way. Hustle. This is Rick and Rick Messer. And well, I'm only Rick Messer. I'm not Rick and Rick Messer, but I'm really mess your host. And I'm here with Anthony or embarrassment host. So, guys, uh, we are sitting here with our buddy Prayer in Pelle. Confidante. Wait, is that? Yeah. That's really okay.

Yeah, it's a real thing. Sure. Way real should. Yeah, that's right. So we're here with Aaron O'Hearn. He is has been working with fun size. Man, have you been here for, like, over a year now? We're cresting. Were one year we're cresting. Wow. Some things bad about that word we are approaching.

Okay, I like that better. Um, Well, ma'am, I guess it has been about a year. Uh, tell us so a little bit. About what? What you do at fun size and who and who you are. What do you do? You Philip business or something?

One could say that. Yeah. Businesses developed here. Yes, indeed. Um, sure. So just by way of background, um, you know, before coming down to Austin, I spent the last just about four years running a business that I have found it and served as the CEO. We were education, business. But if you really boil it down, we're a people business. And our job was to find people help,

understand what was really important to them, and figure out the path that we could put them on for them to achieve. Whatever it was, it was really important to them. I think that's kind of been a common theme for some of my career, right? I did something very similar. And techstars I did it when I was working in Paris as me. I are for this accelerator program. Um, so the threat is around human engineering or frankly, I think people design human design and engineering outcomes that are important for you.

Why, What made you interested in that? Like, why'd you get into that path of I think it

just sort of happened. Um, I heard somebody tell me once that I needed to do everything I could to increase my surface area for luck. So do things that expanded my footprint, do things that made me useful for other people and good things will happen. So I think I try to do that on then. Just sort of happened into a place where I was spending most of my time working with other people, helping, you know, orchestrate what it is they were was important to them. That was an investment. That was a new job, if that was the deal, whatever that was. So I don't know that it was super intentional getting there, but I'm happy to be here.

That's cool. What was the name of the company that you had started out? And

it's called the Startup Institute in Boston. In Boston? Yes. So we started in Boston. We opened a campus in New York City, Chicago, London, England, and Berlin, Germany.

I still what lies like a hot box. Yeah. No, that's awesome, though. But I mean, why? Why wise and what did you What did kids, people, people that went to this thing, like, way they learn? Yeah.

Yeah. So, um, I think the genesis of it is probably important to tell. I can breeze through that for our listeners here. Uh, so today, what the business looks like is and in death, full time. Well, an in depth experience that delivers education for the innovation economy. So rather than trade programs that teach plumbing, electrical work h back work. We're teaching trade programs that deliver on skills that people need to go thrive in our technology world digital marketing, sales account management development Underlying all that is ah, core program that was heavily rigid and something we call e que emotional intelligence. Yeah,

it's about soft skills. It's about your understanding of who the people are that are around you, what it is. It's important to them what they need to make that decision and then ultimately, what you need to do to get them to make the decision that you want. Um, we ultimately started the business because we believed that great talent and good people were the single largest gating factor to accompany growing. So all the venture money in the world can't help you grow your business if you can't find the right people's great point to bring on the team. Great point. So we built a small program inside of Techstars, where we hired designers and developers to work for the companies, and by the end of it, all the companies were saying, Well, we need more of these people. Can you help us find keyword being find more of these folks like we would love to hunt.

Weird hire 10. Um and we said, Well, we can't really find them, but we could help create him. We could engineer them. If you tell us what's really important to you. When you're hiring a designer or a market or a sales person or an engineer, we will back into that and we'll do it through programming will do their coaching Luther mentor ship. And we will produce the person that you want to hire.

So that's pretty cool. That's an interesting approach taken you find. Finally, somebody thio do this job and you're like, Yeah, I can I can make them for you. Make it weaken three D. Print, specialty order. What would you like? Would you like extra development skills on the side?

Yeah, but so the interesting part about that Well, I think if you really extract and I'm gonna reach here, um, it's about engineering the outcome that these individuals wanted. And in most of those cases, it was a job. Right? So we graduated over 1300 alumni across our five programs.

