Lessons You Only Learn From Talking with Clients In Person

[00:00:00] Richard Gaffin: Hey folks. Welcome to the Ecommerce Playbook Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Gaffin, Director of Digital Product Strategy here at Common Thread Collective. And I'm joined, uh, after having seen him in person by Mr. Taylor Holiday, our CEO here at Common Thread. How you doing, man?

[00:00:13] Taylor Holiday: Doing well. Yeah. I've got my, uh, my social, uh, time on my whoop was at an all time high last week, you know, really racking up some good social hours out with the humans.

[00:00:24] Richard Gaffin: there's a social hours thing on Whoop.

[00:00:26] Taylor Holiday: Well, like the, I, I do the journal at the end of each day where I fill out a bunch of qualitative questions

[00:00:31] Richard Gaffin: Oh yeah.

[00:00:32] Taylor Holiday: and one of 'em is like, were you socially fulfilled today?

Something, some version like that, and then like, how many hours did you spend socializing to understand like how that relates to my general wellbeing. Um, so I was, yeah, just really maxing out the extrovert this last week.

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[00:02:16] Richard Gaffin: That's awesome. I, I mean, I felt the same way. It's just like being amongst people is like, kind of reminds you that that's sort of what you're supposed to be doing as a human being. My takeaway from my whoop strap was that when I went golfing with everybody on Thursday, it told me I burned 1800 calories, which can't be right because I was driving the cart the whole time, but.

[00:02:33] Taylor Holiday: Well, I mean, there's a lot. You took a lot of swings though, in fairness.

[00:02:36] Richard Gaffin: That's true. That's true. I won't share what I, uh, what I shot in that round,

[00:02:40] Taylor Holiday: Yeah.

[00:02:40] Richard Gaffin: it's, uh, you know.

[00:02:41] Taylor Holiday: Well, you burned a lot of calories. I think you did share enough. You've shared enough.

[00:02:44] Richard Gaffin: exactly. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'll just

[00:02:46] Taylor Holiday: Yeah,

[00:02:47] Richard Gaffin: lost both complimentary sleeves of balls almost immediately, and, uh, you know, in the walking round and searching and hacking down the fairway, I may well have burned 1800 calories, but,

[00:02:56] Taylor Holiday: it is. It is kind of crazy though. Like one of my reflections, sorry, we're gonna jump into this more formally, but just right off the bat was like, we used to do this every day. That's kind of crazy how much we lost still. I still, it's still kind of one of those things I don't think we'll ever really understand is that like, that was our life every day, seeing each other, hanging out, having little moments, going to lunch, joking around, and that is just so gone.

And, and it's like when you get back together, you realize how, like it was a very rich, fulfilling part of this experience that, uh, you, you do miss on these zoom boxes.

[00:03:30] Richard Gaffin: No, totally. The quantitative, it's hard to quantify like what that impact is, but the qualitative experience of it is so powerful that it's just clear that there's, there's something there. I mean, definitely like ability to brainstorm creative, I mean, that's a cliche, but like getting in a room with people and coming up with new ideas and direction.

That type of thing is so. Clearly better in those in

[00:03:51] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, like and yeah, for sure. Whatever we put in front of them can be.

[00:03:55] Richard Gaffin: segue into what we wanna talk about today, which at this point,

[00:03:58] Taylor Holiday: In the, in the iron end contracts. Right? It's like it's

[00:04:02] Richard Gaffin: speech at our SI

[00:04:03] Taylor Holiday: uhcontract

[00:04:04] Richard Gaffin: summit over the

[00:04:04] Taylor Holiday: and we also like,

[00:04:05] Richard Gaffin: the reason we were all in

[00:04:06] Taylor Holiday: we just have.

[00:04:07] Richard Gaffin: Um, and so what we wanted to do is kind of, uh, distill some takeaways from that. I think the first one that we want to talk about is directly related to this observation around being in person, which is that there is value to, as a client, visiting your vendors in person and of course us as an agency, vice versa.

