amazing.

It sounds like you leveled up during COVID where you were able to almost find your unique brand when you were able to kind of tap into that.

Well, I never had to tell people who we were. It was just so ironic because we're a branding agency, but people just came to us. In some ways, it was great because it allowed us to get deeper into certain industries. So we were. Before COVID hit, we were pretty much hanging our hat on being the preeminent restaurant branding agency in the Midwest. 60% of our clients were restaurants. And we had all these really fun, like, fast casual restaurants. And as a designer, fast casual is the best thing ever because there is design everywhere. If you go to, like, a fancy steakhouse, you're going to see a beautiful menu and a sign on the door, a website. There's a couple things, but when you go into, like, one of our clients is called Protein Bar, and they have protein bowls and quinoa bowls and protein shakes. And, like, the second you walk in that room, it's filled with our design. Every single column has our wallpaper. Every wall has a sign that we made the bags, the Instagram, like, all of that. So that was really great. But that referral, that community that was referring to us had us get very siloed, and that made us really vulnerable. And so when every restaurant in America shut down overnight, it was kind of scary. And so through that process, though, I was really able to begin to have to think about for the first time, okay, we have to market us. Who are we? How do we share the magic of what happens here every day? And then I eventually began to focus on another industry, which is wine and spirits. Because our biggest client is Cooper's Hawk Winery and Restaurants, which is at this point now, they've got, like, 57 restaurants all over the country, and they have the largest wine club in the world. We've done hundreds of wine labels for them. And so we launched our wine division called Vint. And Vint is really hyper focused on the wine and spirits industry. I spent two years marketing that, teaching myself how to market us by creating this alter ego for Design Scout. And they're really getting very specific in marketing within one industry. And now I talk a lot about Design Scout in general, and we still serve a lot of wine and spirits brands. But it's very much just now it's us and personal brand and it really put my feet to the fire.

Yeah. It got you to learn so much about you. And then you're probably even better now with your clients because you've tapped into this other part where you got to do it for yourself too.

Yeah. And that's what's so fun about having a business. Right. You are always a different business owner. I don't think I've ever felt done. I've never checked that box of like, ta da. We achieved, we did it. But there's always something new to learn. Whether you're getting into your P and L statement, whether you're learning about your personal brand and marketing yourself as an owner or efficiencies or co packing. Like there's always something to dig into. And so it's such an exciting, endless opportunity when you have your own business.

So can you talk about branding for people listening that are like, what is branding and what does that even mean? What are you doing and what does that look like?

Yeah, I got a great analogy that we use a lot here at the studio. Brand is all about how people feel when they connect with your product or service. Right. And a great way of describing that is Harley Davidson has been in business for 110 years, 120 years, and they don't sell motorcycles, they sell freedom, they sell independence. They sell the idea of the open road. And if you look at their advertising going back 110 years, every single ad, they're all very different. Like they've evolved over the years. But every ad shows the open road and someone having that experience of independence and freedom. And it is so universally loved by blue collar, white collar, women, men, you name it. So we've really worked with clients to help them figure out what is your freedom, what is the driving emotion behind your brand. We also talk a lot about that ethos or your big idea, Right. Nike's motivation. Nike's feeling is motivation. But their big idea is really the belief that there is an athlete in everyone. And so we help our clients really think about from emotionally driven level, what do you believe? What is truly your big idea behind your brand? How is that tying into your insight as to who's buying your thing? Right. What's that consumer insight? And what is that driving emotion that really allows you to kind of curate your decisions as you think about marketing for your brand? And so that's a very internal way of thinking about your brand. Right. Giving yourself those metrics so that you can stay consistent. You can really stay on top of that. But then you also have to think about how you project that to your customers. Right. So then brand is also wrapping all of that strategy into external messaging. It's your Nike, just do it tagline. It's the way that you convey all of those things, those emotions, those thoughts, those beliefs in the blink of an eye. And then, of course, the qualities of whatever it is that you're selling, the facts, they're a little bit of it. But I find so many of our clients really dig into this idea that their product or their brand is the thing that they do and what is different about it. But it's not about you, it's about your customer. Right. It's about what's in it for them. So. So that's the strategy part that we do. And then, of course, all of that has to translate to visuals. So your brand is also your logo. It's also beyond the logo, the wardrobe or outfit that your logo wears. It's your fonts, it's your colors, it's your typefaces, your iconography. And if you start your brand there, you're doing it wrong. I cannot tell you how many people think, oh, I need a brand, I'll hire a logo designer. And then they end up with 30 logos, and they're all fine, but they don't know how to know which one's right. And they don't know what they're trying to say through that brand. And it might just be based on being trendy or cool or I found it on Canva or I hired someone on Fiverr. But when you're making those choices based on what's cool right now or what your designer just made up because they have a style or an aesthetic, it's going to be good for about six months. And then your logo is not going to be a brand. It's not going to last forever. And you just have to think about that freedom that lasts 110 years. Right? Like, what is that? That's always going to be there for.

