1h 30m 13 min read 13,228
Grow YOUR Design Agency in Under 2 Hours @Hoodzpah
Chris Do and Hoodzpah's Amy and Jen Hood break down the unconventional path from coupon ads to building a world-class design agency.
Chris Do
Founder, The Futur™ · August 6, 2023
The Invisible Ladder
At the start of a creative career, everything is leveraged on hard skills. Portfolio reviews are about execution. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. People hire you based on a simple question: Show me what you can do.
But as you move up, the rules change. The ladder of success is invisible, and the rungs are made of different material. The emphasis skews heavily, almost entirely, toward soft skills.
As Jen Hood, co-founder of the design agency Hoodzpah, explains, “Creative directors who've been creative directors for years and years and years, if you ask them to open a file and do something, it's kind of interesting. They don't really have those hard skills directly anymore. They just have really great taste and vision, and you know, they get paid for that.”
This is the paradox of creative mastery. The very tools that got you in the door become secondary to your ability to lead, to persuade, and to see what others cannot. This is not about forgetting how to design. It is about graduating to a different level of problem-solving.
No one exemplifies this journey from scrappy execution to visionary leadership better than twin sisters Amy and Jen Hood. Alongside Chris Do, they dissect the unconventional, often chaotic, path to building a renowned creative business. Their story is not one of linear progression or academic prestige. It is a story of grit, audacity, and an unwavering belief in their own potential, long before the world agreed.
The Seeds of Chutzpah
The Hoodzpah origin story begins not in a design school classroom, but in a childhood steeped in entrepreneurial ethos. Born in California but raised for their formative years in Kentucky, the twins were encouraged by their mother to think like business owners from day one. “Our mom always had this great idea that she would raise entrepreneurs,” Amy recalls.
This wasn’t just talk. The sisters were tasked with writing books and sketching out murals for their bedroom walls, which they had to pitch like a formal client proposal to their mother, the “art director.” She instilled in them a sense of blind belief that they could make things, do things, and succeed on their own terms. This wasn't a lesson in art; it was a lesson in agency.
The other side of the family provided the work ethic. “It’s the Jost family line,” Amy says. “And it’s the hood also. My dad too. They have always been very just like hard workers, like never expect anything to be given to you. You have to work and claw for it and then say thank you.”
Their grandmother was a particularly powerful influence. A “baller” who ran multiple grassroots businesses, from a country store to a backhoe service, she embodied financial prudence and independence. “She would pay for a Cadillac every year in cash,” Amy says, noting the car was gently used. The secret was simple: live below your means. “A dollar saved is way worth more than a dollar earned,” a principle that would prove critical to their survival in the lean early years of their business.
Creativity, however, served a more immediate, social purpose. Moving frequently between California, Wisconsin, New York, and Kentucky before the age of 16 made them perpetual outsiders. Art became their currency for connection.
“If you're an artist, you can make friends despite being kind of like, you know, zitty and awkward,” Jen jokes. Designing a poster for a friend’s band or doodling comics was a way to find common ground. It was a skill that gave them cachet in the harsh social hierarchy of high school. In a world that often felt unwelcoming, creativity was their bridge.
The transition from art as a hobby to design as a career happened almost by accident. While attending community college, Jen took a career aptitude test. “The computer said design,” she recalls, “and I said, I think I'm already doing that for my friend's band.” She was creating posters by doodling, scanning the art, and adding text in Comic Sans, unaware that this raw process was the foundation of graphic design.
Forging Skills in the Trenches
The twins’ formal design education was shockingly brief. “We took two classes in community college,” Jen admits. Their real training came from a three-year, high-pressure apprenticeship at a local magazine that was, in Amy’s words, a glorified coupon clipper.
After overstaying their welcome at community college for five years while working to pay for school and rent, Amy landed the job through a connection at her coffee shop job. The magazine owner needed two designers. Amy knew exactly who to call. “I happen to know somebody who I know works as hard as I do,” she says of recruiting her sister, Jen.
The pay was meager. Jen had been making good money in tips as a server at California Pizza Kitchen and saw the magazine job as a step back financially. But the alternative, a long-term career in food service, was a grim prospect. “I was like, I can't keep doing this. This is really bad for my psyche,” she says.
They dove in. The work was a relentless grind of rapid-fire ad production. They were responsible for creating 50 ads each for two, and eventually three, publications with a 30-day turnaround. They recreated logos from 300-pixel JPEGs and churned out print work for countless small businesses.
This experience, while unglamorous, was an invaluable bootcamp. It provided what author Malcolm Gladwell calls the 10,000 hours of practice needed to achieve mastery. While they didn’t learn the sophisticated strategy taught in elite design programs, they developed something just as critical.
Their on-the-job training provided crucial development in two areas:
- Hard Skills through Repetition: The sheer volume of work forced them to become incredibly fast and proficient in the design software. They learned by doing, over and over again.
- Soft Skills under Pressure: They had to manage dozens of clients on tight deadlines. They were forced to get on the phone, a terrifying prospect for many millennials, and learn to communicate with different personality types, lead conversations, and confidently guide clients to approvals.
“We learned all the really good things of soft skills,” Jen explains. “Dealing with so many clients on such a short deadline all the time, just learning to focus their attention, learning all the different communication styles.” These skills, forged in the crucible of a high-volume, low-budget print house, would become the bedrock of their future agency.
An Unplanned Leap
The decision to start Hoodzpah was not a calculated career move. It was an act of survival. The coupon magazine folded, leaving Amy and Jen unemployed and, on paper, largely un-hirable for the design jobs they wanted.
As Amy bluntly states, “On paper we were not hireable for the reasons that we have said: one design class, worked at a coupon clipper.” Their portfolio was a collection of ads for local carpet cleaners, not the sexy brand identities that land jobs at top agencies.
They were faced with a stark choice: try to find another low-level production job or bet on themselves. They chose the latter. The timing was forced upon them, but the ambition was already there. For months, friends had been asking them to take on small design projects, but their full-time jobs left no time. Now, they had nothing but time.
They were 25 years old, living in expensive Orange County with minimal savings. At one point, they shared a house with eight people, their designated workspace a sectioned-off corner of the living room. This became “Hoodzpah HQ.”
This is a critical moment many aspiring entrepreneurs face. Do you wait for the perfect conditions, for a robust savings account and a polished business plan? Or do you jump, driven by necessity and what Amy calls blind ambition? The Hood sisters' story is a testament to the power of the latter. As Do often emphasizes, constraints can be a powerful catalyst for creativity and action, a central theme in his discussion with entrepreneur Ryan Blair.
“Nothing will force you or persuade you more than not having any other fallback,” Jen says. “You have to pay your bills.”
Their initial strategy was simple: outreach. They contacted everyone they knew who had previously asked for work. They took on any project they could get. They weren't picky. They just needed to generate income and start building a new body of work. The confidence gap was real, but the network gap and opportunity gap were smaller than they appeared. They had a pool of potential clients waiting; they just needed to activate it.
Manufacturing Momentum
How do you go from designing coupon ads to working with the History Channel and Red Bull? You don't wait for permission. You manufacture your own momentum.
The first step was to address their portfolio problem. The work they had done didn't reflect the work they wanted to do. So, they created it themselves. They began a series of passion projects, designing things for themselves simply because they thought they were cool. This is not about busy work. It is a strategic move to build the exact portfolio a future dream client needs to see. This approach of creating the work you want to be hired for is a cornerstone for anyone looking to accelerate their design career.
They point to designer Matt Stevens and his famous personal project, Good Movies as Old Books. He created over 100 illustrations reimagining popular films as vintage book covers. The project, born from a personal creative exercise, became a sold-out coffee table book and a massive marketing tool. “Almost always when you make something for you to practice a skill,” Jen observes, “people grab onto that.”
The second pillar of their strategy was pure, unadulterated audacity, or “chutzpah.” Back at the coupon magazine, Amy had convinced the editor to give her an interview column. She then proceeded to call the PR representatives for major figures like astronaut Buzz Aldrin and country music legend Merle Haggard. She would state the magazine’s circulation numbers, a respectable 100,000 homes, but wisely chose not to send them a copy of the publication. “We just leveraged the opportunities we had to be the best they could and to kind of get us to that next level,” she says.
This mindset carried directly into their new business. They understood the power of perception. Their makeshift “Hoodzpah HQ” in the living room was carefully photographed from specific angles to look like a legitimate studio on their website. They presented themselves not as two freelancers in a crowded house, but as a professional, “above board operation.”
Their big break didn’t come from a single, massive client. It came through a series of strategic connections and a willingness to take on smaller jobs that led to bigger things.
- The Network Effect: A friend they met at a local creative meetup they started went to work at Asics. After the twins designed a logo for his wife’s ice cream company, he brought them in for a branding project at the global sportswear brand.
- Social Media Visibility: They got a project with Red Bull through a direct message on Instagram after consistently posting work in the surf and moto style, a niche with a strong local presence. They built a reputation by demonstrating their expertise publicly, a key theme in building a powerful personal brand.
- Subcontracting for Credibility: Early on, they subcontracted for larger agencies like 72andSunny. This allowed them to work on projects for brands like the History Channel and Tribeca Film Festival. While they were a vendor, not the lead agency, it gave them the social proof they desperately needed.
“It's amazing how just putting those logos on your logo carousel on your website, people just assume you know what you're doing,” Jen says. This was the turning point. By their third year in business, they were working with international brands. They had successfully closed the gap between their perceived value and their actual skill.
The Agency Crossroads: Scale vs. Expert
With momentum came a new question: what kind of company did they want to be? The default path for a successful agency is growth. Hire more people, take on more clients, and scale the operation. This was the vision they initially had. “When we first started Hoodzpah, we did have the vision of like, oh, we want to be Pentagram,” Jen admits.
But as they began to grow, they realized the role of an agency principal was shifting away from the hands-on creative work they loved and toward management, operations, and HR. This is the classic entrepreneur's dilemma that Do often discusses: you start a business to do the work, only to find that running the business prevents you from doing the work.
They made a conscious decision to reject that model. “We've purposefully stayed small because we want to do the work ourselves,” Jen explains. “We don't want to just pass it off to someone. We're kind of greedy that way.”
