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Outsmarting the Big Guys: Building a Challenger Brand Agency from Scratch · Do Small Business Like a Big Boss Podcast

• Aisha Massengill: Me it to me it means owning. It. Owning what you do, having a sense of who you are, and going with it. It's not about asking for permission, it's asking for forgiveness. It's not about being reluctant, it's about taking shots and big swings and somehow balancing all of that with empathy on top of that. Welcome to Do Small Business Like a Big Boss, where we explore the real stories, hard-earned lessons, and game-changing strategies of entrepreneurs who've moved beyond the side. Hustle and build businesses that scale with confidence. This show is proudly sponsored by Project Icon. I'm your host, Aisha Jorge Massingil, your small business legal guide. Let's dive in. What up, bosses? Welcome to the latest episode of Do Small Business Like a Big Boss. I am your host, Aisha Jorge Massingil, your small business legal guide. And today we are pumped to have Justin Bajin. Justin is the co-founder and creative director of Familiar Creatures, an independent advertising agency based out of Richmond, Virginia. In 2018, he walked away from a six-figure salary, packed up his wife and three daughters, and drove a minivan from Boston to Richmond to bet on himself. Starting his agency with just one client, a local brewery, and a big idea about how Challenger brands could punch above their weight. Today, Familiar Creatures has been named one of Ad Week's 25. fastest growing agencies in the world. Their clients include Dukes Mayonnaise, Crunch Fitness, Bubba Burger, amongst others. This is my favorite part. They've become known for helping smaller brands outsmart, not outspend the big guys. And this is why he's a perfect guest for this show. Welcome Justin. Hey thanks for having me. So let's start at the beginning. You had a six-fig figure salary. I'm imagining a family with a comfortable life in Boston. What was that actual moment or feeling that made you say, I'm gonna blow this thing up and I'm gonna start from scratch? Yeah. It was ⁓ staying in conversation with, you know, my future co-founder. We worked together at the Martin Agency, which is a big agency here in Richmond, Virginia. ⁓ and I kind of was always aware of what he was doing, he was aware of what I was doing. And he just tossed it to me as a very simple text message one day. And I talked to my wife about it. 'Cause I was not necessarily skeptical about the opportunity. It was more so about coming back to a town that I'd only left two years prior. And, you know, us in advertising we have this sort of manifest destiny mindset when you get a job that you're gonna keep on moving to somewhere new every two years, every two years, every two years and you wanna go to New York and you wanna go to LA, you wanna go all the big cities. So it it was kind of like a a humility check. Like, are you ready to go back to where you just came from and build this agency from scratch. And so the moment was very casual and it r requires some reflection. But I give a lot of the credit to my wife for saying, like, let's give it a shot. You know, I'm I got you. And I can't imagine making decisions like this without a partner in your corner, you know, who can provide that support and that cheerleading that you need to make hard decisions. That is ⁓ Absolutely amazing ⁓ when you have that kind of support, right? Because it it I would imagine it I've had to root move several times and and ⁓ when you have the spouse that says yes that gives the thumbs up, that's probably one of the heaviest parts, right? You're like, I'm gonna disrupt everything. Yes. And if you have that quick yes, you're like, Okay, you can switch to like some of the other tactical and strategic things that have to happen with uprooting everything. But you so you go to Richmond now. You have to forgive me. I'm a n I'm a ninety five I ninety five Carter girl. Okay. So I went to school in Boston, ⁓ from New York. When I think of Richmond, I'm thinking tobacco and I'm going south. So what was that like being in a space where people think everything's about New York? People think everything's about LA, but you're like, No, I'm gonna make it work in Richmond. Yeah, that's a great point. You know, ⁓ when I first moved here, I was in LA. ⁓ working at a great agency that worked on challenger brands and I only knew Richmond as an exit along ninety five because to your point I had lived in Boston and I also lived in South Carolina. And Richmond was kinda like a nest like a place where you might have a halfway stopping point. I didn't have any kind of conception of it until ⁓ I I flew out here for an interview. It was then where I kind of understood just based on the times where I've lived in Boston and also visited places like Charleston, South Carolina, where it's the blend of you're gonna hear southern accents, but you're gonna see history. You're gonna see some bricks, you're gonna see some plaques. And I that's comf comforting for me. But to your point about like how does it, you know, sort of measure up against the big cities, it isn't trying to be one of those, you know, maybe eventually we could get to tier one and a half, but we're definitely tier two. You know, when you think of us, you think of Maybe