Wow. I

don't know that many. Yeah, better than gosh. Nearly 90% of them are in jobs that they love getting paid Maur saying that they're happier, more fulfilled. And, you know, we helped orchestrate that outcome. So I think, you know, honestly, some some of the things that I do here with you guys is very similar. I'm just orchestrating an outcome that's valuable to these companies. To our clients.

Yeah, I appreciate the transition to eye, but I didn't do that, you know, we're

gonna We're gonna keep

poking it, but I want it. Well, I just had, uh, kind of thought it might be interesting to hear about why you made the transition from from there to working with fun size Now in Texas can talk a little bit about that. Yeah, um, Rick is passing me nose cannot show. We'll talk about it. No one will know.

Frankly, it was because you passed me a note on the first day that we met, Did it, And I never looked back. Well, we did have, ah, very impactful lunch. It was a good boy at lunch on 2nd 2nd kitchen, second kitchen. Thank you. Uh, that was really impactful for me. Okay. I don't think we've ever talked about it, but we haven't. Yeah,

that was pretty important for me in my in my thought process. So there's two sides to it, I think, one of which is pretty practical in that, um my wife is originally from Texas, and as I think many people would have test you, most husbands will inevitably follow their wife somewhere. So that was part of it now. That wasn't the deciding factor. We were considering going to California or even potentially going back to Berlin. Um, I think what was really important for me coming out of my roll, it sort of institute was to find something that I felt like I could learn. And there were three things that I really did. I tell myself that I wanted to go and learn, and at the top of that list was broadly speaking the world of product,

because I've never really been in a place where I could sit with a product team Dan and day out and learn what's in their head, how they're making decisions, how they think about their work, how I can participate in their work. And so two things happened from that 20.1. I talked to a close mentor of mine, who runs a similar but a little bit further along Justine age organization called Fresh Tilled Soil. Yep, it's Guy Richard Banfield. And I said, Hey, Richard, you know, I'm I'm thinking I really want to spend some time learning, you know, learning the ropes and the product world.

Who should I talk to you? They said, Well, you gotta talk to this guy Anthony. He runs a small studio in Austin. It's on six Street. It's above a bar on. He shared some other detail with me about it that I didn't really believe until I got here. Um and yeah, I mean, you know, I think the opportunity to sit here, learn from all of you guys Ah, angles and help get into the minds of our client partners and what's important to them and watching their product development and product design cycles. Because it's different for all these companies. Everybody sort of treats it a little differently. Eso being able to see all these different flavors of how companies grow and enhance their own product is awesome.

Yeah, that is a really fun part of being at a product design agency. We don't plug in and learn all these different industries.

Plus, you get to share your knowledge about building this company and scaling it with us and that and there's all these, you know, parallels that that that makes sense. I mean, for my perspective, it was a little It was very exciting to me because, you know, in my mind at the time over a year ago is like how you know, I really need a partner to work with on business development and strategic thinking and getting the head getting deeper in the heads of the, you know, the start ups and the product companies. All that Aaron's like, I want to do it, You know what you're doing. And I was like, I wantto know what you know.

And so I mean, it's been a really interesting opportunity toe, you know, share. I think it's been a fun ride.

It's been interesting to me tubes. I kind of been exposed to it. I've never man, I can't I can't develop businessman I. It's just never been some, but it's been very interesting to see how you did it, and kind of how you, Anthony sort of handed handed off that responsibility to you because yeah, before, you know, before we hired you, it was completely fell squarely on Anthony Shoulders, which was rough for him because And I think it made the business suffer, too, because, you know, we were not didn't have access to him to kind of,

like, help out with, like, the design side of things as much as we do now that now that you've sort of taken that weight off his shoulders and it's been really nice Thio kind of have Anthony back from from the business world. But, um, yeah, can you?

Well, before you do like, I want to hear something really quick because I know a lot of people listen to this are freelancers or other owners of small businesses and they're probably asking a question like, Do I Do I do this? My opinion is yes, like, immediately. You know, if I look it looking back, if I could have done anything differently with this company, I probably would have found someone like a Rhonda Hearn and day one because, you know, the it just it the the amount of opportunity that it affords a new owner to kind of plug and where they are passionate about what they need to or to help. You know, business scale, I mean, is either I don't how to describe it.

