Joined by the fantastic voice of Dave Taylor, and creative force behind OkayBro- we try to understand what it means to be your own leader, how to balance making and being, and healthy ways to define success for ourselves.
Jonny: This has been a fun project just to like get to know more people in Seattle. I grew up here, but to actuallyknow the creative individuals in town and to understand how those businesses are made and structured is ultimately my goal of this. So thank you for joining me
Dave: Thanks for having me.
Jonny: So you are based in West Seattle.
Dave: I live in West Seattle. My studio is in SODO
Jonny: Okay. And where in SODO is it based?
Dave: on airport way across from the uh, Toyota and Honda dealership. And half a block from the methadone clinic.
Jonny: Nice. Okay. So that's kind of where my office
Dave: Yeah, in the power space building.
Jonny: How long have you been down there?
Dave: Almost a year. Previously I was working outta the Riveter on Capitol Hill at an office there, and previous to that I was sharing an office, or I was renting an office from the Fear Group, which is the PR agency downtown.[00:01:00]
Jonny: Okay. And how big, like square footage wise, how big is that space?
Dave: It's like a 12 by 12 room with some skylights.
Jonny: Okay. So, okay, bro, is then predominantly you.
Dave: Correct. Okay. Bro is me currently, I have a, a range of contractors that I partner with on all kinds of different projects where we need to, and I see that as a feature and not a bug, it allows me to pick and choose the right partners for the right projects to work on versus, well this is my team, we gotta go into battle with who we got. Whereas this way I can pick and choose the work that I really want to do cuz I still really like keeping my hands dirty and pushing the pixels and bending the busy a curves as much as I can. if I were to build and grow the studio to 15 or so people, then all of a sudden you're away from the work and you know, you're working with the people that you have on.
For every single project, which sometimes is great, but I think it kind of pigeonholes you with the type of projects [00:02:00] that you could take on the type of partners that you can work with.
Jonny: Yeah. You have a built up skillset and that's the work that you're good.
Dave: Exactly. So like to use a horrible baseball team metaphor, at the end of the season, teams are end up always looking for like a missing piece to go and try and win the playoffs in the World Series or something. Right. Whereas in this model, I can pick those missing pieces. There's never a trading deadline that I have to worry about, you know, I can just pick and choose and get going.
Jonny: Okay, so let's rewind it. You went to the Savannah College of Art and Design, but how'd you get there? And then how did you end up in Seattle?
Dave: Long and Winding Road. born in New York at Long Island Jewish Hospital my parents were part of the great Jewish migration from New York to South Florida I started studying photography when I was in high school and completely fell in love with it and decided that I wanted to go into the arts in some shape or form. I was also a bit of a Yahoo as a kid, my parents weren't going to allow me to fly away to go off to art school somewhere cause it probably would not have ended up in a good place. I [00:03:00] continued working in the grocery store and went to this two year art school called the International Fine Arts College, which is in downtown Miami, which is no longer in existence, Started studying there and they didn't have a photography program. They had a couple of photography classes we could take. But going through the program I learned about typography and design And really fell in love with that. that. was my jam. And from there, uh, went off to S scad and then, uh, SCAD went back to Miami. The only job, the only person that gave me the time of day just happened to be Alex Bogusky at Chrisman Porter Bogusky in Miami.
And this is when that agency was like 35 or 40 people. And so that was my first job outta school.
Jonny: Yeah, that's a great person to get the attention of.
Dave: I don't know how that happened, but grateful for it at the time. So I was there for about five years or so. Worked on a huge range of projects. Everything from Truth Florida and Truth National, the anti-tobacco campaign, launching Mini Cooper in the United States and won basketball during the Spree World days.
A [00:04:00] lot of great stuff. It was like getting eight years of master's education because there were just so many heavy hitting creatives in that agency at that time. it was a time of massive explosive growth for them as well. Left there, landed in Baltimore for a brief period of time, and then landed in uh, Madison, Wisconsin at a place called Planet Propaganda.I was there for eight or nine years working on all of the outdoor clients that we had there. So vast hiking boots, all of the truck brands, particularly Gary Fisher. I worked on everything for Gary Fisher from catalogs and ad campaigns and videos. Pretty much everything except for bike graphics
Jonny: It's kind of like an in-house group.
Dave: of sorts.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. But within this agency that I was working at, well as Intelligentsia Coffee, I did their rebrand as well I feel like that agency is kind of where I grew up a bit. You know, Chris Porter is where I got the shit kicked out of me for five years and learned a ton and then was able to take a lot of that knowledge of like big agency stuff and being like one foot in design and one foot in [00:05:00] advertising and took that to Planet it was kind of a perfect fit in a way because Planet started as a design company and then it was called Planet Design Company and then decided to change it to propaganda and started doing design and a.
So it was one of those great places where you could take something from naming and logo and core foundational brand stuff and then blast it out to the world through advertising and Picasso planet. I ended up coming to Seattle cuz we were doing some work with K2 rebranding the zoo triathlon brand, which they owned at the time.
had come out here to go snowboarding in Mount Baker and then the following year went out to K2 and visited. And I was just like, why am I living
in Madison, Wisconsin when I could have a killer job in Seattle and get pow on the weekends as much as I wanted? So convinced my then six months pregnant wife to move to Seattle site unseen she is much braver than I am.
Kudos to Rachel. And then a creature, which was an agency here in Seattle at the time, moved us out here and I worked there for about a [00:06:00] year or so.
Jonny: Okay. And that was right as creature. Picking up.
Dave: Yeah. So I was at Creature when they were in their space above Havana.
Jonny: Mm mm-hmm.
Dave: for the first few months there. And then part of the move to the new office
ha, was at 12th.
Jonny: Yeah. The two, three story. One. I went to a handful of Champagne Fridays in that first office.
Dave: Oh, cool.
Jonny: how then did that kind of first Seattle advertising culture compare to East Coast advertising culture?
Dave: Well, actually I would say that a bit of the original, that creature vibe definitely felt it kind of like Chrisman did in the early days where was just very focused on the work, very aggressive in trying to get the work done and being creative. Unfortunately, it wasn't really the right exact right fit for a brand new parent with the amount of the work and the different kind of vibe that you have to deal with.
So it ended up not being the greatest fit at the time. Still have a lot of great friends from there, but ended up leaving there, after the fact and landed at Amazon to downshift a little bit.
Jonny: In what part of [00:07:00] the Amazon did you land?
