Welcome. Welcome way are here today with the Greg's story on the House. A podcast. Greg is a design

leader and former partner of Happy cause. I'm also here with Anthony on partner Fun Size, and I'm Rick Messer. I'm a product designer of fun sized. And like I said, we got Greg here. Hey, Greg, how's it going, man? Good guys. Awesome. Thanks for making time. Toe. Hang out with us this week in the office and join us on the podcast. It's good to have you here.

Sure, it's been fun to be here. Cool. So fun. We're having fun now. Well, it's a beautiful day in Austin, Texas. We're just kind of relaxing, kicking back. Thought we would just kind of shoot the breeze

with our good friend Greg. Anthony

wanted to bring him in. And you guys have some things

to talk about? Yeah, there's been a There's been a lot of interesting things happened lately. You know, Greg has been, you know, like a voice in my ear of the last few months. Actually, Greg, you wanna give us a little introduction to what you want to talk about?

Yeah, maybe even a

little bit about your background or who you are for those listeners that don't know you, if you don't mind.

No, not at all. Greg Story live here in Austin, Texas. Neighbor to you Fine fellows. I've been working the Web since 1994. I've done Web email, not flash, but pretty much everything else have mostly not only designed but lead design teams almost from from Day one and up until recently was a partner at Happy God. I'd sort of my own studio in, uh, 2005 called Airbag and in 2009 merged that with Happy Cog. And was there a PPE until last October? Sonam actually talking to some other folks and some companies and thinking through what's what's next. Yeah, you're talking about things that you and I have been talking about. And I think that's kind of the tips into the future of the design agency,

which, as you know and kind of our circles, has been a hot topic as of late. Yeah, with, uh, Brian from Zerbe. I think it was Brian friends Herb and, uh, Peter, both kind of writing that the design agency or design studios is dead or is dying or changing. That's been kind of, uh, what I've kind of bug in your ear about as fun. Size is definitely right in the middle of that. Although I don't think the future is his dire, as some people would like to believe.

Yeah, it's definitely, you know, for us. You know, we when we started this company, we went really thinking too much about starting an agency because it really wasn't where gold was, but you accidentally started. We accidentally started an agency, but way knew a few things pretty well, and that was like, agile development. And so I think, naturally, some of the some of the things that we're doing, we kind of fell into being on the on the plus side of the way things were changing, you know? But I also know that there's probably we're also part of maybe some of some of the problems, right? You know, you know,

you guys you guys mentioned that,

you know, those articles had come out about the old older agencies dead or whatever. What?

What are some of the can you guys bullet point that for some of our listen? Listeners like what? What are they saying about that? What are they saying is causing something like that? Well, and in this time, just the authors of those articles in particular, I co founded the bureau Digital Affairs with Greg Coy. And for the last 23 years we've been putting on an event for a design studio owners called Owner Camp. Just recently, they had owner Summit here in Boston, which anti net went to. I think there's a pervasive feeling that in the last year or so, maybe in some cases, a bit longer. Companies have just simply started hiring designers, making their own studios inside,

you know, bringing all that talent. And House and companies now have the wherewithal not only to they don't just have the budgets. They know how to do this so that there's a prevailing thought that that eventually the work is going to go into decline, so so work that agencies like fun size of deer studios like fun size would do like that. That's going to start going away because your your client's now will be hiring enough designers that they won't need agencies. That's kind of the missing anything and the reason

for them hiring designers just from a cost standpoint, makes a lot more sense financially. Toe. Have somebody on, like one you know, a small team and salary,

or just the deeper understanding that they get by. I think it's a deeper understanding because an employee costs a lot more than a consultant. I mean, obviously, depending on what the hourly is or what that breakdown is. But when you bring an employee on and they're full time, you've got benefits, you know, and even things like Social Security tax. That stuff adds up on those costs that are typically, uh, not a 1 to 1. You know, consultant versus Employees Match. I think employees cos of the benefit of they have not just a deeper understanding, but you can also go to an employee and say, Hey,

wait a second, it's Friday afternoon. You know you're not leaving yet. I need you to work through the weekend, right? And an employee typically on a salary salaried person. There's not gonna be an extra cost right for for the business. There's so there's something to be said about that, whereas if you're in your client's called you guys in about an hour and said, Hey, I need you to stay. That's great. Here's what's gonna cost you right There's right And that's not gonna happen in an employee versus consultant uh, situation. So that's sort of that kind of financial breakdown might be one thing that is fueling this sort of transition with the agency's today. Well,

so I'm not. I don't know there's a transition, but cos they're definitely hiring more designers. You know, if you go to authentic jobs, you'll see more, more larger companies or your brands. And I were in years past.