Um, it's something that I wish that we could have done a lot of, What? That what? That said. I think we were always looking. I mean, so you know the company's three and 1/2 years old. We met Aaron, met you probably a year and 1/2 ago that we had probably been looking. You know, it's really hard to find people that are interested in working in agency world, um, and and do this kind of work. It's It's not easy. Well,

it's hard to make the decision as a business or, you know, somebody with P en el responsibility owner, manager. Whatever. It's hard to make the decision on when you bring in somebody who isn't directly billable right? If this is a scenario where we're building out against effort, however, you slice that value time, et cetera. But having a fulltime body that isn't directly related to that is a difficult decision. And, you know, I think it's a tough it's a difficult bet to make because you're not sure how quickly somebody is going to be able to produce how quickly you know they can give back to the organization and free up other time and actually create more billable opportunities. It's tough. Yeah,

so I mean, you're you're relatively new to the agency world, but you have all all this, like awesome experience. I'm really curious if you make might share with our audience. Like what? After you spent all your time talking to our current partners. Prospective partners like boots, trappers, startups, funded companies, venture capital organizations, enterprise organizations like the whole gamut like How is what is what is the What's the benefit? An agency these days, like what Air people looking for Like, What is the agency's role in And,

um, is it? I guess I'll just ask up questions to go along with that. Is it about, you know, finding people that can really push the needle? Or is it is it about just finding resource is or like what? Like how? What? How does this look? I think it's different for companies that are at different stages of their development, so you know what an early stage company coming off of Ah, you know, $750,000 seed round is looking for is different than what a growth stage startup who just raised $20 million be round is looking for, which is different than what a kn enterprise you know the size of Honeywell or Del are looking for. Um,

I guess if I had to draw a correlation between those kind of three categories now understanding there's a bunch of people that fall in between those data points and outside of them, I think most folks are looking for, frankly, a partner. We're looking for a collaborator. They're looking for a team mate or a team who can help them execute their vision now that you could unpack what the definition of execute means. And we could spend an entire hour or episode talking just about that. I think it's about finding a team of, frankly, human beings that they trust that they believe in, and that they want to be in the trenches with to go and execute against their goals.

Yeah, being being like, let's do this. But let's do this together, Yeah,

you know, I think gone are the days where it's like we have this thing we think it needs to get done. Go do it and come back to us in six months. When it's done, it's like That's not how companies were built. That's how companies and old generations were built. But now companies and products are built much differently, and I think companies are frankly, clients are looking for a partner who can build against the methodology that they're using to build their business, which is highly intuitive, very agile. It changes its chaotic and they want, you know, a partner in crime who can, frankly just be in the boat with them and can make continuous progress. But the hardest part about, you know,

sort of dealing with that internally is, um it's hard to make progress every day and earlier you are in the company. I think it's more difficult because you're not sure what to focus on. Yeah, and, you know, finding a partner allows a company to just trust, regardless of what happens, we're gonna make some progress every day.

Yeah, that's that's good. That's that's probably something that feels good to actually hear. Yeah, on their report, like like, yes, we're going to be like we will be doing something.

Yeah, every day. You know, it's the same with the large enterprises to right. I think they have different challenges. Early steel Just yesterday we were talking about we're working on you're working on an S O. W. And you were saying what? The client wants to know exactly what deliverable we're gonna do. And we were just laughing about Well, it's whatever you want it to be. What? What do you think you created along

the way? Yeah, Yeah, it's gonna be what it's gonna what we're gonna build together. That's what it's gonna be at school. Um, we have a pretty I don't know, man. I have no idea how our process, like compares to, like other agencies are. You know how many, uh, people out there doing, like, product design agencies type, you know,

type work that that we are. But I do know that we have a really specific process, and we so velocity of effort. How How is that? Um, like, does that usually come across as like, um, did they ever just say Well, how many hours is that? You know, or, um, do people typically buy into the abstract nature of something like selling up velocity. You're selling an effort, uh,

a weekly effort rather than specified hours and deliver bubbles. Yes, that it's all Just think. I mean so, yes,

I think it's challenging. Um, at times it's challenging because, you know, you're you're making a significant investment, and when you're doing that, you want a couple. You want to de risk the investment as much as you possibly can, and in order to de risk it, you want to be able to see maybe a what's going on, what I'm gonna get for this on the other side? Or be what assurances I have that if it doesn't look like what I expected. Look like on the other side that I'm protected by that. And you know, buying a velocity of effort is essentially, it's rooted entirely on trust. It's rooted on past experience.