Portland, Maine, or Providence, Rhode Island, or maybe Raleigh, North Carolina. We're in that kind of vibe where it's like we have a major state university right here. We have we are the capital of Virginia, but we don't have the gridlock. We don't have the subway system. And I could give a lot of the credit actually back to the Martin agency for starting their business here in the sixties, ⁓ and kind of putting this city on the map for advertising. For many years, you know, it was almost like a one agency town and it's kind of ⁓ grown up over the last decade or so. There's another big or mid sized agency here called Arts and Letters and they're primarily work on Google and that's a huge account. So knowing that those those two places were were here already, us starting, we knew that there was a talent pool that we could recruit from. And there were some big businesses here like Capital One is based here. Carmax is based here. The Virginia, North Carolina power company, Dominion Energy, is here as well. So, you know, it's not it's not a tiny, you know, ⁓ country town, and again, but it's not New York or Boston. And we have now a handful of agencies as opposed to, you know, maybe twenty years ago it didn't look that way. Hmm. Yeah, I forgot to add the banks. In fair in fairness to the good people of Richmond and and one of my really, really good friends lives there and he's wonderful. ⁓ and he's but he's a Virginian you know, he's a native. But you you mentioned, okay, you moved to Richmond with just one client and you just talked about another agency where Google is their anchor client. Can you talk about some of the risks and then some of the rewards of having that one anchor client that can mean so much to your business one way or the other? Mm-hmm. That's interesting. Yeah. It allows you to develop a very deep partnership because the need level is high on your side. You're pouring everything into it. If they're part of the major part of your your PL, you have to make it work, work hard. And it can't just be like, they're just some one of the things that we do here. and but the the dangers are in this age of private equity and a there could be some, you know, changes that could be made. We we've survived one of those actually with Duke's Mana, our largest client probably cutting ahead for you in your ⁓ questions to me. You know, we started working with them in 2021. They were owned by a private equity firm in Charlotte called Falfurious Partners. And then last year they were acquired by ⁓ a group called Advent. And now we've been working with them for a year since then, which is almost like a it's almost like a new day in some ways. And weirdly enough, our other biggest client, Crunch Fitness, was also sold last year, a month after Duke's to another private equity firm. And so these are just things I just never ever thought about when I was in advertising school, when I was starting out in this business, it was just make cool work, see what happens. And now it's like you have to think about things like tariffs and the consumer confidence index and different economic forces that are really way beyond your control. And you gotta figure out can you pivot, can you survive, can you rise above those things and show value and worth despite outside forces that are beyond, you know. what you can manipulate. So just pulling the string on that a little bit, ⁓ after you make that first move and you have that one client, what was the financial reality in those early days in those first few months? What did that look like from a financial perspective when everything is hinging on that one client? Yeah, was it was a very interesting time because I was grew up having a four ⁓ one K in the benefits package And knowing the benefits person and the folks in HR and everything's taken care of. You might have some minor squabbles and issues, but otherwise you're getting a steady paycheck twice a month, you know, the second week of you know, the second Friday and the fourth Friday, whatever it may be, you get bonuses and then starting your own thing. You know, it was us taking a pot of money and writing a check to each other each time we got it, ⁓ and just handing the paper check to to each other. There really wasn't There really wasn't a financial drop off. I mean, it was two people splitting, you know, the the amount of money that eventually like a small agency would work on. So it actually was really good. It was more about later on, it was like when we st when we want to scale, how are we going to do that and make sure it's equitable for everybody? And then also make sure that we're we're still paying ourselves a fair wage. And we we still are not I'm not you know, market value. If you want a glass door, I'm not we're not compensated that way through just actual salary because we're trying to build something here. Mm-hmm. Which is you know, thankfully I read books and stuff and talked to other business types because again, these are things that I just n had no wherewithal within working as a copywriter. You know, that does not prepare you for being a small business owner. There's nothing hardly any overlap. Right. And And you touch on so many really important things there. Maybe I say really important because I know it was part of my own psychological process. The pivot from every two weeks that