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- [00:00]
A
In this episode, Jody Cook breaks down a simple framework. Rabbits, deer and elephants. To help you figure out which type of client actually fits your business. We talk about ambition, scale, lifestyle, and why chasing the biggest deal isn't always the smartest move. If you've ever wondered who you should really be working with, this one's for you.
- [00:30]
B
Let's talk about the three types of CL and which is right for your business because I have a theory or I have a framework that I used when I ran my agency, that I ran for 10 years before I sold it. And this is how we categorize clients so that we decided who to work with. And the three categories are rabbits, deer and elephants. The idea is that first you've got rabbits and rabbits are quite small clients. So they are very easy to close, very easy to get, they're low ticket, they're, they're kind of easy to serve, they multiply. So once you have one rabbit, you'll probably have loads of rabbits. For me, all my first rabbit clients were the small ones. They all came through networking and for me and my agency these were the kind of 500 to $1,500 a month clients. But it doesn't have to be that dollar amount. It could be anything depending on what kind of agency you run or what kind of business you run. Then you've got deer and so deer are mid sized clients. This is kind of a hunting analogy. But because we've got elephants, I'm not going to do that because obviously that doesn't happen. So then you've got deer and they're the mid sized clients. So they are pretty solid value, they're reliable, there's, they don't take a bunch of people to catch. You could kind of catch a deer with one person. They take more effort to land than rabbits, but they're still good return, not too much complexity. And then in my agency when we started getting deer based clients, they were kind of 1500 to maybe 6 or 7000amonth. That was kind of the level of dear client. And then also all of those clients came through either my personal brand or Google Ads. They just, that's where they came from. And then you've got elephants and this is the third type. And elephants are really big clients. And we actually categorized these in terms of Indian elephants and African elephants because they were slightly different size of elephants. And these are really high value, prestigious clients that you put on your website. You tell everyone that you're working with these companies, they're slow moving, they're resource intensive, so it might take five people to land this client. They have often very complex cycles, very complex delivery. You'll be doing a lot of complicated work. You'll have. It won't be really be one size fits all. You have to create new processes to look after this elephant. Um, for us, we had a client, we did a bunch of work for a car company, and it was 20% of our entire company's revenue. And at any given time, if they wanted something. I was on a holiday once and it was my birthday, and that client clicked their fingers and said they wanted something and I just canceled my plans. I just did the work. I was. I just have to. I can't. Not because it's too big and too many jobs rely on it. I just have to do this. And for us, those clients all came through pitches. And so what we found is that we were so tempted by elephants and we wanted to do all these pitches and we wanted to get these really big, prestigious clients because we wanted to work with them and we wanted to have this. Maybe it's ego, maybe it's pretty cool to say, oh, yeah, we work with Subaru or whatever, but at the start, it was very much rabbit, rabbit, rabbit. And then you realize that you get overrun with rabbits and you've got too many of them and you feel like you're just going to be busy forever if you keep serving these types of clients where they all want something slightly different, but there's not too much meat on them, they're not that valuable in themselves. So our strategy eventually was that we came to thinking that deer were just the way we were going to find our version of deer. We were going to define them, we were going to know exactly what type of clients they were, the person at the organization that we were selling to, what's their job title, and then we were going to have a set of things that we would deliver for these clients to mean that it was. That was our jam, that was our bread and butter. And we weren't flexing our work to try and get elephants, and we weren't undervaluing ourselves to get rabbits. So we kind of settled on this, like this middle. And that's the. But that's the framework. There are those three. And I think that every single agency could almost define their version of rabbits, deer and elephants. And then pick the deer and focus on those. Okay, it's not pick the deer. It's every single company could define their version of rabbits and deer and elephants and then decide which one they're going to Serve. Because I really believe that only serving one, the best way of doing it.
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A
Okay, fascinating. So when I run my, ran my agency, we only dealt with elephants or whales because they were pitches.
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B
Whales.
- [04:56]
A
Yeah, they're all the big whale. Right. We're just, you can, you can feed a whole village for months on one kill. And they were not easy to catch and they didn't come by that often. And it's very bespoke service and a lot of hoops to jump through a long procurement process. Everything that you said about the whales. So I'm wondering within the whales, because you said there's two types of elephants, Indian and African, if you've thought much about those very high end clients. Because we're dealing with mostly Fortune 1000 brands, Madison Avenue ad agencies as our clients servicing those brands. If you, if you have any specific insight on that. Curious.
