Episode 253 – Chris Jungjohann

Richard Matthews: [00:00:00] what do you think

your superpower is

in your creative design agency?

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah

I think it’s to some degree

it’s storytelling

I think that’s it is being

able to tell a story

through whatever we’re creating

and being able

to weave that through

all of the brands and partners

that we work with

and that’s really the way

we approach everything

whether it’s a website

an app or an ad

or a video

is that you’re trying

to make that sort

of human connection

and that sort of narrative

you know no matter

what we create

so yeah that

and I think just being

able to sort of corral people

you know around and to brainstorm

and come up with ideas

and to try to think

about things from a different angle

we kind of use that as our

it’s part of our mantra

at the agency

but I would say that

you know being able

to come in and talk

to a different organization

and digest the information

and then essentially

use that data to tell stories

and solve problems is

is probably the superpower

that I would be known for best

​

[00:01:00]

Richard Matthews: Hello and welcome back to the Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews, and today I have the pleasure of having on the line Chris Jungjohann Chris, are you there?

Chris Jungjohann: I’m here. How’s it going?

Richard Matthews: It’s going great. Glad to be here. The spring is finally setting in, and so it’s warming up a little bit [00:02:00] outside, which is so nice.

Chris Jungjohann: Absolutely.

Richard Matthews: So, I know for our audience, where is it that you’re calling in from?

Chris Jungjohann: We’re today. We’re in sunny Cleveland.

Richard Matthews: Sunny Cleveland. And for my audience who knows we travel all the time, we are currently in Central Illinois visiting family. So we’re you know, finishing off the end of spring in cold weather country.

Chris Jungjohann: Cool.

Richard Matthews: So, what I want to do before we get too far into the interview is run through just a brief introduction for my audience that I know who you are, and then we’ll dive into your story.

So Chris Jungjohann is an entrepreneur, creative director, strategist, speaker, photographer, and junior level designer. His work has been awarded by Addy’s, W3S, AIGA, and his mom. My work gets afforded by my mom a lot too. And at SXS W which is South by Southwest for those of you who are not familiar and we’re not running his flagship agency, Recess Creative.

Chris can be found celebrating a Sunday fun day while smoking a variety of meats in his suburban Cleveland backyard with his wife, two kids, and his best friend, Marty McFly. He’s a good boy. So with that [00:03:00] introduction, Chris, what I would love to do is start off the conversation with what you’re known for now, right?

What’s your business like? Who do you serve? What do you do for them?

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah. So, thanks again for having me on the show. So I run a full service creative and technology agency called recess creative. We are a crazy, fun bunch of folks that develop anything from brand strategy and campaigns, marketing and advertising. And then we tie that into the execution of things that drive results for our clients and partners.

So building websites, mobile apps anything from traditional design and collateral through you know, the the execution of, you know, campaign work and digital strategies, ads and everything in between.

Richard Matthews: That is a lot of stuff. How many members do you guys have to make all of that happen?

Chris Jungjohann: So we have about 20 folks here. You know, we’re, we’re hybridly based in Cleveland and we have a couple of folks that are, that are fully remote and one in Pennsylvania, one in Colorado,

Richard Matthews: Nice. So you have, you have a hybrid team. We do our team is fully remote. So we don’t [00:04:00] actually have an office anywhere. But that’s mostly my fault. Becuse I travel and therefore. Can’t really have an office anywhere. So, so, what do you, what do you think of the the hybrid environment is that, I know that’s a, that’s, it’s fairly new over the last few years since the pandemic, how has that been working out for your company?

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah, absolutely. It’s, it’s really interesting. And, and it was kind of weird timing that we had an office and we were full time in Cleveland. And, and before the pandemic and then the pandemic happens and our lease was up in May of 2020. So it was really it was time to look at, okay, what do we need to do in terms of you know, our financial impact and, the health, wellness and safety of our, our, our team members.

So we ended up bailing on our space and we went remote, fully remote for about three years. So we’ve only been back in. In this sort of hybrid mode literally just, it’s been a year now. So March of 2023 is when we moved into this space. So totally different environment and space. Most of our folks are in here two or three days a week.

But the hybrid allows us to I believe it’s the best of both worlds. We get to [00:05:00] collaborate, brainstorm and whiteboard a couple of days a week. And then I like to pitch it to everyone is that we have a, we have a bookended ease in ease out of the week. So most everyone’s remote on Mondays and Fridays.