money is gonna be there and the confidence that you had and the confidence that your wife had in you to say, We're gonna go and we're gonna give up comfort and bet on ourselves. Like were there ever any moments where you were like, What the hell am I doing? Yeah. Yeah. Building the plane as you fly it, you could be one of the metaphors you could use. Fake it till you make it could be another metaphor. You use I mean just learning that you need to get a business license and you know, you need to make sure you have a CPA whose great not just when it comes to tax time, but even when you're doing your articles of, you know, incorporation. We're talking twenty eighteen, so there was no Claude, there was no Gemini to help you with this stuff. Yeah, I I'm trying to think of like a like a funny anecdote or something. I would say I would say, you know, for us this might get so specific that it hopefully it translates to everybody else, but in terms of figuring out what do our services cost. So we knew what we knew what it would cost to work at a huge advertising agency if you were a client. Okay. That's four hundred people. What would what should two people cost or three, you know, when you're dividing your services? And you're thinking them as products. And ⁓ that was a journey that took a couple years. I feel great about it now. But the first couple years, there's just not going to be information about that on their internet. No one's gonna say, like, here's how you do it. Here's here's percentages you could look at. And there were there were times early on where we gave folks sticker shock. And there were times where it was like it felt scary that you might be leaving value on the table if you underpriced yourself, you know. And that's the thing about professional services versus we don't have a physical product. We don't make anything that's sold in stores. So there's nothing about manufacturing and overhead. It's just about intellectual capital. How can you price what that is? So that that I I'm giving you some not a strong anecdote, but I'm giving you some of the struggle right there. No, but it is so real as a small business owner, particularly as you say, in the business of your intellectual capital. I think for me, because they always say use I statements. For me, that is something that you're always Especially when you do a pitch and it comes to that fateful moment where people say, You have to know your value. And you're like, I can go for the gusto, and maybe they get scared, as you say, the sticker shock and they go away, or they accept the number too quickly and you're like, shoot. Yeah. Like we underpriced it. I underpriced it and it's so it's so painful. I'm actually doing two presentations that the energy output is the same, but The amount of money that I'm earning for both are vastly different because of what my psychology was as I went into each one. And and now I know I left money on the table, but I've learned. And that is, I would say, for our listeners out there, it is just a muscle that you build over time as you continue to do perform your services and see what the level of output is that's required, the assets that you have to create. That all helps you to determine, like, yeah, next time I'm gonna get them. I'm gonna get them. Yeah. Yeah. I I learned ⁓ I'm still I'm still processing or absorbing, just kind of like, where are you in the ecosystem, or put it a little bit more Darwinian in the food chain compared to competitors? And, you know, if you think about headcount, if you think about your revenue, if you think about those kinds of things and then you c if you can ever see what other folks are making, you can start to see like, okay, this is how we this is what we can command with a straight face. And we will to your point, we will have losses based on this, but we'll also have wins based on this. ⁓ and but it's kind of humbling because, you know, I I I hope that you have you you have kind of an outsized amount of confidence if you think you can start a business and you actually do and you sustain it. That's you're not a you're not a person who's like, I'm all about being heads down and just being a soldier and just saying, Yes, sir, you're you're kind of a person who questions authority a little bit and you think you can do things a little bit better and you don't like working for other people, you know, if you have lots of opinions, so that means your confidence is higher. So it's humbling when you start to go like, But am I as high quality as this huge place or this really good place that's midsize? ⁓ it's not even about quality. It's just about what you can command based on your experience and the credibility that you've established. And that's another hard lesson that I learned was how long it takes to build reputation. Like nobody knows who you are or cares who you are unless if you are already a superstar. And if you're not a superstar in your respective field, you have to build it over time and it just does not happen fast. That point is so important. ⁓ you know, there's that phrase that says, don't compare your beginning to someone else's middle. that's great. And you you just you see your competitors, you see the people out there doing the thing, but they've been doing the thing for a while. Don't mean you can't do the thing, but it takes a