Creative Agencies in 2025: Trends, Advice, and What's Next

Calling all creative agency founders (or aspiring founders) 🚨 In our latest podcast episode, we sat down with the partners of Casa Davka, a consulting firm for creative agencies.

Focus Lab CEO, Bill Kenney, had the pleasure of diving into the state of creative agencies in 2025 with Emily Cohen and Hunter Vargas on their experiences and observations working with agency owners across the country and beyond.

They hit on fantastic insights such as:

• The top three things agencies struggle with
• Emily's Book, Brutally Honest, and the need for clear communication
• The importance of demonstrating the value of design + branding to clients
• Recent trends and shifts in the creative agency model (and market)
• Advice to anyone considering starting their own agency
• And so much more!

Episode Resources

• Learn more about Casa Davka
• Get the Brutally Honest eBook
• Information on Circles Conference

Full Transcript

[Bill Kenney]

If you're a creative services business owner, if you run an agency, this is finally the episode for you. You've probably been hearing me talk with our past partners in previous episodes and industry leaders about the creative process about us and what we do with our clients, the branding process in general, and the client experience.

Today, we're flipping that coin around and we're going to look at the operation of business as a creative services business, very specifically. So, I sat down with Emily and Hunter from Casa Davka. This is a consultancy for agencies like mine, very specifically, let's call it five people to 50 people, somewhere in that range, small to medium.

And it is their job and their mission to help companies like ours with: how do we think about business development, and not just our craft? How do we think about growing our company with intention and not just with the leads that happen to make it into our inbox? How do we grow our team with leadership in mind? What type of leadership do we need here? What are our plans post business ownership?

And then we finish all the way coming back around to what would they say to anybody that's thinking about entering into a creative business in the first place. Day one, what would they tell that person? A lot of valuable conversations, two amazing people. I hope you find this episode really valuable.

[Bill Kenney]

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. It's morning for us here recording anyways. Before we jump into it though, I was actually just thinking about this this morning. We got to see each other at Circles, Emily, you and I, at least. Uh, that was awesome in Texas this year.

[Emily Cohen]

So much fun.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Good times. Uh, you plan on going back next year? No pressure.

[Emily Cohen]

Maybe, we'll see. I usually only go to conferences that I speak at just because time for travel and everything. So it really depends on my workload, but I had a good time. I loved meeting your team. That was really fun too.

[Bill Kenney]

You did a fantastic job. Your energy on stage, you and Natalie.

[Emily Cohen]

Yeah. Natalie killed it.

[Bill Kenney]

This feels very biased. I feel like you and Natalie, uh, shout out Natalie on our team. You both crushed it. You owned the stage. I really enjoyed your talk for both your energy and knowing you and the subject matter.

That is your expertise, which we're actually going to use as the kind of the structure of this interview. But before we go there, you want to take a second, maybe each of you can introduce yourself and tell us what you do.

[Emily Cohen]

I'll start. Age before youth, I guess, um, so I'm Emily Cohen. For 35 years, I've been a consultant. So we are consultants to creative professionals. I think it's more than 35 years, but I don't want to give away my age. And, uh, we’re consultants for creative professionals. So mainly principles of design firms or agencies.

We help our clients kind of with their business strategy. So what does their business look like in terms of vision, positioning, specialization, organizational structure, new business development, pricing proposals, you know, how they win clients, how they qualify clients, kind of all this stuff designers are actually really good at. Like when we first started my profession, they weren't like consulting practice.

They weren't so good at it, but now they're really good at it. So our clients are really smart and we're just helping them elevate their practices. Um, yeah, and we work with clients kind of all over the country and also in Canada. And Hunter just joined us about 2 years ago, although she's been officially working with me on and off, like, she helped me write the book. And run some events. Yeah, there you go.

[Hunter Vargas]

One of the coveted copies. Yeah, so we officially joined hands and formed a partnership in I guess, I don't even know, 2023. I come from a background of working within the industry. So working within creative firms. As a project manager, account manager, business development, operations, all the above.

And so I kind of come from that perspective of seeing how the things that we recommend the people that we work with, how those things actually get implemented into a company. And how do you make things really sticky? How do you consider your employees while also prioritizing, you know, what the principal wants in terms of the growth and evolution of the firm.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. That's great. I didn't know that, Hunter, your background specifically. I could see how that's really valuable. That's like the insider perspective of recent years, right?

[Emily Cohen]

I used to be able to say that when I started my business, sorry, but I can't say that anymore.

[Hunter Vargas]

Yeah, I think it's helpful because a lot of our clients care about their team, they care about, like, they want to make decisions that are good for themselves, but they also want to make decisions that are good for the team. So we're able to kind of provide that dual perspective.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Uh, yes, so I have the book here, obviously. This is not just like a prop because I'm talking to you all. Beautifully designed. Your book is something special, uh, maybe you can drop some knowledge on that at the end, but I suspect we're going to cover a lot of that in here, so the overlap, that is interesting, which is why I wanted to talk to you all, both having known you and run across you in different avenues, like we just talked about at Circles and stuff.

Knowing some of your clients, past clients, current clients. I'm not sure if they are still, shout out Matchstic, is the one that comes to mind.

I mean, everybody hopefully watching this understands what the overlap is, which is I've been running an agency for 15 years now. And you all help agencies.

And I think actually we're probably very close to what your ideal customer is. So you kind of hinted at it, right? Which is like, hopefully we're smart in a lot of ways already, more savvy than maybe, uh, the previous decades of creative owners, but we're still creatives. We're still like, I started this thing as an art school kid that just wanted to design things.