This contrasts sharply with the model Chris Do built with Blind, a scaled agency designed to create a legacy that outlasts its founder. “What you built will live long, long after you are gone,” Amy says to Do. “We'll just be that flash in the pan.”
But they are perfectly content with that choice. They re-envisioned their business not as a traditional agency, but as an expert boutique model. They are not selling the output of a large team; they are selling their personal expertise. Clients hire Hoodzpah to get the Hood sisters. This positioning allows them to command higher fees and work on premier projects without the complexities of a large organization.
This reveals a crucial insight for any creative entrepreneur: there are multiple paths to success. You do not have to build a 50-person agency to do meaningful, high-value work. You can work for someone else. You can build a scalable company. Or you can operate as a highly specialized, small, and nimble team of experts. The key is to choose the path that aligns with your personal and professional goals, not the one prescribed by industry tradition.
The Playbook for the Unconventional Path
The Hoodzpah story is not just inspiring; it is a practical roadmap for anyone looking to forge their own creative career, especially those who feel like outsiders. Their journey provides a clear set of actions for moving from an undesirable job to a fulfilling and profitable creative business.
For someone stuck in a “coupon ad” job, dreaming of more, the advice is clear and tactical.
First, recognize the trade-offs. Starting a business is easiest when you are young and have fewer responsibilities. “You never have the freedom like you do when you're young and you don't have maybe a wife or kids or a lot of overhead,” Jen advises. As your life grows more complex and your financial nut increases, the leap becomes exponentially harder.
Their recommended playbook for making the transition includes several key steps:
- Start a Side Hustle: Before you quit your day job, start building a roster of clients on the side. This is the lowest-risk way to prove your business model and see if you even enjoy the work of running a business.
- Build a Financial Runway: Save aggressively. “Try to get three months savings at least,” Jen recommends. This nest egg provides the operating capital to survive the inevitable slow months as you get started. The ability to manage finances is a non-negotiable skill, something often overlooked in creative education but essential for running a sustainable business.
- Embrace a Transition Period: Ideally, work for someone else for two to three years. This allows you to learn the ropes, see how a business operates, and make your early mistakes on someone else’s dime while earning a steady income.
- Verbalize Your Ambition: A woman once told Amy something that stuck with her: “The important thing is not figuring out how you're going to do it. It's just figuring out what you want to do and starting to talk about it with as many people as you can.” The people around you become your connectors, opening doors you could never find on your own.
This final point is perhaps the most powerful. Amy Hood always believed she was destined for big things. While it sounds almost outrageous, Do points out that this self-belief is not arrogance; it is a prerequisite for major achievement. “You need a little bit of that,” he insists. “Once you magnetize yourself to that goal, the means and the methods will appear.”
The story of Hoodzpah is a living testament to that principle. They did not have the conventional resume, the money, or the connections. What they had was a clear vision for their future, the work ethic to grind through the unglamorous stages, and the audacity to act like the agency they wanted to become, long before it was a reality.
Their path proves that the biggest gap for most creatives is not one of skill. It is a gap of confidence and a failure to see that every seemingly menial job is an opportunity to forge the skills and reputation you need for the next level.
You don't need permission. You need a plan and the chutzpah to execute it.
TRANSCRIPT
when you start your career you kind of are leveraging everything on your hard skills like I can do this I can do this I can do this and people hire you based on like show me what you can do right but as you move up the invisible ladder or whatever ladder that is
for you if you do want to get up into those like higher management positions it's it skews way more to soft skills to the point where creative directors who've been creative directors for years and years and years if you ask them to open a file and do something it's kind of interesting they
don't really have those hard skills directly anymore they just have really great taste and vision and you know they get paid for that [Music] yeah so I'm so excited to catch up with you but there's probably a handful of people who don't know who you are can you do me a favor and
introduce yourselves oh I'm Jen hood of Hoodzpah this is my twin Amy I speak on behalf of no gentle mouthpiece and co-founders of Hoodzpah and we do branding identity work type design and to be honest a little bit of everything because you know when you do brand identity you kind of have the
joy of if clients like working with you at the beginning they can they keep asking you to do everything and it's just when you want to say no right yeah and you just keep bringing people on as you need and it's that's why branding is so fun yes okay so I think I
just want to quickly point out this this is probably a first for us it's our first two guests on at the same time first twins first design Twins and so we're doing a lot of first things today first double hit a blonde so a lot of excitement double bleach treatment you uh normally
need coffee to be caffeinated I would say don't do that it's going to be too much energy for you you can just feel the energy through your ear holes right now and take all of this in okay and Chris this is exciting too I have to say I was so worried this morning
really quickly at that at the office the electricity went out because they're moving all of the above ground like uh internet and electricity cables underground and the minute they turned it on this morning everything went dead and it just devolved back into you know like prehistoric times and we were panicking and we
were like it's so funny how we have so many skills and we're so evolved and then the electricity goes out and you just turn into like the worst version of yourself and I was just like what are we gonna do I mean how do I and then I'm like trying to I was
about to email you actually because I was worried but I'm so glad it went back on and we turned back into the best version of ourselves ready for this and I'm so excited that we got to talk to you just in time right yeah a little sketchy moment there okay you know what's
really interesting to me besides all the design stuff that you do the lettering and all the beautiful work is that you also teach people about like pricing strategies and how to run a design business right and so that's a relatively new unique and different in the in the world of creative people how's
that been going for you it's been so fun and it started with our book which we talked about a couple times yeah and um but it's been it's so weird how like when you're a designer or a creative of some of any kind you always think like the greatest joy comes from the
work but then if you ever get the chance to Mentor or teach that changes so quickly because sure that this job is fun and that's all great but like being able to help someone else figure out how to like make more get the dream clients get the work they want helping them the
way that somebody helped us when we were young is just so rewarding so it's been really fun and not only that like it's been making pretty good money too so it's like a win-win I love that you know what I feel like I I'm investing in the future yes and that feels good
but also it's almost like as a grandparent it's like you really need to treat your grandkids and kids right because you're about to be like phased out you know what I mean so I feel like I'm training of the Next Generation and I'm building bonds loving them when I'm on my last leg
they throw me a few bones here and there maybe like a little design project like over here and you know that way when I'm like coughing out dust I still have some income hopefully wait a minute you're not that old what are you talking about come on oh my life cycle of a
creative I mean I mean do you know what I mean like oh I see it's like dog years it is it is funny it's funny people I feel like you phase out earlier because it's like there's so much good young Talent you know and it's like you meet creative directors of giant companies
and they're like 35 and you're like dang this is kind of crazy right um no I'm just joking though I'm really not manipulating or conniving but at the same time it really does feel good like I feel like in some ways uh you know there's uh benchmarks we've reached for our studio that
have been so exciting but then the benchmarks we reach like helping other people do things that that are exciting to them it feels like that much more exciting when it's someone else I don't know that you get to live through vicariously all over again almost like kids you know well Chris do you
find because you have all your students I find that having like this like younger generation some of them are younger some of them are just peers and we're all just kind of swapping knowledge but I just find having other people there to like tell me about new things coming down the pike or
like share styles or it keeps me young I find it it keeps me young in a way that if we were just doing our own thing we might become myopic yeah yes I think we get caught up in our own Bubbles and we forget that there's a whole other world and and people
have different points of view and so being around people who are Learners regardless of what your chronological age is they're not old crusty and jaded like some of us are and so they they remind us like oh yeah there was a time when I used to like look forward to those things and
it keeps you really honest and and grounded I think is that their experience oh totally yeah totally or even just like even with live streaming our design process like P people will be in there being like why don't you use this tool it's way quicker you just took 15 minutes to do what
this new tool takes like two seconds to do and I'm over here like learning the shape Builder tool like live on air while everyone just like Reams me but it's like it's this great humbling process of like you know technology is always changing so if you're just doing things the way you've always
done them you know there's there's all these new ideas new ways of doing things so yeah any kind of like sharing your process I always find I learn just as much if not more from sharing what I think I know um because you have to quantify it and you have to kind of
like organize it all together and it really does help you kind of solidify the why now I know we've done several pieces of content together but I'm always a little surprised when people actually never watch the YouTube channel and they only listen to the podcast so for those people if you don't mind
I just want to do a little quick origin story of YouTube so that at least they know who the voices are and where it comes from you're not native Californians you're from Kentucky originally is that right we were born in California but we did do our formative years in Kentucky so you are
100 right and our grandma and our mom's family all lives there so you have all the people so that are heavy ties in Kentucky yes I see okay so when when is it that you discover design and who discovered it first gosh well it I think we discovered art really early because we
love to draw and doodle and our mom had that book um let's see it's something about like help your kids make a million dollar lemonade stand I don't know maybe someone knows an actual title that's somewhat similar to that but the idea of being I think our mom always had this great idea
that like she would raise entrepreneurs which is great because from an early age she was always telling us like oh let's write a book together and we would doodle like book ideas together and like we wanted to draw murals on our wall and she made us like sketch something out so that she
like we could prove it at her the art director she was like Shark Tank we had to like you know propose it to the board and she would pass it and then we would get to draw on our walls so she gave us a lot of freedom but also like instilled this crazy
amount of like just blind belief that we could you know do stuff and make stuff and just like kind of do it so we would draw it a lot draw it a lot we draw it a lot and um but then later on I think the easiest soon we started making it lucrative
like in high school I would I would make a Valentine's shirt for my boyfriend you know like bedazzle shirt that says I love Ross or whatever and then the other girls will be like Oh I like that and so I would charge all the girls to make shirts for their boyfriends you know
so it's like pretty soon you start to realize that this is a skill that you can trade and then somebody tells you in college like oh this is actually a job that you can have like you don't have to do like art can pay the bills and I think Jen it was your
like aptitude test that told you that yeah I just took like a quiz in the the community college career center it's like please help me make money with my drawing and the computer said design and I said I think I'm already doing that for my friend's band you know like which everyone does
I think when you're young and you like to draw you like doodle stuff scan it in and then make printer print it out at Kinkos and you don't even know that you put comic stands with a doodle and that's graphic design you know so yeah it was kind of more organic like that
okay so if I get this right then your mom has encouraged and fostered a creative and entrepreneurial spirit so the seeds were planted early oh yeah now I I just want to quickly dip back in there uh who is your mom like why does she think this is right for her children to
