Hi. Welcome to the hustle podcast show about building digital products, culture, process, solution and all the ins and outs of the things that we do every day at work. This is Anthony Madeira. So I'm here with my co host, Rick Messer, and a special guest today. Rachel Kurt's a good friend of mine that I've met through the bureau Digital Affairs and someone that's helped advise me on on specific things related Thio Project Management and Process. I hear a fun size of the last few months. Rachel, Thanks for joining us. Why don't you say hello?

Hey, guys, how are you doing?

Doing good. Not bad. It's not a little hotter here in Austin. Then I would like for it to be. It's too. It's like 90 something degrees. They always start putting tickets on the cars when it gets hot, too. So people

have to go. So I have the tickets melters at the tires.

I'm not sure. I wish it was the tickets tickets. Rachel, why don't you take a take a moment to introduce yourself and give us a background on who you are, what you're doing and what you care about right now.

Yeah, you bet. So my name is Rachel Gertz, and I work out of a company I quote found a company called Louder than 10. So I do a lot of process consulting and also project management training. I have a background in education, English education, and I do, Ah, lot. I love content strategy. Um, I also really love to research things. And you can find me down a rabbit hole sometimes where I just I want to find out everything there is to know about a topic. And I love talking about things like artificial intelligence and having really deep political debates. Don't get me started and exploring like any of this kind of space stuff. Elon Musk gets it gets me every time. So if you guys ever want to talk that stuff, you come find me.

Maybe we can have ah, talk about some of the the USS candidates after this.

You know,

you're you're in Canada, so I'm sure you're watching from afar. Laughing way

may be joining

you depending on how, this whole way Maybe moving fun size of Canada.

Who knows? I was gonna say I would have preemptively tell you that we have open borders and no wall. So if you need to come here, please do, because we will welcome you with open arms. That's

awesome. S o. I guess both of us missed Owner camp Montreal. Uh, are you gonna be a digital project management summit in Houston?

I plan to. Yeah. It's one of those things where you just like I miss my friends there. We've met so many great people. I mean, we I think that's where we first met Anthony. Like three. What a great event is just super cool to see, kind of like a little nest for people who were doing this kind of work. So it's great to see owners and stuff to coming to you Some of these and creative leaves and all of these other roles as well.

Those of you listening their designers or owners or project managers. You should definitely check out the Digital Project Management Summit. They they do it one or two events a year, and they're really, really killer. The one that I went to where I met met you. Rachel was probably one of the best conference is that I have ever been to. I think it was because we were talking about some of the things we're gonna talk about today that go outside of what it's like doing the craft of design is are these series of events at all connected Thio like owner camp? Yeah, the same company that puts them together. And they're doing, like, a creative director thing. Yes, you this month. Okay. I don't know if they're connected or not.

Okay, cool. So, um, maybe tell us a little bit about what your company is doing. The kind of kind of folks you guys work with, and I'm actually just didn't learning a little bit more about that, too.

Yeah, you bet. So I'm louder than 10. We've been running now for about seven years. We started out as a two person studio, and we actually, at the time, we were sort of wondering like, Well, where do we where do we take this? And we didn't really We were living in Calgary, which I don't know if you guys have ever heard this, but Calgary is kind of like like the Texas of Canada. It's an interesting anomaly, and there's lots of creative communities, but there's also lots of kind of the mix of, you know,

white color and some different political views and things. So we decided to take our kind of show on the road. I guess if you want to call it that and we got a Winnebago and we started travelling around for a year, and I think it really it shifted a lot of our attitudes about not only designed, but just like what it is to to be vulnerable. Meet people rely on kindness of strangers, things like that where you know, you're sleeping on a driveway with a garden hose off, filling up your water supply. It's it's it was really humbling and really need experience. Um, it was Ah, it was interesting because, you know, I had always wanted to teach, but not in a school.

The idea of a brick building was really gross. And when I got out of my teaching degree, you know, it just kind of set the wheels in motion for us. So what we what? We sort of shifted to re realize, you know, there are a lot of very, very talented teams out there in terms of design. Um, I had kind of taken up the project management role is a lot of people do where they actually don't get formally trained, they just fall into it. I'd say most 95 to 98% of the folks I've talked to you. Um, but it is, you know,

a lot about taking those those skill sets and internalizing them and finding out how that can help you manage your manager time in your project. So anyway, um, we started thinking about ways that we could help other agencies and, you know, product teams and just smaller companies were trying to internalize technology. You know, like we're working with a really awesome a lawyer right now. And we reached out with actually, that's a few lawyers and does other folks two accountants and things like that who are trying to internalize technology. We realized that ah, lot of the sort of skill sets and involved in project management are just things that every person needs to know. It's not, you know, not so much a rule, but just a skill set.