I don't have any kind of real business knowledge or background other than working within some family owned businesses, which actually, in hindsight, is helpful knowing that. So all that to say, I think the overlap is interesting. You work with agencies. We are an agency.

So I'm hoping to cover a lot of those types of topics, y'all share your perspective and then maybe I'll concur and say, Oh, yes, we do struggle with that. Or yeah, we do that thing you just mentioned. And then, um, hopefully for the listeners, there's takeaways that they can actually act on.

So the first one is a little bit heavy, but high level.

We can keep it high level. What do you think are the top three things that agencies like mine just struggle with in general that you just see it over and over and over again?

[Emily Cohen]

The first one we always see is positioning. Who are they and what do they stand for?

Because a lot of firms are generalists, right? You're not, which I love. I love that you have a very specific niche, which is really great.

[Bill Kenney]

Thank you.

[Emily Cohen]

Many of our clients, they just kind of go by the seat of the pants, whatever comes in, they take. And so they are allowing clients to dictate what direction their firm is. So we help them think about, so we think one of the problems is their direction.

Who are they? What do they stand for? What is it? What's their positioning? What do they specialize in? I think that's the first thing. You want to add to that, Hunter?

[Hunter Vargas]

I think even before positioning, which is important, I think future vision. Like we're realizing a lot of our clients, we're not saying that you need to be able to plan 20 years in the future. We understand that personal priorities change as the industry changes, but I think at least having a general sense of where you want to go, how big you want to get, at least in the short term, even in two years.

Three years. It's really important because a lot of our clients, what ends up happening is they grow really quick or they, you know, all of a sudden have this huge client base in one area, but there's no control over that. And then they find themselves a couple years later being like, where am I?

What is this business that I've created? What do I want? And we think it's really important. Like we have clients who want to grow. They want to get to 50. We have people who want to stay at six people because that makes them happy. And that's great. We're all for that. Right. So thinking about like, not just like staffing wise, who's on your team, but thinking about like, how do you want, like what you and your partner, if you have a partner, like how you see the business growing and evolving, what type of clients you're picking up, what kind of projects, do you want to be more experimental?

Do you kind of want to stay with your existing services? Thinking about those things and incorporating them into the way you grow and evolve and build your business is really important in the strategy to implement. Yeah, and then once you do that, it’s positioning.

[Emily Cohen]

It helps you make smart decisions, right? So a lot of times we're just making firefighting decisions like, oh, I need money. So we take that client, right? And we don't think informedly, like, wait, this client's going to take us down the road that we don't want to go, or it's going to hurt our staff morale or whatever.

So we really do think vision is very important. It's very, very important. I'm sorry I didn't mention that as the first one. That's definitely a big one.

[Hunter Vargas]

Yeah, I just want to say, like, I think it kind of like transitions into it because positioning supports vision, right? It's like, you know, a huge client comes in that's not within your vision. They could potentially guide the direction of your positioning and then you're kind of stuck a couple of years later, like, only doing finance lines.

You're like, I don't want to do this work. I don't want to have a 20 person team doing stuff for this huge financial company.

[Emily Cohen]

Yeah, and that includes exit strategy. Like, do they want to leave? Do they want to retire? Do they want to sell and do something else?

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Yeah. Before you share a third, I'll just, um, jump in to say that, a client kind of dictating the position of the agency is kind of like what happened to us. Thankfully, it was a positive shift. Um, and like these positive, unintentional, organic kinds of happenings like you're mentioning.

Um, we landed the Marketo project. Gosh, yeah. Eight, nine years ago, we were probably only four or five years into business. We kind of had no right getting that big rebrand. Honestly, it took a lot of trust from the CMO shout out Sarah, who just said, y'all are small and scrappy and agile, and I like your flavor and the taste of what you create, and I think you're going to be great.

And they hired us, right? Where generally a company of that size would have gone somewhere else. But because we had that as a B2B technology kind of staple in our portfolio, the gravity that created to get more of that work became so clear that now we are positioned as a B2B technology branding agency.

So that worked in our favor, but I could see how, yes, maybe that maybe that's not the ideal market for us and we're like, oh man, we just became this you can work against that obviously, but yeah.

[Emily Cohen]

Yeah, I think it's pros and cons. Like there's some existing clients you have that you love and you're like, you want more of that. And then you have a bunch of clients who are like, I just don't, I keep getting this kind of work and I don't want to do that.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, it's like well you're attracting it because it's your entire portfolio. What do you think about a third and again? These are top of mind.

[Emily Cohen]

Business development, which is that they really rely on referrals and inbound business tremendously. And they're, and they're really proud of it and they should be right. It's a great thing that people love, they want to work with you, and they recommend you.

But again, that allows the people that you know in the world out there to drive the direction of your business. And creatives in general just don't like reaching out because they think of business development as sales and selling and cold calling and they think of it like a car salesman. So we have to work with our clients a lot to shift the mindset.

Because we think it's really relationship building, right? Um, and I think that's a really important shift in mindset. And the big problem in our industry is that most designers, almost all design firm principals do not do business development outreach consistently. They'll only do it when they're slow, right? Oh, and they're panicked. Like the economy sucks. Now I have to go and it's too late.

Here's our magic number. It takes two years to get a client from when you meet them to when they turn into a client. It takes two years. So you have to build relationships that have potential for the future, not quick wins.

[Bill Kenney]

Yes. Hallelujah. Uh, Hunter, it looked like you were going to jump in. I was giving you space there.

