047 Project Relationship Management – Rachel Gertz of Louder Than Ten

Podcast Interview Transcript

00:02:00.34
Chris Bolton
Hello out there. I’m very excited to introduce co-founder and director of growth and delivery at Louder Than 10, Rachel Gertz. Rachel, welcome to the show.

00:02:10.99
Rachel Gertz
Hi, how are ya?

00:02:13.46
Chris Bolton
Great, I’m really excited to have you on here. And why don’t you tell our listeners where you’re calling in from?

00:02:22.06
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, you bet. So we’re just north of you folks up in Vancouver, Canada, and it is sunny, surprisingly, today, so I’m really happy about that.

00:02:30.62
Chris Bolton
That is excellent, it’s very nice and sunny here as well. So, louder than 10, can you tell us a little bit about what louder than 10 is and does?

00:02:42.78
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, you bet. So Louder Than Ten is a training and consulting company for digital agencies. And our whole goal is making sure that folks feel like they can run project systems with ease. And that relates back to taking care of our people, taking care of our process, and taking care of the leaders that run things day to day.

00:03:01.95
Chris Bolton
And you primarily work with agencies. Is that right?

00:03:05.59
Rachel Gertz
primarily and we also work with creative studios and product studios. And then if you’re a creative team inside of a larger enterprise, we also work with those folks as well.

00:03:13.65
Chris Bolton
Okay. Gotcha. Awesome.

00:03:15.81
Rachel Gertz
Yeah.

00:03:17.14
Chris Bolton
Well, I always like to ask, you know, tell a little bit of the origin story of Louder Than Ten and maybe even a little bit about your background on how you came to, you know, founding this agency.

00:03:32.50
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, for sure. So about 15 years ago, I had finished my education degree. So I have a history and background in education. And my whole passion ended up being like systems and process. And I fell into this as many people do with my business partner at the time. And we decided to take a road trip with an RV. So it was kind of before Instagram, before everyone was doing quote van life, right? Hashtag van life. And we took our show on the road and we basically were doing, we were doing freelancing and I was doing freelance project management. And one of the things that I noticed at that time even was it was incredibly lonely. There was no resources available for modern digital project management. There was no connective tissue

00:04:18.31
Rachel Gertz
In terms of just the environment and people that were like, yeah, I’m doing this stuff. This is how it works for me around that same time, just afterward, like 2014, um, the sort of the digital project management summit sprung up and this whole like movement around digital PM really kind of came into being. And as part of that, we started realizing that project management was something that, A, a lot of owners and their teams, they did it, but they didn’t think a lot about it. It was just a thing that had to happen. A lot of owners start out in design or dev, or maybe they have a background and become themselves.

00:04:52.42
Rachel Gertz
But project management is side of the desk. We’ve just got to get stuff done. So a lot of it’s learned in the trenches. And for me, my passion is looking after the psychology of folks. How are they doing on the team? What does power look like on a team? How do you distribute that power in a way where people have ease and can move through their projects in a way that feels like you’re building towards something that’s unified, that you’re aligned on that? And so all of this kind of came together way back in like 2014, 2015. And we really started to hone and focus in on digital PM training and education, which naturally kind of fits into operations, right? You need to be financially savvy to understand how business works. If you want to be great at project management, you’ve got to know what the levers and dials are. And that same name, you got to understand account management.

00:05:44.07
Rachel Gertz
If you don’t understand how relationships work, not just with your team, but with your clients, you’re going to be at odds or there’s going to be an odd tension between the different parties on the team. And then also in that same way, just relating back to not how do you run a project on its own, because that’s important. But how do you actually think about systems of project management? How do you know how many projects to run? Why would you want to run that many in the first place? There’s so much art and science to this that I fell in love with that. And creating that connection between all those pieces and with the clients that we were working with became like, I couldn’t get enough of it. So that’s kind of the origin story.

00:06:25.08
Chris Bolton
That’s awesome. How many people are louder than 10? What’s the sort of, how do you guys operate?

00:06:36.00
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, we’re super small. We’re a boutique. So we have the three of us right now. We have my trainer in Philly and myself. I do a little bit of the delivery. We also have one of our workers at my partner trap. He’s working actually remotely from Bali right now. So yeah, we’re doing, yeah.

00:06:50.18
Chris Bolton
Oh, wow.

00:06:52.29
Rachel Gertz
So we’re doing kind of like a, a neat remote first approach to the business. And we’re really focusing on, yeah, that like lifestyle based company, like how can we create a life that we’re all really, really loving to live.

00:07:06.29
Chris Bolton
Wow, that’s awesome. I will say that when I really love your website, both the both the design and the copy and messaging, it struck me.

00:07:16.05
Rachel Gertz
Thanks.

00:07:17.71
Chris Bolton
And actually, there’s this great line on your website that I just felt. And I feel like everybody who goes to your website probably feels this. And it says your team is burnt out. Your clients are pissed off and your family misses you.

00:07:33.20
Chris Bolton
Um, so I, um, I think that probably a lot of our listeners, um, can also relate to that. Um, and so my, my question is, is, is why does that happen at agencies?

00:07:47.76
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, for sure. You know what’s really interesting and I would love to dig into the research behind this more I saw, I think it was Kelly Campbell was was doing a post on like trauma in for agency leaders and sort of the idea of like how and why do we start businesses as entrepreneurs? And one of the sort of theories is like, if at home we didn’t get the like acknowledgement, validation, support and guidance that we needed, sometimes we’re driven to kind of go into an entrepreneurial path, because then we can actually create the team, the dream and all of these things that we wanted to begin with. And, you know, hopefully we’ll find that like relationship that

00:08:27.88
Rachel Gertz
create creative flow that validation that like we’re doing the thing that we always wanted to do. So what happens I think it’s not everyone of course right but what happens is that we can get lost in that dream of trying to be and do everything for our clients and for our teams and we lose ourselves. And in that process, not always, but we try to start focusing on like, okay, well, we just need to get there. So we go into short circuit mode. We start thinking short term instead of long term.

00:09:00.74
Rachel Gertz
We start thinking about, well, I could do that faster than my project manager or my team. Or we just need to close that deal. So I think a lot of these things are systemic based on this, not always, but a desire to please, a really big desire to get it right, to make people happy, to make our clients extremely successful. And in that process, I think we can often kind of lose some of the foundation that when we started that’s what we wanted to build and we just fall into the day-to-day. So that’s kind of like a really broad, big way of talking about it.

00:09:40.42
Chris Bolton
I think. Um, so, uh, my agency was founded by my brother and, um, he sometimes describes how he came to start the business as like, it was kind of a way for him at a time in his life. I think when he had a shot, I think it was when he was first had his child. or his child was very young, and he was just getting, he’d just finished school.

00:10:15.28
Chris Bolton
And I think that he didn’t have the same sort of community that he had had when he was a single person. And he kind of, there was that sort of desire to sort of create a family outside of the home.

00:10:21.70
Rachel Gertz
Right.

00:10:27.76
Chris Bolton
And I think that, I mean, I think he also understands that like, like that’s to a certain extent, it’s a fool’s errand. You know, like you, I don’t think you, I don’t think it’s necessarily healthy always to think of your business as a family.

