We've all been there. You put your best effort into a proposal and the prospect is excited! You've told the team it's 99% in the bag. The agreement goes over and... crickets. A follow-up email goes out to make sure they got it. Nothing. You call and leave a voicemail. Hello? Is this thing on? So what do you do now? Well... read on and we'll look at why it may have happened and some suggestions from the Bureau community on getting them to come back.
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Gene: You good?
Carl: Oh whatever, Gene. Let's just do the damn show.
Gene: What's happening?
Carl: I was remixing that song with my mic volume while we were coming in and it totally changed the whole-
Gene: Interesting.
Carl: ... just the whole feeling. I'm really excited now.
Gene: DJ Carl.
Carl: Oh, you don't even want to... You don't. No, you don't.
Gene: I do. I do.
Carl: Actually, you don't. Do you though?
Gene: I do.
Carl: Gene, how was your Father's Day?
Gene: Oh, Father's Day was excellent. Excellent. It rained, which put a damper on the grilling out but otherwise, it was awesome.
Carl: Well, I'm sorry to hear about your damper.
Gene: I think my family likes me.
Carl: Oh, you know what? That's beautiful, man.
Gene: How about your Father's Day? What'd you do?
Carl: It was fine. No, it was good. I got up and I was so happy.
Gene: I woke up.
Carl: I woke up. No, we went and oddly enough, we hung out with my mom for a while because I got to use my Father's Day, "What do you want to do for Father's Day," to say, "Hey, I would like it if we could all go see my mom."
Gene: Wow.
Carl: So she'd stop asking me, "Why doesn't anybody come over?" I mean, I'm there every week and I'm like, "Hello." But then we hit up Jack's Craft, which is this local, little brewery place. They had somebody grilling and the green eggs. We had some good barbecue and some live music.
Gene: I love the green egg.
Carl: Yeah, it's a good-
Gene: More importantly, I love what comes out of the green egg.
Carl: More importantly, I love when somebody else gets it out of the green egg because even though I went to green egg school with Greg Hoi in Atlanta-
Gene: That's right. I remember he was doing this.
Carl: Yeah, it didn't take.
Gene: It will.
Carl: Come over to my house. We'll get take out.
Gene: That's awesome.
Carl: I did make some good steaks last night. I did make some good steaks.
Gene: That sounds tasty.
Carl: And they were.
Gene: Taste delicious.
Carl: Gene, when it comes to tasty, you know one of the things I like to cook up?
Gene: What's that?
Carl: Ghosts. I like to cook up ghosts, Gene.
Gene: Mm, ghosts. You mean when someone ghosts you?
Carl: Wow. Once again, amazing, amazing segue.
Gene: A segue into this week's email newsletter.
Carl: Whoa, I didn't know you were going to do that.
Gene: Yeah, surprised you, huh?
Carl: That's a... Yeah. Should we just read it out loud to everybody? Here everyone.
Gene: Yeah. No, it's just a little preview. Trying [crosstalk 00:03:15]-
Carl: I like it.
Gene: ... social effect.
Carl: I like it. I want to find a way to hack in there so then when it comes up, it's inappropriate. That would be a thing.
Gene: That would be a thing. Yeah, so we're talking about what happens when potential clients, prospects, whatever-
Carl: You may call them prospects. You may call them clients. You may call them prom dates. What happens? You ask them a question, Gene. You say, "Hey, we've been talking about this for a while." I'm not doing the prom date thing now. I'm talking about the prospect. Let's be very clear.
Gene: Let's be clear. It's been a while since you and I went to prom.
Carl: Be clear. Well, yes it has, ever since that court order. Okay. You go through the whole process. You get to that point where you've got an agreement and it feels like they're going to sign it. It could be an approval via email. It could be whatever. And then whoosh...
Gene: Nothing.
Carl: ... silence.
Gene: What's the longest-
Carl: Even the crickets are shushing other crickets.
Gene: What's the longest you've gone before you... Because there's a game there too, right? Just like you would play with a person like, "Oh, I texted them. They texted me back. How long do I wait?" It's the same game with a client. How long do you wait?