[Hunter Vargas]

No, yeah, no, I agree. I think, I mean, I would just add one other really small other thing that I think our clients should do and don't, and this is very top of mind right now: Just do things. Like a lot of our clients, they plan and they plan and they write lists and they talk about things and, like, you just gotta do it.

And this is related to every single area of your business. Sometimes you just have to do it. Like for business development, you don't need to write a list of 100 people you might want to reach out to each week, write a list of three and reach out. Don't even write the list of reach, reach out to those three people and write the list later. Just do the work and get into it. Which we know can be scary and feel like a big step, but just little steps, baby steps. Um, I think that's one thing we see a lot of people don't, you know, like, oh, I'm gonna have to launch my website before I reach out to anyone. No. Just reach out.

[Emily Cohen]

It's always about the website redesign. Designers always start with, well, I'll redesign my website. I'm like, no.

[Bill Kenney]

No, no, we're going to start acting. Um, I can appreciate both of those intimately again, which is why we're having this conversation. Um, we have forever been really proud of and reliant on referrals. And it's only in those really down years, let’s call it 2023 for us. That was a really challenging year. We go, Oh my God, we need to be doing outreach.

We have no plan. We have no framework for this. How do we want to do this? And it's just too late. Like you said, so, um, we as agencies need to get a lot better at thinking outside of that box, which is referrals, when times are good. We just need to, we have to.

[Emily Cohen]

And it's not scary. Like, I think people are just scared by it. Or they say things like, well, I'm an introvert, you know, like they have lots and lots of excuses.

[Bill Kenney]

It's like, you're also a business owner. And so like, uh, what are you going to do? Uh, I don't struggle on the action bit. I will say, thankfully, I'm, I'm happy that I don't. Me and Will, uh, two of the three owners, um, Will and I are the most active in the day to day. We are very, let's go, let's go.

Maybe almost over indexed to the other side where our team was like, Oh my God, like, can we take a little bit of time to like, think about this some more? So we don't struggle from that perspective, but we certainly struggle from point number three, you made, which is don't get so comfortable on how strong your referrals are.

[Hunter Vargas]

Yeah, and for many reasons, right? That relates to the same thing around positioning, because you want to be building a network of people that you want to be working with, right? You want to build relationships in areas that you're interested in that provide you the type of creative work that you want.

Maybe you want to step outside of the box of referrals because it's limiting, because at the end of the day, the people who usually refer you are similar to your other clients. So it's also just a great way to also just see what else is out there. Like, it's not. It's not just about building business development, right? It's about exploring.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, you know, something this is, this is adjacent, but I'll just share it. Um, we measure, we've started to measure a lot more acutely, like where our actual project leads are coming from. And for a long time, referral was always number one, right? And I'll just throw out random numbers, maybe 30 percent or something, right?

Like pretty high. So when that number is acting up, you're struggling, right? For the first time, SEO has actually taken the number one spot.

[Bill Kenney]

Now this is different from building relationships, but we're starting to put a lot of value on this. I'll just share it here for the listeners.

If they think it's interesting as well, which is to say, we believe that SEO presents a unique opportunity for us because that's an active buyer in the market, right? Like that person is actually looking to buy, generally speaking, at that moment. I need a brand agency that does this to help me with this problem I have right now.

Not, but also valuable, building a two year relationship. You have to wait for them to be an active buyer, right? So we're trying to put multiple lines out there, but the SEO one is one I never really put much weight into. Like I know it's important. We got to show up and people got to be able to find us, but we've always shown up well in the areas that were valuable, uh, in the old days, that was Dribbble in the new world, for me, that's LinkedIn.

Right. Um, but now getting these buyers that would have never found us. Because they're actively shopping at that moment for what they need. It's pretty interesting. We've never had something topple the referral number, and that is now the new number one.

[Hunter Vargas]

Out of curiosity, if it's okay to ask, do you find that these are like, um, qualified clients coming in through SEO? And are they within the sort of the B2B space that you're in?

[Bill Kenney]

I would say to your question root, it is not all great leads, right? So like you get a bigger swath and then you have to filter some of that out. But I guess our stance is going to be, but that's still a valuable subsection to capture because there's still good leads in there. And as long as the volume is high enough and doesn't overrun us, then, uh, we're okay with that dynamic.

[Emily Cohen]

Yeah, because we usually don't recommend relying on SEO because SEO does lead to a lot of unqualified leads and you need a big enough staff to respond to all these inquiries. So it takes a lot of time. But because you have a very specific niche, probably all your thought leadership and every, you know, all your kind of content is optimized to talk about B2B.

[Bill Kenney]

B2B, B2B, B2B, B2B.

[Emily Cohen]

Which a lot of our clients who are unspecialized, which is 90 percent of the designers out there, SEO is not going to work for them because it's going to be about branding and every firm does branding, you know, or non profit, every firm does non-profit. So, it only works, SEO, if you're really specialized.

[Hunter Vargas]

I agree with that. I think that's one of the reasons why we advocate for specializing, right? Because then when you specialize and you're an expert in something and people know that or they can easily find that out. You are going to come up at every touch point, right?

You're going to come up on the industry podcast for prospects, right? You're going to come up in the SEO search, and maybe it looks like it's coming in from SEO, but maybe this person has heard you speak here, on a podcast here, they saw your thought leadership posted here, and then they're like, oh, okay, let me Google this person, or they're like, okay, like, I remember, and then they see your name and they remember it.

The great thing about building expertise is then, while we still believe that relationship building efforts are important, the other networks also become more organically stronger. And they support more qualified leads because you actually have an expertise that, like, it's drawing people to you as opposed to, like, a huge net.

