ENTREPRENEURSHIP

56m 13 min read 12,200

STOP Being Trapped by Clients & Build a Business You Love

Chris Do and John Rocher discuss how to pivot your creative business when it no longer serves you, even if it means tearing it all down.

Chris Do

Founder, The Futur™ · October 10, 2024

Watch on YouTube →

Become a Member →

The Founder's Dilemma

Your business is booming. The client roster is impressive, the team is growing, and the revenue is stable. You are, by all external measures, a success. Yet, a nagging feeling persists. The work that once ignited your passion now just pays the bills. Your company exists to sustain itself, a self-perpetuating machine that has lost its original purpose. You are trapped.

This is the silent crisis many successful agency owners and service providers face. It’s the slow drift from mission-driven creator to operations manager. John Rocher, founder of the creative company raw materials, lived this crisis. In an interview with Chris Do, he charts a course through this dangerous territory, revealing how he dismantled a 150-person agency at its peak to rediscover the reason he started in the first place.

As Rocher explains, service businesses are uniquely vulnerable to this trap. “You're doing work that quote pays the bills, not quite the work you want to be doing,” he says. “It's so easy to get lost in that and it's so hard to pull back out of that and build a brand and build a business and build a portfolio out of the work that you really want to be doing.”

His story is not about incremental change. It is about a complete metamorphosis, a strategic demolition undertaken to build something truer and more resilient. It is a playbook for any creative entrepreneur who feels their creation has taken on a life of its own, and not for the better.

The Accidental Technologist

John Rocher’s career did not begin in a design school or a corporate boardroom. It started in a small town in Texas, at a public library computer in the late 90s and early 2000s. For a kid with not much to do, the dawn of the mass-market internet was not just a curiosity; it was a revelation.

“I didn't know until recently how fantastic of a time that was to be growing up,” Rocher reflects. “The internet was coming online for the masses and for a young kid that didn't have much to do in his small town, that was fantastic. It was fascinating.”

This fascination led him to teach himself how to code and design. He started making websites for small businesses, driven by a raw curiosity about how things were made and an ambition to create things that looked just as cool. There was no formal training, no academic path. It was all self-driven exploration. This lack of a traditional education, he later realized, became a significant advantage. It freed him from a practitioner's mindset and allowed him to see the bigger picture.

His path took a sharp detour when he joined the military right out of high school. Upon returning to civilian life, he faced the universal veteran’s problem: how to build a life and make a living. He picked his old trade back up out of pure necessity. The timing was, once again, impeccable. It was 2007, and the launch of the iPhone and its App Store was creating another gold rush. While he was never what he would call a great “crafts person,” he was completely enamored by the potential of this new ecosystem.

This is where Rocher found his true calling. It was not in the pixels or the code, but in empowering those who excelled at it. “I set out on a journey to enable creative people to make things,” he says. “I desperately wanted businesses to understand and embrace good design, creative thinking, the creation of high quality, well-thought-through products and experiences.”

Many founders struggle to find their place, but Rocher discovered his early. He understood his limitations and strengths with brutal honesty. He recognized he didn't enjoy the repetitive practice of illustration or the granular detail of wireframing. What he did enjoy was strategic thinking.

“What I liked doing in this case was helping clients understand the value of these things, masterminding what all it's going to take to do it, and then finding the talent and enabling them to do those things,” he explains. “I felt comfortable 25 years old in a room with a VP of product of a big company talking to them about what needs to be done. I did not feel comfortable doing it.”

This self-awareness is the first lesson for any aspiring creative entrepreneur. It is not about being the best at everything. It is about identifying your unique contribution and leaning into it without reservation.

From Lonely Freelancer to Agency Founder

Armed with a clear sense of purpose but working as a freelancer, Rocher soon hit a wall. He knew there was a better way to design products and experiences, but he struggled to convince companies to take the leap. The freelance life also proved to be a lonely existence, lacking the creative community and collaborative energy he craved.

These challenges converged into a clear solution: start an agency. The logic was simple and strategic. He needed a vehicle to achieve three specific goals:

Assemble Talent: He needed people who were masters of their respective crafts within the design and development ecosystem.
Build a Brand: He needed a brand that could provide the leverage and credibility necessary to convince clients to invest in doing things the right way.
Create a Community: He wanted to be surrounded by smart, creative people, ending the isolation of his freelance days.

So, in late 2011, he founded Handsome. The timing, once again, was perfect. The mobile app market was maturing past its initial “gold rush” phase. Companies were no longer just rushing to have an app; they were starting to understand the need for quality and thoughtful design. Concepts we now take for granted, like human-centered design, were just beginning to penetrate the corporate world.

This created immense demand for the kind of work Handsome was built to do. The agency grew rapidly, attracting a client list that would be the envy of any founder: FedEx, Visa, Audi, and even Meta. For the kid from a small Texas town who learned to code on a library computer, this was a monumental achievement. “Now I was working for the Fortune 50 creating software experiences for consumers of great consequence,” Rocher recalls. “It was a fantastic journey.” This rapid ascent proved his thesis about the power of building a focused agency, a blueprint many seek to follow, as explored in how to go from freelancing to a seven-figure agency.

The Breakthrough Moment

Every agency has a breakthrough client, the one that validates the model and unlocks the next level of growth. For Handsome, that client was Silvercar, an Austin-based startup determined to fix the universally hated car rental industry.

Their slogan was simple and powerful: “Car rental that doesn’t suck.” They offered a seamless, app-based experience where every customer got a silver Audi. It was a brand built entirely on the promise of a superior experience, which made them a perfect target for Rocher.

“I loved that,” he says. “You're doing something that is going to be successful because it is a good experience. And that's your brand. Your brand and your experience don't live up to that. So here's my opportunity.”

This wasn't an inbound lead or a referral. It was the direct result of a cold outreach, a moment of proactive destiny-shaping that creative founders dream about. At 27 years old, running a bootstrapped agency of about eight people working on tables made from dumpster-dived materials, Rocher sent a cold LinkedIn message to the CEO of Silvercar. The message was disarmingly simple: “I think what you're doing is really interesting, and I think we can help you.”

In today's world of automated and over-optimized outreach, this approach sounds almost naive. But Rocher argues its power lies in its very simplicity and authenticity. “When everyone's trying to over-optimize... the human brain is wired to recognize pattern, and so you just see pattern, you see noise, you block it out,” he explains. “What is different is saying, ‘Hey bud, really cool stuff. I think we can help.’” It's an approach that prioritizes genuine belief over formulaic tactics, a key theme in how to attract your ideal clients.