Yeah, that's I mean, I think that's a word where it is like, you know, um a lot was popularized by product design and a lot of designers being actually excited about going to work in house for a company like Zappos or Amazon. So now the track for a designer you don't have to just be a freelancer, work for a studio. You can work anywhere you want, and it's actually cool to be in house now, right? It's a viable option. Another. Another thing that I've been thinking about it I've been reading about lately is that it's not that these companies won't work with agencies anymore. It's that there's there seems to be they want to own it. They don't want to just hire an agency to say OK, design our website or design our product. Let us know when it's done, you know? Yeah, we'll release it. They want the ownership of the strategic

road Man. I'm gonna be more attached to the product, and it's actually their work. Well, it's It's not just that they want to own or at least be heavily involved in the strategic thinking throughout the whole project. They also want to develop in house capabilities to take that work and to extend it well beyond the engagement. So whereas in airbag days we would get hired to read his own website and then get called back about a year or two later. Now you don't hear back from those companies for maybe 34 years in this hole is dependent upon, uh, decline is what kind of budgets they have, what kind of even need that have adapted websites. But, uh, that the that the type of work and and how the work is even offered out there is changing. So you mentioned Rick that there's a cost benefit. We just talked about how there's a benefit for the client with an in at his agency to kind of own the whole process and therefore have uneducated staff that they can. You extend the state.

The third thing is, and I just forgot it. Uh, well, you have, You

have the financial standpoint, then you have the deeper understanding that and that's

it. But then there's a benefit on the designer side as well. Well, so I would take it. Let's get that in the second. The third thing, which I I was having a hard time remember, is that companies would usually have, at least in my experience, that used to have larger projects come to you and say we have a very large probably take a year, a year and 1/2 big project with a big budget, lots of stakeholders. And what's changed is now they have that same budget, that same all those tasks. But they're smart enough now to break it up into small deliverables or small chunks. So instead of getting a large job, you may say,

here's a $200,000 job. Now it's well, let's do something together first, and that might be like a small discovery, kind of a bunch of tasks there, and that's to make sure the culture is right. It's right fit. Then once the fit is right, or if it is, then they'll say, OK, well, now we have, you know, $100,000 in U ex work for you to d'oh so the entire time throughout the entire engagement, the client is doing that to keep the agency and check and make sure that they know like this isn't a one and done deal.

You're gonna have to keep fighting for every inch of this project. And that's something I think is relatively new, something that happy cog we just started seeing in 2013 and 2014 especially. Where are you even existing clients clients that we have been working with for two years were now kind of using this new a new way to go about dishing out work piece by piece, and that's that's it's difficult. It's not impossible, but it just changes how you have to do business and it puts it, requires a lot more time on the business owner or the the client management side of things. It definitely keeps you on your toes.

Another thing that you know we're aware of here, a fun size similar to what you just mentioned is that they These companies have a lot of work they want to do, huh? Sure, they need to keep the agency and check. But they're all there also thinking about the budget over a long period time. So lecture that 250,000 split spread out over a year versus in six months and constant work instead of like there's a definite definite end a way. See, a lot of that, I think I think we're also kind of playing in a weird space between Oh, you know, when do I hire like a lot of requests were thinking When you win, do when, um, I'm gonna have internal product designers. What does that mean for my relationship with a vendor? We know we just heard from one of our clients yesterday that said,

Yeah, we want to keep working with you, but we also want your help finding helping us grow on internal team so that we can have the division of labor work out a certain way. Were you guys can help us with this kind of big, more powerful stuff in our internal person could be more rapid change.