Carl: Well, it is. I think it's until you're going to miss payroll because that's the thing you don't think about, right? That's the other pressure is if this doesn't come in, I've got to have something else come in because ultimately, in digital services, no matter how you bill it, you're selling availability.
Gene: Yes.
Carl: And if somebody says they're going to be there and then they're not-
Gene: Suddenly you're available.
Carl: Screwed, right? And then you've got a fire sale. You're just like, "Hey, all hours, half off."
Gene: I'll do whatever, one site for shit you need.
Carl: Yeah, come on in. But yeah, it's not only how long. I think it's how many times do you really? How many time are you going to nudge them? How many times are you going to do that stuff? And I think one of the biggest things to understand, especially... I mean, a lot of us have been in this situation. I mean, this is a human thing too, right? Just like we talk about in the show all the time, it's not just about business. It's not just about running a web shop. It's just humans.
Gene: We're in this business of people, Carl.
Carl: We are. We are.
Gene: Well, you are.
Carl: Am I?
Gene: I don't know.
Carl: I am. But what I was going to say before you-
Gene: Did I throw you there?
Carl: Not very far.
Gene: Okay, cool.
Carl: But why? Why is it that a prospect just goes silent, right? Why do they go down into the depths like Godzilla?
Gene: That's a good one. Yeah, I mean there's lots of reasons-
Carl: And do you want them to come back?
Gene: Yeah, but you put a few reasons in the email here. Where does this come from? Where did the-
Carl: Where did this come from? Oh, I found somebody's blog post and I just ripped it off.
Gene: Cool. Awesome. That's how I usually do things.
Carl: Yeah, there was a conversation in the Bureau Slack like always and then I just really played off my personal experience. When you've done something like this for so long, and then there was a lot of conversation in there. There's a lot of good stuff in there that played into it but I think the thing that you understand after a while is that there's a reason why they didn't respond and it's not that they're a jerk or that they're dogging you. They didn't really come all the way to the edge and go, "Let's do this," and then didn't.
Gene: No, that's true.
Carl: And one of the things I learned early on, and this was from the advertising agency I worked at, if you send out a message and don't get a response, it's probably more a reflection of the message than it is the individual.
Gene: Interesting.
Carl: If you've ever run a company or you've been in charge of something that's big and you're like, "Whoa, I'm going to send this and it's changing structure or we're going to have a reorg or we're going to," which is also changing structure in case... I'm just seeing if you're awake, dammit.
Gene: I don't know what you're talking about.
Carl: Or maybe it's, "You know what? We're cutting back on holidays or the bonuses won't be that big or there'll be much bigger," or whatever. And you're thinking, "I'm going to send this out and then it is going to be so noisy with the response," and then it's just nothing. And it's because people aren't sure how to respond, right? Now when it comes to a prospect, and I think this is one of the things to understand is that it could be they didn't have the authority to give the approval.
Gene: Right, which is usually, I would say, probably mostly the case.
Carl: I think so depending on who you work with.
Gene: Yeah, they got to go somewhere else and they're waiting on that person and-
Carl: Yeah, and maybe it's they have to get the budget approved. Maybe they don't have the money and they were embarrassed to tell you. I mean, you've been there, right?
Gene: Oh yeah.
Carl: Where you're looking at buying something and then somebody tells you how much it costs and rather than go through the whole dance of, "Well, I don't have that kind of money for this," you just go, "Sounds great. Bye."
Gene: Yeah. I like that one, especially when that's tied together with somebody you've worked with for a long time and you're... I have a couple of clients like this where we get more work because we come up with things to do for them, right? It's one of their, whatever you call it. I mean, we don't just respond to stuff that they ask for. We spend time, think about their direction with them and then suggest things. Sometimes we suggest things and I could tell they're not really bought into it and we have to do a little work but what about when they just don't want to say, "No," but they also don't want to pay you?
Carl: Well, now that's called digital services, Gene.
Gene: Is it? Damn.