Getting that face time, getting that sort of like type of experience that you have with your coworkers sometimes, let's say if you're in office or you're going meeting, that experience with your clients and vendors. So, uh, speak to that a little bit, Taylor.

[00:04:36] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, so these are. Sort of cliche tropes, but these things tend to exist like that for a reason. There may be another word for them is wisdom. Um, is that in a meeting every week with a client and a vendor, there's a very specific context for that relationship. It's logistical, it's an evaluation. It's this con, it's a very, um, you, you come in with a disposition that you're either on the defensive or you're talking very process oriented.

In logistics, it is not very relational. It just isn't. And if that's the only form of relational fabric that gets built, um, then the relationship I think has a certain. Tension that underpins it.

[00:05:18] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:18] Taylor Holiday: least that's what I've heard from other people and my personal experience in it. And what I've found is that this event, so we have a client summit where we bring as many clients as can make it.

We had people from Australia, Canada, Vermont, Nebraska, Oregon, literally all over the world, came and flew in to hang out with us this past week. And what I found is that it just creates. A very different context. So we open with like a mini nine hole golf course and drinks on the top of this thing at, at this cool hotel overlooking the ocean.

And right away you're asking people to do something that's gonna be awkward and they're gonna look stupid playing golf, most of us, right? You're gonna have a couple drinks and relax and all of a sudden you're setting the expectation that this is not our normal Zoom weekly performance evaluation thing.

This is like much more human than that. And what I found that unlocks. Is that I get the truth of you, who you are, what you care about, and your relationship to me and what's been frustrating that you've disliked or liked way more clearly than I do almost anywhere else. You're just, suddenly, I'm saying you as if I'm speaking to you, potential customers or customers, um, you're way more honest and it's really helpful, and all of a sudden I get to know you in a way that allows me to think about how I might better.

Form my service, uh, to your desires. And you know, there's a lot of talk in our industry about going to visit your manufacturer and building relationship for the sake of negotiating a better deal or building humanity. But like that is true with every vendor that you have. And an agency contract is probably one of the bigger line items for you.

I would go do it. Go visit them in person. And if you're an agency, listen, create spaces for people to visit you in person. There's just something that you can create in that setting alone that I don't think you can actually create on a Zoom call alone.

[00:07:06] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, and it's, and it's difficult to quantify, but one thing that I've noticed in the moments when I've been able to. Have like, sort of like a relational meeting with a client in person is that I'll talk to them about like, Hey, what's your favorite TV show? Or whatever. And then the next time I see 'em on a Zoom call, I'll find that my ability to communicate them about all the other stuff is suddenly better just because I know them a little bit more, uh, in a more kind of human relational way.

[00:07:30] Taylor Holiday: I think about like how stupid like inside jokes are as a form of relational development. But like we can all make a little joke. Like I think about the team that came out from Crop Shop from Australia and like that was their, one of their first times in America. So

[00:07:43] Richard Gaffin: Oh wow.

[00:07:44] Taylor Holiday: one of the things that we did is that they had like never seen a cyber truck apparently

[00:07:48] Richard Gaffin: Oh

[00:07:48] Taylor Holiday: in, in, in Australia there aren't cyber trucks, I dunno, get over there, Elon, whatever.

But one of the people like had one and they thought it was literally hilarious. They asked if they could do a photo shoot in it and take pictures and they said when they thought pulled up, at first they thought the military was there. And so. There's this like little thing that we'll be able to use all the time as a fun connection point, or I always now my like ongoing joke is like, how can I give them the most American experience ever?

And so we took them to Disneyland. They're like, all you have to do now is just get me the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders and we're set. You know, but, but that's like an example of like, we've never. Conversed that way, you know? Um, so I think there's just so much opportunity to know and build with people in a way that, um, is super valuable.

And so go and visit your vendors. That's the, uh, that's my, uh.

[00:08:35] Richard Gaffin: Yeah.

[00:08:36] Taylor Holiday: Push to brands and then agencies like create space for people to come see them, invest the money. The other thing is like, dude, I, I still, we're still meeting our team members for the first time. Like,

[00:08:45] Richard Gaffin: Yeah.

