In The Thick of It

It never hurts to have somebody, an objective outsider with

fresh eyes to look at what you're doing and say,

hey, have you thought about maybe doing this instead?

I think that for me, specifically, that would have helped

had I had that partner or mentor much earlier on.

Welcome to In the Thick of It.

I'm your host, Scott Hollrah

On this episode, I had the pleasure of

sitting down with an old friend, Steve Durman.

He is the founder and creative

director of Four Man Furnace.

In our chat, we dove into

his background in the creative industry.

Starting with his early days as a graphic designer to

his time at big agencies like Rap Collins Worldwide.

Steve shares the challenges and joys of running his

own agency, from assembling teams of contractors to the

importance of creating work that not only looks good,

but accomplishes the client's business objectives.

We also discussed the impact of the pandemic on

his business and lessons learned along the way.

Welcome back to In the Thick of It.

Thank you.

Appreciate you coming over.

It was a long trek getting over to the office, right?

Yeah, I mean, when you set the meeting for two, I

figured, man, I better leave the office by at the latest,

155, so yeah, it wasn't too hard to get here your

whole, like, mile and a half from here.

I don't know if it's even that. It may not be.

Yeah, well, it's a shame that we don't see

each other more often, given how close we are.

I know we'll have to make a

point of, you know, it starts today.

Well, it starts today. All right. Sounds good.

Well, with me today is Steve

derman, founder of four man furnace.

Steve, why don't you tell us a

little bit about what you guys do?

Yeah, I mean, the easiest way to describe

it is we are a full service creative

agency for marketing, advertising, and branding.

So we like to say if you can click it, swipe

it, fold it, or mail it, we can do it.

That doesn't quite capture what our focus is these

days, but in general, that sums up our full

capabilities, which is print design, graphic design for print,

digital, online marketing, branding, event appearances or trade shows,

and those types of things.

We spend a lot of time focusing

these days on branding and video production.

To the extent that your contracts will allow

you, can you talk about some of the

types of customers that you work with?

Yeah, the details of the projects are under NDA,

but I can talk about all of our clients.

We have really good relationships with clients

across a lot of different industry verticals.

We were talking a little bit before you hit

record about one of our clients in the beverage

industry, balcony's distilling down in waco, Texas.

We've done some cheers to that.

Some really lovely video work for them.

We worked with Interactive Corp out of New York.

They are the kind of conglomerate company

that holds brands like Vimeo and Daily

Beast and College Humor and Angie's companies.

We also have worked a lot with Wyndham Hotels

and Resorts and their various brands on branding and

digital marketing and some video production there as well.

And the Texas FFA Foundation is a long

term client of ours, a nonprofit client.

We've done a lot of work for tremendous

volume of work for them, and it's all

really beautiful, lovely stuff, telling their story.

So, yeah, you can see it's.

Travel, hospitality, food and beverage, nonprofit.

Just big corporations. Yeah, exactly.

Across the board.

The common theme through all that work is really our

ability to take the story, take kind of the essence

of what the brand is or what the campaign or

initiative is trying to convey and really understand what are

the objectives this business is trying to accomplish.

We're not in the business of just creating art. Right.

We like to think that what we create is often

very artistic, but it's not in our line of work.

It's not just creating something that's beautiful for

the sake of creating something that's beautiful.

It also has to accomplish a business objective.

And so we like to call that work that works.

And so the common thread through all these different

clients is really that they've got a story to

tell, and they need to connect with an audience.

And we see Visual Communications as

the foundation for building authentic connections

between a brand and a consumer.

You mentioned at the start that

you've got a pretty diverse portfolio. Leandra.

I don't know if that was a Freudian slip.

No, sorry.

Very diverse portfolio of clients.

And you talk about Texas FFA to vimeo.

I mean, I don't know that you get much more broad

on the spectrum than agriculture to high tech video hosting.

Yeah.

I mean, some of the work we've done for

IAC is strictly commercial work or internal comms work.

Some of it is for their nonprofit IAC Fellows program,

which shares a lot of the same attributes as the

Texas FFA Foundation in the sense that they provide kind

of career and technical opportunities for high school and college

age students that give them these opportunities to set them

on a trajectory that gives them an advantage over not

participating in the program.

So all of the statistics on the Texas FFA

experience being beneficial to the future outcomes of a

high school student are similar to the benefits of

the Ise fellowship and the trajectory that it puts

those kids on in terms of future career success.

So we always find kind of common themes that we

can latch onto and leverage for new clients, if possible.

Sure. Yeah.

Outside of the actual creative side, do you guys get

into the media buying and placement, or is that kind

of left up to those not as well?

No, we have a firm understanding of not how

to do the media buying and the media placement,

but what the implications are on the creative that

we need to provide for those media buys.

But that's a completely unique skill set in and

of itself, and we've got some partners that we

reach out to as we need to for that.

If a client comes to us and says, hey, we

have an idea for a campaign, we need the creative,

and we need somebody to kind of plan the whole

program for us, we would bring partners to the table

for that, and we would handle the creative.

Okay, makes sense.

Well, let's go way back in time.

Let's just start with some early stuff.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in New Jersey, and yeah, it was kind of

growing up in the Northeast in a beach community in the was

my idea of, like it was just a really great experience.

I mean, I know it was New Jersey, so there's

always that, but it was a great experience growing up

and had a big Jersey Italian family, lots of cousins

and aunts and uncles, and it was just a really

kind of tight knit kind of vibe growing up. It was cool.

Does that mean that family gatherings were

big and boisterous and full of food? All of the above.

Yeah, it was great.

Every stereotype that you would imagine,

it was probably about 75% true. Yeah.

Stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. Yeah, exactly.

Did you grow up in public school? Private school?

A little bit of both.

I was in private school until about fifth grade,

and it was in fifth grade, we moved kind

of halfway across the state and in Texas, that's

a far journey in New Jersey.

It's like 45 minutes down the road, but we

moved about 45, 50 minutes away, and so went

into the public school system in about fifth grade.

Middle of fifth grade, yeah.

For our listeners that may be up in that area.

What cities were you?

The early years was kind of the central part of

New Jersey and Tom's River, and then we moved south

to Ocean City, summers Point, Atlantic City area.

I've known you for more than

15 probably not quite 20 years.

You made your way to Texas at some point.

How did you wind up down here?

It was kind of a whole sequence

of events that happened really pretty quickly.

I had graduated school with my degree in graphic design,

was working in Atlantic City in a casino in their

marketing department as their only in house designer.

And really, in that two years, probably learned more than

I did in four years of school about the design

industry and print production and all the things that I

actually use on the job from that point forward.

I wanted to get out of the in house creative

and get into an agency because I just knew I

would learn a lot more and a lot faster there.

There's not a big agency industry in South Jersey.

So I was looking actually to move out to California,

where one of my cousins was living for a period

of time, and as those plans were coalescing and I

was getting ready to out that way, he decided to

move back to New Jersey and so kind of pulled

the rug out from under me a little bit.