Carl: Yeah, because you know somebody's got a son that's done that before. They can totally do that. What, you haven't heard of Wix?
Gene: Yes.
Carl: I think you bring up an interesting point. It's not just prospects, right? It could be clients. It could be clients you've been working with for a long time. And I think one of the things that can play into that... Like you mentioned, you can tell there's going to be more work to do, but I think also you get to that situation sometimes where it's, "I heard what I wanted to hear."
Gene: Yeah, I like that one.
Carl: It's like, "Okay. Hey sir, we're good to go?" "Yeah, let me check with the team." You heard, "Yeah," and everything after that, you didn't hear any of it. And what they really said was, "I need to go back and talk with the team."
Gene: Right, and the answer is not certain at all.
Carl: Or, "Sounds good. Let me see when we can get this going." That's not a yes. That's a, "You know what, I'm going to see if maybe we can do this next year," right. You're thinking I need it now.
Gene: When you need it now.
Carl: Exactly, right? There's so much that happens with just the way that the message goes and this was what really led to the whole, I guess, conversation in Slack where... This is just a thing. You are in a business for so long, you think that everybody knows everything. Everything that you've ever learned, you just assume everybody else knows. But the conversation turned to the magic email, right? Now had you ever heard of the magic email?
Gene: No, I don't know what you're talking about.
Carl: Okay. You didn't really use that.
Gene: I really don't. Well, I'm playing along. I [crosstalk 00:10:47] until you.
Carl: Dammit. I have blown your cover, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, Hope Crawford. Basically the magic email is something that somebody said, "Well, that's why I love the magic email," and somebody goes, "Oh, tell me more. Magic email." And this is something that I think a lot of people learn and don't even know it's called that. And somebody branded it and they had a very good example of it. But basically, it just asks one question quickly and that's it, right? And if you look at the official email, if that's what you're going to look at, it basically says, "Since I've not heard from you on this, I have to assume your priorities have changed," and that's it. In the magic email, it's whatever the subject was. There's not even like a signature. It is curt, right? Look at you. Look at you, magic man. You going to have to zoom in.
Gene: Yeah, I know. I don't know how to zoom in.
Carl: [inaudible 00:11:53] crazier. There's all kinds of variations on this and for me, it was always, "Hey, it doesn't seem like this is going to happen. Too bad. Let me know if we can do anything with you in the future." That was it. But what happens when you send an email like that, if they had not said "No," if they were not disappearing to avoid an awkward, "Not interested," they're suddenly like, "Fuck. I sent that up for approval," or "I had that call next week," or whatever. They stopped getting back to you but that doesn't mean they stopped working on it. A lot of times within five minutes, I am not kidding you, you'll hear some... They basically write back, "No, no. We're still interested. Just working on some stuff."
Gene: Yeah, give me some time. Yeah.
Carl: Yeah, whatever it is. And I've had this happen with sponsors before [crosstalk 00:12:47].
Gene: Yes, sponsors [crosstalk 00:12:48].
Carl: I'm sure you've had it. Yeah, where you're just like, "Okay, Hey, guess this isn't' a fit. We're going to move on."
Gene: Yeah, and they're like, "Wait, no." Especially with sponsorships, because it goes through 18 layers of people. There's one person that's in control of it but there's 18 people that have to sign off on the money.
Carl: And they all thought they approved everything the previous October but your event hadn't been announced so now they want to be a part of it, but they've got to go back and they've got to figure out what they're not going to do so they can get the money for what you're doing.
Gene: And this is something that's not directly related to the email, the magic email stuff, but I think it is related, and that's that time is different in different organizations. The time it takes you to do something or respond to someone or whatever is vastly different in different businesses and organizations and depending on task. It's just not as important or especially with government, shit moves really slow and the federal government is even slower. It's just how it is.