I think that's if there's a trend to be had here. That's it, right? So that it does. Agency disappear? No, but it means that agencies are going to have to develop that kind of deep thinking. Strategic big picture programs having clients Thio update monthly newsletters and make small, incremental changes, too. Websites. I don't know how it is in the op world, but search on the Web world. That's not what you use an agency for, right? You go find somebody who was Cem, I would say somewhat minimal training and talent can can do all of that work and freelancer.

Perhaps it's an internal internal company thought. At that point, you're paying whatever depending on the region and what kind of company you're paying anywhere from 12 bucks an hour to maybe $80,000 a year. Like the U. T. Has jobs available for what designers to do. This kind of you dated a task level stuff, and I think their salaries air something like $18 an hour. So yeah, I mean, that's you can't even compete with that. So so why bother? So I definitely think that there's there is a shift that is already in play in terms of what agencies are gonna be looked to do. It's not. What's not clear to be is what's the profile, the agency where this really kicks in.

So if you're a freelancer, if your shop of 2 to 3 people, I think you will likely start to see this if you haven't already see kind of a little bit of a shift in in some of this stuff. But it's not until you gonna do larger team size, larger payrolls much, much larger company over, I would say 20 to 25 people. That's when you start seeing the impact of this kind of shift in business. So do you feel like it's like becoming impossible to maintain, like a size like that? Um, so I think that there's, I think, the size of companies where that that that impossible gap I used to be between 25 50 people, and if you were in the middle of that, you know that was like quicksand.

You either had to get as quickly to 50. It's possible or retreat back to 25 as quickly as possible. Now I think I think that number is more like 15 to maybe a larger. It's not 15 to 50. It's 15 maybe even 75. Now this doesn't apply to everybody. I'm speaking generally based off my experience and running businesses and kind of conversations that I've had during many, many, many owners camps. But there's definitely a gap in there where if if you if you don't have a lot of work coming in and everybody is just working, working, working in that gap of, let's say 15 to 50 you just start losing money quickly, really quickly. Interesting him,

um, yesterday you gave ah presentation keynote presentation of the team and you were talking about some of the stuff, and one of the things that you mentioned was the were some numbers about the average size of these agencies are in the place among the place right now, and in the amount and some of the projected growth.

Yeah, so the Web design space, just what designed as a service is industry or vertical, is supposed to be worth about or doing. I should say not worth is doing $21 billion a year annual in revenue. That's just within the U. S. That's just Web design, that stuff that does not include APS like the kind of work that you guys d'oh does $21 billion annually. There are, at this point roughly about 125,000 companies that are in this industry 125 125,000. So others under 25,000 75% of those companies are four or less, basically 1 to 4 people. Yeah, that's what was surprising. So then from that that that other matrix, I think it's something like 93% are 10 or fewer people,

right? So if you take a look at that and whatever, 93% of 125,000 is that that's the landscape that you're looking at, you're talking a lot of ah, lot, a lot, a lot of small shops. So the other interesting thing about that is of that $21 billion revenue annual. There's no major player in the space, so if you take, you think the people like fun size, uh, Razorfish RG et Even people in this group, you know these these large big companies delight digital all this. None of those companies make up 5% of the total market. All right,

so this industry is owned by small shops. It's owned by freelancers. It's owned by shops that are 1 to 4 people. Uh, now here's Here's the weird thing in doing some some some math and taking a look at the annual growth of this industry. And keep in mind this is also supposedly just Web design. But in 44,014 you had a Norma CE amount of revenue. The revenue grew in those 10 years, and it grew something like, I don't know, like, four times the rate of growth of the agencies right now that we're here in 2014. And if you trend out the next 10 years, those numbers flip and revenue is going to shrink while the number of agencies is going to outgrow revenue. So you'll have basically say, like probably twice the amount of agencies by 2024 and your revenue will only grow up or go up incrementally.

So you know, like no, this is just one report, and I think the first of its kind. But it it does have a lot of data, and if anything, it's a least worth while looking at that and kind of seeing where you are, where any agency is in the big picture. And you know what might be the future. And so there you guys are have been, you know, ongoing discussions on how do you kind of adapt to that projection? Yeah. I mean, if you look at the face of it, it just means that people are going to be doing the same amount of work for less money.