be honest it's not it's the Jost family line it's and it's the hood also my dad too they have always been very just like hard workers like never expect anything to be given to you you have to work in claw for it and then and then say thank you um so I think
it was just like a mixture of our dad is like the hardest such a hard worker and all of his family really Prides himself on that and then our mom's whole family have always run their own ranch or on their own Farm run their own business very Grassroots business yeah and they've always
had two or three businesses they ran the Country Store they rent they rented out their fields to for you know farming and then they also did Backhoe service so it's like always three hands and three different pies and but she my grandma is such a baller so she's also kind of the one
who passed down this entrepreneurial spirit and she would pay for a Cadillac every year in cash it was a used Cadillac but it was only a year old and you know how she did it she never gave any money away because she used to she used to make us you know do all
the chores around the house which yeah you should your kids and you have to pull your weight right but um and it's funny because we would like work all day in the yard and she would give us a quarter you know so it's like she was just really and that's what she taught
us it's like save save save like you know a dollar saved is way worth more than a dollar earned if you can like not live above your means then you're doing really well which I didn't think was that novel of a concept until I moved to California where you realize that many people
don't understand this principle of saving your money and and at least you know budgeting and stuff so I am really grateful that um you know just basic Financial skills which nowadays I think there's a lot more of that being introduced early on in you know middle school high school where you have to
they have all these apps and programs to try and teach financial literacy which is so great because I don't even think they do it enough though like I wish they did it more I wish it was more built into the curriculum like our friend send funches he's like got a whole you know
startup that's angled at teaching kids financial literacy but yeah yeah okay all right so we we understand the hard work stuff runs deep in in the veins there so we get that and you and you have to earn your way through life nothing's going to be handed to you I get all that
part where does the art and drawing and using creativity come in prior to you doing that aptitude test on a computer okay we moved around a lot so California to Wisconsin Wisconsin and New York New York to Kentucky Kentucky back to California all at pivotal moments were before 16. all all amidst a
stream of braces and acne this is what we realized pretty quickly oh my God oh my God I mean for Motorhead is the most hideous man alive but put a guitar in his hand get him up on the whiskey stage like this man can get any lady he wants this kind of thing
if you're an artist you can make friends despite being kind of like you know zitty and awkward that sounds sleazy but I really I mean it really was a way to just connect with people and I think we've realized okay people find creativity interesting and like we can collaborate with people because they
you know have a band they want to make this poster or you know they like Comics I Like Comics whatever and so I think it kind of was a way to just make a connection um and so and it was just fun and we you know it's just something we did naturally so
we kind of transitioned that to well and thank goodness we came up during the time when John container was Blazing away for hand-drawn logos because do you remember twenty two thousand yeah do you remember when this happened Chris how did you feel how did Art Center take it I know everyone from Art
Center is trying to use helvetica and you know me and Amy are like doodling hand-drawn lettering and scanning it in poor and like poorly vectorizing it and calling it a logo but um that was early days of our like logo uh treatment but eventually we we kind of did like clean it up
and learn how to do it properly luckily okay I find this a little bit hard to believe because the way that you it's since I've known you you're both very outgoing you seem super fun and gregarious but even if you moved around a lot I just don't feel like you guys would have
a hard time blending in first of all you always have your friend or best friend with you everywhere you go so you're never really that lonely so I feel like it's always like you come into a new school and you just dominate so is that wrong okay it's wrong because that's hard to
believe all right we'll say our mom made it and friends with everybody you know like and and if people are just as scared as you so if you just are the first one to go up and talk to them that's usually all it takes is somebody to go up and say hey I'm
Amy you know so we've always been pretty good at meeting people except when we moved to California back in when we were 16. people in California man they like to withhold that love like they just very withholding especially in high school I think everyone was just so scared of being rejected that I
I just remember like I would see somebody from first period like in the hall and I'd be like hey and start waving and they were just like oh my gosh they would just keep walking I was like this is it we're not in Kentucky anymore we're not in Kentucky anymore because in Kentucky
everyone waves you wave a complete strangers you it's a big wave it's a big wave state yeah you gotta tip the Hat otherwise you're a rude Outsider you know but Chris don't you find like even if you're outgoing now like you say that you're a loud introvert like you kind of learn how
to read the room or how to read certain situations and kind of how to get out of your comfort zone and when we were young we were really good at it and high school they beat us down in California they beat down our spirit but we learned again later just that like just
kind of remembering that like everybody's scared if you're just the first person to say hi or put yourself out there people usually want to connect wouldn't you say that's true I don't know I have to think about this but I also wanted to quickly interject that this is an interview with Amy and
Jen Hood from Hood spot it's not an anti-california propaganda piece to be honest this is probably refreshing because most people just hear us on and on about how much we love it here right okay so this is a departure then right yes I mean we're here for a reason we're paying all this
money for a reason right I will never you have to drag my carcass from this state I love it so much here okay so this idea that that people want to connect maybe because I've grown up in California most of my life that there is sometimes and especially in La they're a standoffish
like who the hell are you and why should I even give you two looks right because uh here everybody is famous everybody's beautiful everybody is talented and who who the heck are you and what can you do for me so there is a little bit of that stereotype that I think Rings true
in some experiences so you guys face it at 16 and but I still am like you ladies can't I I don't know how I could process this like that you had a hard time so that you use art to like uh be your your I wish we could call a friend remember Who
Wants To Be A Millionaire we got to call a friend I wish I could have called so my friends who could have been like yeah these girls you wouldn't believe how quiet I literally would just go like sit behind the gymnasium just so nobody would like notice but yeah I love listening to
Conan O'Brien's podcast because you know he interviews a lot of Comedians and stuff but it's funny how even like comedians are generally when they're not doing comedy kind of quiet and you know observant and I think we really do like to observe the world and like gather information and then be like okay
so that's going on like we kind of like assess the situation and then we try and like make a connection the way we you know any way we can to try and like you know reach out to people because we really do we are social people I think even though like it's not
always easy at the get-go but um I think that's also why you know if after that we've really been interested in creating Community because having moved around a lot we realized how hard it can be to get new community and so later on in our life it was always like let's like start
a meet up in Orange County because everyone thinks it's only fun in La like let's see if we can make something fun in Orange County you know so we started a little meet up with some friends and everyone else was craving that same community and then you know with the workshops and stuff
like that I think we're always just interested in like let's try and like bring some people together around this surely we're not the only ones who think this is interesting or we should you know like put our heads together share this knowledge or whatever yeah I love that okay so for all the
art nerds out there who may not have a twin sister and not be bursting at the seams with energy and waving at everybody I think it's really neat that you were like okay um what is it that I can do that gives me some acceptance and some cachet because especially in that whole
social hierarchy that seems to help like if I do one thing that's unique and people like I can build an identity around that right going back to my original question I had asked you like who got into design first so is that Jen it was it was Jen Jen definitely took the first
graphic design class because we were like five years into this two-year Community College I mean we were like very much overstaying our welcome but but our dad was like I just love that my dad as soon as like we needed a car he's like all right go get a job and then it
came time for college I'm like all right Dad you paying for me to go to UCLA or what and he's like no um but I honestly thank him for that because we had to work to pay for our school we had to work to pay for our rent all those things so it
took us longer to do community college but because I waited I made a friend at my coffee shop job and he owned a magazine him and his friends had started this local magazine okay now he had definitely talked it up it was a coupon Clipper um but he gave me my first job
and he actually taught Jen and I on the job he gave us an apprenticeship so we basically got to learn design for free on the job and get paid to do it so it was like that's what you call a good Roi you know I kind of asked for a better first job
and he gave us so much responsibility because it was just us three and him turning out like three Publications and a bunch of print house you know like business cards for small businesses and recreating logos for people who only had like a 300 pixel jpeg of their logo okay so I want to
get the chronology here you come back to California 16 you deal with the snobby people and you're in Community College taking a little longer to process this and then you're working so you're like are you in your 20s now yeah 20s yeah 18 19 20 and 21. yeah yeah because we must have
got our first job when we were like 20 doing design because we started hoods but when we were like 25 so okay okay very interesting all right so you get this job and then is it a two for one like you hire one sister you get the other one it was crazy like
people always ask like because we always thought we'd do our own thing we never had glasses together we kind of had our own friends even though we would bring them together on the weekends but like we pretty much had our own lives now we are we are absolutely like merged at the hip
in every possible way that that is true yes and it all started because this guy who came into my coffee shop was like I need two designers and I was like I happen to know somebody who I know works as hard as I do you know you know the funny thing is too
I was working a California Pizza Kitchen which that makes some good pizza if anyone out there believes it's true um and I was a server and I was making pretty good money with the tips you know so I was like like we're going we're just taking a step back here with this magazine
job like her future was so small at that time she just thought I could make 100 worth of tips like why it was so small yeah but then I just I don't know if any of you have been a server at any point most people have but it's like when you see the
life long term of a server it's just like uh working nights and weekends you never see your friends and then you just get like drunk after work to like numb the pain of like serving people all day you know so I was like I can't keep doing this this is really bad for
my psyche you know this can't be a long-term solution so yeah we both worked at the print house so we worked at the print house yeah magazine we got so much great experience by just doing really quick quick iteration rapid fire Ad work like there just wasn't time it was like a 30-day
turnaround to make two magazines and we had to do like 50 ads each for clients and at one point we had three magazines like they would just keep piling on the magazines but never hire anyone else so it's just like oh it was crazy but it was great work because I mean you
do you just learn so much by just repetition right the 10 000 hours so um but then when we started hoods we realized we needed to learn again but with repetition of a different story like we had to elevate the kind of where we were doing like you can't like we didn't want
to do ads anymore obviously like no more coupon ads for a local uh you know carpet cleaning companies so um we had to do all the things that you you tell everyone to do you know like make your passion projects like make stuff you want to you know get paid for so there
was a lot of so we were kind of like juggling um like I had a part-time job doing more ads for another magazine and then Amy was like kind of full-time trying to build up hudspa and we were you know kind of living off of some savings and trying to bankroll the dream
you know so is that the extent of your design education isn't that shocking we took two College it was basically three years of on-the-job training I would say and you know what we learned all the really good things of soft skills I'll say we did learn the programs and um he did teach