The message landed. It led to a meeting where Rocher, despite his youth and his agency’s scrappy origins, successfully pitched the CEO on a project to design the entire holistic brand, user experience, and flagship mobile application. He secured the project not by being the most experienced practitioner, but by believing deeply in the value he could provide. This experience taught him a crucial lesson about confidence.

It starts with believing in the value of what you're proposing. He contrasts this with a short-lived, disastrous attempt to work as a car salesman where he froze up during a practice session. “I didn't give a crap about those cars. I didn't believe in it,” he admits. “But when it comes to this... I believe that there's a way to make this great, and that if it is great, it will sell more and it will provide more value to customers. And that gives me the confidence.”

Handsome delivered. Their work with Silvercar not only became a cornerstone case study but also led to subsequent projects with Audi after the German automaker acquired Silvercar in 2017. It was a massive stepping stone, proving that a small, hungry agency could play at the highest level.

The Scaling Trap

By the late 2010s, Handsome was no longer a scrappy startup. It was a mature design agency with a staff of nearly 150 people. The business was booming. But for Rocher, something fundamental had changed. He felt a growing detachment from the magic that first drew him into the industry. The work had shifted from invention to implementation.

He articulates this shift with a two-part philosophy. First: necessity is the mother of invention. Every new thing exists for a reason. Second, and more critically for a growing business: no idea is ever as good as when it is first conceived. The process of realizing an idea, and especially scaling it, puts its original quality at risk.

“The best companies in the world are companies... [that are good at] maintaining the value and the quality of the idea as you go to realize it and especially as you go to scale it,” he says.

Handsome had fallen into the scaling trap. The agency no longer existed to fulfill its original mission of bringing great creative ideas to life. It existed to grow, to scale, to feed the machine. “Handsome existed so that Handsome could grow and so that Handsome could scale, not for the reasons why we started it,” Rocher states. The problems he was solving were no longer about creative strategy but about operational scale.

This wasn't a unique failure of his agency but a reflection of a broader trend in the design industry. As tech companies grew to dominate the economy, their focus shifted from innovation to optimization and expansion. Design, in turn, was increasingly being employed as a function of implementation, a tool to execute decisions made elsewhere. Handsome, due to its size and success, was being pulled into that gravitational field.

“I just kind of woke up and looked around and said, ‘Hey, this is not what I wanted to do when I started out,’” he recalls. This moment of clarity is one many entrepreneurs face, a difficult reckoning covered in discussions on how to buy back your time and build true brand equity.

The joy was gone. The purpose was diluted. The business was a success on paper, but a failure in spirit. He was faced with a choice: continue running the profitable machine he had built, or dare to tear it down and start again.

The Metamorphosis: Killing Your Darling

The decision to pivot from Handsome was not an overnight epiphany. It was a drawn-out, two-and-a-half-year process of questioning, strategic realignment, and gut-wrenching choices. It began with the feeling that something was wrong and culminated in the launch of a completely new company: raw materials.

The first step was recognizing the need for new leadership perspectives. Rocher brought in Jennifer Allen, with a long career at larger agencies like R/GA, as his COO. Later, he recruited Pablo Marquez as Chief Creative Officer. Their hard questions forced a moment of truth. “He asked some great, very hard questions,” Rocher says of Marquez. “‘What the hell do you even want to do with this thing? Why are you doing this? I thought you said you wanted to be great. What is this? Are we building a business or are we doing great work?’”

These questions drove Rocher back to first principles. Why did he start this in the first place? What did he truly believe in? An early COVID-era business slowdown forced the issue, leading to a foundational insight that would guide the entire transition. It crystallized into a single, powerful rule: a business should only exist to the extent that it can generate demand for the thing it sets out to do.

This principle became the North Star. If you cannot generate demand for the exact work you want to do, it means one of two things: either the world does not need or want what you are offering, or you are not good enough at communicating its value. To exist otherwise is to operate on false pretenses, surviving on work that pays the bills but kills your soul and dilutes your brand.

Armed with this clarity, the leadership team of Rocher, Allen, and Marquez began what was initially a rebrand of Handsome. But they quickly realized a simple facelift was not enough. “If we want something different and new, we got to not try to change what exists but truly create something new,” he says. They had to “kill their darling.”

This meant making incredibly difficult decisions. They systematically evaluated their client roster and team, parting ways with those that did not align with the new vision. This involved letting a significant number of people go, a process Rocher describes as swift, honest, and decisive. “Being honest, being swift, being decisive is always the best thing, providing clarity and transparency,” he explains. “No one takes it well... but no one wants to be a part of something that's wrong. Only what's right. That helped give clarity on making hard decisions.”

The fear of perceived failure was immense. But the conviction in their new direction was stronger. By May 2023, after a year of defining the new business and brand, raw materials was officially launched. It was a metamorphosis born from the DNA of Handsome but entirely new in its purpose and structure.

The Principles of Raw Materials

So what is raw materials? It is more than just a new name. It is a creative company built on a fundamentally different premise than the one Handsome had become. Its core principle is a direct response to the commoditization of the design industry: when everything is the same, different is the greatest opportunity.

This is another way of saying that creativity, when properly harnessed, is the greatest source of potential value for any business. The company exists to prove this thesis. While it operates as an agency today, with clients like Google, Meta, and Peacock, its ambitions are broader. It is an exploration into creating the optimal conditions for creativity to thrive and generate value, whether for clients or for its own projects.

To achieve this, the company is built on a few key operational tenets:

Find the Best Talent in the World: This is a common refrain at any agency, but raw materials takes it literally. The company is fully remote, a decision solidified by the pandemic. This allows them to hire the absolute best people, regardless of location, with team members across the US, Europe, and South America.
Enable Them to Do Their Best Work: This means rejecting rigid, top-down systems. The company is tool-agnostic, trusting teams to use whatever works best to solve the problem at hand. The focus is on creating a resilient culture that can thrive in a fluid environment, not on squeezing maximum margin from every project.
Embrace Ambiguity: Rocher is honest about what he doesn't know. He believes the best work happens when people are physically together but also that the best people are not all in one place. He has no perfect answer for recreating remote culture. “I believe that the best work happens when people work together in the same space,” he admits. “I also believe at the same time that all of the best people don't live and can't live in the same place. So what do you do?”

This honesty is refreshing. Instead of pretending to have a perfect solution, raw materials is a living experiment. It is a company built not on a rigid business plan but on a set of deeply held beliefs about creativity, talent, and value. This is a difficult path, but it is one born of hard-won experience. It is the conscious choice to stop feeding a machine and start building something that matters.

Rocher’s journey offers a powerful lesson: your greatest success can become your prison. The courage required is not just to build something from nothing, but to tear down something valuable to build it right.