minute, as you said, to build up to that point. So I always say, I don't always say somebody said it first, but it's one of my favorite quotes. Comparison is a thief of joy. Yes. And if you're experiencing joy in what you're doing, stop comparing yourself to someone else's middle when you're just beginning. Yes. Rating. Yes. It's so discouraging compared against you, you know, your best you. Yes. So all right, we talked about the money a little bit. ⁓ I want to talk about decision making in the context of a partnership. Because you have a partner, you both in your business. How do you all approach decision making when you are aligned on something? How do you ⁓ do decision making when you're not aligned? Like Who's gets the tiebreaker to go forward if you don't agree? Tell me about that process. Yeah, I wish I wish that we had something systematic. It's it's a vibes check each time. You know, with the way that we divide up the business, he handles more of the finances and the operations side. He knows the money flowing in and out. I handle the business development networking side. So it's kind of like you're a little you're like a chief of one thing or two things and You come in with what you think you should do and the other person has to go like, Okay, I could see that. Yeah, sure. Like I empower you to do that. And then there's other decisions that have to be made though that are joint ones to your point that are don't really impact either of those two spheres. So, you know, I don't think there's ever been a time where there was some kind of thing where it's like, I don't know, whatever you want, fine. I think we always we always check in and make sure that we're both aligned, ⁓ before we do something. I mean, we're We're talking to each other four hundred times a day. You know. ⁓ you know, we have an open office, you know, layout here. So it's mostly over Slack messaging and then over some texting and then sometimes it's taking walks or meeting off site, but we're always communicating. So little decisions are being made, you know, fractions of a second. And ⁓ but maybe earlier on we probably had more friction. in those first few months as we were just trying to figure out the philosophy or point of view, like what are we trying to do with this thing. So there were some more battles early on. And luckily we were so small nobody really knew about those. ⁓ Yeah. But they don't they don't really happen anymore. I think ⁓ one of the things that's really important drawing on my experience when I was in corporate America is what you described. I would call it like clear lanes. Right. What are the clear lanes of responsibility? And when I've had points of friction, it's when multiple team members had intersection within those lanes, causing either confusion for your external business folks or internally between you, who has ownership and responsibility over what? And the clearer that you can be with your business partners, I would say from a legal perspective, ⁓ it needs to be in your operating agreement. You know, who's responsible for what, who's in what lane. The clearer that you can be about th that kind of stuff, it helps you with your decision making down down the road. I want to take a commercial break to talk about something fun. Okay. Because you did an interview that just started to take me back because it had these multiple clips of all these really great ads. It had the Budweiser frogs and the Let's ⁓ guys. And I just like I it was just transporting me back. And I just wanted to get like Can you tell us a little bit about the creative process? You get ⁓ a new client that comes in or one of your existing clients that wants to do a new campaign. What is that creative process like in terms of trying to source what they're trying to accomplish and then what vision you all bring? Yeah. ⁓ great question. It's starting out smart, which is starting out with strategy. So you're taking into account what are you seeing out there in the consumer. world. What are they what are they like or what do they need? What are their opinions? And that can go across many different methods. You could do interviews, you could do surveys, you can do desk research. Then you're talking about the category. So what what vertical is your or industry is your the brand in? What are they doing? What are their what seems to be kind of the tropes and the themes that you see. Then you're looking at ⁓ the ⁓ kind of the culture at large, what's going on in the in the world today. And then What does your company do, your brand do that that is kind of their secret sauce, the white space that they occupy? Those are some of the like basic tenets for you to arrive at just a single-minded thought that can kind of galvanize everybody so they can think of fun creative ideas. So it's strategy, and I could talk about that for hours, but once you have a great insight, a great kind of unlock strategically, then it's just coming up with lots of ideas. And the way it's done in advertising is which is been like this since the nineteen fifties probably is creative teams. So an art director and a writer staring at each other and coming up with ideas that are sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes you they hope no one ever knows. And it's sharpening each other. You know, it's go, okay, I could see that. But what