us really well but we did also pick up some bad habits but that's I mean you know you kind of realize as you go through life oh okay I need to relearn that because that wasn't proper or whatever or you know more of the technical stuff I think we did have to relearn
a lot to kind of pivot to what we wanted to do but that the soft skills we learned were invaluable with dealing with so many clients on such a short deadline all the time just learning to like Focus their attention learning all the different communication styles that people have and how like if
you really do want to get the most out of people you can't be so rigid as to not be flexible to how they have to communicate with like we're Millennials so we're terrified of the phone but we had to get on the phone and like bother these you know Boomers about their ad
their ad deadlines so it's like you gotta sometimes get out of your conference yeah totally push this out of our code yeah and get used to like talking confidently on the phone and like leading people and making them feel comfortable to say it's approved you know yes so when you talk about soft
skills in case people are like what the heck are they talking about it's things like thinking negotiation communication right and then the hard skills are I know how to use Adobe Illustrator InDesign or whatever and you got a little bit of both while doing a gazillion ads right exactly it's interesting because like
when you start your career you kind of are leveraging everything on your hard skills it's like I can do this I can do this I can do this and people hire you based on like show me what you can do right but as you move up the invisible ladder or whatever ladder that
is for you if you do want to get up into those like higher management positions it's it excuse way more to soft skills to the point where creative directors who have been creative directors for years and years and years if you ask them to open a file and do something it's kind of
interesting they don't really have those hard skills directly anymore they just have really great taste and vision and you know they get paid for that so it is kind of interesting but we never got to that full point where we fully delegated even with Hoodzpah we love doing the Hands-On work too and
that's why we've purposefully stayed small because we want to do the work ourselves we don't want to just pass it off to someone we're kind of greedy that way you know it's probably that um farming hard labor work ethic that was instilled in you that you're like you know this is an honest
day's work right good to do it yeah yeah I do I find a lot of rewards from being able to see see something at the end of the day this is where you and I may depart from like our philosophy on business right right because I think that as an entrepreneur at some
point if you if you want to grow Beyond like a boutique creative service agency that you actually have to hire people and you have to delegate and then yeah you do hard decisions and oh you have to you do and which is why we stayed small we realized when we started trying to
grow we were just like this isn't for us let's just use our name and we'll just get bigger projects and bigger pay as people see that we are better and better at what we do right but that's the cool thing like Chris what you built will live long long after you are gone
because you have scaled that to a team that's not just you anymore I mean you are that amazing figurehead but you've trained up all these amazing people who can you know keep it going yeah so that's what's so cool is like you'll have a legacy we'll just be that flash in the pan
but like it was known it was super hot though super hot flashes we didn't set it up for a long time but that's okay with it like to be honest like we're like you know what I think we're more like almost expert uh and they're hiring an expert to do it they're not
really hiring an agency we've just kind of elevated but I think there's something really cool to that I don't when we first started Hoodzpah we did have the vision of like oh we want to be the pentagram like we want to grow to be that thing and then we were like actually we
can kind of still do these things that we like to do ourselves we could just be a small brand that's really well known and is an expert in that in that wheelhouse you know and um for anyone out there who doesn't feel like they're really that's not their wheelhouse to scale scale scale
like you really can still get your dream jobs if you at least position your small brand the right way as an expert you know yeah there's a lot of paths towards being or making a living being a creative person what you guys are doing you can also work for someone that's okay too
yeah and just delegate most of the work well there's a lot of people working for someone else making way more than we are we're probably way happier they sleep more but it's interesting it's like each person does the path that like yeah they've mine was interesting but this is what I want to
know Chris I'm going to turn it back on you because you recently had your face in Times Square which is so cool and it was from a NASDAQ company that went public right but it's like your face was in Times Square and unless you're in a Calvin Klein ad or you know you're
a Marvel Universe character being promoted for the next movie like you don't get your face in Times Square so you know what so I want an achievement I need to know details okay now it's not as big of an achievement as you might think so it was there and I saw the photos
thanks for like drawing me into this and now everybody's like oh it was just that that's it okay I'll tell you the whole story okay it's a very quick story um first of all it only appeared on that screen for a moment it was very up and then it was gone and it
only looks like it's something because we were given a photograph of it so it's like wow this is awesome yeah but here's the thing one of my design internet friends Chris Green he said Chris there's this company and they're gonna feature people you should submit your photo I'm like oh God do I
really want to do this and then looked at it only five people made a comment so part of the contest was you have to make a comment I'm like my odds of one out of five pretty good very high and they didn't require anything else they didn't say anything like you have to
like jump through three hoops and and and you know uh wrestle bear or anything it was really straightforward submit your image uh tell us a little something about what you do and that was it I didn't think anything else of it um and then Monday morning there I you need to be sure
you're there for the opening bell tomorrow at nine or a.m or Eastern Standard Time I'm like well that's not a lot of time for me to get on a plane so I had to reach out to my friends on the internet and that's that's all it was it was I love that is
that not like the most amazing Parable though to just like put yourself out there because Chris you have like you are one of the most famous designers out there and you still said yeah I'm gonna do this little contest on Instagram I love that but do you know what I'm saying like there's
one of 2 000 people I'm like shoot you know no but I think that's great but you played the odds that's and your nighttime skin regimen you've been prepping for this you've been prepping for this baby all my life was meant to be big Beauty regimen you're on yeah you do not age
okay all right I want to get back to you guys though the the thing that you said which I think a lot of people are gonna have a hard time figuring out on their own because your story isn't the typical story uh self-taught took two classes in the community college and gets a
job at a coffee shop design and then all of a sudden three years later I'm gonna start a company so if somebody is out there sitting there thinking I'm doing those coupons or Those ads still help me please what do you say to those people it's interesting because it's so much easier to
start when you're young and you have blind ambition so I really try not to tap down any any ambition that someone's has when they're young even if it may be too soon for them to start their own business because ideally you would get two to three years working for somebody else so that
you can see like how things work what to do and what not to do right on someone else's dollar and with steady income because you want to have that savings net for when you do go out on your own but at the same time nothing will force you or what would you say
persuade you more than not having any other fallback then to just do the Outreach and get clients because you have to pay your bills so it's interesting as much which was our experience we the magazine we were at folded we were basically just out on our butts and we live in Orange County
and it's very expensive here so we started our company much sooner than we had anticipated because on paper we were not hireable for the reasons that we have said one design class uh worked at a coupon Clipper I wish I could show you my portfolio it's so funny um but these ads worked
for the clients and that's really all that mattered but as far as getting hired on it no it wasn't going to happen so we really just had to start the company just because we knew we had all these friends that had been asking us for months and months and months to do these
little projects for them but we hadn't had time because of our full-time jobs so we basically just reached out to everybody but when somebody is at a steady job and they're like I want to go out on my own you know and maybe they're a little bit young I always just try to
tell them like start getting a roster of clients on the side first start building up your nest income try to get three months savings at least so that you have operating expenses to bankroll the slow months as you get rolling you know um but at the same time I I love when young
people want to start something because you never have the freedom like you do when you're young and you don't have maybe a wife or kids or a lot of overhead from a house you know so it's like why not try something when you'll bounce back and your bones are made of rubber you
know like why not try something big who knows and I I actually feel for people who they do have the steady income they have reached that really great job that they love but they still have that dream of going out on their own it's harder for them because it's they have such a
great thing going right you work for someone else you you know and now their monthly nut is probably so high exactly so for them you just have to kind of think about it more of like will I hate myself if I never try this right so it's like build up your again build
up saving saving saving saving savings because at that point in your life obviously you probably have a little bit more to lose maybe there's people who rely on you so you just really gotta build up savings and then even still like if you can muster up the energy to start it on the
side even though that's a lot to ask if someone um especially if you know maybe you're older and you're just like not as energetic as you once were but still starting anything on the side is the easiest way just low risk and high reward just see if you can prove the model with
two or three clients if you actually even enjoy doing it and then from there you can kind of see like am I willing to try and scale this up you know in a situation like that you're working at the magazine and the magazine folds and so now you're like what do we need
to do right we need to do something and I look at gaps like sometimes there's a confidence Gap sometimes there's a skill Gap and sometimes there's an opportunity or a network Gap it seemed to me like you're not short of confidence uh your network of friends that you said have been bothering you
about doing something so you had opportunities and you use those three years wisely to close whatever skill Gap but I I kind of have to think if you're you showed your portfolio that time it'd just be a bunch of ads and ads generally are not that sexy did you feel at that point
in time that you had the the skills you just didn't have the proof of that in the work that you were doing 100 100 we always knew I always was like I'm gonna be a famous artist or I'm going to own my own big business I never felt the same way but I
at least I can cling on to Amy while she rides a high into the sky know why when I was in Kentucky I was like I'm I'm made for big things baby I was so I was so out there I had so much confidence it's outrageous I would dress like Gwen Stefani or
like Britney Spears I was just like so out there but um but yeah so I think I always like really wanted to do that I just knew that like like you said this skills maybe I hadn't had the opportunity and also I just hadn't learned the the programs to do like the more
fun work the more like creative work I had mostly just been kind of a Yes Man for clients to get their ad done so so yeah that first year was just taking on projects really any projects we could we were not at all picky at first um and but then on the side
we were doing passion work so we made a lot of you know just stuff that we thought was cool to try and try and build a style exactly yeah work that you did just for you yeah exactly right and all of my favorite designers still do that even if they work for someone
else even if they work for themselves people like Matt Stevens I mean he did like um good movies as old books it's a big project and I think it was like he did it like something like 150 entries and he ended up making it into a coffee table book that sold out it
was so popular and it just started as an exercise of like what are what are what's the pop culture that I love and how's how's the way that I can test and flex my illustration skills and make this something for me and almost always when you make something for you to to practice
a scale and you do more than ten people people grab onto that people like that kind of thing yeah I I think those daily or weekly exercises that you give yourself a prompt so you don't have to really think about the assignment and that there's a lot of constraints that you work within
