The Ultimate Guide to Building Million Dollar Agencies

0:00[Music]

0:13this is a special where it happens episode we've got a criminally underfollowed guest violetaba [Music] [Music] uh The Man Behind the Scenes co-founder lay check out CEO everyone's been asking me who the hell is running the show and uh figured I'd bring the man in the myth The Legend on the show so welcome what's up Jesus nice to see you back in Quebec good to be here to wood stove behind you it's cozy yeah there's a light fire behind me if you're watching on YouTube it's it's nice and I I felt like this was the proper setting in order to have this conversation um you know you come from a small town

1:14uh in the woods around here um and uh and now you you were you know you've run a bunch of companies like did you ever think you'd be doing this no definitely not didn't even know it was a thing uh although I think you opened my eyes to back in 2012 the world Beyond Montreal which was cool because I was in it to win it at Molson Coors slang and beer and having a good time to the wee hours of the morning and then my eyes opened up to the land of possibilities and startups and all that good stuff and for context there you were selling beer to bars right selling

1:56beer to bars for those who know anything about beer Newcastle is a brand that Molson had Acquired and was Distributing kind of also running Coors Light late night boat parties events at bars yada yada the lifestyle got old real quick so fast forward to today because I think you know I want to just talk about today and and where we're going and just sort of have a frame conversation about what we're doing well what we're not doing well and and here we go so you know late checkout is a holding company meaning we run or a company that builds companies so we've got boring marketing we've got you probably need a robot

2:39we've got the late checkout Innovation agency um dispatch with the design subscription etc etc I know it's hard to choose a favorite kid but what what project are you most excited about which one of these companies so I think uh good question I'm going to ask you the same question so you can ruminate on that as I said with this um I don't need a ruminate you know yeah you've got a favorite childhood yeah of course you do um so I think it changes actually from like week to week month to month um today for example in the Innovation agency jamming with a bunch of execs

3:13from one of the biggest tech companies in the world and we were like talking about product design Frameworks relating to states of widgets and how the levels of commitment it was just like this is awesome I love doing this this is like just raw product in the pixels a lot of fun this month though the studio the evolution of the studio and all of those companies that you name dropped seeing what they've been able to do with a little bit of Greg jet fuel some like badass operators and a really good idea has been Next Level so dispatching the subscriptions grow has been a ton of fun

3:48so last week it was like four new subscriptions piling onto what we already had I was really jazzed about dispatch we were kind of doing the video for product hunt launch you know Shameless what is dispatch for people who who don't know what that is great question dispatch batch is our design subscription service so what that means is you get access to a team of world-class designers for a fixed monthly fee and essentially you subscribe to this board where you get unlimited design requests and we will fulfill them one after the other for you across graphic design brand product design all the way up to animations

4:24illustrations and Beyond yeah and you know the reason we're able to do it for so cheap even though it's like high-end design is we use international I.E non-us designers and AI enhanced productivity and we just sort of uh also we have tons of UI kits that we've created so it's really just leveraging a lot of the stuff that we've built already to make things go faster yeah it's a great call out after three years in the agency the systems we've built and the kind of like team bondingness and like just how we work together has like made speed an unfair advantage and also just efficiency and

5:04so yeah we're able to dispatch it dispatch is your favorite child right now like I said it changes you know wake up one morning it could be dispatched like in the afternoon it could be you probably need a robot because I get a glimpse of that subscriber count and then boring marketing is the channel of new inbound keeps lighting up my slack I still can't believe how many people want in on boring is pretty astounding if I had to choose one let's roll with dispatch for now one of the questions a lot of people ask me is you know with a product Studio you can do anything

5:36meaning the world is your oyster um but the issue with that is you can do anything so how do you know when to cut a project how do you know like when it's you know time to either I guess the question for you is is this how do you know to cut a project or to add jet fuel into a project yeah a great man once said when you get product Market fit you know you know when you know you know and that was you um for those who didn't catch onto sarcasm but uh I think it's a it's a bit of a nuanced thing we have a system for standing up

6:14new projects we now have like a badass checklist we have a really interesting formula on how we create companies and what we need to make them work essentially how do we actually take the BET and are serious about it when we do that we've seen in the past that some things just don't catch on or pick up like we thought they would and I think it's a case-by-case basis we don't have the perfect rubric for saying this startup is done it didn't hit the metric therefore it's done or the startup's incredible we need to keep investing again when you know you know and I think the early traction with dispatch and

6:46boring boring was a longer term commitment boring marketing for those who don't know what I'm talking about SEO agency very forward thinking and really kind of SEO for boring businesses or marketing for boring businesses it's going to be much more than that took a little longer to stand up but the vision was there and we knew it was part of our core offering uh dispatch a lot quicker in terms of Engagement and sales and kind of traction so to speak and robot was just I I still don't even know how to explain how quickly things had happened that have happened there so again I think when you know you know we