I mean, they will have to write, so doesn't mean everybody will have to. But if you say you're dear doing websites now and you're charging $75 an hour, it's likely that by 2024 that number could be cut in half. Right. So wow. Yeah, and I would assume so. The danger here and why I talk to Anthony is that app design, and kind of what you guys do is, uh, you know, to some degree, just a different, uh,

different style of work than than what's been done in the last 20 years, right? And even though creating APS takes probably a lot more engineering work thing than creating websites, I would see that that segment of the industry, even though it's not part of this report, you know, is going to fall in line with what's happening on the Web. And so eventually, hopefully not before we retire. Eventually, it's just gonna get a lot more competitive. The price is gonna get driven down. And, uh, yeah, welcome to the happy future of

So how does how does a company survive? Like, how do they? How did he different? She, you know, in a world where there's 100 and 20,000 companies in North America within 10 years, we're gonna be double that. We should go into the culinary

field so differentiation could happen in a lot of ways. One is in size and your ability to be agile, not the not the process, but just literally, literally be agile. Prices always, uh, you know, one way to differentiate yourself, but not the one that you want to use. But I actually do think it is developing going into different industry verticals and specializing on. Then there's always enterprise, you know, and the enterprise world is horrible. I mean, it looks like 1925 compared to if you take a look at the enterprise little app and you take a look at consumer app. It's day and night,

and not in a good way. And you have companies like IBM who are hiring thousands of designers to try to fix their own stuff, you know, make their own applications much better than what they are today for they themselves to be competitive with the people that you know they have to go up against. So how does an agency differentiate? How do you survive that study? Prepare for this. And I think it's just any time you can find a little bit of a niche. You know it sze cliche. But any time you can learn more about a particular industry or even a subset of the industry, I think that's where you find some really success.

Find a vertical. I don't I don't know if this is true or not. You could please correct me from wrong. Sure, uh, but Natalie and I seem to think that maybe another way is in the experience that the customer has actually working with you. Yesterday you were talking about customer experience. I don't mean that exactly. I just mean, how did they feel about work? You know, like, did they feel like you were, like, over here in left field? Like Do they feel like you're a part of your team like today? You know, I don't know, like, but it seems like some of the more popular traffic to our site goes her culture section, not not toe work or things like that,

right? I definitely think that that's ah place where you can differentiate and where you can be very competitive. So if you live in Kansas City, know anybody who works in Kansas City. If you've driven from the airport to downtown Kansas City, you'll have passed an agency called V M L. And they're large and they do a lot of work, but they also go in and just completely destroy any and all goodwill tea. Most of their clients, they continually over promise and under deliver. And I know this firsthand one, because I know some people who live work in Kansas City and have had to endure the V m. L relationship, and twice, uh, have a cog was called in to fix problems that V m l had created. And ah,

lot of it had to do with the way that people were treated, you know? And they just have a horrible, horrible, horrible reputation in that city, and yet they get hired back, right? So somebody will hire someone like Happy cock, have a great experience, but they're so used to having the locals. Collins said, Hey, let's go get lunch, Seiken. Chew you out for charging me three times what you said you're gonna charge me for they, uh, they tend to get working that way.

So that's answer Interesting sub topic that I am curious toe being about. Like I remember back in 2006 when I worked at behavior, a lot of the art of peace would black in the top five questions like you would always see, like, how far are you from our office? Yeah, especially New York. Yeah. Is that Has that changed?

No. No. Well, it depends on the city. So isn't it just like just New York is? No. Boston is extremely territorial, Extremely territorial. In fact, I will. I will never do business in Boston. I won't try to do business in Boston ever again. Many, many times we have gone to pitch work in Boston. We've won the work on Lee to be told. Nope, sorry.