- [05:37]
B
On the whale level. Right at the top.
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A
Or the elephant in your case. Yeah.
- [05:42]
B
For us, going after elephants, it required learning a lot of stuff from scratch and it involved almost winging it. And we weren't successful in catching that many elephants. So when we got some, it was like, oh my God, what do we do with this? And we probably didn't really know because we weren't actually that set up to do that. Because if you think I was running an agency, I was also. I saw it very much as a lifestyle business process in place so that the team could look after them. Elephants aren't going to. They're not. You can't put them in box, you can't get them to just follow those processes because they want everything bespoke, you said, and they want everything done their way. And so sometimes the difference actually between a deer and an elephant or a rabbit and an elephant is whose T's and C's do you sign? Do you sign your T's and C's or do you sign theirs? Because the elephants, you sign theirs. But the rabbits and the deer, it's like, well, these are ours and this is them and you agree to our terms. But I don't think we were set up at all to serve elephants. So it meant that when we had them, it was like they took, they massively took over. It's like you imagine putting a physical elephant in with a bunch of rabbits. It's like they stomp around, they want to be heard, they want to be seen. And all the rabbits eventually are just like, what? Like they don't understand and then they escape. Whereas if you're like, if you're set up to serve the rabbits. Then you create the systems in place and you look after a lot of rabbits and you scale it up because you've got the, you've got the way of doing it.
- [07:03]
A
Yeah, I think when you, when you service rabbit client clients, it's all about volume, I think. Cause you can't sustain yourself. You, you literally have to kind of do an assembly line thing in order to put enough food on the table for everybody. You don't get to do that kind of super high end bespoke work because you, you would sink the company. You would go into the red. You're financing their inability to pay with your own desire to do a better job. As you were talking, I was really kind of just searching my mind of all the clients, the hundreds of clients that we've pitched and won. What, what did they fall into? I don't, I haven't thought about the whole animal hunting analogy as you have. So I'm just going to wing it here and, and just using the rule of three. So there were the whales who would come to the boat. They would just come to the boat because they, they knew you were there. And they, they like whatever you put in out the shrimp, the krill, whatever you put in the water, they liked. And they see they saw something you did and they made it on their list to work with you at some point, like it was an accomplishment to work with you. And you got the inside track. There was preferred treatment. And I like that. Of course, we wanted all of our clients to treat us like that. And there's a phrase that they use, not always true, but a phrase they use. It's your job to lose unless you do something that scares us. We're not really considering anybody else. And to a point, one of our clients who we had done multiple projects with, and that's also a sign that they're the kind of whale that prefers you. All right, Chris, we didn't even like some of the ideas that you presented, but we're going to pay you and you want to do this other idea we have. I'm like, yeah, or here's the best one. And this has happened multiple times. We have a surplus budget at the end of the year and we need you to send us an invoice for which we'll figure out what to do with you later. Because if we don't use this budget, we're going to lose it. So then you knew you're in so deep with this organization and the powers that be, invite you to dinner and do personal things together. Go play golf or play something. You're like, wow, I'm so in. This is really nice. You feel like you've worked all your life to have the whales swim up to your boat and you're like, I'm good. Then there are the whales who, who tease you, but they actually have zero intent working with you. But because they have to triple bid, as mandated by their contract with their clients, you're just a third bid. Those suck. And we used to fall for them all the time. And the way we got around that is we would ask them, are we the third bid? We would just say point blank, are we the third bid? And sometimes they would say, yes and say, this is fantastic. Tell us what number you need us to submit the bid under. We're not going to go through all this work for nothing. Right? So they want to tell you to put in a high number so they can pick the people that they want to work with, because if you're too competitive, they actually might have to give you the work and they're going to resent the process. So that saved us a lot of work. And they like how honest and direct we are and how comfortable we are with knowing how the game works. The ones in the middle are the real, the most interesting, the most difficult. They're kind of undecided. It is a fair race, as anybody can tell, and made the best bed, pitch, presentation, win. And this is highly subjective, so I don't mean literally the best design creative, but to whatever standards that they're looking at, that person wins. And so that's where we. We spent most of our time figuring out how to be better at hunting big game.