00:10:47.57
Rachel Gertz
No, not at all. Yeah, you can’t fire your family, right? I mean, that’s, yeah.

00:10:52.22
Chris Bolton
Yeah.

00:10:54.99
Rachel Gertz
Totally.

00:10:55.52
Chris Bolton
Um, but I think that, I think you’re probably, you’re probably right that there is that sort of, um, probably that tension and a lot of, you know, a lot of business owners and founders, um, along those lines.

00:11:10.89
Rachel Gertz
Yeah. And I don’t think we mean to. I think it happens because we do want that chosen family or that chosen community, that connection. And there is something about the creation process, right? You have a vision. You see what you want to be. And you see all of these things that maybe other your clients, they’re not able to. We’re always on the bleeding edge of everything, right? And I mean, that’s an uncomfortable and beautiful position to be in as a digital or creative agency. So yeah, I think I’m always interested in uncovering sort of like this psychology behind why we’re motivated to do what we do. And I think if we speak to that and we come in with a soft place to land for these leaders that are doing hard things, that creates softness for the entire team. And I think right now globally, I don’t know if you’re noticing this, but I think the entire planet is in need of that softness and that rest because we are burnt out.

00:12:10.12
Chris Bolton
Yeah. We talk about burnout a lot of my agency. I mean, we, yeah, absolutely. I think that I see it all over. I don’t know. I see it with clients that we’re meeting with too. So I know it’s not just the agency world.

00:12:23.38
Rachel Gertz
No, we’re all in it, right?

00:12:26.45
Chris Bolton
Yes.

00:12:31.06
Chris Bolton
Well, it’s also interesting. You know, I mean, one of the reasons I’ve sort of started up this podcast too, I think is to talk, you know, I feel like there’s more conversations to be had.

00:12:39.60
Rachel Gertz
Yeah. What do you find gives you energy right now?

00:12:42.29
Chris Bolton
Um,

00:12:44.76
Rachel Gertz
Like where do you find your own energy?

00:12:47.09
Chris Bolton
absolutely.

00:12:50.08
Chris Bolton
Um, so how, I’m curious, how do you sort of engage, um, with clients? Um, what is, so your focus is, is sort of project management or is that what you would say? Or you’d say it was project management?

00:13:05.28
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, we call it project management ops.

00:13:07.00
Chris Bolton
Mm-hmm.

00:13:07.02
Rachel Gertz
So it’s how project management hooks in with operations and kind of creates a cohesive system.

00:13:12.27
Chris Bolton
Gotcha. But you’re not actually doing project management. You’re improving, teaching, consulting, that sort of thing.

00:13:23.13
Rachel Gertz
Exactly. The whole key is instead of we can do it for you or you can do it, we can help. We want to teach you how to do it. We want to get your delivery teams. The interesting thing is, as you can imagine, project management is one of those skills where everybody needs it. It’s not just the dedicated roles, but It’s valuable for everyone. Everyone understands, A, how companies make and raise money, B, how processes work and don’t work, C, how to deliver value throughout.

00:13:53.53
Rachel Gertz
That’s just good for everybody.

00:13:55.40
Chris Bolton
Right.

00:13:55.45
Rachel Gertz
So we will take delivery teams and their leaders and especially those folks that are running the projects, whatever hats or titles they actually have, right? It’s like you lead projects. And we’ll walk them through the foundations and also the really key places where we see those breakdowns in the system happening, which, as you can imagine, are usually much of it up front, knock on effects downstream in that project process. By the time you get to QA, you’re like, what budget?

00:14:25.09
Chris Bolton
Yeah, I know.

00:14:25.68
Rachel Gertz
So yeah.

00:14:31.52
Chris Bolton
Yeah, that seems really valuable. I think that, yeah, project management has been, yeah, I mean, you know, we, I mean, just like so many agencies, you know, like we started, like we knew how to do like creative work. And then we realized we needed project management, but we didn’t have any expertise in that way.

00:14:48.37
Rachel Gertz
Yeah.

00:14:54.71
Chris Bolton
And now we do, which is really helpful, but it has been sort of, I mean, we’ve been around since 2007, but I think we’re just sort of starting to mature in the project management sense now.

00:15:10.98
Rachel Gertz
Makes sense. Yeah, there’s so much nuance to it, right?

00:15:14.19
Chris Bolton
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So when you are working with clients, are you doing workshops? Are you auditing information? Are you getting invited to meetings? How does it work?

00:15:34.68
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, yeah. So we kind of have two pathways. You can either put an individual into a course, and that course will give them the foundations they need with like seven other folks from different companies or agencies, and they’ll kind of walk out with this new systems focus. So it’s a good brush up for folks who are like mid level, even senior level who are just like, I never actually got that formal training, because it’s not like a typical, like PMP style you know, if you’re in construction or mining, it’s not like that at all. So that’s the one path.

00:16:00.52
Chris Bolton
Mm

00:16:02.16
Rachel Gertz
But the area where we’re really growing and excited about is that custom training for teams. So we do start with an initial process audit. And the idea is we could come in and just be like, we could point to all the things that we notice as a company and be like, yeah, here’s where you’re going wrong. But how does that help the team understand their own root causes? So we like to do this audit analysis where the actual team gets to put dynamite sticks on all the places where things start to break down.

00:16:22.06
Chris Bolton
hmm.

00:16:29.59
Rachel Gertz
Then they, we help them surface the root cause together so that when we walk away, we’re like, hey, here’s the top five core issues that are happening. Here’s kind of like why they’re happening. Now let’s actually set the modules to be able to train you up in what to do about it. Meanwhile, we’ll add that consulting layer so that you have some soft touch as well where you have guidance. And we’re also incorporating more recently, like if you need that fractional support regarding some of the implementation, just because timing, right? Everything is timing.

00:16:59.97
Rachel Gertz
You might need that and you just don’t have the person available or the capacity available for that. So it’s kind of a nice package to be able to move through OpsChange, which takes time.

00:17:04.55
Chris Bolton
Mhmm.

00:17:10.21
Chris Bolton
Yeah, totally. I can see that valuable, too. I mean, one of the things that is sometimes difficult is how much how much change happens, especially, you know, most agencies are I can’t remember what the stat was, but, you know, like 25 people or less, like when you have, you know, people moving in and out of the agency in a small agency, like everything sometimes has to change, you know,

00:17:38.10
Rachel Gertz
Yes, everything, right?

00:17:41.05
Rachel Gertz
I think the average, what did I read? Something like, every 12 to 18 months, your processes break. So you’ll have to refine and change them. And every time you double in size, your processes break. So if you’re in a growth phase, you’re definitely going to be experiencing pain around operations and documentation and flow and all of this. Things are going to go from feeling really good to all of a sudden maybe not feeling so good at all. And it might be like, what happened? Why can’t we just read the document we made like a year ago? Because that doesn’t fit anymore. You folks have shifted and evolved in a way that you don’t even recognize yet.

00:18:18.65
Chris Bolton
Now I’ll say that something that happened in our at our agency is like we’re primarily branding but we always have website projects going on but we got up to doing like Um, you know, $200,000 website projects. And then over the last year, we went down to like doing $20,000 website projects.

00:18:41.63
Rachel Gertz
Right, the shift here.