[Bill Kenney]

That's right. Not just random leads, not $250 logo leads, you know.

[Emily Cohen]

I need a T-shirt.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Yeah. Not to knock those people, but yes. Like if someone lands on our website. They're not going to make that ask. I wouldn't think, um, you know, it's also interesting just from content creation and trying to own a vertical perspective. Now we're starting to show up really well, even in like, um, AI search, right.

People using chatGPT say, I need this. I want this. Um, not qualified leads, but just traffic coming through from those areas. But again, I think that's closer to what I was mentioning earlier, which is like, that's generally closer to an active buyer.

That's not a random person saying I'm bored today. I want to find a random agency. It's like, no, they're saying, find one. And we had a prospect tell us this.

What did you search for? I searched, I need to bring, I need a branding agency. That's about this size that works with people that are like, Y Combinator style startups? So in that example, we came up above Pentagram, right? Pentagram is generally the higher profile clients, not maybe closer to a startup where we might be, um, so, yeah. It's all interesting how you kind of get yourself out there. But to come back to the point, it is about that. It's how you position yourself.

It is like, who are you? Um, as opposed to being a generalist, you all would know better than me. It's surprising to me that you say the majority are still generalists. I would just assume that people have started to say like, we got to carve out a niche or we're like, nothing.

[Emily Cohen]

Okay, they might not think they're generalists, but we do. So a lot of them say they're branding. So they'll say they're branding firms. They think that's specialized. It's not anymore. Branding firms say they're branding, or they say they do, uh, social good, non profit. Everybody does social good.

So, I think there are people that think they're specialized, but they really aren't.

[Bill Kenney]

So you almost have to get more tunneled in, right? If you're non profit then you have to be non profit in the sector to own the sector as opposed to the whole industry.

[Hunter Vargas]

Then even in those ones, right? Like, if you're working in nonprofits, even within sectors it’s still a very saturated market. Like, how is your process or approach different? And not your process approach, in general, but like, specifically for nonprofits, you know, your strategy work. Like Hyperakt does a great job at this, right?

They work basically exclusively nonprofits and they have a very defined strategy and process working with them. And that's why it really works for them because they, I mean, they were also one of the first to really go into non profits, but also because they have that extra level of differentiator, that's not only are they specialized, but they’re experts.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Shout out Hyperact. We're going to shout out all the awesome, what do we call, them smaller? I think we're small too, right? We're all kind of in that same size. 20ish people.

[Emily Cohen]

There's so many great firms out there.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Uh, which is also a challenge for a company like mine, right? I think the market is becoming very saturated regardless of what position you pick.

[Emily Cohen]

Yeah, big time. It's really, really hard. Yeah, it's very sad. More than ever.

[Hunter Vargas]

I agree. And I think one thing our clients always say, well, nothing can really make me different. And that's in some ways it's kind of true. There are so many firms out there, but there's still ways to kind of, you know, fold a story that feels really authentic to you.

[Bill Kenney]

That's right. Hey, build a brand.

Hey, uh, all right, now this is drawing off the book a little bit. Um, let's talk about the balance between honesty and empathy in either client or team relationships. Emily, I've known you for a bit now. You speak in a very frank, direct way. Your book, your book is named Brutally Honest, right?

So people can presume how that voice comes across in that book. So, do you find that your clients struggle with that type of communication, either with their team or their clients.

[Emily Cohen]

So, first of all, she's not as brutally honest as I am. So we're trying to move away from that, but it's really hard because that's just who I am. Uh, she's the more empathetic side, so we have a good balance there.

[Bill Kenney]

Oh, there we go. Okay.

[Emily Cohen]

I think communication, whether it's honest or not, communication is an issue. Like we always, whenever I do my presentation, every single presentation, almost all of them, I always have slides that say, here's the magic answer to all your problems.

And then the next slide is communication. It's just, no one talks to each other, you know? So if you, we make a lot of assumptions, you know, we, we think, Oh, we can't say this cause the client's going to get angry, or we can't say this to this team member cause they're going to quit. Or, you know, and so we don't believe in that.

We think, we've seen it, and have proven that, you know, if you just communicate in a nice, honest way, people appreciate that. It might be difficult, but you always land in a better place. And so for us, communication is really important. And I think most designers, because they're really empathetic people, creatives have personality, you know, very common personality type, which is kind of just really just lovely people.

They're very empathetic. And we think you can do both. I think you can be empathetic and be honest. Like, it doesn't mean they're, you know, limiting each other. Like, I think you just have to, it's not about being mean. It's not being confrontational. It's just being honest, like with clients and with your peers.

[Hunter Vargas]

I think there's a little bit of confrontation. Like, I think a lot of people are scared of confrontation personally and professionally. I mean, I think everyone's experienced challenges with and I think with our clients, we definitely like to strike that balance.

Like people, you know, they hire us to tell them a little bit what to do, but we also make sure that we work with them and we find ways that work for them. So we find a nice balance. Like, this is what we think, but we also like, if we're being honest, we want you to be honest.

I think it's like a mutual two way street. We say this to our clients, like, before they're even our client. We say this on our 1st, like, our 1st call. We just meet someone like, hey, this is our approach, our approach is that we like to have pushback, we like to have debate.

We like to get somewhere good, because if you're just saying yes to us, or we're just saying yes to you, that's not effective. We really like to make sure that we're pushing back.

[Emily Cohen]

And even in partnerships, I'm sure you have that with your partners, like you have to really have good conversations because you're going to build up resentment otherwise. And I think we, you know, a lot of partners don't really have honest conversations because they're best friends, or they're married, or they're related or they, you know, like something.

