How to Scale Your Creative Team: Part 1 - Real Creative Leadership

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How to Scale Your Creative Team: Part 1

April 14, 2020 Business Growth

How to Scale Your Creative Team

Change can come in an instant and being prepared to navigate your team through growth or scaling back, or outsourcing projects or bringing them in-house, is the sign of a great leader. Make inevitable change easier with some advance prep.

Host Adam Morgan is executive creative director at Adobe and a popular author and speaker on the topic of creative leadership. In this episode he’ll walk you through:

Who you should hire first.
Different ways you can scale your organization.
Insights on growth breakpoints and how to figure costs.
Options to be flexible for unforeseen events.

Learn how to assess your current team and what the best next steps are — it’s training that will help establish your credibility as a creative leader.

mentioned in this show:

Adam Morgan

Creative Leader and RCL Host

The Stoke Group

Digital Marketing and Full-Service Content Agency

Transcript

Adam Morgan:

It’s important to learn when to scale and learn how to scale. You all often want to be the hero, and stay up late, and do the big project and save the account, save the whatever. If that happens every once in a while that’s probably fine. But when I see people who can’t scale and who consistently are just working late, working their tail off. Always the martyr just constantly going, going, going. The first time when they saved everyone was awesome. But if it’s like the 20th time, then it’s not great anymore. It’s just you don’t know how to scale and you don’t know how to flex and figure out how to grow.

Welcome to Real Creative Leadership. A place where creative leaders can find insights and practical guidance on the day to day job of being a creative leader. We focus on real issues, topics, and insights of creativity in the business world. Join me as we explore the best strategies for developing your team, getting others to embrace your vision, and generating amazing experiences. This webinar series is produced by The Stoke Group. I’m your host, Adam Morgan, Adobe Executive Creative Director, and author of Sorry Spock Emotions Drive Business. And this is Real Creative Leadership.

Hello. Welcome. Welcome to episode two of Real Creative Leadership podcast. Thanks for listening both those who are tuning in through our webinar or also those who are listening on your favorite podcast. I appreciate you listening in. So today’s topic, today I’m going to talk about our topic in two parts because there’s so much to talk about. The topic is how to scale. Let’s first talk about scaling in general. I do a lot of home improvement projects, like right now I’m finishing off my basement during this whole COVID crisis. There are times that you need to scale at times that you don’t like. My wife is always telling me, “Adam, stop doing all the work yourself. Stop messing around in the basement. We can hire it out, we can do whatever.” There are times that I say, “No, I like the feeling of working with my hands and building stuff, doing tile work, doing cabinetry, whatever it may be.” It’s fun because that’s the part that you want, you feel accomplished, and I get it. So it’s really, really important.

But there’s times that you do need to scale. There are times that I should probably hire some things out, maybe installation or other things that I’m not good at. It’s also, I think it’s really important as a leader… This whole series is all about creative leadership. It’s important to learn when to scale and how, and learn how to scale. For example, I’ve seen many people in my career that… And moving this back to the marketing, advertising, design, creative world. You often want to be the hero, and stay up late, and do the big project, and save the account, save the whatever. If that happens every once in a while, that’s probably fine. But when I see people who can’t scale and consistently are just working late, working their tail off, always the martyr, just constantly going, going, going. The first time when they saved everyone was awesome, but if it’s the 20th time, then it’s not great anymore. It’s just you don’t know how to scale and you don’t how to flex, and figure out how to grow.

So there are times that you really need to scale. When we talk about scaling, that’s an awesome, jargon term, but it’s really about how to expand your team, how to expand your capabilities, your personal capabilities, and also skill sets that you may not have. So that’s, we’re going to talk about today. So this things, again, like I said in two parts today, I’m going to actually talk more about outside of the company. So who are people you can reach out to, what our resource, what our agencies, what are ways that you can scale externally. Then part two of this episode, we’re going to talk about internal. So I’m not going to spend a lot of time in this first one about that. That may be some, some of the questions many of you might have. So I apologize, but we’re going to push that off because there’s just so much in this topic that I thought it was important to spread it out and make sure we get enough coverage on all of it.

All right. So to start out, when we’re talking about scaling, there are so many different scenarios of, of team sizes and situations. So throughout this presentation I’m going to try and focus on three just because it gives a good variety of three different size teams. The first one is going to be the example I’ll use is, so before Adobe years and years ago, I used to live up in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and I worked at a small boutique advertising agency. After I left, two of my friends, Terry Kirkwood and Julie Martin Stacy, they created their own agency called Open Creative, and it’s still there in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It’s awesome. What a wonderful place to live. So there are some of the struggles that they had to learn being just a two person ad agency and how they would scale and move and grow. So we’re going to use them as one example.

The next one is Jonathan [Finour 00:05:03]. So he is a friend of mine and he and several others left to start another financial institution and they had no creative team. So they had to learn to how do we scale and grow and build a creative team when we didn’t have a huge budget to just hire a bunch of people? So that’s a separate example of… The first is you’re an agency and you just need it and you’re hitting different growth phases. Second example is you’re a company you don’t have an internal team. How do you get help? Where do you go? Then the third example I’m going to use throughout today’s presentation is just me. So my situation at Adobe, where we have a big team, a big internal creative department, but there are still moments that we have to learn to scale and flex, and move things around. That’s also, whether that’s in-house or in my past experience of leading a creative team at an ad agency or a large international ad agency.

The third example should cover off on most of those scenarios so that you get an idea of how you scale if you’re in that situation. The reason why I bring these three up, it’s just because I know many of you that I’ve talked to or they’re listening have such different personal situations in your job. You may be an individual freelancer, you may have a small shop, you may work for a big company. So I’ll try my best throughout this presentation to make sure I cover off on some examples of how you deal with those different scenarios so that you have some good guidance.

All right. Today there are several questions we want to ask and answer like, who should I hire? How do I scale temporarily versus permanently? How do I grow the team in the right way so I’m not just growing it too fast, and then having to have layoffs or other issues. Then also, in today’s environment, obviously, I’m filming here from my front room. COVID has played a big part in the need for scale, and the need for people in teams to be able to flex in uncertain times. So that’s an important part of the conversation as well.

All right, next. So I want to talk about the creative roller coaster. So I’ve talked about the creative road roller coaster many times in a different situation. Oftentimes for me, it’s if you’ve ever experienced the life of the creative roller coaster it’s usually you feel like you’re doing awesome, you’re doing great. Then the next day you’re like what am I even doing? Why am I in this industry? It’s almost more of a self esteem roller coaster. Because as creative people, we’re putting ourselves out there, we’re creating things, we’re trying new things and sometimes it’s a little vulnerable.

So part of that creative roller coaster usually is the ups and downs of “I’ve achieved something awesome. I won some award, I got a great job.” Then it comes crashing down. I don’t know what the cycle is for most people, but just even me it seems like I have a nice solid career, but I still ride that creative roller coaster all the time. Where I feel like I’ve done a great job on this project and then the next one I just think it’s just suck-a-licious, and I don’t like it even the second night after I finished it. So that’s just the creative life. We just are always having those ups and downs.

But in the meta kind of the macro look at the creative roller coaster, it’s the truth that just as you may feel those ups and downs, but companies always, always feel those up and downs. So there may be times that you need more help, times that things are chill and you don’t need to work, or you don’t need as much flexibility. So there’s always the up and down of the creative life. That’s been, the 24 years that I’ve been in this business, that’s what I’ve experienced.

Sometimes there’s just crazy amount of work and you’re… I’m going to talk about some of those examples later on where it’s like you’re super, super overwhelmed and there’s just too much. Then other times, and sometimes it’s not always a bad thing. You may see a hole in the fence and you’re like, “Dude, today I’ve just taken off and I’m just going to take advantage of a light day.” And that’s fine. But just know it’s always going to happen. So the trick in being a good creative leader is knowing how to balance the load. Because it’s just like good budgeting for a business. You know if there’s going to be up and downs, you’ve got to prepare and plan ahead for the times when you need the money and times when you have excess money.

