Welcome to the Also a podcast about the business of mobile product Design Coast, but numbers of Fun Signs Mobile Life Studio in Austin Today we have a special one on one with Stew Smith of Sputnik creative and fun size owner Anthony Armand ears he's doing Anthony. Both have a lot to share about choosing the right client. Today's episode. They discuss the traits of a good relationship between a creative agency and quiet and also what it looks like. It's not such a good Yeah. Hey, welcome to the Hustle podcast. This is Anthony Armendariz, CEO of Fun Size and I'm here today talking about choosing the right client with the Stew Smith partner Sputnik Creative, also based here in Austin, Texas. For those of you that don't know Stew, his company, Sputnik, is on extra neighbor. It's too, had a fundamental hand in getting our business started, and student I have being owners of two agencies talk a lot about running an agency we thought would be a great idea that has to join and tell us a little bit about his company and have a conversation about important topic of cheese and right Clint, do you want to introduce yourself?

Yeah, I'm stew and, uh, and thanks, guys, for having me. It's awesome. I've heard about these podcasts. Listen, Thio, I think keeping the window while you guys were recording before, So it's actually awesome to be here and, uh, yeah, like anything he said, I, um I'm a partner at Sputnik,

and we're, uh, Brandon Webb Studio here in Austin. We work with all sorts of different crazy, cool clients that teaches different things all the time. We work with people that air small businesses and people is largest. You guys that you've heard of, like IBM, so anything in between and really, I think this topic is pretty awesome for us. It's timely based on things that we've learned recently. But it's also It's one of those things that, uh, working with such a broad range of clients. It's not really about who they are. It's categorically, but it's really about who they are as people. So it's pretty interesting

to me over the course of running your agency, I mean, what has you know, what have you learned about choosing the wrong client?

Yeah, well, it's, like kind of a thing that you can actually do by accident if you're gonna have your guard down. I've learned a lot about that, learning about it daily sometimes fortunately, sometimes unfortunately. So uh, yeah, so there is an inherent cost, and I think it it's one of those things that has effects that you wouldn't even expect. It's one of the things that I didn't think I actually learned too much when I was a freelancer, because it only really have ever affected me. If it was chose a client that maybe was slow to pay or something, it was always kind of like, Well, you know,

that's fine. I'll just I'll eat this for a little while. It's It's no problem, and I can kind of endure through. It's been more complicated as we've grown and have people on our team, and I see it affect them. That's that's kind of the cost. The ultimate cost for me is that it really does start to bug my team. If you if you were working with the wrong wrong person

you had, it's really infectious, right? I mean, from a business owners perspective, it's a struggle, right? Because you're tryingto way out, like choosing the right piece of business. The right in the industry. The right stepping stone of a project that'll get you where you want to be the right finances and also made matching that with what your team wants. And as you have your team changes, the variety of what they want is gonna change. So I don't know about you guys, but one of the thing one of the big learning lessons that we've had is in the beginning. We have to try to keep everything democratic. Way would all go on what projects will take,

which worked for a while. But, you know, it doesn't always work from the business perspective, right? Yeah, I think it's really hard to manage that. But one of the things that you know, you know, we've learned is making that wrong decision can cause a lot of turn can really set the wrong tone to really burn people out.

Well, yeah, And to that point, you know, you can, uh, we haven't ever done kind of a true democratic way in a voting where everyone gets around the table or anything, but it always is kind of like, Oh, man, we get this lead from this school thing and you know, just by a kind of collective conscious talking about it, things will rise to the surface where we pursue that. And, um, it's kind of kind of interesting, something that you said made me think about it.

It's not actually wrong clients not actually only a person that cost you money or wears that your team. It could be an inter, energizing client that wears out your finances. Like what you were saying, where it's it's got to be a perfect balance. It's not always a verbal balance, but what you're at least trying for, because we've had plenty of clients at a really fun to work with. But, um, don't have the budget where it's kind of it actually hurts us. Tow. Invest in the passion projects. That's actually something we've had to learn this. We want those things really badly. I've noticed that those are the things that energize the team the most.