And, you know, that's not to say that there aren't really talented folks out there who have PM hat on. I think that's pivotal to. So

it feels good to hear you say that a lot or most people that you talk to kind of have fallen into that role because, you know, when we're thinking about it sometimes, UM, I guess I feel like that happens a lot. And so it's good to hear the other people do. Maybe it's because most people you talk to are in need of your help. I don't know. That could be. It's also hard from the small business perspective because you know you want to you want to build a do good team, you want to do good work, you want to deliver, you wantto provide a great experience for your team and for your clients. But then there's other things that sort of roadblocks you have toe get over like you know, how many people can you actually afford afford to employ? What's you know, what's the right way to invest and how do you distribute all these?

You know, soft and hard skills across the team. It's it's very challenging Thio to figure out. I mean, I'd be lying if I said that, you know, we have that we have that solved but Yeah, I do agree that, like, you know, there's there's a There's a lot of things that are really important for anyone that's working with a customer at all. You know, you need to learn. How do you guys when you're working with designers or agencies or studios? I mean, what are some of the things that let the fundamentals that you you teach that you know, the basics that individuals need toe have to in order to perform correctly?

Um, I think it's really important. Thio focus on first and foremost empathy. This is probably something that is almost like beating on old drum. But I think even Erin, on your last podcast, your business developer talked a lot about emotional intelligence. Um, and not only is it vital, but it's something I think it's really important to remember that this is something that's usually taught, embodies, taught. You don't just you are not just born an empathetic person. So you know, I don't know if you guys remember this, but there was a story in the news years ago. I think in Florida were like two kids set another kid on fire and everyone was shocked because they were like,

Well, how could how could you know this happened? And like, what's wrong with our world? And when it comes back to it, you know, behaviors like that, they're they're learned behaviors, and so we have to teach empathy. And so if if we are not conscious of what empathy is and does and how we use it in a business sense, because again, how are we taught to use empathy at work? Remember when your kids share be nice, but what does that translate to in a business sense, right? That's that's pivotal.

Um, I think some of the other things that are really important for the skill set and and the rule of a P M. R to look at trying to identify always those project goals and keeping everyone focused on them. I can't tell you how many times I talked with different teams, and they just they'd never set goals with the clients, like they're kind of It's almost like a tedious or kind of jokey process. We're like, Yeah, goals, goal setting, you know, But But really, what is anchoring? What do you What do you working towards? What are you trying to accomplish right. So making sure that this this person or thes people on the team are all clear on what those goals are and how you can actually meet them.

Yeah, I think you just add to that. I know your kind of continuing down a list here, but just to add to that when I would say like something that's really tough with with us with that particular thing is not like we have no problem setting goals. I think I think it's really, really difficult. Like while we're in the weeds and working on the project to even remember to like measure are are are, you know, progress on those goals like we set goals all the time, but like actually keeping them in front of us like that's really difficult. So I just wanted to add that little on into that particular point you mentioned. So sometimes I I'm sorry at him in Europe, I was gonna say, Sometimes I suffer from forgetting the goal, like maybe maybe I helped establish the go like, Oh, we're gonna wait.

We're going to try to read, redefine what it's like, you know, in a to do a Mac up with writing experience. And then then I get involved and I start making decisions that that actually you're moving in a different direction and working, agile, right, like it's made to be that way to allow, like, product as it's being created, to pivot and go this way and that way and this way and that way. And so, like when something like huge thing comes crashing into you, the road map on things change like that happens like pretty often, and so is really, really tough to stay focused on what was the goal?

And then is that goal even relevant anymore? Totally. Yes. Sorry. Probably totally three off where you're going.

Oh, no. I think that's actually a really good point, Ric and I mean to theirs. They're sort of there's layers to the goals, right? So there are project goals, but there's also business goals, and I think you know, in terms of what that company wants to accomplish, they could probably from a high level, you know, really come down on. We want to focus on either a growth or B, you know, sustainability. We want to focus on,

you know, launching a product and increasing revenue by acts, you know, like there's some sort of like high level goals that might might make a little easier where you can allow your project goes to shift around a natural process. But as long as you know, like the PM rule would help to kind of always draw back to the business case for wire approaching a direction the way, the way you weren't and it oration should be kind of reinforcing that that direction. Hopefully,

I like that. You said innit? Oration specifically. Well, just because we've been thinking about, um what we used to consider sprints, as as it orations like periods of it orations. Um, but okay, so I have a question kind of like back to what you were talking about in like, the the core of it. I mean, I really like that you're adding in, like, look, you know, whether there's a pivot or not.