But in the creative world, for us it’s how do I prepare and know that I’ve got to be able to balance the load quickly, and to do it in the right way so that I know when I bring more resources on and when I don’t? So coming back to the creative roller coaster, it’s just being a good leader is all about knowing when to balance the load and when to scale. That’s the big trick is when. So obvious questions are, first thing you need to do is assess your current team. There’s no need to go out and hire up a million people if there are ways that you can balance the load internally. Like I said in the beginning, this part of the topic I’m not going to cover a lot right now and that’s what we talked about, load balancing.

I’m going to bring up the Whelm scale. If any of you ever heard me talk about the Whelm scale. That’s making sure what are the metrics? What are the ways that you can find out if someone on your team is overwhelmed or underwhelmed? How do you get them perfectly whelmed. So the Whelm scale is really helpful, but I’m going to go into more detail on the second part of this session. Then it’s also internally as you’re assessing your current team’s load. A big part of that is project management. Again, I’m going to get into that in part two. So let’s talk more about this. Number two, this second question of how do I know? So once I’ve decided that I need to scale, I need external help, or I need to bring on more people, how do I know? Once you figured out your team and how much you can handle now what are the warning signs? What are the things that you’re looking for? So that you know if you really need to scale.

Some of those warning signs are really interesting. Certainly it’s, if you get a big huge list of deliverables and it’s more than you’ve ever done before. Absolutely, that’s an easy answer. But really a lot of the warning signs that I have noticed are, how late are people working? How much can each person handle? Again, all of us can flex and have a little bit, handle a little bit more, when times are tough or when times are tricky. So and this may be tricky, that there’s not a perfect answer on what those warning signs are and metrics. But again, I’m probably getting ahead of myself. These are all things that I’m going to cover in part two. I think, like the Whelm scale and load balancing, all of that’s going to be covered in that.

So let’s go on to the external stuff now for a while. So I’m going to talk about this. I’m going to stay here. If you’re seeing the slide on scaling options. This is really where I’m going to focus for a long time. I’m talking about all your different options. Once you’ve identified I need to go outside and I get help. Here at least in my experience, these are the six big buckets of ways that you can scale your team. Sorry, I’m going to refer to my notes every once in while cause there’s a lot of things to talk about here. But I really want to go through all of these individually and talk about pros and cons. A little bit later on I’m going to talk about how you reach these people, how you know if people are good, all that kind of good stuff. So we’re going to get into it and how much it costs everything. But at least what your options are. And these are at least, like I said, the ones that I’ve pulled from in my career as a creative leader and how I’ve helped my team.

So again, number one, internal. Not going to talk a lot about this, but I do want to at least just know as you’re scaling always keep that in mind. Sometimes it’s not even just… next session I’m going to talk about how you’re balancing your current team, but when I talk internal, there also could be ways that you’re pulling people from another team. Maybe you’re a small startup and you learn, you need to ask around and say, all right are there people on the team who have had experience in doing creative stuff? Maybe there’s someone who is a project manager who’s done writing in the past, or maybe there’s someone who’s done some video editing when they were college. Whatever that may be, first look internally and try and flex some of those people that are unexpected.

Now obviously there was the con to that of pulling internally is that now those people can’t focus on their job, their main job of what they were hired to do because they’re flexing and helping you scale the creative department. So that’s tricking and totally understandable. I guess really wouldn’t when we’re pulling from internal teams, it’s more of like if there is excess availability on some other team, or some other person that’s, that’s not overworked. That’s where I’d go to first. This gets tricky because sometimes they may not have… Many times we as creative people get really grumpy and don’t want people doing our business or doing our stuff because we’ve been training, we’ve gone to college, we’ve done whatever it is, our whole careers working as a creative and we don’t want to give up that control. So it’s a little tricky. But I’d say sometimes it’s required.

There have been times we’ve had even at Adobe where someone on another team has helped write something or at least put together an outline or a design or something like that or helped with some video stuff. So it’s certainly a viable option. I’m not going to spend too much more time on that because we’re going to talk more in the second episode. All right, so let’s go to number two, freelance. So freelancers, absolutely. Today it’s the gig economy. There are so many freelancers who are out there looking to do work and a lot of them doing it full-time. I’ve even had trouble hiring some people full-time, especially in California where there’s just so much work like in Silicon Valley because they’re used to the gig economy and they know, “I can get something else later I don’t have to stay tied down to one thing.”

In fact, Adobe did a whole thing on the new working environment of the gig economy. In the notes I can add a link to one of those things. But it’s just really interesting that things have changed. So a lot of people are coming at it where they don’t want full time work and they’re definitely wanting flexibility more than anything. As companies, we have to learn to flex around and be able to give opportunities to more freelancers. Now what I don’t want to get into right now is how do you make money as a freelancer, or what’s the job, or all of those things. That’s not what I’m going to focus on today. If you want a lot of good detail on that, the life of a freelancer, go to The Futur F-U-T-U-R with Chris Do, just look it up. He has a ton of awesome classes on how do you price yourself out? How do you, what kind of work should you be doing? How do you build your business? If you’re a freelancer and that’s what you want to do full time, go check out The Futur with Chris Do.

I’m going to take it more of the perspective as of I need to get freelancers as a whether I’m at an agency or I’m an in-house group, how do I bring on freelancers to help me out? So what are the benefits of that? So the pros of a freelancer, it’s short term. I don’t have to hire, especially in today’s COVID environment, I don’t have to hire someone full time and plan on keeping them busy year round. I can just bring them in for a short amount of time for just a project, or for a few months, or whatever it may be, and you just bring in this awesome talent on a temporary basis. That’s one of the biggest benefits of just getting a freelancer. The other thing beyond just the flexibility in the short term is budget. Again, rather than paying someone for a whole year salary and having to put that into my regular team budgets, I just can take a smaller amount and just do it for a short term. So I can get a lot of great work for a little bit of money when it’s needed.

What are the cons of this? The cons are timing. Sometimes it’s harder to find good talent. Sometimes they may have other jobs they’re doing and they’re not available. A lot of times, even with freelance, it’s not full time freelancers that you’re bringing in. A lot of times for me, and throughout my whole career, I’ve done a lot of freelance on the side, a lot of moonlighting. I know a lot of people at agencies do that and frankly, when I had people on my team I encouraged it. Because it kept your skill sharpened and gave variety so that you weren’t stuck on the same accounts all the time. As long as it doesn’t interfere. But sometimes it can interfere, especially when it comes to time.

So let’s say you need freelancers and you need it done at a certain, for the next two weeks and your go-to people are all busy because they have a big project or something else is going on. So that’s one of the problems with freelance is just timing it. They may already be busy, they may not have availability. So one of the first things I do if I’m going to go the freelance road is just check with my main contacts and see if they have availability. Then once I know who has availability, then I can make a plan of who I’m going to bring in for what thing. So definitely a con. There’s also, with freelancers you have the issue of knowing what type of talent or finding the right talent for the job.

For example, you could easily find some young freelancers who are very willing and very available and very cheap, but it may take them a lot longer to get up to speed and may take them a little longer to understand your project. Or maybe you’ll get junior level work back from them. Versus if you go get a more established person who’s been doing this for many years and they’re really good at it, their rates may be a lot higher, but they may understand the problem because they’ve dealt with solving problems like this many, many, many times. So they can get that solved really quickly. So it may take fewer overall hours or amount of time to get the job done, and they can give you big ideas plus good just advice, or life skills, or whatever it may be. So there’s always that balance of finding that balance between do I go with the kind of a young gun or a more established kind of veteran? What’s the scale? And frankly, it all depends on your situation. So just keep that in mind that sometimes you have those options.