We get to work on this kind of small niche dating, but we really have to be on guard of like making sure that a they're not gonna turn into a problem client. Uh, just because they're a cool little passion project and be that it's not gonna cannibalize our other efforts with stuff that's actually allowing us to pay our rent at the office. And they pay rule and stuff like

that. That that's I couldn't agree more that some of the most difficult clients that we've had have not necessarily been bad clients, and actually, there projects are very exciting. It was that they were early stage startups. Maybe they had never hired an agency before. Yeah, I don't know how where, where they could push and pull. And because we busted him into a smaller budget. They ended up being a bad fit because what they really needed was the same amount of effort will be given a normal project. They didn't know howto how to really engage with

us. Yeah, and really in their defense, it's like they probably had no idea how to communicate that outfront way have plenty of that words. It's ah you know, especially with some of our pet projects like and this is all these people care about their bootstrapping hard core. They're not, uh, funded. They're not, you know, in most cases, not anything that's even very old It's like, Well, look up with a guy that's stealing something really interesting And he just has no idea what even just $1000 worth of design. But you'd get you that because that's that's so much money to the to this person who's never bought this commodity before, that they're like him.

I just don't think I'm getting much out of that like, Well, you actually are holding is energized working on this, um, you just maybe don't have the grasp of what kind of thing that we do. And also we don't Some of that's on us a little bit of having to educate those types of clients a lot, a lot of bad, more in depth. That's actually something we were just talking about with our proposal process with those type of clients that we want to pursue, that we're actually gonna try and handled a little bit. Maur just even adding sections of the proposal that say, You know, here's an example of this type of work, and here's an example of how far we go in the scope in real visual, so you can see what you're going to get the ends. There's not any mix up of understandings of

isn't Isn't there something to say about wrong Kleiner Bad Project? Also someone sort of based on the way that the project starts. Like if you start the project wrong with bad habits on either side. I mean, couldn't a good client become a bad plan?

Oh, yeah, it's all about, you know, the training process. A little bit of front, uh, you know, related toe, just like even a dating relationship or anything like that, where it's kind of like if you set some standards up front that I like. Okay, well, kind of what kind of give and take on this this one thing that drives me now it's like there's not really a way to dig yourself out of that, especially with a client. Six weeks. And if you know one thing that is a pet peeve of mine is getting texted by clients only because it happens sometimes.

I'm riding the Zilker Zephyr with my daughter through the park, and I get a text about work on a Saturday morning. It's it's not really fair. It kind of stinks. You know, it's, uh, it's O if in that moment I let my fear of losing that client or my on the other side, my love of their kind of quirky little project get in my psyche and respond to them. Oh, they will always text me any time that they want forever. Then there's no way out of it.

I see that, you know, personally. Also, I kind of like that when when someone trusts me enough that they see me as just a member of their team where they don't really see the line between agency. You know, I think some of the some of the best clients that we've had with their tiny companies are large ones or the ones that truly, like work with us. Transparent. I know that. It's kind of hard to like. Boundaries are kind of Louisa a tough issue, but, you know, you know, kind of going internist next line of talking points, What is really gonna make the client What is that?

What is the right client? Is it money is a passion is a relationship. I mean, how do you like it's button it? How do you guys address that?

Yeah. So we've learned the hard lesson, uh, to never do things based off of just how much budget is coming in because we've had had things come in where it's Hey, we have 50,000 bucks and it's over the next four weeks and it's right in time for us. Tow, uh, to make a little bit extra money for our growth plans that we have and where it's been something where it's, you know, just kind of dangling carrot of maybe future projects. Something like that just had to definitely make sure we're not taking projects solely based off of that. But I feel like that's something we're really still still learning. It's kind of a gut check, actually after, like, the first call, because we d'oh something be the most efficient way to do it.