We need to make sure and measure that this is going against the business schools because even if there is a pivot like I don't know, you're halfway through designing a product, and there's another product that has, like, a very, very similar thing. So you gotta pivot, but then there's still business goals that sort of stay the same, like we need to get this particular benchmark. So, yeah, I just kind of like put a period on that. I think that is actually something and may have just understood for the first times that while there's always product pivots, the business goals are are typically not. Not changing its just pivots based on what? The way you know,

a business goal is trying to be reached, just like Oh, I can't go that way. We got to turn around and go around this way there kickoff meetings and stuff like that. I've always been the hardest for me because easy for me to get passionate talking about design. But then sometimes forget, you know, toe lay the groundwork for the initial goal planning. And there's a couple like a couple articles that I read late lately that gave me some tips on like some very simple questions to ask. One of them is, um, one of them is like, uh how, like, as an agency like, how do we help you as a client be successful in your organization?

Because the answer might be we need to, like, prove like speed or the ability to innovate or another complete opposite might be. We need to like, I need to build trust with my boss and I need to do that slowly. And I think one of the hardest things that I think creative people are designers is struggle with. Unless there they unless they've been in the product world for a while and they realize it takes time to do things, is it? They can get almost, um, really excited about doing something big like a complete redesign and maybe get a little butt hurt when they realize they can't do that immediately that they have to do this baby step. But that baby step unlocks like some goal for the client or the customer to get the budget for the next step or whatever. And that goes along with the empathy she's saying, like having empathy for the user and, like actually leading them along something I felt I find myself good, sir.

Oh, yeah, and two with empathy. It's, you know, empathy for your client and where they're at, you know, uh, we have to remember we're not We're not just building APS like We're basically building businesses and there's a lot of risk there, and you know, they have everything to lose. We have a client to lose, and so when they are approaching us, they're putting their hearts on the table and hoping you're not going to stab him, right? So we have to. We really have to look at how we can use empathy.

And I mean, trust absolutely is important. But, you know, it's it's sort of like one of those things we have to consider. You know, when we talk about miscommunication, you know how that can affect the project and the business, right? And what kind of impact that has theirs. Something called keyhole communication and us might have traditionally heard of her to those, like happening a lot in the more sort of waterfall style methodologies we're basically like, So you sit down in your kick off right and or even let's leave before your kickoff. You have your first meeting with your client, your biz Dev Persons this down and talks to your client a potential and everything that that person gleans. They have to somehow communicate that to do the next person who needs to receive that information.

So, you know, ideally, it would be a PM or if you do, haven't you know, on your team of product manager, it depends how you set your sort of service is because when you're dealing with agile, it's that weird blend, right? There's all kinds of rules that might be on your side of the client side, but essentially, when you talk about keyhole communication, you're like losing 75 to 80% of whatever you just learned. Because it's like you're taking a sponge in dripping it over a really narrow cup. And you cannot, you know,

passed that information off. So traditionally, you know PM's were and you might have. This is sort of like Thea. What do you call it? A traditional idea of what comes do. It's like we'll just write a lot of documents Well, like right and, you know, and you ex was like, right, a lot of FX and a lot of stories, and we'll just like document the hell out of everything and then that way, if we have, if we wanna refer back, we can close those gaps.

So there has to be this fundamental balance between creating busywork. That is just, you know, deliver Bols that get tossed away. And nobody ever comes back to them versus delivering and actually doing work that is going to get people closer to understanding what we're accomplishing together. It's called Why is that called keyhole communication? Oh, yeah. Keyhole. Because if the picture looking through a keyhole, you can only see kind of a portion until you get closer to that key, right? Like the closer you get, the better

your view. Yeah, Yeah. Okay, Cool. I

get it. Yeah, yeah, its interesting. And I don't know, I have a couple more too. If you guys are here, Yeah, we'll let you finish.

Your thoughts are really so you

don't know what that's so so the other kind of areas with that I think are really important, you know, a P M. Rollers. So that skill set is to really be a champion for your team. You know, like they're basically dealing with a lot of pressure. There's there's deadline pressure sometimes even just, you know, sprint to sprint. You're still dealing with a lot of kind of predictive pressure. And there's the that disappointment Where if you do create something and you might not even need to be too attached to the work that you do, But we're all we'll get attached, like I know even when I'm a content. And then my partner, Travis, is like,

yeah, doesn't really, uh, does that really say what we wanted to say? I get a little like, Oh, that's hard. That's really hard. But I'm gonna just Okay, does it? What are we trying to accomplish? You know, trying to help support your team through those tough conversations where they might have some dirt kicked in their eyes, you know, and kind of showing them like it's okay, you know,

we're doing a good job. And so the PM's rules kind of hate to say it, but this way, but it's kind of to take it from the top end from the bottom of the same time they're taking from the client, and they're sort of taking it from the team. And they're acting. Is that really soft padding between the two so that they can both communicate across and reduce those barriers?