You can always go with one or the other or somewhere in between. As we get into pricing, I’ll talk about a little bit more about that. So one of the other cons of freelancers is if the project takes too long. Because think about the benefit of going with freelancers is you’re paying them a higher rate than you would a normal rate. If you had someone full time, over a month you’re going to spend X, but a freelancer if you have them working for a full month, it’s going to be more, maybe that’s less than your overall yearly budget. So it’s worth it for that one month to spend that because it’s a savings. But if you continue to use a freelancer for six months at a time. Or a year, then you’re going to blow your budgets because you’ve got to pay them enough to cover all of their fees, plus their taxes, plus their benefits, and all that other good stuff. So I would say the other con of a freelancer is if it’s a big, big project that needs to go longer than short term, then you need to reconsider.

All right, so now that’s enough on freelancers. We’re going to talk more about how you find them and all that good stuff later, but I just want to talk about the pros and cons of all these first. All right. The next one is a freelance agency. So this is an interesting new model that I’ve seen a lot lately. Early on in my career in the mid 90s and the early 2000s-
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:20:04]

Early on in my career, in the mid nineties and in the early 2000s, it was mostly like if you were in an agency, you were in a full service agency. But lately I’ve been seeing a lot more of these freelance agencies and the way their model works is they as an agency may only have two or three or just a few full time people that are the owners or the creative director or the main account person on that agency. And then their model is they have connections to all these other freelancers or that they can get access to fairly quickly. Or they may have dozens who are on staff, kind of ad hoc freelancers. So they’re not necessarily on salary, but they’re regulars that are always working with them. And this model is really interesting because what it gives you is, one of the pros, a lot less overhead than a traditional boutique or full service agency, so they have less overhead because there’s fewer full time people.

And then they just bring in the right people at the right time. Maybe you’re writing a paper for government and then you need a writer that really understands that kind of language. Great, they can bring someone in. So they have the flexibility to bring in all the right people without having to pay their full time salaries. So, the benefit for you is that you’re not paying a lot of overhead, but that’s also a con, meaning sometimes it’s just regular freelancers, you may go with a freelance agency and that’s your go to, but there may be times that some of those people aren’t available and you still have those same issues of freelance where it’s availability and timing, but at least there’s a little bit more control. And with the freelance agency, the other benefit is you don’t have to go out and find the freelancers. They do that work for you. They’re the ones who are shaking the trees, finding the talent, vetting them.

They may give them a project and if it doesn’t work out then they’re done, they won’t use them. So they can help a little bit more for you in finding the right quality and the right type of talent that you’re looking for that matches your needs and then you don’t have to spend a ton of time going out searching for freelancers, but you can still get kind of the benefits of having freelancers on your jobs. So a freelance agency is great. What I’ve seen also, the trend in these agencies, some of them, many of them are more like full time or full service agencies where they cover everything. It doesn’t matter who you need, they’ll go out and get them, but there are some that focus on specific skill sets.

For example, at Adobe, we work with a group that is focused specifically on writing, and they only do writing. It’s funny, there have been times, like several years ago that I went to the owner and asked her if she could also just start bringing on designers. And she thought about it and good to her, she came back to me and said, “Nope, Adam. I’m not doing it. I’m going to stick with writing because that’s what we’re good at. And that’s what our specialty is and if I start trying to do everything, I’m going to water it all down and not be able to focus on it.” So she wants to bring just quality in long form editorial writing. And good on her. So she stuck to her guns, which is great.

So, that’s just knowing there are different types. You could have one that’s just focused only on motion graphics or one that’s focused on writing or one that’s just design or you may have a freelance agency that focuses on everything. They can get you anything you need and then bring it in. And we work with a lot of those types of agencies as well. In fact, Stoke Group who helps produce this podcast, that’s exactly their model. They have a few people on staff but then they can bring in whoever else as needed.

All right. The next category, boutique agencies. So, I talked about earlier when I lived up in Jackson Hole, it was really like this boutique agency. And what I mean by a boutique is that it’s a little bit more than, it’s not quite a full service where it’s this big agency, but they have a specific niche. They’re focused on something. For us, in Jackson Hole it was all about outdoor recreation and travel and hospitality. That was what we focused on. And so, it was the smaller agency, but we had a lot of skill set in the outdoors. Everyone who worked there was passionate about hiking, climbing, skiing, fly fishing, whatever it was, or travel. And so, what we brought together was really good skillset in that category. So clients who had come to us, they really were looking for people who understood that space. And I’ve seen a lot of boutique agencies where it’s like we totally understand government or we totally understand healthcare. We understand whatever it may be and we’re not going to be all things to all people, but just focus on those categories.

So, that’s the next option you have. If you need to scale and if there happens to be a boutique agency in the space that you’re working and you happen to have a category that’s really challenging, like let’s say government, we have that at Adobe, our government team, they need to create webpages and emails and videos and everything just like everyone else and sometimes, they worry that when we go to just the big normal full service agencies that are all things to everyone, they don’t understand that specific category. So, we use a very special boutique agency for our government work because they know the language, they know the style, they know the rules, they know all the things that you need to know about that category. So, that’s the benefit, pro going with a boutique agency is the skills are in the right industry that you need.

The cons are just like with the freelance agency, if it’s a skill set outside of that, then you have to look elsewhere and you need to move on and find something else. So, it’s not like you have a agency of record who just does everything you need and then they solve stuff for you. So, boutique is great if it’s the right situation. So, that’s really what it is, specialized skills. So what are some of the cons? The cons are they know it and they’re going to be able to charge more for those skills because they’re not just trying to solve problems for everyone. They want to focus on that specific industry. So, you need to make sure, one of the cons is maybe there’s not a lot of options, maybe there aren’t a lot of agencies that focus on your specific niche.

So that may be a con, but it also could be a pro if you happen to find one. So, boutique agencies are great if you can get them. All right, next. Number five, let’s move on to full service agencies. So, there are a lot of full service agencies. I myself have worked at half dozen of them from the McCann’s or The Publicists, there’s so many big networks and agencies everywhere. And here at Adobe, we use a lot of full service agencies depending on the work that we need.

So what are the pros and cons of a full service agency? Pros are you just get everything handled. It really is about a one stop shop relationship. When I was in that role on the agency side, it was like you just do all things for that client and you service them in anything they need. Benefits around that are, it’s super easy. If you’re scaling with a full service agency, you get the price and you just pay it and you get all the expertise and they just handle everything for you. You don’t have to worry about flexing. In fact, the scaling issue could go away. If you have a relationship with a good agency, they do the scaling, they’ll move up and down to flex and get the work done for you and you don’t have to worry about that as much.

Other thing is longterm. With a full service agency, I mean truth be told, it used to be that there were more agencies that that were agencies of record for certain accounts or certain clients and I’ve definitely seen that go away in our more recent economy. Things have become more project based rather than agency of record. But I have noticed that once you build relationships with a certain agency, they’re still your go to. Let’s say, back to some of those examples of the people, so for Adobe, we definitely have a lot of relationships. In fact, we have relationships with, I think all of these options that we’re looking at right now, all six we definitely use. When I think of open creative, that other example [inaudible 00:27:53] getting with Julie and Terry, they’re going to be using more freelancers or maybe a boutique or contractor agency, but they’re not going to go with another full service agency because you don’t scale that way.

It’s just weird. That’s mostly just if you’re the client or an account or in house that you’re going to use a full service agency. So, benefits of that though is when you have that relationship, it’s also that they’re looking out for your longterm success. For example, there’s always these pros and cons of how much money do I spend? And it’s not always the case that when you go with a full service agency that you’re spending the most money. Certainly there are cases where you could be spending a lot for a blended rate in an agency and it’ll cost you a lot, but there’s also sometimes, there can be smaller full service agencies or boutique ones that really understand you and they’ll work around you.

So, if you have that relationship with them, you may spend the equivalent of, let’s say… Easy small example, if you spend $100,000 with them in a year, normally that may only get you one person for a full year. So, you’d get the value of one person for a full year because that’s their salary plus benefits. But if you go with a small agency, they could take that 100,000 and they could service you with maybe four or five people throughout the year, and then there may be flex times when you get a lot of brain power, like 10 people working in your account and then low periods that you only get one.