TRANSCRIPT

business should only exist to the extent that it can generate demand for the thing that it sets out to do and be is actually agencies and service people service providers in general whether you're a freelancer or an agency really are susceptible to this thing where you're doing work that quote pays the bills not quite the work you want to be doing it's so easy to get lost in that and it's so hard to pull back out of that and build a brand and build a business and build a portfolio out of the work that you really want to be doing today I'm excited to welcome John Rocher founder of raw materials a design company known for its unique branding approach he's also picked up D andad agency of the year and also five can Awards John welcome to the show for people who don't know who you are can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your journey into the business that you're in right now there's not much more than what you said actually so it's my name's John I am I am the founder and the CEO of raw materials I grew up in a small town in Texas and um was going through Junior High and High School in the early 2000s kind of late '90s early 2000s and so I didn't know until recently how fantastic of a time that was to be growing up um a kid in the United States just you know in the sense that the the internet was coming online for the mass for the masses and for a young kid that didn't have much to do in his small town that was was fantastic it was fascinating so I got interested in technology and the internet and therefore design and and um software design and development things like that very early taught myself out of code wanted to design things um started making websites for small businesses thought this is this is cool this is fun actually join the military right out of high school had nothing to do with that and coming out of the military there's a real problem for veterans like you you dropped right back into civilian life and make money have a life and so I picked that trade back up just out of necessity and was thrown back into in the you know 2007 2008 2009 time frame when the iPhone was was uh was launching and the App Store was launching another amazing time to be put into this industry so I was fascinated was like this is what I want to do I was never a great crafts person or practitioner but I was enamored by the craft and the trade and the things that could be made and so I set out on a on a journey to enable creative people to to make things to do things I desperately wanted businesses to understand and embrace uh good design creative thinking the creation of high quality wellth thought through products and experiences for consumers as I thought this I mean it was kind of that that those days like look at Apple this works look at Microsoft look at at Google look at Facebook I mean all these things were were having you know some of those companies were having their Renaissance and some of those companies were were creating the Renaissance in the industry and so that led me on a journey to to just how do I make great things I started out as a mostly as a freelancer and I ran into some some barriers there I knew there was a better way to do things I didn't have a career I wasn't great at doing things that way I just knew they should be done that way I had a hard time convincing companies to do them that way and also the freelance life was a bit lonely for me after some time we didn't have the community that we have today back then uh so it was really a lonely existence so those things added up to me to start an agency I said okay well what what do I need I need people that are smart at various crafts uh various trades within this ecosystem I need a a brand that I could use to leverage into convincing clients to to to take the leap to invest in doing things the right way and I wanted a community around me and so those things were like okay start an agency so I started an agency called handsome late 2011 early 2012 and that was a great time that was around the time when mobile was becoming a a sophomore M mobile apps were becoming a sophomore it's think like 2007 2009 they launch everyone rushed to have one and so there was this Gold Rush 2012 2013 things were maturing just a little bit and so was this idea a of quote design thinking and quote human centered design things that we kind of take for granted now but these were were pretty new especially in the larger corporations back then so a lot of demand for good design in 2012 2013 2014 and handsome had a great run over the next 10 11 years um we grew uh our client base include companies like FedEx and visa and Audi and meta you know just for me again uh kid from a small town in Texas used the the public library computer to learn how to code Now is working for the Fortune 50 creating software experiences for consumers of great consequence for those companies was a fantastic Journey as we start rounding out 2017 18 19 and heading into the covid era things at handsome were booming you know the company was about 140 150 people at its at its Max as a as a design agency doing great work loving it great people but I started to feel detached from why I got into this business in the first place what drew me in think back to the early days of the internet and how fantastic and magical that was and now we were being asked to scale things we were being asked to take ideas and decisions and specifications that came from somewhere else in the company and Implement those things I felt like the role of design had changed and as an agency I was kind of being especially because of our size I was kind of being pulled into that gravity and so um we can get into it in a minute but that led me to metamorphosize handsome into raw materials which is the creative company that we are today so it's a bit about my journey and why why I got started how I got here wonderful thanks for doing that I have a lot of questions to ask you about your early days because there's of like Parts I have to like dig into and kick out with you but ultimately I want to land on all the branding stuff the design stuff the stuff that I get to see on your website is all the beautiful stuff that that young aspiring agency owners or designers want to be able to do so let's split this conversation in two parts I know that you mentioned that you were interested in code and design and websites and things of that nature what I don't know is besides going to the public library did you go to school for this did you concentrate in a specific major or is this all self-taught all self-taught all just I saw things I thought those are cool and I want to know the people who did it and I want to know how it was done and I want to make stuff it looks like that and then I just kind of connected the dots the best I could back to I said I I I never was you know I was never very good or trained let professionally trained in anyone craft or trade and so I look I I quickly found my role as enabling those who were great at these things to to do them and I think that helped me not have that professional or academic training uh I just looked at myself as a like as a servant like let's let's help Let's Help great creative people do great things because I know that's valuable to business so yeah no no schooling just right into it that's crazy okay it's even more remarkable because there are a lot of jumps that help me out here so if I'm a young person I say in my early mid 20s and I don't have access to the education that some other people have what are the things that you can recommend looking back on your life that I need to work on so that I have a portfolio that I can even get freelance work because that's something that people are asking me all the time like how do I get my first gig Chris look at my work is my work good enough how come I can't get anything what are they missing what did you figure out there's a couple of things so one like I said a couple times I figured out what I was and wasn't good at and then I had to make a decision the things the things that I am not I mean back then I'm not good at anything but uh I think there's some some insight there too like if if your portfolio is not good just because you're not good yeah uh and so there's a lot of there's a lot of information in there that's that's practice that's figure out what level of taste you want to be at what level of craft and quality you want to be at and be honest with yourself and then just put in the time I mean that's as simple as put in the time practice Cycles reps make things do things always put yourself in a situation where you have to rise to the the occasion it's kind of synonymous with fake it till you make it but that's a careful thing like you if you if you're choosing to fake it till you make it you got to know that's what you're doing and you got to fake it and then make it like you got to figure it out make it happen so I think there's there there's a couple things in there right it's like being honest with what I what I'm good at what I'm not good at really being honest about what I want to do like I said I led these things I just here's something I didn't like to practice doing certain parts of the trade so illustrating I liked illustration I wanted to be a good illustrator I didn't like practicing illustration so that was an insightful okay I'm not going to be I'm not going to be that you know I liked wireframing I kind of liked practicing doing that but I didn't really like getting into the nuts and bolts and taking it all the way through to something that that works and makes sense and is and is incredible okay I don't like practicing doing that what do I like practicing doing like what is the actual day-to-day hour- toour job that I like doing and then just run