I usually I interviewed guest on the show, but they were gonna do something a little bit different. I brought in my coworker, Tony Sanchez, in my business partner, Nathalie Armin Sheriff, so that we could talk about some of the stuff that way worked on this past year that kept me from doing the hustle by caste and talk a little bit about how we design our design team

and build a culture of trust related to this awesome article that was published about us and envision Block this past week. I hope you enjoy this episode and are looking forward to more episodes of the Hustle podcast.

Hey, I'm Tony Sanchez and I'm a product designer at fun size. Today I'm here with Anthony and Natalie armed. There's partners of fun size. Hey, guys, how's it going? Going pretty well. I my name in this Natalie. I'm a partner in design director at Fun Size Messiah from all the business me and marketing stuff. My day today consists of about managing four projects, helping the designers on those projects manager their own work streams and mentor ship, making sure that they have the best environment to do kick ass working.

I'm Anthony. You guys all know me partner and head of design. Mostly. What I focus on is the defining the future of our company and figuring out how to get there. And that means working and sells. It means working a marketing. It means devoting a lot of my time to growing or our designers interservices and our practices except

awesome. That's cool. So first off, I just want to say that this year has been super super fun. Being part of the team has been amazing, and seeing everything that's been going on has been awesome. I know that we've worked with some super rad clients, and we've grown and brought in some new people new, fun, talented people to the team and kind of mature it all at the same time. Recently, though, envisioned publish an article about about you, Anthony and how your designer of design teams. And quite honestly, I've read it probably four or five times now, and,

uh, I'm still trying to absorb it, even though, um, I see you every day, and some of the things that I think are pretty cool is that about that article is because I didn't know that you cared about things as much as you did. So I kind of wanted to take an opportunity to kind of ask you guys some questions about what's been going on love to answer them, Do you know? So first of all, first of all, one of the one of the biggest the first things that came up in the article is the fact that that your you called or they or you I guess you might be both agreed on that You're a business designer. What the hell is that? What? What is a business designer?

Well, I mean, I don't know if I've really talked about this before, but I spent most of my career being a designer and designing things. And then when we started fun size, I started designing things less and less, and I started to think about other things more and more. You know who's the right resource for a project and when and who is the right higher and growing their careers and all that. At first it was really challenging for me because I felt like I was moving too far away from the practice of design. But the more and more. I realized that that by intentionally shaping the team that is is design. It's it's ah requires a design approach. It requires, you know, thoughtful thinking about, you know, constructing something very intentionally for specific outcome.

So I don't know why. You know what you think about that in the in the article. But when I think about business and if I feel like I can apply designed to it, I still feel like I'm designing. So and that's the way that I can contribute my background to what we're doing in the company. I don't know what Natalie has anything to add to that.

No, I think you covered it pretty well. I was actually gonna I was actually gonna pull you into this conversation because not only are you a business designer, Anthony, but I mean, you guys are also married, so you kind of are I would say as much as you are designer, you catch a code designing too, because I think that I've never really asked you guys this, but like you guys have to have, like a check and balance system. I think, too, because you can't just, like, come up with crazy ideas and think it's gonna work. And then I'm sure he tells you about things.

And you're like, Oh, whoa, hold on their second like, think about that for a minute, you know? So how how do you guys, you know, work is it work as a team to, like, understand the needs of the business and, ah, the needs of the team to kind of, like, make the right choices? Well,

for the longest time, we made a lot of gut decisions, and there's never been a big decision that we've made that we haven't made together. And so for the most part, we pretty much agree on on all the big stuff like Anthony has. He has the authority to do, you know, like what he feels is right. And usually I'll trust that. But there's never been, you know, it's highway. We've haven't We haven't had a conversation about it.

Yeah, you know, I really can't take credit for the envision article. Just so happens it was an interview with me, but all the things that we're talking about in there is a lot of the things that we all do as a team. When Some people may not be aware of that, but you know Natalie and I, in order for things for us to operate as, ah, as business partners and as a married couple we have to have division in alignment. So in order for the company to put Natalie in a position where she's able to focus on the things that she's most passionate about, I need to focus on certain things and vice versa. But we do, you know, like the conversations we have at nine on the weekend and we're usually talking about our people were, you know, we're talking about You were talking about the next candidate and it's not like we're working late,

and that's that's, Ah, some burden. It's like we can't do that a lot of that stuff during the business day, so we have to wait till we're home. We have to wait. What? We have, like the mind frame to think and work on some of those things.