00:18:42.33
Chris Bolton
And actually like financially, um, it wasn’t great, but it’s like manageable. But the fact that we had to adjust our gears from doing these giant projects to doing these small projects was really difficult.

00:18:53.19
Rachel Gertz
Yeah. No kidding. Can I ask, what was the biggest thing that you folks noticed with that change from those larger projects to the smaller ones? What was happening with the team?

00:19:09.36
Chris Bolton
Well, I think that the smaller projects ended up being more templated website projects where I think that the tough thing is client expectations, setting with when you have more limits on design, and we’re all geared towards super custom design stuff.

00:19:19.21
Rachel Gertz
course. yeah.

00:19:34.61
Rachel Gertz
yeah.

00:19:36.12
Chris Bolton
You know, sometimes I would almost like overdramatize our limits to clients because I was just so afraid that they were going to get pissed off when they realized they couldn’t do something that they asked for.

00:19:40.49
Rachel Gertz
mm hmm.

00:19:48.33
Rachel Gertz
No doubt. That makes perfect sense too, right? When you think of the amount of budget and spend that a larger, say $200,000 budget client could spend, they’re not as worried about where that 10K is going to go. But if the total is 20K, then they’re like, oh, that 10 is very, very important. And often the expectations are kind of the same, but we really want things to be great.

00:20:09.72
Chris Bolton
Yeah.

00:20:11.61
Rachel Gertz
And they don’t understand the differential because they’re not that other company.

00:20:15.51
Chris Bolton
Yeah.

00:20:15.90
Rachel Gertz
That’s an important amount of money for them.

00:20:18.33
Chris Bolton
Yeah. It’s a hard perspective for us to make because, you know, like we feel resentful when people are asking us to do the same kind of work that we did for a much larger budget, you know.

00:20:28.90
Rachel Gertz
totally yeah because it’s like for you folks it’s like it doesn’t make sense but for them they have no concept of that and I totally get it and it’s like this combination of empathy for like where they’re at in their business and they’re looking at trying to like open up new pipelines for revenue and they already have like 20 projects on the go and this is just one more project so they’re like expectations and reality are often just completely out of alignment.

00:20:56.72
Chris Bolton
Mm hmm.

00:20:57.01
Rachel Gertz
I think that’s that beautiful area where like project management can come into play with account management if it’s separate function or if it’s the same like you know just looking at where do you want to go? Let’s get there together. We can’t do this and this in three months, but we could probably add that additional thing in six months or 12 months if and when we’re able to release and open up some of this revenue for you. I think there’s so much we can do with the language there and in that relationship building process.

00:21:22.00
Chris Bolton
Mm hmm.

00:21:25.96
Chris Bolton
Yeah, absolutely. I found myself relying more on conversations about ours.

00:21:35.44
Chris Bolton
And part of that is sort of the expectation setting. I think hourly billing is kind of horrible, but it’s what we deal in.

00:21:45.96
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, I get it.

00:21:47.28
Chris Bolton
And it’s something that clients understand. you know, so you can be like, this is going to take eight hours, this is going to take 10 hours, this is going to take 15 hours, and they get it. You know, like, I think that when you, you know, when you’re just like, well, that’s going to be $10,000.

00:21:57.08
Rachel Gertz
Yeah.

00:22:02.54
Chris Bolton
They’re just like, what?

00:22:04.58
Rachel Gertz
Right.

00:22:06.03
Chris Bolton
But

00:22:06.48
Rachel Gertz
Do you know? Do you notice with that time and materials approach, is everything A-OK up until that you’re 90% finished and all of a sudden they’re like, well, are we at the thing? Do you see when shops do that if there’s like that? Everything’s fine until it’s not.

00:22:22.85
Chris Bolton
Yeah, I mean, we still, we don’t like build like time and materials. I just try to have all the conversations, like this is how we’re calculating everything.

00:22:30.88
Rachel Gertz
Oh, I see. Yeah, still fixed it.

00:22:35.02
Chris Bolton
Yeah, so it’s still fixed bid, but I do think that like, I mean, the end of the projects is always where. We’re out of hours and they’re asking for extra things. And it’s when the stakeholder that you didn’t know existed suddenly appears and wants everything to change.

00:22:50.96
Rachel Gertz
Yep.

00:22:52.68
Rachel Gertz
Totally business scope creep. We see that one. Yep.

00:23:00.78
Rachel Gertz
So true.

00:23:01.23
Chris Bolton
Let’s see, I have some questions for you about project management.

00:23:06.31
Rachel Gertz
Yeah.

00:23:09.05
Chris Bolton
So, and this is, I mean, this kind of plays right into what we were talking about. Can you share some best practices for managing client expectations?

00:23:21.38
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, for sure. So usually a client comes in, they know their business, you know your business, right? I think a lot of the relationship building starts in that first and second sales call, which we recommend when possible. If you have project leaders running the show, they should be brought in after that first sales call, at least to just vet and do a risk analysis on the project. It’s just to look at alignment, right? So making sure that what we say we can deliver is actually what’s matching what’s happening in the sales process. So with that, you can even get your juniors, your junior PMs or mid-level PMs trained up in assessing risk by just having them sit in as a fly on the wall. One of the exercises that we recommend is have this silent dialogue with the PM and whoever’s running the sales call, and you can have them mark

00:24:12.14
Rachel Gertz
quote like little red flags you can do it with like a like a like a pipe and a carrot on your keyboard or you can like have a system where you’re like noting them in the margins if you’re doing notes and it’s just a kind of a nonverbal way to communicate hey like here’s it here’s an opportunity to ask another question or here’s an opportunity to get stronger alignment between sales and project management because I kind of see them as like left foot right foot like they need each other to tango right and so all of those things kind of

00:24:33.22
Chris Bolton
Okay.

00:24:41.01
Rachel Gertz
end up centering around once we’ve defined what we think we’re going to sell, getting the PMs in on vetting the SOW, making sure that terms and services are clarifying and getting rid of any vague language. When possible, we want flexible language. So instead of we’ll do two or three revisions, it’ll be like, well, we’ll do a minimum of two, and then every one after that will be an extra round, and that’s outside of the scope, or whatever. Just clarity.

00:25:09.46
Chris Bolton
Mm hmm.

00:25:09.47
Rachel Gertz
Clarity is kindness, right? So from there, in terms of managing expectations, and we’re looking at that handover process. And I think what I often see with digital agencies is they do this almost like hucking the baton over to the PM team, and the PM team doesn’t quite get enough information. So if there’s missing context around who are those key stakeholders, And there’s new faces that are like, wait, who is that? Often the introductions don’t always get properly done. So like, you’ll just have this, this like, hi, we’re going to run the project now. And it’s like, wait, who’s was that person? Is that still going to be involved that person doing sales? Or what’s the deal? And I think

00:25:50.24
Rachel Gertz
stakeholders on the client side get almost like whiplash from that fast handover process. So like, for example, in an onboarding process, I know this sounds excessive, but like hearing me out, you could have like up to five short meetings before you’re even considering like one of those being the kickoff. So you might have to sit down with your internal stakeholders on the team and get alignment there. Then you want to do kind of like your, your one on one with your client point of contact to just make sure like How can I help you get where you need to go, right? That’s so key in helping them and supporting them. And then we’ve got like that internal kickoff before the actual client kickoff.