But at that same time, my dad took a job in Dallas,

and he was like, hey, I'm going to go down to Dallas.

And that's kind of the next chapter for us.

You're welcome to ride the coattails a little bit

and try it out and see if it sticks.

And here we are 23 years later.

So, yeah, came down with my

whole family, my sister, my parents.

We all moved down here at once in January of 2000. Wow.

Okay.

We've had a lot of growth, particularly in

the last few years, but you were probably

much on the early side compared to the

growth that we've had in more recent times.

So where did you go to college?

I went to what's now called Stockton University.

At the time.

It was Stockton State College.

It's a really small liberal arts school.

Actually, I can't speak to how I don't think it's

much larger now than it was back in the 90s,

but it's a really nice, intimate liberal arts college in

kind of like south southern part of central New Jersey,

just kind of tucked away in the Pine Barrens.

You wouldn't even see it if

you were driving down the highway.

One of the rules in that area, as

I recall, is because it's like a federal

preserve, they're not allowed to build structures that

are taller than the tops of the trees.

So all of the really tall buildings are

actually dug kind of into the ground.

And if it's a three or four story building, you walk

in on the third floor and then have to go down.

So it's kind of a cool little situation.

Their focus at the time, there were a lot

of people going there for visual arts and natural

conservation, like environmental sciences and things like that.

So what was school like for you? Was it easy?

Was it a challenge?

No, school was always pretty easy for me, I

think, in terms of inputs and outputs and formulas.

And for an art guy, I also kind of

have a very analytical, technical side of my brain.

And so school was always very like,

test taking was always easy for me.

There's a code and a pattern to

it that was always very simple.

And since much of school and a lot of secondary

education at the time as well, was just kind of

like passing tests, that was really easy for me.

When it got into more the artistic side,

that was a little more subjective, like portfolio

reviews and kind of more subjective creative analysis

by your teachers and professors.

That part was a little more challenging for me.

I had to do work.

I actually had to try.

And so that was nice. That was a challenge.

And that's really where I got to, I think, put the

majority of my effort was on those types of classes.

So I'm a little bit of an

outsider to your industry, but it's something

I've always been somewhat intrigued by.

And at different points, maybe closer to there's the

visual side, but then there's also the messaging side.

How much of your coursework focused on the

words and the story versus the visual art? None.

So for my degree in graphic design, some of

it was focused on the conceptual side of things,

but not the writing side of things.

It was all the visual side of things.

And so it's really been something

that I've learned on the job.

Being a good writer, or at least at the minimum

a good editor of copy, has been something that you're

I think it's part talent and part learned skill.

You learn what works.

And what we've learned over the last probably five

to eight years as we've made partnerships with other

people in the marketing industry who focus more on

behavioral economics of advertising, has really helped us go

a long way in terms of being able to

work with writers as well as generate copy ourselves.

That is kind of back to what I said earlier.

The work that works. Right.

We know that we can't get somebody to

change their behavior or take an action unless

we get them to feel something.

And so understanding kind of sometimes even subconsciously

what their goals are as it pertains to

a service or to a product.

And being able to craft compelling copy around that is

kind of a workflow that has become important to us

as creatives who work in the space of marketing and

who have to try to compel people to even just

stop and think about something, let alone make a decision.

The copy is an incredibly important part of what

we do, but it's been something that I've learned

as I went because it's not something they were

teaching graphic design majors in 1997.

When you started school, did you go into school

knowing that advertising was where you wanted to be,

or did you have a different bent post graduation?

My intention going into college was to actually be more

of an industrial designer, like working in I had wanted

to work in the aerospace industry, working kind of more

like engineering design for airplanes and jets and whatnot, and

quickly learn like one of the first classes I had

on that track was handwriting.

You know how when you see those blueprints and

schematics, it looks like the same guy wrote all

of the notes on all of them?

It's because they hammer into you.

This is how you write notes on a schematic.

You're learning a literally, yeah, you're

learning a font, a handwritten font.

And so I went through that class, and I

was just like, this isn't creative enough for me.

I still love the engineering side of things, but

this is not as kind of freewheeling and creative

as I had wanted it to be.

Did you start with physics and some

Intro to Engineering kind of classes?

I was just feeling it out freshman year.

I didn't take any physics or engineering.

I got out of that track pretty quick.

As soon as they were teaching me how to write in

a font, I was just like, I'm out of here.

What's this graphic design thing?

That seems a little bit more my speed. Okay.

And I guess before college, were you an artistic kid?

Yeah, I was very artistic.

Even in junior high and high school, I

was always anything art, drawing, illustration, and music.

But those were the two things I was really,

really interested in at that point in time.

And so, yeah, I was creating my own

comic books and doing my own illustrations.

Always drawing.

Didn't go anywhere without a pen and a sketchbook.

And it served you well, I guess.

Okay, so we start in a casino

as a one person graphic designer.

I want to actually pause on that for just a second.

My first job out of school, I was a

one man marketing department for an aviation services company.

Okay.

And you talked about how you learned more in those two

years than you did in your four years of school.

For people that are in college that might be listening

for me, I totally resonate with what you said.

I learned so much in I was

only with that company for a year.

I learned so much.

I got to do everything from buying media to working

with creatives to putting on events to I mean, you

name it, I got to touch every aspect of marketing.

And had I been in a larger firm and one

person in a department of many, I'm sure I would

have learned a lot of things from the other people,

but I had to get in and figure it out

on my own, and I learned so much from that.

And so I don't know if that resonates being

in a department of one, but anyway, it resonates

a lot, especially in this day and age.

Like, I've had this conversation with my kids

a few times just regarding just the college

experience and the investment of time and money

versus what you get out of it, and

everybody needs to make that decision for themselves.

But if a kid in high school who's interested in

graphic design and working in our industry came to me

and said, which college should I go to?

I would probably advise them take a year and

just do an internship, walk into an agency, offer

to intern for free for six months.

They're not going to tell you no and work there

for six months and then decide, do I want to

do this for another two years, or do I want

to spend a couple of hundred grand and go to

college for four years to learn the same thing?

I think there's a lot of opportunity for folks we

didn't have in the mid 90s, we didn't have YouTube.

We didn't have a lot of the information

that's available today to learn on your own.

And if you're a self starter and if you're

motivated and you know what you want to do,

I would suggest, as I've done to my kids,

that give it a shot going that route.

Because for you and I, at least, we feel that we

learned more on the job than we did in the classroom.

And I think that's true for a lot of career paths.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, so it's 2000.

You move to Dallas with your family. What happened next?

Where did you go work wise?

So I freelanced graphic design.

I actually freelanced for the casino that

I had left for a few months.

I was looking around Dallas for a job at

an agency because that was my intention for coming

here, and found an agency called Wrapcollins Worldwide, which

was a direct marketing focused agency with a full

service kind of suite of offering of creative services.