with that I think that that helped me and so what I liked doing in this case was helping clients understand the value of these things masterminding what all it's going to take to do it and then finding the talent and enabling them to do those things I loved practicing doing that I felt comfortable 25 years old in a room with a VP of product of a big company talking to them about what needs to be done I did not feel comfortable doing it and so I just leaned into that and I think that's um that's uh that that's what that's what I think back on when I think about that how does one who's who's most mostly self-taught have the confidence and the Acumen to be able to ask the right questions and to probe in ways there's a big mystery here there's like I can't figure it out like you're this Enigma because a lot of people who are exactly where you are at 25 don't come to the same result or conclusion that you do so help us unpack that please I think it starts with believing in whatever you're doing or talking about believing that it's needed believing that it's valuable like I said I knew I wasn't the Great at it but I knew that it was the right thing to do I tried I got out of the military one of the jobs I tried was as a car salesman I just had to do something had to make money uh so I okay we be a car salesman I sold zero cars in one month and quit I was asked to practice by a general manager and froze up one of the only like two or three times in my life where I've had a panic attack and just Frozen up it's because I didn't give a crap about those cars I didn't believe in it I didn't care about sales and I just froze up it was impossible but when it comes to this kind of myself I look at a company I look at a brand I look at a product and I say I believe that there's a way to make this great and that if it is great it will sell more and it will provide more value to customers and that gives me the confidence and I can be honest say I don't know all the ins and outs of this but I do know that it's right and I do have confidence that um given the right kind of investment and and and focus we can find the right people to do this and make so it really starts with that like and so connecting passion with something that you really believe you think is true becomes a lot easier to navigate stressful and high pressure situations wonderful take me back to that time when what however you wanted to find it that first big breakthrough where you're whatever size client doesn't really matter where you felt like okay this is good I'm having this meeting and then you walk away with that gig how did that meeting come about what happened during the meeting and how did it turn out for you and give us a little context how old are you where are you how did this thing come about the first time that really happened was was with a company in Austin called silver car it doesn't exist anymore because Audi acquired them in sequence of us working with them not because of the work we did I we had a big we had a lot to do with it um and and so silver car was was you know there was heading out to disrupt the car rental industry so I don't know if if you or listeners remember the company silver car a lot probably do you use an app to rent an Audi and you get an Audi it's it's it's a beautiful car this was before turo so turo kind of so all this but it was a beautiful car very seamless experience took an industry that sucked and everyone hated um that had no pressure to to fix themselves the carbon tool industry and they solved it their their slogan was carbonal that doesn't suck and I loved that I you know I I love going into that and saying okay you're doing something that is going to be successful because it is a good experience and that's your brand your brand and your experience don't live up to that so here's my opportunity okay this everything that I believe in right here uh it's so going in and selling that we could do that connecting with their executive team their leadership from CEO a chief product officer CTO I was 27 28 years old we had a a tiny office in Austin Texas probably a dozen people or less probably eight people everything's so bootstrapped and Scrappy our the tables we were working on were Ikea legs with some desktop tables that we found behind dumpster I mean this is a startup world as a early mid 20s and getting a project with silver car to do the brand the holistic user experience and in the design of the key Flagship touch point which is the mobile application into to end and that moment of selling that was great connecting all those dots together having a having a CEO that I that I thought was more of a a very smart guy um very successful very smart guy but but more of a business Builder then concerned with these things get it it clicked he said okay we're going to do this that was great and then we were off the races then we had to deliver that that was kind of I don't say fake it till we make it but that was like okay here you go there's the opportunity and and having the the confidence in my team to to kind of pull together we needed to make that happen that was a great moment and then that led to subsequent projects with them and with Audi and gave us amazing case studies and that that was one of the the big stepping stones for for that agency were you involved in the initial Outreach to them to even get that meeting in the first place great question because yes doesn't always happen um we have organic we have referrals you know our business come to us in so many different ways but it is it it is those times where it is that cold direct Outreach that turns into a major project that feels so good because you're it's controlling it you know controlling your own destiny yes that one cold LinkedIn message to the CEO uh because it was a cool Austin company a growing startup LinkedIn message said hey I think that we could help you um and that turned into that project so yeah I'm proud of that one wow that's awesome was that literally as the simple message that you sent I think we can help you something like that yeah I think what you're really interesting and I think we can help you yeah okay well for people who have tried that same line of messaging and are getting no results times are different these days because everyone is in your me your DM saying we can help you and for me currently it's a big turnoff because it's like I don't even know you how about we talk first like is there any interest from you or is it you're I'm a meal ticket you know so it's kind of tricky these days how would you approach it in 2024 if you've spotted somebody that you really genuinely believe you can help what would your cold Outreach be like today would it be the same or would you change something no actually it would be the same and I think it would be more effective today for the reasons that you mentioned everyone and this kind of goes now into to even some of the raw materials philosophy and what we're doing in design that is that that that we believe in it's a strong parallel but it's just like the simple fact when everything when everyone's trying to over optimize and the answer to these things and cold Outreach is the same it's optimize this thing let's scale there's power in numbers oh everyone is saying you need you need to provide value you got to get bullet point you know there there's all these like methods and and and tools and tactics and things well everyone's reading the same stuff everyone's doing the same stuff the human brain is is is wired to recognize pattern and so you just see pattern you see noise you block it out what is different is saying hey bud really cool stuff I think we can help how many messages do you get like that a day or me me or anyone else you know so that is just one example of doing something a that is different B that is personal and genuine and C that that relieves the pressure of having to commit to to you know let me give you a demo or whatever whatever your tactic might be okay those things they exist because they work but I think trying something different trying something more genuine and personal and back to what I said before truly believing in what you're doing versus trying to win at a game I think there's something in there for me and that's a very personal thing that's just kind of my style in general okay now we move forward in the timeline you grow grow handsome to a point in which it's like 140 150 people something doesn't feel right for you can you articulate what that feeling like what happened like you're you're the founder of the company right it and sometimes people have a hard time understanding this is sometimes the company becomes something that you're wait this doesn't feel like the way it felt when it was just me and three people so something happens and what were you feeling and then how did you go about kind of morphing that into its next iteration there's something that I I think about a lot when trying to help clients think about strategy which is is just this two part two-part philosophy like a necessity is the mother of invention so there's always a reason why something new exists in the world and then B that no idea is ever as good as when it is first conceived the problem is you have to realize an idea into into a real product or or whatever it might be and then what's even worse um is you have to scale it and realizing an idea always puts that idea at risk and scaling it really puts it at risk and so the best companies in the world are companies you know everyone says like ideas are cheap the ideas are diamond doesn't it's really an execution okay that that that kind of that that horse is beaten but I think there's truth in there and like I think the Insight is that what's hard is maintaining the value and the quality of