It's rooted on past examples, and it's rooted in the trust that we will be able to execute what somebody believes is important to them. Um, there's a great this is for the freelancers out there. There's a great e book that will take about 40 minutes to read called Breaking the time barrier. And it's not something that you know. We don't necessarily subscribe to the methodology or that sort of philosophy over, mate. Um, but it's a great quick read about you know how to think. How to think through. Yeah, sort of investment vs expense or time versus effort or effort versus outcome. Eso It's, I think it's a free e book. Forget the guy who

wrote it, but we have a link. It weighed like it later. Great. Yeah. Does that answer your question? And I

always kind of suspected that that way of thinking makes a lot of sense to organizations that have always, historically operated that way. You know, like, say, a product company. And we're looking at making a decision in a vendor. I always felt like us as an option is maybe the closest option two scaling their team that feels like coworker collaborative effort without actually making the higher. And so the way that you know we were we were able to plug in would be similar to what they were expecting, like an internal team, but that also, you see it really different with some of these other customers. Were that were there. They're the concept of building a product team in working this way is is very new, and there's different. There's different barriers. There's also a lot of these frameworks are really good for a lot of this stuff.

But it's also kind of hard to reach beyond the like, just a typical day to day expectations and, like, really push things forward. And I think that's you know, that's one of the things that I think, you know. We're trying to figure out how we how we do that. I mean, how how does you know? How does a designer or a design team or an engineering team deliver that trust to to the to the person that is buying the service? That is an awesome question. Um, man, you know, I wish it were extraordinarily simple,

or I guess I wish that it were something that could happen, like a light switch or like a tool you could subscribe and pay monthly, too. I think it it boils down to a series of trust building activities, and on the opposite end of that, by the way, would be activities that deteriorate trust, like saying we're gonna do something and then not doing it deteriorates. Trust saying we're going to do something and then actually doing it builds trust in doing that over time. Um, can I pop in? Another article that I think is awesome? Um, totally different context. There's an investor out in Los Angeles named Mark Sister. He wrote this block post a couple of years ago,

um called investing in lines and not dots. And his thought process behind this was that he wants to track an entrepreneur overtime and watch them make progress and do what they say they're going to do overtime. So what happens with that is when we first meet and we say we're gonna do something and we do it, we get a dot. Then time goes on, we move to the right On the graph, we say we're gonna do something more. We do it, we get a dot it's higher into the right. And at the end of this, there's a nice line that gets up into the right. Coach is a great graph that everybody loves, but I think it's kind of similar in our world where you've got to do what you say you're gonna d'oh! And if you do that over time, you will prove to people that you're credible and that you're trustworthy and yeah, they can. Then put another dot i e Hey, we want to hire you for an engagement and based on the track record, they

can see pretty clearly these

guys were probably gonna hit that. There's a high likelihood that they're going to go up into the right again because that's what they have done for as long as I've known them. Um, going up and down and up and down and up and down without going up into the right is exactly That's not good. That's like, Hey, I'll email you tomorrow it gets super simple. I'll email you tomorrow and you don't email that tomorrow. Yeah, Bam, you're you're down now. I'll call you tomorrow at 10 a.m. You call tomorrow 10 a.m. bam up into the right. Yeah, it's really simple, but it's about just constantly building trust, doing what you say you're gonna d'oh! And you know along the way that trust also helps people open up about what their challenges are, what

their problems are. Yeah, that's true. It's hard. There's some we try to do, like as soon as possible. Like once we get a new project is what can we do to, like, build trust, like, right away? Um, so we try and we try and do that. We we do. It's sometimes through, Um, just Well,

first of all, just kindly giving, uh, as Anthony always says, opening the kimono a little bit about, like, our process, they'll have access to, you know, seeing stuff in a lot of lot of transparency. But like something that I like that, um, Anthony usually does is try to get a win. You know, um, out of the gate. Even if it's small, let the first, like experience be be a positive one. I

think if you that's usually the first test for both sides, right? Like, yeah, can we? Is there chemistry in these two organizations to actually in entered positive energy and excitement and making something? And so if if you can get over, like, one or two or three little quick hurdles, then you start getting the trust you need to like be given Maur. Hi, impactful where it's sometimes it's hard to do that initially because maybe The client really wants to start working on something really hard at the at the right out the gate. But if you could just find one or two easier things, it's easier. I think, too. Manage that.