those are great portfolio building exercises that can lead to a lot of different things like great marketing materials to get clients or potentially turn into a product that pays for itself I like that um one thing I want to quickly highlight is that whether or not you had a gen Amy had it
right so she had this belief that she was going to be a world famous designer and everybody's going to celebrate that so then she just needed to manifest that into reality and so I think that's something for people understand we're giggling about it we're laughing about it because like who is she to
think you know she's so Superior to everybody else right but you need a little bit of that you really do so each and every single person who's listening to this think about this future state where you you've achieved not all of your goals but some of your goals and then once you magnetize
yourself to that goal the means and the methods will appear right and I think that's you you are living proof of that oh yeah it's so true well I met this lady one time she was saying um the important thing is not figuring out how you're going to do it which that sounds
really like naive but hear me out she said the important thing is not figuring out how to do it it's just figuring out what you want to do and starting to talk about it with as many people as you can because the people around you will actually be those connectors that help you
get to the next steps and now of course yeah logically trying thinking through like how the best way you would do it is but don't close your off yourself off to just talking it out with people because they'll say oh my gosh I know someone who wants something like that and they will
actually make better connections for you than you could ever just dream up out of nowhere right because it's the real world and you just can't plan ahead for the perfect scenario so yes plan because I mean planning is smart but then also just just talk about it and it just goes to show
like you know Amy was way more confident probably than I was if I was probably left to my own devices I would probably just go to work for someone else like my whole life even though I do like doing my own thing so but it speaks to how important it is to have
Community around you you know and just to like hold yourself accountable by telling people what you want to do and then letting them actually kind of like ride you on it like being like what where is that at like why haven't you finished that like you know like having people who can kind
of call you on your stuff so that you can like push yourself to the next level if that's what you want not everybody wants to be constantly like harassed and ranked but I actually kind of like having friends who really like you know talk honestly with me about things that I've I've said
I want to do yeah I think it's so neat and special that you have a friend a sister and a business partner and someone who has very complementary personality traits where she's as far as I know comes across as the rebel the risk taker The you know I don't care if it works
out because I'll make it work and then you're like the pragmatic let's let's get this thing done and so she can jump first and you're like how's the parachute right and then you're like oh she didn't die I'll jump two now but it's a combination of those two things and it's very rare
and special that you have that especially because your sisters and it works out really well okay I want to Circle back to something that you kind of just said very jokingly your grandmother had money because you never spent any of it you never gave it to anybody and I'm thinking work at a
coffee shop designed for magazine living in California like the math doesn't add up um we were living with eight people at one point oh yeah we were living so okay now okay don't don't skip any of the details and tell us the dark period there yeah tell us all oh my gosh it
was such a dark period And when I when that guy offered me that job I was working at this coffee shop and people were honestly worried about me I was like cursing like a sailor any little thing would like fly me off the handle like I just I had not achieved these dreams
of being a famous artist and I thought it was going to be fine art so I I think I was like really spiraling as to like I had all these goals why I thought I was so good why is no one seeing the potential in me like they're not seeing me the way
I see me and um and it was so good though I I find that we've thrived under action and I I read this article by Brian Collins and he was it was like a letter to design students or something like that and the student basically asked him like I don't feel comfortable I
don't feel like there's a place for me I don't feel like there's anybody who really wants what I have and he said most of the greats don't and I'm not saying I'm a great he's just he was just saying like if you're carving A New Path where people don't really share the same
taste as you in this area or in this field that means you need to start your own little Community you need to start your own little thing you know start um invite people into what you're doing start inviting people into what you're doing rather than trying to fit into what they're doing sure
so I think pretty quickly I was like okay I'm probably not going to go to design school I don't have the money they don't want they don't want my portfolio um you know and so I just started taking opportunities and then maximizing them so at that coupon Clipper I started my own interview
column and I we had great readership because it was a free magazine that had a few local interest stories and then mostly just ads well I would convince the editor to give me an uh interview column where I would interview local celebrities and I would just tell them what the readership was I
never showed them the magazine I would just call their PR people and say like we go to 100 000 homes like great readership we'd like to interview Buzz Aldrin and they would say sure and so we interviewed people like Merle Haggard and all these really cool people and and I can only imagine
their face when they actually got the the printed magazine like just shock and horror but it you know we we just leveraged the opportunities we had to be the best they could and to kind of get us to that next level well then when we started Hoodzpah as far as we where we
were we were renting a place with uh five there's like five of us total and then we had the kind of living room sectioned off as Hoodzpah HQ and we just made it look so cool and then took photos at the right angles to make it look like a studio you know and
so that was the office and that was what we used on the website to make it look like this was a above board operation you know and then there was just a lot of trade with friends for photography and stuff like that I like that oh my gosh because yeah I I suspected
this was true and and you're proving it to be true the name hutzpah is really what you embody the fact that you had the intestinal fortitude to just call up famous people I'm like you know what I'm gonna just by hook or by crook get stuff done because I got places to be
and things to do and you didn't like the reality of it uh temper your your vision of what the future is like like for you you're like you know I'm the creative director editor of Vogue I'm gonna call people that was kind of like how you felt even though it's like the Penny
Saver or something totally right and I think it's also being instilled with that thing like our dad would I don't he never said it but it's like if you're gonna do a job do it right so even though we were working at a job where I'm pretty sure I was making twelve dollars
an hour like I we were making literally nickels and dimes and um but I still treated it like I would work overtime they didn't even pay us overtime I would just work non-stop because I wanted this to be like Sunset magazine you know and obviously there's some bad habits there like I think
we're always more eager to just like we have to prove ourselves as a bit of a chip on the shoulder but we had to relearn some things like healthy boundaries and you know um actually kind of like finally getting used to asking for what we're worth and not apologizing all the time like
obviously that was a different hurdle we had to pass when we started Hoodzpah which was not just being like um it's gonna be this price but I'm sorry I don't know whatever you want to pay like you can't do it like that so we did have to really learn to show confidence in
a different way not just in skills but just in talking money which was not something we were very comfortable with at all so um getting confident there like we had some friends who had really good business experience and so uh we would just kind of like run scenarios with them and they were
kind enough to just be like just say this this and this and uh we just took as much advice as we could from literally anywhere we could get it shout out to Mark hemian Joel bukelman pretty much everyone who's ever given us advice okay okay so you're making nickels and pennies okay and
you're working like dogs for three years they're just piling on the work and you don't spend any of anything I assume because you have to live pretty modestly here it's not a lot of money at one point you you say to each other like I think this is a thing well let's get
our own place and I think we can we're gonna have clients and things are gonna work when was that how old are you and what happened to trigger that I wish I could remember the moment I feel like it's so easy to just like as as as you start to accomplish things it's
easy to forget that was like really early just big meaningful wins but I think year three was when we started finally failing like we had our footing we finally got hooked in with some local agencies that had got us like those logos that you want on your logo carousel right like History Channel
Tribeca film festival and it's amazing how just putting those the work doesn't even have to be good you put those logos on your logo carousel on your website and people just assume you know what you're doing it's like the power of putting the Nike symbol on literally any design it immediately becomes cool
in the eye of the beholder and so just having being able to say we worked with agencies like these 73 and sunny 73 72 and sunny and you know just being able to put those logos on the carousel was a huge game changer for us and that's when we knew I think like
okay if we're doing it right for these agencies we no longer have to worry like is our process what other people are doing I think everybody worries that is is everyone doing it this way is this how it goes so only three years in into your nascent business you're working with International brands
yeah which to be honest felt like forever at the time the head on this girl it's like I know yeah but some people start their businesses and sure they have more years experience like before starting their own business and they just grow so quickly and I feel like that's what I always see
is like one year in they're already working with Facebook or whoever you know like whatever multi-million dollar company but yeah we were working with those clients via subcontract from an agency so but and in some ways we're like okay this is fine literally we'll take it any way we can get it but
I think it also helped us realize okay so we really don't need the middleman like we can get these we just have to build up our our confidence and our presentation because those clients do expect a different level of you know um song and dance well yeah and Leadership through the project like
they just want to know like you're not going to just disappear tomorrow you're not just like a flight or fancy freelancer but someone that they can rely on like they would rely on a large agency so you just have to you really have to run your p's and q's and really give the
right presentation from the get-go the decks have to be right the calls have to be right the way you talk to them it just has to be a different level of of just Assurance to them you know and rightly so you know they've got a lot more on the line when they're the
those larger companies you know the question I always get from people is like when you start working with big Brands it's easy to work with big brands the problem is how do you get to work with the Big Brand so you're working with friends probably mom and pop businesses how is it that
you're able to get one of those big Brands okay it's always I find Jen and I did this really fun exercise where we tried to Circle back to our biggest clients and how we got them was it so for Red Bull we got that through a DM on Instagram like they just we
were posting work non-stop really trying to get ourselves into the surf Moto kind of Arena that we know locally has a lot of work to be had right and um so I think we just were really putting it out there and people were starting to kind of notice because Red Bull is locally
in this area but then things like my friend who started coming to I met at our creative Meetup that we started here he works at Asics I did a logo for his wife's ice cream company he loved it then they're like hey Asics needs a logo for this small you know event we
need a brand for this event you know it's it's literally like taking on the job that you think ah this may not be huge but it'll be fun everybody knows somebody a little bit higher up or with a little bit more clout than them right so I think it's just really taking care
of the people in your life and trying to put yourself out there to meet people which I know has been hard in the last few years but even just going to like live things like Adobe live and they have the live chat jumping in there and saying hi to people starting conversations finding
them on Instagram and Twitter and following up with them some of our greatest leads have been through friends we literally only know on the internet we've never even met oh yeah well the power of cold emails because like this agency reached out to us a smaller like more like a studio even they
call it themselves an agency they reach out and said if you ever need subcontractor help like we're around and they did incredible work but we don't usually subcontract that often however we get a lot of work in that I can't we can't take on I refer to them all the time because they