Dave: I ended up in first advertising group that was there. So I was, my role was in charge of print brand and retail for devices which evolved into Amazon brand as well. And I was there for about two years, launched a few products, embarked on some just crazy forward thinking projects, which eventually became the entire Alexa and Echo line of products.
it involved a lot of Jeff Bezos, I intense Jeff Bezos meetings as well as being allowed onto floors that my managers who I was direct reporting to, weren't allowed to because I was worked on these secret future facing projects. So it was definitely a wild experience some out-of-body experiences happened while I was there.
Just cause of the scale and the people that you're working with on the day-to-day basis. Like, oh, we have this idea. Okay, here's the print we're gonna do. And then you turn around three weeks later those ads have taken over the subway station and then also hanging on ginormous billboards in Italy. And it felt like it happened at a drop of a hat normal. US regular advertising for [00:08:00] like normal sized companies. That would take a little bit of time to get to those spaces. But one of the amazing things about Amazon is that like they can turn things on, but cost of the scale and the amount of money that they have to promote stuff, that kind of stuff, just like felt like it happened at the drop of a hat.
Jonny: Okay. So you've worked at this multinational, gigantic company. You worked for these East coast and West coast advertising. What convinced you to become your own company? What was alluring to that?
Dave: Well, there's a few things. One is I just wanted to see if I could do it. It's like this is a challenge and when you're working within a larger organization, you have a support system around you. You have these debates that you can do to make sure that the work is right, there's always a little bit of backup that you can rely on.
And then there's another part of you, it's like, well, is my creative vision like my creative vision? Is that strong enough to be able to just hold the weight? Or do you need all this other help around you to do these things? I also got to a point where it's like, you know what?
I'm a grownup. I don't want to [00:09:00] ask anybody if I could take a day off. the irony of that is when you run your own company, you almost never give yourself a day a day off. And it's not because there's so much work to do, you just kind of just keep. At least I do. But so I think it was like those two things, like one, can I do it?
And then also just the freedom of being able to be like, I'm not going in today and I don't have to tell anybody. You know? And that's a completely selfish thing about that. It's okay to do those things, you know? And then having two kids and be able to be like, yeah, I'm taking them to school every single day and that means I get to work at nine 30.
No big deal. I'm coaching my younger daughters eight and under soccer team and the other dad that I'm coaching with his work schedule blew up and he's like, I can't do the Tuesday practices anymore. Can you do it? I'm like, sure. All I do is block it off on my calendar and I make every Tuesday practice no problem. Whereas if I was working in a larger organization, there's a lot more people relying on you to do those things or to be around for meetings and et cetera. And so that just becomes a little bit more challenging.
Jonny: I [00:10:00] remember my first boss, my first manager, and at one point he just kind of looked at me and said, well, it's nice out you keep doing that and I'm gonna go take a bike ride. I'll be back in a bit. And I was like, how do I get to be you? That you can create an organization that can run by itself or be productive by itself and then go off and do the things that you need to do to kind of continue being a creative with Enough inputs coming back in, but also having a family and supporting them and doing the things that that requires.
Dave: It'll happen. I mean, all you need to do is just set a goal of what you want and like mind you, my business, if I'm not doing things, it's not running. one of my goals eventually is I think I would like to get to about that four or five people range, . What I would like to do is have all the people that are part of the company have that same flexibility, especially from the creatives that I would hire, because sometimes it's just not happening in the morning. Sometimes like the idea comes to you at three o'clock in the evening, three o'clock in the afternoon rather, or three [00:11:00] o'clock in the morning.there's this agency in Dallas called the Richards Group and they did a whole bunch of really great work that you. know, we'll leave the light on for you.
They did that original Chick-Fil-A work with the cows, eat more chicken,But the agency Laura, is Stan Richards, who founded that company. He would stand by the front door and lock the door at nine o'clock and the people that were locked out that were late weren't allowed in and they still had a culture of working late.
So it had this really weird thing and I was like, I never want to be part of that kind of vibe There's a whole bunch of different industries that we could be in where we get paid a whole lot more money that are a lot stricter, But we do this for a reason. It's supposed to be enjoyable, it's supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be your client's best part of their day. literally we get, even when an idea doesn't sell, you literally got to spend a week coming up with like silly ideas if you wanted to. Right. finding a wild hair and just pulling at it to see if you could come up with something beautiful.
you look at a client's organization, the marketing person tends to be the [00:12:00] person that's kind of has the coolest job in those companies, right? Cause they get to interface with their celebrities and their influencers and all that type of stuff. But still, their day is spent with Excel spreadsheets and budgets and.
Jonny: that to the rest of the company. Yeah.
Dave: Exactly and understanding their ROI and all their reporting and all that kind of stuff. But then we get to come in and do our little dog and pony show with fun, playful ideas. It's supposed to be a great time and so if we're not having a great time making it, that's not gonna transfer over to your clients thinking that it's a great time being presented to.
Jonny: I mean at some point there is this design skill that you need to, for lack of a better word, you kind of have to turn on and come up with something. Do you find like you learned how to be a professional creative at these other studios and so that you can manage when you're turning that on and off for yourself as opposed to like, you are here at nine o'clock and thou shall work and do these things.
Dave: I think the evolution of any artist gets to understand their [00:13:00] process better and better over time. we're all humans and that's gonna be different for every single person. what you learn from a lot of these other agencies that interfacing with other creatives is what works for your process.
Oh, are there pits and pieces of the way that you think or you draw inspiration that might help me in my process and my artistic practice,Some are the old Hemingway thing of right drunken edit, sober. sometimes it's just like you're generating ideas until three o'clock in the morning and then you wake up the next day and you have a whole bunch of stuff to sort through.
Other times it's just like, , I have this thing, it just needs to marinate. And then tomorrow it's gonna like reveal itself. And then sometimes it's just like you just need to sit, write a comic book for three hours and then things are happening in the back of your head and you come out the other side of that comic book and you're just like, ah, I think I know what the path.
Jonny: I'm coming
Dave: Exactly. Sometimes it's a conversation with the client, cuz then there might be a gem of an idea and something that they said and you're like, ah, that's that thread that I could start pulling on. Then there's an interesting [00:14:00] insight in there somewhere, I love account planners who do great research and have really great strategy because their entire job is to say here's what's going on in the culture.
Here's what people care about, and this is what we're hearing. Let's come up with a creative strategy that's gonna really resonate with them. it pulls away the curtain of directions of where you could start to go. there's good strategists and bad ones, and there's plenty of strategists that don't really know what an insight is that would really help creative work happen.