Those of you that don't have a business even. I just love that question, what is your freedom? And then find the passion that drives it beyond that. Such a great question.

Yeah. I had the pleasure of. I'm a mentor with the Chicago Innovation. Chicago Innovation has a big awards here, and they also have a number of mentorship groups. And there's one, the Women's Mentoring Co Op, and I'm a mentor for that. I was in a room with about probably about 50 to 60 women the other day. And actually they said, okay, we're gonna do an exercise where you have one word, say one word about yourself. And I swear, no one had a repeat. Every woman in that room had a different word. That was their freedom. And it was so inspiring. I wish someone had recorded it because it was just all these women just sitting around saying, you know, inspiration, creativity, drive, no compromise. Everyone was just so inspiring. So I love that. For people to do outside of a business or a brand. Yeah.

What would be some other advice you'd have for people that are maybe thinking about their business and their brand and what would be something they could be able to do even just starting today?

Yeah. I think so much of it is not feeling like you have to get everybody to like you. Knowing who you are is important, but also knowing who you really want to like you. And to put it a different way, some businesses think, oh, we have to get 10% of everybody to want to buy this thing. But the truth is that you want to get 100% of your 10%. You want to find what is that one 10% profile. And then how do you really get those people to connect with you? And that, to me, that translates to courage. Right. So when you say, I know that. For an example, we work with a client called Benji Huda, and it's a falafel and shawarma restaurant here in Chicago. And they were very into the idea of not branding themselves at all. They had nothing on the walls. They had a logo that was kind of hard to read. A name that you're like, I don't know what really that means. Ben Yehuda. Okay. But it turned out that going after a little bit of everybody, they were getting the right people who like their food. But we eventually gave them a counterculture brand because we got to know them and we're like, wow, this is a brand that is kind of an Anthony Bourdain brand. You guys are kind of a holes in the best way. There's an edge to this. Keep your name that's hard to pronounce. We'll give you a logo that you can read. We'll you give. Going to fill your storage with counterculture, and people are going to feel like they just walked into a skate shop or a hip hop concert or all of these counterculture vibes. And they discovered that 10% of people who were downtown Chicago who just wanted to get out of their cubicle and be themselves and listen to some loud music and watch Animal House on the tv, those people Wanted a home that felt counterculture and they wanted a brand. They'd be like, f, yeah, like, this is my brand. This is my. My shawarma brand, you know, and then their sales went up by 40% because they finally were walking around in a brand that felt like them and that connected with their 10%. So that's something I always suggest to people. Don't feel like you have to appeal to everyone, because if you're appealing to everyone, you're appealing to no one. Everyone thinks they're a special flower and they have their own needs and their own opinions, and they want to be part of this group of people who are passionate about something. So figure out how you connect with that person, and then you turn your best customer into your biggest fan and they share you everywhere.

So, yeah, I love how so many things kind of tap into this idea of finding your voice, right? Because when you find your voice, who you are, what you want, what your legacy is, what impact you want to make on the world, and who you want to resonate with your products, message, whatever that is, it's like when you can tap into that kind of internal knowing, then everything sort of kind of follows through. I'd love to hear just your thoughts on that, too.