7:20do have metrics around it we do track those and we do check-ins structured as a team every month monthly business reviews and then we kind of get the Brain Trust together of all the operators of these businesses to check in and see how things are going have an honest conversation when you know you know I.E when it's working when you know you know in terms of when it's not working it feels like a slog it feels harder than it needs to be it's distracting tensions are higher and it doesn't quite fit in the family and I think that is be that was evident with a few of our past

7:50projects we put some money resources Etc behind them but at the end of the day we knew it just wasn't quite a fit and we ended up making the right call I think of sun setting those give an example of a project that we started and knew it wasn't a good fit and the reason why I'm asking this question is I want people like I'm a big believer that product studios are the future of building startups and I want people to leave this conversation with more information around okay I was gonna go build a startup but now I'm going to build a studio or hey I'm like an executive at

8:24this company and I was gonna go build this like one moonshot bet I'm actually gonna go build like a few of them so walk us through one project that failed how you knew and why did it fail sure I think a good one that I'll say is actually there were some indications of success and so even harder to walk away from but it's a good example nonetheless and I think coming back to what you want to arm people with the checklist we've created of what these businesses need to be really helps with understanding should I go build a studio should I go build a single project or invest in a

8:58single product and if I'm building the studio what am I building you have to hire an operator I get I.E if you're serious about it you need someone to kind of lead if there's no owner nothing will get shipped we want to make sure that it's a sustainable business in some way shape or form so a path to revenue why now has to be strong there has to be some kind of unfair advantage or reason why we might succeed we've had and you've had an Insight around creators and audience being real jet fuel to early adoption whether that be just to a newsletter at a Content play or whether

9:30it be to a service so those are a few criteria one thing that we did try back to your question on what studio project did we start really kind of invest in and then decide to pull the plug on we called it Dash you remember Dash Greg you were in those early calls man jamming on dash the future you know was our oyster we were excited we were going to change the face of design and hiring for junior designers we were going to get them hired and the best ones Rising above and getting them hired at the best tech companies in the world really cool idea really cool Vision we did this

10:03through design assignments so you had to come in you submitted your email we sent you a design assignment all the best submissions we would forward and pass along to the best tech companies in our Network and we try and get you hired two problems maybe three but let's start with two one is we promise feedback for every submission so I know Airbnb Brian chesky do things that don't scale maybe that's a y combinatorism we did things that didn't scale which was giving personalized feedback to every design subscription damn even with rubrics even with all of the systems we put in place that did not scale very personalized

10:38very high touch people loved it but it didn't scale two our hypothesis that there were incredible Junior designers out there willing to do these assignments good enough to get hired at some of the best tech companies at least the ones we got were slightly disproven no one actually stood out to a degree that we felt really good putting our stamp of approval on we had a couple of referrals a couple people do interviews which was cool but at the end of the day it was a different problem that we were solving it wasn't actually our hypothesis was proven false essentially and third was Revenue there was just no

11:10clear path to revenue with Junior designers folks who were looking to get into the game with essentially not an established career or job they didn't have a ton of income to spend on education on content etc etc and companies I don't think we're willing to pay for access to that talent and it became especially true as the market deteriorated as more and more designers were getting laid off from Big tech companies like basically their willingness to spend money to basically get connected with Junior designers became less and less exactly Stars aligned you had a really cool Insight early on which was hey let's at least capture the emails to get the assignment

11:51we had a version of it where it was just the assignment and every day the assignment would change we pivoted and made it an email capture you got the assignment when you submitted your email so that was cool we got thousands of emails it started to work really well we got high engagement organic growth but there was just no path to sustainability and success so we pulled the plug we are kind of like we're kind of numb to it now but like and we shouldn't be where we launched a thing thousands of people signed up then we had like some of the leading designers in the world tweet out

12:23oh my God there is this like incredible thing called Dash we had you know the head of design of I think like Netflix or something you know tweet it tweet about us and they got like 700 likes people were loving Dash and what made it so hard was we could have just I mean okay so I'll take the other side of the argument the other side of the argument is we ended the project too soon and we could have just pivoted our way to maybe like mid-level or senior or figure that out like why didn't why didn't we do that so great little saying super obvious but

13:02saying yes to something means saying no to something else and I think why we didn't do that is because one the agency was scaling like crazy and we were dedicating valuable time resources and brain power to a problem that yes we probably could have cracked but felt like it was taking precious resources away from something that was really gaining traction and we kind of capitalized on that momentum so that was one two is I think on that sink in that same vein there are other like the world is our oyster right there are other projects to start and you were already Brewing on a couple of new ones that you