But when you have a great strategist, And a great researcher who have really done the work and understand what an insight is. It's like rocket fuel to be able to come up with great ideas.
Jonny: do you work with research?
Dave: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. I work with Megan Aval at the Insight End. She has her own company, solopreneur, she was a branch strategist at big agencies.
Really love doing, the deep dive research and holding focus groups and ethnographic research and all that stuff. Just digging and finding about what do people care about where are their heads at, what do they [00:15:00] like, what do they dislike, what do they resonate, what cultural touchpoints are interesting to them,it's a palette for you to work with as a creative.
Jonny: how much opinion are you putting into your work or are you really working straight from this palette of kind of audience behavior and audience demographics?
Dave: That stuff is always a jump off point. Any creative needs to put some of their own personal opinion and point of view on it. Because that's what's gonna differentiate myself as a creative of my company from the next company is like, is my point of view more interesting than the next person's? as much research and everything that you do after the fact of like what's selling and what's not.
It really just comes down to what's gonna resonate. when a client is approving work, it's kind of subjective. There's no amount of testing that's gonna make sense and that's where like the trust between the relationship that you have with your client comes in. That's when the previous work that you've done that's been successful, that's gonna. That's how you know whether things might work or not. Okay? They're [00:16:00] doing good work that's compelling and it has a good track record. there's no magic silver bullet for creating amazing creative work. And a lot of it just comes from your own personal experiences And your point of view and how you interpret the world around you and what you think is interesting.
the key with the research is making sure that all that stuff is relevant to the market and the type of people or the consumers that you're trying to talk to. especially when they're not you, right? I'm currently doing a lot of work in the bike industry in mount biking, and I love mount biking.
I do it every weekend. I wish you could do it eight times a week, you know? So I just kind of know what's gonna resonate because I'm on the bike website's daily.
Jonny: Yeah, you're a part of that community.
Dave: Right part of that world. don't really need to do a whole bunch of research in that. Now I'm doing a big project with the Omaha Public Power District. I don't live in Omaha, Nebraska. I don't really personally just know what ticks with them. So that's where the research really to the forefront, cuz it helps you learn, get inside the head of those consumers, of those [00:17:00] people and bridge that gap.
So what's the insight? What's making them tick? And from there you could put your own personal spin on what's making them tick to get them to react positively or negatively.
Jonny: Yeah, absolutely. Was there a turning point in your own business practice that you felt like, okay, this is happening?
Dave: It kind of came out of the blocks running when I decided I was gonna do it. We, you know, looked at our personal finances and set a very low goal at the bare minimum. I think it was something like $40,000. You'd be able to make it through the year, not crush our savings And we'll be fine. And luckily we blew that out of the water quite a bit.
that was really exciting. The struggle always comes, you know, just like a band, right? You have the sophomore slump, things are going, everyone's excited for you, and now you really have to prove that you can do it. So that second and third year are pretty challenging, right? Cause you come out of the gates, things are hopping.
You don't necessarily have all of your ducks in a row. From a business perspective, you have a lot [00:18:00] of running that you need to do to figure stuff out while you're trying to do the work. Nobody, aside from your core network really knows what you're doing. Your name's not out there whatsoever. that's where the challenge is really came in.
Jonny: how are you finding? Clients that you wanna work with, is it then entirely word of mouth or because you're involved in the biking industry, have you sought out those companies?
Dave: Yeah, it's kind of a mix of those two things. I mean, the world that we live in or the world that we play in as creatives is relatively small, and your network and your word and the respect that you give and take from people is everything. And that's really how my business is built and grown because. it's almost primarily referral based. We're starting to get some stuff coming in that just fall out of the sky, which is really nice. doing things like these podcasts and starting to win some awards and getting some press, that stuff helps. But really it's referral and being good to the clients that you have because they're not gonna stay at a brand forever. if you're good to [00:19:00] them and the work is quality, they enjoy working with you, when they go and take their next job, they're gonna bring you with them. And then ideally you'd be able to keep that previous brand that you worked with and then you get a new brand to work on as well. And so that's like a way to grow. And I always thought that if you put really great work out there, it's gonna come, but there's so much really great workout in the world, how are you gonna cut through? And you know, there's really just a handful of agencies out in the world that get all of the press because they're working on the brands that everybody wishes that they were working on. it's how do you cut through all that? you kind of have to like bottom up and it's almost like gorilla marketing, if you will.
Jonny: there's that. If you build it, they will come mentality that like you want that to work because you kind of just want to keep doing the work. Yeah. The kind of contrasting market opinion of like, you also just have to go talk to more people. You also just have to get yourself in front of more people.
Dave: And it's yourself less than the work because people wanna work with you and who you are and be able to [00:20:00] trust you because clients are putting their job on the line by hiring you, right? We're hiring you to help us with their ad campaign for the next 12 months. So a big chunk of their budget is relying on the work that you're doing, not that you're getting all of that, right?
So like say your creative fees for a project for a year, 50 K, they're then gonna put $300,000 of ad buy behind that. they want to know that the person that's on the other line of the phone are sitting in across the table, is someone that's going to deliver. one of the things that I noticed pretty early on, a difference between companies that make it and don't, are the ones that actually just do what they say they're going to do. That is like all work being equal. Not everybody does what they say they're gonna do. They don't deliver on time, they don't deliver on budget, then they don't take feedback in a respectful way. And it seems to me like the blueprint is, or the equation is really easy, all work being.
Jonny: Yes, I know people that I sometimes myself also fail at those things, but I also know people that [00:21:00] don't deliver on what they say they're gonna do and you know, the work being awesome when they do it, me as a designer, trying to hire a designer is frustrating, right? Because like I know what should happen or what that process should look.
and then for me, for seeing a designer not do it, not deliver the work that they say that they're gonna do. I think that was the first time I saw the client's perspective truly as being a client.
Dave: Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's just treat others the way you wanna be treated. you know what, yeah, there's probably 15 creatives or designers out in the world that are just head and shoulders above everybody else from a creative standpoint. that's why there's like a Picasso in the world, right?
they might be able to play that game a little bit more because they're so sought after because of the past work that they've done, and they just have like these insights and their fingers are deeper on their culture or whatever. But there's probably like 15 people on the planet that really could pull that bullshit. Everybody else that's in that 95 to 99% [00:22:00] percentile, we're all competing against that. And the only way that you can beat them out is just being better people.
Jonny: Have you ever had to fire a client?