[00:08:46] Taylor Holiday: like Taylor on your team is new. She was there for the first time.

She was apparently disappointed to find out I'm not as tall as she thought I was. I heard at dinner like that got leaked by Corey. But, but yeah, like I, it's, it's really cool to actually see these people who you have this like massive shared life experience with,

[00:09:03] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:04] Taylor Holiday: no real human connection.

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[00:09:31] Richard Gaffin: Totally. I was just gonna say tangentially on the, uh, the Australians Visiting America thing, my favorite one of those is, uh, meeting British people who really want to drink out of red solo cups because they don't have 'em in the uk and that's what they see on tv.

[00:09:44] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, that's, that's it.

[00:09:45] Richard Gaffin: little thing that we're used to, that they are just mythologized for some

[00:09:48] Taylor Holiday: Well, you come to Orange County and like all we are is just this like giant meme of Laguna Beach Real Housewives and, and uh, everything else that they sort of have constructed in their heads about who we are. So it's kind of fun being a character to somebody. You're like, oh yeah, we'll play this up for you, see what we can do.

[00:10:04] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, yeah. Totally.

[00:10:05] Taylor Holiday: but yeah, so there's that. And then like it got us a bunch of good feedback about the business experience that they're having. And I'll give you an example of one thing that just continues to just be really obvious to me is that businesses. Don't know how to handle the idea of creative volume, like this is, this is such a broadly distributed ideal.

Um, but it is so unclear how to actually systematize it. Is that it is so obvious to me that people conceptually have a sort of a agreed. Um, but don't know how to operationalize the idea. And candidly, I I, it's one of the things we struggle with entirely too. It's really actually a hard concept to figure out how to design a system that's going to output for you a consistent set of diverse quality of creative.

And I think it's very clear that it's like an under-resourced part of systems still buy a lot and so that it's like helping me think about the shape of our service and sows and things like that. So, uh, these are all. Important pieces, uh, of discovery, of seeing a bunch of people in one place at once and watch what they respond to.

Like as we go through a topic and we bring up X and then you can kind of get a sense of the response. Um,

[00:11:14] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:14] Taylor Holiday: thing that always is surprising to me is we always do a session on like leadership or employee development and like how much that's a big pain and how much people wanna talk to each other, especially in safe.

Spaces about their challenges with their employee bases and things like that. Like it's just there's these certain nerves that you can watch get touched in person. Whereas when I send an email or do a podcast, the feedback isn't the same. I might get a couple comments on YouTube, a couple of you might send an email, but I can literally watch a nerve get touched and the crowd and go, Ooh, that's like a thing.

Okay. There's more there for us to go after.

[00:11:44] Richard Gaffin: I'm curious to dig into that a little bit more just about, about the nerves that were touched. So obviously you mentioned creative volume. and you mentioned, uh, just sort of like general, like leadership and, and organizational construction, that type of thing. So maybe unpack especially that second one a little bit, like without any as names or any specifics or whatever, like what were the, did you feel like were the biggest pain points or struggles across our clientele around let's say leadership?

[00:12:12] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, it's funny, it's in, in the same way that saying like. I think a lot of creative is important. People like have a players on your team. It's like another thing. It's like, okay, sure. Um, and so Dane does this really good job of sort of extracting out an honest response to, are there people in your head right now that he uses this framework of like detractors versus, um, advocates?

And can you, in your mind, sort of picture. And break your employee base into these groups. Uh, two threes and fives is like this metaphor that he'll use the rule of 10. Uh, look it up if you can ask jet GBT if you wanna understand more about that. But the point is just like people very quickly can do that, they can, they can have in their minds.

Groups of employees that are like really meaningfully contributing and impactful to the organization. Those that are kind of in the middle and those that are like detractors that are actually pulling the organization away. And we have this, uh, I say we now I'm sort of lumping myself into this cohort of founders or people in managers or in charge of it groups of humans.

You like, allow this thing to persist. That is like, so obviously like it's not benefiting them, it's not benefiting us, but it just, there's this like story you make up about why it needs to continue. Um, and I think everybody has that experience and so it's a very shared experience amongst leaders to be dealing with those kinds of problems.