13:38had in the hopper and those were those were already super interesting and I think both those were failures weren't they they were I wouldn't call them failures again is there failure and product I don't know there's definitely learnings but uh yeah not neither of them are here with us today you're right they're in the graveyard I don't know how big that graveyard's gonna be in five years man but I'm I'm stuck to check it out I mean if your graveyard isn't you know bigger than your house then you're doing it you're doing it wrong exactly someone needs to write that up yeah yeah so I think those

14:14are those are the main reasons uh or the main reason why we had to say no or why we chose to say no to it um and at the time I gotta say we weren't as kind of refined and pointed about how to do Studio well we didn't have like the operator model down pat we didn't have the checklist down pat maybe if we hired a full-time operator dedicated you know tens X tens of thousands of dollars to it and said let's go solve the problem or figure out how to we would have kept with it but I gotta say we were still a little younger in

14:42the game knowing what you know now would you know would you have quit would you have never started on that on that on dash no I think would have done it the same and wise I mean obviously like knowing what I know now maybe we would have changed the schema a little bit or change the value proposition a little bit but I'm not there's no regrets for what we did we learned a ton we got better at design as a result because we were reviewing essentially we reviewed over a thousand plus design submissions in a matter of a couple of months had to grade all of them came up with a grading

15:19system we just got a crazy good understanding of the talent pool out there and how to really evaluate great design we sell design we are world-class designers it made us better so even though you know we lost the battle I think we won the war the hardest if you were to ask me Greg what was the hardest part about that project for me personally I would say the hardest part was I knew from the get-go that this project was going to fail and I was like this is there's no like I just don't see how this is going to work and I just have to be like you

15:54know what I'm gonna I'm gonna say my opinion they're probably not gonna listen to me and we're gonna do it anyways and uh you know it happened I I did but I I must say like I was supporting it the whole way through right it wasn't like I was like oh I secretly want these guys to fail but I definitely said I think that's a challenge that a lot of leaders and companies have which is they want to enable their teams to grow and do be their best selves but at the same time like the only way to do that is to fall down and scrape your knee and then you

16:32know get back up so do remember a do you remember that and and B how could I have how could I have handled it differently I do remember that my friend I do I do remember those certainly calls thanks for reminding me I think you yeah but I think you nailed it right as like you embodied disagree and commit you disagreed but you come and usually that's the other way around usually it's the employees disagreeing with execs and committing it was a cool flip on its head of like you being like you know what like I don't see it but like let's go help you supported the

17:06promotion and distribution of it you kind of gave your feedback on a weekly basis you were with it and I think to your point like sometimes you just have to show not tell and this was a very bold example or bold way of doing that do you allow you you were able to show employees and Folks at late checkout how hard it is to stand something up and make something work especially this type of idea instead of just telling to build trust and build conviction and build again I think commitment to lay check out so it was a cool move and I would say that hasn't changed I think uh you

17:41know for those of you not watching on YouTube I'm wearing a 14 Costco sweater and uh I think I'd be wearing a 120 you know am Leon Dore if it wasn't for the dash failure was it with the dash failure exactly and I just was in a downward spiral spent all my money that's what I had to do hey um I want to come back too quickly to what your favorite project is right now favorite project right every kid yeah you kind of scared it away from that one but I'll sort of answer that question I'll give favorite projects right now with runner-up so favorite project right now obviously you probably

18:22need a robot.com yep like I'm I'm just having so much fun learning about uh different AI tools and where you probably need a robot.com as a free community for people interested in Ai and productivity and I created it based on a tweet I was just like hey is anyone else interested in the like this sort of thing and so to be at the center of it is really really cool and we're monetizing it via our AI agency and automation agency where we actually I don't know if you know this video you've got a lot going on but we we've sold ads on the newsletter um so that's cool

18:58um and the newsletter is almost I think it's at 56 000 subscribers in like 50 days so it's pretty crazy it's nuts you know I found out about the ads I got a message from Jordan that who's helping us run it and you'd stripe info cut the slack I was like okay what's this open it up I was like oh we're selling ads on the newsletter now amazing love it yeah it's cool though cool message to open that's what I mean by day to day you're just like oh man this is sweet another small step big win I want to come back to that I just want

19:31to give my runner up please do my runner-up is our core late checkout agency which basically acts as an innovation Agency for for I mean big Brands but also like fast growing startups you know you mentioned today that you were sitting in a room with the executives at you know a big Tech you know one of the biggest Tech platforms I I often have pinch me moments at the agency when I'm I'm getting to meet some like basically building an agent an innovation agency is kind of a cheat code to meet the most interesting people in the world 100 not only meet them but work and work with