We just found out you're not down the street. So the procurement officer or some head honchos who wasn't part of the sales process finds out that we're not in a Boston Zip code and immediately we're just we get canned right and New York is the same way, although not, I don't think as as bad. But there are some some places that Air Santa Monica has been. I've had that happen in Santa Monica, so I think it depends depends on individual in their comfort level, on working virtually right. And there's a lot of people who are still trying to learn what that means and adapt that to not only how they work but even just being comfortable with it. So I think it's still gonna happen. But I can tell you for sure Boston would not try to do business in

Boston. Yeah, you know, out there in the East Coast, things were still you can feel it They're very like face to face, you know? Yeah, you know, they need they need that. And I was watching the, you know, video that will about crudity of the day and one of them big things about their cultures that are distributed. Yeah, and that's another thing that you have been talking about. How do clients feel about distributed teams?

I've personally never had a problem with that. Um, I think we especially if you communicate that early on and you're able to show that despite your the distance between people, you have a cohesive team. You know that Not only do can you work together, but you also have a company culture together, uh, on and you're that does not get in the way. That's really what you have to communicate is I r. Geographical diversity is not gonna hinder this project in any way. I think that airbag started up virtual. We were virtual for a number of years. When I got up to about 10 employees for an entire year, I had about 10 11 people that were entirely virtual And you know, the only thing that really bothered me about that and the clients think hair, but really bothered. Some of us who have been working together in the office is that way.

Were remote, remote. I mean, we were in other states. It wasn't just down the road s Oh, you didn't get to just go hang out from time to time. Yeah, and you can't have the victory

together. You

know what I mean? Well, you can You just have to do it differently, you know? So But I gotta tell you, I mean, I think that you want to talk about differentiation. That's another way to do it because and being competitive, getting rid of office space, Or at least, you know, turning that into more of, like meeting space so that you don't have to have a desk for every person that is the future. It's just a matter of where you're working and and how soon the workplace is gonna adapt. But, I mean, that's coming.

Yeah. My first company, 30 dinar girl that I started with Steve. There were five of us and we were always just in different cities. In fact, there is over maybe two and 1/2 years I only saw Chris, one of our designers face to face, like, maybe twice. Um, we had to be really creative about how How are we gonna create that company culture, Right? Like so, Unfortunately, it didn't involve a lot of Skype calls. You know, when we get it, got to a point where we just leave Skype on and our tools like that just kind of mimic, like

even today there's there's a lot more tools that allow it s o u Keep slack on Thursday night. One squiggle product for that and in fact, to save like your battery, the way it works is it just takes

like a a photo, like every 30 seconds or something. Have you seen that? No. It creates like a grid. Yeah, pictures of your remote people. It's

like they say it's the black and white. And then if you want to talk to somebody, you just click on them and then it goes on to video and color. It's gonna I mean, it's it's no coincidence that these things are evolving, right, because they're evolving to meet the demands of the market place and to create new ways of doing business that weren't possible even five years ago, when we did an airbag. We had. You didn't have Skype. You had. I am audio and video. And a Skype came later. Frankly, we used

a drop box back

that drop box. Ho man, Did you guys ever have to use those? Like, virtual SP

ends or whatever p and all kinds,

you know, we got started with I want say we get started with it on IRC, um uh, chat channel. And then campfire came out not too long after that. So we were able to have, you know, basically slack version 0.1. Uh, and then we we used, uh, I am and video and audio capabilities there and then used ESPN for version control. That was that, you know, And in terms of company culture, once we got campfire and you could upload images in the campfire. You know,

back in 2007 we were you would animated GIFs going on and links to couldn't do audio, But you could do iTunes and eventually you could do YouTube. But in terms of like the culture, we would also do things like hop on Xbox. So they're all nice. There's a point in time where I got made sure that everybody I want to say I didn't get everybody Xbox, but made sure, but he had Xbox and Xbox Live account. And so, about three o'clock in the afternoon, just about the time that the guys in these coast for were locking off, we get into Halo and just beat the crap out of There you go. That's a creative way of keeping you connected. Well, it also gives you a different way of interacting that's not solely based upon work and sitting in front of computers. I think that's what you get out of having victory parties and being able to go to Happy hour. You're interacting with everybody, but not in front of a

computer or doing work. So I mean, let's talk about some recent news now. Today we heard that tea and blocks, Yeah, close its doors to join Facebook team.

