← The Futur with Chris Do
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- [00:00]
A
I think that so many people avoid building their personal brand because they think it's going to make their business reliant on them. And I feel like when I was building my agency, which I accidentally named after me, people would ask me this all the time, like, oh, whoa, your name, your initials. And it would be this really big problem. And I feel like you might have been asked this question as well or a variant of this question. And I feel like there's so much more to it than just personal brand equals can't get away from your business or business reliant on you, that I thought it would be a really good topic for us to dig into today.
- [00:37]
B
There's a couple ways we can look at this. I think many entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, build a business, and the easy name is to call it something after yourself, like dough and Associates or like how attorneys and ad agencies do this. And it's just a bunch of last names put together. And then eventually they grow and they grow to a certain point where they think they want to exit or sell or be acquired or something like that. So let's just unpack that without adding the word personal brand in there, because if we can understand that, then we can just see what the difference is with a personal brand. So you sold your company?
- [01:09]
A
I sold my company. It was called JC Social Media. My name's Jodie Cook. It was actually my initials, but I named it completely by accident. I named it in two seconds. When I was at a networking event. When I realized I didn't have a company name, I felt like I needed a company name. Everyone in the room was introducing themselves. It was about to be my turn. I sensed a pattern with all the businesses in the room, that they were all called ML Accountancy and JP Entertainment and JS Electrical Services and that kind of stuff. And I just kind of went, okay, JC Social Media. And that was literally it. There was no more thought that went into it whatsoever. And then also I feel like it's like the ad agencies, like Sterling Cooper Draper Price, however many more last names were added onto that. But then. And also my great granddad had a family business that was named using their last name. And so it's just so unbelievably common that people do this. And it's almost like we've got this. This idea that this is the way to name a business.
- [02:15]
B
Yes. Because this doesn't require a lot of creative input from the person. And most businesses are not started by creative entrepreneurs. They're started by entrepreneurs. And so they go with their last name. So if your name is baked into your business and we can just look at history and say they seem to be doing fine without the founders and the owners in the company anymore. So what are we worried about? When it's called Sterling Draper, Price Cooper, or whatever it's called, and Draper's not in it, Sterling's not in. Seems to be fine. So what people really buying are systems, a book of business. And they're usually buying the talents. That's part of that team. That's really what they're buying. So a book of business, if you're not familiar with that term, it means the accounts that you have that are valid and open, that you can count on for some reliable income. So they want to see that basically, it's like your Rolodex or your address book of current and previous clients that they can call upon to kind of rekindle the relationship, they're buying that. They're buying the system. And the system is something that can be repeated. And there's a process in place so that they know when input A goes in, output Z comes out, and you have something set up, and it's not tied to a specific person, because then they can't buy that business, because if that person were to get sick, quit, or suddenly pass away, they'd have a huge problem. And then not in this order, but the last is the talent who's there. Because they're buying the brain trust. They're buying the creatives, the engineers, the legal team. They're buying that entire team. Because without that team, the process and the book of business are quite useless. And I know this because when I tried to sell my business, when someone had offered me seven figures to buy my business, they wanted one key employee, and that key employee refused to go. So I'm like, I'm screwed. So, of course, I didn't sell my company because of that. We asked ourselves, how active is Dan Wyden? And I don't even know who Kennedy is, but how active are they in Wyden and Kennedy and running Nike ads? They're pretty old. Now, if we talk about Saatchi and Saatchi or Foot Coleman, Belding, or any one of these legacy Ogilvy, well, David Ogilvy's dead agency continues on without him. So we're talking about reality now. It's a liability to have it tied to one person. We don't expect Roy Kroc, the person who really built McDonald's, to be making the burgers. We don't expect Howard Schultz to be the barista, the founder of Starbucks. It just doesn't make any sense. And here's the best example. The poster boy of them all. One of the most charismatic humans who've ever lived. We didn't expect Steve Jobs to be designing computers, circuit boards, or even to write the copy for the advertising. Yet he was so linked with Apple's fortunes that when he died, I was really worried the Apple stock was going to tank. So much so that when it dipped and it went back up, I sold. Foolishly, I sold. And now Apple's worth so much more without Steve Jobs than it ever was. It's a $3 trillion company under Tim Cook, who arguably doesn't have much of a spark or a personal brand at all. And it's because humans are a little bit smarter than that that there's engineers, designers, user experience designers, packaging designers, all these kinds of people who make the thing work. There's a figurehead, and we know that it's just a figurehead. There are some cases. And I do want to talk about this. Okay. You know who Seth Godin is? Prolific writer. He's written over 20 books. He has a company called Altmba, and people sign up in droves. And Seth doesn't run it. He doesn't touch it. All he does is say hello at the beginning and says congratulations at the end. So what he's done is he's established a system and a framework that works without him. That's what real entrepreneurs do. They build companies. They're not tying everything to themselves. It's hard to be a big company and have everything be about you. It's kind of impossible. There are actors who will put in a different category where their face, their likeness is their bread and butter. So that's a different thing. So their companies are really built around them. So should they perish, we don't want the carbon copy of that person. We just want that person. I get that. There's this thing called the effective span of management. Are you familiar with that concept, Jodi?