And they just don't, they're afraid and they, they, you need to overcome that fear. Like Hunter and I, we don't always agree and we do have that family dynamic, so sometimes we have to kind of navigate those and have difficult conversations.

[Bill Kenney]

I can only imagine. Yeah, yeah. I guess I'll speak for myself as a past designer. I don't design anything anymore, but I was always, and I still am even as a business owner, to the client, to our clients. Um, I always want them to be happy, right? That's the simplest way to say it. There's a more intellectual way to say that.

But at the end of the day, I want people to be happy, right? I want, I feel like that's even why I'm in this business. I want people to receive things and say, Oh my God, I love this. This is going to help us. Thank you so much. You're the best.

You know, that's, that's not reality, right? These projects, branding projects are long and they're hard and they're complicated and you've got multiple opinions and some people understand these projects and people don't.

And do you have interpersonal relationships on top of the thing? And it's like, it can be really complicated. Um, something that we've adopted as a core value in our company to kind of challenge this, um barrier of like, Oh, no, I have to say something. And now there's like this blocker. There's this mental blocker. It is the value of lead with courage.

[Emily Cohen]

I love that.

[Bill Kenney]

Lean into this uncomfortable feeling and say something. It's better for the project. It's better for the client. You're not serving them, actually, if you don't lean in and just have an open conversation. And as the company has matured and our team has matured and we're basically all senior now. Now they're very easy, right?

Now it's kind of like, Oh, we got to talk about a thing. But I remember in those early years, everybody was looking around at each other, like who's going to say the thing? And then like four weeks would go by and we'd be like, we should have said the thing. It's worse now. We don't want that pain anymore. That pain is worse.

[Hunter Vargas]

And we cannot agree more. I think that's what we also believe that, like, also, if you avoid conflict or avoid hard conversations or avoid talking about things that are tricky, right? It doesn't even need to be, like, something that you're in opposition to, or you need to say no, but there's feedback that's confusing or whatever it might be.

If you don't talk about it, like, it's just going to end up being more complicated later. So, it's better to address it at the head, with clients, with your team, with their business partner.

[Bill Kenney]

You learn that a couple times, and then you don't do that anymore. Right? We all learn through the pain. Don't touch the fire.

[Emily Cohen]

I actually don't know. We have clients who just keep repeating the same bad behavior. There are a few clients that I'm like, remember this magic word, communication.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Communicate, communicate. It's not easy for everybody. Thankfully, it's become easier for myself. I think the way that I'm able to do it is, um, I never look at things as me versus the other, in any regard.

I just look at it like there's a thing that needs to be discussed and I'm going to put it in the middle of the table. I'm not even going to say you created it or I created it. There's no right or wrong, but there's a thing here. We got to talk about it. I've become very comfortable in that world and it allows me to be like, all right, there's a thing we got to talk about.

No one's going to die here. No one's going to hate each other when we're done talking about it. We're going to be better when we're done talking about it. Let's talk about it. Um, and I think, you know, a casual personality helps, right? If you're, if you're in there fired up and well, you're doing this thing and it's messing the project up, that's obviously not going to work.

[Emily Cohen]

But then also it's really hard because you're fighting cultural norms, like so certain cultures think pushing back and talking for yourself is not always great, and there are certain parts of the country like Midwestern nice, you know.

So, I think you have to fight all that and know that there's a good at the end of this, and that all of us All of us, like we just want to be people pleasers.

I want to be a people pleaser. I do, but I also want to stand up for myself and I want to stand up for my, my business partner and my clients and the industry.

[Hunter Vargas]

And your team, yeah, I think it's yeah, that just looks back to kind of what the original, I think the original question to this was like honesty and empathy, right? Like, if you lead any of these conversations that are more challenging with honesty and empathy, that's when the conversation is usually going to go really well.

[Bill Kenney]

That's the formula. Literally just follow that formula. Nervous or not. Doesn't matter. Yeah.

[Hunter Vargas]

I think also when you're navigating different cultures and different, not just cultures, but different communication styles, you could even just be open and work with people in a way that works for them in a way that's respectful in a way that everyone's kind of mutually agreed upon.

[Bill Kenney]

It's just good knowledge to have up front. Yeah. Alright, um, let's talk about just the nature of the industry. I think the industry has been evolving. I'm sure you all see it at scale, right? I only see it in a one to one setting through my business lens, but you see it through multiple businesses.

Would you say that the expectations from clients, before we go into the whole industry, let's just talk about clients specifically, do you think those expectations of agencies like mine are changing in any regard, what they should cost, how they should serve, all these things?

[Emily Cohen]

Absolutely. I think here's the thing, right? We have a tendency to blame clients for everything. So the first thing I don't want to necessarily blame the clients. I think a lot of the problems that we find with clients that are happening, is sort of the fault of ourselves.

If that makes sense. So, I don't want to necessarily blame clients, but, um, it's kind of the whole thing. It's the clients and the designers misbehaving together. And so one of the things is we're saturated. So there's a lot of us out there, and that's making our prices plummet. And whenever the prices go down, clients are offering less and less money because we're taking less and less money.

And then, you know, like when 9/11 happened, even that was all, then when COVID happened, we lowered our prices just to win projects, right? And those prices never went up. So once you lower your prices, they never go up. And so I think one of those things is that clients don't have as many budgets.

I think the other thing that's happening is that clients are taking a much longer lead time to make decisions. So it doesn't mean like they'll call you and you'll get the project the next week. It could be months before you get the project. So there's not ghosting, so much, but a lot of delays, a lot of, a lot of delays that are happening where clients are just taking a long time to make final decisions.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah.