Carl: Yeah. This is hilarious because it's got me thinking about so many different movies or even think about the Flash or think about Loki where the time variants' authority, where people move in different speeds and... It was a Star Trek. That's what it was. And so, you see things happen, but you don't see the people because they're moving so fast. I think you just nailed it, right? For us, we're moving at hyper speed because we need to get this in the door because it's going to mean so much so that we can survive another three to six months whereas they're moving slowly and they're like, "You just called me five minutes ago, even though it's been five days," because this is not their main job in most places.
Gene: Yep, and this usually takes a month. Yeah.
Carl: Yeah, and even though they may have said "Yes," the other one that happens all the time is they think they're going to get the yes any minute now so they don't want to reply with a-
Gene: Still waiting.
Carl: ... "Hey, I appreciate your patience." They want to say, "Yeah, we're a go," but they've got to wait. When you send that magic email, when you send that email that gives them only one option, which is to stop you from closing the opportunity, and we always call it the takeaway before I heard the magic email. It was just like, "Hey, it doesn't look like this is a fit. We're going to go ahead and move on." Then that's when they're just like, "We are minutes away," which is probably again, days or weeks, but to them... You cracked it, Gene.
Gene: I'm a genius.
Carl: I am going to have to call Luther and tell him that unfortunately, the co-hosting spot is not available because Gene Crawford nailed it.
Gene: I filled it.
Carl: You did.
Gene: I like it. I like it.
Carl: You did.
Gene: You watch Rick and Morty?
Carl: Actually, I'm just going to ghost Luther at this point but yeah, I've totally watched Rick and Morty. Yeah.
Gene: The season premiere episode is all about time. It's really funny. I can't wait for you to see it.
Carl: There you go.
Gene: If you've seen it-
Carl: Maybe we can watch it here.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Bring it up on the screen.
Gene: We could, and we'll just watch Rick and Morty. Our ratings will go through the roof.
Carl: It will be a reaction video.
Gene: All right, so-
Carl: That's what they want. Two white guys watching Rick and Morty. Oh my God.
Gene: All right. I'm intrigued by this. I want to call it a awesome link, hot link of the week or whatever-
Carl: Gene-
Gene: ... this 50 things keeping you from scaling your agency.
Carl: It was the hot link. No, because we have a hot take. Can't be the hot link. You've got a hot link and a hot take? Okay. You know what? This was the popular link of the week.
Gene: Popular link.
Carl: Pop link.
Gene: Popular link. I like it.
Carl: Popular link, and it [crosstalk 00:16:42] was... And this is a long time Bureau member, Peter Kang, who runs Barrel up in New York, he wrote this and he dropped in the Bureau Slack. We have a channel called Share and we have a self-promotion channel. And it was just one of those things for me when I was looking at it that I was like, "Yeah." I mean, they're 50 things listed-
Gene: Yeah, it [crosstalk 00:17:11].
Carl: ... that holds you from scaling your agency, right? For those of you not watching the video, they can't see when Gene pops that up-
Gene: Subscribe to the newsletter-
Carl: Subscribe to the newsletter-
Gene: .. and then follow along.
Carl: ... and then you're good. But Peter wrote an article called 50 Things Keeping You from Scaling Your Agency. Okay. And he's got some other articles linked from this so it's a really great resource and that's why in the newsletter, I mean, it was far and away the most popular link.
Gene: That's awesome.
Carl: But what I love is that he also categorized these into three categories, or he calls them themes, right? And these themes are the main reasons why you struggle to scale your shop, and I have to say there are very few of these I would push back on. I think one of the things that is teased out in those 50 is that we have an inferiority about the stuff that we're doing.
Gene: Yeah, the three, the fear, lack of discipline and lack of systems and process, those cut deep, bro.
Carl: They do cut deep and those themes that he puts the 50 in. But when you look at fear, I think one of the things... For me, I loved Engine when we were four people. I mean, I did. We were four for most of the early years, and then we grew and it was great. We were around eight to 12, then we got up to 40, and we were able to do stuff we could never do before, right? I mean, that was a thing, but I loved that size. Now here's the thing. We struggled financially when we were four people because everybody was making the money. I think that when you look at fear, I think a lot of times we don't look to scale because we're worried it's going to take more time. We're worried we don't have what it takes to run a big place. We left a big place so we don't want to do it. Again, that's fear-based because we think we're going to build where we left. But yeah, I think fear is-
Gene: It's a big one.