- [10:26]
B
The third bid. One, they're more dolphins. They're just playing. It's not real. It's just la, la, la. Let's just get this third bid because we have to. I love that you asked that. Yeah, I think we were probably the third bid a few times, but I don't think I would have thought to ask back then.
- [10:42]
A
I didn't think to either until my coach told me, just ask them if, you know, this is what happens. Just ask again. Somebody just gives you permission to do what you've always wanted to do. And we did it. We just asked. And it was shocking because every once in a while they would say, yeah, you are.
- [10:57]
B
And then you decide what to do. So did you ever look after rabbits or deer? Those kind of clients where they weren't huge multi. Did you ever have somewhere where they just. We just want a logo. We just want A logo, one file. There's the really, really small pieces of work.
- [11:12]
A
Yeah. I think in the first seven to eight months of running my business in 1995. Yes. But because we were making commercials, there are not a lot of small commercials. There might be pro bono, which we've done for. I remember when we did one for the Partnership for Drug Free America on meth use and that was no budget and there were a couple other things that we did that responsible drinking, that kind of stuff. And we would do those for free. But when it comes to commercial advertising, you're usually dealing with an agency. And agencies are not small. There's mid sized agencies and then there's really big agencies and they have to have a media team. There's a lot that's involved. So all the projects, the low, low budget projects would probably be around a hundred grand. A high budget project would be a million plus. And so we're dealing with a different caliber now. One valuable lesson I learned from my business mentor was when we were dealing with clients that were paying us between a hundred to 200k, those are easy to get. Those would be considered our rabbits. They were easy to get. We would show up, we barely had to do anything on the call and they were just so happy to give us the work. They might have been like an animated logo or some, what they call supers, titles that appear on the screen, superimposed on, on whatever live action footage. But as we got into bigger budget projects with live action, with visual effects, with motion graphics, it got really complicated and the level of competition got real steep. So we would consider those probably our, our deer, our bread and butter. Between 2 to 400k. Above 400k was as you say, there's a lot of tire kicking, procurement process, cost consultants, people of that nature who would really look into all this stuff. Those typically were like product launches, 360 campaigns that had a lot of touch points. And so it's, it was a massive thing. They needed to know you could do all this stuff.
- [13:05]
B
They talk about rabbit's day and elephants, we're talking about whales, we're talking about dolphins, people messing around and how to decide which, how to decide which one you should work with and what the best strategy is.
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A
Yeah. So how, how do you decide? I mean if somebody's early in their business, I'm pretty sure it's going to be rabbits. By whatever definition it's going to be plentiful, but you need a lot of them to sustain yourself. And they're not that difficult to get. And A lot of people just cruise on that. And if we are talking about people in the creative space, it could be that they're on one of these marketplaces for creative services and there's lots of those kind of clients out there that are going to spend hundreds or maybe a couple thousand on what you do. They don't really love what you do, but it's easy, it's convenient for you, it's convenient for them. You don't have to learn how to do marketing, sales. Do you think it's natural for us to want to progress to the larger game?
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B
Yeah, I think so. When I was running my agency, I saw it as, first it was me doing the work, then it was me teaching other people to do the work, then it was me teaching more people to do the work, then it was me teaching other people to teach other people to do the work. And the idea that if you join a company and have a job, you've got this career ladder that you're probably going to progress up, but if it's your business, you have to create your own career ladder. So I always saw it as me progressing to the types of different work I did and the types of different clients we served. But I do think that now maybe stuff's different with how much AI stuff is around that you could apply to rabbits. So I think now, if I had the same agency in the first three years when we were just rabbits, rabbits, rabbits everywhere. I think if I applied now, the tools that exist, I think we could have got a ton bigger, probably 10x with the AI tools that are out there, and then it would have been quite fun. But I also think it depends on the type of business you want to run, because if you want to run a performance business where you're seeing how big it can get, how much impact you can make, the coolest clients that you can possibly work with, then yes, progress up the chain and move from rabbits to deer to elephants to whales. But if you want a lifestyle business where you want things to fit in with your processes, you want to be able to do a certain work, deliver someone's 30 LinkedIn posts a month and then leave it at that, like, it depends how much ambition you've got for your company or whether your ambition is more lifestyle and your company supports that. So I think there's so much to ask the founder about before they decide which animal to go after.