[Emily Cohen]

Um, I think that's one thing that's also happening. So we have potential work, but we don't know when it's going to come through.

Um, and the other thing is that clients are just, because their companies have scaled back, they have more on their plates.

And so they're doing, they're doing like three jobs instead of two jobs or one job. And so they’re stressed and that stress causes more stress on you, right? So we have to figure that out also, right?

Because our clients are stressed. They're not meaning to take it out on us, but they're like, they have tighter deadlines, tighter budgets, more expectations, more stakeholders, less enabling power. So they're not empowered to make decisions, even though they think they are. That's just all these things happening.

And that is less of a trend that's been happening for years, but yeah.

[Hunter Vargas]

I think, especially if people kind of cut their in-house teams too, right? There's like, this sort of trend of like, relying on also the branding firm to find from do everything, which isn't necessarily what, you know, your firm is meant to do, or is cut out to or wants to do. And so I think it kind of goes back to what we talked about before, like, from the beginning, having very clearly defined scopes to the client, talking about what you do, what you don't do, how you can support them, how you can't support them.

Same as communication, talking about how you like to communicate what the expectations are around feedback and timing and making sure that all that as much as possible is laid out at the start as clearly as you possibly can, so you don't get into trouble on either side. You know, and it helps the client as well to understand what you're a resource for what you're not, et cetera. Um, we definitely we've been seeing that, unfortunately.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah the pain points that you’re expressing that we saw really more acutely in 2023. This year has been largely back to normal-ish for us. But time to close a project became really, really long. The fear in what we would call the Driver of the project, sometimes that’s the Chief Marketing Officer, sometimes it’s the VP of a different department, but whoever is accountable to the project on the client side, the fear that they held in both maybe who knows what’s going on inside their business, and now they have this big project, let’s call it a big rebrand, and a lot of attention is being focused on it and a lot of expectations on how this might shift their business for the better, is being placed on top of that. And rightfully so, but to an extra degree that made it that our drivers and stakeholders decisions became really hard. Because every decision felt like life or death, right? Every color decision, typography decision, God, logo decisions. Let's not even go there. Um, visual language styles. How is this going to represent on ads versus web? All these decisions become really, really, really heavy in a fear based market.

And for us, that fear based market was really 2023 as B2B tech money pulled back. There just wasn't money to move around. And when it, and when it was spent, it was like, Oh God. Oh my God, this better be great. Or I'm doomed. Fear of losing their job if the project doesn't perform well, these types of things.

So then again, that's not something we can be mad at them about. That's something we have to be able to deal with as an agency, because that's just the nature of the market. Uh, it makes it really tough, right? It adds a level of complexity to the project. That's hard.

[Hunter Vargas]

Yeah, I think that's why, like, it's important, like, things are going to happen, right? There's going to be, 2023 was a hard year for a bunch of our clients. Like, budgets are being slashed, clients are stressed. These things are going to happen. There's good times, there’s bad times in any industry, right?

And so just making sure that you are protecting yourself where you can. Making sure that you’re communicating with your clients when it's appropriate and the right moment. And making sure that you are like, you are also, you know, a value added business, so you should be kind of standing up for yourself in those areas as well.

I think that's really important.

[Emily Cohen]

I think it's the value. Clients don't, more and more, do not understand the value of design. So that's why they're making decisions out of fear because they don't understand that they can trust us as experts. And again, that's our own faults because we are not proving our value by giving them metrics about how our work has really moved the needle for our clients. And so I think we have to do, as an industry, as creatives, in house as well, all the creatives have to prove why design has value. Even branding has value.

Like it might be harder to measure, but there are measures out there. And so being able to measure the value and telling that to the clients, that's why I think they're a little fearful because they don't know, they've never worked with designers, they don't understand what designers do, or they've worked with designers that have not been very professional or don't value their own selves.

So I think value is a big issue also that we're just seeing a lot, a lot of clients who don't understand or value design. And I think that's the industry's fault. So I think AIJ and all the associations need to do a better job of really selling our industry as a value add.

[Hunter Vargas]

And we are a value add. Like, we forget, I think, like, it's, you know, there is a huge value add to what our clients do, and we really believe in that, but the world changes and so do the services you provide and the way you provide them and what people are looking for.

And I mean, so many more of our clients like strategy becomes such an important part because, not that you need to prove why you're doing a design, but it's not just about building pretty things. It's like thinking about business goals, thinking about what business goals this new brand is going to meet and how it's going to meet them.

And there's, it does that, but you have to like, make sure that you're speaking to that. And some of our clients, they're doing it without even realizing, or they like to like, well, we always have clients. Well, we don't really do strategy. Then we look at what they do. And we're like, well, you do strategy and you should say that you do strategy because you do.

And so you need to also value yourself and what you do.

[Bill Kenney]

Shout out to the strategy team on our side. We use the word designer a lot in this, in this call specifically, right? It's easy to go there. Yeah. Um, we put a lot of emphasis on having just a strategy team, right? Dedicated strategists. That's all they do. They are just strategists on our team, writers on our team, designers on our team.

Everybody's in a lane owning their craft. Uh, that's a really great bridge into the next question I was going to ask, which is like, what shifts are you seeing? Just like almost, um, the creative agency models. How is the model shifting? Not the market. Well, I guess maybe if the market is shifting, how do we have to adapt as agencies?

What are you seeing as far as your customers operationally and like model wise?