Yeah, and they did a good thing. Or at least what works is that we're both passionate about the same things and we want the same outcomes. So I think that really helps you. Yeah, it really shows and you to your note about what other people may not know that aren't, you know, in the same room as all of us at the same time Is that Ah, lot of the things that you discussed on the article are stuff that are that we talk about every day, you know, And I think that that I even I feel like, is Ah, you know, I've been with the company for about a year, and I feel like that I'm pretty. I feel happy to contribute with when and where I can.

Well, it's a it's a it's a family already or into culture. And, you know, we try toe, let people we want people to feel exposed to this stuff. I've definitely worked at places before where you know, designers weren't exposed to any of the decision making at all. And and even if you don't want even if you can't like include a designer in the discussion, it's important for people to hear about it. You know, it's to be empathetic for people to understand what we're doing outside of our regular work at worker, you know, to understand what's what it takes to run a business. What it takes to hire people, what it takes toe build their careers like giving a promotion isn't just like, you know,

a binary thing. It requires and, you know, thoughtful approach and growing them. And the way we want people to understand some of these principles because I still think that at some point or another, like designers in a studio or designers and a product company, whatever, we're gonna probably some point in time, like maybe start their own company. And I think people need to be exposed to this stuff.

So, yeah, to add on to that a little bit, A lot of me. I know people designer specifically that I don't want anything to do with that, right? Like they're like, I'm just gonna go in to do my job, gonna do some cool design stuff and leave every day at five or six or whatever. But I think the culture that we've built in the reason why we call it a family, I don't think we use that very lightly is because each person that joins the company should understand that they have a big impact and they have a voice in the direction of the company. That's so that's so foreign. Like I've actually, I was actually thinking I wanted to ask the S u guys that, too, because it is a family like I genuinely like hanging out with all of you guys. And I think it's really kind of rare to hear that and to feel that way because a lot of people that I know,

you know, I mean, in past past, like, places that I've worked, there's always been a couple of people that you like, and I don't really like that person that monitor now they're not my favorite, but I can't think of one of you guys that I don't like actually, like love calling my friend. And that's kind of weird, I think. Sorry, is that weird to you guys? Like, I know that you guys consciously consider that

in previous episodes, I've referenced this as the beer test. It's not necessarily the beard like on the episode, you're on what I call it the beer test. It's not necessarily the beer test, but it we do like when higher hiring a new person. It is a culture test like, because we do want to hire people that want. I like being around each other. And so that means that means carrying a little bit more about culture fit than skills. Because, you know, we choose to be here. We all choose to be a fun size. We could all be somewhere else, which used to be here. So we need to make sure that we're around the people that were inspired by

I think that that's also the main way to build trust any any person that I that I work with, I can know that they got they have my back and that we're going to try to, you know, work through this together on there's no hanging anybody out to dry. All right?

Yeah. I think that's, you know, to me, one of the more important things. Now, I will admit I I have had a mentor to tell me You're not only in the past that you shouldn't be. You shouldn't be friends with your employees like it's gonna be hard for you to grow a business that way. I understand that that thought but I refused to accept that for various reasons. I don't see why, why it can't. What? You can't be friends with the people you work with because you know, if you know like you're right, like trust is really important. It's also something we talked about. The article,

One of the things you know, People ask me all the time of what makes when I'm on a sales call, for example, What? What makes you different in my usual response is, well, any linking designed an app like, you know, you can go. You can go get an app designed in South Korea for 10 bucks an hour. And it's gonna be great design shit money. Better than, like, the good design in the Bay Area. That's a strong statement, but point uh,

but the point is, is that a lot of people could design, But what you know, like my answer to what makes us different is that most people on our team have worked on the team. So, you know, on average, I would say three years, 24 years. If the average person's days at a product, company or agency for eight months to a year, they're not able to develop the kind of trust that we have. And so, since we have the trust and those deep friendships and the lots of practice working with each other. I think that's why we can go into these engagement with other foreign design teams and automatically do good work quick as we're

able to do it. Yeah, I think it's an easy way to make a big impact, even just on the relationships. I'd actually feel like they themes feel like that. You care about them and you care about the work that you're doing. Yeah. I mean, I I can't count how many times like a clients come to me and has made, like, just, you know, side comment, right? Like, Oh, it seems like you guys were so close.

So you guys are all friends outside of work, like we can. They can actually tell, you know, just by the way, that we interact with each other.