Dave: Yeah. And that's from the other side. It's like you're not doing what you said you were gonna do. You didn't pay me on time. Your briefs are nonsense. Your requests are out of control. you're not listening to the research.
Jonny: that's important to make exact parallel.
Dave: Yeah. they're people too. And you're a person also. no client deserves to treat anybody poorly, And I've seen that both from the big agency side where we're just getting the crap kicked out of us by these people every day and it's not worth it. And your team that's working for you, they're all miserable as well.
And it's like nobody wants to live that way.
Jonny: How do you structure your client contracts? Like how do you protect yourself from that situation, but also how do you give the client what they need and what they're looking for?
Dave: Oh, just very clear scope. So you know, and what your scope of work does is just sets the expectations for the relationship. luckily the work that I do [00:23:00] isn't incredibly complex. I have a friend that runs an e-commerce web development company, and their contracts are very complex because there's a lot of different levers involved in how everything works in that world.
In my world, I try and keep it as simple as possible, but as clear as possible, this budget will get you X, Y, and Z. We will deliver on this timeline, not necessarily dates, but time elapsed. And then if we don't get feedback in this amount of time, then the deadline gets pushed. You know? So you just put in these little levers in place that holds everyone who's signing that document accountable for what they're supposed to be doing.
for a creative, it's always challenging to talk about those kind of like money and lawyerly type of things, especially when you're like, this is supposed to be a happy, fun relationship between the two of us. But you always have to do your diligence and make sure that all those things are completely clear and.
I spent my entire morning working on a writing a scope for a new project that's gonna be probably about three months long. I don't know how many bullet points are on there of all the different [00:24:00] deliverables that we're gonna do, but saying these are all the things that we are going to be delivering for this amount of money in this timeframe with these terms.
you have a meeting that's just review the scope, and that way everybody knows what the expectations are, what the timing is, and then if someone's blows it up, you have recourse and say like, okay, well that's a change of scope. And so what that means is we're gonna add 25% to the budget and add this amount of time. And if they don't like it, well my scope has a
K fee in there.
Jonny: Excellent. Yeah. A protective structure
Dave: Because your client signs that with every other vendor that they have. So they'll sign that with their media vendor. They'll sign that with the trucking company that delivers their product from the warehouse to the retailers. The creative agency should have those types of things as well. And a lot of designers are creatives who start out as a sole entrepreneur.
They don't do that cuz you're so grateful to be able to see it and be able to do these things Every day that we get to do that, so many of us just get hosed by it.
Jonny: cuz it's almost like I can't believe that I get to do [00:25:00] this, which is the imposter syndrome. back on this idea of making sure that you're building the contracts and the structures to protect both you and the client. How many people support you? Do you have and accountants, what is your business' set of support organization?
Dave: Yes, I have a lawyer, mountain biking friend of mine Fong up in Bellingham, and he drafted all of my documents for me. I also have an accounting slash bookkeeping team, Ranta cpa, which is over on Westlake that have been with me pretty much since day one. Okay. And they help with invoicing and billing and keeping me on track and making sure I'm not blowing it. I think it's key to always find an expert in their particular category that can help you out with the things that you aren't very.
Jonny: Just like creative professionals are experts at coming up with random stuff, what are we experts at
Dave: we're experts at creating compelling things that people care about. I think that's what creatives, you know, you boil it [00:26:00] down. You know what a creative does is make people give a shit about something.
Jonny: or not give a shit and get angry about it?
Dave: Mm-hmm. elicit a reaction.
Jonny: What is a successful studio look like to you? I mean, maybe where did that notion of what success looks like to you come from, but also where are you trying to get to as a business and as an individual?
Dave: You know, your definition of success is different for every single person on the planet. For me, it's creating work that I'm happy about and proud of with people who I enjoy doing it with, and the people that I enjoy doing with Includes the clients, it includes my team around me, it includes the contractors I work with, the photographers that I'll work with, et cetera, and then being able to just live the type of life that I want to lead.
Whether that means taking off on a Wednesday and going for a mountain bike ride, being able to support my family by just doing this thing that I'm doing on my own, which like blows me away every day. That's, to me is the definition of success. Awards are nice. It's a notoriety is nice, but that's all great.
From a business [00:27:00] perspective, my goal for me in success isn't to be the most widely recognized designer and ad creative on the planet. Right. My path would be completely different if that was it. Right? My path is more personal to me, am I proud of this work that I did? Did I enjoy the path of making it?
Am I making a decent living and supporting my family and we can all do the things that we want to do? Yes.
Great success.
Jonny: How do you balance that work versus home? I only ask because some designers come home and they just completely switch it off. They're like, I'm done being creative for the day, and now I'm doing home things. Or as soon as they go to work, they're not worthy, I guess thinking about home things, but it sounds like there's an integration that.
Dave: I think any creative, there's always gonna be some type of integration. I think a true, good creative, whether it's designer or writer or whatever, there's always something happening in your head, whether it's for a specific client job or it's just like a wild [00:28:00] hair that you want to try and see if you could figure out or do something that you just feel right. Cause I think being a creative. Maybe it's less of a career and more of a compulsion to make things, you know, where a proper fine artist or a studio artist, they just work and they just make stuff, right? And there's no other levers in their world that forces them to make things. They are just constantly making stuff and exploring and trying to express the internal ideas and feelings that they have in their head and their body. Us as commercial artists, a lot of our, the compulsion comes from outside forces to make stuff, right? This project, I'm gonna think it through. This is the goals of the client. I want to go and do these different things. But you still have that same creative compulsion in you somewhere that it's always kind of like bubbling beneath the surface. And when I go home tonight, you know, I'm gonna see my family and we're gonna play with the dog and I'm gonna go run around with the kids in the yard and all that kind of stuff. That's not necessarily like telling the [00:29:00] family to like, Hey, it's creative time now, but it's still gonna influence you in some way because you need that input and the output.
To happen. And that happens with the choices that you make. What shows are you gonna watch tonight? Is it real house wise of whatever? Is that a creative decision or is it like squid game, which has a lot of interesting creative and that's gonna influence you? And so like all of those choices that you make are creative choices that are gonna influence your perspective down the line.
So like it's always integrated in some shape or form. The things that I don't think about once I clock out for the day is like, I'm not gonna worry about my budgets. I'm not gonna worry about, you know, on a Friday night, I'm not gonna worry about what client hasn't paid. I'm not gonna worry about whether I'm gonna make rent next month because that's why I have my accountant and my bookkeeper and all those other people to worry about that kind of stuff.