- [15:32]
A
Yeah, I think because you're entrepreneurial, that you see scaling as something that's fun and then you building something together, a community A culture, a tribe of people, like minded individuals that you can train and level up. A lot of people in the creative space don't think like that. They just want to do all the work themselves. There's lots of limiting beliefs about loss of control, loss of quality. Imposter syndrome, where if I'm not doing the work, then who is it and what am I selling? All kinds of things. And they're gonna be in that rabbit space for a really long time now. The rabbits eventually get fatter. Maybe they get one of those rare, bred for human consumption as food source with a really big. Yeah, maybe that's what they get for a while. Yeah, they're like biggest dogs. I'm like, dang, that's a big rabbit, man.
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B
I feel like we had some jumbo rabbits. I feel like we had some rabbit sized clients who act like elephants. And then at first you get taken along with it and then you're like, hang on, no, you're a rabbit client. It sounds horrible. Never the thing. Because you of course buy your clients and everything else. But I feel like at some point someone has to be a decent size contract for them to be able to stomp around like an elephant.
- [16:44]
A
Well, there's something I want to share in terms of whales because we can get enamored with the client. The prestige gets a big brand name and it's something that when you do for the first time, it feels really good. But as you do it more and more, you start to realize none of this really changes anything. And you get. It's very alluring to work on big budget projects like mid six figures. Right? It sounds like a lot of money. I guess it is. But what you have to pay attention to is profitability. And the reason why we stopped doing client work is we're doing projects between, I would say about 250 to $500,000 on a regular basis. And what we realized is after we spent all the money to get this client in the door, the pitches, the presentations, missed pitches, we have to account for those, account those as well. And then after we paid all these super high end people because whales want the very best. So you have to hire very expensive artists to work with. The profit that's left over on a half a million dollar job could be a hundred grand, like net. And you can confuse your $500,000 client as a $500,000 client. But I always looked at it as that was a hundred thousand dollar client because that's what we made. Then when we started to evaluate other things that we can do to make a hundred grand. It led us towards content and product based business. And so that's when we're like, okay, so I own my own ip, I don't have to chase anybody. I just get to do me. And people will pay me the equivalent of the same as the big whale. But I'm happier, I'm more fulfilled, I'm working less so the teams is not stressed out. And so when we do that, I felt like the natural evolution of our company was to move away from working with whales and just doing a product based business. So I wanted to warn everybody that, and there's an expression, I heard it from Ron Baker, he said, revenue is vanity, profit is sanity. And we were looking at the revenue, the big number and getting mesmerized by that. So I just want to put that out there because eventually I think you came to the similar conclusion where I think we can run a really good agency by just getting fat deer.
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B
So you're the feeder feeding up all these animals.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Nice. But then, so something that pops into my head. My first ever officee job, it was a one in university holidays. And my boss there was always convinced that there was an easier way of making money than the one he was currently pursuing. Always, no matter what was happening, whether it was a really good day, there was a really bad day, no matter what was happening, it's, oh, I could do that. Oh, I could do that. It was, it was probably my first introduction to shiny object syndrome. And I wonder if that's the thing with rabbits and deer and elephants. There will be some agencies or some freelancers where elephants is just their jam. They're just so good at it and they are making profit and they do know what they're doing and they've got their process. But similarly with rabbits as well. I think you can make anything work. It's just about owning the. Owning the animal and owning the one that you've chosen.
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A
Yeah, I think everybody before. Before you send us all hate mail, we're just talking about metaphors.
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B
Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I've never killed a rabbit, a.
- [20:01]
A
Deer, a whale or an elephant. Yeah, no animals. It's just a metaphor.
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B
No animals are harmed in the making of this episode. Not at all. Just metaphor. That's it.
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A
Yeah. What were you gonna say?