Carl: ... just a huge one and the responsibility of all these people and their mortgages and their families, that was ultimately what burnt me out at Engine was worrying, waking up in the middle of the night knowing that something didn't happen and thinking that I was going to impact somebody else's life. That's just a tough thing.
Gene: And that fear one, there's a lot that relate... I don't know if he did it equally or not, but there's a lot of them that relate to that. I'd encourage everybody to read through those and really do an honest gut check. It's even one and two person shops all the way up to the 40 or whatever. I worked for a company that had 300 employees and even at that level, the CEO was approving expenses as low as a hundred bucks.
Carl: Yep, I-
Gene: I remember thinking like, "What the fuck? Dude, there's 300 people here. What do you care what laptop I buy? Just give me a budget. Give everyone a budget and let them just deal with their shit." But no, he had to sign off on everything and I think it was because he had a fear of letting go of that particular part because that's what he did early on and he felt like his value was tied to making those decisions when that's a minuscule decision.
Carl: Yeah. No, I totally agree.
Gene: It was a $20 million a year company. A $900 laptop is not going to... If that breaks your business, you got deeper problems than you approving that line item.
Carl: Yeah, that's definitely... If somebody's holding onto stuff at that level, especially if you're that size, both in terms of financially and humans-
Gene: And the moral of the story is, they not around anymore.
Carl: That's right.
Gene: I mean, it's something to learn there.
Carl: They had some challenges because if you're also doing all of that, you're not guiding the ship because you're busy shoveling coal. And also, that's really bad for the environment so you might want to rethink your business model.
Gene: Go solar, yeah.
Carl: That's horrible. But then lack of systems, or lack of discipline-
Gene: Lack of discipline, yeah.
Carl: ... I think I definitely had that one because I came into the web when it was that whole lifestyle concept and I was like, "Maybe I won't work today."
Gene: Maybe I'll play Warcraft for three months in a row and almost lose my business. I never did that.
Carl: No, no. I wasn't a Warcraft player, but I definitely did the video game thing instead of working. I mean-
Gene: Or when you're at the four or five person stage and you're all playing the video game.
Carl: Yeah, or your round robining and whoever loses has to work while the others get to keep playing. That's what we used to do.
Gene: That's so smart. That's how you get rich.
Carl: Yeah, we were playing Guitar Hero, and if you lost, you had to go back and work and then the next person would come up and you would just go through the day like that. And that's not just lack of discipline. That's just having fun. But that was-
Gene: That's being awesome.
Carl: That was why people wanted to be us. But then you get to that moment of fear where it's like, all of this could go away and suddenly you're disciplined for two days. But the ongoing discipline, and I think the systems and processes, that's the other one, lack of systems and processes, I think comes right in there. If you're not disciplined, you're not going to have those systems and processes and we're working on this with the digital agency maturity model. You get up to about 25 people, 20 to 25. Your old system of just everybody knowing everything doesn't work, right? You suddenly have to have new procedures. You have to have a talent pipeline, as well as a business pipeline. You're going to have some people that are rolling over.
Carl: You're going to have all this type of stuff and that, for a lot of people, I think... I can't remember who said this originally, but the person who got us here is not necessarily the person that's going to get us there. A lot of times when you're the person who founded something and you get into the 20's in terms of the number of people, maybe you're not supposed to be running it anymore. I think that was definitely a case with me.
Gene: Huh. That's interesting. Yeah, the systems thing, that can also... I mean, the whole fear thing can really get in your way of exploring some of those systems and putting those things in place because you're not going to want to let go of that stuff.
Carl: And you don't want to feel stupid. And so, when you start reading-
Gene: Or useless.
Carl: ... about these other ways and you're like, "Eh." I mean, honestly, Engine took off and started doing great the less I was involved. And I think it hurt, but that's great too. It's definitely one of those things, but I want to thank Peter, and I'll make sure that he knows that we spent some time on this because I thought it was a great... It's a gut check.