if you tried this? Or like that's really good. Let's just start working on that now. Or like, that's bad. You know, and then once they have those ideas, they bring them to the creative directors, which would mean B dufts and an eye. And we start gauging them based on what would work well for the consumer, but then what can we really sell to the client that would be authentic to them? And yeah, we want to make sure there's a quality there that's great would be something we'd be proudly demonstrating or displaying on our website. So it's a it's it's not a very ⁓ scientific thing. It's a lot more artful and organic, but the more you do it. As a creative person, the where you can kind of see what can be fruitful and what seems like a dead end. And then as a creative director, you're just guiding them, you know, you're not necessarily creating anymore. You're just guiding them in the right direction to then bring that expression back to the client. And here we love love it have our teams present to the clients with us there, as opposed to other places I've been where it's been like you never you you you give your baby bird to the creative directors and you hope for the best. Now we like to have our folks be in that room and show the work. with their true passion and conviction. So yeah, hopefully that answers what your your question was there. Yeah. And I I would imagine, you know, that showing buy-in to your team, you know, confidence in them and giving them an opportunity to claim their work. I I think some of the feedback that I've gotten being a l a little bit adjacent to those spaces is I will hear claims of like they are misrepresent either misrepresenting my work or misrepresenting my work as their own, even though it's a team it's a team sport. But people like their credit, right? Mm-hmm. So it's great that you do that. I wanna ask you about the decision to scale, because it's you and Dustin in the beginning, how big is your team now? Now we're like 10, 10 folks. So what were some of the key decision points and how did you approach like, hey, we need to add on this person? We think that we have enough. money to support this person. What was some of the thinking around that? Yeah, it was ⁓ you know, we started out with one client, like you said, and within months we picked up a second client and we realized that it was getting difficult wearing all the hats. And so we thought about what's one function that would be great to empower someone else to take on. At that time it was account management. So like handling the client relationship, you know, on a day to day basis, it took a lot of thinking about just like what kind of place do we want to build? We kept doing a lot of scenario plannings of like, okay, year one, we want to look like this, year five, we want to look like this, year ten. And we thought about the roles that would go along with each times of the timeline. We haven't done that in a few years because it's just hard to, especially in our business driven by the economy so much it's hard to say with certainty, here's what we're gonna do in five years. You know, it's more like, what are you gonna do in five months, buddy? But you know, we were starting out. So it was it was looking at the resourcing of it all. It's like, okay, we have two clients. So we have this kind of this income coming in. It seems like we could start building something with this income. And then we eventually won another client after that. And ⁓ slowly but surely we we were building and building. Really things changed ⁓ in 2021, ⁓ so that's three years later when we won Duke's and we won Crunch Fitness. And that's when we really realized we need to go from three or four people to like five or six, which doesn't sound like much, but who are those strategic ⁓ hires that will help take these new pieces of business forward? So yeah, I mean it's we look at payroll and we look at ⁓ revenue coming in and we try to make sure that the ratios are Correct. We run lean. We always will be that way. I'd rather have, I would say I'd rather have one less person than one more. And then, you know, just like in any business, there's different cycles of busyness and the in-between times. And it can be painful when you feel like, wow, we've all been just chilling for for months, you know. So how do you make sure your overhead is correctly managed so you don't feel that kind of because I live in a new business, so I'm always just thinking about business, business, business. How can we get more business? So you want to make sure there's a level of productivity at all times. Hopefully that answers your question. It does. And and it leads into another one for me, which is you talked about your business like many being cyclical and sometimes they're slow periods. How does that impact your decision making in terms of taking on new clients, whether you think they're a good fit or not? Yeah. We years ago developed a very sophisticated system called the smiley face system. And it was grading things based on the budget, the time, the opportunity creatively. And eventually we added a fourth one, which was like, are they cool? 