Yeah, well. And by the way, you can extract that all the way back to my world. Which is the first gift from a client. Is time for a phone call or time for a meeting, right? It's okay. How do we get a win on the board so that the next time they give a little bit more time or we can spend more time talking about something impactful, Yeah, and then the next. And it builds and builds and builds. Yeah, the, um um I'm I'm also curious if there's differences and the expectations we just discussed here on the service's side versus what the expectation might be for an engineer a product manager designer like working inside of a startup might be, I guess it's probably more.

It's It's higher on on the service aside because they're paying. People are paying more. It's right, but, you know, just kind of curious about that. I mean, you know, I think the the process of or the idea that there are trust, building and trust deteriorating activities. It holds true across the board across any application personal, professional, etcetera. For people inside of these product companies, the same is true, right?

I mean, they need to show up every day and make progress of some type. And frankly, in many cases, we allow them to do that. All right, we are the partner that, um somebody can point to and say, Based on what I was responsible for doing, I made progress and I did it with the help of these guys over there in Austin. That's a really important point, I think, because I think as a designer, personally, I think a lot of times I have judge things on the exterior like, Well,

how awesome is this design gonna be? But one of the things that is probably more impactful was, did I help my client be successful because the product could be really boring or it may be be a combination of some boring things, some exciting things, but at the end of the day, really, if you like that client and if there's a good relationship, it's really on a lot of ways boils down to do that. Do we help that person be a hero at their organization? And when they're when they have the next challenge to solve, they think of that freelancer or that agency? Or that employees like this, you know, like you said that the dots are going up into the right. I have a you know, I need looking for another hero moment again, and we got this win and

hell, yes, and it's a good way to win business. But it's also just a better way to do business, too, you know, like that's what I enjoy about, Um, working with many of our clients is just that we are connecting, like on a people level, like What can we do to help you? Not, You know, we know what the big picture is, What can we help you get to the next step? You know, and, uh, that I think people always respond to that.

We had been Johnson from elegant seagulls on the podcast, tear their episodes back, and one of the things that we were talking about with him was how it's important to be empathetic to the customer, not just the user, which got me thinking about a lot of cool potential exercises to do in the agency or consulting world. Like, why aren't we building personas for our clients? Like like in really understanding who they are And what are they trying to innovate? Are they trying to just, like, get out of the weeds, like does their boss scream at them every day? Like, you know, like, what is their world look like? And how can we help them navigate that

to get into their

This is kind of interesting, right? Cause, you know, I think, um, I think you like you said it's a It's a people business and people want oh, work with people they enjoy working with, right? That's it. Yeah. Yeah. I think empathy plays a huge role in that. Yeah, I think it It's easy to. It's easy to, um,

not think about that enough. I mean, that's what I'm doing when I'm talking to people and I'm trying to understand what their challenges are, what they're up against, and in my mind and frankly, in discussion I'm thinking about Okay, this is what you're up against. How can fund size help you get over this hurdle. If we can, Let's try to pull it off. And if we can, we're gonna try. I'm gonna try to find you the next best option, because shit, you need to get around this girl like I empathize with where you're at. I wanna help you.

Yeah, That's one of the coolest things I think about, You know, the parallels between business development, sales and design? Is it in my mind, it's all designed. It's like, Well, it may not be the actual pixels or the actuals product solution it, but it's like the plan, the ideas that get you there Don't invest your money and design yet Don't do that yet, or you need to know you should, right, Because a year later, he will,

you know, you know, you might have accumulated things in the wrong direction. We're right. That's really awesome stuff. And e, I think it is designed.