the idea as you go to real realize it and especially as you go to scale it so back to your question started handsome because I had an idea there was a need in the market 10 12 years later hansom existed because you know hansome existed so that hansom could grow and so that hansome could scale not for the reasons why we started it and I think that's a that's a thing that Founders you know individual Founders companies and the biggest companies in the world I think I think even companies like Facebook went through a bit of an identity CR lost what they were you know they gave up the move fast and break things and it turned into a scale what we've got as much as you know extract as much as we we can from what we've got and you kind of lose your way well we're nowhere near the size of Facebook or n meta but the same kind of thing was happening with handsome the reason why that was happening was because I think that was happening in the design industry in general which is because that was happening in the technology and and other in some of the larger Industries in general as well and so what I felt happening to my own self and my own thing was I was existing in order to what I was the problems I was solving was how to scale this thing I've got I think the reason why that was happening is because the design industry was turning into uh a function of implementation and scale and that's because the design was being employed by these companies who were trying to scale as fast as possible and so I just kind of woke up and looked around and said hey this is not what I wanted to do when I when I started out so what is it that I want to do well I want to to use creativity to create things that are valuable and successful because they are different and they are the right thing and they're different and hansome wasn't really geared to do that so the question was okay well then do we just kind of reconfigure ourselves do we evolve ourselves into that thing companies can evolve and change and we just got to a point where we said okay well if if we're going to be asking our clients to do this we need to fully take the leap so let's completely change ourselves let's start over again let's create a set of principles and fundamentals that we believe in and let's let's build a company to do that and it took us stripping the the company down to basically nothing and completely changing our our name our brand our reason to be our philosophy and at a certain point you have changed so much that you are not the thing you were before and that's that's what led into uh to to where we are today with raw materials so that's why I kind of think of it as a it is a brand new company um call it a metamorphosis because there is a lot of connective tissue or or or leftover kind of DNA from the handsome days but it is only those like core things that that drove me to start back you know 12 13 years ago not a lot to do with what we were doing in the recent years um take me through some of the Strategic and emotional things that you had to process in order to go from handsome to raw materials because I've had Cycles in my career where I'm like yeah this is not fun anymore I'm not sure what happened to this company and it's not even anywhere near it's like one tenth of the size of your company and thinking oh my God first of all the need to like just keep things going becomes the overwhelming driving force which is not a good reason and you talked about that it's like you just feed the machine and you're like why am I even doing this and I'm not getting any Joy from this or very little Joy something had happened but even saying like who we're going to keep how do we phase this down what's the external Communications going to be like there's all those things and for I'll I'll I'll voice it some people myself included feel like the fear of failure the perception of failure it's like no it's just not right for me right now it's not because I can't do this but it's just it's not what I want anymore and if I'm going to pursue this creative life I want to make sure it's filled with the things that give me joy otherwise I get a corporate job somewhere so can you take us through a couple of the things like because you you obviously had to let people go because you said you you dropped it way back down to almost nothing so that impacts the lives of people let's talk about that first like how do you feel about that how do how do you execute that because that's a re really tough thing to do it really is and that was tough for a lot of for a lot of reasons I mean it was tough for the people that were affected by it it was tough to you know quote kill your darling kind of thing um it was scary the thing that made it all make sense was coming down to a core truth a principle if you believe in it which is back to you know there there's a thread here that you've helped me uncover if you really believe in something then everything exists to try to make that thing happen then all that makes sense and the people and the businesses and things that are affected kind of comes to this this this idea that something should exist because it's wanted and because it is needed not exist because on on kind of false or fake pretenses this thing is okay but it exists because I'm good at selling it versus this thing really should exist and it it's its level of success is ACC is is more representative of my ability to realize it and lessen my ability to keep something alive so I think that finding that core truth that core that core principle was the answer to all those questions you just asked and that that was a process you that was a little bit of a journey for me and I it wasn't the first step in the journey where I thought where I looked back to why did I get into this business in the first place there were a couple of steps before that you know there was a what kind of business do I want wrong question you know what kind of Lifestyle do I want wrong question you those are important questions but later and I just kind of walked myself into okay well I am only going to be successful if I am making something that I think truly should exist everything else should be just a process of helping that thing exist and then that's what led me to think back to why I John Roser and Junior High at the public library being fascinated by websites whatever those were back then uh let's bring that energy back to today and that kind of attitude of I could go get a corporate job or I could cash out and that's a real good option for me so let's own let's let's do this exercise and only doing the thing that you really believe in and should exist there was a moment in during covid that was very difficult for handsome as it was for almost everyone in the early days of Co we thought the world was ending and it did kind of stopped for a second um and that means Revenue stopped for a second big companies pulled back on projects and budgets and so we were faced with some very hard decisions and um my coo who still is COO of raw materials now Jennifer Allen you know helped me think principal Le um and just saying like you know so the way I describe it is business should only exist to the extent that it can generate demand for the thing that it sets out to do and be which is actually agencies and service service people service providers in general whether you're a freelancer or an agency uh really are susceptible to this thing where you're doing work that quote pays the bills not quite the work you want to be doing and it's so easy to get lost in that so easy to kind of lose where who you are and where you started and it's so hard to pull back out of that and build a brand and build a business and build a portfolio out of the work that you really want to be doing which it's kind of a very simple business business it's like you you use a portfolio to to convince clients that you are capable of doing that kind of work so it would make sense that you need a portfolio that is best representative of the exact kind of work you want to be doing but if you're filling your time or if you're I mean an agency is just kind of the same thing as a freelancer just more people uh more hours if you're filling your hours doing work that isn't what you want to be doing sure you're making money sure you're staying alive but you're not helping your case you're not building your book you're not building your brand and so anyway long story short that was like that principle of only exist as a result of your ability to generate a demand for the exact thing you want to be doing if you can't then a it's not needed or wanted and you're kind of wrong maybe wrong wrong bad timing or whatever I think the whole world needs this and like okay well not really or you're not great at generating demand for it and those two things are true it is possible to exist without those things being true which is what I'm saying some people are just really good at selling things or some people are willing to do things that aren't what they want to be doing so that was the journey I had to go through with raw materials to say okay what do I really think needs to be exist I I analyze and S and assess the industry I worked with uh Pablo Marquez the chief creative officer of raw materials and Jennifer Allen Chief Operating Officer all three of us came from different parts of the industry long careers and we all came came to the same conclusion there is this thing there is this problem to solve it will always be a problem to solve and we should solve that problem raw material should only exist as a result of our ability to generate demand to solve that problem so then it was a process of which of these clients do we feel like align with that which don't thank you nice to work with you we've helped to but we're