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's. It takes a lot of courage to start a business, right? And it takes a lot of courage to even be yourself in daily life. And so that idea that, you know, you. You're going to take the risk to put yourself out there and that people are going to respond to that is a very terrifying idea. And then multiple times throughout your life, too. I was just thinking recently about how in my early 20s, for the first time in my life, I was meeting new friends and I moved away from home. And every single person I met had the potential to be like my husband or my lifelong best friend. And it was like, there's the world, your oyster. But I found myself constantly acting like the person I thought they wanted me to be. I was meeting someone in art school. I would try to be super creative. If I met someone who was studying literature, I would talk all about Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Like, I just was completely putting on hairs of this version of myself I thought they wanted to see. And I think eventually I found that the biggest risk was just being myself. And the best reward would be that the people I found wouldn't be finding these versions of me that they liked for a little bit. It was scary to go out there, but I realized what can happen, right? The worst thing that could happen is that someone goes, oh, I like the kind of person you are. And I'm also that kind of person. And I think that's something that's a through line and in business as well. And I'm on LinkedIn all the time and I'm always like, what should I type that will make me seem smart? Or like that people will share. When you shift your mindset on LinkedIn from I need to be this thing to make people want me to just here's who I am, here's what I do, here's what I think you should do, and here's why you should care. Then it's like, oh, this is just like 20 flashbacks. You can actually just be yourself. And I've had such a great response to people just getting to know me in that platform. For me being myself. I do a little series called Scout from the Swing. We have a swing here at the studio. I'll hop on my swing with my brand new selfie stick gimbal make people nauseous as I give them branding advice. But it's just been really fun to say here's a minute and a half of me rambling at you and giving you my top advice from the last 20 years of branding. And so, yeah, I think that's just a big part of it. Yeah.

Because it's kind of exhausting when you have to be something you're not. Right. Whether it's friends or business. But when you can really tap into that and play it like you feel it, then everything sort of starts to flow.

Yeah. Yeah. You have to be yourself because no one's else going to be. Right. I really think there's a space for all of us in professional life and your job and your career or business, and that's okay. Just somebody has to achieve all of these things and it can be you and you can just. Someone's got to do it. Why not you?

It's so cool. I love having these conversations because it helps me tap back into what I'm doing too. And so what's really alive for me is when I started do the Thing, it was all about taking action and helping people just do the thing. Right. And then I got into the podcast and I started interviewing people. I. I realized really what it was is helping. Cause I realized this was me where I always took action, but then maybe didn't tap into myself. And so that's something I. It's been a work in progress over the last year and a half is not just doing the thing but really being able to tap into who you are and the things that are live for you. And it sounds like you're doing something really similar with these brands and being able to help them tap into themselves, which then is helping their business flourish. Like the one you mentioned.

I love that.

You wouldn't have known that had you not know what their personality was and what drove them.

Yeah. And I think so many people will tell you, be authentic. Gen Z loves authenticity, like personal brands and be yourselves, because you'll sell more stuff if you're authentic and to a certain step. That's true. But also, I think it's just the right thing to do. I don't go to house parties or dinner parties and find the person who's in the corner preening in front of their selfie stick. Look how great I look. This is my manufactured me. Or like, I don't like talking to people who put on airs or who are just never relaxed to be themselves or they just feel like this fake version of themselves. I feel like in business it's the same way. It doesn't matter who you're attracting. Anyone can smell your bullshit. There's no harm in taking a risk being yourself. And I've never seen it fail. And we also work. I mean, I do do a lot of B2B work where businesses are selling other businesses. We draw on that work from our consumer brand experience. So a lot of our experience in luxury retail or restaurants or CPT products or craft beer or wine, et cetera. But the businesses that serve other businesses that especially feel like they have to be very corporate, those businesses who are willing to work with our studio. And I always joke and this, I guess this is sexist, but I'm always like, show a little leg. Stop being so conservative. Just dare to have a little bit of fun. Those brands are so fun to work with, and it's so easy. Amazing to me to see these boring industries have one person break out and be like, hey, everybody, the people that you're selling to are still people. And they still like Target and they still like these podcasts and they're still watching Ted Lasso. These are humans. So Even though it's B2B, you can still afford to be yourself in that way and have a little bit of humanity in what you're doing. And so that's what really inspires me now too, because post Covid, we really had to shift our clientele away from 60% restaurants, and now it's maybe 30% restaurants, but it's finding those businesses that are. I call them, like, delightfully rebellious, where it's like, they're not jerks, but, like, they're not playing the game so much. Right. They're able to kind of stand out and be authentic. And so I think it applies in personal life and in business.