Yeah. So the company itself, or I thought it was actually haven't read the whole thing. Yeah, you know, the the principles of the company. And they didn't go to huge amount of detail about this, but basically decided that they no longer wanted to run the design studios. What I got out of it. There's a very long blonde post about it, but they dont longer wanted to be there on studio. They wanted to go work elsewhere, a place where they felt they could have a bigger impact on the world come and make great things. And so they essentially walked away from their studio and shut it down. And they're

they're gonna go work for Facebook, and then this is, ah, happening. All of you know all about a lot of cool shops, you know, 80 80 20 adaptive path that fjord like. Yeah, yeah.

You know, people think that these these companies air being acquired for massive sums of money. My, my hunch, based off of knowing a couple of stories of agencies get inquired. What not is that they're getting something. But you're not talking about instant millionaires here. You're simply talk about design studios and especially the partners, the founders who were given an opportunity essentially to practice their vocation without having to worry about. Where's my next paycheck gonna come from? It's interesting. You're starting to see kind of like a burn rate for an agency owner, you know? How much time can you really put in before. It's like, All right, I built this.

It's great. It's not worth two cents. You know that. That's the reality of it is if you don't have ah client roster that kind, like an ad agency will be in agency of record, right? So they will have a client list so that if a company comes in behind them, they already see that there's guaranteed revenue coming in through the door. That's my ad. Agencies are bought and sold, right? For what we d'oh. There's very few of us that actually are a quote agency of record that I have a client that we work with that were on retainer for, you know, for long, prolonged periods of time.

If we did, that, would build value, and they'd be something to sell. Otherwise, you've got people and you've got computers. Yeah, that's

it. And people have tried that. You know, schematic for a while was agency record for Del. You know, they opened off an office in Austin just for Dell. And then what's happening? You know Del is taking the work in house. Yep,

yep. Yeah, exactly. So But I do see this as think eventually you just as you talk about this early on that you and Natalie started here and kind of grew business by accident. And as you know, from going owner camp, that is not, um I should say that is a really common story. It's the same thing I did with air bag, assorted airbag. I started working with freelancers just to see what it's like to work with people that I thought were pretty cool. In some cases, it was actually the type of work that needed to be done. I couldn't do myself. But then, after wild second cabinet, just gonna bring this person on full time,

you know? And then you bring out another and then you bring on another and then you you start to see that. Hey, if if I can continue to do this, I can get it to about 10 and I can actually have a business that brings in a steady income. And I don't have to worry about being a freelancer and always going shopping out every every every exit in the next gig. But after a while, I think that unless it's wildly successful, and maybe even if it is It's just after a while. It's like, all right, enough is enough. You know, you can only grow that business so much before you really start to lose your time. Your soul, you know, you're it takes a lot. A lot of people don't they don't see this. Especially even when you work in a studio. It takes a lot to run a small design studio.

Yeah, and you know, there's definitely a lot of you know every time you hear about one of these things, there's a lot of mixed opinions and you start hearing from the people that work there. You know, things like that. You know, I can see both sides of it. You know what you know, But one of the good things, right? I mean, you look a company like to relax industry leaders and mobile space and Webb space for a while. They've created a career path for these guys that, you know, I'm sure their, you know,

whatever, wherever they go, they're gonna have lots of good options. And, hey, wait

a minute. I just realized something. When they come out with Iowa's, that the next Iowa's where we're going to get the chrome from

bringing me for Facebook. It's all gonna be blue way.

It's just gonna be a PSD and with a bunch of like buttons. That's it.