I'm curious what it's like for you to kind of, uh you've got a pretty big responsibility. I mean, um, keeping projects coming to our company is what's, you know, keeping the lights on and keeping all of us, you know, busy and and all that. What's it like to, um, how do you deal with, like, having that responsibility? Because I think like that, You know, like I said at the beginning, like, I wouldn't probably not be very good at this job. And I think that's one of the things. It's just like a crushing responsibility on my mind Way

didn't tell you that your job was

Oh, shit. After this. I know. I actually

think you'd be better than you think you would be.

Thanks, man. I

mean, this is this goes back. This is about the soft skill. I think that inherently the people here and frankly, it's think a number of us have it. It kind of comes down to empathy and being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes and get creative about how to get them to the next level or to the next step. Whatever that is. Um, you do that through design and through leadership of the design team, I just use a different medium. Um, so the crushing responsibility, I actually didn't know. That's how we made money. What do you mean, wait. Um,

yeah. So Okay. Part of it is It's thrilling. Yeah, you have to want to take that on, and you have to want frankly, you know, to g o to shoulder that, um a lot of people don't fit well into scenarios like this or rolls like this because they don't want that level of responsibility. Um, personally, I enjoy I think it's awesome.

About how many? How many projects are we doing, right, Like in general, like we'll do fun size does. How many projects at one time would you say 66 projects. So with six projects, like ongoing in the middle of summer in the middle somewhere, beginning somewhere The end. Um, I mean, I've seen, like, Wait, we have, ah, weekly meeting of toe Look at our pipeline and see,

like, what's coming up. But I know that what I'm seeing of that pipeline, what's coming in with locked in what's like a maybe in the future and stuff. I know that that is only a tiny little piece

of it. Might be 3 to 3

to 10%. Yeah. Yeah. What? Like how? How much of the iceberg yr ri actually seeing here? Like, I guess I'm just curious. Like you Ah, you're a guy who's on the phone a lot on dhe. I'm just like, I kind of curious, like toe actually successfully maintain six projects at a time getting in here, you know, being run over being, you know, contracts signed, being actually like getting paid on stuff. What what percentage of of other, um, but potential projects are Are you exploring on a daily weekly monthly basis?

I think the review that we do, which is probably let's call it five. Um, there's another 50 behind that that are at different stages. And then behind that 50 there's probably another 100 that air, Not not actively. I don't paint the picture that I'm talking actively with all 155 of those people. But, you know, realistically, there are probably 40 to 50 active conversations at any.

Yeah, you

know, and it varies right in there spaced out. Um, I mean, I don't know that this is great advice for the world here, but I generally like to keep our annual revenue goal in the pipeline at all times. Meaning what could you explaining if I am a company and or, you know, if I'm a small team. And my goal is to do half a $1,000,000 in revenue in 2000 and 16. I want to be able to look at the pipeline and see customers that I'm actively discussing with the represent half a $1,000,000. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Because that any given point, somebody falls out, somebody comes in.

Whatever. Now, there's probably best practice around that I think, you know, we've had we've been strategic, and we've been fortunate at the same time. I said, that is a great sort of, um, ratio for fun size. But I'm sure it differs for other people.

Yeah, I know. Just you know what? What we see. Um, I know there are other spreadsheets floating around that have probably are others. What do you want? Fast. What you use, like for CR em like, Yeah, I love this. Yeah, I'm kind of curious. I mean, is it like

so we use a tool called Prosper Works. Okay. Which has, ah, phenomenal relationship. And, as a result, integration with Gmail. Oh, cool. Yeah. So it's super easy plugs into Gmail. Very simple reporting. It's not super robust. It like if we were a mid market company doing him had an inside sales team with volume and hundreds of calls a day. This is not a great tool for that, but for a small quantity of high,

um, hi. Touch prospects or deals or opportunities. Press works is awesome. Yeah, Yeah, it's great.

I have another question. Sorry. These air genuinely genuine guardian about how this stuff works. But, um, so, you know, there are, like, 101 150 you know, things that are out there. Some, like some things I know might, um, be at the point where they're actually like, Yes, we do need fun size specific,

You know what they do, and then we decide, Um, eternally that this actually might not be the best fit for us. Uh, you know, so that those things happen, too. So what's that experience, like, both for you and and that potential prospects like, is it like a, uh Well, that's cool. We respect that. You guys,

you know, really keep you know things. You know, client alignment. The way you know it's gonna best benefit them. Or is it like, a Why don't you work with us or what's that like?