Yeah. And I think that's why when you tap into who you are and at your core, what your freedom is, that's when you're able to really expand, because that's what people connect to is that real version of whether it's the brand, the person, whoever it is.

Yeah. And if you are tapping into that core of you, chances are you're doing something that you love. Right. It's not like you're like, I'm an accountant still. And you're like, no, I'm an accountant who helps small businesses and I change lives and I get them on track, and they don't even understand it until they work with, like, if you are so authentic to doing something that you love, you are going to do it well.

Yeah.

That's, to me, what's so inspiring, too. So that courage to start a business, that courage to be yourself in business, the courage to show your passion for it and really share that with the world and, like, connect on that emotional level no matter what you do, I think is really, to me, what's so inspiring and what it's all about. And founders are the definition of courage to me.

Right.

Especially in that I talk a lot about female founders, and yet I know some amazing men who have started businesses who are some of our favorite clients. But, like, thinking about the history of women in business, I get so passionate about this, and I don't want to hijack the conversation too much, but, like, women literally couldn't get a business loan until my lifetime. I think it was like 1986 or something. Ronald Reagan signed an act that allowed women to have commercial business loans not in their husband or son's name. In the 80s, in the 1980s. That's insane to me. So we are truly the first generation, second generation of women business owners in America on any real scale. And now they're like 42,000 women on businesses in America. It's insane. So I think women especially, they get this. They call it imposter syndrome. But to me, it's all about the fact that we're pioneers. We didn't have these role models. My mom and dad didn't go to college or they didn't finish college. I should say they started college. But they were both interrupted in their educational Career. No one in my worldview ever, ever, ever considered having a business. My people didn't do that. And so you have to have the courage, though, to realize that just because we haven't had it modeled for us, that every family, you know, has a woman business owner in it, that we can do it and we should do it. And that really inspires me to keep working with more female founders and help them grow and, and just find success.

All right, Scott, well, the time is here. I'd love to hear what your number one piece of advice is for people on doing the thing.

Oh, my gosh. I think it's just be brave. Really. Don't be afraid to be yourself. And that applies everywhere. And I know we talked about that a lot in depth, but it's something I'm really passionate about and that is really transformational for me personally in my business. And it's something that I encourage in every client that we work with. You can't do the thing if you're too afraid to do it. And bravery isn't about being unafraid. It's about being brave enough to do it even though you're afraid. So be brave.

Well, please share who you like to work with and how they can connect with you as well.

Yeah. Thank you. We work with delightfully rebellious businesses and really, truly anyone who has a brand that doesn't reflect their success. So a lot of times our clients are 10 years old, 15 years old, and they realize that they just have never really had a brand that was bespoke to them and that conveyed everything in the blink of an eye. And a lot of startups, my favorite kind of clients are often kind of round two founders where they have a passion project and they're like, I get it. I know how important brand is now. And now we're going to hit the ground running and really do it the right way because it's, you know, it's a 12 week process. Like, there's a lot that goes into our branding, but that's really my favorite clients, folks that are just super passionate and ready to be brave with us. You can find me on LinkedIn at Scout Driscoll and our website is designscout.com.

I just love the name of your company. It's great. Well, thank you so much for coming on. This was so much fun.

Yeah. And thank you for all you're doing. I feel like what you're putting out in the world in all these episodes is just so inspiring. And I hope that people reach out to you and tell Stacy that they did the thing and tell her what you did because of this podcast. I think that's where I want you to be brave in and reach out to her and tell her all the impact that she has had in this wonderful, wonderful gift.

Aw, thank you. It's so funny, I was noticing when you were talking about your swing episodes. I have a swing that I do episodes on, too. Where I do on them. It's outside. They'll have to do a swing day, I think. You and I.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

People always ask, like, why do you have a swing in your design studio? And I said, well, if you had your own design studio, wouldn't you have a swing? And they're like, oh, yeah, probably.

Exactly. It's so good. Well, thanks so much. And for you guys, thank you for listening. And do the thing. Don't wait for opportunity. Create it. And hey, guys, have you checked out my Facebook group yet? It's do the Thing community.

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