going to do something different and uh and then which of our team were either up to that task ready for that Journey suitable for that Journey or were a part of those clients that worked with that and it helped give that conviction it's like I I I don't like letting people go of course um no one does but no one wants to be a part of something that's wrong only what's right that helped make give Clarity on making hard decisions and has given us the confidence to navigate the last uh you know 18 months or so of raw materials because it's been hard but having that that true and that passion and that purpose has been that is the answer to all your questions real quick before I forget this video is brought to you by us the future are you ready to Kickstart your creative career and build a business doing what you love whether you're just starting out or you're switching careers or starting something new with Decades of experience we can help accelerator is your fast track to building a killer portfolio and Landing those dream clients you'll get training and experience on everything from lead generation and building your your network to closing the sale in project management with over 100 video lessons weekly coaching and personalized feedback from the future team you are never alone an accelerator want to learn more about the coursework community and coaching you'll get as an accelerator member get all the details at the future.com accelerator we'll see you there all right let's get you back to the video so the three of you got together shared a vision defined principles that you want to live by and then made the decision like these are the clients who want to de these are of team that are most aligned with what we want to do and is it then a gradual wind down or do you just call everybody one at a time it's like okay this is kind of handsome going away thank you for your service we're we're doing something different it's a little bit of a both but a little bit of both they were it's was a gradual wind down these are some tough tough but important topics you know I think decisiveness and Clarity are very important as a leader When people's lives and livelihood are on are on the line so being honest being Swift being decisive is always the best thing providing Clarity and transparency so with those values in mind I think the best way to handle something like that is as many people at once as fast as possible no blowing smoke no being opaque no pretending and so that helped just you know these are hard things you got to do hard things so having values and principles and employing those as strictly as possible really help to do the right thing while doing the hard thing and uh and that that's how we we did our best you you do and and I I'm right there with you did you have a couple of people who did not take it well and how did you respond to that no no one takes it well I'm not equating it to the same kind of experience um but as a as a as a freelancer who then turned into an agency owner getting rejected and getting fired is part of is part of my job um you know we're pitching clients we're trying to keep business and so I think it's always hard it's an emotional hard thing you you you get you get scared you start to doubt yourself you get angry you want you want to blame someone and all that's totally fair I think everyone has a bit of that that went through that process I don't know what everyone really went through internally but uh I think going back to those those principles and trying to handle it the best way we did the best way we could I think helped quite a bit having those reasons having them be for the right reason and then communicating that I think helps everyone you know stands the best chance of helping everyone deal with it in their own way but yeah last question on this and I'd love to talk about branding and the kinds of things that you're doing today is from the moment which you woke up one morning or maybe woke up in the middle of the night and said this isn't right I don't want to do this this way anymore to the point in which raw materials is created what's the timeline on that like how long does it take from this doesn't feel right in my gut we need to do something a lot of the planning the definition and then now we're raw materials how long did that take the real answer is it wasn't a clean or clear process and didn't set down didn't sit down with a with a with a brief and conduct a strategy and creative exercise to figure this out I would be interested to to to to know what would have happened if we did it that way it was more driven by feeling you know there was a there were different moments that happened it's a journey right so I think there was a big moment when I said I need a a a partner in this that that has done this at a large scale at the big leagues Jennifer Allen came from RGA long career RGA and other other types of bigger agencies and so I need someone like that who wants to build this this thing for me even back then I was feeling like this is not what am I doing here I'm building a machine it's not what I really wanted to do okay so there's that kind of that feeling that happens and then we get to a point where like okay things are successful here an economic perspective and from a brand building perspective uh how are we going to use this I think we can think you know 6 to 12 months out which is as an agency it's hard to do that it's like day to day week to week I think we can just look 12 months out let's make a let's really start to do some Vision here so I think that is that I would say that's the moment when Jennifer and I said all right like what are we going to do with this thing and so we okay well let's we want to be doing better work we want to be working with better people we want to have projects that are more true to what we believe in okay what's that going to take well let's let's find a chief creative officer who's going be a creative partner that can it can be at that same level with us that has done it has done these things and so we set out to find a chief creative officer then Pablo Marquez joins and then that was the moment where we're like okay you know he asked some great some great very hard questions what the hell do you even want to do with this thing why are you doing this I thought you said you wanted to be great what is this are we building a business are we doing great work business as a result of that there like really good hard questions for us to answer that's about the time when I started thinking back to okay thanks for asking me that question you're being a good Chief creative officer um helping us through a bit of a creative process here existential kind of creative process and so I started thinking back to why I started as as Jennifer as Pablo you kind of merge those things together that led us to May of 2023 when raw materials launched so for the year before that when is is the whole time where we were defining what raw materials was going to be and early in that process we decided to completely changed from handsome and started out as a Rebrand handsome project and as I say we quickly found ourselves like we got to get rid of the if we want something different and new we got to not try to change what exists but truly create something new um that was about a year process and then may of 2023 is when raw materials actually launched after a year of kind of business and brand defining and designing a previous a year before that of thinking about what we really wanted to do what really needed to exist in the industry what we wanted to do personally so I would say if I had to say give a time frame to it it was about a two to two and a half year process from like something's got to change to raw materials launches thank you for taking the time to kind of explain it in a more nuanced way because a lot of times people think oh it's a linear path and it didn't sound linear at all I was going to say it took you almost four years but something feels funny I think I'm going to do this and that turns into this and then I bring the right people and then they bring Clarity and then all of a sudden we have a plan and it just it's rather a morphous but you you kind of had that maybe that gut feeling that told you like this isn't right I don't know what the answer is yet until you get there like I said i' would be really curious to see what happened if we did a more formal rigorous creative process the kind that we ask our clients to go through with us but I think the things are are would would be true if in a in a more rigorous creative process the kind that we ask our clients to go through one is Clarity on the goal and that was that something feels wrong what do I so the goal is what do I really think should exist let's make that thing okay then it's open-mindedness which which really in a in a in a commercial or kind of project environment means trust and faith in the process you don't have to be too open you got to be a bit open-minded if you want creativity to do its job um but it's really I could call that more kind of trust the process have faith in the process rigor is called for so trust do the rigor and Trust the rigor and then just be have so much conviction and belief in what you're doing that you do it to a level of the highest level of greatness that you possibly can and just go all in on that thing and that's what happened that's and I and I do think that still applies very much so uh to a more rigorous kind of fixed project environment like what we do with raw materials you've done the the very difficult thing that very few people are able to do you you kind of ripped off the bandage and like you know what we're going to bring this down to nothing we're going to rebuild and we're going to make