But we always do Our intro calls with the two partners and our office manager, Diana, and we always sit there and actually look at each other after a call like, Hey, how do you do you think that win? Do you think that's gonna be somebody like Well, that maybe doesn't fit with our culture may produce some major red flags down the road, so I always actually like kind of phrase things and, well, I had a yellow flag about this. They said they have this much work to dio within, you know, just a couple of couple of weeks and they always email me at, like, three in the morning. I'm not really sure if that maybe they have Ah,

have a mentality that about their work That is a little bit different than we we d'oh. So we kind of call like yellow flags and red flags. Red flags are like, Wow, that I actually just felt uncomfortable on that call. We should not do anything with that client because I just felt uncomfortable. Um, yes. I mean, it's kind of it's it's a hard thing. I think, Uh, I think we're still trying to figure out, like trades of the best types of clients. We have several clients that really, really exemplify the types of clients we want to pursue working more with, um so we maybe talk more about that, but yeah,

I mean, I think No, this is a second business that I run, but this is the first business of the scale that I've run. You know, I always try to make sure that there's enough like interesting work going on. And I recently realized I made some mistakes. Early on. I tried to book it these smaller clients into just few hours just because they have less money. Yeah, And then after interviewing them, I got a sort of consistent response from these clients. That was pretty much something like this. We really want to work with you. We really wanted youto own it. We wanted to ask you for more time, but we felt bad doing so.

It just kind of occurred to me that instead of me bucket ing them into a smaller budget project, if I really wanted to work with that smaller climate, I should have just dropped the raid so that we could give them the same effort that we gave them. What else do you really think that that early stage start up is just as passionate about their product, if not more than maybe a corporation? Their users are just as important, and it is just just simple mistakes. But, you know, and on the on the higher inside of it, we definitely had people, as I'm sure you have to have approached us with very large budgets and didn't blink at the money but asked us to make concessions in areas that made us feel completely uncomfortable. Like Thea. The day we got way had a client that was ready to go a very large budget but wanted us to remove the claws from our contract that said that they could not poach our employees and our employees. I'm sorry that our number one trade and that's just not something I'm gonna budge on it with

them. Don't build, Uh, you don't build fences and you don't do drywall. You don't do exchangeable things like that, employing extraordinarily creative people that are in your town, not, you know, somewhere else. Uh, yeah, that's Ah, that would've been red flag. I see he didn't take

the work. No, we didn't. I mean, you get because that's just something you can't like. You know, like you said, Like a red flag moving forward. If they're gonna get that, That's the way the relationship is starting. You know, I can't. Couldn't imagine where that would end up 3 to 6 months later.

Yeah, when you can actually kind of always tell in contract negotiation how things are gonna get I mean, that's That's actually kind of like if there's a color more advanced than read it as a warning, that's like def Con purple or whatever. But it's, you know, that's a huge red flag. But then you pick, like, more commonly, pick up on things where it's like, Well, I don't know, like, this is this is a clause that I set down specifically with my attorney, based on other situations on really wanted in the in the contract. But now I have this client debating me,

and they're also debating me on four other things. I just wonder if that's maybe gonna be the nature of how we actually do the work together. Um, yeah, we've We've bailed honestly like we had. We had a very sizable, very high profile cool client by all measures last fall, and it was just way had to step out as hard when we spend a little, a little bit of money with our attorney than negotiating because we're like, we really want these guys on our side. This would be so cool, and I think it would be so much more work. But there was an absurd clause about about non compete for 10 years and there's there's just no way we were gonna do

that. I mean, one of the things that I've learned and I learned this from my very first client, was that it seems like there's a trend that the people that want to work with you the most. I just want to start working right. I know you gotta get the house cleaning of the way. You gotta sign a contract. But yes, absolutely. If there's any sort of back and forth on a contract, it's an immediately like sign that that's gonna set the tone. I mean, even the corporate, even some of the corporate clients that we worked with, We're just like, you know what? Like we know,

this is gonna be a rigorous process. Malicious could start it. Are you willing to just get started? Those have always been the best for us. Yeah, the ones that just express an extreme passion of wanting to work with us. Or, like you said yesterday at lunch, Like ones that approach you from like a fan perspective.