Yeah. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. In fact, if it wasn't like that, I don't I don't know if I wouldn't want to work at this

company. Same. I don't think if you guys didn't want to work here, I wouldn't want to work here either. So awesome. That's cool. I mean, I really love hearing you guys perspectives on all that. That's kind of like a little bit into my next question about which is also something you talked about in this invention. Envision article is the fact that one of your main focus is is like the younger design population of the local area and making sure that that disk that fun size is kind of serving that community. So, you know, you're talking about, you know, hiring and what you're looking for. And one of the cool things that that I read in that article in quotes is that you said quote, we champion and higher for diversity across the board.

You have to be good, but you don't have to be great yet, and I think that's pretty awesome. It's pretty, pretty freaking

cool. I mean, it's not something that we were always able to D'oh. You know, in our first year or two, when we were just trying to be a company, we to be a company, we first had to prove that people would hire us and that we could run 2 to 4 projects at a time. So in the early days, you know people had to be kind of the same. You know, like the this. The skills DNA had to be similar in order to prove the model. But once we reached a certain size, when we realized that we were like OK, well, we can finally start toe,

take advantage of this. There's a There's a lot to unpack there. The first thing is, is that not all great designers are senior designers in an agency when you live or die by margins. If everyone that's on your team is senior, there's no way that you can make a profit margin. I mean, that's just brass tacks. Uh, the other thing is getting back to the community is that, you know, Austin has a healthy design community for sure, one of the best that I've ever seen, you know, Wait, you know,

one of the best, but not every and then design jobs or coming here cos they're coming here, and product design, jobs and service is on. Jobs are emerging. But I still don't think that many people here are truly ready for that. And I want to be We want to help. We want to do our part to create readiness so that when these companies do move and open up jobs in Austin that people in Austin can fill those positions so they don't feel like they need to go recruit from the east or the West Coast. There's a lot more. But the other thing is just skills mix right, like you're the best work that I've seen comes from when you have, you know, a few or more people that come from very different backgrounds and different lenses and views on life. And you put them on a project together. And so, you know,

I think that we just look for people that have different, you know, different backgrounds, different perspectives on life, different seniority levels, different. All the stuff, the more diverse it could be, the better in my in my pay. Yeah,

I think so, too, because I mean, no, the all of us on our team are complete different backgrounds, and every now and then you just see that one little like, like little shining moment of somebody's past experience coming through in a project today, which I think it's really pretty cool. Um, actually, have another

question before you before you do that, though. The one thing that I will say is that it's really hard to do this. It's hard to have a diverse team of like seniors and juniors and generals and specialists. If you don't have it, it's team structure that will allow all of these individuals toe have what they need to be successful. And that's important because for us, because we realized if we really want to do this, we actually have to grow

well. Also, I think on a typical agency, when you say seniors and juniors release from my experience, all the junior people get the shit work and all the senior people get the cool work. But I think that at funds, eyes we when we say senior and junior is that's not what we mean. Like we try to give the work that is appropriate to that person based on how they want to grow as a designer. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, which I think is yes, something important to note as well.

I mean, we have ah, we have senior people that do production work. And we have junior people that lead enterprise where I mean like, but the reason why that works is because we've been able in this last. This last year was really big for me because I spent almost an entire year like focusing on one problem. What should the structure of the team be on? But I worked on it every day for, like, months and months and months and months and months. And and but because without that, like if you if you give a you know, if people are spread too thin and leaders only have juniors and juniors don't have mentors and clients aren't like it can crumble really quickly. So

and circling back to what Tony said to a lot of it also is because we all have each other's backs. Yeah, that's gonna you know. So, yeah, there's a lot of trust involved. I think I just had a random question for both you guys. I guess whenever I was reading through the article thinking about in the article, you guys talk about a lot about strategy, team structure and just kind of the evolution of the designer and then also in conjunction with Austin being kind of, ah, hotbed of like rising new young talent. Do you? Do you guys feel like that. This new rise of young junior talent, it's kind of got a leg up or any other benefit on top of other like, maybe people that have been doing it for a while because they're kind of their more.

They're more of the generalised mindset that we're kind of in right now. So, like, they're having to just they're having to manage multiple skills, like out of the gate. And that's the way that that's where the market is right now.