So they did television spots, and

they did direct mail, print design.

They did digital and kind of as it was 20 00

20 01 20 02 as kind of all these brands were

starting to move online and figuring out what does advertising look

like online, what does marketing look like online?

All of the big agencies like Wrap, which is

an omnicom agency, all of those big agencies were

figuring out, how do we sell these services?

How do we create unique offerings?

And so I kind of learned as the industry

went in that direction, I was an art director,

associate creative director, a creative director, kind of evolving

my career as that industry evolved in the early

2000s with online digital design, experiential marketing, and all

this stuff that was going on at the time.

And so from 2000 till, I don't know, around

2006, 2007, it was actually through 2007, I was

working at Wrap, started just in their pre production,

what they called the digital studio.

So creative team would send files down, and my job would

be get these things ready to go to the printer.

So clean them up and make sure all the traps and

bleeds and everything is set up the way that it needs

to be set up so that when a printer gets this

file, they don't have to mess with it.

They can just get it on press.

And I got to imagine your

responsibilities grew over time pretty quickly.

Yeah, I worked the swing shift, so they had so

much work coming through the shop that they actually had

the nine to five folks, and then they had like

the I think my shift was, I don't know, eleven

to eight or noon to 09:00 p.m.

Or something like that.

So I just worked the late shift, but I was

able to get all the work done in just, like

a couple of hours and then just kind of hang

out and wait for other stuff to pop up.

It wasn't a super challenging role for me.

And then pretty quickly, they were looking for

more people to add to the creative team.

So I moved from the digital studio

to creative and then just kind of

started hopping when the digital started up.

I always had an interest in web design and

digital creative, and so when they started their sub

agency called wrap digital, I raised my hand and

said, hey, I want to go with these guys.

And you saw the future.

I don't know if I'm that smart.

I don't think I saw the future.

I just thought that that was cooler work to be doing.

And the lead of that department, the creative director

of that department, saw me and was like, oh,

I want this guy on my team.

So it was kind of like, hey, yeah, let's do this.

And so then that's where I kind of rose through

the ranks over a couple of years, eventually held a

seat as a creative director, and that's kind of the

seat that I held until I left rap. Interesting.

Going back to working that swing shift, you said you

could get your work done in a couple of hours,

and you're stuck there till eight, nine o'clock at night.

I don't know, man, because that was like 2000.

It was late 2000, maybe into early 2001, I think.

Anyway, it's not like there was, like, facebook

and instagram to go kill time on.

I honestly don't remember.

I was probably partly just walking around the hallways

talking to other folks and kind of just shooting

the breeze a little bit and maybe or almost

definitely on car forums reading about car stuff because

that's a big hobby of mine. Okay, interesting.

I just got to ask, out of sheer curiosity for

anybody that's watched mad men or has looked at the

industry at all, what was the environment like there?

It was not all that different from the

tour you just gave me here at venn. Right?

We had our fun spaces with guitar hero

and poker tables and foosball and kitchens full.

When I worked, not at Rap, but at the

agency after that, we had pepsi was a client,

so fountain machines in the break rooms.

And it's not mad men, like 60s style

ad agency, but it's what you would expect

kind of like one of those types of

companies to be, especially when you're fostering creativity.

And creativity is very nonlinear, and you can't just

force somebody to sit in a cubicle and just,

okay, design for 8 hours or whatever.

So it was a pretty fun environment.

It was also those big agencies tend to be a

little more sweatshop like in terms of they don't care

how long it takes you to do the work.

Like if you've got to work 12 hours because you

have a deadline tomorrow, because the creative process, it's not

like a linear progression of inputs and outputs.

It requires inspiration.

It requires kind of like sometimes just luck

to come up with something that looks good.

So you'd see people there late at night burning the

midnight oil because they just need to get something done.

And then of course, because agencies sell

hours, there's often non billable tasks like

RFPs and new business pitches.

There's a lot of weekend work.

That's one of the reasons I got out of the

agency business and kind of started my own shop, was

just because that side of it wasn't attractive.

Two weekends a month I was working all weekend and

it was just on spec work for new business pitches,

which was always some of the most fun work to

work on because there's no rules, there's no mandatories, there's

no limits to the creative we're trying to show off.

So it's as flashy and cool as we can make

it, but that never sees the light of day.

And so it was a little bit of

a let down at the end every time.

So you would put out your best stuff

and you'd win the work, but the client

would say, let's go a different direction.

Let's use the thing that you

poured your heart and soul into.

Usually, not usually, we would swing for the

fences and over deliver in the RFP.

So the client may or may not have even been asking

for spec work, but we were going to show it.

Which by the way, when we work on RFPs now,

we never do spec work even if it's asked for.

It's just not necessary.

We have other ways of telling the story of how we

would approach a project, but we would do all this spec

work and it would just be swing for the fences.

And so even if we did win the work, which

is I think back then, it was probably almost half

the time we would win the client, then it would

be, okay, now here's your creative grief.

Now let's actually do the work.

And it would always be much more dumbed down

version of what we did in the pitch.

What was the coolest or craziest experience

you had working for the big agency?

Wow, there were a lot of

cool experiences just traveling around.

We had Toyota as a client back

when they were still in California.

I had Sony PlayStation as a client,

we had Best Buy as a client.

So I think one of the coolest experiences

was just traveling to all these big corporate

headquarters and seeing what is Best Buy's campus

like up there in Minneapolis.

What was Toyota's Campus like in California?

And visiting clients on their turf at

these global corporations that everybody knows and

having meetings with the decision makers over

there and selling them on creative ideas? I don't know.

That was always a really fun part of

that job, especially as a young creative director

that really didn't have a lot of reps.

I don't think a lot of guys in the

industry get put on a plane to California to

go meet with Toyota by themselves when they've been

a creative director for a year and a half.

And you're how old at that point?

25. 26. Okay.

Man, when you would walk in in your mid 20s, are

people looking at you like, man, this guy's so green?

Probably. I don't know.

Again, I'm not that smart, so I don't

have a lot of discernment in those situations

to know better, like to read the room.

So I would just go in with all sorts

of audacity and probably unearned confidence, which was maybe

part of why I was in the room.

Right, is because I had that blind

confidence to just talk about things.

I was always very confident about saying we could do work,

and then when we would get it, I'd be like, crap,

we got to figure out how to do this work.

We won the business.

Now we have to figure out how to

oh, the client really likes this idea that

I really didn't talk with the team about.

So now I've got to go back

and we've got to get it done.

That was one of the memories I have, or

the series of memories I have is traveling to

see these clients and just really feeling impressed by

all these big campuses and headquarters and walking in

those doors was always a cool feeling. Yeah.

Being 25, 26 years old, getting to work in

these huge brands, that had to been super cool. Yeah.