Yeah. I mean, those, uh, those have become the coolest clients ever, and I don't know that a little bit of a different thing, but maybe takes us to the topic of like, um, you know, a little bit deeper in the topic of quality of a good client. Uh, you know, one thing that I've noticed just with that with, like, our word getting out there a little bit on being on different things, it's it's attracted clients like you're saying that approach is really kind of, you know,

in a way that I like we really love. Like I was going to say, We really love what you do growing, Doc really love what you do with story land come and do that same thing with us and like you're saying like, let's get started, Can you start next week? Which is not usually ever possible, but, um, but that type of client exhibits this thing that's almost like a cheerleader style, which we have a client right now that's like that. It's so stinking cool, and everyone on the team that's so motivated to do the work because every time that this client e mails, it's so like you guys are doing so awesome. This is so cool. I can see how this is gonna change our business.

Um, it's so much. It's such a different thing than somebody That's like No, like the turning on that is off or no, let's I know that that's this hex color. But can we change a couple of those? So that made it to this X color, like really fine tuning things? I don't know. Cheerleaders are awesome.

Clients. Yeah, hungry.

And put

it on. It's willing thio, like, go through the process with you like you were. Our businesses were slightly different. I don't know how the rest of people find size. Think about it. We have a lot of clients are just very cooperative, like they'll, you know, You know, CEO and the team will sit in the room and we'll go over design over and over together as a team, Not really treat us like we're this sort of external shop that is just sort of doing production, you know, that's me. Is what is starting to become more clear. I don't want to feel like by taking a big project just because of the money that we're gonna be treated just like a sort of production I want.

I want Thio feel like a partner. And I think everyone that works here does, too. Because, like, you're saying that that you later thing, that knowing that what you're doing is making a difference go so much further than, like, can you just do this? Can you just change that? Can just keep changing this? Yeah, if you understand, Like, what the common goal is and you're working together. I mean,

those are the kind of things that we look for. And so, you know, you know, in the process of interviewing clients, you know, kind of what you're saying. We try toe, figure that out. You know, like we you know, one of the main points is trying to figure out, like, how much trust in collaboration will provide.

Yeah, it's interesting. You just, um it's totally a good thing. I don't know. I want to get it down to the science where it's like, Okay, if clients is X, then we're out. It says why we're out. But it is so just a gut thing. And almost you have toe looked person, and I know, but even over hang out and be like, Is this guy going toe? You know, totally come back and bite us in the end.

There's things that you and I see. We're talking to these people that are team never sees, right? Like, yeah, we get to test the deepest part of the relationship that most the team will never see. Like What was it like trying to schedule that first meeting like, Yeah, it was. It was this person considered of my schedule and willing to use the tools that I usedto get a phone call me or today with a demanding and only provided me with, like, one option way we can kind of sniff that out.

Yeah. Are they lay to that? First

meeting is kind of our job to do that, you know? Yeah. Are they late? Constantly reschedule, You know? Are they gonna respect the process?

Yeah, There was. There was actually on the top. There was a hilarious thing a long time ago, this client showed up to their first meeting about 30 minutes late. And, you know, we're sitting there, the whole team sitting there. It's the kickoff, and I and I was pretty bitter, but I was just like men. I have something. If the meeting was at two o'clock, he showed up to 30. We had a thing at three. It was internal.

But it's important. And so it goes, Yeah, you should probably really schedule, but the meetings, like, 30 minutes in advance because I'm habitually late. I was like, Well, we're habitually on time like so this is gonna be pretty hard. I don't know. I don't think we're gonna actually be ableto like scheduled meetings early for

you. Might as well give them an extra four months to pay their invoice because yeah, exactly. Because you don't really need that money. Pay the payroll.

Yeah, my mortgage company is like, super flexible.

It's just so cool. So let's let's talk about the interview. Part of the process. How do you How do you How do we sort of address determining whether someone's the right client?