So I could do the things that I'm good at and enjoy doing. And that's how it becomes like, just like it's an integrated path.
Jonny: I mean, that's awesome. Literally, my [00:30:00] next question was, how does this practice affect your health? Which is, it sounds like what you're describing is creating a positive feedback loop for yourself.
Dave: Yeah, I think you need to try and do that. And it wasn't always that healthy. It used to be just grinding away and bang in your head against the wall all night to try and figure it out. My wife taught me that weekends are a good thing and you need those respite of the pressure that you put on yourself to come up with an idea.
Your brain needs the time off for just free thinking. It's an interesting thing cause before we had our first kid, we went and listened to this woman, give a lecture about the different types of education you could give kids, you know, talked about traditional education, Montessori, all the different types of things. The one thing that stuck in my mind, especially as a creative, was her belief, which I agree with is kids don't need to be learning how to read and doing flash. Until first or second grade. Everything up until then should be what's called free play. Just leave stuff out and let them explore and [00:31:00] draw. If they want to read, If they want to play with books, look at them, see the words you could read to them, but don't force them to go into this space of do these slash cards. Now, she said the research showed that kids that learned how to read at four years old, by sixth grade, they weren't ahead of the kids that didn't learn how to read until they were seven. Right? All, all other
things being equal. But the kids that weren't forced to do these very specific tasks of reading and math and stuff, they learned how to think earlier and can solve more complex problems earlier because they could think freely. It wasn't this linear way of thinking. It was like this. I don't know what the opposite of that would be, but it was this more freeform way of thinking and playing, and I think that creatives need that as well. So you need that same freeform, like I'm not. Working towards this goal or answering this brief or doing this specific thing.
It's just like letting the world around you tell you what is going to be interesting.
Jonny: of the different [00:32:00] creative environments, physical environments that you've worked in, do you find that they follow that same idea?
Dave: not all of 'em do
Jonny: Were ones that were more successful closer to that.
Dave: I think so. You know, probably one of more creative times at a larger agency was by time at Planet Propaganda, which, you know, the only definite meetings that we had were our Monday morning standup. This is what we're gonna do for the week. Other than that is you just had your deadlines and you could do whatever.
There was never anybody, like, you're not at your desk, what are you doing? So in that period, the looseness of that environment was really positive in that way. I think I did a lot of really great work there. It wasn't open office space. I think that might be challenging for some people, but as far as I'm concerned, putting headphones on on full Blast is a closed door,
Jonny: Yeah, don't put a little flag up of, don't bother me. So you have worked mostly in agencies. Do you ever work with in-house creative groups or are you, do you ever consult with in-house creative groups
Dave: the time.
Jonny: And is there, [00:33:00] relating back to your previous environmental statement, is there ever.
Conflict or a friction with those kinds of in-house groups, or do you find camaraderie with them,
Dave: The goal is always to find camaraderie. Cause your job there is to help them along. the reason why that client is hiring someone out of house to do the work that maybe their in-house people might be able to do. Cuz the client doesn't feel that their in-house team has the bandwidth, the skillset, or they're too close to it.
They just can't see the forest for the trees when you're inside like that. And so your goal is to make their lives easier and the work that you're doing with that in-house team is meant to inspire them and give them the tools to grow the brand that they're working for.
Jonny: not compete with them?
Dave: No, it's never to compete with them.
And if you end up in a position where you're competing with them, it's no one ends up happy.
Jonny: Well, you're probably gonna lose Yeah. Cause you're the more expensive house group.
Dave: Yeah. And also you're in that mix for two hours a week and they're there for 40 plus. So the [00:34:00] goal is with the in-house teams is always gonna be comradery and giving them the tools to make their job better and grow that brand. Because if that brand's successful, they're gonna come back to you for the next year's.
Jonny: how has kind of just the greater creative culture of the Northwest affected you? And maybe it's just, I mean, you were talking previously about how just being able to go outside and do the activities that you want to do and the lifestyle that you want to live, is that kind of influence that you were looking for.
Dave: Yeah, I think the broader kind of outdoor community might be a little bit more creative than the broader outdoor community in other areas of the country. I think Seattle has a very interesting point of view in that it's both kind of super outdoors, but very city-centric, right? Like the city is rough.
There's like a lot of amazing graffiti and mural artists and music And all those types of things influence. And that's from like that urban perspective. [00:35:00] Whereas those same people that are in these urban environments, they'll also go hike the enchantments. And so it's a really interesting interplay between those two different things. Where you have like urban high design and fashion and music and all those types of things that are super inspiring. But then you also get the crunchy granola vibes out in the woods, which is really cool. Cause like it ends up being a very interesting mix of things. I think the Seattle's in an interesting place in, I think it's maybe creative lifecycle if you will, because when Seattle had its heyday of like when it was like on the forefront of design and on the forefront of music, everybody was looking to Seattle and buying a photocopier and copying whatever art Chantry did and wishing that they could sit next to just Kline Smith and design album covers at sub hop. And that was like everybody nationally, all over the planet actually. Right? And then that whole world died out and a bit, but there's still a lot of people here that were influenced by that that were [00:36:00] looking at that when they were in art school, who are now in senior creative positions. At agencies and brands in town. But then you also layer on top of that the influx of people who came to work at Amazon and Expedia and Google and all those things who are doing these. A lot of these like maybe less creative jobs in like UI and UX and things like that, who are also starting to look for more ways to express themselves.
Cause design has this weird thing these days where it used to have like design was a lot, most of design was a lot more creative in scope. Whereas now most people will call themselves a designer or doing these ui UX jobs and product design, which there is some creativity in that, but it's a little bit more formulaic because you're working against how people react to things on a screen. But I'm feeling that there's a boomerang effect maybe, or like a rubber band effect happening in Seattle right now where there's a lot of art that's popping and it's, I think it's a reaction to their turmoil that's happening within the city and the wealth gap that's happening. [00:37:00] You know, there's either very rich people or very poor people, and there's not a whole lot of middle ground, and that tension usually creates really great art.
The unfortunate thing is like this, you know, the rich people always end up winning in a city, but I think Seattle's having to create a renaissance right now, and there's like a bunch of really great groups of different people doing really interesting work right now.
Jonny: How do you find those people?
Dave: Honestly, Instagram and social media and all those types of things have been super valuable in finding different people like that. But also, you know, Thursday Art Walks, you know, yesterday was a great one and unfortunately I didn't get to go cause of kiddos soccer practice and not wanting to deal with Seahawks traffic and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah. But there's a lot of really great stuff. happening in town.