'Cause we we noticed we had some folks that actually they checked off the three and it was like this still wasn't very ⁓ you know, satisfying with experience. ⁓ yeah, because they were not nice. ⁓ and so we don't really and we really would, like Dustin and I would go like I feel like this is two smileys. What are you getting out of this? I'm like, I'm getting one smiley, then I'm getting like a s like a middle face. Okay. Hmm. And ⁓ eventually it really came down to the fit for us. Like it's a it's ⁓ it's an intuitive thing. So to your point, in the d days of COVID, which was a really weird time for advertising and anybody, we were a lot more open minded. And then once we got more clients You know, as we came out of that twenty twenty one happened, which was again great, and we kept building, then we felt more empowered to say no on things came up and and now we we also have gotten even better at saying no because we used to say no after working on something for a little bit and then saying no. And now we can say no before we even get there. And you just have to trust in the opportunity cost of it all. You don't feel so good about it, and what if you say yes to it, but then You couldn't say yes to something else that was better and you don't even know when that's gonna come and maybe it won't. But there's nothing worse than a bad guess. A quick no is so much better than a bad guess, where you feel over leveraged or overcomp or you feel like you've compromised. You feel like you're stretching to fit them instead of what's best for for your organization. And we've learned some of those lessons, you know, over time. And you have to have in addition to the confidence, you have to have some optimism balanced with realism. But if you if you don't have it, I don't know how you just keep showing up every single day, no? I can't imagine and I just think about how ⁓ we went through COVID and we went through things that felt like recessions or something akin to it. It's been a it's been a ⁓ a topsy turvy ride from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty six, you know. ⁓ Three presidents with varying much very different takes on how things should be run. We had inflation, we had surpluses, we had stimulus, stimmy checks, you know. so many different things. So ⁓ you have to have a even keel nature to not get too too ⁓ full at yourself and not to get too down on yourself, you know. Yeah. Was so the great Robin Arson of Peloton says, use your no's to protect your yeses. Ooh, that's good. Is there a no that you had to give that really hurt, but you knew it was right? Or maybe a yes that you said something you said yes to where you're like, we shouldn't have done that. That's gonna be hard for me to to get 1000 percent I won't get so specific, but I will say. There is one thing that was really enticing. in that middle point of our times, the twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two era, where really business changing RFP came our way. And we went through one round of it, meaning like there was a a meeting where you met with them and you got to hear about the opportunity. I started thinking about well of course on w on on the smiley face system, the budget of this is incredible. This would change us. We could go from that point from like five to like twenty-five people. But back to your point about anchor clients, it would change us in such a way we would be only we would have to invest so much into working on that one piece of business that would pull us away from what we want to be, which is an agency for challenger brands and brands with a plural, not just one. So we can have a variety of experiences and bring those different learnings to bear on different verticals and industries. And this would have just kept us in one one industry. And it's not as if it's not as if they we were at the stage where it was like we went all the way to it and it was like, do you want the business or not? This was very early on. ⁓ I don't have regrets about it. I had And the first few months afterward, especially seeing who won that piece of business, I was like, ⁓ maybe could have had a shot. A better shot than I thought I would have, but I didn't feel bad about like, yeah, but we didn't have to hire people in different capacities that we've never managed before. We would have to hire managers to manage people, you know, in different capacities that are just are not germane to what we've grown up doing. So that felt like a good no and ⁓ a bad yes. I don't know. I don't know if I don't know. I don't think we've had I don't think we've had one that would would be worthy of talking about, but we've had some challenging relationships earlier on that we haven't had anything like that in the last like four years. Well, good good for you on that. I know I've had both. In fact, just the other day, yesterday, I turned a gentleman down because I I told him I I just don't have the capacity to help you in the way that you be helped. And I could tell I love your smiley face thing. I hope you know that I'm stealing that. In terms of a decision making, because it was gonna be a lot of sad face. It's gonna be an energy suck. The money was gonna be okay, but not great. And I had had an an another occasion or two where I let my heart take over and I'm like, you know, they really need help. And and I hated it. Every minute I was like, I told a couple of my friends if you if you hear me saying I'm taking that kind of working and you have Your permission, my permission hit me in the throat because