20:05them learn from them and build with them which is like three more vectors that are just insane and could never come true otherwise and it's so cool because like they move companies and then they call you up and they're like hey Theo I need like I need an app or I need um I need something right so it's also fun just seeing how and tracking how they these people grow which I think not enough people realize that about agencies like if you get if you're able to attract like these pretty stellar clients you end up developing a pretty pretty sweet Rolodex yeah nuts at the client level I.E the company and at the

20:42person level to your point like you've had folks in your network which is insane jump from company to company and now we're getting to work at some of the coolest companies because they're doing their tour and so I think again it's just a huge unlock for us to be exposed to all this and then get to learn and build with these folks going back to Jordan and selling ads yeah one of the things that you do really well I think is you know building culture within hold codes and product Studios and I'm sure that transcends beyond that one of the channels that we have at lay

21:17checkout is the level up Channel talk talk to us about like I was just thinking we should have put the you know tag Jordan and level them up but talk to us about how you think about building remote culture for holding companies and product Studios with a team that's distributed yeah that's definitely the biggest challenge um the distributed fully remote team which we can talk about us getting together in a couple of weeks but um I think it starts with knowing kind of loosely what culture you want to build and that ladders up to what kind of companies or company you want to build or the whole code you want to build

21:52what's the vision why are you doing this what's your purpose go down a layer from that create the values to your point about the level up Channel that's one of our three values be surprisingly thoughtful put Community First and level up those are the three values that kind of guide the how we operate on a day-to-day basis and when you see when you see it come out in the work when you see it come out and how people communicate and when you see it come out and just how people act and the reflexes they develop and you can bucket it into one of those three or all of those three

22:23it's a really inspiring moment and I think again you want to give people the tools to succeed and the kind of guidelines on how to operate but you don't want to dictate how they should operate again you want to build culture not a cult and so I think for us having those values and then having people fill them in color in the line so to speak on how those actually show up and manifest has been really dope and yeah we have a level up Channel we call out people when they do amazing things and it's really cool to see the effect of everyone else jumping on and jumping into the kind of

22:58action and saying you know what this is sick we see a beautiful prototype or new revenue or a closed sale or X or Y and it's really cool to uh to see the community come together around those wins you mentioned like we are doing like an off site we often do these off-sites either fully team to get together or just some of you know different teams or subsections of teams or different pods um we're doing one in two weeks in Toronto like how do you like what do you hope to get out of like why are we doing this like why do we spend thousands of

23:32dollars on Retreats and stuff like that why is this a good use of money I think I remember last year how much we spent on this sort of thing and it was just Bonkers cancel up it was like before our session was coming it was it was Ferrari money you know like it was it was crazy but would we do it again I think so but I'm curious your perspective why do we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on Retreats and bringing people together and that sort of thing when we started late checkout one of the things you told me was one you wanted to build a forever place to

24:11work and two you just wanted to have fun and I think like if you just get obsessive over the balance sheet on like every dollar being fully optimized and I'm not saying this isn't a good use of money I'll get to that second but if you start to obsess over the balance sheet and every dollar going to direct High leverage activities like sales like marketing like fulfillment like operations and you divest in community and culture and fun you might build a super successful business but is it the one that you actually want to build and be a part of and so I think when you said

24:49that and we tell people that when they join why are we doing it one man like just to connect and build some Community we are remote we are alone in our homes and in our offices you're out and about a little more but a lot of these folks are just kind of hanging out and haven't ever even met the team and so let's get together let's put faces to names in the 3D World and uh see how folks actually are and kind of stand next to one another shake hands and have a good time so that's one two is like I think on the fun note just have a good

25:22time and some spontaneity when you're together and you're just jamming you know usually you join a meeting it has a start and an end and a very strict end and you're there to accomplish something you're there to make a decision you're there to you know listen and learn in a one-on-one you're not there to just like see what happens that's a quote-unquote waste of time or not a good use of a meeting but in person just being able to jam whiteboard a bit have a beer have a glass of wine have a water whatever it may be go for a walk the [ __ ] that starts to brew the things

25:53that start to happen are really interesting and I think what comes out of that is like you can't put a price on that sometimes it's really really rich we purposely like don't even have very strict agendas for these oxides in 2022 we had two large off-sites one was in Montreal Canada and around here actually we also rented a literal Chateau um for the team and then we had one in Bali as well in Indonesia so we when we design our off sites we think a lot about how can we create these like kind of crazy experiences um with like very little agenda should we be having more of an agenda like do

26:36you have an agenda for the Toronto thing because I have like a basic idea what I want to get out but I'm I'm more interested in just hanging out yeah totally I think the memorable moments piece are like these kind of magical experiences is a cool way to frame it just something memorable again have fun like make it unique one thing is like who's going to be there and what out of that Brain Trust together can we kind of it's not extract but can we create and produce together that's high value I think strategy like we did a hackathon last on-site if you look at last year we