When you stay at an agency that long, like seven years,

seven and a half years at an agency is like two

careers for a creative to stay at one place that long.

So I think part of it, I was kind of just used to it.

We land a new client, and it would be a big

name, but I'd been working on Place Station in Hyatt Hotels.

So when we add DirecTV to the list,

it's like, okay, well, it fits right in.

That seems normal.

So you kind of get used to it to a degree.

If I was to lock in a Toyota now, I think

I would even having worked on Toyota 15 years ago, I

would emotionally react to it a little bit differently.

Probably like I should have back then. Very good.

All right, so you were with Big

Omnicom Agency for a long time.

I think you said 2007, 2008

is when you transitioned out.

And where did you go from there?

So I left in.

Late 2007 went to another agency that

doesn't exist anymore here in Dallas.

At the time, it was called IMC Squared.

They rebranded and then sold,

and now they got absorbed.

But I was working there on Procter

and Gamble brands, primarily feminine care products.

Always.

Tampax and SEC OTC.

I can't relate to several of those, but I'll tell you

what, Prilosec is a part of my regular regimen anyway.

Glad they got that product to market. Yeah.

And the Femcare stuff was an

education for me again, as well.

What was that like, being a man working

with products that are not made for men?

I think it was part of the challenge

of just really understanding a brand's, the unique

value they bring to their target audience, and

just messaging building campaigns and creative around that.

Right.

So that's just the skill.

That's just what we do.

I don't have to have heartburn

to sell Prilus, Echo, TC, right.

I don't need to use these products

to be able to sell them.

So many, like most of the clients we've had, have been

at least at four man furnace in the last several years,

have been products or services that I can relate to.

But we've very frequently had clients that I

can't relate to the product or the service.

It's the skill of what we do,

is being able to message around that.

But that was early on.

I think, for me, it was the greater challenge is

that for the Femcare brands, what their insight was that

if we get girls to use this product in middle

school, they'll continue to use it throughout their life.

Whatever the first product is they

use, that's what they use.

And so we were building a campaign to 7th grade

girls, which was that was the challenge to me as

a late 20s dude working at an agency.

Yeah, that was interesting.

So I'm 41, and in probably 97 or 98, Gillette,

the razor company, came out with the Mach Three razor

system, and I'm pretty sure that they got a list

of every you just got one in the mail.

You got one in the mail when you turned 18.

It was probably a little bit earlier than that,

maybe they got a list of every 16.

I got one, too, back in the

90s when I turned, I guess yes.

1617.

I just got a razor in the mail.

I can't imagine the investment that they made in that

mail out and product that they weren't getting paid for.

But I bought Mach Three razors for

years, for probably ten plus years.

And so it's amazing that things like that, you

get stuck on early in your life and you

stick with it for a really long time. Yeah.

That was the same insight for the Femcare

stuff is the first one they use.

It's just like, for whatever reason, they

just tend to keep using it.

That's a wow investment that

pays long, long term dividends.

Okay, so you're at another agency.

From there, did you go off and start your own? It is?

Yeah.

From IMC Squared is where I left and started.

Four man furnace.

The team I was on at IMC was a bit of

a wreck in terms of the process, and I don't think

some of the people who were planning the process didn't quite

understand how the creative side of things worked.

Wasn't a good fit for me.

And around that time, I was still, like, 27 maybe,

and not really ready to be done being a creative. Right.

Like, I was sitting in meetings.

I wasn't doing any creative.

I was sitting in meetings.

I was directing my team of creatives.

I was the one on the call

selling the creative to the clients.

So, wait a second.

You're 27 and you're already at the

point that you are leading other creatives?

Yeah, I mean, that was the same at Rap.

I literally had a conversation

with the creative director.

I don't remember her exact title, but she

was from corporate, so she was the creative

director over all of North America, Rap.

And she came in my office and

was wanting to give me additional responsibility.

And I sat there and I told her, I said,

I don't know if I want this, because as it

is, I don't really do any creative anymore, and I'm

not ready to be done with that.

I'm still a designer.

I still, like, pushing the pixels.

Was that the impetus for you leaving

Rap and going to IMC Squared?

It was around that time.

I don't know if that was the impetus,

so to speak, but it was around that

time that I was becoming dissatisfied.

And like I said, seven and a half years

at an agency for creative is two careers.

So I was there long enough.

And so.

Yeah, I mean, same thing at IMC Squared.

I was in meetings, I was talking to clients.

I was helping review creative briefs.

I was overseeing some process stuff,

but not doing any creative.

And so, to scratch that itch.

I had clients on the side.

I had built up my side business.

I was working a full day at the agency

and then going home and working a full day

at night, and it just wasn't sustainable.

And one of those two things had to give.

And at this point, you're married. Married.

Just found out.

My wife was pregnant with Wesley, our firstborn,

and I decided to quit my job.

All right, so that right there,

I decided to quit my job.

I want to dig into that.

What was the moment that it was

like, boom, okay, here it is. I'm gone. I'm going.

I think that moment probably happened in a conversation

with my wife after I was just completely exhausted.

I remember it might not have been this instance, but

I remember one Friday, we'd go out with you guys.

We would go up friday, Saturday we were still in our

twenty s and none of us had kids and we were

going out and doing a lot of stuff, being very social,

doing what people do in their 20s on the weekends.

And I remember one Friday I came home from work and

the thing about what I liked about IMC different than Rap

is it wasn't late nights, it was not weekends.

It was just like bankers hours almost.

So I'd be home by 530 from the office

and I fell asleep on the floor in the

living room at 545 and didn't wake up.

Just was like completely exhausted and spent because

of the side hustle plus the day job.

And it was around then that I

was like, I can't keep this up.

I'm not enjoying this.

I'm not enjoying just kind of my life at this phase.

It's just too much.

And so something had to give.

And when we were talking about it I think my

mindset was like let me just give this a shot.

I enjoy of the two.

I enjoy the side hustle more.

I enjoy still being a designer,

working with clients, solving their business

objectives with creative execution.

So let's give that a shot.

Let me just try that and if it doesn't

take off after a few months then I can

always go back to an agency somewhere.

I think that for a lot of people that are

very skilled at things, that's a very natural thing.

In fact that was kind of part of the calculus

for me was okay, if I do this and it

doesn't work out, I've got these skills and I can

go hop back to another consulting firm.

So was that kind of like a safety

net, a comfort level for you and Leandra?

Yeah, it definitely was.

It was still scary.

It's still scary to quit your job when

you're about to have a kid and you

really don't know what the future holds.

It was definitely a leap of faith in a

lot of ways, but it was calculated risk.

Apart from the idea that hey, I could

go back to another agency anytime, were there

other things that contributed to the confidence of,

hey, I think I can take this risk?

I think just in general my faith, right, like I'm

a Christian and I named the company Four Man Furnace.

And the story behind that is a story from

the Old Testament of the Bible where three Israelites

refused to kind of do what was expected of

them and instead they chose to do what's right.