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B
I think it's really easy to be serving deer thinking, oh, I'd love to be working with elephants. And yeah, like you said, getting enamored by those huge big clients and like, oh, we should be pitching more and we should be doing this. But you could probably hang out where you are and just make the best of it and build something really cool because there is, there's work to go around and there are smaller clients who want looking after and there are so many terrible agencies out there probably doing a really, really bad job. It's like it's yours to lose.
- [20:44]
A
I, I want to put this out there no matter what we say. I think if you're in the deer category, you're going to want to experience the elephant because you're going to say it's going to change everything for me. Jody and Chris do not know what they're talking about. I'm going to go for it. And there's nothing we can say that will stop you and you need to experience it. And then after you do this for a while, after you go after the elephants and the whales, you're gonna come to the same conclusion. I believe it's no coincidence that both you and I land at the same spot. We're two totally different people from different places in the world with different experiences, but we landed in the same exact spot. I think where the whale thing works is when the whales are a monster. Like there's so much profit in it that you can really, really have a million dollar project as a profit, not as revenue. That's when it starts to become worth it. And that's why I think advertising agencies exist, because they only service whales, but they make enough off of the whale that they can sustain lots of people for a good long period of time. They have an added benefit too, that they become agency of record. And that means that they're not just pitching for the new business. They pitch for it one time, they get the client and then they service that client. Now, in our lifetime, I've had a couple of clients, not many, a handful of clients where we were agency of record, everything they had, creative wise, strategy wise, they would just call us up and we would send them a bill for whatever it is that we did. And so it was a bit of an onboarding process. But once we had a msa, a master service agreement set up, it was just easy to knock it out. It became like one client that started out as a hundred thousand dollar project became over a million dollars in revenue for us really, really fast because they were a whale. They were that was going to be on semi retainer basis where they're coming back for more and more work that made sense.
- [22:33]
B
I like what you said. Jodi and Chris don't know what they're talking about. I feel like that could almost be the tagline for many of these conversations. But that's the point, isn't it? Everyone's kind of making it up as they go along. Especially I was for sure, I was 22 when I started my agency. It was my first business. I was, I was playing businesses. And then you're just learning and going, huh, I'm not going to do that again. Or oh, this, this is cool, I'll go more in that direction. And then you just figure everything out as you go along. I don't think there's ever, I don't think anyone really knows because then things change and then they don't know all over again.
- [23:03]
A
Now let me ask you this question. If you're in the rabbit space and you want to transition into going after deer sized clients, what are a couple things you need to do? Let's make this super practical for people. Get it, Rabbits are good, but I want to know what it's like to go after a deer or to go after the elephants. What do I need to do? What kind of skills do I need to acquire?
- [23:23]
B
You need to do exceptional work. You need to focus on quality. You need to try and get all the results that you possibly can. Potentially overservice the rabbits to the point where you've, you've got some results that you're really proud of and write up the case studies and use social proof to get dear more and more stories of people you've worked with that you've done a really good job with. Put them all over your website and create PDF documents that can be downloaded, be almost become famous on the success of your clients and become famous for the quality of your work so that you start to attract in the better clients. That's what I would do. If I was starting from scratch going from rabbits to deer. What would you do?
- [24:03]
A
I could totally vouch for that. One of the clients we wound up working with, they're called Hudson Pacific Properties and they do class A buildings in Los Angeles, but in other places, the world, they're a $13 billion company. Last time I talked to them and the reason why they hired us, even though we didn't have specific industry real estate experience, was because we took a fairly modest company brand called Trojan Storage, which is a self storage facility, and we made it look 10 times more valuable. And I only found out months after working with them. They said, you know why we hired you? I'm like, no, I don't know why it didn't occur to me to ask you and they said it was because if you can make that look good, you're going to make what we do look great because we're spending millions of dollars developing these buildings and we want that magic. And you're absolutely right. So if you can take a smaller client where you see the potential and they are open enough to be led by you and what it is that you're doing, so you have to be aligned there in values. We talked about this in our last episode. Then you can actually make more out of this meal. And you want to use this as the showcase client, and that's going to help you trade up a smaller client for a much bigger client.