27:08had five teams create five companies in five days less than it was really in five hours and that was cool to see we had working prototypes we had a couple of really good ideas none of them turned into companies but it was a lot of fun just to code and design and collab this time around I think very loose agenda it will be a little bit of strategy around the studio um and a little bit of alignment on this agency which is also my runner-up for favorite cos and or Focus areas right now again it's hard to pick a favorite child but like lots of crazy opportunity

27:43there we're seeing a huge reboot in the last couple of weeks or a few weeks which is really interesting and uh I think talking a little bit about that is going to be worth a while it is a good time it's surprisingly good time to be an agency owner right now because a lot of companies are cutting staff or freezing hiring but they still need new products and new new businesses to go out there so they look at companies like like our lady checkout Innovation agency and they're like oh hey like I get to pay you X dollars and you're gonna ship this thing versus I gonna hire 10 people in New

28:20York and they're gonna have benefits and like I don't know when they're gonna ship it and so it is interesting to see this reboom of you know product and agencies right now I didn't expect it to be honest yeah and again that was kind of one of the catalysts for starting dispatch was kind of moving down Market a little bit our Innovation agency's premium top of its game the beginning of the year was a lot of people frozen and so dispatch I think was an elegant solution for a lot of reasons one of which was to move down market and we saw super high adoption and a great response but yeah I didn't

28:58expect it either I didn't expect it this early I thought maybe Q3 or four but to have an early Q2 is really cool how do you know when you're being too conservative or too aggressive so right now there's tons of talent that's coming online and I had two two or three interviews today of candidates that one year ago two years ago we would have never had the opportunity to speak to these people yet now they're like knocking on our door I a part of me is like we should hire all these people and we'll figure out things to do that's being aggressive conservative is being like Oh you know we're in the service we

29:41have a ton of services business it's like maintain like think about it as build profitable companies and as profit grows hire more people how do you think about conservative versus aggressive one I think is the opportunity and how rare or how common the opportunity is so when we're looking at a higher that's not a hell yes that's not a absolutely we need to hire this role today and they're good but there may be again everyone is unique here all snowflakes don't don't worry about that that's not what I'm saying but if the expertise plus the uncertainty feels common feels like we'll see it again I think you lean into

30:21conservation or being more more conservative if it's a like how are we speaking to this person their skills the fit again we optimize for fit less about hard skills and soft skills and like where they went to school and where they worked but more about fit with late checkout and how we roll if the fit is like off the charts and they're going to be a level up to the entire team and they're in a function isn't something super unique to one of our businesses only if all the stars are aligned to me it's like a conservative way to be aggressive like we have to jump on those

30:53opportunities and make put our best foot forward or make our best offer and so I think there's an opportunity factor that goes into it another one is just for us knowing what's going to be like a net positive and a net negative or a potential net negative and I don't know if we always have the answer for that but I think that boils down to are we acting on a short kind of dopamine rush because of recent events or is this like the right move for the long-term business because we are building a very long-term business the last thing I might add aggressive versus conservative and how do you know

31:32is I think for me there's something about like fit check and what we've created on having people kind of come in and date before we get married we've developed this system where people can come in and experience the late checkout universe and we can experience them in this very mutually kind of understood way where we do this quote-unquote fit check and that could last 20 days it could last two months it could last 90 days but what we do is we essentially kind of gauge and temperature check is this going to be a right long-term fit and I think with that we've avoided a ton of bad hires so to speak and we've

32:10also moved quickly and made a few really good ones and so I think the world is changing and slightly shifting to more people being open to those fit checks instead of All or Nothing we do something that I don't know if many people do we call it the nerd in Residence what is the nerd in Residence and why do you think it's a huge unlock to building products that people love you came up with that term I think I was calling it a contributor in Residence lame was calling it Creator in Residence lame like you came back with nerd in Residence and again in your marketing a

32:44way you speak I think that really hit the nail on the head so nerd in Residence is essentially someone who's focused on the new project who's obsessed with it and is thinking about it all the time loves what they do and again it doesn't feel like work to them because they absolutely love it and so when you have someone like that on the team and not only on the team but sometimes leading the project we're stacking the deck in our favor to staff it properly to get insights and Intel to resonate with the community which is really important to us and then three not take a bunch of brain power and

33:17energy away from you or I because we have someone in there thinking about it feeding us information and we are able to do what we do best to operate more Market grow and give kind of strategic recommendations on where to take it but the tactics and the obsession is done by the nerd yeah one of the big takeaways I think for us and why we develop nerd and residence was the late checkout model is very pick a niche then Niche down even more like go super Niche and when you're creating a product that might be for you know Volvo lovers you know people who drive Volvos like