Whereas like the incrementality of YouTube. May not matter to A CEO 'cause they're the product person who's there or they're into finance. Like those topics don't kind of land in the same way as like human management issues amongst leaders are pretty broadly shared. And so I think you see that come to life in that kind of setting.

[00:13:53] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, that's interesting. And also I think given, know, some of the conversations I've had on this podcast with various, uh. Entrepreneurs and and leaders is that seems to me like the biggest unlock of all of this is figuring that out, like figuring out your relationships with your employees, your relationship with your org structure, having everybody own something, having clearly responsibilities, that type of thing.

In some ways, yeah, that's gonna be I mean, it is significantly more important than any sort of smaller tactical thing that we can talk about.

[00:14:21] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, I mean, probably a topic for a bigger episode, but I think that it might be true that the biggest fundamental flaw of founders and CEOs is. The, uh, how important they make themselves in the lives of their people, um, and how that affects their ability to manage them, honestly. And it's like, it, it masquerades as empathy and kindness, but it's really ego and like I, that's like, I think a huge problem.

I.

[00:14:48] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Yeah, totally. So this would be like the, the situation where the CEO, let's say, has a team of people around them whose job is to just manage their mood or something like that. as opposed to creating a system where people can be transparent with the guy on the top. Is that essentially what you're talking about here?

[00:15:06] Taylor Holiday: And I think that I, let's say you have somebody that's like underperforming and you're kind of afraid to let them go because you think. You're like really important to them that this job is so important to them and that like if they don't have you, they'll be like destitute or lost.

[00:15:26] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:26] Taylor Holiday: But the reality is like you're actually like.

We, the organization, are totally replaceable in the same way most employees are. Like,

[00:15:33] Richard Gaffin: Yeah.

[00:15:33] Taylor Holiday: are lots of jobs. These people are competent, they're talented, they land on their feet most of the time. And in fact, they'll probably go somewhere where they're thriving 'cause they won't be unhappy or they won't be, they won't have the distrust that they have with you, or you might be failing to manage them appropriately in lots of ways.

And so those kinds of relational dynamics, like I just have overplayed my importance in the person's life a lot of times. Um. And, uh, CTC is, I like to think it's a special place. Like, um, I feel good about it, but in reality there are like innumerable companies in the world that do good things. Like, and so it is just not, uh, implausible that someone could find a better option for themselves.

Um, and that if I'm dissatisfied and they're dissatisfied that that relationship doesn't need to persist. It's a lot like dating in that way where it's like. If we break up, we actually both might be better off. And that happens more often than I thought it would initially. 'cause I thought I was like really special and really important and if you lost me it'd be really bad for you.

But,

[00:16:35] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Well a, a topic deserving of its own

[00:16:38] Taylor Holiday: yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:39] Richard Gaffin: um, to jump back to the, to the summit like any other. Kind of like you say, like key sort of like pressure points or moments where everybody's eyes lit up. Uh, kind of anything else, any other takeaways there to highlight?

[00:16:51] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, I think the creative thing, like I said, it continues to be this question of just, uh, and I've talked about this before, maybe on the podcast or not, but, but the reality is like we designed. Um, a legacy inside of infrastructure, inside of consumer businesses in particular for design production that don't meet the modern playbook.

And that's what I've just realized is that like, if you think about design inside of a, especially larger, like a consumer enterprise, brands like the, the system used to be sort of like there's a design request. That could be for a point of sale display. It could be for like a packaging insert. It could be for a magazine ad.

It could be for a television ad. It could be for a Facebook organic post, or it could be for a Facebook ad. And those are all sort of just like design tasks that go into the queue and come out the other side when the available design resources have time to do it. And a lot of design infrastructure got built that way.

Like a lot of it. And the reality is like now take that system and jam in an ideology that says like, make 500 ads a month that are completely diverse and need to be live really fast. And like they just like ram into each other over and over and there's no amicable solution. And the reality is that what I think about the, the creative needs.