And the penalty for that was death.

And so the means of execution was throwing them in

a furnace and they were about to be thrown in

the furnace, which is a scary kind of thing.

And their reaction to that was, well

we know we're doing the right thing.

This is scary, but we trust that whatever happens

is going to be what's supposed to happen.

And so I named the company that because I felt like that's

what I was going through a little bit at the time.

It was a leap of faith, and it

was kind of scary, but I knew that

whatever happened is what was supposed to happen.

Man I have been curious for years what the story behind

the name was, and I'm so glad to finally have that.

So we've got Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego

that are thrown into the fiery furnace.

The fourth man was Christ.

Yeah, or the angel of the Lord at the

time, because it's Old Testament story, but yeah, the

story literally says, when Nebuchadnezzar looked into the furnace

to make sure they were dead, he didn't see

three men, he saw four.

And they were walking around, and

one appeared to be an angel.

Kind of protecting the group.

Man wow. That's awesome.

I love that I was going to get to

that, and I'm so glad you brought that up. Okay.

All right.

So you feel this calling, you feel this

confidence, this inspiration to go do this.

Are you a one man show right out of the gate?

Did you have people that you

brought with you from day one?

What the early days look like?

Yeah, it was great. I loved it.

I was a one man show in terms of

the company, but I was working with contractors, like

Copywriters, other designers, web developers, Flash animators.

Every month, I would send out seven or eight

checks to other people, and I loved it. It was great.

I remember just doing my job, and I had a stack

of, like, eight checks I was sending out, and I showed

them to my wife, and I was like, Isn't this cool?

I'm doing this, but it's providing for other people.

And it was just a good feeling for me.

And so it was for a solid two, maybe two

and a half years, it was just that model, which

I really liked that model, too, because what it allowed

me to do as a creative director is as a

client came to me, I could assemble a team that's

right for the creative needs of the project.

One of the challenges I had at the agency

was we had headcount, and we had to just

to find them, we had to keep them out.

We sell hours, so we got to keep these guys.

Billable so when a new project came in, the people

who are there are going to work on it.

And it may not be anything that's in their wheelhouse.

It may be a project that requires a

lot of custom illustration, but nobody's an illustrator.

Doesn't matter.

Figure it out, work on it.

And so the creative suffers from that model.

That was kind of the light bulb going off for

me in terms of that really flexible boutique kind of

model, being valuable not only to me, but valuable to

clients because they don't have to pay the overhead.

I always say that with the agency,

they're paying for the 500 gallon saltwater

fish tank behind the receptionist desk.

Agencies have a lot of overhead.

They've got a lot of bells and whistles.

They've got a lot of just like, perks

for the employees, this, that, and the other.

With the boutique model, they're very low overhead,

so the agency or the client sees savings,

but they also see better product because I'm

assembling the team that's right.

For their creative.

So I think you talked about the

first two, two and a half years. That was the model.

Was you and subcontractors were you working from home?

Did you have a WeWork space?

I guess that was probably even

a little early for WeWork.

It was a little early for that.

There were some coworking things around town.

I was working from home until I hired my first

employee, and then he would come over to my house,

but that got awkward real fast with a newborn and

my wife trying to raise two year old or whatever.

And so I had freelanced for an agency

right off of 635 in Central in Dallas. So right.

What they call the high five, there's a

building there, and they were like on the

14th floor, and they had actually downsized.

They had reduced their headcounts, they had extra space,

and so we just kind of subletted a room

in there that was big enough for two people.

I know that for me, hiring my first employee

was one of the absolute hardest things that I've

had to do in this whole journey.

And it had nothing to do with the person

it was all about, okay, I got to make

sure that I can feed my own family.

And I think your mentality and my

mentality are very much the same.

I eat last, so I got to make sure that

not only can I provide for them, but then is

there going to be enough leftover for me.

Did you have any of that?

Or was it like, oh, a little bit.

I did have a little bit of that.

And there were times when it was like,

hey, babe, can you wait until next Thursday

to actually go to the grocery store?

Those weeks happened after I hired my first employee.

Again, it was a calculated risk.

I've never been a big, just super big risk taker.

It's always been really hedging the bets as best I can.

And in this particular case, it actually made more sense

to hire him full time than to keep him on

contract because his hourly rate times 40 hours a week

was twice what I would pay him salary.

And so that's just what we did as the decision I made.

And as the work fluctuated in those early

years, it would be feeling really flush some

months and tightening the belt other months.

For sure, that resonates more than you know.

So what kind of fears did you have going into it?

Mostly not knowing.

Like, I don't know what I don't know.

I've never took business classes,

I'm not a business guy.

All of that is just learning as I go.

And so I think the biggest fear was just

like, I don't even know what questions to ask.

I don't know what surprises are around the next corner.

I've been taking it one day at a time

for 15 years because that's just how I roll.

And so, yeah, I think that the greatest fear

is just not knowing what to anticipate, what problems

I can head off at the pass.

Did you have any mentors that spoke into

your business and into your life early on? No.

In your list of pre podcast prep questions, and it

may be coming up in your list too, but one

of the questions was, what would you have done differently?

Or something like or what advice would you give?

I'm totally fast forwarding to the end of the podcast.

Sorry, but one of the questions

has something to do with that.

And that was my biggest regret, I guess you

could say, is, I went into it again with

that audacity, with that I can do it.

And I'll say, I can do it and I'll figure it out later.

The biggest piece of advice I would

give somebody is, don't do that.

Get a mentor or a partner and don't try to just

figure it out on your own, because two heads are better

than one in these types of situations, for sure.

15 years in.

Have you found a mentor at this point?

I've got really smart connections now and people

who I can bounce questions off of.

I don't have a mentor, so to speak, in the sense

of like a business mentor that I meet with once a

month and we go over things and put together a list

of things to work on this next month.

But I have some really smart people I

can bounce ideas off of ad hoc.

I'm now working with kind of a business

partner who comes from a slightly different perspective,

but still from the creative industry.

It's a guy, you know, his name's Rick Roshan. No way.

Yeah.

I haven't talked to Rick in forever. No way. Yeah, dude.

We've done a lot of really good

work together, and his career has gone

in really crazy, interesting, adventurous, incredible directions.

And so now he is even on

our website as a co creative director.

And when we work on video

projects, he's the heavy hitter.

I mean, the guy's got Emmys. I know.

He's got at least one Pulitzer project.

He's got a Pulitzer. He's got Emmys. He's got Webbies.

He's got all sorts of accolades for his work.

And he's just a really smart guy who we complement

each other well on the business side, on the analytical

side, on the kind of the thoughtful planning side.

When we do big shoots I function as

the executive producer and he's the director that

kind of describes how we work.

He's super discerning, really good with people.

He comes from a documentary journalism background, and so

he's just real intuitive and can see pieces moving

before they move, which I can't do.