Hi. The short answer it, as I think. Yes, I think you're right. I mean, generally, right? Like, generally speaking, um, if I weren't like, for example, if I were to share our design director position with a creative director at a traditional agency, they would say, Oh, yeah,

right. Good luck finding that unicorn. Right? But if I were to share that same job description with someone more junior in our company, they'd be like, I'm I want to do that. Yeah, that's just general, but I think there's a lot of truth of that. I think it's something that we've talked about this phase that we've been in lately. Where, where the, You know It's a lot. Lots of work to be done on mobile applications, Web absolute on its It's required a generation of generalists to to do, to be successful in this last seven years.

And so, yeah, it's hard to find leaders senior leaders to come in your company if they haven't already been exposed to that. Because if their approaches and let me think about team structure process are probably a lot different. But I don't know. I mean, like, I don't want to make too too many general statements. But I have seen that.

So what do you mean? What do you mean by 10? Listen, specialists like, because they re entering it in every now entering time of going into specialists cause, like we've been like, you know, like the magic leap goggles just came out, which is like a super forward thinking technology, and it's going to go more into, like, a R V R type stuff. So is that

where we're going? I mean, I could probably talk about this topic for an hour. I think the answer is yes. I mentioned this in the article. Just a little retrospective. If you will look back, you know when the when Webb's when websites were just becoming a thing, it required a generalist approach. To make them, he had to know howto like, you know, like put a website online using command line. There really wasn't any graphical user interface you had toe, you know, kind of make these things. And then then there was,

like graphical user interface and buttons. And then, you know, and I remember because I came from this era and to do things what people were doing on the Web was not pattern ized yet. Like every website was a work of art. It was treated more like a work of art and websites had, like, crazy jobs. Kirk animations like a button over here would make this other thing move. And it had animal. People were playing with D html and and shockwave and flash and all this stuff. And so you were also dealing with coat. You were dealing with code. You were dealing with mixed media. You're dealing audio video, all this stuff And then websites started become more mature.

Things became pattern ized and, you know, budgets got bigger. So then you got the team had to expand to be able to do that. You know, you needed specialist. You needed project managers. You needed information. Architecture needed strategists. You needed visual designers front and developers back in. Developers like some of these teams were really, really big right? That's because people would spend their budgets that way. They would they would spend. They would spend their money to redesign and build once and then do that again. Three years later, there wasn't a concept of it. Er of iterative

working, continuous, continually, like continually maintenance, maintenance sing

If that's even a word, yes, it was the iPhone era that brought that to the design world. Like is as soon as you know, a soon as companies were ableto make, um, Web gaps in the consumer space and, you know, absolute iPhone and stuff like that. For the first time, design was exposed to engineering way of thinking, and that sort of entered a model in it. In teams got smaller. It required more generalised approach like because, you know, instead of hiring a team of five t, you know,

divide to do a product. It was a team of one or two. And so now, with technology emerging. I feel like we're kind of we might already be in this sort of phase where we definitely need the generalists. But we need this specialist to like, because producing an iPhone out and building screens just is a commodity. So to do better to be better, we have to. We have to be better at different things. We need to be better at strategy. We need to learn of emerging technology in this requires and mixes both specialists and generalists. And it kind of looked depends on whether you look at it the industry at large or or at one vertical. True. But I think we need both. And I think that what's been undervalued lately are the specialist,

the strategist, the information architects like to do the kind of work that we're gonna be doing in these ecosystems that that include a vast number of different touchpoints. You just you're not. We're not. We're not gonna get by with just It was simply a generalist perspective,

and I think that those specialists, the people that play those roles and they're really, really excited about those roles are the people that define define the new the new era and allow for those patterns and systems

to come about. So, you know, that's why we decided. Okay, that's what we decided in 2017. Okay, well, let's not Let's make sure that we're not just a one trick pony. Let's make sure that we invest in the future, invest in the specific interest of our team because, I mean, let's face it, we're talking about a people business like fun. Size is nothing without its people, like we're, you know,

like we're nothing without our people. So we have to make sure that we're able to do the things that we want to as business owners. But we're also we also need to make sure we're doing the things that our people want to do and and letting them decide whether they want to go this direction or this direction, or, you know, this way or this way. And so we really do spend a lot

of time. I think you could also, I think you could also categorize your client says your people, too, because, you know, sometimes there's there. You have toe, you know, let let your people know is in your client's Hey, this is this is something you need to consider. This is something you need to really move forward into, especially in the strategy mindset of, like, really guiding, guiding a startup that is not anywhere close to being ready or they think they are. But they don't.