So uh, from my experience doing that and having that conversation, I think the net of it is that it's a positive thing. And it's for one reason, which is we know what we're good at. And we're not going to try to be somebody that we're not. Right. So when we get to the end of this period or in this process and kind of decide, Hey, client, you know, unfortunate. But we love getting to know you. Yeah. This is awesome. Yeah, but we're probably not the right partner for you.

There's kind of an immediate like, Oh, shit. What are we gonna do now? Yeah, And then there's the recognition of Well, that's actually really honorable, because I would rather have you tell me that you're not the right fit. Then try to go through this and then fail. Yeah, Or have the outcome right. Optimal? Yeah. Yeah, that's and by the way, that's another trust building.

Think that's Yeah. Look, we're being very honest, and here's what it is. And I will always try and give somebody a couple of options. Hey, talk to these people. I think they're probably a better fit.

I've prepped them. Yeah, Yeah, yeah.

And honestly, there's There's been times that I can remember over the last three and 1/2 years where we thought initially that someone may not be a good fit but after we actually got to know them, like, met them face to face for like, holy crap like like, this is awesome in a couple of things that kind of popped into my head, like on the trust thing, like we've even had clients have been burned really bad, you know, with other agencies that were more formal or more waterfall where they were worried about. Like am I even gonna get this work delivered from you? And we told them like, Yeah, you actually already have access to And they're like, Oh, okay, you know,

And then I was thinking at a higher level about all of this in context of this conversation about business development being people, people oriented industry and service business and business development goes way beyond just the sales. It's like actually optimizing the business to react to the market opportunity and the customer expectations. Like, you know, this the other things that you do here that aren't as you know, well, defined is you're actually help us be learned how to provide the service better in a partner to us and howto like How how do we respond to this and grows grows business especially. We're trying to create that trust and that repeat customers and all those things that are important to us. And then it became kind of even Maur crystallize in my mind, and I've been talking about this a lot lately. But Aaron and recommended that I read this book. Start with why? And it really helped me understand. Not only, like,

why am I interested in doing this, but how easy it is to deliver trust. If you condone, distribute the work appropriately across your team and you see them, you know, get dots to the right and the left constantly, and then you can like. Then you can kind of focus on your part that you're good at. And then everyone's kind of focused on one part of that total puzzle that all results in the same thing in today. It's really interesting to me. It's probably fun for you to look at. Yeah, I mean, you know, cause I think you know, for someone like myself,

who is new to like running a business. Spent most of my career just designing things and, you know, and as I'm growing and I think as we're all growing real, we're realizing. Okay, well, you know, to be successful, we want to retain the talent, will retain the customers. We want to deliver the trust. We want to be able to, you know, do good work. And so it,

you know, it's all about like, seeing that the, you know, almost like the military sort of thing, like the pert Does the person to my right left believe in this mission the same way? Do we all believe in the same mission? We got each other's backs? Are we all gonna, you know, contribute our part to the mission? You know, first, you know, it might be one person might be a radio person. What the person might be on a machine gun. They're doing different jobs, but it's all the same mission.

Yeah. Mr Nice. I like that parody. Are we the machine gun in that? In that illustration? I don't know. You might machine guns on them. She and

I might have the radio. Yeah, I got sniper rifle. Somebody's got food, food. Everybody plays a part. Yeah.

Cool. Well, I think we're kind of getting low on time. Um, but, man, thank you for coming in and just kind of talking with us a little bit about this stuff I was curious about. To be honest with you, that's that's kind of neat to hear how that goes back. All, um, Aaron, is there, like, your throat, your twitter handle or something, or you're,

I don't know, linked in find a link to him. I mean, you could, but, uh,

my twitter handle is at Aaron zero. Aaron a r o N. Zero the number zero. Not the words in case that was confusing.

Yeah. No, that's good point. Well, you'll be in the, uh I'll be in the notes on the notes and whatnot. Yeah. Anyway, um, a cool. Yeah, thanks so much. And, uh, man, until next time. Same time.

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