00:26:28.14
Rachel Gertz
Then after the kickoff, we want to make sure we’re kind of like checking it. Hey, did all of that sound right? Was that a line? Like, did we do all the things we needed to do in that meeting before then actually going in for sign offs and like getting that scope finalized for the delivery phase? So I think we shortcut a little bit on that stuff because we’re like, ooh, meetings. But these are like valuable information sharing meetings that are so key and that creative process is so key to getting this right. So those are just a few examples of how to manage those expectations.

00:27:01.24
Chris Bolton
And do you find, I mean, I agree. And we sort of do some of those meetings in different ways. But one of the questions I sort of am wondering is, are you saying all five happen before signing the SOW or can it?

00:27:21.22
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, so there’s different ways to approach this, right? Sometimes people are like, you go in firmed up with your statement of work and it’s like nothing changes and then you start. But I like to look at it like this. Every single project you sell, if you design it to change, you design it to evolve, you know it’s going to start as project A and turn into project B because people don’t know what they don’t know. The client doesn’t know what they don’t know. the team doesn’t know what they don’t know. If we build that verbiage in, you can still come in from a statement of work perspective where you go in with your goals and you might go in with like high level outcomes. And then what I recommend as part of Louder Than 10, we recommend that you actually go in and you revise that statement of work once you’ve done your initial conversations and your kickoff. You wanna make sure that the thing that you started out

00:28:12.51
Rachel Gertz
like from the sales process designing, you’ve confirmed that this is actually going to work because otherwise what happens is you’re selling a fantasy. You’re selling an idea instead of an actual constraint within real resources, real timelines, real budgets. So you have to give it that breathing room to be able to evolve and then you can actually agree and that just gives clarity to all parties involved.

00:28:28.80
Chris Bolton
Yeah.

00:28:36.97
Rachel Gertz
And it’s actually way less risky and it’s way more comfortable even though a client might be like, oh, we’re changing the thing. It’s like, yeah, we want that to happen so that we nail it, right?

00:28:50.00
Chris Bolton
Yeah, usually in our process, I think that the project management part is like bringing in a project manager in that sort of early sales process, probably not our biggest strength. Partially because our client services department is basically like also sales. So our person who’s the primary salesperson is very well connected to the project managers.

00:29:13.86
Rachel Gertz
yeah.

00:29:20.96
Chris Bolton
Um, but I think that, yeah, that doesn’t mean that we can’t involve them and we do. It’s just like probably not super consistent. And then, um, but what we do, usually our sales processes, like we’ll have a, um, initial call with our, you know, with our client services director, and then she’ll bring in subject matter, matter expert.

00:29:30.36
Rachel Gertz
Right.

00:29:43.92
Chris Bolton
to meet with the client, and then that will be when the scope sort of starts getting created.

00:29:43.78
Rachel Gertz
Exactly.

00:29:50.41
Chris Bolton
And then there’ll be conversations from various people throughout the agency sort of like figuring out the scope, creating the proposal and sending it off. And then there is a handoff to project manager, obviously.

00:30:06.72
Chris Bolton
And introduction by our client services director to the project manager will have a kick off and then the project sort of goes from there.

00:30:20.01
Rachel Gertz
Mm-hmm.

00:30:23.22
Chris Bolton
But I do think that like that we’re not super consistent in bringing in the project manager in that sort of scope defining phase we could be better at.

00:30:30.65
Rachel Gertz
Right. potentially a separate project discovery that has its own budget and outcomes, right? Because that gives you a chance to vet your client as well and be like, do we really want to work together? And so that whole process, even if it’s buckled into a larger budget and you’re like, okay, flat rate, say you have your 20K project, you’re taking a minimum of 10% and having that towards the paid discovery, at least for just vetting and saying like, yes or no, does that actually work, right? Because again, our expertise is like we’re really good as agencies at defining the problem space and then defining the solution space. But if we’re sort of rushed into defining the problem space because we need to get to the sale to get to the solution, then that’s when all, that’s when shit hits the fan. That’s when everything starts breaking down. So we didn’t ask enough questions. And then the questions pop up in the middle of development. It was like, why are we doing this?

00:31:26.93
Chris Bolton
Yeah,

00:31:27.22
Rachel Gertz
It’s so painful. It can be so painful for shops. It’s awful.

00:31:32.95
Chris Bolton
no, it definitely, it definitely is. There’s always, I mean, it is because, you know, people come like, it’s like, hello, I’ve never met you before. Can you give me a website in three months? You know, it’s like,

00:31:42.54
Rachel Gertz
Right? Yeah. And it needs to do this, this, and this. And it’s like, slow down. Why, what, when, how? What are we doing, right?

00:31:54.28
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, exactly. I think the sadness that I see in it is that because of this forced commoditization, we have been put in a position where as agencies we really have to rush everything. And it’s all because of margin. It’s all because everyone else is doing it faster, cheaper, and somehow better. And we’re trying to compete. And I think that there is this transformation of how we’re looking at what we do. A lot of folks are focusing more on service design because it’s more broad in terms of we’re looking at value creation here. We’re not looking at a website. We’re looking at a relationship that is going to extend, that is going to open up

00:32:39.72
Rachel Gertz
other pipeline revenue for you that is going to create an ongoing monthly recurring revenue system for us. You know, like we want that shared connection and that takes time just like you’re building a relationship. If you were finding a romantic partner, if you came out like 20 questions on the first date, so you want kids, it’d be like, um, so I think there is something to that.

00:32:59.21
Chris Bolton
Yeah.

00:33:03.28
Rachel Gertz
And I, I, it’s so much beautiful nuance to the sales process because we still got to close the deal.

00:33:09.40
Chris Bolton
No, no, that’s valuable. And it’s also timely for us because we are switching. I mean, we for the longest time were in like in and out agency. Like we did the thing for you and then you took off at the end of it. And we’re we’re doing a lot more retainer and relationship stuff now.

00:33:26.78
Rachel Gertz
Great.

00:33:27.41
Chris Bolton
And we know it’s better. I think we’ve always kind of known it’s better. But like we did it the other way because it was like people just kept on knocking on our door and.

00:33:38.18
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, yeah.

00:33:41.88
Rachel Gertz
Totally understandable. Yeah.

00:33:43.96
Rachel Gertz
It is. It’s that, yeah, it’s like slow down to go fast, right? We have to look at the deeper reason for that connection and like how we’re going to nurture it. I know people always talk about, they’re like, yeah, so project management is like just getting stuff done. And I’m like, man, It should be called something different altogether because we teach a blend of project and account management.

00:34:03.60
Chris Bolton
and we don’t like to say no.

00:34:08.51
Rachel Gertz
You’re thinking about the needs of the client three steps away. You’re like, yes, here and also here. And that nuance there I think is so important. And I think that If you have project managers that aren’t curious and they’re not compassionate and care-focused, they might be really good at the details. They might be really good at being like, hey, we’re going to go over budget. But it doesn’t speak to growth of the relationship. It doesn’t speak to connection with the team, unburdening the team. And I think we lose something in there. So if I had to choose, hands down, I would always be looking for a project manager who shows curiosity, compassion, and care.