And so, there really are benefits of going with an agency. If it helps kind of flatten out your curve, that roller coaster and as long as you can get the right price and money that’s working for you, then it’s not going to cost you an arm and a leg to have that good relationship. But of course, the con could be, it’s money. The reason why sometimes people don’t go with a full time agent or a full service agency is just because the overhead is a lot. Some of those big agencies cost a lot and you get what you pay for. Sometimes it’s awesome work. We certainly have some that we use and when we use them it’s fantastic.

We may be doing a big TV commercial and we want to bring in really good talent and so, we’ll go with them and they’ll bring back awesome ideas and so, it’s totally worth it. And having that relationship with them, they can smooth out the ups and downs that we may have to go through. So, it’s totally worth it. And even if it’s project based, there are times we go with an agency that’s just kind of our go to because we have a good relationship with them. So absolutely, relationships with full service agencies go a long way in the equation, so it’s not just about money, it’s really about the value you’re getting from them.

Let’s see. Oh, last one. Okay, so contractor agency. So what is the difference in a contractor agency? A contractor agency is really kind of lessening the middle man or the middle person in the relationship. So a contractor agency, what they do is they’ll go out just like a freelance agency and they’ll find all these people, but instead of just hiring for freelance projects, they will create contracts where they’ll go in and work full time at a company for a set amount of time or even indefinitely and then basically, they’re augmenting the full time head count for that company. So, for example at Adobe, if we go with a contractor agency, we’re going to go out and work with them and they’ll take care of all of the legal, HR, hiring, everything down to the contract and then we’ll just pay them a set set of money every month and then they will in turn pay for the contractors.

But those contractors are then full time working on our projects and they could sit onsite, they may sit at the agency. Sometimes we’ve worked with even full service agencies that work also as a contractor agency where they may work there or they may work onsite. But either way, the benefit of it is sometimes you don’t want to have that added extra headcount, but it also gives you a little bit of flexibility. A contractor is part of the team and they get to know everything, know all the nuances, the ins and outs of the company, but then it’s also flexible that if you need to move up and down, it’s not as hard of a process of flexing up and down.

So it’s like hired guns. Freelance, that’s full time. The other benefit is if I went out and just found a freelancer and paid them full time rates to work onsite for a whole year on my account, I would lose way too much money. But with a contractor, I can pay a more reasonable salary as if they’re a full time person, with maybe not all the benefits or all the other different things that are expenses that I have to take care of. To be fair though, I mean, most times when we’ve used contractors, it’s almost like they’re part of the team and we match benefits and match salary and all that good stuff because they’re working full time. The only difference is they don’t report to you. They’re not full time employees, they’re still contractors. And so, I think there are a lot of industries like government and healthcare and other things that are used to having a contractor onsite and they’re just like a full time freelancer that’s there.

So, pros and cons. Flexibility is great with contractors, you have more control because you have them embedded in house. You can extend the team a lot easier. But some of the cons are, maybe it can be awkward that they’re not really part of the team but they feel like they are, that can be bad or there may have to be trade offs with when they’re onsite or when they’re not onsite. So, it all just depends on the contract, but just know that that’s definitely an option. If you need someone and you need them longterm and you don’t want to go with freelance or an agency may be too expensive and you know a person, maybe you already have them picked out and you just need to go through a contractor and set it up and then they’ll pay them. That’s just in cases where you can’t hire them full time.

So, definitely something to keep in mind when you’re looking at all your scaling options. All right, so that’s it. Those are those six options. Just wanted to give a good understanding of what they were so that you have an idea of where you need to go. So, the next question though is what type of skills do I usually scale? So, now we’re moving on. What skills do you usually scale? Since we’re in the world of being a creative leader, it seems pretty obvious that the core skills that you have on your team are most likely the ones you’re going to scale. Design, writing, video, sometimes project management. Those are really the main skills that you’re looking for help if you’re on the creative team trying to flex. And let’s talk about these separately, because the one that’s really different is video.

Video is a completely different animal usually or it has been in times past. Maybe we’ll just focus on that for a minute. So, in my experience, even at in house departments or an agency, in the past 15-20 years ago, we really didn’t have video capabilities on the staff. It was almost always where you’d go out and you’d go to a production company and you’d find the right director and you’d find the right production team and then go out and film and do something and then they’d edit it and then bring it back. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for us to go out and say, “We’re going to hire this production company for the editor and we’re going to bring in our own director. We’re going to go somewhere else over here where we’re going to do the coloring and we’re going to do sweetening and sound with it with another group.”

So, they were all used to, and I think that’s kind of like the TV production way, is they’re just all hired guns or all small production groups and then they all come together on different projects in different ways. And that still happens today. There are still times we’ll go out and we’ll shoot a TV spot and we’ll bring on a certain director and a production company to manage the whole process and that still happens. But what I’m seeing more and more on the agency side, sometimes I’ve seen where people are hiring motion graphics people right off the bat, because they have a lot of video work with their company and if you have the need for a lot of video work, then that makes sense. Or even at Adobe, at a big company, we will have a film and video department where they’re, and I would say, even still our model is most of the people on that team are producers and we’ll still reach out for the right talent, meaning the right director or the right editor, whatever it may be to get the project done.

So, we still use a lot of production houses to get our work done and that’s the way we flex. But the reason why we have in house producers is so that we have consistency and quality and control over the flow and the type and the style of projects that we do. So, let’s say you were a smaller company like Jonathan [inaudible 00:36:57] where you’re needing to get up and running, you may only go with an outside video vendor because that’s who you need to come in and quickly just do a… You just need a video and you’re not going to do videos all the time, you just need one video and maybe another one in six months and so, that’s definitely the model that you should go with is a production agency for just a film.

And let’s say, again back to the other example of open creative, if you’re a small little one or two person shop, most likely it’s all based on what you’re selling for your small agency. If you’re selling traditional print design, then absolutely you’re going to have to flex in video. If you’re selling that you’re all just video all up, then yes, you’re going to scale more video. So, it’s really hard for me to answer that, but just thinking in terms of what your options are, most likely it’s whatever you’re missing is what you’re going to scale and go out and find. But there are some pretty common ones.

In my experience, no matter what scenario it was, here are usually the ones when you’re growing or scaling, these are the skills that you need most. It’ll start out that usually, your first hire or your first scale up is usually going to be a designer, because most likely if it’s a small startup, you know the product, you know the things that you want, you know what you need to say, you just need someone who’s got good design skills. And truth is everyone’s a writer, which sucks but everyone thinks that, and so the first person they hire is usually not a writer, but usually a designer.

But then the second person that I often find is a writer. So it’s like it goes designer, writer, designer, and then probably a production person and then maybe a project manager and then video, depending on your company. So video is not the same to everyone, that’s why I wanted to call that out. That’s a special thing based on your needs. But that’s usually the order that I see. So if you’re scaling up, let’s say you already have a designer and you scale up, you get your second designer and usually one writer can feed two designers. And so, that’s why it’ll be like a designer, writer, designer. So you’ll always have a couple more designers than you do writers, at least for a smaller company, because design oftentimes takes a little bit longer time than writing. So, that’s usually what I see.

And then, once you get enough people where you’re scaling and you’re like, “Okay, now my team consists of two or three designers and one or two writers” then it hits that wall where it’s like there’s just too much going on and I need production help or project management help and that’s usually the next step, to help organize all that work, because in small groups like Terry and Julie, if they only have a couple of people in their company, they can usually project manage their own work, right?

So, they’ll be able to take the calls, and take all the projects, go and do the stuff and then deliver it and it’s usually fine. And then, they’re usually just looking for skills to hand off. They’ll continue to do the project management and the relationship, and they’ll just bring in hired guns to do some of the design or some of the writing. And we’re going to talk about those walls because there certainly are walls that you hit when you’re going through growth that I’ve seen. When you scale up and then you hit a wall and then you have to really overcome that wall.
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:40:04]

When you scale up and then you hit a wall, and then you have to really overcome that wall in order to move beyond it. So that’s just, if it’s helpful, what skills you scale, obviously it depends on what your needs are. But that’s the stuff that I’m more commonly seeing, is you definitely … Think about it in terms of this. You want consistency. If you went out and just hired a whole bunch of freelancers, you’d get just a dog’s breakfast of work, all over the place. And that’s not consistent, and it’s hard to grow and scale that way. So if you, maybe you have an established writer and they will establish the voice of all the things, and then you can bring in different designers and styles to add to that.