So that's actually a really interesting point, and I'm gonna potentially derail you again so for that in advance,

but

something that we were interested in talking to you about to was the fact with the question of Should creatives be doing like project management? Like, is it Are they replacement for a project management in some situations? Maybe in most situations, I'd say. Probably not love to hear your opinion on it. But there's product companies out there now. Envision is a product company that's totally distributed, and their designers like all their their P m p M R. In fact, designers like doing design work. And I think we even had, uh that's because there I mean that you're talking about product managers. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely like,

definitely important to make make a differentiation there. But at the same, I think the question is the same should should designers like be doing either of those jobs? And I think it was Adam Saint from bench we had on last season. Also Canadian. Also Canadian. Yeah, yeah, um, he he was saying that he felt that, you know, designers are best suited to be to be doing doing those types of roles,

but because

of what you just said, I think that that you know, makes actually a very unique challenge for a designer creative to be in that role because you sort of need, You know, while you're getting close to the work, you need to make able to maintain, like, a different like level of, um, you know, objectivity, which is very, very difficult to do and even, like neither say, impossible to do when you're actually like the one doing the work, too. You know,

like, how can you be totally objective about your own work? You know, like that's really, really tough. So the question that I that I pose here is is it is it practical to really think that, um, designers or creatives can actually fill that role without somebody else? That's that's a sort of non designer person supporting them.

I have so much to say about that. You know what? Ultimately, what it'll have to be is that your company has to decide that for itself. Every company has to decide that. So I don't know if you guys happen to read this article yet if you get a chance. Mike Davidson. He used to be the design director. Twitter, right? And the founder of news. Fine. So you actually talks about his time a Twitter as a design duck director and just like when he was working with product managers and sort of what the traits of those product managers should be. And I mean, essentially, what he outlined was, again an empathy,

understanding, communication. And he added, like that you should be able to have a really good business sense in the business savvy sense. And then, finally, his thing was taste, which, you know, that's a great thing to have someone who's going to be guiding product development. Right? So, um, what I what? I really wanted to kind of dig in to you, though.

Is that so? Rather not your product manager or object manager. I know. Okay, there's a lot of people getting really flappy around the sort of the differences between those rules. I'm not gonna get into that because that's a whole other conversation. But what I can say is that there is there is a specific role. And yes, every person on the team should have PM skills. Like all the things we just talked about. Every team members should probably be hired for those things less for fit more for Can they be savvy business sense? Can they be empathetic all those things? But the one thing is that the PM role is designed so that that one person is accountable for the project being a success. No one else carries that burden on their shoulders. But the PM's role is to be accountable for that project. And that means that that PM role,

they are supposed to not only be able to see what's going on in the project down to the detail, right, they need to know, like if there's if the code is working or the design and code, If there's a breakdown between the intersection points where you know their communication, uh, felt a lot of the plate, Or maybe they even are just not aligning with again those business goals and they're going a little bit in the wrong direction. PM needs to see those details, but the PM also needs to be able to balance that with a very high level strategy. Focus for where that project is going, even if it's a product they need to know right where the product is headed. And does that align with with the weeds. Are we going in the right direction? If if you look at every single team mate, they are not only carrying the load off the creative burden,

right? And I hate to say burden because it's not a burden, but just just in terms of the overall load that they carry right there doing their design, their coding, they're doing amazing content writing there, doing research in U X, who has the job of asking the tough questions about the project, who has the job of going back to the client and reading red flags and risks from the client that are going to not only indicate, are we doing the right thing? But how does this impact the scope of the project and the timeline of the project? Because if you don't recognize the ways that body language, certain ways of communicating, even things like adding multiple layers of stakeholders are going to impact your project in terms of budget timeline and just quality, then you're estimating the wrong thing and you're doing the wrong work. So that's the thing that I kind of wanted to leave you with, and I know that's a tough you have to decide for yourselves.

No, I mean, I really respect that perspective. I think that's actually I think you actually gave ah more definitive answer than I thought you were headed towards. So no, I I appreciate that. And I think you touch on some very, uh, interesting things there. Um, if you know, like, if a designer right is in charge of managing a product in addition to being the designer and the design is having a problem, you know who you're gonna blame or who you gonna hold accountable for that? Like, Hey, we're having some design problems.

Well, it's a pretty logical that you told the designer to that. But if that designer is also having, like, some project like, you know, like the roadmap issue, or like if it's client service is like the clients is irritated about this or that, then who you gonna hold responsible? The designer I may be. But aren't they, like, more focused on creativity? I don't know. There's there's other sides to that, too.

Like, um, we kind of have layers of designers now at at fun size. And so we have designed directors that are sort of, um, working day to day with design. But they're also like, maybe like if the designers day today or like in the weeds, the design directors or maybe like, uh, 50 100 feet above, you know, in a view, since you know, So maybe they're they're you know, that's kind of how we're doing it right now.