00:34:51.30
Rachel Gertz
in their way of working.

00:34:54.45
Chris Bolton
That’s great. I like that. Okay, some more questions for you.

00:35:00.51
Rachel Gertz
Yes!

00:35:03.09
Chris Bolton
In your estimation, what makes agencies more efficient?

00:35:08.17
Rachel Gertz
Oh yes. Okay. So efficiency from an agency perspective, right? You have the project life cycle. The majority of your money that comes in from a project or client is going to go out to labor. So of course labor is one of the biggest ones. Now, without getting into the history of utilization and the fact that there’s a whole issue around the scientific method and how it’s a carrot and stick driver of like cogs in the wheel, not going there could, but maybe another day, um, the idea of creating creating clarity around where do I stop and where do you begin? And what are the things that if we were able to solve them in real time, or if we were more symbolic in our async time, we were actually able to get better work done separately and come together to solve the harder problems. That kind of stuff in the efficiency of process is very valuable. A lot of it is the clarity and kindness of boundary setting. I find that a lot of

00:36:06.25
Rachel Gertz
digital PMs are not taught how to set proper boundaries around their relationships and projects. So efficiency actually comes down from being able to have the hard conversations in an easy way.

00:36:23.48
Rachel Gertz
It also comes from having opportunities to look backwards and reflect. Continuous improvement is a word that everybody has baked in now, right? But if we don’t learn from our past experiences, we’re not going to get that efficiency back.

00:36:39.75
Chris Bolton
Mm

00:36:40.24
Rachel Gertz
Um, when we don’t sit down and actually have targets in mind with like target client revenue or even like target revenue per full-time employee, we’re not going to understand how the business runs and what we need to be able to do to help get it there.

00:36:45.55
Chris Bolton
hmm.

00:36:56.67
Rachel Gertz
I think you probably heard this line, but I believe it. Everyone’s job is business development. Everybody’s there to support that process and function of that.

00:37:05.17
Chris Bolton
Yeah.

00:37:04.27
Rachel Gertz
Right. So efficiency comes from saving time, saving money, saving energy. And I would also say on the flip side, project management is a huge driver of additional freed up revenue from capturing scope creep or just seeing opportunity like an account manager would.

00:37:24.51
Chris Bolton
Right. No, I mean, that’s something that I feel, you know, like that project management is kind of where profitability comes from. It’s like, because if you don’t, you know, if you can’t manage a project well, then you’re not going to make money on it.

00:37:45.17
Rachel Gertz
Yeah. Yeah. And when you’re dealing with 15 to 20% margin, like 20, if you’re real good, that’s not a lot of room to not get that right, right? Like that’s where you’re going to see your margins increase. I think there’s, I have to pull where this is from, but it’s like, if you add project manager, your profit margin can go up by 15%. Like you’re instantly going to have, not instantly, but like very soon you’re going to see this beautiful knock on effect from organization, letting go, with people who should not be managing those relationships, they have to let go of those relationships when the PM can come in and support that process. That’s where you’re going to see massive amounts of change and focus. That’s where our efficiency and productivity comes from.

00:38:31.38
Chris Bolton
I like that.

00:38:39.90
Chris Bolton
What strategies do you recommend for enhancing collaboration within an agency?

00:38:45.57
Rachel Gertz
Ooh, I love it. So if you’ve never read The Art of Collaboration, I’m totally awful with author names, director names. Do not ask me who wrote or directed Prometheus, because I will probably forget. But The Art of Gathering is a book that is fantastic. I recommend it for everyone. And the idea is we’re looking at ways of facilitating group wisdom. So everyone’s got their own specialties, their own skills. And when we’re coming together in these spaces, Even doing activities like, I think it’s like one to four, right? So you have large group break into two groups, then break into four groups, then back together again. You can do so much with these kinds of just ways of creating open-ended opportunity for flow, right? For problem solving. One of my favorite activities, I actually just ran this the other day with a house building team in moving into like the digital realm. And we did an anti-problem game storming activity. So this is great. If you ever get stuck in a place where you’re like, I don’t know how to solve for this problem. It’s so complex. I’ve never done it. It’s emergent. What the heck? You can go and you can be like, all right, well, let’s talk about the worst way to solve this problem. So imagine you had to

00:39:58.81
Rachel Gertz
I don’t know, build like a website for dog food company and you’re like, well, let’s look at all the worst ways we could do that. You can actually start getting everyone to brainstorm silently, silently categorize their thoughts and feelings. And then you can start looking at, well, what would be the opposite of that? And that’s how you can arrive at like why, like you get ridiculous. You’re like, well, the worst way to build it is we should employ sharks to come in and like make the website. But what that can reveal, right? Cause you’re like, well, that’s ridiculous. But what that can reveal is stuff that’s outside of the immediate realm of like our imagination. So maybe we’re thinking, Oh, what we’re talking about is the right person for the, for the right job.

00:40:40.52
Rachel Gertz
And maybe something that’s unconventional because maybe we wouldn’t normally think of a subject matter expert in this particular area, but maybe a scientist who is familiar with dog behavior, for example, might be a better fit for SME than just a dog food. I don’t know. I’m really pulling at straws with a dog food metaphor.

00:41:01.65
Chris Bolton
I’m trying to follow, I’m almost there.

00:41:05.10
Rachel Gertz
Me too. I’m almost there too. But for example, right, it just helps you to extend past your like, our kind of linear thinking. It really throws you into some like neat, abstract thinking, which can be fun.

00:41:16.01
Chris Bolton
I love that. I like that exercise.

00:41:19.66
Chris Bolton
I feel like I want to try it out, so we’ll see what happens.

00:41:22.75
Rachel Gertz
Sweet. Yeah, let me know if you if you get into the dog food realm and you’re thinking about sharks, it’s like, let me know.

00:41:31.17
Chris Bolton
Rachel help sharks.

00:41:41.44
Chris Bolton
How about what about an example of, you know, an engagement that you’ve had with an agency that really made a big difference?

00:41:52.89
Rachel Gertz
Thank you. Yeah. So we worked with a Colorado based agency and they were marketing focused and they were really kind of hitting their upper limit on their size. I think at the time they were about eight to 12 people plus or minus, and they were trying to get past that growth limit. And so what we really focused on from the consulting side was walking them through Help! The sharks are coming.

00:42:14.90
Rachel Gertz
some of the limiting beliefs and behaviors that they were running into repeatedly, they didn’t even know they weren’t aware of these. And so a lot of that was assumptions being made between sales and delivery. And so when we stopped and we slowed down a little to evaluate, we started to uncover some of these key patterns that they kept repeating. And then going back and trying to remember, I think a lot of it was pushing information instead of allowing the folks running the projects to pull the information out of them. Because fire hydrants saying anybody is not going to yield in a net positive, you’re going to just drown somebody in the

00:42:54.94
Rachel Gertz
words you’re using right so we started to see these neat patterns and then we also created an opportunity to look at if you were able to grow your team to get to the size and we’re focusing on the maturity level of the clients that actually fit. Could you start seeing when we work with you know this sort of like. upper not adolescent clients like adolescent where they’re just just starting to get their business models figured out they’re still organizing on their like directors and all that but like into their prime you can see well there’s this opportunity for growth that if we trained this person this person in this person in these key skill areas around communication scope management

00:43:34.96
Rachel Gertz
and maybe even managing change, we’re going to start seeing this transformation and helping our clients go from this adolescence into a prime maturity level, which then unlocks potentially millions of dollars of revenue of which they can allocate more back to marketing, which then allows you folks to grow. So it’s like kind of completing the whole circle on that system. And it was really a fun, it was such a great engagement. I had so much fun working with them and just having them like share some of the big dreams that they had for this in terms of how we could translate that from a project management perspective.