- [06:27]
A
No, maybe not.
- [06:28]
B
Like how many people you can actively manage properly, and you can count them on one hand, it's five. So in business management, there's this rule that you can only manage five people well. So if you look at the C suite, there's about five people that the CEO kind of manages, right? CRO, CTO, CFO, and CMO. So there's about five people that can manage, and those five people manage five people. Those are the senior VPs. Then you have senior VPs and then you go to VPs, and the VPs go to something else, something else. And it just keeps going like that. If you look at government, it's exactly how government is done. There's basically five people who report to the boss and then five people. So that's how it starts to mushroom out. When you're under 20 people, under $5 million in revenue, one person can effectively, sort of not effectively, but they can sort of manage each and every single person. They still know everyone's name. They probably hired everybody. They're going to fire everybody. And it's not really a company that is easily sold. It usually has some problems. Now, I'm sure there's M and A people out there listening to this. Mergers and acquisitions people are like, no, no, Chris, you don't know what you're talking about. And then I would bow to you and say, of course I don't. I really don't. And I'm just reflecting on the businesses that I'm aware of in the creative space who really, the company cannot survive without them. Not for any period of time.
- [07:42]
A
I just want to repeat back to you to make sure I understand your thinking. So when it's below around 5 million, that's when it's kind of a lifestyle business. It probably couldn't survive without the founder simply because of the size of it.
- [07:57]
B
It's a rule of thumb around 20 people, around $5 million. You could do $20 million, and you're running a really good company under 20 people. But once you start going between 20 and 100 people, you can't be the choke point anymore. It just doesn't work. When all decisions are being made by you. Your hands are in all the creative work, the strategy, the writing. Then basically, you paid 99 people to sit around and watch you work, which you can do. But I don't think a lot of businesses do that. So what they do is they let those people go. They shrink the team back down to 20 because they want to retain control. Now, Tello 2 cities is this. Jody starts her company when she's young and she calls it JC Social Media. I start my company when I'm young. I call it blind. So you can see like, okay, we already diverge. Because I was like, I want a name that means something. My name doesn't mean anything except for means me. And I call it blind because it stands for philosophy, which I've embraced when I was in school. It's kind of the modernist point of view on design, which is we don't begin the project with preconceived ideas or notions. We begin when we talk to you. Therefore, we begin blind. And that's why we called it plus, we thought it would be a total zag in the market. When you're a visual design company, calls yourselves blind, it raises some eyebrows and it starts some dialogue. There's a pattern here in terms of how I think about my company's name. So from the very beginning, Blind is Chris Doe. Because it's just me, right? And people are like, we need to talk to Chris every single time they need to talk to me. But as you may know something about me, I start to develop systems pretty quickly, hire people, I train them on how to do what I do, and I just do the gentle handoff. And then before you know it, I have an intern who becomes an art director, who becomes a creative director, who then becomes the main point of contact. In some cases, people don't even know I exist anymore. And I make a point to promote and talk about all the creatives and use super inclusive language and make sure I give proper credit to every single person. In a pretty rare move at that time, when we would show work, we would list every single person who worked and contributed to the project. Whereas I made it a point where I would be one credit of many credits. And so in that case, for many years, I would just kind of disappear into the darkness. I could teach, I could do whatever I wanted, and the company would hum along. The general rule was, we don't call Chris unless it's an emergency. And when they called me in and it was an emergency and they got the explanation as to why we don't do that, I said, I hired smart people. Smart people were in this room. Smart people can solve this problem. I'm leaving because you don't want to create a dependent culture on what does Chris want to do? So the general rule is, I don't check on you, you check on me. I'm not a hover boss. And what that means is I'm not going to sneak up behind you like, oh, what are you working on? Oh, I think this could be better. I'm not sure this writing is sharp. Basically, I told my creative directors, and there were four of them at the time. I said, call me if you feel creatively stuck or you need a different point of view. And when I give you my point of view, it's not directive like, you must do this thing. It's just for you to consider, because I want you to use your brain. And the only other Time they would call me is when they felt. And this was literally what I said. If the job is slipping through our hands and you can feel it, you are obligated to call me in, but do everything in your power not to call me. And they would call me from time to time. I would be like the wolf from Pulp Fiction. I'd come in, I'd clean up the dead body, and we're like, we're out, we're good. So sometimes they're like, we did every test. We've had five conversations with the client. They're not ready to say yes. I would get on the phone with them and I would just talk em through and then we would just close the project. Cause I knew how people worked. There's some things you say to people and if you say those magic phrases, they will say yes.
- [11:49]
A
I made so many mistakes. So I was 22 when I started this agency. I feel like at first I didn't know how to hire, Then I feel like I didn't know how to train people, then I didn't know how to leave them alone. So I just sort of made all the mistakes. And having started a business that I wanted to create so that I could travel, I created something that was just a job for me with all these dependencies. But it took me a long time of learning those lessons. I would say like three years of doing it wrong before I had to book a trip to Australia to get myself to systemize my business and to get a handle on how I got the people in it to own it. Have you heard the phrase founder vibes?
- [12:30]
B
No.