- [25:15]
B
I think you also benefit from them trading up. You benefit from the account managers or the marketing directors at your rabbit clients trading up in their roles and then joining new companies and then wanting to take you with them. We've got so many clients through doing that because it's. They, they get in, they get their role, they find their feet, and then as soon as they can change agencies, they're back with you because they just want to work with you because you're really good. So you almost benefit from them progressing as well as you progressing.
- [25:42]
A
That happens a lot. This means that you must be really good. It goes back to you being good and then you providing a great customer experience. And then your reputation will travel when they travel. And so at times you're sad to hear, oh, my gosh, you're not going to be with Agency X anymore. And if they happen to be going to some bigger agency or bigger company, that means the opportunities hopefully will follow you. That literally happened to us. That's how we got a big break when we were just starting out. Somebody who had worked at a very small agency, more of a local agency, they were hired on to lead a bigger team for a newer agency. And they remembered. I didn't even work with them. They just remembered our portfolio. So much so that they invited us to bid on this project and we bid on it and then we grew with them and it was an awesome ride for many, many years.
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B
The moral of so many of these stories is just to be good. Could just get better. No excuses, just get better.
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A
I think one, maybe one way that we can wrap up this episode is we talked about the different types, the three types and what they look like, and to figure out which one makes the most sense for you and how you can move up and maybe going to the very top isn't exactly what you hoped it to be. I'm curious if you have any tips for us on not how to go backwards? So you're working with a certain type of clients, things are going great and then for some reason they don't want to work with you anymore. I know that's happened in my life, in my career. I'm curious if you've experienced this and if you have any advice on that.
- [27:08]
B
Advice on going down. I would find the most valuable part of the work that you're doing and package it into a smaller offer. You know, this is different industry, but you know how Instagram started out as the photo filter? It was called Bourbon and it started off, they had all these functionalities, but people just really like this filter thing that they had. Where it was, you could take upload your pictures and put something else on it and it would look different. And then so they doubled down on that. They were like, this photo filter thing is the thing that we're going to just create. And then it became a photo sharing app where you put your filters on and that's like an Instagram and It's sold for $1 billion. So I would look into all the work that you're doing for your elephant clients and your whale clients and see if you can be like, that is the most valuable thing. That is the thing that people really want. Separate it from the fluff and then put a package around that and then sell that to more dear level clients.
- [28:01]
A
You answer that question in a different way than I thought you and I love it. Like, how do you package your high end service work to be to service a different market? You package it up. What I was asking you was how do you keep these relationships so that they don't fire you? Because yes, the person gets promoted, they move to a different company, you get bigger opportunities and things are going great and then something weird happens and then you're no longer talking to them, you're no longer working with them. What can you do to prevent that from happening?
- [28:30]
B
I think you need to not be afraid to get into the black box and figure out what's really going on. As you said, are we the third option? Are you just speaking to us because you need to get a third quote. It's asking those kind of questions, calling them up and saying, why are you talking to us anymore? What's going on? Why are we falling out? And having those conversations, which I think actually might feel quite uncomfortable. Because if it is a client where maybe it's 20% of your revenue, maybe more, you might just want to tread carefully, not upset anything for fear of losing them, but you're probably going to lose them anyway if you don't do anything. So you might as well go on the offense and start talking to them and asking them the difficult questions, and then you can find some kind of solution, and then you can figure out what role you play in their future, if any.
- [29:18]
A
I think in every relationship, both sides take each other for granted. They take it for granted that you're. They're an important client to you and that you would not want to work with anybody else. You take it for granted that everything you do is great and they're going to have lots and lots of projects to feed you, and you don't have to level up. I think what happens is you have to renew relationships in personal and professional life. You have to kind of rekindle. You have to renew your vows, if you will. So in. In a relationship like this, I think, and we. We never did this. And so eventually clients would just leave. And we were just like, what happened? Because we weren't proactive. We weren't saying, so we've been working with you for two years. It's a good time for us to check in with you to see how else we may be of better service to you. Are you happy with what we're doing and the level of service we're providing? Is the work meeting and exceeding your standards? Are there things that are coming down the pike that we can then maybe look out for and see if we can't be of assistance to you and to continue to maintain those relationships? Now, back then, I was a different person. So I didn't love talking to people. I didn't like hanging out with them. And I think that signaled to them like it wasn't important. They were very important to me, but I didn't act like it. I don't call in and check on people like the way a good salesperson or a good account manager would. There's a friend of mine, he'd always say, well, Chris, Chris, the fish always rots from the head. You're the head. Things aren't working because people look at what you do naturally, and then they're going to mimic or do what you do, and they're going to try to adhere to your values or your sense of what you'd normally do. So nobody did it. And so eventually the clients stopped calling us, and we're like, I wonder what happened?