Or if not, you want to look for ways that you can scale and still maintain. And that’s why it’s important that you don’t just go crazy and hire a million freelancers, because then it causes actually more work for you. Because you have to get them up to speed, you have to help them understand it. So sometimes it really does make sense to mix it up, hire a full-time person, and then scale freelance for some of the other things. Or go to an agency and then have them do it all. Going back to the examples, Jonathan Finer, he came to me and said, “Hey, we just started this new finance company. I don’t have a creative department, but where do I go first?” And he didn’t have the money to just go and just start with a full-time, full service agency.

What he needed was either a freelance agency or a small boutique agency, someone that’s smaller in size and had more reasonable rates so that he could use them as his flex and basically his creative department. So anyhow, that’s really all the stuff. It’s really important to just know what options are out there. But again, keep in mind, of all of those agency types, I went through the main agency types, but make sure you can think about video, because video is a totally different animal. And there are a lot of boutique video shops or production agencies that are out there, some focused on motion graphics, some focused on live action, some that do all of it. And it’s almost like the same thing as as those examples I had before. From freelancers to full-time agencies, or sorry, full service agencies, to boutiques. They have all those same things but just with video.

All right, so the next question we want to move on to is, how do you find them? So you’ve gone through and you’re like, “Okay, I know I need to scale. I know I need more people on my team. I think I need either freelancers or I need an agency. How do I find them?” So the reality is, agencies are a lot easier to find. You can do a search and just look for agencies in your city. You can ask for recommendations of other companies. What agencies do they use? I think it’s really easy to find agencies. That’s not the problem. Usually when we’re talking about how to find them, and when I’m talking agency, I’m talking whether it’s a boutique, whether it’s a contractor agency, whether it’s a full service agency. All of those, their job is to get, they want you to find them, so they’re going to make it easy to find them just through simple Google searches. Or sometimes there’ll be lists, you can get a list of the local agencies in your town, whatever. I think those are easier to find.

Where most often I have people ask me the question is, how do I find freelancers? Maybe you’re like a situation where you just don’t have a network. Because to be honest, that’s where it starts, is your network. For me it’s easier because I’m around creative people all the time and I’ve worked at a lot of different agencies. I have a network of freelancers. I know who I can go to, or I can contact this person who has a friend who has a friend. It’s much easier. The people who have a hard time scaling are those who don’t have a network. And so that’s what I want to address right now, is how do you find the right freelancers when you don’t have a network, when you’re not plugged in? So here’s some of the ways you can do it. And some of these are actually fun, just good tips on how to find freelancers. So the first place, which is easy, is going to LinkedIn. This is something that wasn’t around before, we didn’t have it, but now it’s super easy.

You can just go do a search and say, whatever the skill set is, creative director or writer or designer, in your town, and just do a search. And you’ll come up with a list of them. So that’s a good way of finding a bunch of them. And then you just reach out to them. The trick is, how do I know if they’re any good? And that’s where something like Behance comes in. Behance is kind of like that, but it’s more focused on creatives. So when you go to Behance, and this is not me just plugging Adobe. I used Behance before I even ever worked for Adobe. Behance is just great because you’re searching for specific skill sets, and then you see their work, you see their portfolio. So this is mostly really, really great for illustration design, more visual arts than it is writing.

But it is awesome because you do your search, and then you’re not limited to just the people in your town. It could be anywhere in the world. In fact, at Adobe we still use Behance a lot. We may find some awesome illustrator who is in Ukraine, or we may find someone who is, we’ve got one that we use in London who’s amazing, and we just found him on Behance. So it’s just a matter of, sometimes they’ll list their rates on there. There are a lot of other websites out there, from the Fiverrs to whatever. And I’m not saying you have to only go to Behance. Go to whatever website you want. I’m just saying usually with one of those platforms, the benefit is, you see the person, you see their skillsets, you see their portfolio, you can look through it and see if it fits the style you’re going for, and then you can see pricing.

And if it doesn’t show pricing, it’s usually an easy email, just to find out what their costs are. And then you can go from there. And we’re going to talk about cost in a minute. So I’m going to hold off on that.

So anyhow, obviously those are great options. LinkedIn, Behance, whatever it may be. But the problem with that is you still don’t know, you don’t know any of the people. So it’s just still a blind, it’s like a blind trial. So here’s some other ways that I have gone out to find people to avoid the blind taste test. So number one, schools and professors. So what I’ll do is I’ll go to the local university, find out who the professor is that is in charge of the local creative design program, whatever it may be, writing, anything that is a need that you have.

Sometimes I find it’s just the marketing or the advertising department. Because they’ll have people who are still trying to not just be project managers or account people, but also the creatives. So I’ll get a relationship with the professor and then I’ll check in with them every once in a while and say, “Hey, I’m looking for this. Is there any of one of your students, or even a student who graduated a couple of years ago, or someone who’s looking for something?” And then I get, the professor can say, “Hey, this person is a rock star. And they have done all these great projects and we had them on the school newspaper and they did this and this and that.” And so it’s a way of vetting at least young talent. Obviously this is young, fresh talent. But if I’m looking for freelance and I still want some good talent but I have a low budget, that’s an awesome option.

So contact the local professors and just get that relationship now, because you never know when you’ll need it. And it could even just not be for freelance. It could be for full-time, like, “I’m hiring, who’s someone you recommend?” Especially graduation time in April. Who’s looking?

Okay. The next one I love using is just, if you have no network, you don’t know where to go, where I have found a ton of talent is through local clubs. Local clubs meaning the AAF, American Advertising Federation, AIGA, marketing club. There’s just so many different professional organizations. So what you just need to do is just find in your city which clubs. And chances are there’s an AIGA. Chances are there’s an AAF. And all of these programs, or all these clubs usually have some sort of an awards program.

So AIGA has the AIGA 100, AAF has the Addys, which is now the American Advertising Awards. And then what I do is I’ll go to the websites of those clubs, and then I’ll get a book or a listing of the last awards show. So let’s say it was the Addys. In the past I’d get the Addys book for the local town, and I would just flip through and see all the awesome work, and then look and see who did it and find the names, and that’s when I would know, okay, I definitely need that person. Whether I’m hiring a full-time or I just want them for freelance, that’s a good way to see the stuff they’ve done. Because A, it’s vetted that they’ve won. Obviously awards are one measurement, but they’ve produced great work and they’ve shown that they can do it, and they’re recognized.

So that’s an awesome trick. Go to the AIGA, go to the AAF, attend one of their local events. Network. Find people, ask around. You could just show up at one of those events and say, “Hey, I’m looking for a designer, I’m looking for a great motion graphics person.” And everyone will be happy to give you names, because half of them are all still looking for work. So anyhow, that is one of the best tricks I would have, is if you really need to flex and you don’t have any network, go to them and you’ll instantly find some people. Beyond that, it’s the same thing if you want, go talk to some of the local agencies. And you could say, if there’s an agency that you normally used in your past life, go to them and say, “Who’s looking for freelance? Who’s a good writer? Who’s a good designer, who’s a good whatever?” Whether it’s full-time work or it’s for freelance.

And that’s a good way of building up a network. If you don’t have it, ask other people who you work with or other companies in your town, “Who’s your agency, who do you work with, who do you use?” That’s a good way of just getting plugged in. Because once you’re plugged into the local agency scene, man, there are just so many people who moonlight or do freelance or who are looking for work or looking to jump. And I would say it’s not even just … Agency is just awesome because there’s a collection of it. Beyond that, you can move beyond agencies and just go to the big companies around. You could say, “All right, here are the five big companies in town. They have to have a creative department.” And then just start asking around.