cold emailed me to work for us but I that didn't work out but it doesn't it doesn't matter like if you have a good portfolio and you're willing to put yourself out there it's amazing what can come back you just have to kind of like it's a numbers game it is a numbers
game it really is but another interesting thing about what you were saying there are agent there are sorry Brands like Nike Red Bull who have so much work that they need done and so many sub projects and sub events like and they're kind of the budgets aren't always what you would think they
would be to be honest and so if you can get in with some those kind of companies and you're kind of an up and coming Studio they want that kind of like experimental like really relevant look for a lot of their capsule collections a lot of their events so really I mean reach
out to those places never fear because art directors really they're they're on the hunt for what's new and relevant in those kinds of Worlds okay a couple things to to talk about here some of the things and you're going to hear recurring themes here is you you need to be a little bit
Fearless you really do and that's what you're saying uh because that leads you right into the whole put yourself out there because if you don't no one will ever know and Amy I guess you're the the the poster child for this because you keep just saying hey hey you want to talk to
me or not and and whole hosting events and doing things that creative people generally freak out over like sending out emails to people they don't know and being visible in public and seen and the other parts of your secret is be in Southern California because to be honest right it is to admit
and I think I think right in the middle of you know Hollywood la like huge you know it's ports there's there's so much going on not to mention San Francisco which is just a plane right away so there's definitely value to that but if you give yourself a budget for conferences you can
meet just as many cool people if you're just putting yourself out there and just you know making the time and there's people in your area that do cool things and you just never know who they know or who's in their circle of influence so it's like take advantage of what you can in
your area and then that that will start to grow if you just do right by your clients but um because yeah I mean the things that have come that have had nothing to do actually with local connection interestingly so Red Bull was in the DM they were just searching hashtags the power of
like literally just hashtagging your work and art directors are looking for a certain kind of thing that they need to you know get approved to do for their kind of thing that but also we reached out to a lot of people who worked at brands that we really admired on Twitter and we
met a ton of really cool people that way who you know that wasn't through a local connection or a local Meetup that was just the power of the internet you know and so there and we work remote we don't have a kind of like an office where people can come to and we
can like woo them and wind them and dine them so we did kind of have to take advantage of that like remote Reach Out kind of approach that people in you know secondary third markets that kind of thing have to do a little bit more of but it's possible it totally is possible
yeah I'm glad you say that but I also was saying it in a very serious way because I have a lot of friends that are not from California and then Chris the kind of budges you're talking about just I'm like well dude this is kind of just normal here and yeah we pay
this living tax quote unquote to be here because real estate prices are ridiculous and like you know we were talking we're joking beforehand like you can get a tiny little place and it's going to cost you an arm and I'd like to get but there's this thing where if there's a lot of
Enterprise and commerce and entrepreneurs everybody's looking to to grow their company and if you're in the creative service space you're ideally situated like you said there's a lot of people in your backyard right in Newport or in Orange County tons of businesses from retail fashion we're in LA's entertainment Capital World lots of
opportunities you pay for that and we need to be around that but you said too don't let that be your limiting thing because opportunities exist you just have to travel a little bit you can go to a conference you can go to a trade show or something and just be around others who
are looking for help right now and the other thing that you said yeah um Chris is this thing is called social media do it you might get some opportunities and it's totally true it is it's true and it's saturated now I mean Chris how do you feel like I almost feel bad because
it's like we got in early we got in when it was like there was room to be had now it is I feel like it is hard to stand out now I totally understand but at the same time there's a cyclical nature to popularity right that's true and I'm saying that in a
good way like the brands are the people that have the big followings now like it's sad but familiarity breeds contempt as they say and I think there is something like there is a different kind of advantage to being the new person on the Block who has that fresh voice and I think there
are there's a hunger for that and there is a benefit to being like kind of the the up-and-comer so don't worry if you're not the 60 000 or 200 000 follower person because to be honest like they start to get to a point where they've actually they're priced out of a lot of
people's like budget and there there could be a point where even like there's overexposure but that's a whole other thing all to say like every single kind of person deals with their own kind of problems right and um you know I don't know we had I mean we were up and coming like
for plenty of time and and we I think we did have an advantage of being like hey we do really quality work as quality as any one of these really well-known people but you're you're going to pay Studio prices not you know top built prices you know and we kind of played that
angle for a while and you mean in a few short years you guys will be grandmas and so somebody will be looking for fresh new hotness right is that right right there's always room no matter how saturated something is there's always room for people who do it better so there's usually the rush
and the the people who are early in get first first mover uh Advantage but eventually the market settles and then just the cream Rises to the top so just be on top of your game have a push a person like that's what I love about like you had Adam JK on he would
not claim to be a great drawer like he would not say like like I can draw a figure from memory like that's his charm that's his charm is he's not trying to be the most perfect drawer like that's why he's awesome and his voice is so funny so it's like you don't have
to be the best even like you just have to have like a funny interesting story like and something doesn't matter too funny just interesting like a different angle well it's like there's so many of those of like cartoon shows like the when The Simpsons came on everyone was kind of like wow a
cartoon show for an adult you know like how novel and I was like you wouldn't think there'd be any more room for cartoon shows for adults and yet they keep coming up with more it's just like if you can do it in a new way there's room for more Stance socks like who
thought we need another sock brand but they came in and did it different right I mean that's just the power of like positioning in a way that people haven't seen from something they're very familiar with right right I think that's also the power of recognizing Niche markets and saying just because they're sock
companies doesn't mean there's a saw company for me for dog lovers for people who like Argyle or for people who are like dressed as Lumberjacks today I mean you could do different kinds of things and there's a market out there um I wanted to ask you this question because I'm like oh my
God we're running out of time here what is your relationship with money today I know this about people who grow up not on the coast they believe in hard work there's always a sense of guilt when it comes to getting paid uh you're you cut your teeth and develop some bad habits at
this company where it's just like just say yes to everything what is in your your own evaluation of what's your relationship with money today I actually think I'm really proud of what we're getting like I think we've done some projects that have really kind of put our that sounds this is going to
sound really Vain and I don't mean it too it's just like when you work for 10 years to grow your brand and you want to get the projects that Mackie Saturday gets that you know um Jessica hitch gets those kinds that level of project to finally get some it feels so good because
like we got the sea geek logo which is I think this today probably one of our biggest logo projects for like a brand that's like known a pretty a fairly known brand you know and so after that we've gotten a few other inquiries that are of the same kind of level in caliber
and we've been able to land prices that I never would have thought we could do just because we we didn't get an MBA and we weren't like and we're only a four-person Studio yeah and we're a small Studio but I am so grateful for people who when we were coming up we went
to epicurrence like in what 2016 which was this kind of like a designer event thrown by Dan Petty and Mackie Saturday was there and I was asking him like I don't even understand how anyone could charge 10 grand for a logo and this was back then you know and he was like you
can like I'm telling you right now you can you're works good enough you just have to work up to it and you have to get your decks right you have to get your presentation right all I can say is you've got to get the presentation right because people who pay that much it's
all about they just they need a certain level you know so just having people along your journey who are just telling you no you can it's it's not impossible and then from there like slowly getting that price and getting that rate and then like boosting our confidence to do that as a new
kind of median and then raising the rate even more like I don't know it's just um I do feel like we're finally more confident that we can scale to those higher higher budget projects but at the same time we still love doing uh projects for Mom and Pops as well mixing it in
because there's a level of freedom and like just like Joy on return on investment when you help like a friend who's starting their pasta shop or or things like that and so being able to mix that has been really rewarding to us and is the Perfect Blend and we're still making you know
a good amount of money and we're putting away savings and that kind of thing okay uh can I ask you a money question sure I'm scared and you should be you should be because one of our most popular videos is when I tell people how much we charge for a logo and they
freak out over this stuff like nobody gets paid eighteen thousand dollars and they're really quick to say oh I'll just go to Fiverr oh Chris you've developed a whole career and to say no and not getting any clients right okay I I'm going to ask you the question what do you charge for
a logo generally speaking we do it in tears so we have three tiers and there are basically three base prices that we do plus or minus so it's like small company which is Mom and Pop people that we love or we just really believe in what they're doing could be friends medium is
you know the mid-sized company like they could do big things later but they don't have the budget now you know that kind of thing or maybe they have a decent amount of funding they're not using personal money there's some sort of a built-in like budget budget there yes and then there's the big
client the people have the big name who are recording the bigger agencies but maybe I find that a lot of people these days are feeling jaded with bigger agencies and there I I found that there's so much open-mindedness towards using small firms you know where you just get an expert on the team
so um those would be like the higher rates and we don't get as many of those of course I would say for that kind of level of logo we've done what would you like one a quarter really well no no no yeah I know because I do the quoting well oh okay I
see what you're saying yeah we've maybe done maybe we do three two or three in a year yeah the high high one and then mostly the middle size and then peppered in with a few of just like friends or things that we're so passionate about that are small business but I mean to
be honest like like you were saying some some locations just can't afford the same rates right so it's like um we'll do it for as low as I mean a thousand dollars and then we'll go all the way up to 50 to 60. was that uncomfortable for you to say the silence a
little uncomfortable it's like a piano dropping on Wiley Coyote like I heard it coming no but it is that being said though the 50 to 60 when you are a small Studio you boots are on the ground I mean the work that's put in to ensure that usually the the use cases there
are so broad so you have to prove that this thing will work across so many different applications because usually that at that level it's for an established brand yes and they're taking on a lot of risk to put this new thing out in the world so you really have to prove it to
stress test it yeah so there's a lot more of the soft skills of the presentations and sometimes hiring subcontractors if we need help just in ideation phase or putting together decks things like that well purely the time of just getting the board and all the people all the stakeholders that are involved to
agree right yeah so I mean that's why the price goes up you know but um but you know what's so interesting there's so much to be learned about pricing and money from movies like I was watching my fair lady the other day and you know this professor of linguistics this like street urchin
comes in is like I'll pay you like I forget what it was like five pence to teach me to talk right and he's and uh the guy in the room's like that's nothing that's like a slap in the face and then the guy's like actually that's all the money she has if you