- [30:51]
B
That's so interesting. I think I went the other way. This is so we should dig into this more because this is so the. What Percentage introvert would you call yourself if you had to roughly say now?
- [31:01]
A
I would describe myself on the spectrum before as a hardcore introvert. As far left on the introvert spectrum as you can imagine. But as I'm finding out, part of that is through socialization, feeling I don't belong, some internal conflicts about who am I? I'm a stranger in a strange land kind of thing. But as I become more of myself, people are like, there's no way you're an introvert. I still am, but I think I'm more ambivert than I was or I thought myself to be previously.
- [31:29]
B
I think I'm almost 100% extrovert. There's some quiet time needed, but not much. If you told me that I could never ever be alone, I'd be like, I think I'd be okay with that. I would rather never be alone than never not be alone. I think is fun because I have, I don't know if I said that right, but I'm having people around me a lot. But I think that that meant that we had the opposite problem with clients. It wasn't that we wouldn't talk to them, it's that we would develop such big relationships with them and such deep relationships with them that the actual work side sometimes would take a second tier to the relationship. So then you end up, you know, their kids names, you get invited to their wedding, you're so close with your clients, but as soon as someone goes, hang on, what are the results that they're getting then? That's not been your focus because your focus has been more the relationship. So I find that we had to really be like, hang on, let's make sure we focus on what's important here rather than just getting on with them.
- [32:22]
A
Okay? So this, this is the example I will share with everybody. When you have a client, they're in town, six figure client, it's an obligation to take them out for dinner. And the producers, my executive producers, would go and take them out. They would always ask me, chris, we're, we're going to this great place. You should come with us. I'm like, no, I'm not coming. I'm paying for the bill and an expensive dinner. Everybody's having a good time on my dime, but I don't want to go. Cause I'm like, oh, this is so weird. And to this day I, I kind of think about that like, I wonder how different my business would be had I gone to some of those things to give some FaceTime. Because my business coach Would always tell me when the owner shows up for anything, even if they don't do anything, it means a lot. And I remember when he said that, because I walked into this editorial place called Rock Paper Scissor in Hollywood and I was picking up something or delivering something. I can't remember what I was doing there. Still a pretty young person and a lady hippie, ish, walks out barefoot and says, honey, can I take care of you? Are you okay? Somebody look after you? Want to have something to eat? I'm like, oh, my God. Later on I found out she's the co founder and owner of a Rock Paper Scissor. I was like, that's so cool. That is really dope. That I'm. For all she knows, a messenger boy just dropping off the tape. An insignificant person in the. A cog in the machine, if you will. And she paid that kind of attention to me because I think that's her nature. So I can only imagine if you were a client, you walked in the door and she's like, great to see you, Bobby. How are the kids, Mary, what's going on with you? Et cetera, that they would feel this warmth. And that was her role. She was a great hostess, co founder. And then Angus could just do the editing. And that worked for them.
- [34:07]
B
It's founder energy, isn't it? There's just some energy that founders have that is different. It's just different. And maybe if you get really amazing account managers and maybe if they do have some ownership of the company. And I know, I know they exist, I know they're out there, but I still think there's just something about founder energy that is just different. You just think in a different way. You want. We used to. I feel I used to have so much empathy for my clients and what they wanted to do, especially when they were other business owners that I was just. So it was. It was my business at the same time. And you just care so much that they can feel that. And I feel that's the really hard thing to replicate. Really hard. And if you find an account manager who can do that, then keep. Keep all of them forever.