So not toe not to completely oversimplified. But I think it's the challenge, you know, like some people might have all the skills or combos of the skills. But if you put too much of any one thing on someone there, something else that they're doing is bound to suffer. So, like, for me is like, I couldn't do all the creative direction and do all the sales and do X, y and Z So it was That was natural, you know, hire people even though I can sell higher. And to do that, even though I can creative, direct split that up between three design directors and more recently were been faced with a lot of these sort of issues,

like Okay, we do great design work like everyone on the team is you oppose the value system really well. But how can a design director. Stay focused on design. If there's no one you know, managing the project, and someone does need to be accountable for that because, you know, like right before we started hearing the record button you were talking about, something was really important to me about managing the expectations and what happens when you failed to deliver. Even once you failed to do something once it could, you might lose that trust forever. And, you know, you know, there's so many ways to structure teams,

and I think, but I think that's really important. You know, i e I still have a lot to learn about. Like how the best way to do this. I mean, I wish I wish that, you know, budgets and all that weren't a concern, because I would just, you know, build this. Like, most perfect. I think we should go back to the way where you were doing, like,

creative direction sales, like all the biz, Dev and, you know, and actually designing to, like, we should just go back to that. That that that was working pretty good. Yeah, we, uh you know, we you know, we we've had a lot of experiments with how we do this. I think that the thing that we're doing right now, I have the most faith. And we hired someone to kind of,

you know, stepping and gonna be ahead ahead of projects and the part of it that you know, even though I mean, I'm not as technical on the work as Rick is, but from the business management side, like someone that really make sure that we're that we're delivering a delightful, productive process and that we're adapting and that we're allowing two values and, you know, measuring the the client expectation how that how that one person will add the right value over 6 to 7 projects at a time. I don't know

a lot of this whole thing, you know, building processes and kind of refining operations. It's all it's all about a bit about experimentation, right, cause I don't think anyone does have the answers. We're just trying to figure out better ways to work, and there's so many different approaches and methodologies, and so you can't get bogged down in a methodology or, you know, like rolls and titles that has to be about doing good work together and I think you guys like I do, I really respect all of the information direction that you've sort of shared over the last little while because I think that's really it's showing that no matter where we are on that sort of, you know, phase in our businesses like you're still learning, everybody's still learning. And I think that's super powerful.

Yeah, I mean, I think I think that, you know, the way we approach product design is that we embrace an agile process. We're really only, you know, planning like two weeks ahead, because it's it's sort of just unrealistic t plan beyond that and like that, we've sort of taken that thio, um, the concept of how things air working with fun size, you know, like we're trying things out like constantly and just kind of feeling it out as we go and trying to just, you know, like, be really,

really critical about like, is this really working? No. Let's try something else, you know, and and be just very open minded of doing so. I think the other theater realization to me is that like all like I mean, I'm sure every freelancer studio agency has a similar problem that not one project is identical to the other. Unless you're just making like unless you specialize on one thing like e commerce design or something that specific. Yeah, And to me, why things interesting is having all these different people with all these very different skill sets and being able to move them around If you need to write, like, have a project manager in pair of that person with a designer for this project, this project despair a couple designers together, I don't know.

But that seems to be the best, you know, solution that I can come up with, You know, until you know, we're in a position where we can structure everything I want a more, you know, identical fashion. But it is tough and and it is it is Ah, very, you know, clear that. You know, it's really tough to be doing, You know, four different things and doing those all it,

you know, the same level, you know, same same level work. And, you know, I think my you know where you have a lot of value to bring here. Is that you? You're You've been in this world for a long time where I have it. I'm curious. Like, if you have, you know, advice for the listeners out there that it may be freelancers or working for a small studio or an agency are also trying to figure out this these issues, like, how would you?

Well, well, they said number one, reach out to you and hire you. But if you had advice to them on howto think about, I mean, I know it's probably hard to like generalize it. But how should someone think about doing this? Well, like in terms of, you know, the principles of the kind of roles they need or how how to think about how many people you need to do this. I mean, is there anything that that you that you can share?

Yeah. I mean, so we work with a lot of we work with, like smaller companies, like small to medium sized companies, because I find So this is our This is our sort of own internal thing where we were like, you know, what? We could work with large, large agencies and enterprises, and we could go in and try to change the process. But I think what I really discovered. And I talked a lot to Travis about this was You know, when you want to put energy into something, you want that energy to have an impact. And so when you're dealing with large, often bureaucratic structures,

you you can only do so much. And I we really wanted to have a larger impact. So we said, you know, like we wanna work with people who get people, they care about their teams and they care about the work that they do. And the money, like obviously, money is the thing that keeps the rudder moving. But it cannot be sort of the primary motivation for what we're doing here, because I don't know if you guys have been paying attention, but eventually we're probably gonna have a very big cut in our job sector down the road when we start looking at how all these ways Aye, aye. And all these other sort of machine learning things are gonna automate the work we do. So we have to figure out how to be sustainable and to be sustainable. We have to look at creating processes that work for our people.