- [12:31]
A
So I competed at the weekend and I got chatting to the person who was on the desk and it turned out he actually owned the gym. And it's like you could just tell he just gave off founder vibes. And I don't know what it was. And I wonder if sometimes we don't realize how much founder vibes we've got. Can you even train other people that have founder vibes? Unless you give them equity, they're not going to be part owner. So therefore, how do you do it?
- [12:56]
B
Well, I think you're right in that people can sense you must be the owner. Founder sounds nicer. But whoever started the company, you have a lot of power. I remember when I was maybe a year or two out of school, I went to this editorial company who I didn't know at the time, but turned out to be a pretty big deal called Rock Paper Scissor. And I was there to either drop off a tape or meet with somebody about something. I can't remember. And I was there. I was, like, in the lobby, and this woman walks out barefoot and says, honey, are you okay? I'm like, huh? Because I was just waiting. Like I'm some lowly messenger boy, kind of a gopher. You know, something like that. She goes, do you need anything? Would you like breakfast? I'm like, no, because I was just too shy to say, yes, I did want breakfast, but I just couldn't say it. She goes, okay. And is somebody aware that you're here? And I'm like, yes. And she goes, okay. And she walked away. I felt she was an owner. And I'll tell you something that owners do that non owners don't do. Owners aren't process people. There are people who are very good at following directions. As long as there's a rule book or a guide, they will do an excellent job and the world needs them. But the minute something's not in a book, they don't know what to do because there's not a rule for this. The example is this one day, I was. I don't remember where I was, but I was walking around our office. It's a pretty big office. It's like 12,000 square foot. And some alarm goes off. I can't remember what I was doing. But as soon as I finished doing what I did, I ran into the room, and every single designer and every person in the building was sitting there, like, still working, but looking around like, I think that's a fire alarm, guys. Everybody get up right now. Get out of the building. Just drop what you're doing, get out, get your whatever you need, and just get out right now. And then they all got up, and they're, like, looking around, and then get out. And we're outside in the street. And then the fire department came and said, something got tripped, but it was not on a fire. Thank God. They came in, we set the alarm. It was a false alarm. Always good. Everybody went back in. Then I had a meeting with my management team. I said, hey, guys, whenever there's a threat to someone's safety, and you're not even sure, and you're not even, like, it could be a 40% threat. I need you to get everybody to safety. So that is process people, because they just follow the rules. Like, there's no protocol for a weird alarm sound, and we don't know what to do. So they just. They just kept working. Because if one person doesn't get up, no one gets up. And I think what Happens is what founders are able to do is just look through all the weeds or the forest and like, there's a tree right there. That's a tree. And this is what we need to do. We need to grow that tree or we need to chop that tree down. And we know. So when we meet those people, we can tell. And they have a confidence that they can't get fired. They have that confidence. Whereas your second in command, your chief fill in the blank officer, they don't have that kind of security. Here's the thing that's going to be really hard for people to get their head wrapped around this. Okay? Really, really hard. I say to my team who are frontline people, people who are interfacing with clients or customers, I say, you represent me. I need you to know that they're like, what? You represent me? And I'll tell you what that means. I'm confident. I don't discount, I don't explain myself. I don't have time for fools. I just don't. But you're discounting. You're listening to their complaints. I would never do that. So you're acting like you. You're not acting like me. You're not a good representative of this company right now. You're a good representative of you. And you're unsure and you're insecure and every complaint sounds real and righteous to you. And when they want an explanation, you give it to them. Whereas a founder walks in, it's like, what's the problem? Oh, we're not sure. Here's your money back. I wish you the best of luck. And like, how can we do that? Because that's what we do. That's what I would do. So when you're out there working, I need you to act as me. So when people are complaining, what do I do? I want you to ask yourself, what would Christo do?
- [17:02]
A
Yeah, that works.
- [17:04]
B
Yes, it does. Right? And that's the thing they don't understand. They got that relationship flipped. They think you represent them. That's not how this works. So when they're not playing big, when they're not being confident, they for sure don't have founder vibes. But they're doing the company a disservice act in the best interest of this company based on the principles and philosophies of the founder.
- [17:28]
A
They almost need the psychological safety from the founder to act in the theme and the vibe of the founder. But then would you also say that they need the psychological safety that they're not going to get fired?
- [17:42]
B
Yeah.
- [17:43]
A
So would you say you're not going to get. Obviously you're not going to get fired for specific things, but would you ever blanket say I will never, ever going to fire you so that they don't have that fear? Because we know that people don't do their best work from a state of fear?
- [17:57]
B
No, because I will fire you. I'm not going to say that. I'll say something else, but I'm not going to say that. Because if you do something inappropriate, I'm firing you. I have to, otherwise I'm liable. If you misbehave, if you grope somebody, if you make it a hostile work environment, I'll warn you, and then you're going to get fired. I just can't happen. We've done this before. We've lost good people because they didn't behave well. I did not want to do that. That hurt me. It hurt us financially too, by the way. So what I tell people is this. You will never, ever get fired for taking a shot at playing big and rolling the dice. You will get fired if you play it safe and you just keep doing what you've done forever.