Uh, yeah, it's really crazy, you know, having gone to a couple of the owner camps, you know, hearing a ll, the different stories of success or struggles and in a lot of cases, hearing a lot of owners. Lee, I'm trying to figure out, like Wynn to kill the baby. You know it, which is another podcast episode's topic. We have, you know, coming up with a grill from scouts,

you know, talking about intentionally ending something I was in. Greg was in your panel in someone at Owner Simmons. Yeah, had owner Summit J. Finelli said. Some will try to pair phrase he said, like, Let's just face it there. You know, a significant amount of us in this room like our companies, is starting to be successful, you know, and that's well,

that's the truth. I mean, few companies get past their first year, let alone their 1st 5 years. Then you have economic milestones like getting up two million and revenue. That's a huge milestone for a small business getting up to five million even bigger. You know where something like less than 3% of small businesses started in the U. S. Ever make to make it to $10 million in annual revenue, Right? So, uh, yeah, it's Ah, it's It's not easy. I think a lot of people make it look easy or even make it look enviable. But as you know,

Anthony, once you start a business, you know you can kind of say goodbye to sleep, especially those first couple of years. It's just no matter what you d'oh, unless you're going to Michael Jackson around, you're just not You're not gonna sleep well just because of the stress that comes from from running that. And then eventually, as you get bigger, you find yourself doing less and less of the things that got you to where you were in the first place to start the business. You're not designing your managing payroll, your dealing with clients all the time. You're in meetings constantly, and you're just not doing what it is you love to do. Um, what is the Michael Jackson route?

I want to go the Michael. That's where Michael Jackson What he was getting drugs every night from a doctor. That's how he died. Is he o d'd on? Oh, yeah, just just like you've reached the maximum. You know, like human you now need Wait, have to Michio medically put you

out. So, Greg, I have a question that might tie some of this together for listeners. You know, designers or developers out there. If the landscape is changing right, we know there's gonna be work, But, you know, we may not make much money doing it. We're gonna have lots of more competition, especially in the same individual toe for 4 to 10 persons I shops. What is that gonna do to our salaries? You know, because I think for a while, you know,

designers have been, um, really happy that over the years we've finally been able to make really good incomes, right? And we said, Okay, now you know, design is appreciated, like people values, and then we we we do this cool stuff and then from the agency perspective, Like, what is an agency owner? House agency owner gonna manage that? You know, you know what does that mean? A constant rotation of employees and once they reach a certain financial ceiling, they have to go to work somewhere else. Or that's scary part for me.

Yeah, it could write, so it could literally be where And we've even that this, though. You know, there's a certain there are limits to where you can take people, and not only just in in payroll, but even just in career advancement. And so I think that there's definitely I. There's limitations to how long someone could actually stay on a team before they need to make another move. Now, if that's monetary monetary level, I don't know. But I mean, that's You got to do what you gotta do. You know that the business still has to run. Um,

if you want you start, uh, not sticking to whatever those principles of that plan. That's when you run the risk of losing the company, right? You just start. You just start bleeding money. So I think the good news in all this, though, is that despite this one singular report, you know there's there's it would be nice if our industry had like, three or four of these things. You know where Gardner was doing 14 stores doing one, you know, maybe like Smashing magazine. I don't know why they're not doing it.

Some kind of industry reporting on this kind of stuff. But, you know, I think it just means not so much everybody necessarily may make less. I think it'll likely be. If you're a freelancer, you're not gonna be able to charge as much as you do now. And if you're a larger company, you probably need to reduce your rates, because to be doing pretty good.

Yeah, I have a lot to think about. Yeah. Interesting. Well, yeah, well, we all kind of chew on that. I think we were about out of time here. Um, Greg, What people do if they wanna, you know, continue to hear your thoughts and

your antics subscribe. My newsletter? No, I'm I could be found it on Twitter at Brilliant crank. My website, airbag industries dot com On. From there, you can get two medium and all current kinds of places. You know where I'm posting things, but for now, that's kind of where it could be found. Were I'll be sharing some of these thoughts in talking with Anthony on kind of prepping for that presentation that I did yesterday. I'm slowly working up to something. I think I'll get posted on medium and then we'll

see what happens. Yeah. I can't

wait to see that. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds interesting. You're looking forward to man. Thanks very much again for coming on. Yeah. Thanks for having me, guys. Thanks, guys. Please check out the the feed from this podcast on iTunes and give us a subscriber rating, if you so choose. Thanks very much. Today's episode is brought to you by paying board an employee directory that will supercharge your team. Today's best companies use paying board to help their growing team continue to feel small. The Ping Board company directory lets your team learn about each other in a way that's fun and engaging and ensures that they'll always have important info about their team wherever they are.

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