Another one, and these last two are, it doesn’t have to be local. Even just like with Behance, when we were finding people in Ukraine, you don’t have to stay local. So look for the awesome agencies you’ve heard of in different towns. There are a lot of big famous agencies or production houses that are anywhere. They may do awesome motion graphics and you just go use them. So you can do searches for them. You can look, the same thing, through the award shows. That’s another thing that I’ve done a lot in my career, is I’ll either go to Communication Arts or the One Show or Cannes Lions, and just look on their website and see who’s doing the work. Not just the agencies or the companies, but the individuals who are doing it.

It’s a little bit of cyberstalking, but you find the talent. So if you’re like, “That certain spot, that viral video is exactly what I want,” go look it up in the awards shows, go to One Show. They seem to have the most breadth because their awards books are so massive. Versus CA, that’s smaller. And it’s all online. So I can go through and say, “I love that spot. Who is the director?” Or, “Who is the writer? Who is the designer on that website?” Whatever it may be. And then you can find the people and then see where they’re working and contact them. Or maybe you’ll say, “That’s the agency I want to go with. I’ll just go with the agency.” So those are some of the tips and tricks that I’ve used. Find the awards show books, go to the local clubs, check with professors, go to the local agencies, and if the local stuff’s not working, then just go national and just find them. And then of course, obviously the networks. So LinkedIn, Behance, whatever. There’s a lot of great talent out there and a lot of ways to find them. So it shouldn’t be a challenge with that in mind, it just takes a little time to sleuth and figure it out.

All right, next. How do you know if they’re talented? So I talked about that a minute ago. Some of those methods are built in. if I’m looking at an awards show, it’s a guess that they’re somewhat talented. If I’m looking at, or I’m talking to a professor, I can find out from them if they’re motivated, talented, all that good stuff. But really it’s all word of mouth. So how do you find out if someone is talented? It’s really about connections and relationships. Because obviously the easy answer, is look at their portfolio. If I’m looking at a Behance or if I’m looking to hire someone full-time, I’m going to look at their portfolio. And as a creative leader, you should know good work from bad work. So obviously the first answer is, look at their work. And I’ll tell you, when I’m doing that, what I’m really looking for is for an anomaly.

And what I mean by that is, I’ve looked at hundreds and hundreds of books. And what I’m really looking for is something that’s unique, something that’s different, something I haven’t seen before. And whether that’s writing or video or design, you’re looking through that book to see if they have a special style or something different that they’ve tried. Because it’s so easy to, someone could just take a book and go, copy all the greats, or get an awards show and just copy all of that. And then you don’t know if they’re any good or if they’re copying stuff.

So look for the anomaly, look for something that they’ve written or done that’s just so different that just makes you feel something completely different. So that’s what I would look for. The other thing that’s really important when you’re knowing if they’re talented is how many different styles they have. So obviously if you find that anomaly or they have a specific style that you’re going for, this is really easy with illustrators or designers, they have a style, and you’re hiring them for that style. But if I’m looking for someone for full-time, I absolutely want to look and make sure that they have multiple styles. Because I don’t want to get stuck in that one style and that’s it. And then when our brand moves beyond that style, do I have to fire them because that’s all they’ve got? I’m looking for people to have multiple styles.

And usually if you do a test project with them and say, “Here, here’s this project, let’s do it freelance.” They’ll come back, and if they give you three options and all three of them are basically the same idea, just three versions of it, then that’s a good indicator that they have that one style. But if you have some that come back and they’re like, “Here’s one and then here’s a completely different idea in a different style, and here’s another completely different idea in a style,” that is pure gold. Because that way you’d know that they’ll be able to think outside the box and really come at the problem with different points of view and give you different styles. So you know they’re talented if they can come up with multiple styles.

Now, that’s not to say, this is a tough question, because some people have an awesome style and that’s what makes them famous. Whether you’re a director and you’re making movies or you’re writing books, and you have that style and that’s what we go to for your art, because of that style. If that’s the case, great. I’m just saying, when I’m scaling my team, if that style is one that 100% will work with me for the future, than awesome sauce, go for it. But sometimes it’s not. And so I just need to look for people who have multiple styles, whether you’re a writer or design. So that’s something to keep in mind.

So that’s when you’re looking for talent. There are also issues of, sometimes you’re just looking for production work. You’re not looking for … You have that rock star who’s coming up with the ideas, and what you need to scale is getting stuff done faster. There’s that old rule. It’s the three things. It’s either speed, quality, or price. In our world, those are the three big factors. And you cannot have all three, you can never have all three. Whether you’re an agency or you’re an individual, that’s just the rule of thumb. The adage of, you can have one for sure and maybe two, but never three. So if you’re going for production, you’re going for speed and price. If you’re going for an awesome talent, you’re going to go for quality and then maybe speed, I don’t know. Mostly quality.

So again, if you’re looking how talented they are, if you’re going for production, then you’re looking for a minimum threshold. And it’s usually, how fast are they? If you can’t find from someone else or find and vet that out, because when I’m hiring a production person, you don’t see that on their portfolio. You don’t see that on their website. And so sometimes we do just simple minimum threshold tests. We’ll give them a production test. Or if you’re doing production copy, we’ll give you a copy test or a design test that just lets me see how fast, how quickly, how much quality there is in the work. And just have them come in and interview and do that test. And then you’ll know. Or you just send it out to them and say, “Hey, let’s do this freelance project. And it’s really just a test to hit those time, money, and quality issues.”

So that’s always the thing. If you can try them out on a small project, great. And so as a creative leader, you should be doing these different things at all times. You should be looking at the networks. You should be looking at the clubs. You should be trying some freelance projects with someone right now, that maybe you don’t need them right now, but in six months you might need them. And you’re talking with agencies, you’re building relationships. That is a big part of being a creative leader, is doing all of these things with all of those groups all the time, and keeping that network built. Because that is one of your secret superpowers, is your network. Your ability to go out and find and flex and scale and do things and find the right person for the right job at the right moment. So I encourage you, if you are going to be a good creative leader, this whole story of scale and finding all these people and building a network is huge.

So start doing it now. Start even when you don’t need it. Because it may not even be this job or maybe your next job that you 100% need all these connections. So all these things I’m talking about, just get going, get doing it.

All right. So next I want to talk about growth breakpoints. And this is just in my mind, or sorry, in my experience, I’ve never seen growth and scale as just a consistent up and to the right. You’re going to hit walls. And depending on the size of your company, you’re absolutely going to hit a wall. And what do I mean by a wall? So let’s take my example of my friends Julie and Terry. They started a small agency and they only had a couple people. And the equation doesn’t go, “I add more people, it just keeps growing, I add more people, it just keeps growing.” It’s not linear. It’s more like steps. You’ll have a bunch of people to solve the work that you have, and then you hit a wall and it’s this huge step. And you have to be able to get up and over that step in order to get at the next platform.

So for example, I often see a lot of small freelance groups that are one to five people. And there’s a reason why they’re one to five people, it’s because they have those core skillsets. Maybe they have a writer and a couple designers and a project manager. And that’s perfect and they can scale and work, but then they’re going to hit a point where they can’t take on big, big clients because they’re just too small. And they’re not going to jump up to a huge team overnight, because that just doesn’t happen.

In fact, there’s an awesome story. So in Kirshenbaum, Bond, and Partners, when they started their agency, and there’s a book that they put out that’s awesome. And they were just a couple people, I think it was maybe even just the two founders, and they were courting a new client. And it was a bigger client. And normally if the client looked and said, “Oh, you only have two people, how are you going to be able to service my account? There’s no way.” It’s just like they just wouldn’t even be in the running. But what they did, it was pretty ingenious. The building that they worked in was this big law firm. And they just had one small little office in there. But when they had the client come over to do a meet and greet with the client, they just printed a sign that said the logo of their agency, and they put it over the top of the law firm.