[Emily Cohen]

Some of it's emotional, they're deciding, is this the industry for them? They're like requestioning their whole lives. I think there's some big questions happening just with people like, is this the kind of industry I want to be in right now? Um, I think there's not as much but there is that, um, AI is definitely like where is AI going?

Are we going to compete against it? How do we, you know, like the whole, I'm sure you heard the Paula Sher thing with using AI as part of her, design solution for a client and there was some, you know, online discussion So I think there's a lot of conversation.

[Bill Kenney]

Online discussion is putting it lightly, Emily.

[Emily Cohen]

Yeah, so I think that look, I've been in the business for 35 years and every year there's always something new. And so I think part of our industry is that there's always going to be new things. And if you're, if you have trouble with change, this is not the industry for you because there's always new things, right?

There's going to be always new technologies and new ways of working and new challenges. I think the other thing that creatives are encountering is struggling with staff mental health issues.

Or staff management issues. You know, they blame, I hate this when they call millennials entitled. I don't think that's actually really true.

Um, they're just speaking up for themselves, which we should have done a long time ago. So I think there's a lot more need to really care for your team than there ever was. You know, our team is speaking up for themselves more and more. They're more honest about their mental health challenges, and they're taking longer breaks.

[Hunter Vargas]

I think one thing we're definitely seeing is also like, we talked about staff management, also the makeup of teams, right? We hear more and more about teams that are doing like, full freelancer models we're hearing, you know, distributed teams, which is an ongoing trend. And so we don't believe that there's a right or wrong way to organize your business.

But you want to make sure that it's aligned with what your vision is and what your future is. And so I think like being deliberate about your staffing model, whether that's and not just doing it because like, oh, well, it's cheaper to hire a bunch of freelancers or which isn't necessarily true, right?

It's like any decision you make about your model needs to be deliberate in terms of how you're staffing up. And so we're seeing different trends in terms of how people are building teams. And I think I'm definitely curious to see how that continues to change and grow and see what our clients do in those areas and like, you know, I think it just depends on the firm and what works for them and what their needs are and types of clients they have types of projects, et cetera.

[Emily Cohen]

Yeah, one of the things we're saying is leadership models. People are building leadership teams.

[Hunter Vargas]

Yeah, we're seeing that a lot.

[Bill Kenney]

Meaning that you were not seeing as much focus on leadership levels and tiers within the kind of space?

[Hunter Vargas]

I think, especially within mid to small to mid size, not so much before, but now people, I think, as principals and partners of firms are kind of reconsidering their priorities. First of all, they're more committed to being like, I don't want to just be in the weeds. I know that I need to focus on business development.

They want to maybe work less hours. They want to, you know, exit in five to ten years. There's kind of different priorities and pressures that I think are happening with industry. Especially when they're a solo, um, partner, well, I guess not a solo partner.

They're one, they're one person who runs a firm. We find that especially when they're like a midsize, like having a leadership team that they trust. And that they're building very deliberately can have really incredible results to build a team that supports you in the ways that you need to be supported.

[Bill Kenney]

That's good to hear. I think that Focus Lab, we've always valued having pretty clear leadership tiers within our company. Even when we were really small, like we had full time dedicated HR, we were like 12, 13 people, right?

When people, even if a CPA or CFO looks at that, they're like, you're crazy. You need more billable seats. What are you doing adding admin like that at this stage? I only share that to say I couldn't state more clearly how valuable it is to have great leadership that is not founder leadership.

The people on our team leading within our team make my life easier. Yes. Okay. Sure. But just make the company better. You're talking about people that add a perspective and a personality that I just don't have, and I can't bring, I bring alternate stuff to the table that we just wouldn't have, right? This thing would not be the same if it were me and two other partners and a bunch of designers, writers, and strategists, right?

Like it just, it wouldn't be the same.

Um, so yeah, I would just like basically plus one, I guess is what I'm doing. Plus one to that point of add leadership early and often, even when it feels like it might be too early.

[Hunter Vargas]

But the right balance of leadership. Yeah. The right balance. Not too many, the right personalities for you, the right roles. There's so many things to consider within that. There's no one size fits all of source, but there's definitely like, you want to be any sort of staffing, any sort of, anytime you hire, anytime you promote.

You're not just doing it to do it, right? Because you it's not, it's not only because you need it, it's also because you want it. I think that's important when you're hiring and when you're promoting. It's like, not only is there a need, but there's also a want and a reason and strategy and thinking behind it. If that makes, if that, like, makes sense.

[Emily Cohen]

Which is why you need a vision.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah coming all the way back around. Understand what you’re building, why the hell you're building it, you know. When we start these things, we say, I want to design brochures for people and websites because they'll pay me money and that's better than working at Starbucks and then it turns into like a, Oh, This is a thing, now. I need to sit down and think critically about it.

[Hunter Vargas]

Yeah. And listen, I'll say something and maybe this is a little bit controversial, I think my mom agrees with me. There's a lot of people who, you know, there's a huge trend because the market's more saturated. It's obvious that there's a trend that more people are starting firms. And a lot of people are starting firms right out of college.

And we're not saying you can't do that, but I'm someone who's out of college like a couple of years ago, and I knew I was going to own my own business eventually, but it's important to get the experience and see what it's like to actually be a business owner. Like I thought I knew even what it was to be a business owner.

And then I'm now a business owner. And I'm like, Oh, there's like even these, all these other things that I didn't like consider. And so I think it's important that, you know, if, if people are listening to this that are maybe thinking of starting a firm that you're really considering what that means and what the potential is.

Maybe like, you know, I think just starting a firm is no joke. And you know, you take it seriously because you also, you take it seriously because you represent other people in the industry. If you're low cutting, you know, competitors, that's not good for the industry either. Low balling.