00:44:14.86
Chris Bolton
That’s a really interesting focus. So you’re actually thinking about the clients that you’re working with now and how you can grow them to the point where they can pay you more money. While I’ll say that we’re aware of that phenomena,

00:44:27.00
Rachel Gertz
Exactly.

00:44:37.01
Chris Bolton
actually being proactive and strategic about that in itself.

00:44:39.77
Rachel Gertz
Yep.

00:44:42.32
Chris Bolton
I don’t think it’s anything that we’ve we’ve totally done. You know, it’s like we nurture the relationship. We do the work and we see that our work helps them. But I don’t know that we’ve like been ever knowing. The other thing is like we don’t necessarily know that if they grow, they’re going to give us more money. I mean, we hope, but like, but I don’t know that if we’re strategically, I mean, some of that, I suppose, might be something like having more insight into their, you know, success financials, things like that, you know, because you can have conversations like that, be like, where do we need to get in order to do this, you know, like,

00:45:02.95
Rachel Gertz
Exactly.

00:45:17.73
Rachel Gertz
Yeah.

00:45:24.95
Rachel Gertz
Exactly. When you think about it, in that initial sales call, you need to know what are their business goals for growth? What are their own issues that are slowing them down? Because if they’re like, hey, can you build me a website? And then you find out what their actual issue is that their teams are so disorganized that they’re unable to actually achieve the goals that if you created the website, it would launch, you’re going to unblock them.

00:45:38.54
Chris Bolton
you

00:45:49.89
Rachel Gertz
they’re going to be more available for your client calls. They’re going to be more focused. And not only that, they might be able to hire two people that then can start directing and growing that area of the business that you’re like, hey, we could help you get there. So if you’re in sales and PM able to ask those questions, who’s at the table? What are you trying to accomplish this year? Where have you actually noticed your own bottlenecks? And like when you tried to do this project before, if you did, what stopped you from getting where you needed to go? We’re not in the business of delivering projects. Even though I know I’m all about project management, the whole idea is we’re trying to help you sustain and scale responsibly. So our team can help you do that. And by that means I think we do sort of refocus our attention as agencies into almost like boutique consultants.

00:46:38.83
Rachel Gertz
We become specialized in helping other businesses grow, and that really should be our job.

00:46:45.31
Chris Bolton
It is really interesting because I think that sometimes that value, the sort of consulting value, the having access to experts is like not really billed for in the way that like, especially if you’re selling hours or you’re selling products, you know, like that

00:47:04.85
Rachel Gertz
Yeah.

00:47:05.77
Chris Bolton
really important value is sort of like it’s there and it’s not really quantified always, you know, it’s sort of like, you know, and in that way, like the client doesn’t know

00:47:15.59
Rachel Gertz
Yeah.

00:47:21.11
Chris Bolton
how valuable it is either. They might take an idea or they might take some advice and go utilize it.

00:47:23.77
Rachel Gertz
Yeah.

00:47:28.40
Chris Bolton
It might be wildly successful and they may or may not attribute that to something that they paid for.

00:47:36.16
Rachel Gertz
Exactly. And that’s why it’s so key right right up front to be establishing that kind of a relationship, that kind of curiosity, and that kind of confidence in our ability to deliver as that as that digital agency because all of those pieces like following where your points of contact go. when they’re not at that current job anymore. All of that breeds these longer-term opportunities and relationships to continue. I think it is a bit of a lens shift on how we look at it. It’s like we’re not building the thing. That is the least important part of this conversation. We’re establishing a future and a scalable way of building a business here together.

00:48:16.97
Rachel Gertz
Where’s the limit on that from a project budget perspective, right?

00:48:21.03
Chris Bolton
No, absolutely.

00:48:21.13
Rachel Gertz
Start with one, build the trust, and then grow, grow, grow, grow with them sustainably.

00:48:25.69
Chris Bolton
Yeah. So much of what we do, you know, someone comes to us for like a logo or a website or, you know, new packaging design is like transforming what they’re asking for into something more useful.

00:48:38.47
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, which is a valuable skill set in and of itself, and.

00:48:44.02
Chris Bolton
Because they think they need this thing, but their vision of it is not just from experience. We’re like, oh, but actually, if we build this other thing that’s kind of similar, you’re going to get more bang for your buck.

00:48:54.12
Rachel Gertz
Exactly.

00:48:56.81
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, so you can say that we could build this thing. And if we built this other thing first or second, then we could do X. What do you think of that? And I think that kind of, you know, expertise is that priceless.

00:49:08.09
Chris Bolton
Absolutely.

00:49:13.84
Rachel Gertz
That’s what they’re really paying for. I know as our own business, we had folks approach us and say, yeah, you’re asking for this solution, but we want to develop the problem space. Let’s ask more questions about where you’re at. Why are you here? What are you trying to accomplish? Slow down on that to understand. That’s where you can unearth all of that together. I would be like, yeah, I’ll pay you whatever it takes. Get me there. I want to do this.

00:49:38.56
Chris Bolton
Yeah, exactly. No, I love that. And I think that it is like important. I mean, for us as an agency, it’s like kind of the most important thing. I think that I don’t I mean, you may have more perspective. I mean, it kind of sounds like you’re you’re so kind of globally like like agencies need to be doing this. And I know that we’ve come to that conclusion for ourselves, but I think that it is interesting to see that you view it as a trend or something that’s vital for all agencies.

00:50:17.07
Rachel Gertz
Yes, I think it will be the difference ultimately between the ones who are successful and the ones who cannot be because of all of these other automations and processes that are happening, right? Increasingly, agencies will be expected to be all and do it all and do it cheaper, do it faster, do it all of these things, right? If you can create ongoing value, then you’re going to become absolutely indispensable to your clients. There’s a book. I pulled it up so I can remember the author’s name, but it’s called The Boutique, How to Start, Scale, and Sell a Professional Service Firm. And it’s by Greg Alexander. And I would highly recommend that to your audience. It’s a great read. It’ll help you gut check how well you’re doing as a company and how well you could become this consultative service.

00:51:05.59
Rachel Gertz
if that was the direction you wanted to go. It’s really valuable.

00:51:08.70
Chris Bolton
That’s cool. Yeah. I find also like, um, and I think that in the beginning this was a lot harder, but as I grow more experienced, I’m getting better at like just telling clients when I don’t know things. Like.

00:51:24.65
Rachel Gertz
Yeah.

00:51:24.71
Chris Bolton
being vulnerable and just be, you know, because I think sometimes like we’re so eager for the sale and to say yes to everything. And like, you know, I was on a call yesterday with a client and I was like, I think, you know, we’re looking at website analytics and they’re like, where’s this thing? And I’m like, I don’t know actually like I was like I have some experience with the software but not a ton you know like I like yeah I mean you know someone that’s getting older too I’m just like you know what I have human limits but

00:51:42.97
Rachel Gertz
Yeah. Totally right.