more strategic decisions that are aligned with our principles and we're going to build it back up so let's not jump to the Future that was the hardest part and thank you for for outlining kind of what had happened and telling us the behind the scenes look which we very rarely get a glimpse at at the scale in which you're operating so what is raw materials today how many people are involved and is it realized in in that initial conception or the idea that you had and how does it match up to that so raw materials what we're setting out to do with raw materials is to is to create a creative company and we only barely know what that means which is part of that openmed fluid nature of things but what we do know is that we want to build a company that exists based on the belief that creativity when harnessed and applied in the right ways is I I I truly believe is the source of the greatest potential value for any Endeavor so the idea is use creativity in a serious way to create things and if you do that right those things are valuable and things that are valuable can be monetized if that's the goal I think that as an a an agency which I think what is an what is an a design agency a creative agency it's um you know it's it's project it's SS with with with clients you just try to boil it down I think that that that's a great vehicle for that clients have a need they have resources they have reach they have problems to solve and so a creative company works well as an agency for clients but really what raw materials is is trying to understand and explore what it means to create the environment and conditions for creativity to really create value and then you know you know make things of value and monetize that raw materials is it you know today it is an agency we have clients um we're doing digital product design work largely uh as well as brand work mostly in conjunction for clients uh like you know peacock and meta and Google and uh 7-Eleven you know some big big companies big consequences but we're also doing things that are are realizing and exploring that idea in other ways um we're building building a a creative Community that's that in it that's going to have its own its own life its own soul that is going to um going to you know by be fueled by by raw materials to go and explore that idea in different ways we're doing projects and creating things that aren't for clients that are solving problems that we think need to be solved whether we monetize those or or not and then who knows where it goes the number of people that are involved you know I think it's I I'm happy to say that that's a kind of a hard thing hard question to answer um if you really wanted to get into some spreadsheets and say how many FTE are doing things uh which is one way to answer that question it's probably about 30 30 to 40 people at any given time at the moment the number of people that are involved in in a in a broader scale could easily easily be double that and I think the idea is that we can can help and and influence and support creatives in ways um that can can kind of be larger than ourselves you know so that's why that number can kind of be hard to answer did you have to get rid of the old space and move into a new space or are you still in the same space or how how are you operating today well Co helped us out with that handsome lefted space in uh March of 2020 and never have been back in a physical space for any permanent period of time so we have people now that helps us have you know what a big a big uh of tenant of of raw materials is find the best talent in the world and enable them to do the best work of their lives and we're true to that we do find the best talent that we possibly can regardless of where they are we have people working in in Europe and South America and Canada you all across the United States and so there's no way to put the genie back in the bottle on that one so we'll have to other ways to be physically present what do you do to have that same kind of culture that that you have before when everyone's remote we have the same problem Co everybody scattered like the wind and we started asking ourselves do we like to be in a commute no do we want to live in cities where it's not so you know the quality of life isn't matching what we want or we have elderly parents and so everybody just left then I had this building I'm like what am I doing with this okay well now we got to get rid of the building and we go through this whole process but there's something I really do miss John which is walking by the team and it's like what what are you working on oh my God that's really cool who who did this this is super awesome or hey there's this resource that I have or this thing that might make your thing a little bit better or easier I do miss that I'm not sure I miss it so much that I want to create this giant operation or even have a building just to have a building and so what do you guys do to even with the 40ish people to keep that culture alive these are great questions and I think mostly I don't have answers to them okay which is an honest answer you know because and I think the reason for that is I think there's where it's kind of a a paradox or a conundrum here I believe that the best work happens when people work together in the same space I also believe at the same time that all of the best people don't live and can't live live in the same place so what do you do do you get the best people to work on a problem POS Poss as possible anywhere they are in the world or do you get the best people that to work on a problem that are within the same local and I'm not it sounds a bit factious I actually don't know quite the answer to that one it's a lot easier to experiment on the on the former which is what we've been doing so far I don't know that in our future we aren't going to try to experiment with the latter and try to do things to help people be physically together as much as possible it hasn't been our Focus for the first year raw materials but it is a great question and a problem to solve that we haven't solved yet I appreciate the honesty there so then I'm going to ask you a super nerdy question okay if you don't want to answer or you're like no you need to talk to CTO about this what does the tech stack look like so that you can do work remotely still feel connected I'm I'm always curious the the nerd in me is like what is the Tex tack how do you guys collaborate I'll say this I think we're fairly UNS at just in the sense that we like to find the most basic tools and then use them the best way possible I think so we're slack we're figma you know I think I think things like uh git and things like that have helped development environments quite a bit and that's been around for a long time but nothing sophisticated on the kind of productivity and teamwork side of things and then also I think leaving it up to teams and individuals to kind of figure out what's best for them I think that's a pretty big thing we we don't we're we're pretty fluid and open we don't impose everyone must use fig Jam every time no matter what it's like you probably find a dozen different things being used at any given time it's just whatever's I'll put it like this it's whatever is best to solve the problem in the moment and building a culture then that's that's kind of strong and resilient enough to exist and thrive in an environment that is a bit more fluid or or ambiguous what do you do for files like assets it's pretty fluid across things I mean we have when if it's documentation we're fairly standardized into the Google Docs if a lot of the file work is done in in figma a lot of the files and assets can exist there so doing a lot of digital product design and then as it is uh other types of media I think it's going to mostly exist either between a file sharing and slack or storage in in Google you mentioned something about these U principles that you and Pablo and Jennifer sat down and talked about I think you mentioned six but maybe I wrote that down wrong and I wanted to follow up with that was it six and what are the principles and if there if it's not interesting it's fine but I I don't want to leave that open thread because somebody's going to be yelling Chris why didn't you ask about the principles and here I am asking about the principles the best thing you can do is have a single core principle or truth and for us that is summarized best as when everything is the same different is the greatest opportunity and that's synonymous with creativity is the source of the greatest potential potential value and for any Endeavor is kind of the same thing one is more of a means to an end I guess but I think that generally is the core principle then everything else is to support that I said finding the best talent and enabling them to do the best work that sounds like a nice little tagline that that any agency could and should say and believe in frankly or any creative but you know what is different is that we have made it our our work at the moment our life's work at the moment to really explore and enable that as much as possible we are obsessive over those things finding the best talent there's a lot in there what is the best talent what does that even mean um where are they how do we how do we find them and and know that we found them enable them to do the best work what all goes into that what is even the best work um how do we create an environment what is the absolute best environment for great work to happen not how do we scale quarter over quarter or what systems do we use so we can squeeze as much margin out as possible I mean we do some of that stuff because we have to as a business but that is the inconvenient afterthought of everything it is what is the environment that will