33:54you need to hire someone who knows everything about Volvos right like who's been there done that who's like in the subreddit who's all you know goes to meet up so I think one way to get a unfair Advantage is by hiring some of these Community leaders or just like nerds um and when I say nerd I mean in like the most like loving way like you and I are both nerds you're like a climbing nerd Once Upon a Time pre-kids yeah absolutely yeah and uh I'm a nerd in my own right um maybe even a Volvo nerd so maybe don't want to give too much info about

34:31myself but [Music] is and was an unlock again a lot of other Studios and Innovation Labs have entrepreneurs and residents and they hire an entrepreneur who's quote unquote created a company before but to your point about us and the importance of resonating with the community and being authentic we can only be nerds and so many things our team can only be nerds and so many things so when you hire that nerd in Residence I think the unlock is tremendous for what a potential success or outside returns can be one of the things we do is our product managers the majority of them are designers it's unusual why why do we have a structure

35:13that way we believe in the power of design and what design can do for Brands and for product uh design is so much more than just how something looks it's really how it works how it feels and how it resonates with the community and how it shows up in the world again if like your personal reputation is your brand my brand is how people talk about me when I'm not in the room to use a Jeff Bezos quote scaling that up to a company level your brand is everything it's how people interact with the product how they talk about you how they don't talk about you how they use you and what they

35:47feel when they kind of interact and so when we hire design centered PMS or kind of PMS who are more rooted in design we want that design thinking to come through in the product strategy we want that design thinking to come through and how we create the products from the ground up business strategy is extremely important I can pair with them we have other folks who are great at that again the kind of nitty-gritty on how to go cross-functional how is this beneficial to the business in big ways what are the business models how do you get to revenue those are all key things but RPMs have that intuition and also

36:22have the foundational expertise in design so that they can put forth these product ideas that are just beautiful to look at and resonate with communities right away and resonate with products of clients right away which is really interesting it's such a storytelling weapon and such a product weapon that we I think will continue to do this why do you think we did it I think it's a culture thing that gets started off you know me and you really prioritize design and we have an insanely High bar for um a product to go out to either you know either ourselves or a client we run the same design Sprint methodology for

37:03ourselves as we do for our clients so as an example like you probably need a robot.com go check out that brand like it's it's not just like another beehive newsletter it's got like a lot of personality to it and I don't think we would have gotten that level of that brand if you know our PMS were not versed in in great design so I think uh I was very inspired I think Snapchat has a similar model where their PMS are product designers and that's because Evan Spiegel from Snapchat he is a designer so I love that we kind of have a stance like that and we're kind of like yeah like if you're

37:45gonna be at late checkout like you need to you need to be spending half your time in figma exactly every time in figma a quarter of your time on design Twitter and a quarter full time looking at beautiful products that we've churned out and trying to figure out how to do it um and get it done absolutely all right let's shift gears a little bit tiny recently when public 850 million dollar valuation as of today they are kind of you know I'll just put it out there they're kind of like our bigger older brother you know we're Canadian they're Canadian we're from the east coast of Canada

38:22they're from the west coast of Canada a lot of a lot of analogies there but I think we have our our thesis and they have their thesis what do you admire about tiny like what can we learn from Tiny that we can take back to late checkup one thing I think is like sticking with the problem or sticking with the process essentially just sticking with it and seeing through seeing their Vision through so 80 of success is showing up the other 20 is a mix of a whole bunch of things and I think what's cool is like how long they've been at this it's not a crazy

38:53long time but in startup terms it's it's like a decade and a half if I'm not mistaken that's right so for Andrew to kind of stick with this learn grow the agency fail almost lose it all as he's mentioned some stories continue really keep his eye on the prize which was like knowing that let's build metal lab or let's build this agency Build It Up offer quality again they're design Centric as well which is cool and then Pete took on a Model that we may adopt in the future we flirted with it um more on the acquisition front than on the building from scratch front um so I think the m a is a is a cool

39:35piece to build your hold Co out I also think Grassroots product Studio spinning things up with kind of the team that we have is also a really fun route for us right now and I think we'll stick with it for a bit but M A is not or just Acquisitions in general are not off the table um and I'm just an admirable it's admirable what he was able to do to just kind of stick with it and take it from zero to this it's really cool to see I remember asking Andrew what advice he has for me and I was actually up here during the summer time and it's like

40:09basically in the middle of nowhere the reception is horrible and I was like Andrew was one piece of advice you can give to us he was like like it was coming in and I was like and stop incubating that you know and I was like what and he's like I don't know what and you know incubating I was like what he's like it is he's like I'll say it again it's like incubating is way harder than buying like if I were you guys I'd be buying way more and my response to him was but I just love building like it's just fun it's way more fun and like you know we've