00:51:55.48
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, there’s only so much a person can do.

00:51:59.26
Chris Bolton
Yeah, exactly. And that’s relationship building too. I think that people, they appreciate when someone’s not just saying that we know everything and we’re going to knock everything out of the park and be like, we’re humans too.

00:52:15.67
Rachel Gertz
totally yeah we’re humans too damn it i love it

00:52:27.90
Chris Bolton
Let’s see, what else do we have here? Oh, here’s a good question. What does an agency need to do to scale up or scale down? What is, you know, how do you look at scalability? What are the, you know, what are the important things that agencies need to consider?

00:52:44.55
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, so I think, again, my numbers, I want to double check, but I think that I saw a recent poll and it was like 80% or 82% of digital agencies are like on the smaller side, under 30 people. And there’s like several, the size is between like 30 to 100. And then there’s the ones that are like behemoths, right? And so what I’m seeing as a general trend is either just massive mergers and acquisitions where you’re going to see these octopus arms where you have several head offices and they’re just scooping up.

00:53:14.81
Chris Bolton
you

00:53:21.55
Rachel Gertz
I see it all over the place. Or you have these shops that choose to stay small. They choose to be more nimble, more agile, and be able to do the work. But there is a sort of natural competition. What happens, and what I notice, is that when you get past this size of like, it’s like 24 to 30, you start hitting this place called diseconomies of scale. So your margins can’t actually compete with the level of, you have all this extra cruft in terms of middle management and decision making slows down. It’s the thing that happens when companies become enterprise. They start growing and they get into this uncomfortable

00:53:59.62
Rachel Gertz
growth zone so for scalability it’s not that I’m saying don’t do that like absolutely just be mindful that again all your processes are going to break as you double in size and you’re going to have to start going into something larger client sizes if you want to hit that like middle middle size 30 to 100 because you can’t serve it like the speed at which you have to service those clients with the budgets that are on the smaller side when you’re growing, it’s almost untenable. The number of agencies that come to me, we’re this big, like over 30. We want to be able to optimize for this, but we’re not able to slow down. We have to continue to hire. We have to continue to feed the monster in terms of all of the sales.

00:54:48.99
Rachel Gertz
Okay, what do you want to do then? Because you either have to push through to the other side, or you’re going to have to shrink down, and that’s going to require getting really honest about the size of clients you want to work with, the type of work you want to deliver. Again, with the stuff we were talking about with maybe a more boutique approach, you don’t want to you don’t wanna create a situation where you’re gonna jeopardize the subject matter expertise that you have, right? So I think, first of all, it’s like just vetting. What do you want as an owner? What do you actually dream and desire with your organization? Because you’re gonna have to get creative.

00:55:27.86
Rachel Gertz
In terms of that growth and so from a practical pragmatic standpoint, right? Like you can install you can install like a digital project manager say you’re like Under I’d say between five and seven people is when you want to start hiring that first dedicated PM role course, right? You get uncomfortable after that and And then when you start hitting your like 12 to 15 people up and around there, you’re starting to look at that middle director layer or you’re moving into that senior to director level layer. You’re director of either operations and or projects.

00:56:03.30
Rachel Gertz
Sometimes they’re doubling, they’re doing a half and half role. You can take like a senior leader that you have senior PM and you can grow them into

00:56:08.20
Chris Bolton
Mm hmm.

00:56:12.28
Rachel Gertz
director level role however you’re also going to have to make sure that they’re aware of systems because they cannot operate just by being like I’m really good at running and leading projects because there’s also okay how do you now how do you support and grow your team relationships And what does it take to look at an objective measurement for team and individual success? Project managers, they aren’t managers of people. They’re managers of projects. They don’t have direct reports. So that’s a switch. That’s a change in terms of what the focus of those roles becomes. And I think I’ve seen a lot of folks get into hot water over that when they’re not intentional about that kind of scaling.

00:56:59.20
Rachel Gertz
So that’s a couple ideas there, but we can deep dive if you want.

00:57:02.42
Chris Bolton
No, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I think that we’re also sort of in that spot right now. We actually were up at like 25 people at one point, and now we’re down to around 20. But I think that that’s sort of not just project management, but project management leadership. is very important, having that sort of high level view of like, yeah, what are the systems, what is our philosophy?

00:57:25.80
Rachel Gertz
Yeah.

00:57:37.34
Chris Bolton
What are our goals? Yeah, how are we continuing to get revenue from these clients and create better relationships and stuff like that? Absolutely.

00:57:49.15
Rachel Gertz
Exactly Absolutely, yeah, it’s incredible It’s so vital to know right as you as you are trying to do that growth and or just the care Intentionality of being the size of being the right size for the clients that you want

00:58:02.72
Chris Bolton
Yeah. So I feel like we’ve been talking about this the whole time, but maybe you have something to add to it. What trends do you see sort of shaping the future of the creative services industry?

00:58:17.38
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of change happening right now, right? Like right now what we’re seeing, a lot of the digital agencies are experiencing these, they’re trying to catch up from the cashflow crunch that we just experienced with like this downturn, right? And I know it’s like, no one’s actually officially calling it, but it’s like, who has not experienced this? On average, I’m seeing like the pipelines are taking, it’s taking like 50% longer to close.

00:58:36.58
Chris Bolton
Yeah.

00:58:43.58
Rachel Gertz
It’s taking up to a year to close on enterprise level clients. Which is wild right when you think about that, so I think like you’re seeing It might feel like hesitancy on the client side. I think it’s some intentionality I think what’s happening is that new business as usual is that they’re gonna be more mindful and pay more attention to? Where are we headed? We have to stay profitable, right? You’ve seen this all the soft bank, all of these things happening.

00:59:09.70
Chris Bolton
Thank

00:59:10.52
Rachel Gertz
We have to be more mindful about growth because I don’t think like, I don’t think I’m better growth is the answer for any industry, especially digital agencies.

00:59:15.56
Chris Bolton
you.

00:59:20.17
Rachel Gertz
So without digging into AI as this concept around efficiency, productivity, I think you’re going to start seeing a lot of folks managing several different hats, using the tools of AI to augment their existing roles. I do think there’ll probably be more agencies shrinking because they’re being intentional about that. being able to deliver more value to clients, but I think they also, you’re going to see this thing with this like, what are they calling it?

00:59:54.17
Rachel Gertz
The great tired or whatever where we were talking about just people, people are burnt out, right?

00:59:58.01
Chris Bolton
Yeah.

00:59:59.48
Rachel Gertz
we have to take care of our teams and our workers. And unless everybody’s going overseas and outsourcing, how are we going to support local economies that where rent and mortgages are unaffordable? We have to balance that. So I think it’s going to be extremely specialized focuses on types of clients, types of service offerings. I think that’s going to happen because Generalizing, I don’t see as necessarily a long-term. People have very strong feelings and opinions about this. I’m not saying specializing in terms of an industry, but just specializing in terms of craft and get really good at what you’re doing with the clients that you have. And then be willing to explore for your own revenue as an agency opportunities to go in weird directions that you might not have even thought before.