So I guess that's like something that we always think about, it's important to act ethically as well, and I think part of that is when you run a business is acting that way, and thinking about your actions and practices.

[Emily Cohen]

And I would say, I would add to that. I completely agree. And I actually would be even harsher. So it's not only students, it's not even students. It's people who have, who've been laid off and they decide they're going to open their own practice. And most firms, they start by opening their practice because they want independence creatively.

And they want to do cool design work.That is not a reason to start a firm. I'm going to be really honest. You start a firm because you want to run a business. You have to do business development. You have to deal with operations and finances. You are not designing. You should not be designing as a firm owner. Like, you know, like, that's not your job.

And if you're going to start a job just because you want to design, go get a, you know, like, then get a real job.

[Hunter Vargas]

Yeah and maybe it won't actually support what you want, right? Like running a business also, there's not financial security in that, right? Like I think when people are, you know, where there's just some things that you have to consider when you, and I think I wanted to speak from this more general perspective of like, we also speak from this because we believe in the industry.

We believe in the value it adds. And if any person is jumping into start the business, it's just going to be harder to, you know, maintain sort of like the value and showcase and all that and make sure everyone's kind of maintaining industry ethics.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, you, Hunter, you've done a good job beating me to the next question. So props to you. Uh, yeah, we basically answered the next question, which is going to be open advice for anybody thinking about starting a creative agency. I would just add on top of that. You answered it. Uh, you, um. You brought up some really good points that I think people should really embrace, which is like, if you are just feeling, creatively unfulfilled at a current shop, and God, even if this is happening in mine, right?

Like this can happen anywhere. Going to start your own thing is not necessarily the solution, right? There's a whole basket of headaches that are going to now be on your plate that you don't want. I literally had this conversation this week, talking with a guy that I'm like, pseudo-mentoring.

Yeah. Right. And he's like, Hey, you know, three people have left the place that I'm working at. And I'm, and I'm thinking maybe like, is it time for me to leave too? He laid out his options. One of the options was to go start a thing with the other three people. And I'm like, that needs to be your number one last option.

Do not think that that is the right path. That has so much complexity. I think you should stay there and look for an opportunity now that might have presented itself now that three people have left. What, what value can you bring now in the gaps and grow yourself?

But, you know, caveats being unless it's toxic and you have to leave. But to your point, like going to build your own thing sounds great.

[Emily Cohen]

Yeah.

[Bill Kenney]

And then there's a period at the end of that sentence and then like fill in the rest of the paragraph. And it's like, uhhhh. I'm really happy I started this business. And like I said, I've been doing it for 15 years, but I kind of jumped in blindly too.

I didn't know what I didn't know. So it's not to say that people couldn't do it, but just, just understand what you're getting into, right? What do they say? I mean, the percentages, right? Like 85 percent don't make it past the first five years. Like, you know, even people with business partners, people with business partners generally blow up.

I, I'm a, yeah, I'm a little bit of the small percentage that has made it, mostly through all of that, uh, fairly well put together, great business partners still exist, uh, business continues to do well, but it hits its bad years like 2023. That's just what it is, right? That's the price of doing business.

[Hunter Vargas]

Yeah, And I think one thing that we always tell our clients and I think it kind of relates to this and like, I think just a general life thing that I've also been taking really to heart. You can also like, let's say you do it and it doesn't work out or you realize that your priorities have changed, that's okay.

Like, I don't think like also reflecting back and like I've committed a grave error, like our clients always like whenever we're, let's say, providing with a recommendation about something that's going to be a major improvement. They're like, well, I just didn't do it for this one. And we're like, it's okay, it's done.

But in moving forward, you're going to do it now for this proposal or this deck or whatever. And that's what matters. And so I think also with partnerships or with your business. You know, we're not yelling at anyone for starting a business or, you know, it's just things might change and that's okay. And, you know, be aware of that and be open to it and be honest with yourself and with people around you and move forward with that.

[Bill Kenney]

You all have shared a lot. I appreciate you both. I appreciate what you do and stand for in the industry um, we've heard a lot of that in the call which is like, we should all be trying to hold up the ethics and what we want this industry to be. And quite honestly, I don't hear a lot of that around me.

I don't even know that I wake up every day thinking that way. So it's kind of a good reminder and it's quite refreshing to hear those types of words. Um, so I thank you for that and for what you're trying to do for the industry as a whole. You're not just out there saying like, well, we know about business and we're going to help this one business.

No, you're trying to kind of hold this industry up. That’s a tall task.

[Emily Cohen]

Yeah, Yeah, it's definitely we've been on a mission for the last year and a half to do this. Because we are doing a lot of things that are hurting our industry and we need to stop, honestly, and it's up to us as an industry. So we really try to, when we work with our clients, tell them that your actions have repercussions on everybody else in the industry.

[Hunter Vargas]

And then on you, ultimately.

[Emily Cohen]

So we can't just, yeah, and so we can't be selfish and think just about us and our team. It's really about us as an industry and us as a world, you know.

[Bill Kenney]

All right. Way to fit, way to finish on the big note.

[Emily Cohen]

That was great.

[Bill Kenney]

Uh, yeah. Thank you both. I really appreciate the time. I really look forward to crossing paths. Again, Hunter, maybe you'll be there next time, uh, doesn't have be Circles, but somewhere somehow.

[Emily Cohen]

It might be Circles. Yeah.

[Bill Kenney]

Thanks. Thanks. Okay,

[Emily Cohen]

Thanks, Bill.