David Herman (26:40)
Chaos. It was, it was a couple of things. It was, it was, it was. I call it organized chaos because I said no more than I said yes to working with people. And I just, I think for me it was always much I aligned with, hey, I have to do this whole day with, with people, not the, necessarily the business. And so it was like if I liked you as a person, I was like, yeah, let's do it. But then on the back end you're always like, hey, okay, you have to actually do the work. And so you know that always have to like it always be this rearranging of things where it's like, hey, if, you know, if this brand comes on then either a. I need to figure out how to make the back end work. So it was always this like jigsaw puzzle in a way because again, I never wanted to take on. The thing was I never wanted to grow to be a big agency. Right. I'll never forget Taylor from the CTC hit me up. He said, hey, you want to come work for me? Like no man, like I, I'm good, you know. And that was, that was like right when they were kind of in their growth stage when you know, Andrew was there and a couple of those guys, it was like, I love you guys, but I don't. I don't want to go work at a big agency again, right? And so I kind of maintained that I just, like, I wanted to work on the few brands that I was confident in growing and kind of go from there. And so that was the plan. And then obviously, Covid hit. And then, like, that whole first few months, it was just everybody hitting me up, and I was working with Thinx, the. The women's underwear brand, and their entire company was in house. I remember the CEO hitting me up is like, hey, you know, this is crazy. You're like, the one thing that's like, hasn't changed, you know? And I was like that. Like, I felt like, okay, this is my purpose now is to, like, just keep these companies afloat while they're trying to figure out their work from home things. And so I was kind of managing all this stuff, and then. And then my mom passed away suddenly in September of 2021. I was kind of left in this. Okay, Now I'm by myself trying to figure this out. And that's when my. The guy that works for McTanner, Duncan, stepped in and was like, hey, yeah, I can manage things where you go, take care, take care of business. And then he just kind of came in and helped for about two months while I just kind of took time off. And then, you know, here I have this assistant slash, you know, partner now, and his, you know, he was young and eager and ready to go. And so we naturally, like, all right, we can probably take on a couple more brands now than. It's just me. And then we just started to build this little boutique thing, but again, maintained my whole thing was never grow beyond what we can't do and never hire too many employees. But then it becomes too much. And so, you know, to this day, we have, what, five people total that are working with me? Um, you know, it's one analytics guy. It's a two ad builders, and then it's Tanner and I, and we manage all these brands, and, you know, we've been able to kind of build it in a certain way where it's like, either Tanner's day to day on these four brands, and then I'm day to day on these three brands, and then I'm higher up on these other brands. So it's like I can have a different perspective on things, and then we'll switch things around, right? So it's like, you know, suddenly now I'll kind of get in the weeds on this brand. Well, he goes high level on this brand. So it's. It allows us to kind of always be kind of mindful of. Of each brand and how to look at things. Because obviously if you live in a brand day to day 247 and don't have anyone else looking at it, you lose the perspective. So it's always helpful to have others look at the accounts. And so that's been helpful. And then, you know, through that process, I've had, you know, other assistants, like, know Kyle who works for Hexclad now and other brands. Like, he was working for me and he kind of. I trained him how to do this stuff and he's kind of, you know, worked with a bunch of. He works with like Honey Love and Hexclad and Couple. I don't know who I work with these days, but, you know, that's how it's been. And, and again, it's. It's. It's been a. It's. It's been a very smooth yet chaotic adventure in a way because, you know, navigating Covid was, you know, just feast, right? Everybody was just wanting like, we'd have VCs hitting us up, hey, can you take on 12 brands? Like, no, dude, I cannot take on 12 brands. Like, okay. And then like, obviously this year things really slowed down to where it was like nobody's, you know, wanting things, but then everyone's hitting me up because they're get getting rid of either their, their internal growth team or they're getting rid of their big agency. And I was that, like, middle ground. So then people were hitting us to do that. And then it was like, okay, like, yeah, I can help consult or audit on the side and get you going. But then it's like, it just kind of felt like there's never really a right answer. And I think like, you know, every brain has to kind of operate very differently. And you know, you guys, especially with, I mean, obviously I know the Ridge team. How you guys do it, I think is, is. Is great because it's like you have this really core team that's been in this together and it's. I think it's still like the best way of doing things that I've seen. And it's like, you know, having these outside agencies is. Is. Is tough. I think this year it's been tougher because of the creative and just kind of all things that have shifted specifically in. In Metaland. And it's like we're all, we're all at this point kind of figuring it out together, right? And it's like there is not really an expert at, at trying to understand all right, what, what's going on here and how are we figuring this out. And I think that's been really tough. And I've talked to a lot of agencies this year that felt like either a, their, their scopes of work got so out of hand because they were kind of forced to have to do a lot more figuring things out and do things and they felt very stressed and all that. And then you have the in house teams that are feeling unhappy with the agencies because they're feeling like they're not getting what they is. It felt like just this year was a lot of, just kind of infighting of just trying to figure it out. But I feel like it's at this point now kind of people know what the lay of the land is and they're kind of moving into the next phase, which is good. But it's been very much a, I would say this year of, of all of it has been a very difficult time.