40:46we've done some M A 2022 we did our first M A and we're gonna be doing more of it in 2023 and Beyond but I think like well that's a core difference between us and them which is I think we just love building so much they build too like they've incubated other stuff but incubating is a lot of fun exactly and that boils down to like why we started this and damn dude like the day we stopped building and start buying cool company like it'll get huge and I have no doubt about that it's just is that the company we want to build as of the old code we want to build and I

41:20think we'll never lose the build we'll never lose the building element of what we do we'll never lose the product Studio but uh which is great as hard as it can be are there any other companies that you look up to in terms of seeing what they do and and and thinking like oh wow we should be doing more of that I think it's less about companies at this moment and more about people I think people's stories are more inspiring than company stories at the moment for me seeing folks who manage YouTubers for example and are like behind the scenes just calculated dangerous and like masterminds at

41:57building Empires but in a different way or creators just going after it being who they are showing up and again just putting in the work and taking it from zero to 100 is just really inspiring and then you can go a layer up to folks are even bigger uh and just doing this on all other scale and so I love to think more about people than companies and the people I think are more inspiring for me than the company so even folks we work with people in bigger companies starting companies speaking to them gets me way more fired up than looking at what other companies are doing and their success

42:33within our company you have a you're kind of known for theoisms as we call it um and and some of them you borrow from other people like I think you borrowed um was the latest one you said dress me slowly I'm in a hurry pretty sure Napoleon said that correct uh that murderer but uh that's Savage what uh one or two or three theoisms you can give to people and and you know why do you like those sayings why I like these sayings is it it captivates people instead of saying guys slow down so we can align everyone gets on the same page we agree on where we're going and then

43:19we can move quickly saying that theoism or you know just a great Snappy saying like dress me slowly I'm in a hurry people have to be like I get it it's like a great book title you're like [ __ ] I have to read that book they need to know more and so they ask and then it resonates and they remember and so I think the staying power of these sayings holds way more water than the actual substance of them and so that's why I like to say them because I like to say things to the team hopefully once maybe a couple of times but then it sticks

43:50almost like a principle so that when they they go and build after or they go and operate after or they go and do things after in the company they're able to take them with them and help them level up so there's quite a few I like um again very rarely are they mine they're all things that I've heard and again because of their staying power they've sticked with me one I heard from Andy Mr Elwood fences make good neighbors absolutely love that I think it's a texasism if anything and essentially what it means is like boundaries and clear definition of roles responsibilities what's kind of what am

44:25I focusing on where are you focusing on ownership is actually going to lead to way more happiness connectivity connection community and success in a company then everyone just guns blazing and figuring it out so fences make good neighbors is one that I love another one I love is from Tim Ferriss which is how do we win even if we lose if you can like train the team to think like that and also train yourselves to think like that I like to think of like writing I've started writing this year it's a great practice to develop to develop I'll lose in terms of like maybe I won't

44:56get to a million followers I don't actually know if that's the goal but I'm winning by developing this practice and clarifying my thinking and so how do you win even if you lose is another one I love there's so many more you wanna you want me to keep going like I have them all again they're just swimming around here is there any you want to give us a couple more one that's maybe less applicable to work that I love is the dose makes the poison I think this one to me is really all about balance and that everyone is unique you know Greg you've been living

45:24up living it up in Miami you're probably pretty pretty good with the Sun by now I haven't seen the sun in six months so like sunshine is good but then it's bad and I think for me the dose makes the poison if I'm out for 20 minutes I'm gonna burn to a crisp you could probably hang all day in the Sun so that applies to many different things and I think even you know you can think about it to your soft skills as well your hard skills as well like patience I have a lot of patience the dose maybe is higher until it becomes poisonous there's a there's a threshold and an

45:56optimal dose so to speak and then you move into poison knowing when you hit poison on the things that you do and the things you embody to me is super critical and can really help you out so that that's one I also just love Heaven is an is a new pair of glasses like that's one of my favorite because it's just it grounds you to perspective when you're like holy [ __ ] the world's on fire this person just let this one's not showing up they drop the ball on that not that the team does this often but you know I'm being a little bit dramatic for uh for

46:26effect if you just put on a new pair of glasses so to speak and just re-contextualize the it really is like a pill it's like magic it goes from chaos to calm and then you can go in and execute and just take it with a smile dude I love it I I really love it um one of them I think it was what was your second what was your second one that you said fences made good neighbors fences make good neighbors reminds me of a book that I'm reading right now um so it's called Rocket Fuel the one essential combination that will get you more of what you want from your business