So, you know, we often talk a lot about, like, don't hire for fit because fit basically means you want someone who acts just like you do and you want. You want people who are gonna make you better Different than you were gonna make challenge you to think differently. So when we're talking to vote, I

started comments again on that, but I actually wrote that down earlier. When you when you mention that because, you know, we've been, you know, we've been growing a little bit. We've been, like, going hiring in in a few different directions and like that sort of like our number one thing is cultural fit, you know? But as soon as he said that I started, you know, my mind kind of started going. That's that's actually really, really interesting. I yeah,

I think that is, too. I mean, that's that's really inspiring. Our wrote a read an article the other day. I can't who wrote it, but it was like general business advice, and one of the things on there was intentionally hire people that are different and forced them to work together or or or force that Yeah, that's a good point. Please carry on

I had No. Well, I mean, as long as they have those those core central skills right where they are, they're trying to work together, and they, you know, they have empathy and they have the business skills like they might, you know, if you're hiring people from different backgrounds, different sexes and different, you know, sort of history's like, you're you're encouraging in inviting new ideas that will help kind of blow up all of our you know, we all build things in the same way right now. Like if you look a TTE uh, overall in Silicon Valley,

like we're making products that are all very similar. And were there functioning in a similar way for a similar audience? Like what if we could make that look and feel different and I don't know, We just really think that there's there's, there's something else out there that we're we're getting there. There's lots of conversations happening, but we just have to kind of blow the lid off of it. So, um, so I think you guys were asking me about sort of like, Is it like setting up the system And, like what? Like what kind of advice we would have for people who are looking at spending this well

is that I think your answer was actually a lot different than what I was asking. But it was more inspiring because it's it. Sounds to me like the way that you guys approaches is not necessarily force feeding a certain, you know, methodology your ideology on a company, but helping them sort of navigate what works best for them. And I think that's pretty powerful.

That's cool. You really want to work with companies who want to be sustainable. They want they want a last like I don't know if you guys read this the I think Fortune five Zehr now lasting on average about 5 to 15 years Max before they there and gone like How is that possible? We're living in this very tenuous world now where you know even the biggest best ideas are they're coming and they're going. And so oh, you know, again, people feel differently about this stuff. Growth isn't a bad thing. It's just that when it's run away and it definitely doesn't serve your people that that are, you know, doing the work for you, then we have to kind of look at like, Well, what is important? Why are we doing these things? So So when we work with with folks,

we really wanna work with folks who feel I feel the same way as that. And maybe that would maybe some people like all you're just hiring for fit. But really, what we want is we want to make sure that we're aligned on goals. And if they have a different way of getting there, we just want to say, Well, let's see what's working for you guys already. So let's look at your systems like, What do you What do you guys use for tools? Um, what's your project drag? Great. So in other words, do you start projects when you say you're going to start? Um,

do the end when you say that you're gonna end them because you can actually get a lot of information from from a company based on those those details, right? If they drag a lot, then you know there's something happening that is causing that drag, and you have to go into, like, project profitability. Are you guys consistently, um, under or less than 10% over on your project budgets. And if you're over, why is it happening? Um, what kind of I think we said tool sets do you use? And what kinds of processes do you put in place? Like,

Are you using collaborative communication or are you styling your workers incidentally, without even realizing it? If you slack, how do you use Black to encourage that kind of collaboration instead of actually, you know, closing those conversations down things like that, you know, just really getting people to sort of re evaluate the way that they work together and half the time they have most of the answers. And it's just like, sort of, we're changing the gays, just changing the gaze a little bit and making it more about like, let's let's go fix this problem together. So not prescriptive at all. Just explore it of

school. Yeah, that's that's kind of like altering Cem Cem thoughts. I think that we're kind of currently have right here. Uh, but yeah, that I mean, well,

let me let me

actually challenge something you said and just just kind of proud that a little bit. You said that you can learn a lot about a company from just understanding the drag time of their projects. So, like, how do they started when they think, say, they're going to start? Did they finish when they say What? Can you learn from that? Other than that there, I mean, what conclusions can you draw from seeing if somebody is accurate with that or inaccurate?