Of the modern media playbook for advertising is it's shouldn't be likely. Single source is that diversity, uh, is really hard for one person to create. This is actually another thing I'm learning all the time, is that, um, as much as I could try to create a bunch of different ideas, the reality is that my worldview and bias lends itself towards a specific POV all the time, and it's usually my own.

And so I could try to. Think about designing rain gear for someone who lives in Seattle, and I could think about what it might be like to live in Seattle. I could go study or read or think about what other people say, but that will flow naturally out of a different source, I think, of someone who has that lived experience.

And so there's something about the actual diversity of the production pipeline in terms of how many different people do you have making things for you. That actually helps to solve the problem of both volume and diversity. And so I think, I think there's some things about how the system needs to be reconstructed to be pulling creative from lots of different sources and how you should build a pricing model that allows you to do that.

That I think is part of the solution that just hasn't been broadly circulated. Um, and it, and it shouldn't be that CTC is the sole solution and it shouldn't be that your internal team is the sole solution. I actually think this is a more collaborative process required to get to where people are trying to go.

[00:19:24] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, I mean, well it sounds like the ideal would be something like you, you brief out an ad concept and it goes to 500 people, each of whom create you one ad or something along those lines. You get 500 different takes, different perspectives, different, I dunno, something along those lines,

[00:19:38] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, that's like the extreme version of it. I think that's why creator content is like sort of this really good vehicle for that. 'cause that's fundamentally what it's doing is it's like sourcing from a variant group of creators. Whereas when you go into your design system, there's like. One designer like, so it's like the opposite.

You're asking one person to make 50 ads versus 50 people to make one ads

[00:19:56] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:56] Taylor Holiday: ad. And like those two different system designs I think are a big shift in how things occur. And I think the world is moving closer to the 50 and one or 50 and five versus the one and 250. Uh, and I think that's a big shift for how a lot of these organizations are built.

[00:20:14] Richard Gaffin: Cool. All right. Well, um. Yeah, I think if there's anything else that you wanna hit from in terms of summit takeaways, observations.

[00:20:24] Taylor Holiday: Um, I think we're gonna move it to twice a year. If you are interested in being a part of it. The other thing we wanna try and do is we wanna try and bring a little bit of potential client into this experience too overlapping, because I think it's really important to think about your experience with your agency as a partnership, as a relationship, and to get a sense of what the relationship with CTC would be like.

Um, that's interesting to you. We'd love to, to chat about it, I think. I think it's a really cool way to. Investigate us. Um, and to see other clients talk to them. Don't gotta talk to us, you can talk to them to meet the other employees. So you don't just hear from Taylor. A lot of people wanna meet the team, right?

And so if you think about the sales process that's like, okay, here comes, you know, Brian Skanky onto a call and he is gonna talk for 45 minutes. And it's like, okay, did you really learn a whole lot in that process? I always think it's kind of weird when people are like, I wanna meet the team first. It's like, is your actual capacity to interview them right now?

Like really? Hi. Like, do you really, are you really gonna get something substantive out of this conversation? Um, but I think that is a space where you could, you could actually sit at dinner next to the people you're going to potentially work with and get to know them a lot. Ask them questions, see how they think.

So I think there's a lot of reasons why those kinds of spaces as a potential customer could be really valuable too. So just more stuff we're thinking about. Um, yeah, creative is a pain, I think. I think the general sense is that. One of the things we hit on a lot, and if you listened to the speech last week, is that like, I believe we're in a recessionary environment for consumer products.

[00:21:56] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:57] Taylor Holiday: Um, and the way to win in that environment is to not pull back. It's to be courageous and push forward. And that takes, um, some confidence and clarity. And so how do you create that clarity and that leverage to do it? Um, that's what we're after and I think we're gonna keep on those themes for a bit.

[00:22:12] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Cool. Well if you wanna join us for the next one, this is one way to put it. Check us out, you know where to find us. Commentary co.com. Hit that hire us button. We would love to have a conversation about how we could potentially work together. Alright folks, I think that's gonna do it for us this week.

Um, take care of everyone. We will see you next time.