think about it it's a fortune for her it's the best money I've ever made and that's the whole thing about a sliding scale of value for pricing on things where it makes sense obviously where it's not just like a service that anyone can do where it's like you know a Specialized Service so
um and you do you slide it on Scale based on what they can that's what we do or that's what we do yeah they can value and it's worth it the value to you and the value to them okay I asked this question because obviously it's a very tricky thing most creatives don't
want to talk about money the fact that you and I and you together talk about money and teach people how to run a business eventually we got to talk about money somewhere and so people are gobsmacked that they're like what can a human being do do with their hands that can warrant such
high price tags right but I think you explained it there's a lot of different things that are going on and people are going to have a reaction to this when they hear this episode for sure they're gonna and that's why we are a little reluctant to say these things because it feels fine
to me but I also don't want people coming out of the woodwork trying to say well who do you think you are sure you know uh Amy's finally like realized her dream the world's most famous designer can charge I'll design your logo and you can buy me a BMW it'll work just it's
a fair trade right and people like No And it's because they have a false um false ear attachment to labor and value this gets into like Karl Marx labor Theory value and all that kind of stuff that historically speaking in the predominant way to measure value is through Labor and so people who
know how to design logos like that is not worth the amount of Labor that goes into like a 5 Series BMW or something they can't process that sure I'd love for you to just take a minute and think what can you say to the people who are going to have this horrible reaction
to hearing both of you say well we charge as much as 50k before this is your opportunity to talk straight to them to their heart and their soul right now well it's interesting once you are hit a certain level um you'll be left out of the room if you don't quote a certain
amount if you say it's only worth a thousand I can do this for a thousand dollars they don't want you to do it for a thousand dollars at that level there's an amount of prestige that's wanted as well as they want to know that you have your skin in the game a bit
if you only do it for a thousand dollars you might not have the dedication level of okay they're gonna pay me fifty thousand dollars this I want I want to make sure I have everybody on the team that we need to make this the best project that they've ever had right so it's
like there's like you said it's it's more of a a mental thing and it's the reason that you know LeBron wants to go out and buy a Louis Vuitton you know whatever bag instead of go to Costco and get one for five dollars Kirkland Kirkland brand baby see I saw a Jamie Lee
Fox the other day on Tick Tock with his daughter and he got his jeans from it was something like 20 jeans and it was making me laugh so hard it wasn't Kirkland but it was something similar anyway so some people still are level-headed but but when you get to that level you want
The Prestige of saying like we got this designer we got this studio and and it builds in the value you know of when you launch this Rebrand you know and um so I think maybe when we were like five years in again speaking with people like Mackie they were saying like you have
to start positioning yourself to be perceived as that higher Echelon you need to put the money into the website to make that look like it's not just a glorified WordPress you need to do all these things to show that you belong in the among the lineup on Rodeo Drive not that specifically but
you know what I'm saying um so that people feel like they're going to the top brand Studios when they come to you yeah this is a lot about perception perception is reality so the reason why the food tastes better is because the Ambiance of the restaurant and the way you're spoken to and
the the tablecloth and the cloth napkins it all creates an experience for you Seth Godin writes about this in his book all marketers are liars in that we're complicit in the lie so we think the stake is better because we've seen that Chef on TV I've I purchased your cookbook so I know
and so part of you building your brand is to create that experience for people in their mind because we're emotional buyers and we lie to ourselves all the time right so is that Louis Vuitton fanny pack better than the Kirkland model it's debatable it makes you feel very different it must make you
feel like you're from a different fashion era you know they both achieve that equally but it feels different and you're saying even for the way that your client is perceived right it's like they don't want to say they only spent a thousand dollars on this logo they want to say we went to
the top agency and that builds in respect from the end user too oh they got so and so to do it potentially you know what I mean like it all kind of Builds on itself to yeah the thing that you said and I want to emphasize for people to hear this is that
when Red Bull's calling you or Nike or Asics or whoever and they're looking to help help get help launching something that's going to generate a quarter of a billion dollars of revenue for them this year and you quote them some ridiculously low price relative to what they're expecting to pay what they're going
to feel is a sense of you're new uh you have a small team your fly-by-night operation and I'm losing something here and they want to buy Assurance not insurance but assurance that you've been doing this and there's a team and there's a whole process and they're paying to feel better that the proper
amount of attention and time is going to be spent on something otherwise they can't consider you you can lose a job because you're too cheap I know it's hard for people to hear but it's true but there's also the opposite side of the coin and it depends on the service they're coming to
you for and yeah obviously what the project is but we've definitely had the bigger Brands come to us earlier in our career when they knew we were a small studio and they were hoping to get the the bottom bin prices because it was a smaller thing or a little event but some Brands
really throw their notoriety around and expect some really crazy prices I mean crazy low prices like even for our standards when we were three years and we were like excuse me I get more from my friend who lives down the street and runs a donut shop are you kidding me so it's like
there is both sides of it which is interesting you know and um and it's funny Once you know the certain companies because then when you see all the people working for them you're like ah it's interesting okay so they said yes it's not like you should feel bad about it but you realize
that there are certain projects with certain brands that look really great to other clients that maybe don't pay very well actually but it doesn't matter like it adds a credibility to get the medium-sized clients who want to think I worked with a brand who worked with Nike yes and actually Nike jobs are
kind of like like um you can like there is a lot of jobs to be had at different tiers which is great they're a great company to work with they have a great brand they have a really great creative like Vibe so it's like if you can get those smaller jobs even though
that you know and I'm not saying they pay really poorly they're not one of the ones I'm talking about but I'm saying like they have little events and capsule collections that it's a smaller images right it's just a shorter life it's a shorter lifespan so it's not going to be like the big
like Rebrand budget and so you do have to kind of like temper your expectations but I mean we're so grateful for those little capsule projects and event projects with Red Bull which you know were a really great portfolio pieces and did give us that notoriety of having worked with a big brand and
for sure that was like a big part of us building um our name I think yeah 100 do you think that there's a ceiling to what you think is reasonable for someone to pay you to design a logo I do I do I do I do it is crazy sometimes I'll hear who's
this speaking hold on isn't this this is Amy it feels like gross and gratuitous cars okay hold on hold the presses hold on Amy Kentucky we can't help it yeah they're still yeah can you take the girl out of Kentucky right yeah yeah okay so what is the ceiling for you Amy to
be honest I don't know I think it's a feeling I think you know kind of when you get there I think here's what I think I don't know if it's a specific number I just know there's an attitude that can come along with getting used to getting the higher rates and you almost
become like just an endless hunger of like I need more I need a higher rate I need a higher rate let's see if I can get more and I think that's just can be an empty and just kind of meaningless Chase if you're just after how much can I get and at some
point your service in the client's mind won't return on that investment to them and they'll start to feel more jaded I had once had a client who told me and he owns like some of the most awesome restaurants in Southern California one of them is the Cannery and he oh he said I
always like to have a kind of like mediocre facade and I was like what and he said I want them to see kind of like a okay building but then when they get inside I want them to be absolutely wowed and I think it's just that old adage of under over promise or
no under promise over and over that old manage wow you can't fool me all the time I just always want to make sure that the clients that come to Hoodzpah no matter what they pay feel like they got an amazing outcome for what they paid I want them to feel great about what
we did together and I think at a certain point if they just feel like you're sucking them dry and it's all about the money they'll sense that you know even if it is a top brand that can't afford it like not saying that they should get some sort of a cut rate but
as long as it's fair for both sides and it's not just getting to a point where it becomes a bubble and it's just going to ruin it for everyone you know like because I mean tulip bubble is that what you're saying yes at some point we just become tulip bulbs Chris the words
well I'm gonna stay here for a minute so you were talking about when the restaurant owner says I want a mediocre facade because I want to temper expectations and so they're completely blown away once they walk inside you're drawing that parallel to if you charge so much money the expectations that you have
to live up to are probably more than what you want to deal with and then there's certain words that you use and I want to just here we go all right let me say like well it's a Chase and if you if you pursue it like I need to make this amount of
money otherwise I'm not gonna be happy and it's an endless probably you didn't use the word Hollow Pursuit but you said it makes you feel like you're sucking them dry when I think of sucking people dry I think of vampires leeches and parasites is that the feeling you have about certain price points
that you become that kind of person I don't think it's the price point again I I don't think it's I don't I think it's for different for every individual because I actually am very practical and Jen and I actually do set a number every year that's a goal that we want to make
and it's always more than previous year and so far we've always met that goal which has been amazing but um so I actually do really believe in making monetary goals for yourself I think it's a really great way to know if you're growing and you know just to make sure you get what
you need to run the business successfully but that being said when your whole it's easy to get wrapped up in especially when you hear famous designers talk about like oh I get this much I get this much it's really easy to get wrapped up in well I could get this much and starting
to have that become your reason reason to be and reason to do and I just think that's can be a really slippery slope um from getting away from I just I this is going to sound so Kentucky but just doing quality work for real for good rates for everybody I still want to
make more next year than I did this year so but just not having it be the whole reason yeah it almost sounds like uh the LL Bean catalog I got the other day which is make a high quality product and charge a fair price it's you guys with that whole like just a
modest amount of profit my whole thing is make a quality product and get as much as you can it's a little different philosophy right I wish I could be more like that nobody well here's the other the thing that I hate about myself though is when I'm like well it's also a good
learning experience though you know when you quote something and they say yes too fast and you're like damn it I could have quoted it higher and then you like resent everybody and it's like you know I don't want to go into a project resenting someone thinking that like I I didn't get enough
and they got they got the wool over my eyes you have no Expressions it says it's approved I just want to start thinking positively about like okay I'm gonna make this killer and I'm grateful that I got it yeah now of course I probably I always take note of what did they say
yes to and did they say yes too fast because I want to make note of that for the next time I'd have to someone with the same industry same kind of background because then that's how you know that's how you fine tune your your quoting so it's not like usage should be just
like blindly ignorant about it but at the same time I don't want to be someone who's just like kind of always like grumbling and like you know about how much I wish I would have gotten from someone you know so I guess it's more of an attitude thing it's like you just got
to keep your attitude grounded okay this is where it's hard to uh read someone's attitude or intention or motivation right we can only just have General conversations about what we can see when it's done now Amy answered the question really quickly like there is Jen are you in alignment is there a ceiling