Jonny: Yeah. And maybe just participating.
Dave: Yeah. You gotta get out of the office and you gotta go look.
Jonny: So you, most of your primary work is in I would branding advertising. How then do you approach the changing industry where so much of the UX UI [00:38:00] work becomes dominant in what people are asking for? Or is there still as much branding and advertising work as there is product design work happening
Dave: Or brand design? Brand design. Yeah. I mean, every single one of those things that someone's building a user experience before still needs a brand. People need to know why they have to care about something. Right? And you need to be able to build something that someone can resonate to. I had a conversation with my buddy Marcus, who's a web developer, and my client Rebecca, who's a futurist.
The week before last and then our conversation ended up just being about like finally realizing that you're in a place in your career where you don't have to want or need to do everything. And having an understanding of what you're really good at and what your, what Rebecca calls your personal superpower is and doubling down on those things.
Cuz as anybody who has like an entrepreneurial spirit, you're like, what is that shiny thing over there? Maybe I should go and do that. Should I go explore doing ui? Should I go try and be a motion [00:39:00] graphics designer that looks pretty fun, should I do these things? But, and yeah, maybe you should go and explore different things and try new things all the time.
But from a day-to-day practice, you shouldn't be stressing yourself out by trying to do all of these things. Find out what your secret sauce is and what your superpower is. Double down on that, focus it and be really good at it. And you're gonna be a lot happier because you know that grass isn't always greener as you're kind of jumping ship over there.
Cuz like I have a buddy who's like, Super high-end product UI ux designer, like deep in Google, future state stuff like makes a killing. But he wants to do the logos that I do . I'm like, man, I would love to have that $200,000 contract that you just landed, but he'd rather do this $10,000 logo project.
Jonny: and is it a grass always greener thing or is it a, I'm fascinated by learning new things and doing new things and pushing yourself to do different types of work.
Dave: is [00:40:00] some of that, but I think it's like, are you working in a different industry? I mean, a logo project today is gonna be different from the logo project tomorrow, cuz there's a lot of different factors that are involved in it. Right, right. And I try and approach each project as if I've almost never done one before.
And so then it's fresh and new. Cause now you're dealing with new people with new hopes and new dreams and new things that need to be expressed on new platform. And so it always stays interesting in that way. Now, I always have this curiosity of wanting to do other ways of creative expression, and you can bring it into your daily practice. You know, I've done a little bit of editing. I've done a little bit of motion graphics, I've done a little bit of animation and things like that, and that's, I dig it, but there's always so many. That's a little bit,
Jonny: There's always gonna be someone that's better at it.
Dave: but then you know, there's someone better to collaborate with. But then can I find the time to dedicate myself to being as good as possible at those things without leaving the [00:41:00] practice that's making my day-to-day happen? That's like if I want to go, I'm pretty sure that if I dedicated myself to doing motion graphics tomorrow, and I took three months off of work, I'd probably come out the other side. I have the knowledge and this creative skillset to know good from bad and to tell the story. I don't have the technical skills to do those things right now.
Right, and so it's just a matter of developing those technical skills and being able to dedicate yourself to doing them and being able to express the ideas that you have in that medium.
Jonny: does that come up sometimes in your projects then of like, I could do that, but I should go find the person and hire them and let me direct that relationship?
Dave: Some of my favorite collaborators when it comes to those types of things are someone that's a great pair of hands at editing or motion graphics, but maybe isn't like an A level creative, because then you can. Keep going and going and going with them and they could just do everything that you ask very quickly. Whereas if you're working with someone that's like a pretty good creative but also has those technical [00:42:00] skills, they're gonna push back a lot more on what you want them to do cuz they're trying to push their creative vision as well. But if you could find someone that has a super great pair of hands, can do whatever you ask for, don't really have too much of a creative skin in the game, then it's a really good working relationship that way. Then the other level is there's a super, a plus level creative that has those technical skills at doing something like motion graphics or editing. And then what you're giving them is coming back 10 times better than you ever dreamed, and that's where some extra magic starts to happen. Like in the TV commercial world, it's called plusing, the boards, right? Your art director, copywriter creative director from the agency has storyboards and a script. You give it to a director who has their A-level editors and motion graphics people and they like raise the level from what you had imagined it would be.
Jonny: So if you imagined a staff of like five or six people, would it be a mix of those two perspectives or those two skillsets, or would you wanna hire all the top A-list creatives that you could find? Or what makes [00:43:00] for that balance of a good studio?
Dave: I think for that size of a studio, I think everyone needs to have a great creative skillset and not worry so much about the technical skills. As technical skills can always be learned over time, but a great creative, if you don't have that spark or that compulsion, you can't really be learned. So I would always look for, in my studio, mind you, it would change if I decided I wanted a studio to be 75 or a hundred people, then yeah, you want those extra hands in there to be able to like just make stuff. But at the scale that I'm imagining, you want everybody to be at like a great creative level to be adding ideas and being able to drive vision for clients. Cuz you could always find someone that can make stuff for you.
Jonny: Can always hire the right people.
Dave: Mm-hmm.
Jonny: So in as far as gaining those skills, you can always learn them, but where do you sit as far as formal design education versus just learning everything on the job versus like for-profit schools?
Dave: Everyone has their own [00:44:00] path, and I don't really care what design school you went to or if you learn something yourself, let me see the goods. And so if we sit down in an interview and we vibe and it's a good relationship and you have the goods, doesn't matter. Cause the skills will come, the proper way of doing things will come.
But you can't teach someone to be in a better relationship with you. You can't teach someone to have a better point of view on the world or a different point of view, or you can't teach someone to be more curious. You can't teach someone who's like, Hey, just watch these tutorials for the week.
Jonny: and you can learn these skills, but.
Dave: Exactly.
And you know, in some ways you wanna almost hire the person that was self-taught because you know that they have that compulsion and they want to go and figure some shit out on their own. And that's, you want that because not every client's gonna tell you exactly what they want. You have to like figure out or not what they want or what they need. You need to go and have that curiosity and go and just figure it out sometimes. Right. It's like if you toss someone in the woods and say like, all right, find [00:45:00] your way to water. Some people are gonna be able to just like, okay, I can go and figure my way. And other people will just be like, well,
I guess I live here now. And like I want the person that's like, all right, I'm gonna go figure my way out. I don't, there's a little bit of fake it until you make it aspect in there. It's like, I don't really know, but we're gonna go figure this shit out. That's what you want out of a
Jonny: But we are going to go do it. We are going to go figure it
Dave: exactly.