01:00:58.59
Rachel Gertz
When you meet a client, you’re like, this is something that I should not say no to.

01:01:03.65
Chris Bolton
Yeah, yeah, no, that that’s. I think that’s very similar. Oh, I guess the one thing that I, I will throw out there that I’ve sort of noticed is there is a willingness, I think, among clients for like I guess like specific problem solving and that and and not so much like we need to do some sort of brand transformation or and you know we’re still doing that work but I feel like the the companies that are you know being very mindful of their budgets they want that sort of like

01:01:44.28
Rachel Gertz
Mm hmm.

01:01:44.35
Chris Bolton
you know, like this is, we gotta fix this problem now. You know, like we need to fix some of our problems and not worry about like big growth initiatives as much.

01:01:47.93
Rachel Gertz
Yeah.

01:01:53.36
Rachel Gertz
Mm hmm.

01:01:54.90
Chris Bolton
And I think that there is opportunity there. As just an example, I’ve had a lot more clients interested in SEO. You know, it’s like, it’s something that’s always on the back burner for clients.

01:02:03.94
Rachel Gertz
Oh yeah.

01:02:06.94
Chris Bolton
And you know, now they’re suddenly like, how’s our SEO doing?

01:02:09.01
Rachel Gertz
Big

01:02:10.39
Chris Bolton
You know, like, Who do we talk to?

01:02:12.30
Rachel Gertz
time.

01:02:13.23
Chris Bolton
Let’s reach out to our agency, you know.

01:02:16.37
Rachel Gertz
I’ve seen that too as a result of when COVID happened, it was like everyone went from victim order to online, especially in an e-commerce area. So all of a sudden, all of these different shops are competing online. And of course, SEO becomes super important for them. They need to be able to compete. And I’m also seeing now the sort of backlash of two years after all of this, when inflation is so high that consumer buying is down and people are like, I can’t afford to get these goods and services. So it’s wild to see how fast things are moving right now.

01:02:49.76
Rachel Gertz
It just fascinates me.

01:02:50.92
Chris Bolton
Yeah. Yeah. No, it is. It does really feel breakneck and I’m like, you know, I’m constantly like, do I have all the, do I know about all the AI tools I should be using? You know?

01:03:00.32
Rachel Gertz
Right? Oh, seriously. I’m doing my best to keep up, but it is super, super, it’s moving fast.

01:03:07.85
Chris Bolton
Yeah, absolutely.

01:03:08.57
Rachel Gertz
This is where we’re at now. This is life.

01:03:14.69
Chris Bolton
Speaking of tools, from a project management perspective, are there any tools that you love that you would recommend?

01:03:21.58
Rachel Gertz
Yeah. I mean, okay, so I’ll say this with a caveat. I don’t recommend this tool for everyone because it is a blank canvas, but Notion has been an absolute lifesaver for us in terms of using it as like our company manuals, SOPs. We use it for project management. We use it for teaching because you can do in line and real time, like interactive work together. So creative work would work really well for agencies. Honestly, it’s become a CRM, a CMS, like it’s pretty much started to take over, but I don’t recommend it for everyone because it is so

01:03:54.36
Rachel Gertz
you’ve got to know it, you’ve got to learn it. It’s just like creating from nothing, right? You can make anything. So I would recommend Notion as a tool for sure.

01:04:03.68
Chris Bolton
I’ve heard a lot of good things about that project or that product. Yeah, I need to play around with it again.

01:04:08.99
Rachel Gertz
Yeah. Yeah, it’s a pretty useful tool and I love now that we’re starting to get into like, I don’t know, being as a user, being able to design the experience of the tool that you want. So just getting more, like I love things. My partner, Travis would talk about this too, but he loves things where you get to choose your fonts and like have like a backup palette so that your interface of what you’re using could look like how you want your brand to feel. Like why not, right?

01:04:37.55
Chris Bolton
Yeah.

01:04:37.62
Rachel Gertz
It’s just the continuity of brands. So.

01:04:40.45
Chris Bolton
Yeah. And we actually, we’ve had trouble with, um, you know, because we’re a branding and design agency, we adopted a project management tool a while back. Um, because it was one of those sort of all in one, it does everything. Um, but unfortunately the, the UI was, was so kind of ugly and hard to deal with.

01:04:59.63
Rachel Gertz
Yeah.

01:05:00.53
Chris Bolton
Our designers just hated it.

01:05:01.55
Rachel Gertz
It won’t use it, right? Yeah, it’s like, nope.

01:05:04.36
Chris Bolton
Yeah.

01:05:06.49
Rachel Gertz
It makes sense. Like, it’s got to do all of it, right? That’s where we’re at. So that’s why a lot of agencies make a lot of project management tools.

01:05:13.96
Chris Bolton
I know, I know.

01:05:17.28
Rachel Gertz
That’s funny.

01:05:19.34
Chris Bolton
Oh my gosh, I met with a agency owner recently over coffee and he showed me their dev agency and they built the most beautiful like operating system for their whole agency and I was just like,

01:05:34.10
Rachel Gertz
Ooh.

01:05:35.67
Chris Bolton
I was like, do you ever think about selling this? And he was like, I don’t know. But like, I was, you know, and who knows? I mean, once you take those things out of their context, you know, it’s who knows.

01:05:45.44
Rachel Gertz
Yeah.

01:05:46.25
Chris Bolton
But like, I was like, dang, this is awesome. Can we build ours?

01:05:51.50
Rachel Gertz
It’s going to get so neat. We’re going to be able to do so many cool things that felt impossible a couple years ago. I’m really excited for that, even though at the same time, I still don’t believe technology solves most, if not all, of our problems.

01:06:02.02
Chris Bolton
Right.

01:06:04.29
Rachel Gertz
But I think that the capacity, if we were able to focus on long-term sustainability of the human race, for example, I think we could do some pretty neat stuff.

01:06:12.95
Chris Bolton
Yeah, absolutely.

01:06:19.06
Chris Bolton
Well, gosh, it was amazing talking to you. I feel like, yeah, I feel like I’m going to enjoy going back and editing this podcast because I think you shared a lot of really valuable information.

01:06:30.38
Rachel Gertz
Yay.

01:06:33.70
Chris Bolton
I know our listeners will as well.

01:06:36.54
Rachel Gertz
Thanks so much. It was so nice to be on the show. And like, man, if you ever want to do it again, there’s so much fun stuff we can talk about. Like just, I love, I love stuff.

01:06:47.99
Chris Bolton
Awesome. So your website, louderthan10.com.

01:06:53.13
Rachel Gertz
Yes, sir.

01:06:54.32
Chris Bolton
Anything else people want to reach out to you, follow up should know.

01:06:59.95
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, come and check us out. We’ve got loads of resources if you’re in operations or project management or even just looking at profitability and efficiency. That’s another area that we love to support folks on. We have some events coming up, but we’re kind of going to be announcing some things later on. So just check this site out and come and find us. I’m always down for conversation. If you’re a PM who’s just like, I need support, where is my community? We got you.

01:07:26.09
Chris Bolton
Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show.

01:07:29.31
Rachel Gertz
Yeah, thank you.