Yeah, for me, I have to connect on some sort of relational level. Too much of a like, gregarious wanna hang out, have a beer type of person, uh, Thio to not seek that first in the relationship. Like we had a couple of business calls yesterday. Man, I could tell immediately out of the two guys that I talk to you. Two clients. I talk to you. It was like this one guy was able to talk about the cool Mexican restaurants in Austin. Plus, I was able to talk about, you know,

the craft beer that I'm into within the 1st 5 minutes of the call. Not that that means he's gonna be the most amazing client, but we at least could share some commonalities. You know, the guy right after him that I talked to was basically was like, Hey, man, you know, I just want to hear about what you guys are doing and just here's the worry. And, uh, and he was like, Well, let's just get down to business And probable. That's what I'm looking for. Uh, that feels weird. We're gonna work together for the next 12 weeks. We we need to be ableto share a

meal together, and it's it's not enjoy. Different than dating or hiring employees, right? Like you're looking for someone that you want to genuinely

work with. Yeah, I had a client. I call it the Sunday Test, which is actually kind of a thing that has stuck with me. You know, he said it was like we don't work on the weekends. But if we had to, if it was, the ship's going down or we have this client coming into town. We got, you know, freaking Walmart wants us to do their IOS abs, and I'm gonna pay us $2 million we need to start on Sunday to be able to do that. But all of us are gonna have six months off. He's like, I want to be ableto have my entire team,

be people that I would be around on the weekend on a Sunday, working my tail off, and he's like, Somebody doesn't fit that just in my gut. Then they don't get hired, and I kind of want that on the client level of like if we literally have to go do a video shoot, especially on our branding stuff. We spent a lot of hands on time with people kind of outside of the office, like we have to get a photo shoot, video shoot, sit down a copywriter, sit down with PR firm, even in the remote chance on the weekend. I want that to be somebody that I actually want to show up and say, Hey, man, what's up like, this is cool. I don't dread going and seeing them.

Yeah, yeah. WeII don't have this down to a perfect science other than it's been mostly me doing his death. And I kind of operating with a little too. I mean, I I first looked at, you know, like we're saying, What are they? How accommodating and respectful are They like my time, my team's time? You know how if they're willing to wait until we have that perfect opening because we're very transparent, like we could maybe start early. But if we're gonna give you the right amount of tension you need, you need to kind of wait in liquids. Let's get this deal structured correctly. Does have always been but the best.

We also looked for other things to go bit deeper now, like it's a start up. We asked more questions about you know how much funding they received the last 12 24 months their corporation will ask questions about you know how long it takes to get set up as a bender. And you know, because you know, like we have one client right now is it is a passion client but it is a major corporation, and my pricing to them was based on we're starting pranks. But I kind of learned once we started engaged a engagement that it would take, like, 3 to 4 weeks just to get set up as a approved vendor. And then we take another two weeks to get set up with a P O and that their payment terms were not in that 15 which we prefer. They were net 45. So instead of getting paid in within two weeks, like we assume we would is actually gonna take, like, two and 1/2 months.

Knowing those things early are not necessarily the traits of a good client, but would have allowed me to create a better perception of our studio side of what they what, knowing what we're gonna be dealing with. So we try to just ask ask those things and I don't, you know, I don't know. It's really hard. I mean, sometimes you're right, and sometimes you're wrong. But, you know, I think the harder part of it is, you know, maybe course correcting when when something isn't going

just right. Yeah. I do think it is all about it is about the right questions of fried like you're mentioning about funding and building that other things that we do ask up front all the time. Our stakeholders and, uh, you know, it's been kind of an interesting thing where, uh, we've had instances where stakeholders appear at the last minute, have things pop up, and it's, you know, incredibly stressful to have to deal with some input. You know, our contract now reflects that that's a kind of ah, game game changer, and we'll kill the contract that point. But

well, I mean, I know it's kind of subjective that in your mind what what is the ideal kind of like? What are the traits of the ideal client respect?