Totally, Totally. So So, at first glance, you're going to see just data, right? You're going to see okay, start dates or later, So you have to. So this is this is the process. You start, you start making assumptions. Assumptions are not dangerous unless you do not vet them. If you do not vet your assumptions and challenge them, that's where you get into hot water, right? So as a team,

when you're going to your client and asking questions, if they're telling you something and you're like writing it down, but then you never challenge it. That's the part where you have two big We might not be going on the right path. So for me, when we're looking at project drag, we wouldn't just say OK, project drag up. Your projects are consistently starting two weeks late. Therefore, you must be having problems closing your contracts and projects are not finishing on time because communication is poor. Know what we would do probably would be to look at the root cause analysis. So you guys may have heard this puts the Toyota method. Basically, you ask why five times you ask why? Why,

why, Why? Why? I think I said it five times until you get to the root of what is really happening, but it gives clues about things that could be impacting it. So you're just using it as one metric so that when your resource planning and you're trying to say, Okay, do we need a design on this to be in content? Strategist. Do we need a full stack? When do they need to? Come on now if a project is dragging it, maybe because there's a lot of other things happening there where, um, you know contracts aren't closing on time? Or have you guys ever had this where you have There's an executive board or a legal board involved?

And so even though we had all agreed that we would have signed off for this it oration or this outcome at this time, well, that extra. It actually ended up adding an additional, like three weeks, four weeks to the budget or to the timeline, and there's nothing any of us could do. Except had we known going in that that would happen. We could have allocated more time for that, right? We always forget. It's not just implementation on our side, right? Not just not just building the thing. It is about planning for the response on their side, for processing that, too. So I know that that might different from a lot of the agile approach that you guys might take. So just a different way to look

at it. I think it's the same principles, you know, like the things that we do. Like, Rick said. We plan every two weeks and those you know, sometimes that's very conk. You know you're gonna do it. It's concrete. Sometimes it's assumptions. You don't know exactly how long something is going to take, but you're saying, Oh, well, let's let's invest three days into this and then getting the client to agree to that. But then what always happens for us is we're always because of this process.

We're always asking our customers to pick what's the most important thing to them at the time, because every decision that they're gonna make is gonna push something else back. But you know, it's the same principle, cause, like, right now we just kicked up. There's a There's a project we just kicked off number one. We started two days later just because of how long it took to organize a meeting with a very big corporate company. And so that already on day one of the project, there's already confusion about Well, when is the first iteration actually start? And what? How does that? How does that affect the end date? And that's obviously something you have to talk with a customer about,

like immediately before they lose the You know, before that you started out the gate with no trust, and then when we started doing the initial planning today, when I was doing it, I realized, well, we thought we had an assumption about what the project was, but then when we kicked it off, we learned a lot more about what they needed. And when we started writing that into the project plan, we realized, well, we only have half the amount of time that we need. So, you know, like you.

It just is an example. Already in day one with a client, there's already two big things that have to be discussed. Like we don't have enough time for this project. Do you want us? To which which 50% of it do you want us to get done? And, well, how do we reconcile these two days that we were slow start.

How'd it go?

It hasn't happened yet. Well, it's

gonna be going, Yeah, at

hand. Yeah. So we have we weak, and that's just an example. And that kind of stuff happens every two weeks. And we, you know, we did realize that it's hard for designers to be focused on that heads down to a generation work and for our design leaders to be focused on directing that, plus being strategic, like, who's managing the client expectation?

Oh, totally. And you guys probably have additional complexity to because, like, I forget how exactly structure this. But a lot of the time, you guys were like, kind of acting as the internal design team for a client, and I don't know. How long did you guys say your typical partnerships last like you're trying to go for ongoing collaboration, right? It's just they are the

team. It really depends. I mean, most of our engagements will start out at about three months, and we'll use it to kind of test it on both sides. And if it works out, it's very typical that a client will renew 2 to 5 times consecutively,

which I

think proof like proves our value. Like last month, 82 or more percent of all of our clients will repeat customers that have done more than two engagements, 2 to 5 engagements. And sometimes these conspire man for 69 12 months at a time. And, like you said, a lot of those our product companies, where were essentially their design solution or augmenting their team in some way. And that's a whole different animal, because the person that hired us is most likely the product manager like, you know, and they have, like a product team behind them in a designer research team behind them and an engineering team behind them and sometimes even design. And so the it's, um it's a weird dynamic because they are in charge of the strategy. They're in charge of the road map.

We can help influence that, and we can bring our ideas the table. But a lot of the times, that's, um it's directed to us versus the other half of our projects were It's like maybe an early stage of word directing the strategy and in that team has way less experience with product management or product management or understanding how decisions effect time, cost quality and all that good stuff.

Are you drawn to either one of the other You feeling like this? This sort of nice balance? Or I think

that we're continually drawn to keep a good balance of those things. I think once we start teetering one way or the other, our team starts getting fidgety and like too much enterprise. They're all this, you know, not enough big. You know, big things were working on or whatever. So like, Yeah, I think we've done a pretty dese jobs so far of keeping it balanced. But I don't see us ever going one way or the other more, more or less agree with that. It's hard because, you know, like some of our Big Bayer clients were paired up with a product manager. We're doing a lot of execution against their strategy,

which is cool, right? You like you get to work on you get to execute this stuff, and you get to see it built near where you work. Really? Collaborative engineers. That's cool. But it's also cool when you're in a position to inform what you're gonna build. And that's a whole different set of skills, right? And and then there may be there. Maybe they have 1/3 party engineer, right? And then they all like not all companies could just spend money over and over again without repercussion. So, you know, a lot of the stuff that we lot of this the other half of the stuff we like to do in this early stage sort of bucket really means that we have to bring Maur skill sets to the table to help

navigate that. Yeah, absolutely. We could see that for sure.