But then on the analytical side,

on the managing budgets, timelines, project

plans, schedules, I'm good with that.

So it's been a really good collaboration over the last year

or so formally, and we meet twice a week and just

talk through the business, talk through what's happening, and he brings

a lot of insight and sheds light on a lot of

things that I need light shed onto.

We're going to have to talk a little bit more offline.

I had no idea.

I texted him right before I came in here.

I was like, guess who I'm about to go talk to?

Man, that's awesome.

And I can only imagine how much his

talent has grown since I last saw him.

I remember when we were regularly all together,

the three of us and some other folks.

I think it was about the time he

won the Pulitzer for coverage from Hurricane Katrina.

That's right.

And I can still vividly remember one of the photos

he had taken, and it was this person's foot with

this kind of makeshift shoe feel, like it was made

out of like a piece of poster board or something.

And on the bottom it said, Keep moving.

And there was something so haunting about this photo of

somebody that had gone through this incredible tragedy with a

hurricane and their feet worn from the journey, and these

words on the bottom of it was keep moving.

And so anyway, wow. Yeah.

I can only imagine how much

his capability has grown since then.

What a great partner for you to have.

Yeah, it's awesome. That's amazing.

So you've been at this for 15 years now?

15 years at four. Man furnace. Yeah.

What does the company look like today?

As I mentioned earlier, I latched onto

that boutique model of being able to

assemble teams based on client needs.

At our peak, we were about eight full time,

and that was when we had a couple of

retainer clients that just needed us to staff up.

And so that was great.

We had processes working smoothly and workflows

in place for these various retainer clients.

And then as things kind of shifted, specifically

around 2020, when the pandemic hit, a lot

of our clients were in travel and hospitality.

I mentioned Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, and

the status of those retainers changed.

Retainers just went away.

I mean, clients in travel and hospitality

were not investing in advertising because nobody

was traveling or staying at hotels.

So that changed, and so we just flexed down.

So now we're three full time rick, myself,

and then one of my associate creative directors.

And then at any point in time, we

have eight to ten contractors still working.

So those checks that I'm sending out every

month, it's kind of high caliber, hand selected

contractors that we bring in on project basis.

So we've always got that bench rotating of contractors.

So active talent at any given point in time is

ten to a dozen, but only three in house.

And again, for the reasons I said earlier,

it's really a benefit to the client for

us not to have headcount unless they retain

us to have a certain number of headcount.

Because at that point, let's say, I don't

know, one of our clients, Goddard Schools, let's

say they want to retain us because they've

got a curriculum program that needs constant design

support for the course of three years.

I'm going to put the same people on that

for three years because the benefit of the familiarity

that creatives bring with process and brand and messaging,

and we're able to now start anticipating client needs

or building kind of SOPs around quality control for

their work and those sorts of things.

So we will always staff up for retainers if we need to.

But if we don't have retainers, I will employ the

minimum number of full time kind of leadership team staff

to manage the bench of contractors that we work with.

Makes sense.

Something you talked about earlier that I kind

of want to come back to and see

if or how it has affected you today.

You talked about that day that you came home, and it

was a Friday afternoon, and you got home at 530, and

by 540, you're asleep on the floor in the living room.

How has your big or bigger agency experience

influenced how you set the tone, how you

shape the culture for your organization?

The camaraderie and team building was always kind of I

think it was a double edged sword at the agency.

Sometimes it felt really necessary

and genuinely built friendships.

I mean, I'm still in touch with a lot

of the people I worked at Rap, and we

still reminisce about the good old days sometimes.

On the other hand, it often felt like, okay, we're

working you guys to death, so here's some beers on

Friday afternoon to kind of make up for it.

And it felt a little bit contrived sometimes.

Really, that's a difficult question to answer.

I don't know the extent to which

that experience has guided the culture building.

I mean, the culture that we have is

really just around we care about doing the

best work that we can for our clients.

Our core values are do amazing work

and be amazing to work with.

And that's been kind of our recipe for success over the

years, is the work needs to be right for the project.

It needs to be effective for the client's business.

It needs to really look good.

We need to be proud of it, and we need to do

that in a way that clients want to continue working with us.

We want them to see us

as leaders in the creative space.

We want them to understand that they can trust us

to know what's right and to do what's right.

And we want them to enjoy just the

channels of communication they have with us.

We want to be encouraging and

collaborative and all those things.

So as long as my team is

following those guidelines, everything works out.

And with such a small team, I mean, with a team

of three, it's pretty easy to keep the morale up.

We all get along.

Aaron and Rick, we know each other from

back in the IBC days as well.

Aaron went to the Friday morning Men's Bible study and

was in our small group back in those days.

And so it's kind of just

know it's the guys good friends.

Yeah, it's good friends.

There's not a lot of culture building

that necessarily needs to take place.

I still keep that in mind.

It's still important to make sure people are

feeling heard and needs are being met and

morales up, but it's low effort.

And then with regards to the contractors, it's really

just helping them feel valued and maybe insulating them

a little bit from the client facing nonsense that

they don't have to deal with.

When you think about the future of the firm, do

you see this being a 20 person, a 50 person,

a 500 person firm, or do you like kind of

where it is and plan to keep it that way?

I've never had ambition to grow it

to be an X number person firm.

Back in the early days, I remember having this conversation with

a guy who was not a business mentor, but more of

just like a personal kind of guy that I met with

every now and then just as a personal mentor.

He came from a business background.

He asked me that same question.

This was year one or year two of four man furnace.

And I told him, I'm happy how it

is, and I still feel that way.

And I felt that way when it was eight people.

I feel that way with three.

Again, I kind of take it day by day, and

as long as we're enjoying making work for our clients

and the clients are appreciating us for the value that

we're bringing to their programs, then I'm happy.

It could be the three of us.

It could maybe be five in the future

or just me again, I don't know.

But whatever it ends up being, if we're accomplishing

those goals, then I'll be happy with it.

I think more than a growth goal for the company.

I think where I would like to work, kind of

a goal that I have to work towards is really

being in a position where we get to be a

little bit more selective about the clients we work with.

Because right now we are selective

about the projects we work on. Right.

There may be projects that we're not cut

out for, but we're not super selective over

the clients that we work with.

And so that's kind of the part of the business

that's the biggest thorn in my side is every now

and then we end up with a client that doesn't

really value working with a creative agency.

They see us more as skilled labor

and less as a creative thought leader.

You're just a vendor. Yeah.

It's kind of like the person who has a plumber

come over to their house and then tells them how

to do their job and exactly what to do.

And we find ourselves in that

position every now and then.

And so I'd like to be able

to tell those clients to go away.

That resonates a lot.

We want to be a partner and not a vendor. Exactly.

We want this to be a long term, mutual kind

of a thing where we both not only drive financial

benefit, but enjoy working with one another along the way.

So you've been on your own for 15 years.

You've had to do a lot of things.