do the absolute best work so I think you know those are some of like the core principles but it really comes down to you know create different for in any of the work that we're doing in as a means to an end of creating value and then everything is just kind of trying to figure that out and and apply that whether it be for clients or or work at we doing for ourselves or or otherwise well I guess I know you're saying it kind of sounds like a I think that every companies you say the best talent but then you have to make decisions that align with that allowing people to work remotely because the best talent don't always live in town in fact most likely they don't and then being kind of agnostic about the tools that you use and not saying you have to use this tool set whatever works for you works for us right and so you're kind of building that into this I forgot to ask you this one question is when you have client meetings and I assume you have client meetings where you have to go somewhere I don't know maybe it's a new world we don't have to do that anymore do you do that and how where is the team how does this work do they are they in town do they fly in and then you do the big meetings or no I'll answer it in a couple ways here two ways like one like I I I clearly believe in thinking this way going to go back to the principal answer mhm is always going to be what is going to create the best work and I for some reason I don't I I think that that is not the first question in agency especially the larger you get again back to the whole the goal becomes scale the goal may have started out as I want to do the best work and then the goal turns into scale but we're trying to maintain as much as possible what's going to create the absolute best work and that becomes the justification for anything including the expensive task of uh flying half a dozen people from various parts of the world into a single place to meet with a client and co-work together if that isn't going to create the absolute best work but just seems like something that will make the client feel better or something that will help morale it's not going to you know I think a lot of times getting on zoom and opening up figma opening up whatever the tool of the day is we do a lot of strategy work we do a lot of design work we do a lot development work it's whatever the tool to day is opening that up on in figma with client and getting to work kind of hand inand with a client usually is going to create the best work and that doesn't require you to be in the same space with a client asking someone to fly from Poland to New York for for kind of political social reasons with a client you're not going to find that here um you're you're going to find us kind of going back to that principle and so then it becomes easy do we do it do we not do it how do we do it and we just kind of blindly follow those principles and it's worked out for us that's wonderful I love that answer is this something that you walk clients or prospects through before you get involved because some of them like what what do you mean you're not going to meet with us yeah absolutely you know our work starts the very first conversation we have with the CL and I think our work starts with the brand that we build I think that's kind of a a fun kind of way to think too was like the end product and and Pablo is something Pablo's really helped me you you think you understand this you can say it and then you find yourself not doing it but truly everything that you do affects the in product every meeting every email every proposal uh every edit of a spreadsheet one way or another affects the in product and if the principle is create the absolute best work possible you need to think about everything that you do all the way through and that includes the brand that you build that includes that first sales call with the client and so the easiest thing then what we do is we let the client in on that one of the very first things we say you know when the first call is like just so you know we're going to treat this as if we're doing the work together so let's go on this journey starting now let's talk about the problem you're solving let's talk about the environment that's going to need to be created to create the best work and then there's a bit of that kind of self- selection uh kind of validation through the process that's a bit of an educational process and also a bit of like let's get and create that culture together starting as early as possible so then it's not a surprise when we come in the end and say and they say hey why don't you all come and and and spend a couple days with us here why you know honest question how's that going to help the work be better oh this is why and it might be because our stakeholders really want to see your face around here and if our stakeholders don't see you then we're not going to have as easy of a time getting Buy in on the things you make which means we're going to have to make you know more sanitized generic stuff that they're not afraid of great good answer we're going to hop on a flight we're going to be there because it helps create the best work possible and as we scale as as a creative company working as an agency we're going to maintain that that posture that culture and that will be the challenge because again I think as you scale as you get more owners as you get you know you're beholden to keeping employed dozens and dozens of people Etc that principle gets is one of the first things that starts to degrade why are you doing this because of a number not because it's going to make the absolute best thing that is most successful possible and I just keep going back if that's always the way you're doing every hard decision is going to be made much easier you're going to have much more confidence and the clients are going to completely understand for my last question for you I'm going to ask you something I've never asked a podcast guest before and it's the Dan Sullivan question are you familiar with the Dan Sullivan question no okay he he's like the I guess the king of coaches for for people and very successful and a prolific writer his question is this three years from now you and I are looking back on the past three years what has happened both personally and professionally that's made you really happy so now we're in 2027 towards the third quarter and and you you you started this thing I guess it's been about 18 months or so about this idea about living in these principles and making every decision grounded in this one core idea take me to the future look back and tell me what what's happened what do you see great question it's fun being put on the spot like that so what would make me happy is that big things have happened we've got big iconic legendary projects out there in the world that the industry is looking at and saying there's a Renaissance here this is what's needed we need more creativity in the design of our experiences and products we were so sick and didn't know it of the sameness that prolif that that proliferated uh digital experiences digital products in a lot of cases Brands and the design of our everyday things became such a saturation of sameness and we we did know it we didn't know it we know it now because we can see what has happened here both by raw materials and the effects of what we've done and we're looking at a set of case studies or examples out there together and saying that's it that's what was needed that happened and it happened because of the things that we said in this podcast interview today in 2024 so big things happened it proves these ideas and you talk so much John about these principles and staying true to those principles you did stay true to them look at those effects look at what happened that's that's iconic that's legendary now let's go through the next three years and build on that and and make things uh make the make the things that we use every day better and better super cool so you have this hypothesis that you're like I think it's going to work but now we need to see at a big big scale so like it really did work this all these decisions actually led to the best possible work to be done by the very best most talented people and in ways that kind of stayed true to that and then everybody in the industry is looking at like well we want some of that what has happened here let's let that be the beacon or the high water mark to see like if we can't catch up or play in that same sphere that was a really great answer boom you got it that's exactly it it's a you even using some of my own words I I think all business is an experiment I like to be honest with myself about that so what is the hypothesis and then the whole point is to prove it so we're looking back three years from now we've we've proven it and we've created a starting point that is much better than we are today or we were three years ago well John thank you very much for sharing so openly and tackling some of the difficult questions I had no idea where this conversation was going to go and I feel much clear and more enlightened about like somebody who is at a scale much bigger than I ever was to kind of hear the trials and tribulations you went through and I wish you nothing but the very best for the next three last years thanks a lot Chris this was fun [Music]

Download transcript

Enjoyed this? There’s more where it came from.

Get insights on creativity, business, and design from The Futur.

You can unsubscribe anytime. By submitting, you agree to receive communications and to our Privacy Policy.

“When everything is the same, different is the greatest opportunity.”

— Chris Do

Key Takeaways

Subscribe

Details

Length: 56m
Views: 12,200
Topic: ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Share