They're arguably harder. Yeah, um, we heard that you're gonna be on the road doing some presentations and stuff like that. Why don't you tell us about those? Maybe some folks want to go. Or maybe they are going

Yeah, for sure. So we've got a couple cool things I'm really, really excited about. We're going to pull in for a very first time and my very first tattoo, but we're going to be speaking at as part of the soap conference, which is actually specifically designed for content writers. And and I'm sure there'll be. A lot of designers there were talking about, sort of that that content and design love together and how we can build those things in tandem. And then we've been invited to speak at the Content Design Conference in Vancouver in July, the ones Esti Fisher puts on and his wife and partner. So we're really excited about those and doing a collaboration workshop leader this false of learning, sort of like how to get your team to play together almost like a jazz band, right effortlessly and And how we increased communication across those channels. Eso you confined us. We're be posting a lot of that information fairly shortly on the on the site so you can find us that louder than 10 dot com.

Um, but yeah, Ultimately, we're just We're excited. We'll hopefully see you guys at the Digital Project Management Summit Um, and I would seriously like the thing I really want to sort of drive home, I think, is that people have kind of like have a like P M has a bit of a bad rap. I'm not quite sure why, but I think it's because maybe the folks who have worked with PM's, maybe they didn't have a great experience, and so they've kind of summed it up is like I don't really need him, But I would really challenge people t just sort of like, Look at what we're talking about at the base of this right, which is those core skill sets and just championing each other, making sure we're there for each other,

having great conversations and focusing on doing good work. And I think like if we can't stop sort of trifling over like product and project and producer and all of these other terms, I just focus on doing good work, like maybe I don't know. Maybe that's just the next step,

you know? Yeah, I can definitely appreciate that. It's hard to say we can completely Diskant connect from defining, and I think at some point, like everyone's gonna be looking for an answer for that. But yeah, I agree. At this point, it's just a distraction from from the good work that we could be doing. Um, What about you mentioned your website? Um, can you throw out your Twitter handle s so people could follow you and tweet and stuff?

Yeah, absolutely. It's at louder than 10. So that's Ah, tee hee and not not 10 and, yeah, we're gonna be kind of sharing a bunch of new things that we've got coming up. We've got a coax magazine that we invite people to just talk about the real stuff, you know, like everything in your life is a project. If you're, you know, you're burying your dog or your you know, we're moving into a new house. Everything we do is a project. And I think it's for all the project lovers. You know, people who just really want to share a story. And it's about working together and trying to figure each other out where human were weird. And we gotta celebrate

that. We are. We are weird. Especially Anthony. But other than

that, Yeah, cool. Well, thank

you so much. We really appreciate your time I think a lot of the stuff that you said is actually already instantly influential. Thio Anthony and I, um So thank you very much for sharing your wisdom today. Appreciate it.

I love you guys. I really thank you so much for just keep keep sharing this stuff. This is amazing. And it's just really need to be, you know, trying to talk to more folks who you get this stuff and you and you guys totally get This is really need to be ableto, you know, share that. So thank you for the this opportunity.

Thank you for making time and whether or not I could make the conference, I'll definitely drive down to Houston. Hang out. Just let me know if you're coming. Yeah, You bet. That sounds great. All right. All right. Cool. Thanks a lot. Hey, thanks so much for listening today. This is Rick. I'm sure you've all heard of envisioned. The product is practically synonymous with screen design. We're stuck.

That envision is now a sponsor of hustle. Something we love about envision is that they are so highly involved in the community. These guys really care about where design is going and the support creative loads of design. Resource is you, like kids designed process and interview articles on their block, which is great for just general inspiration when building products. Aside from being a great prototyping tool, they also have features for a project management, creating mood boards and presentations, live collaborative screen share ings and, like a 1,000,000 other useful things. I literally do not have enough time t even list all their features, but they pretty much got what you need. Bottom line. They don't just want you to be a user. They want to empower you with their tools so that you can do your best work.

And I think that's pretty cool. Overall takeaway. If you haven't heard about in vision or haven't checked him out in a while, just play around with their latest features. They have a free trial and a really impressive lineup of industry leading design and project management tools. Their home pages. Just envision app dot com Check Mouth Hustle is brought to you by Fun Size. A digital product design agency in Austin, Texas, secretes delightful, innovative products for mobile web and beyond.