And then when the client came, they just met him in the lobby, and the client just thought, “Oh, all these people busily working behind them, those are all just people in their agency.” And they played it off and it was like, “Oh, you know what? Let’s not be here at the office. Let’s just go to this fun, we’ve got a great place down the street that’s a fun hole in the wall. We should go just chat there and it’ll be private.” And so it was an awesome trick that they got into that, that’s how they jumped to the next category. Because once they won that account, then they had the money to go and hire a bunch of people and actually build the team. Whereas normally you can’t. It’s hard to just put a bunch of people out there in order to hope for a client when you don’t have it.

So I thought that was a brilliant, brilliant idea. But again, don’t think in terms of a linear scale, think of it as set of steps. So these are the buckets that I usually see. When you’re at one to five, that’s all hats, meaning you are wearing all the hats, you’re doing all the work, you just have this core group of people who just-
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:00:04]

You are wearing all the hats, you’re doing all the work, you just have this core group of people who just do everything. And you may have specific skill sets within that, but it still like doesn’t matter what the request is, you just take it and you figure it out. And then there’s like you hit that wall of like going beyond five or six up to 10 and if you can get enough good steady work then you get up to that, whether that’s in house or an agency, it’s enough projects to keep that many people busy. Then I see you go to 10 and once you’re on that 10 step, then for me it’s more of like generalists, like you have different skills but you’re still again trying to do a lot of things and you don’t wear all the hats, but you may have to wear like two hats. You may have to do a lot of long form writing and short form writing and social writing, whatever it may be. But you’re not doing project management, right? At the size of 10.

And then once you get to that next step, which is about 20, then you’re all specialists. Then on the team you have the long form writer, you have the designer, you have the art director who’s focused on more like big concepts, and you have the more fine artist designer who’s doing all of the print stuff or the web stuff. Anyhow, just all these specialists that work on your team. And that I would say for like the most part is most in house teams are in that range of like 10 to 20. So they may have like a video producer, they may have the writer, the designer, like all that stuff, and that’s usually the specialist team or specialists.

And then beyond that, when you’re like 30 plus, that’s when I see like instead of it just being this massive, massive creator department, then it starts to break down into specialist teams. So you have your video team, you have your writing team, you have your design team, or maybe it’s just like your project management group and then you have a leader on each of those who are managing all the different people who are doing the work. So just know those breakpoints and why is it important to know that just so that as you’re starting something out, don’t think that, “Oh, I’m just going to go straight from five to 30.” It may be really, really hard to do that because you don’t have the money to flex that fast.

That’s obviously why some of these agencies have gone to the freelance agency model because they can only hire a few all purpose people and then flex in all the rest in order to create their agency. And then as they build it up over time, then they have enough money that they could actually become a full service agency. Or maybe they don’t want to, maybe they stay with that model.

So just be aware of those growth break points so that as you’re growing your team you know when, you know if I’m at 11 people, I’m not going to go into the board and say, “Hey, I need 10 more people.” It’s probably not going to happen. They’re going to say, “No, we don’t know if that work’s going to come up and down, so there’s no way.” So that’s when you have to flex and scale and then you have to permanently be scaled at a certain point before you get the resources to jump to the next one. So just keep that in mind that it may be a pipe dream if you’re thinking you’re just going to go in a linear fashion straight out to the next break point.

All right, let’s talk about costs. So costs, again, we talked a little bit about this earlier. It used to be that with all those different models, and I’m going to have to talk between agencies or in house, that costs are for in house it’s usually, “Do I have budget that I can flex and bring in people temporarily or do I get permanent budget that allows me to go out and hire someone full time?” So that’s really the balance you’re dealing with in costs.

And I want to go down to the bottom on that hiring 2080 multiplier thing. So if you’re bringing someone on full time, that number 2080 is just an awesome number for me of knowing the difference between like an hourly up to a salary. So it’s just the equivalent of doing the math of I take that number if I’m paying someone 30 bucks an hour times 40 hours a week times however many months, blah, blah, blah. If you just do take the number of the hourly and times it by 2080, that’ll give you what the salary is for a full year. And then you have to add the multiplier because sometimes people make the mistake of like, “Oh, I’m going to go hire someone and they’ll do the math,” and they’re only adding in the salary and they’re not doing the multiplier, which is all the other benefits.

And from my experience, it’s usually like let’s say there was someone you were doing freelance and you figured out what their salary is, times it by 1.5 because it’s going to be about 50% more to cover all of their benefits, health insurance, 401k, all that other stuff, vacation, time off, loss, all that stuff. It’s a lot more than you think. So when you’re being realistic, as I’ve hired different people, I know that I have to figure out what my markup is. And that’s all based on the benefits that you give. If you have a very benefits rich company, then that multiplier’s going to be higher, if it’s more of a bare bones startup, whatever it may be, that may be lower. So definitely keep that in mind. If your goal is to scale by hiring full time, be aware of all the costs and just add that in. Go 1.5 or even more, 1.75 depending, because that’s the real cost. And then you won’t be in trouble when your budgets are totally in trouble because you’ve over hired.

Okay, so what about for contractors, because that’s almost the same thing. Instead of doing your multiplier for your benefits, what you have to do is say here’s the salary for the person for the year and then what’s the contract multiplier. So depending on the contractor agency you go with, some of them may be whatever that X multiplier is. A lot of times it’s like 25% or 30%. So whatever the cost for the salary is, then you have to put the multiplier on there. So that’s just something to keep in mind. And obviously you can shop around, usually with a contractor there’s not that much value add. It’s mostly they’re just doing all the behind the scenes work for the contract and for the pricing and the payment and all that kind of stuff and you just want that quick service so you can ask around.

But there may be some that charge a little bit more, but give you more value. They may say, “Okay, that’s great, but we’re going to take care of this benefit,” or, “We’re going to actually have a creative director who internally helps with all their work and makes it better.” I found that that’s actually a huge value add even on like the freelance agency. So they may only have a few people on site, but instead of me just going out and just hiring a freelancer directly because then I have to creative direct them, they may have a creative director on their team and say, “You know what? We know what level of work you want, so we’ll use our freelancers and then do a round with them beforehand to make sure it’s solid.” Especially if someone’s new and you’ve never vetted them out, they’ll take care of that for you and then you’re going to be paying a little bit more because you’re getting that service from them where they’re basically saving you time to not have to babysit all of these different freelancers and get them up to the right level. So that’s something to keep in mind, whether you’re doing contractor multiplier or you’re going for an agency rate, find out what value you’re getting from it.

And in terms of agencies, agencies, there’s different models. More and more I’m seeing it just by project, so build per project. So they’ll come out and say, and this is especially too with video, “If you want to do this video project, here’s how much it’s going to cost.” And by the way, I think that’s phenomenal. I am a huge proponent of per project because it’s no longer about hours. I have this huge rant if you want to go on my Medium publication and look at why time sheets are the devil. I feel like we should be paying for the service. If you want X, then pay for X. If you want a video, here’s the price for the video. If you want an email program, here’s the price for the email program. If you want a website, here’s the price. And just pay for the project and then it’s on the freelancer or the agency to figure out how they stay profitable from that project.

Or even the team, like if it’s on my team, if I want to bring someone on, a contractor, I want them for that project rather than doing rates. Because the other models that agencies use, they use rates, so you could have a blended rate where they say, “It doesn’t matter who in the agency is going to work on your account, we’re going to charge you a blended rate of $200 per hour.” Or they may have roll rates where they could say, “All right, if a junior person works on it we’re going to charge you $100 an hour and if a senior person works on it, we’re going to charge you $350 an hour,” and then there’s all these different breakpoints in between.

And sometimes that can be nice if you’re looking for specific talent and sometimes it can be a huge headache because there’s just so much math that you’re doing all the time. You’re wasting more time dealing with figuring out which rates are which and who and how we’re getting billed for it rather than just a flat rate. So sometimes blended rates are great and then it’s easier to compare agency to agency. You can say, “All right, the blended rate for this agency is 225 and this one’s 300 and they’re both awesome,” then you’ll know the difference.