I have no business being over here. Don't let me go over here. So and I felt I felt such a wash of relief to just say no. And that's when you know, you know, biblically they say the the peace that surpasses all understanding. I just had a great amount of peace about it and he took it well. And, you know, we're both the better for it. Mm-hmm. I'll s I'll say that part. So that's awesome. I want to pivot to this like fighter mentality. Like you guys are small and scrappy. You may not be as resourced because you're better resourced than when you started, but you're perhaps not as well resourced as the big guys. What kind of mentality and approach do you take to continuing to thrive in your business against those big guys? Yeah. ⁓ it's definitely just thinking about what does a business really need in terms of the clients that we've that we service? What do they really need to move and grow up fast, you know, like Duke's mayonnaise, we helped them become the fastest growing mayonnaise, you know, in the category. Us, you know, like when we were f five or six people all the way till now we're ten people, we did that. You would think that would come from a huge, you know, place or a big place to to get them to that level or to help them be sold for one point five billion last year, like they were f ⁓ to the private equity firm. But it what you learn is that intelligence and intuition ⁓ are superpowers and you have to trust in your gut and making decisions quickly based on experience. ⁓ and so we just have learned like brands don't need armies. They just need some specialists who I don't want it to be military minded here, but just folks that have been there before that c can act with you know, precision like targeting. It's not about bodies. It's about getting smart folks together who have been there. So yeah, nothing nothing now really rattles us in terms of taking on a new client because we know we've been there and we've done it for great brands in the past and we like we work in challenger brands. So we do like the odds and we like the stakes. You know, like I like a challenge. There's not much I can point to though that I would say, like, ⁓ that was just easy. You know, we just got it done in a day and didn't think much about it. It was like everything involved something some obstacle to overcome. And yeah, you would might think like our size could be an obstacle, but I think it's a strength for us. And it's it's actually made me think back to what I said earlier about like, ⁓ at one year we want to be here, five years and ten years we want to be here. You know, we're coming up on our eighth anniversary and I'm excited about nerdy things like incremental growth and not as much excited about or pushing towards scaling X twenty X whatever because I I want to make sure the quality level is is maintained and and it's not just a a ⁓ numbers game. You know. I love that. Brands don't need armies. You don't need armies in your business to grow and to be successful and to be sustainable and to be financially healthy. ⁓ that is absolutely wonderful. All right, Justin, I just got a couple more questions for you then. I hear when you hear the phrase do small business like a big boss, what does that mean to you? To me to me it means owning it, owning what you do, having a sense of who you are and going with it. It's not about asking for Permission, it's asking for forgiveness. It's not about being reluctant, it's about taking shots, some big swings, and somehow balancing all of that with empathy on top of that. I think we've had some cartoon like examples of what what it means to be someone like that, you know, in the last few decades. And ⁓ I don't I'm I'm not sure how many great role models we have anymore because I feel like as soon as you think someone's interesting, you find out they're embroiled in some scandal. Right. So then you just have to you have to not like you mentioned about comparison, you to not just look outside there and you have to say, like, what do I have within me that is a superpower and how do I bring that to bear on it's a journey, it's a process. It probably requires maybe some some therapy and maybe some executive coaching to get you there. And I highly recommend both those things. those can also find the strengths that are within you that you might have not known were there or you might have underrated. ⁓ Your shot caller, a baller. Start ⁓ start going into lyrics, the hip hop lyrics. Where can the people find you, Justin? A variety of places. LinkedIn, I I post there pretty frequently. You just look up my name, Justin Bajon. ⁓ our agency's website is familiarcreatures.com. We're very up to date on that. And then, you know, I I'm still on X, very quiet there. You can look me up there and then Maybe you could look at us on on Instagram as well, familiar creatures on Instagram. We post pretty frequently there as well. So those are those are some places you could find me and my agency. All right. Well, bosses, if this episode brought you any kind of value, please do all the things. Make sure you like it and you comment and you subscribe. That really helps the podcast grow and bring the message out to a lot of other people. And most importantly, and as always, build that dream messy. Build it scared, but just don't build it small. We'll see you next time. Thank you.