Welcome back to The Workaround. I’m Bob 👋
You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.
I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.
Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app. Or listen and watch on YouTube.
I’m excited to share the next podcast episode in my series of conversations with interesting people on topics where business and life intersect.
My discussion partner this week, Peter Williams, is the Founder & CEO of Designerds, a creative-led agency based in the Bay Area, and Luna Park, a “skunk works” product development shop with some exciting consumer products just now hitting the market.
I first met Peter over twenty years ago, when we were both very early in our careers. However, we never had a deep conversation until just over a month ago. Once we spoke, I knew I had to get him on the pod. Peter has some great stories of building an agency, buying out his partners, and then elevating his leadership team so he could pursue his personal creative passions.
You’re going to love his career and personal development arc, and I get to throw in a few new stories of my own in the process.
Here’s a summary, a teaser, an amuse-bouche to get you to hit the play button above ^^^ or see our faces on YouTube.
Most of us aren’t born entrepreneurs, and the longer you stay on the employee path, the harder it can feel to leap. Peter didn’t plan to start his own company, but working in a small business early on gave him exposure to the founder and a feel for what it takes. Because he was curious and paid attention, Peter knew it was doable.
A few years later, while working at a small agency, Peter observed that the owner lacked key skills in operational discipline and business strategy. Again, this curiosity helped him identify issues and gave him the confidence to build a better business when the opportunity arose.
Early stints in small businesses, whether as college internships or first jobs, can provide a goldmine of knowledge and experience. You gain a sense of the entire operation and have the opportunity to explore which skills and tasks align best with your interests and strengths. From there, I’ve seen many people gain the confidence to start their own companies or enter the corporate world with an ownership mentality and a clearer career direction.
I’ve seen many people jump into starting their own professional service businesses with a shotgun approach, using SEO ads and email campaigns. They get a small one-off project, then rush to find the next client.
However, a quicker way to launch and grow can be by focusing on just a handful of clients—or even just one—as long as they have significant upside. At my digital agency years ago, over 80% of our $10 million in revenue came from Procter & Gamble when we sold the company. A sister agency of ours did something similar with Walmart. Peter recounts the story of how he got his agency off the ground by winning projects with the Samsung innovation group.
For our companies to make this work, we did everything we could to be physically present in the clients’ buildings. We got contractor badges that allowed us the freedom to roam the halls, ate lunch at their corporate cafeterias, and secured desk space in their cubicles. The result: Current and potential clients see you—and think of new projects to bring you in on. Peter shares a few other tricks of the trade that helped him grow with Samsung and then Twitter.
Like many small business owners, once he had a dozen or so employees, Peter had to find others to do the work and shift his focus to discovering, evaluating, and training talent.
Fortunately, he found a secret: Hire people with a desire to learn. He shares the story of taking a chance on a young employee named Austin, who had no prior agency experience and was a server at Olive Garden at the time. But Austin had a drive to learn and ended up being a favorite within the company and with clients.
People who love to learn are self-directed and often develop additional practical skills to help them satisfy this drive, including curiosity, passion, confidence, and effective listening.
In our talk, Peter discusses the tools he developed to help his team assess talent more effectively. He’s also a big believer in a 3-month contract-to-hire model that allows him to test employees on real-world projects, while giving talent the chance to ensure the company is a good fit before they commit.
As the owner of a creative-driven agency, Peter knows that most creatives leave their jobs because they get burned out from doing the same type of work for too long. So, he regularly reassigns his team members to different tasks and has found the right approach to help his clients understand and appreciate these changes.
However, after taking full control of the company and navigating it through the COVID-19 times, Peter felt the need to do something different in his own creative life. Instead of selling the company, he gave more responsibility to his leadership team. This freed him up to scratch an itch he felt since childhood: designing and developing consumer products to solve problems he has experienced.
His first product, the DRYE Fan, is a system designed to quickly and efficiently dry hydration bladders, such as Camelbak, reducing the risk of mold and bacterial growth. Peter walks us through his experience, covering everything from product design to patent applications to offshore production to meetings with major partners.
In addition to all this goodness, you’ll hear how Peter structured a deal to buy out his agency co-founders. It closed in the middle of the pandemic, but it ultimately yielded an excellent result for all parties.
To enjoy the whole chat, hit the play button above, subscribe to the podcast on Apple or Spotify, or watch us below on YouTube!
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