um I mean yes give her a moment let there be silence go ahead it is funny though well the minute you make the most this isn't an answer this is just I'm just gonna it's an observation the minute you make the most you become the biggest target right the deaf businesses and I
think you can easily just become like that's how you can just kind of edge yourself out even out of your industry almost so and I'm not saying that this is an example of it but it's just something that came to mind so pentagram is like a very easy target or these top top
um you know agencies because they put out these rebrands and if people don't like it it's easy to say oh everything's like turn to [ __ ] like why are they getting those rates you know and not to say you have to do everything to please everybody else because that would be like
an exhausting task and no one should live their life that way but um I don't know it's just like when you're charging so much it's easy for people I think to think is it even worth I mean I don't know maybe I'm just like it's like Jeff Bezos like everybody who makes the
most money becomes the enemy I don't want to be called first world problems by the way detached from normal uh the normal human existence that you have to move to space like I don't want to have to go into rocketry do you know what I'm saying no I want to share something and
then and then we'll hopefully find a way to like finalize our thoughts on this which is what my business coach here told me many many years ago I said here this is a normal and he like looked at me he goes normal you do understand uh California is not normal relative to the
rest of the United States and then Southern California is not normal to all of California and then La is not Southern California and then Santa Monica so he's like you are so far from normal right now you need to just understand that because if we were to travel back in time to to
Coffee Shop Amy and Jen and said you know you're gonna charge fifty thousand dollars for a logo something that you're going to be able to do in a couple of days and you would probably then say shut up that's so ridiculous nobody would be worth that much but your perspective changes as you
continue to grow we're on board same same thing so some young person in the middle of this country who's never made two thousand dollars on anything is sitting here thinking there's no freaking way that these ladies are worth that amount of money so it's all relative right yes so I'm gonna ask you
one more time is there a ceiling on how much you can charge for a logo no [Laughter] it's perfect by the way hypnosis through uh through Zen Caster here wow you're like I'm done no I only want you to answer that the way that you feel because I'm pretty sure when you're actually
Grandma age like legitimately you and I always sit here we'll do another conversation so what's the most you ever chart for local you're like 407 000 I'm like oh that's what I thought and you're like well but 600 is ridiculous Chris you know it's all relative because the bar moves right yeah I
like what you're saying I like the vision you see for my future yes I'll help you you know okay so the idea here is this and I I will hopefully will plant a little seed and see where where it grows to you guys watch million dollar listing LA just to see how crazy
home prices are no but I look on Zillow every day yeah same here it's like oh my God that's crazy right it's therapy and the the Realtors they play a game now you could say some people are a little sleazy or slimy but they played a game and they're entrepreneurs they're sales people
they want to set new benchmarks like I sold the most expensive single my family residents in Beverly Hills or I broke new records and I think there's something really cool and inspirational about that that they're business people through and through and that's what they're trying to do so I don't tell myself oh
I need to charge this amount of money or I think I'm worth it the only thing I ask myself is I wonder how much I wonder how much they'd be willing to pay and it's okay if they say no I'm not offended and I'm pleasantly shocked and surprised that they keep saying yes
and you had said this if your clients keep saying yes it's a signal that maybe you are actually worth more than you think and then you should try a new number because we want them to push back a little bit we want some resistance to know that we did actually meet them at
their ceiling and they're giving us what they were prepared to spend not that we're extorting them there's nothing unethical about this but that you are not leaving money on the table which they were happy to pay you yeah right oh I agree with that yes 100 I we have not designed a lot
of logos in our lives in our life but we've been able to charge a lot of money and that's the thing I want to help creatives understand the value isn't in what you see it is it's what they see it is because they're prepared to spend different amount of money so don't use
your own value system to decide this is the way it's going to be sure and that's probably the hardest thing is to learn how to do that kind of Recon and pick up the context clues to figure out what your client's value system is you know what I mean and I know when
we first started out um I couldn't talk money on the Fly I just wasn't confident enough and I didn't have those skills honed well enough to do it real time so that's why we perfected our proposal deck because I would take all my notes on the call and then I would get off
the call and say okay I'm going to send you a proposal you know by tomorrow and then I would do crazy Recon and call as many friends as I could to get like good feelers and and like ideas on like if my number sounded right so that's how we did it back then
but I mean Blair ends who you've had on your your show a lot he's a big proponent for talking money on the phone to save time and that is the best way 100 but you do have to kind of like get yourself used to that skill so we kind of did it slowly
through that kind of like have the call do the research and then send the proposal as a way to kind of um work around that until we were felt confident to do that but now I do find that that's like something I'm able to do better and better on the Fly and they
have these little words that they say that I'm like okay that other client we quoted you know had that same thing and I quoted him that and they didn't say yes but you know and I'm kind of running the numbers in my head and writing notes down as they're talking but it's so
true like you do have to kind of get used to business and be somewhat World wise and in what these kind of companies make what their income streams are like you know what kind of budgets they're usually working with you know that kind of thing which is a whole other skill probably you
know it is a whole other skill and I'm glad that your allies in the fight to help creative people learn how to be better business people because we got to be able to take care of our business if we want to continue doing our art or design right totally yeah okay um I
I have a small challenge for you and then I I'm just trying to mind time we're kind of running a little long thank you for your for hanging in there with me and then I have like one somewhat uh not so serious question to ask you okay all right so here's the challenge
challenge first is you had said something that every year you set yourself new financial goals and every year thus far you've been able to hit that so first of all congratulations uh that's progress you guys are building and growing and you deserve every bit of success oh thank you my challenge to you
is set goals that you know you can't hit to set goals and deliberately fail and I forget who said this I want to say it's either Jim Rohn or Jack Canfield who said you need to set big hairy audacious goals and it's not as important that you achieve those goals but the person
you become in the pursuit of those goals right totally so when you set these really high milestones for yourself you're like you know what we have to write a third book and we have to go meet Oprah because that's on our thing and what do we have to do to become a person
that someone like that would talk to right yeah and so I want to challenge you for so for 2022 I want you to be slightly disappointed that you didn't hit yourself no that is great I think that's great we we do do like a safe goal and then we do like a Dream
Big Goal usually we've always met the safe goal sometimes we meet the green Bagel so but I'm gonna dream even bigger even bigger the right person that's right she's already in outer space so you know she's on it yeah exactly so what you want to do is to look at each other and
like there is no way in that we can do this so then the means and the process the house will materialize or they won't but that's okay and it's always nice to fail at a super big goal then actually to achieve a super small goal yeah yeah because usually you still fail over
what the safe goal would have been yes that's right so that's a challenge so in December of 2022 post pandemic fingers crossed will have a conversation you'll DM me it's like Chris you won't believe it you won't believe it you won't believe it I need to hear we we did not hear a
goal but this is what we did instead and we're gonna celebrate right cool I love that is that cool yeah so keep that down now okay I didn't realize this but this is my final question for you I was like how are you guys hearing me and then I can see on on
Jen she has one half of an airpod right because I was like how can I hear this is like must be really weird to only hear out of one side of your ear but okay you guys have mastered this game so here's what I want to do here's the not so serious serious
question I want you to look at each other okay and I want you to say that the one thing you appreciate most about your partner your sister your partner in crime what is the one thing that they bring to the table that you're like freaking a if you weren't in my life what
a disaster this would be because I want to see what you see in each other that's okay right okay I know it okay okay before you say before you say are you both ready because I don't want you to influence I always have you ready yeah because we have such different even though
we're very similar in our in our tangible skills our soft skills are very different so without Jen I would be making half of what I'm making I have really big goals but I just want to do them so badly that the money is neither here nor there for me sometimes so um I
think I'd be getting half as much and Jen as far as strategy goes Jen is really good at gaining the trust of our clients she's really good at speaking cohesively and really honing in is what somebody took two hours to say into three really succinct goals or even one really succinct goal that
can start guiding the project much easier so um Jen does the strategy that really allows us to work with these bigger clients oh thanks Sam you're welcome I will I would love it for you to say the number one thing I appreciate the most about Jen is okay okay it's Gotta follow the
format no shotgun approach is like the number one thing that she brings to the table that I appreciate the most is the number one thing that I appreciate about Jen is her business sense mind okay I love that that's very succinct yeah did you kick her under the table by the way dude
you better say it right yeah okay all right okay Amy the thing that I appreciate I don't like having to look at you you guys can't look at each other when you talk it's too awkward yeah I know she didn't make eye contact with you I know she won't look at me so
weird the thing that I appreciate most about Amy is her um like optimism you can take like out I'm sorry I'm a Liker um her optimism because the kind of the way you see things and how easy it'll be which it never is but just like the way you're just like you have
an optimistic vision of like everything you want to do and you just go for it which I guess that's like adventurous optimism huh oh I love that thank you Jen which I I like to dream and stuff and then I I just like read it in a notebook and then put it in
a drawer at a house that I sell 10 years later yes so if I were to to guess and I'm not into this woo stuff but I would say like um Amy must be an air element she's lofty she's floating she doesn't want to be tied down by these things but she's oxygen
for your business and then Jen I say you are Earth you're grounded you're pragmatic you're practical we got to get the stuff done and you know what happens when air mixed with Earth right you get a dust cloud it was water and Earth I would say mud but it didn't work it did
okay I'm sorry that's as far as I got with that that's why I'm not so eloquent I mean if I was paying you I'd approve this right now okay it's been a delight uh I can't believe it's been an hour and a half thank you very much uh Hood sisters Hoodzpah it's it's
so fun I already know every time I talk to you I'm Gonna Leave more energetic than I came in so thank you very much thanks for having me I tell this to everybody I know you do so much for the design community and all your resources are like gold so thank you for
continuing to do what you do and to invite us into it it's just fun to always hang out with you and the crew everything that you're the whole team does is just really really awesome thank you so much thank you for drinking the Kool-Aid I love it okay so if people want to
find out more about what it is that you do where should they go they can find us pretty much everywhere a Hoodzpah design so Instagram Twitter and then we have a YouTube which is just hudspa and hutzpass is that how you spell it or is it a different spelling it's h-o-o-d-z-p-a-h there you
go Hoodzpah because it's Amy and Jen hood and they have a lot of Hoodzpah so I love it's very clever and yes all right thank you very much ladies foreign
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“The important thing is not figuring out how to do it, it's just figuring out what you want to do.”
— Chris Do
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