Yeah, with us, it's, uh, I think over over any other trade. It's really, honestly trust the worst thing that you could do for a group of creatives that care about your brand, cause we're not gonna take on a project that we don't care about. That's that goes back to We're not going to take things only because of the money. We're not gonna take things only because while this is a cool, sexy client, that We want our site and I don't care how they work. But we want that name on our site. It's honestly, it's trust. It's just that, um,

the person for us is not going to drag her team down with over art Directing are micromanaging and that, you know, my partner BJ related related itto you know, like a pilot where it's like if a Rand tells us that ultimately we want to be considered alongside of these brands say it's a lifestyle brand that wants to be on the on the same low with Patagonian polar. Well, you have five creatives in the room that know how to get you there. We know the trends. We know what's happening. The worst thing you could do is not trust us that we we don't have a have a clue. So, um so, yeah, I think it's honestly, it's trust. It's the cheerleading thing is probably second line. The If I ever write a book,

it'll probably be about how to be a good client toe where you know how to say the right things that get your creative team to pull back because you and I running shops. We know what those things are. We know the moments they encourage our teams and say, You know this thing or I was in here and you gave Rick a day off When and now that it's strategy, you guys are friends. But it's one of those where you understand what Rick needs is a creative toe thrive. He's been working his tail off. Um, so I want, you know, I want clients that understand that have empathy for the creative to Cem.

That's that's really good perspective. Have fun size. I don't know what it is, you know, I think you know, number are number one concern is creating products that benefit human beings. So I can weed out a lot of clients really early in the process because I'll ask them What is your product matter and what will this do to benefit human beings? Because, quite honestly, we don't want to be making a four square something like that. We will first, most importantly, want to be making things that actually gonna fit people. And then, secondly, kind of the long lines, what you said about trust,

but a little bit different. We look to see how much trust will allow us to have in letting us effect the long term end of their product. Or how much will they let us change what they have? Will they let us do something unique? Because we were trying to do is balance out most of our well, First of all, most of our projects are 3 to 6 months long, so designers wanna put their own stamp on it. They want to feel trusted, they wantto be challenged. We want to retain strong, talented people, so, you know, way Just try to make sure that it's gonna be something that we're gonna enjoy doing every day. Because if we take it on, we'll be doing it every day for six months.

Yeah, seriously, that's that. That's the thing to remember during this, Dev. I mean, gosh, like I didn't learn that until embarrassingly probably a couple of years ago. Been doing this for a long time, like Oh, yeah. Wait. If I take this on, I definitely have to look this person in the eye or be on the phone with them for, like, six months, probably.

And then Oh, gosh, Like if we did their website development, that person is going to call me in 30 years. Absolutely. They're going to call me in three years.

I think you know, if there's any advice that I could give two people I normally given this example there was first getting started. We had a client that same planet referenced earlier. I was really scared about working with my gut. Actually told me not to work with him because they were big, you know, publicly traded tech company, and I my assumed they would treat us like upon or they would just try to own us. It was that it was actually quite the opposite. They had full trust in us. We were the right arm, and they were the left arm. Listen to our recommendations are opinion's got to affect the actual product. Uh, and sometimes you just have two to try, you know? So,

you know, my recommendation is, if you don't know just any think it's exciting. Just tried out. Do a small engagement. Do it, do it 123 month engagement and test it out. And if it works well, go for six or nine or 12 months, work or cancel it. Sometimes you just don't know.

Yeah, I'd rather outer. They get in a small project and, um, you know, have have something, even even if the project is just discovery. That's something we've been doing the last six months where we do a brand camp where it's literally a company will come to Austin for two days and sit in the same room with us and and just talk about what their brand actually needs. Um And so the address to get in on something, you know, small like that. And they get saddled with some someday. Yes, it of you. That is, like six months.

Well, still thank you for joining us today. Why don't you let everyone know how they can contact you?

Yeah. So were we have a website? Oddly enough, sputnik creative dot com. We're on instagram a Sputnik creative. We're on Twitter. It's but Niko and I think we're on Facebook or something as well. So but that's kind of the ways don't linked in me, bro. Just get

I know you're busy. Thank you for taking the time to do walk 30 steps. So

it was like

I was crazy, thanks to you. Yeah,