So anyhow, they do blended rates or sometimes it’s agency of record where it’s just like, “Here’s your cost, every quarter it’s going to cost you X amount, and then you get all the thought or all the whatever that we can offer you.” And when that kind of a contract happens, then they usually are going to spell out how many people are going to work on your account. So they’re going to have 10 people for this cost every quarter, that’s what you get, and they’ll be full time on your work, on your business. So that means you can give them as much as you want, as long as you keep those 10 people busy. So that’s how it works with agencies.

Now with freelancers, it’s different. Freelance rates, obviously if you can do per project, great, and then you’ll just have to figure out what the value is for that project. But in my experience, and again this could change based on city or what the going rates are, but there’s usually like three break points in freelance rates. There was like the entry level cheap rate, and let’s say that’s 50 to $75 an hour, and that may seem like a lot because normally if you’re hiring someone you’re only going to pay them 25, $30 an hour. But the reason why is because freelance rates are going to be more because they have to cover all their overhead and it’s not consistent, they’re just coming in for that short time.

So you’d have that 50 to 75 range and that was usually for like younger, junior kind of a rate, and so it may be cheaper. But again, you may spend a lot more time getting to the final output because they may just take a lot longer because they’re junior. And then there was the range of like 75 to 125 or something around there, and that was more like the mid range. And that was just like classic writer, designer, whatever it was that you’re freelancing and you bring them in and that’s their freelance rate and they’re going to be solid, hardworking, awesome, talented, and go from there.

And then beyond that, then you would get into the higher threshold, which is 125 and up. And those usually higher freelance rates are usually for someone who’s really seasoned, really senior, who’d come in and maybe you’d pay fewer hours because they just know what to do and they’d figure it out. And again, that was more of like Utah rates. You could be in the Bay area, you could be in New York, and just multiply all of those things. Or if you’re in a small town, it may be less, and maybe 75 is high. So obviously what you just need to do is just go out and ask different freelancers or ask people maybe who you’re not going to be hiring and just say what the going rates are with the agency they’re using, the freelancers they’re using, whatever it may be. And then you can kind of get a sense for the ranges and how much you’re going to be paying for all these different people.

So hopefully that helps with costs. There are some websites that will help you with that and they’ll just figure out the pricing for you. But usually obviously if you’re a freelancer, you want to charge the right amount so your work is valued. And like one of the biggest rules of thumbs, again, I’m not here to help you with your freelance career, but for me it’s always never do freelance for free. Freelance is not free. And don’t ever hire someone and have them do it for free as a favor with hopes for better work later. That’s the worst model and it doesn’t work and you don’t get good value. So pay the price that you want for the quality that you want and then go from there.

All right, we’re nearing the end here. I just had a few final considerations to think about. In terms of scale, so obviously we have to scale, as a leader you need to learn and you should be doing it all the time. Always be figuring out what your scale options are. And so what that really means is scale is all about relationships, for me that is critical. Building those relationships, it’s not just about now and the current needs you have, it’s the next month away, six months away, two years away. It doesn’t matter, but it’s really about relationships. Having a network of people who are looking or people who are talented is really important.

I may even get people who always reach out to me on LinkedIn and say, “Hey, I’m looking for a job. Do you know of anything that’s happening?” Because I’ve built that network, they know that I’ll be looking for things, whether it’s for me or not. And I may not even use them at that time, but I’ll forward them on to someone else who’s looking. So just remember that, scale is about relationships. If you’re starting out fresh, it’s really rough to scale. It’s really, really rough. So build, build, build relationships and start doing it now.

And then the next point here is like from production to partnership, as you’re scaling your team, especially if it’s an internal in house team, if you want to have more options on scaling, it’s important to change from being a set of hands to being a strategic partner. When you’re a set of hands, all of the scaling decisions almost are out of your hands and they go to whoever the owner of the business is or whoever the person who is in charge of those budgets. They’ll just come to you and say, “Hey, this is the thing we need and here’s how much money you got,” and you may not have that many options.

So if you as a creative leader can start to work to train and say, “I’m not a monkey, a set of hands, I’m not just going to do your production work. But I’m going to be a strategic partner and I’m going to have this network and I’m going to understand all these different skills and the nuances and who’s talented, who’s not.” And the more you train yourself to have all of those values and then you go to your stakeholders, you go to your board of directors and you say, “Here’s what I’m providing. I have all of this stuff and I know how to scale and I have the network,” then you’re a strategic partner and you’re changing the equation from just production and get it done to what are all the possibilities that we can do and grow and change and make this company great? Then when you can change that narrative where you’re a strategic partner, then you have a completely different vantage point for scaling.

Then the control comes to you and they’ll just say, “Okay, what do you need in order to do X?” And then you can decide and scale and figure out the right way to do it. So I would just say keep that in mind as you’re becoming a creative leader. It’s get those relationships and then prove your value by becoming a strategic partner. Make sure you show here’s what I bring to the table, here’s why I can help with growth, with scale, with all this stuff in the right way, and grow the team in the right way or bring in the right people because I know everyone.

All right, and that’s it. And finally COVID, I mean obviously I’m here at home recording. We’re all dealing with this together. So there are a lot of considerations. I see a lot of people right now flexing and pulling back and cutting budgets and being afraid because of uncertainty. So the best thing you can do is if you have all these different options in front of you, find the right ones that are flexible for right now. Meaning, here at Adobe, I’m pausing hiring for a while because I want to use more flexible options until we get back into a natural state. And that may still be fine, look for people who have been let go or people who don’t have jobs because they’ll still have availability and this may be the perfect time to flex some freelancer, flex some contractors or whatever you may be doing. Just find those ways to be flexible now and still keep building for the future.

And right now is a good time to be in a building mode. Who are the talent? How do I get ahold of them? If you’re stuck at home and you don’t have ways to go to connect with other people or networking options, you can still like I said, look for those award shows, look for those clubs, look for things, groups. There’s online stuff still happening and you can still find the right people and give opportunities and jobs or maybe even if it’s for yourself and how you can reach out and be available to flex for other people during a situation like this. So anyhow, hopefully this whole session gave you a lot of at least options of knowing what’s out there from my experience, what I’ve used, what I’ve done, different scenarios of size of company and hopefully that at least gives you a taste of what you have and what’s out there.

All right, well thank you, so that was part one. Again, I said there’s two parts. So part two we’re going to have in just a few weeks and we’re going to talk more about the internal stuff, balancing tricks, how to do internal systems, how to make sure everyone on your team is perfectly whelmed. I talked about the whelmed scale. We don’t want people overwhelmed or underwhelmed, but perfectly whelmed. So we’re going to talk about that. And also we usually send out a survey. So anyone who signs up for the webinar, if there’s a particular topic you want me to cover, please let me know. You could respond to that survey or go to my website or email me directly. So I want this to be valuable. Sometimes people say they want things deep in the weeds, sometimes you want an overarching kind of 50,000 foot view, and I’m hoping to do both with one session, in the weeds in one session, high level.

So anyhow, reach out to me and here’s the way that you can do that. You can go to my website, adamwmorgan.com. You can sign up for my newsletter or there’s a way there you can contact me directly. Or you can come over to realcreativeleadership.com. Again, this is all new, we’re just starting out so it’s still somewhat under construction so bear with me for a little while until we get that up and running. Or if you need help scaling right now you can reach out to The Stoke Group. They are one of those freelance scale agency models. So please reach out to them if you like and they would be happy to help you out.

And as always, thanks to The Stoke Group If you want a free copy of my book, Sorry Spock, Emotions Drive Business, they will send you out a free copy if you just go to their contact. Even if you just talk to them and they’ll give you a copy. And the book is all about proving the value of creativity to your stakeholders. If you have like a particularly tough stakeholder who doesn’t believe in creativity, this is like five years of research from me to prove that creativity matters to the bottom line and how you can prove that to them.

I want to thank Stoke for producing this podcast. They do an amazing job of getting this out to all of you. And thank you for all of you for listening, whether you are coming to the webinar or listening later on the podcast, I appreciate it and we will see you at the next episode of Real Creative Leadership with Adam Morgan. Thank you.
PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [01:18:36]

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