Jonny: There's an energy there.
Dave: That's one of the reasons why, you know, all things being equal, I'll almost always hire, there's a number of reasons why, but I'll almost hire a skateboarder versus someone else.
All things being equal, cuz you know that a, a skateboarder, in order to do like the most basic trick, like in Ollie, you fell down 150 times until you figured it out. And then you start to learn the next trick and you fall down 150 times
before you can do it again before you learn that trick. And it's that kind of skateboarder mentality really works with the creative because you need to throw a hundred ideas against the wall until there's a good one, or [00:46:00] your first idea might be a great one, but you still need to come up with a hundred more to know that that first one was a great one.
Jonny: do you hire interns?
Dave: I am actually thinking about it. I've had a few in the past not as okay bro, but in other places and it's a, when there's enough work and enough structure and an environment to be able to spend the time to really groom them and help them so that they're getting something out of it, it's a great thing because it's very rewarding to see a young person, their light bulbs start to turn on and really start to understand what the real world is like.
Especially when you could take that raw talent and show them what it takes to really turn that raw talent into something great. It's really rewarding. I've had a few interns that I've been following, you know, they were my interns like 15 years ago into another 15 years deep in their career. And to see them now as like creative directors and doing award-winning work is so reward.
Jonny: Yeah, cuz you helped set that
Dave: It was part of their foundation. Right. And they're three months or so [00:47:00] that they spent with you when you're just like pushing 'em and pushing 'em and pushing 'em, and then the light turns on, I'm like, you fucking got it now. And then to see them take that and run and go have a great career, it's so cool to see that. So I would love to, you know, I'm not in the place right now where it would totally make sense just cause of the way I'm structured, but I would love to.
Jonny: as far as like degrees and how education is structured. What do you think about certification as a field? Do you think it's something that would benefit? Do you think it's something that would, we'd have to even figure out how to do? Would it be negative to try to certify yourself as a designer? It's even, it's kind of bizarre to describe.
Dave: I don't think design graphic designer creative should have a certification cause it's subjective. What are these blocking and tackling things that you need to know? And if you suck at them, nobody's gonna die. It makes sense that architects are are certified because if an architect designs a shitty building that gets built and it [00:48:00] collapses, there's some fucking consequences there.
If I pick the wrong font and I put it on a website, nobody can. The only issue there is the client has a shitty website, and that's just decisions that people made. They don't think we necessarily need a certification to be able to do what we do. The thing that might be
interesting is to have a larger, maybe creative union, because creatives as a whole, you know, when you go to art school and stuff, you're never educated about the business.
You never know what you should be paid. There are no standards in, in the way people get paid for the work that they do. There are no standards in how you get healthcare as a freelancer, all of those different things, right? And earlier in my career, some of the agencies I was at, it was like a sweatshop.
If you didn't come in on Sunday, don't come in on Monday, and you're just there constantly. And things I think are changing now,
but I think more than a certification, a union of sorts, that sets some standards to protect the people that work in this industry, seems a lot more interesting to me, especially with the [00:49:00] amount of like solo creatives out in the world.
Just think about. All the brilliant illustrators all over the country that sit in their room and do amazing work, that do editorial work, And you know, the New York Times pays like 250 to $500 for black and white illustration that how many people around the planet are gonna see
Jonny: Yeah. And that you literally had to produce in six hours before it went to press.
Dave: Exactly. Right. Is that fair? And there's no way for those illustrators, they don't work within a larger organization. So any of those illustrators are like, what are they doing for healthcare with the way things are structured right now? Like, shouldn't there be an illustrator's union? Yeah, I think so. That would be much better than having a, I'm a certified illustrator.
I know I had to mix yellow and green to make another color.
Jonny: That's fair. Yeah. Well then we gotta get the Art Directors Guild and the AIGs, the world to, I mean, those people seem to be the only ones that are positioned to come up with those kinds of protecting
Dave: In New York, there is a thing called the Freelancers Union, which I don't [00:50:00] know how much sway it really has within the industry as a whole, but they do have things, the website's pretty interesting and it helped me as I was building my company in that they have ways as if you were in New York and part of this freelancers union, you could buy healthcare together and they just kind of talk about the different practices that you need to have, like your contracts and NDAs and all that kind of stuff.
So you're protected, but I don't know that necessarily functions as like the uaw, but I think it would be awesome to have that. That's like you have solo designers, you have solo creative directors, you have solo illustrators, you have solo photographers that there's no protection for any of us out in the world.
Right? If you're a director, there's the film artist. There's a writer's guild who are striking right now. No, it's the production folks that are striking right now.
Jonny: Right. Yeah. As opposed to like the actor skill, but yeah, grips and things. Okay. Maybe we will, maybe we'll figure out how to do that eventually.
Dave: I think that'll be important, and I'm pretty excited that there's this [00:51:00] labor union movement that's happening across the country right now. I think people are fed up.
Jonny: Yeah. Just across the board. Interesting. Unionizing is you can do it well, you can do it poorly and you kind of have to balance like the effect on the, because we have such like a preoccupation with creating good work, whatever good work is, I could see that unionizing would may could get in the way of creating good work versus creating well paying work or something. I'd be curious how that would play out. I don't think there's an answer to that.
Dave: I think happy, healthy people will do better work in the long run. Than stressed out, unhealthy people. There are so many brilliant creatives that I've seen in this industry that did amazing work, inflamed out because there was so much pressure to try and do this good work. So they keep their job and alcoholism runs rampant within the agency world.
And maybe it [00:52:00] wouldn't if people weren't so worried about keeping their job because they had to do some amazing creative to be able to keep their job. It can be such a, what have you done for me lately? World? Oh, you haven't created a award-winning Super Bowl campaign in two years. It's like, It's kind of a lightning and a bottle thing and there's a lot of stress within that, and that's why people end up in those places.
Jonny: I know some agencies that have a better stocked bar than the bar down the street.
Dave: Yeah, and part of that is all just to get people at the agency longer so they can keep.
Jonny: Squeeze every little last ounce.
Dave: Yeah. I mean, sure. Maybe people won't be pulling like these crazy all-nighters and yeah, there's some good work that comes out of it and there's good camaraderie that happens when you're in the foxhole together sometimes, but it gets taken advantage of. Cause when you go and win that big account, they're like, great.