Gene: It really is. Everybody should go through this. I don't know. I don't have any experience of running a business for any amount of time, 20 and over people as an organization, but a lot of this still feels... Everybody should read through this and take stock of where you are and maybe just a little couple of points list of shit I need to work on because-
Carl: Because of Gene.
Gene: ... I did.
Carl: Gene, it's come to that time in the show where we do our hot takes.
Gene: Hot takes.
Carl: Now it was not a hot link. There was a pop link, popular link. This is the hot take. Gene-
Gene: Hot take.
Carl: ... what's your hot take of the week?
Gene: Hot take of the week. I like the vacation link.
Carl: That was the number two right behind by 12 clicks. But yeah, the-
Gene: No, it's a big issue and it ties into everything we've been talking about, and that's, I don't know. You get this hero syndrome where you're the guy that runs, or the gal that runs everything. Everything goes through me because I'm awesome and I make it happen. But then how in the hell do you go on vacation?
Carl: Well, do you do it because you think you're awesome or you do it because you're worried everybody's going to find out you're holding on by a thread?
Gene: Well, whatever reason.
Carl: But yeah-
Gene: Whatever reason. I mean, whatever reason, it's still wrapped in your ego with whatever that is. You're micro-managing because you're the only one that can do it. You're micromanaging because you're scared somebody's going to mess it up. Whatever the thing that's driving that ego, it's going to keep you from having a good vacation, I promise. How [crosstalk 00:25:54] many vacations have you spent with your family at some point huddled away on your laptop, answering bullshit, calling people, texting them, while you're like, "I'm coming to the pool. Y'all just wait," or whatever?
Carl: Oh no. For me, I always wait until they're busy doing something.
Gene: And then you just [crosstalk 00:26:11] drift away? Yeah.
Carl: Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. And it's always like... I mean, even last night, I got home and Alyssa, who's 18, she's like, "Do you have to work?" And I was like, "No."
Gene: But I'm going to think about it while your doing your thing.
Carl: But you know what I say now, which is really the truth? There's stuff I'd like to do, but honestly I'd rather hang out with you. That article really just-
Gene: Yeah, it made me think about all that stuff and I'm at a point in my life now where for the first time in forever, past couple of years, I've taken vacations and genuinely, never worked on anything. I wound up working on my own stuff. I wrote my own blog posts and thought about my own other things as opposed to some client needing some shit done. It was awesome. It was awesome. I never experienced it before and I can't count how many vacations... We spent a lot of money, traveled really far to some location, and then I've just spent 80% of the time working on some shit.
Carl: In the hotel room.
Gene: Yeah, wherever. Up before they get up and then they're up and you put it away for a little while and then you're tired and you're cranky because you've been working and you're like, "Y'all haven't done shit." It's the whole thing.
Carl: You tell your family they haven't done shit?
Gene: No. No, no, no. But it's a problem. Then after a while, it's like you're the guy that never... You're never there.
Carl: What's the snarky thing you ever said to your family because you had to work and they wanted to do something else?
Gene: Oh no, no, no. I don't even remember. I would never do that. That's a good way to get your ass beat. I've done it. I've worked. I've made people mad, but I'm not stupid enough to poke the bear and make [inaudible 00:28:08].
Carl: Well, I am and I'll say something like, "Well, I thought it might be nice to pay for this." Gene, I will tell you that does not end well on any level.
Gene: I do see you have all your teeth. That's impressive.
Carl: I did. These were replaced recently, but yes.
Gene: Damn. That's exactly what would happen to me, like ka-slap. Yeah, that's pretty good, man. You got a set.
Carl: Yeah, I felt bad about that one.
Gene: Well, yeah, but it's-
Carl: I mean, I stand by it, but I shouldn't have said it that way.
Gene: Oh man. The myth of like, "I'll take this project so we can pay for a vacation." That's awesome. You're just telling yourself a lie.
Carl: You know what? You just have to keep feeding the beast and that's just what's going to happen.