What are the parts of the job

that bring you the most joy?

So, like I said before, that team collaboration, like, just

sitting down with the guys and talking about work, making

plans for clients, really, I think the most satisfaction comes

from when we deliver creative to a client and their

reaction to it is just really positive.

And that happens a lot, and that's what we do it for.

I always tell clients at the end of the

day what we're creating, whether it's a brand, whether

it's a campaign or a series of ads or

whatever, this work isn't for you.

This work is for your consumers.

You are not your consumers in a lot of cases.

And so we want you to like the work.

But at the end of the day, what you

need to understand is you're not the target audience.

But all that being said, when they really do love the

work and they gush about it or they just act really

excited about it, that's what we do it for.

Is it hard for your clients to wrap their

head around the idea that they are not the

target audience for what you come up with?

Yeah, whether they admit it or not, some of

them just they refuse to not like the know.

And you can tell when they start

putting their art director hat on.

And we end up in the position,

like I said, just skilled labor.

Like, we're the ones who happen to

know Adobe InDesign or Adobe Photoshop.

They don't know how to use it.

Otherwise they would just go do it themselves.

So they're just telling us what to do.

Those are the clients who just don't understand

how this process works and what our expertise

is, what we can bring to the table.

They just don't allow us to. Do.

So, unfortunately, that happens more

frequently than we would like.

What you just said kind of resonated with

me, probably for maybe slightly different reasons.

I talked earlier about that first job I had

out of school working for this aviation services company.

And while I was not the creative, I was working

with creative, and we had this outside boutique agency.

Part of what they did when they came in and

designed this great print campaign that was going in different

industry magazines, they helped kind of brand the office.

They made these giant posters of our different ads

that we were running in in these trade magazines.

And I remember after, I don't know, a few months

telling our creative, we need to change this, and he

goes, no, you're saying we need to change this because

you're in this office every day, and when you get

up to go to the kitchen to get a cup

of coffee, you see this constantly throughout the day.

Your audience is not seeing this constantly

all day, every day, like you are.

We need to keep this consistent and out there.

And no, we're not changing this just yet.

So I have an appreciation for what you're saying.

Yeah, all of that is just the perspective that people

have about how the creative exists out in the market.

And some people, I just don't think have a true,

really solid paradigm on how that creative appears or engages

with the audience, because they're engaging with it from a

brand manager perspective or a CMO perspective.

And they almost have blinders on.

They can only see it from that angle.

And so it really does inform, I think, a lot of

their opinion and their direction that we receive from them.

And some of them, you can talk them out of it.

Like this story you just relayed.

You saw the light that was explained to you.

You're like, oh, yeah, I get it.

Some of them, they just dig their heels in.

All right, so you love the joy

that comes from revealing things to the

customer and showing off your hard work.

But, man, after 15 years and you've had to do

everything as a small business owner, as a founder, what

are the parts that you just wish could go away?

I mean, I think obviously, when you're a

founder, an owner and operator, you're wearing a

lot of hats on the administrative side, on

the business development side, on the accounting side.

So I do all of that, and I'm used to a

lot of it, but it's just a vacuum of time.

I don't enjoy that part of the work as much.

But really, the things we were just talking about, about clients

that don't trust us to do what we do best and

who see us just as a vendor or skilled labor, that's

the absolute part that I really dislike the most.

You obviously took a big risk in

starting the firm in the first place.

And you mentioned that faith was a

big part of making that happen.

In addition to taking the initial risk

of just going off on your own,

you've probably tried some things over time.

Has there been anything that you have tried that

has not panned out like you hoped it would?

Probably the one thing that I tried that I

really had hoped would have a good outcome, but

didn't was I contracted with a lead generation company.

And, you know, you get these emails all the time of

we'll send you qualified leads, this, that, and the other.

So I decided to respond to a bunch of those,

had a bunch of conversations, found a company that I

was like, okay, their process, I really like their process.

I think this is going to work.

And they did get me on the phone with a lot

of people, but they were just garbage leads, just garbage.

Just not qualified and not ready to hire

us or didn't even know what we did.

And so that was the biggest if I had to

take one business decision back that I've ever made, it

would be that it's these lead generation companies.

And I'm sure they work if you're a plumber or

if you're an HVAC company, which a lot of people

think we are because our name is Four Man Furnace,

so a lot of people think we are HVAC.

But if you're one of those types of companies, I'm

sure just hiring one of these lead gen agencies to

just funnel people in your direction because you have a

service offering that's really easy to understand.

Whether or not you need it, I'm sure that's valuable.

But for us, it wasn't.

You're like pouring salt in a wound,

because we did one of those too.

It's probably a year and a half, two years ago,

and I think you hit the nail on the head.

If your offering is something that

the general market really understands, well,

then those kinds of things work.

But when you sell something that requires a

little bit more application of thought and understanding,

just going out and putting a fire hose

out there, it just doesn't work.

By the way, if somebody listening is in that

space, or you're a recruiter or a financial advisor

or a business advisor or there's probably five other

categories, please stop emailing me and please stop sending

LinkedIn requests because I'm tired. Oh, yeah.

Sadly, I don't pay as much

attention to LinkedIn as I should.

I probably check it once a week.

And I was thumbing through it before I came over here,

and I had a bunch of messages in my inbox.

One of them was a legit message from one of

my contacts, and the rest of them were total noise.

It was just, yeah, it's the new junk mail.

Yeah, I love LinkedIn.

And now the volume has just gone through the roof.

It has. It's weird.

They've changed something in the

last six to eight months.

I was just going to say the exact same thing.

The volume of junk that I get is just through the roof.

All right, so apart from you talked earlier

about wishing that you'd had a more formal

mentor relationship in the early days, you talked

about the lead gen side of things.

If you were going to go back and

do this again today, you're talking to your

20 something, early 30 something self.

What would you tell them?

What would you do differently?

I think the biggest thing that I would

do differently is when I was feeling good

about the client load, having clients on retainer.

The mistake that I made back in 2017, 2018, when

we had a couple of big retainer clients, we had

a decent amount of full time staff and a whole

bunch of contractors working at any given point in time.

I was really focused on just keeping that

as it was, making sure that didn't break

and I didn't capitalize on the momentum.

There was an opportunity there, I

think, to capitalize on the momentum.

And instead of putting all my eggs in one

basket with just a couple of clients that had

big retainers, I could have diversified our clients kind

of client portfolio and maybe spun that momentum off

into a business development effort that would have grown

that or at least hedged that.

Because when the pandemic hit and those clients, by

their own business, they had to they had no

other choice but to kind of cut back that.

We felt that more than I think we might had I

been a little bit more smart about how I handled it.

Real quick, let's take just a couple

of minutes and talk about the pandemic.

This is a topic I wish that with our

other guests, we'd spend a little bit more time

kind of drilling into February, March of 2020.

What was your business like?

What was going through your mind?

Walk me through that time.