You get to keep your job. Meanwhile the agency owners or the holding company is like, I just took my $5 million bonus for the year.
Jonny: and I got paid the same amount because I'm salaried.
Dave: Yeah. Whereas [00:53:00] if it's like unionized, I don't know, maybe that might change a little bit. But I think the basis of it is like people deserve to have a happy and healthy life no matter what their career choice is. And just cause you're creative and you love what you do doesn't mean that you should be taken advantage of and put in 80 hours a week if you're a business owner and you want to do that or power to, cuz you're gonna see all the benefit of it. So like every hour I put into, okay bro, it comes back to me in multipliers. But if I hire somebody, they get their salary, whatever they put in after that, kind of just go back to me. Even with profit sharing and all that stuff. But still, the profit sharing that you get is like a couple percent of your salary.
It's no windfall that happens for the employees of a company when it's successful, you know? And I've been reading about, even with startups, there was a recent startup that just went public and most of the employees were very well salaried, and so they got like nothing from the I P O
Jonny: MailChimp. Oh, MailChimp just
sold. Yep. Had [00:54:00] essentially bootstrapped the company from the beginning. No one really got anything out of that except for the owners.
Dave: Well, that's another story then. Yeah, it was MailChimp that I was thinking of. Well, what was the life like for the people that were working at that company when they were bootstrapping it, and what was their expectation? Were they working at a startup with their expectations? Like, I'm putting in all this energy now and I'm gonna be that, you know, the proverbial Microsoft receptionist that's now a multi-millionaire. does that dream still exist?
Jonny: I mean, it's bizarre that they could even bootstrap that big of a company without VC funding. To me, that just doesn't really happen anymore within that space, that kind of tech product space.
Dave: Yeah. And you know, more power to them for figuring that out. It's kind of like, that's a great old story of how people used to build companies.
Jonny: Yeah. But also, did you mean to not involve your employees at that point when you sold the company, or, I would love to know what the thinking was there, kind of how that shook out.
Dave: Mm-hmm. , I'm sure there'll be a business book written about it [00:55:00] at some point.
Jonny: Probably. Let's see. Are you happy with your business? Are you content with where you are in your.
Dave: generally. Yeah. But you know, you hit the five year mark, which I did this year, and you're like, this is real. I can do this. And made it through a pandemic, which is still happening, but still up and kicking. Making a living and people are still calling. So yeah, happy. I like the work that I'm doing. Am I completely satisfied? Probably never going to be a hundred percent satisfied. That's the creative way. Am I so unsatisfied that I want to just like change it all and go back, get a job, some work. Oh, I don't really see that happening. Are there other things that I might want to explore later in my career or, well, okay bro, I've run its course at some point maybe, you know, but life changes, goals change.
Your meaning of success changes over time. I could see myself wanting to get back to doing things at a ginormous scale again, which you get to, [00:56:00] you know, being an entrepreneur and doing things yourself makes your decision set and the way that you do things a little bit different than you did when you were working at an.
And so in a lot of ways you almost start thinking as an executive because you're thinking about all the different dominoes that happen that would fall when you do certain things, which ends up allowing me to be a better partner with my clients because I'm thinking at the same level that an executive would be thinking.
Jonny: but also kind of slingshots you if you were to go back and get a job somewhere, you've now sling shotted yourself levels above what you were doing as just a designer at an agency previously. Yeah.
Dave: it definitely could. It's an interesting thing.
Jonny: What does okay bro look like at the tenure mark?
Dave: I think, you know, right now my short-term vision is like maybe we're four or five people and doing slightly bigger work, and the reason for wanting to grow is one to do slightly bigger work. Two, to take me off of doing some things that one isn't super profitable or super [00:57:00] rewarding for myself to do, but then also is getting the reward of taking talent and evolving them. Wishing the little birdie out of the nest and seeing them be successful. I could see all of those things start to happen. But I think as far as our, what we deliver or our services that we do, I don't necessarily see that changing all that much because the foundation of what companies need from a creative agency is always gonna be the same in some way.
Like how you execute it would be different. Now it comes to, life would be different in 10 years, but the core of like, who are we and what do we stand for? That question's always gonna need to be answered by any brand.
Jonny: If you look at your peers at the same kind of five year mark, are there things that you would love to just like pick their. Brain about, or people that were at the 10 year mark that you would love to pick their brain at that are kind of like peer type agencies.
Dave: I do that already and that's part of just growing a network and having relationships with people that are doing the same thing that you do. Right, because there's. .I wouldn't call it therapy, but it's [00:58:00] just like, how did you do th Being able to have relationships with people to say like, how did you do this?
How did you deal with these different problems is super helpful. And so I would recommend everybody, just reach out to people as much as you can because it's like when you have to be the sole decision maker over the direction of a project or the direction of your company, or how to deal with a difficult client or a difficult situation, how do you know if you're even doing it right?
And those people that have already been through it, their situation might be a little bit different, but at least you can like feel better about the decisions that you're starting to make.
Jonny: I think I've found that the more I communicate and ask people about anything, the more I get back and the more I learn through it, as opposed to just trying to. Beat my head against the wall to figure.
Dave: Yeah, I mean, a perfect example, I have two kids, and as they're growing up, sometimes you're just. You look at them and they're doing something totally weird or wrong, or S strain, you know that they know better. And you're just like, why are they doing this? Why are they acting this way? This is so weird. And then you [00:59:00] spend time at the playground with, and they're playing with their kid, their buddies at the same age as they are, and they're like, oh, they are all doing the same exact weird thing at this point in time.
And so there's everyone's situation slightly different. There's some universal human truths that everybody deals with at some point in their life, right? Cause we all come from the same place basically. Our situations are different. How we have to live and react in the world are all different cause we're all different people. But when it all comes down to the core, the same thing. My design company's gonna be the same, but a little bit different from the one that's down the block because their perspective and their life is different. But they're still dealing with, I have a project, I need to scope it. I need to deal with the client.
I need to get someone to buy it. I need to come with an idea and execute it. Well. It's the same thing.
Jonny: Final question, what would get you up at 5:00 AM with a smile on your face?
Dave: 16 inches of Fresh Pal. I mean, generally I wake up with a, I'm in a pretty good mood. Life's pretty good. We have our up days and our down [01:00:00] days,
but generally things are pretty good. Lately, my dog, Yoda's been waking me up at like 4:00 AM but that's a whole nother story. I don't know what his deal is right now.
Jonny: That's awesome. No, that's awesome. Well, thank you so much.