Gene: That's all it is. That's all it is. Go through the other list too, the 50 reasons of scaling your agency, whatever, we do it to ourselves, man, and I think a lot of it is ego-driven and as much as we are bitching about like, "Well I'm on vacation. I'm going to work," I think we still like it. There's something inside of all of us that run these firms, agencies or whatever that we like it and it feels good, even though it's pissing everybody off or whatever. It's our own fault.
Carl: It feels like we're needed and being needed is one of those things... I remember reading this whole... It was an article about people who are paranoid and the reason they're paranoid, for this segment of people who are paranoid, is that they would rather think there were people out to get them then nobody cared. They would rather be paranoid to the point that they're scared to open a door than they would be to think that-
Gene: It doesn't matter, right.
Carl: ... nobody even knows they exist. They create a world where there are people who are out to get them because at least those people care enough to spend their time trying to get them.
Gene: I believe it.
Carl: How sad is that?
Gene: I believe it. It's funny. It's funny, man. What you got? You got anything? Was it that one for you too?
Carl: My hot take of the week?
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Why no, it wasn't, Gene. I'll tell you my hot take of the week, and this really does come again... Peter, we should have you on the show. It came from reading that and thinking about Engine and thinking about the Bureau and thinking about things that I've been instrumental in putting out into the world, right? I may not have created them. I didn't do it by myself, but I was definitely part of it. I think what it was for me this week when I started looking at all this, and also when I think about 2022, it's that things fall apart when we stop creating and we start protecting. We get to this point where like, "Oh, this is pretty good. I don't want to screw this up. I'm going to start worrying about what happens if this comes to fruition," instead of "What would be really cool now," right?
Carl: It's like when you get to this point and... I tell everybody this, because I think it's completely true. You are at a better place in your life to succeed right now than you've ever been before. This is the time where you can make the best decisions because you know the most, you've experienced the most and you have the most wisdom you've ever had. Why would you start protecting stuff instead of continuing to create it? For me, that was really it. I journal and I went three pages deep on how I need to stop worrying about what happens if stuff falls apart and start building whatever's next.
Gene: That's interesting because that's where-
Carl: I win.
Gene: You did. That's where we all start, right? We've made the music album analogy, I think, on other shows before, and you always disagree and you come back with something witty about second albums. But I'll stand by it and say that the first album that a band puts out is awesome and usually the second one sucks, maybe the third or fourth one. But in the case of some of these bands that have been around forever, they have the sound that they've engineered and they protect and things have to sound like us. And that's why their music starts to suck because they're protecting that business instead of where they started, which is literally, "Fuck it. I don't know. We're just going to throw some shit out there and see if everybody likes it."
Carl: I mean, if you look at, and you can't really see it, but Prince there or the Beatles, they didn't do the same thing every time.
Gene: That's right.
Carl: Right, especially Prince. When Around the World in a Day came out, which I think was right after Purple Rain, people were really pissed because it was such an experimental concept album and I had friends who felt like Prince had abandoned them. They were emotionally distraught. And I was just like, "This is different," and it grew on me and I started to like it and then he just moved on into other crazy stuff.
Gene: And that's the genius of Prince. That's the genius of a true creative.
Carl: They make it for themselves, right? They do get to that point. If you look at TikTok right now, there's so many videos around, "Here's how the algorithm works."
Gene: Yeah. Playing it safe [inaudible 00:33:26].
Carl: I mean, it's fine if there's certain tweaks you want to do, but if you have to create the same type of content every single time... Like the video I watched today, it's like, "If you do a dog video one day and a workout video the next day, the algorithm doesn't know who you are." Well, you know what? I'm not doing this for the damned algorithm.
Gene: Yeah, who gives a shit?
Carl: I'm doing it for the money once I please the damn algorithm.
