What did you learn about yourself when you did finally let go of it?

Yeah, it was very hard.

I mean, I had to get sick and be out of commission and come back to do it.

I had to be in a place where I couldn't do everything myself like I had been doing to get help.

And, you know, it's also when you're a young agency, young studio, whatever you want to call it, you feel like you have to prove yourself every single time.

The next thing I put out has to be even better than the previous thing.

Everything has to be just like 99-pack amazing, right? And You know, that for me led to a lot of micromanaging, like not letting designers grow and find their path to a solution that maybe not be the way I would solve it, but it totally works.

So maybe that's something you could think about.

So if people are guesting and they want to use that to build their personal brand, what are the sort of what are the key things that they need to get the listener to understand or have a real clear sense of who they are and what they stand for?

Yeah, I think it's it points back to brand, right? It's like throughout that conversation, you should exhibit.

what your purpose is, right? My purpose is to build things, create things that bring joy and value to people's lives and drive results for our partners, right? That's my thing.

And that goes for my family as well, to create these moments of joy and value and to create wealth through my family.

And wealth doesn't just mean money.

It means health.

It means good human connections.

I can't remember what you mentioned, but you did insinuate that kind of thing.

What are the, what are the recurring problems and malaises you hear from your clients?

One that we encounter fairly often because of the breadth of work we do in terms of size, so like we work with Nabisco and Disney, but then we also work with small, you know, startups that are first-time founders.

And when you're doing the, the small startup first-time founder things, my job as much as building the brand and the voice and all those fun things, is just educating them on how brands work.

They come in very green.

Mm-hmm.

So externally, we put great work out into the world.

That's number one.

We do a lot of thought leadership and, you know, LinkedIn sharing and education through that to kind of establish authority and to, to benefit folks who are learning about brand.

Yeah.

Um, life is too short to be, to be that.

Um, you know, w- when I think about our team, we have ...

It says on our website, "We don't work with assholes," and that includes us.

Um, we have a tremendous team of really wonderful, thoughtful people, and I learned years and years ago that I might hire the second or third best portfolio on our list of candidates, but I'll hire the best person.

Because I can teach you to be a great brand designer.

I can't teach you to be a great person.

... which means definitionally people are not going to want that transformation.