47:07by Gino Wickman have you heard about it so it basically talks about how successful businesses are built on the foundation of two people the Visionary and the integrator where you're the integrator actually and I'm the Visionary get outside Visionary the Visionary is the big picture person and the integrator is the one who makes things happen and it's basically This Confidential uh complementary relationship I'm I haven't finished it but I do have a few of the rules from that book that I want to share for people so the five rules for for the Visionary integrated relationship number one stay on the same page basically like regular alignment uh

47:51number two no end runs um so basically avoiding bypassing bypassing managers because that interferes in the relationship effectiveness of the relationship uh number three integrators break ties so this is about like delegation to the you know lowest person responsible uh integrator handling day-to-day issues between departments uh in the case of disagreement the integrator decides based on their awareness of priorities problems and resources so that's a great example we had a disagreement yesterday I was like I gave you my point of view but I was just like all right like you know you can you know the priorities and problems resources better so I also have a a different point of view than you do

48:36right number four working in versus on the business Visionary should focus on the company while integrators handle day-to-day operations and then finally number five maintain mutual respect so obviously there must be a high degree of trust that happens between Visionary and integrator spot on sounds like someone wrote the book on it and nailed it um funny I'm reading good to Great like we're both on our again this is like a perfect example we're both on our tracks of like leveling up and I think always helpful to reframe or at least kind of keep my feet grounded to to that and I have a lot to learn

49:14from you and I learn from you every week and as the Visionary I don't I I think for some companies it's not always clear who wears witch hat and I think for us it was clear from day one and it's made this really easy uh not to sound corny but this has never been hard even like our biggest disagreements don't last for more than a few minutes and then we move on as we like to say onwards with the rocket ship emoji and then we go and we've been doing that since literally 2020 is writing that saying after something happens I bet it happens that often but when it does and then we roll

49:50and so for me it's always yeah a matter of outside and inside and I think you're second to none at outside and I think I'm doing a decent job at inside and so I think together we are we're good pair man you and I 100 100 Let's uh we're out of time but let's let's end with one thing you hate about me and working with me because you spend a lot of time with me you think you want to end on a high note man now you want me to take you down take me down take me down I mean you know I want people to see that you

50:26know not all that Glitters Is gold right like and there's not a yeah I mean I'd love you know I'd love to hear my feedback session live feedback exactly my performance review roast me um okay I'll save the like nice one you know when people are like what's your greatest weakness I try too hard like I'll save that for the end and I'll no don't even don't give me that one I don't want that one okay that one save for after the Pod yeah actually don't even don't even I'm not even gonna tell you man I'm not even gonna tell you no you that one leaves with me

51:02um okay sometimes you go like gorilla CEO on us and just like go and have something executed on without really like waiting around or planning it and that's just because I'm the operator and so for me structure helps give me calm and peace what it does do is get [ __ ] done real quick and so I will give you like hats off to you when you do go gorilla CEO things get done but when you do go gorilla CEO sometimes it has Downstream effects on what we were working on the team Etc so that's one totally and then another one I don't know if I

51:44asked for one thing no I got another one I don't know if it's a superpower or or a weakness oftentimes the two are pretty uh out of juxtaposition for folks but once your mind is made up it's really hard to change it and I think it's a force that's not my mom so my mom told me as a kid I you know I was like that so I guess I guess people don't change I think they can again superpower probably sometimes I wouldn't say I Hate's a strong word sometimes it's a challenge all right I appreciate it listen it's a it's a it's an honor working with you on

52:22a day-to-day basis um likewise man I love it it's it's the best there's nothing I'd rather let's uh let's tell people I started off this pod by saying that you're criminally underfollowed and I couldn't agree like it's it's again it's criminal I use the word criminal and I don't mean it lightly where could people follow you on the internet to get more viewer theoisms sure two places right now maybe there'll be some video action in the future who knows LinkedIn and Twitter both at the otaba t-h-e-o-t-a-b-a-h I don't know about criminally underfollowed criminal and Theo I haven't been used in the same sentence in a long time but uh

53:03yeah I've got some cool stuff to say on culture Community operations and building businesses and uh onward yeah I think onward onward indeed and uh like LinkedIn specifically I think you're you've been really crushing it on so I'm just gonna highlight that one for for folks sure and uh if you like this episode please please please number one subscribe to the YouTube channel so I'm trying to get our YouTube numbers up and it's so hard it's like the hardest thing I've ever done so Theo can you tell can you tell people who are listening to get to YouTube and subscribe please go to YouTube subscribe and thank you if you've made it this

53:44long thanks for listening to me yeah thank you thank you and I the reason I also care about the the YouTube subscription honestly is we don't have ads on this we pay out of pocket for this podcast and it just lets me know that people care so if you care vote with your subscription thank you so much that's a wrap Theo come back on you know people like this episode tweet at the on myself and he'll come back on