- [34:54]
A
Yes, I'm a founder. I don't have founder energy the way that you describe, because I'm not just shooting at energy in my pores and, oh my God, so good to see you. But there is this bias that we have that when we find out somebody who's of importance within the company pays attention to you, because I think no matter how long we live, how well we've been raised, we could probably always use a little bit more of someone caring about us and what we're going through. And so when we find somebody that, for example, when a chef walks out from behind the kitchen and says, you know, I'm Chef Leon or whatever, and I just wondered if you're ever, if you're happy with a meal, is there anything I can do for you? And they're just in their apron or whatever. Damn, I didn't know how it was that important that you would check in on me, you know, and it could just be an assistant chef, it doesn't even matter. But the fact that we think it's somebody important and if you contrast that with say the waiter who walks over and hey, I just want to make sure the meal is fine, is there anything else we can do for you? Yeah, that's good. That was a good service. You got your tip. It's not the same as knowing it's the owner and all that is is just a story. I don't know if they are any different, any more charismatic. But to your point though, I think when two founders speak to each other, two business owners speak to each other, there's a level of shorthand that you develop that you know, they know what you know and they respect how hard it is to run a company where if you're a mid level manager, sorry, no shade to mid level managers, maybe you're not seeing that perspective. You don't understand that you can move mountains because you're not given permission to do that. So you play within a very defined box and so therefore you're not as creative as with the kinds of solutions you're able to provide. And that's a natural limitation to the authority you've been given.
- [36:38]
B
I feel like if we went back to the deer and elephants and rabbits as well, it often depends who your contact is at the type of company you're working for as to how sustainable those relationships are over time as well. Because I think we, at my agency, it started off that our main point of contact would always be the owner. And then that was when we were working with rabbits and then as we moved up to deer and then as we moved up to elephants, it would be the marketing manager. But if you can get on a level with the owner and they want to never let you go, then you will always keep the client. Whereas marketing managers, they kind of come and go and they also have a different agenda because entrepreneurs probably they partly want to work with you because you've got the founder energy as well, they partly want to work with you because you're getting good results for their company. But marketing managers, so often they just wanted to not make the wrong decision. They wanted to make the safe decision that they wouldn't get in trouble for. And everything that you did was to make them look good in their job. So then you've got different undertones and levels of understanding around that at the same time. But either way, I think the founder going to dinner is always a really good thing, whether you're doing it with the marketing manager or the founder of their company.
- [37:53]
A
I think so, yeah. Okay. Here's what I've learned on this episode is there are a couple different types of clients that you're going to work with. And Jodi shared with us her analogy in terms of like game hunting, I suppose, providing food for you. And clients can be categorized into three things. One, the rabbit, which is abundant, small, but you have to consume a lot for you to sustain yourself. They're fun, they're easy to work with. And generally speaking, when you work with the rabbits of the world, you're dealing with the decision maker. They're too small for you not to work with the decision maker. And so there's a, a connection there that you're going to get that you're not going to get somewhere else. And you may at some point elevate yourself to the next tier, which is the medium sized client. And she describes this as a deer. They are reliable, they're a little bit harder to get, but they're not impossible to get. And they're a good return on your investment. And this tends to be probably the most profitable and happy you'll ever be because it's the right mix of number of clients and profitability with some name brand in there and you feel like you're making progress. And some of you might aspire to work with the elephants, which is the third tier. And the elephant is like the really big, profitable, generally speaking, big name brand. They're large, they're slow moving, they're hard to get. Usually it requires pitching. You're now pretty far removed from the decision maker because the nature of the organization, there are multiple gatekeepers in charge and you could do great work for them. And you can put that feather in your cap and have that beautiful logo quilt of name brand clients that people recognize. But you may come to the realization that this might not be what it's all cracked up to be, that you might have to do a lot of really highly customized bespoke work, be on call at all times, and it might not be as profitable as you think. So in reality, it's like the expression, I'm mixing metaphors here. A sheep or wolf in sheep's clothing. It might be a deer in elephant clothing, where at the end of the day, the amount of revenue is higher, but the rev percentage of profit is much lower. And so if you're in business to be profitable, you might want to consider that. And it doesn't matter what I say or what Jody says. You have to find what works for you. So here's an easy thing to follow. Rabbit, deer, elephant. Figure out which works for you, and you may need to try them all at some point. And we've shared ways for you to level up, and if you're up, ways that you can maintain and keep that relationship, depending on your introverted or extroverted selves. Hope you enjoyed it.