Gene: Think about our industry, right? This is going back. The kids aren't going to know what I'm talking about. Hang with me, but how many agencies or small shops or whatever do you know that stopped to exist because they couldn't make the transition from building flash-based websites to CSS-only based websites? They could not make that transition because there was a very specific type of a group or former agency or whatever that did those flash-based websites, right? A lot of them just went, [inaudible 00:34:21] because they could not get out of that workflow or whatever it was that had them there and they just couldn't exist. And then all the new shops that embraced web standards and stuff just ate them alive.
Carl: Yeah. I mean, no, that's absolutely right. I mean, Engine was one of those flash shops, but then we were lucky enough to have Travis Schmeiser come on the team and he was a standards advocate. Taught substandards because he was bored and thought it would be a good way to keep himself fresh and then we rebuilt half our portfolio of flash sites into standard compliance sites. To your point, yeah, we saw there was a better way. We saw we'd been hurting clients. We didn't realize it. Although I will say there's nothing like a "Mch, mch, mch, mch, mch," intro.
Gene: Or the tiny little open site, boop.
Carl: All that stuff.
Gene: Every website on the planet but-
Carl: It was entertainment.
Gene: ... you saw it or you listened to someone who saw it, you took the risk, you spent the money and made the effort to revamp and re-engineer some stuff and I mean, you succeeded because of it. A lot of places didn't.
Carl: We saw some of the clients that we wanted weren't going to be able to use a flash site and that was the thing. We were never looking at where we were. We were always looking at where we wanted go and we always wanted clients to feel like they were reaching up to get to us, not like we were reaching down to get to them and that always worked. But yeah, no, to your point, that's an excellent example. It's-
Gene: Yeah, it only sticks with me because I saw up... I mean, I don't know what it was. The people I hung out with or the groups I was in, I saw so many people lose their freelance or lose their shops. And I was lucky. I was same like you. I was working with a guy who it was, "CSS is for smarty pants. Flash is for morons," and I was like, "Okay, I don't know what you mean, but show me." And just looking up-
Carl: What about moron pants?
Gene: Yeah, moron pants. But that's what it felt like but it sucked. It sucked to watch that.
Carl: All right, a little story to round out this episode. Okay. When you were getting out of the flash side of the business... We still did it for bars and entertainment and stuff like that, but we put this little video together that picked on a flash company called 2Advanced.
Gene: I remember those guys.
Carl: 2Advanced, and it basically was a pitch session with a new client. It was 2Advanced and it was one person going, "Mch, mch, mch, mch," and the other one was moving a comp around really fast. And so, we do this and we decided not to put it out there. We never put it out or whatever, but I was really happy with it and I would show it to anybody who wanted to see it. And we're at South by Southwest and the room I was supposed to get, it just fell apart.
Carl: And so, a friend that I had, had a condo, but I was going to have to share it with a few people. I was like, "That's totally cool." The first person that I meet is this bodybuilder-looking dude, a little bit different, all this kind of stuff, and he was like, "What do you do?" And I told him, and I was like, "We're a flash shop and now we're going standards," and he was like, "Yeah, we're a flash shop." And I was like, "Oh, I want to show you this video. We think it's funny, but we never did anything." He was the founder of 2Advanced.
Gene: He was like, "[crosstalk 00:37:45]. Great to meet you."
Carl: He literally just looked at me and walked away and I'm lucky because he was a-
Gene: A big dude.
Carl: He wasn't tall, but he was a big dude. And so yeah, he was like a honey badger waiting to happen. And yeah, just sometimes I think things are funny, Gene, and other people-
Gene: They don't.
Carl: Not so much.
Gene: Well-
Carl: Here we are.
Gene: There we go. All right, man.
Carl: Love and respect, Gene.
Gene: Yes, sir. All you guys and gals, get the newsletter please.
Carl: You're going to catch hell for this gal's thing. That's just not a thing.
Gene: You don't say gals?
Carl: No.
Gene: What do you say?
Carl: I say humans. I say men and women.
Gene: All right. Humans of the Bureau.
Carl: Humans of the Bureau. Take us to your leader because he's damn well not here.
Gene: Get this email and stuff. All right.
Carl: Sign up for things.
Gene: Yes. See y'all.