Yeah, so it was actually earlier than that.

I want to say it was December of 2019.

One of our clients, they have high security protocols

at their campus, and they were starting to make

guests as a part of their sign in protocol,

like, sign a form that says that I've not

been to China in the last however many weeks.

And we thought that was really weird.

I mean, in late 2019, I think maybe

there were whispers of a virus in China,

but nothing really in America yet.

And we just were like, this seems really over the top.

And so that was the first signal that

I had from a business perspective, that this

pandemic thing, which we didn't even know was

a pandemic yet, was something to take seriously.

I just thought they were being overzealous about it.

They knew something that we didn't know.

Real quick, just to interject, I can remember December

of 2019 hanging out with some buddies and somebody

had been watching the news is like, have you

seen what's going on in China?

Yeah, they're locking people in their homes.

Can you imagine?

That would never happen here.

They couldn't do that. Yeah.

Fast forward 90 days. Yes.

So then we were joking about that.

We went into the winter holidays, took Christmas.

Yeah, I think we took a week off, closed the

office for a week, came back in January, February, and

yeah, things just started becoming tenuous, I think.

Not just in our industry, just in the country.

And so we just kind of

followed suit with mainly CDC guidelines.

So we transitioned to a work from

home model for a couple months, and

then they kind of lightened that guidance.

And we were back in the office a little

bit, and then we were back at home.

I think we were back in the office for three

or four weeks, and then we were back at home.

So we were just riding that out.

But it was during the course of that

that our travel and hospitality clients were starting

to revisit the state of their retainers.

And as those retainers were kind of coming

to an end, they weren't being renewed.

And so that's where the future became

a big question mark in my mind.

I didn't know what was going to

happen in the middle of 2020.

None of us really knew what was going to

happen, but specifically to our business and our client

roster, I had no clue what the future held.

So I just really focused on making sure my

people were taken care of and that they knew

what was going on from a business perspective.

We were having regular calls where I

was just kind of updating them on.

Here's where we're at.

Here's the status of things, here's

the status of our clients.

If things need to change, you guys are going to get

plenty of warning and just really making sure that they felt

like they knew what was going on with the business.

Have you made any lasting changes in your business

because of the pandemic or has it kind of

cycled back to where it was before?

I don't think there have been any lasting

changes in our process or just general methodology

or the mindset to how we do business.

I think the pandemic was just kind of we had

to adjust for what was happening in the world.

As you can imagine, video production ground to a halt.

People weren't going on set.

People weren't getting in a room and

hiring a crew and coming in.

So that all just kind of stopped for a

little while and only really just got back to

what I would call, quote unquote, normal.

End of last year, we were shooting

in New York, and there were some

protocols, like pandemic level in Manhattan.

There were some pandemic level protocols that

we were having to figure out.

This was september of last year.

We were working around some of that, but I

think just after that is when a typical film

production got back to normal, so to speak.

Over the course of the next decade, I'm sure

there's going to be a lot written, said, and

researched about the effects of the pandemic.

And when we get to 2030, I'm really eager to see

what people have to say, looking back crazy specifically to our

industry and what we do in creative for brands.

I think the pandemic actually did shift.

I think it accelerated a trajectory that our business

was on, which was really leading up to that.

We saw as social media became more prevalent and

platforms like, you know, Instagram reels and Facebook Reels

became more popular, the value of what we do

as emotional storytellers was slowly decreasing.

Clients were less likely to spend $100,000 on

a series of two or three really moving,

emotional high like cinematic narrative films, and more

likely to spend half that money on two

dozen 15 2nd TikTok UGC level quality pieces.

So that trajectory we saw happening, and

then the pandemic hit, and I think

it just fast forwarded all of that.

And I think where we're at now is

clients, and I've heard this directly from clients.

We're trying to do more for less.

They want more volume, less quality, less expense,

which is something that we're adjusting to.

And I think when you fast forward to 2030,

it's like, how do we adjust what we do

as storytellers and filmmakers and brand strategists?

How do we adapt that to a world that's

increasingly becoming more short form, low production quality kitschy,

and in a world of where AI is now

a tool that we use for creative, and eventually

a tool clients might use for creative without us,

how do we adapt to those types of things?

So that's kind of what we're looking forward

and trying to figure out actively right now.

Has the influencer movement, if

you will, impacted your business.

I don't know.

So our business, as it pertains to kind of the requests

that we get from clients, the leads we get for bigger

projects, there's less of a demand for bigger projects.

I don't know necessarily what to attribute that to.

I'm sure, this idea of influencer, or even if

it's not influencer, even if it's just lightweight, smaller,

less expensive, more bite sized social content that's just

in general overtaking the idea of a six minute

short documentary about a person in a narrative style

that's very cinematic and emotional, I think that there's

just less of an appetite for that.

And it could be influencer style.

It's pretty easy to spend 30 $40,000 to get

somebody who's influential in social media to promote your

brand, versus 30,000 $40,000 to create a really beautiful

film that maybe, I don't know, just as many

people will see, or maybe less people will see.

I don't know.

All right, well, kind of coming

down the home stretch here.

What's been the biggest surprise in your

15 years of running Four Man Furnace?

I don't know if there's been a whole lot of surprises.

We keep our ear to the ground and

like I said, I stay pretty nimble.

The pandemic was a huge left hook.

I don't think any of us really saw that coming.

Yeah, nothing has really shocked me.

I mean, there's been lots of small surprises

like, oh, this client a client's response to

some work or something like that.

But that just comes with the cost of doing business.

Yeah.

Nothing I would say was a real

big shocker in the last 15 years.

Industry agnostic, whether it's advertising or tech

consulting or starting a manufacturing business.

Do you have any just general advice

to somebody who's thinking about hanging a

shingle and starting their own thing?

Get a mentor.

That's the first thing I would say

is don't try to do it yourself.

No matter how audacious and self confident

you are undeservedly, it's always better to

have somebody to bounce ideas off of.

Even if you are super smart and you do know

what you're doing and you listen to the podcast and

read the books and follow all the YouTubers and really

have your ear to the ground and kind of have

an idea of how it will work or be successful.

It never hurts to have somebody, an objective outsider with

fresh eyes, to look at what you're doing and say,

hey, have you thought about maybe doing this instead?

I think that for me specifically, that would have helped

had I had that partner or mentor much earlier on.

I'm going to build on that for just a second

and say that the more self confident you are and

the more you think you've got it all figured out,

the more you probably 100% need a mentor.

Yeah, if you don't think you need a mentor,

that's the sign that you definitely need a mentor.

Everybody needs one, but if you don't think you

need one, you definitely that was Steve Derman, founder

and creative director of Four Man Furnace.

To learn more, visit 4mf.co. That's the number.

Four.

M as in Mike, f as in Foxtrot .co.

If you or a founder, you know, would like

to be a guest on In the Thick of

It, email us at intro@founderstory.us.