They're not really there yet, and so it's important to really guide them and to care about their product is as much as they do. It's why I was like an enterprise product. It's, I think, just as important to think about that, too, because a lot of times they get caught up in in executing for this quarter or, you know, this three months, you know, it's important to have a perspective outside of that. No. Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, we're in the business of building relationships, and that goes both ways, right? Like internally and externally.

I would be curious, though, to know how our clients feel like whether they really see us as a partner are just like a, you know, a temporary solution. I don't know. I mean, I think a lot of teams do you actually see us as a valuable partner, which is really fulfilling when Wade get some of the feedback that we do get. But I know like their their focus isn't, you know, our culture. They don't you know, like they I'm sure they appreciate our culture, but

I think it's refreshing to them attention exactly. In line with that, the another. Another section of the article was about this fun sized ventures project or section of the company that you guys are really dedicated to. And that's, you know, using funds, you know, franchises, capital to invest in these these companies, he start ups and, ah and try to make a meaningful product together with them. I think that's that's really a pretty amazing thing that I don't really know that a lot of people do either.

E. I mean, it's definitely a lot of people are doing it, but they're doing it a little bit different, like a lot of companies are actually putting cash in and like starting new businesses. I mean, I wish we could do that. We don't have the capital to do that for For us it was about making sure that as we grow that we don't lose our ability to work with the small fish because, let's face it, as you grow and team grows, rates grow. And, you know, we started in a point where a lot of start upstairs couldn't afford us. And then to me, that's to me and Natalie. That wasn't acceptable.

Like we we can't just have all of our eggs in one basket. And so you know, the problem in selling to start ups is a lot of the times budget related, you know, it's just, you know, there's usually, like a little part that, you know, they just can't they can't afford. So we decided, if if we could get started is to value our work the same way our big enterprise clients do, then we will offer them alternative solutions to meet their needs. So, yeah, well,

they can pay cash if they're willing to value it at the same value as everyone else, or we'll do 20 to 50% cash equity and, like help him get going. So it's a little too early to know, like how successful any of the four companies that were currently investing in will will be. But we're no, we're not doing this to look for a buyout or in a you know, I mean, like, we want them to be successful. But the reason why we love doing it is so that we can maintain the ability to work on that kind of work and let our people work on that kind of work and be able to tell a story like we're not We're not influenced by the money on it. But again, it's it's back to the same thing. Like unless we if we didn't grow in this last year, we would not be able to do that. Yeah, you know,

you know, one more question. What's next? What's happening? Fun size for big question. Um, how can How about my highlight? Maybe she's because it's really fresh, but, um, profit sharing. We ruled that out in 2017. That was the first year. And then I've been working on that for several years now. So it felt really, really, really good to be able to share that with the team. So hopefully 2018 more revenue, more sales equals more profit sharing. Awesome.

Yeah, and that's a big thing for sure. For me, Um, I'm not really sure yet. Actually, I think what I'll be doing is probably spend less time on projects in general, because, I mean, we're gonna We're growing the company. I'm gonna probably spend more of my time working with our clients on making sure that we're able to help them with strategy and building. Strategic service is with you and and and a few things. I'm basically just gonna be focused on 28 laying the groundwork in 2018 for hopefully what we're gonna be doing in 2020.

Well, thanks for making time to be here at the table with me. And I was really, really excited to talk to you guys about some stuff s o. If you guys want to let people know where they can find you, you know what to expect. Go ahead. Yeah. My twitter handle is Natalie V. V. I on it, actually everywhere. Instagram the twitters I think Facebook

to I don't know. You should check out the fun size Instagram. Natalie does all the photography. It's pretty awesome.

That's why I'm river in them. If anyone's ever wondering person behind the camera. But yes, please follow us. We're fun Size co on Instagram.

You can follow this, Anthony. You can follow me on Twitter at favorite shape and man twine on Instagram and the hustle podcast at Hustle Cast.

And I'm Tony Tony Sanchez. And my Twitter handle is at Tony two toned with the d A the end and then the same on instagram. So, uh, hope you guys enjoy the show and thanks for listening. Thanks, Y'all hustles Brought to you by Fun Size A digital service and product design agency that works with inspiring teams to uncover opportunity of all popular products. Bring new businesses to market You prepare for the future, Learn more at fun sized ASIO I'm Dina, a product designer. It fun size. Thanks for listening by.