So it’s nice to be able to wake up on Monday morning and not have to worry about a commute. And then on Friday, you can kind of ease out. And in the summer we do a lot of flexible Fridays where our team takes days and kind of front loads the weekend or we’ll flex time to enjoy the couple of sunny days we get here in Cleveland.

Richard Matthews: That’s really nice. Yeah. We, we’re, we actually use a, a digital office. So it’s like a it’s, it’s. What would you call it? I don’t even know what you call it. It’s like a, a halfway to a metaverse kind of thing. So it’s, it’s called Kumo space and it’s like, it’s like a, if you could imagine an office that you like look down at the top, like the floor plan and everyone has their own offices and the way that it works is like you’re, you have a little person that is your video camera, like what you’re looking at here and you can move him around and you have a circle and anyone who’s in your circle, you can hear and talk [00:06:00] to.

Or if you go into an office, Anyone who’s in the office can talk to each other. And so like all of our staff members have their own offices that they’ve decorated, they have their own, you know, things in there. And so they can work in those places and then they can go and talk to each other and the thing.

So it’s like fully remote team, but we have a common location where we work at. And it’s even cool to like, bring in like salespeople, like when we bring in someone, we’re doing a sales thing with me, like walk them through the digital office instead of being on zoom, which is, you know, it’s useful, but you can like, Hey, come join me in my office and meet some of my other staff members and show them everyone.

Chris Jungjohann: That’s wild.

Richard Matthews: kind of cool technology

Chris Jungjohann: cool. Yeah. Very cool.

Richard Matthews: So what I want to what I want to get into then is how you got into this creative agency world, right? We talk on this show all the time about your origin story. Every good comic book hero has an origin story. It’s the thing that made you into the, here you are today.

And we want to hear that story. Were you born a hero or were you bit by a radioactive spider that pick up a camera and do some digital marketing? When you start in a job and eventually become an entrepreneur, basically, how’d you get here? Way

Chris Jungjohann: And so it’s a very long, there’s a long version and a short version. I’ll do the medium version. So, my, my [00:07:00] family ran a bar and restaurant that we lived next door to for about 75 years back home in Western New York. So I grew up in an entrepreneurial family that was like, Oh, this is what you do, you kind of choose your own adventure.

And I was going to be the fourth generation to run the family business. Until my family decided that everybody wanted to retire. And it was like, all right, Chris has to figure out what else he wants to do with his life. And so I discovered like art and design. And in high school, I started drawing and painting and, being creative.

I went to art school. I studied photography and design at the Cleveland Institute of Art. And it was an amazing experience where, I think at first I was like, I want to be an artist and I want to live in a loft and paint for the rest of my life. And then I discovered really early on that I loved visualization of you know, photography and, it really was sort of the, the boom of sort of early stage websites and I started coding and designing and was like, Oh, there’s this thing called the internet where we can mess around and do all this cool stuff.

And that’s kind of how I got into it.

Richard Matthews: to age yourself with the[00:08:00]

Chris Jungjohann: I know, right? I feel so old. I talk about my degree and I’m like, well, we used to spend all of our time in a dark room. And then it was like, I think I bought my first digital camera was like a 1. 5 megapixel camera. Which now is like the iPhone is like 50 of those that so the resolution of stuff was bad, but I was again, traditionally trained in, photo and video and took 16 millimeter film classes and started designing and building websites early on.

And that was really Part of it was being all over the place and loving the process of creating and designing. I worked in education and was freelancing and then decided I would give this thing a try and to be, try to be a professional designer. There was an, there was an agency that came in and pitched some collateral work that for the, the college I was at.

And when I was a student, I got to see, okay, what do these guys do? I said, Oh, they’re a marketing and advertising agency. I was like, this is really cool. They seem like cool people. Maybe I’ll try that someday. So I worked for a couple of agencies, both big and small and had sort of this vision where I [00:09:00] wanted to, to do really impactful work for, for big, big brands and small brands.

And, but I wanted to have a tight knit team. And I knew I didn’t want to start an agency that was going to grow to, 300 people. But to try and find the sweet spot of somewhere in between of where we can be small and nimble and do really great work, but. Do big work and impactful work and be innovative.

And, and that’s really where it started. So, when I started the agency, I was teaching I took a one year lectureship as a, as a design instructor at a community college here. And, and in my off time I sat and this also sounds really bad, but I sat in the computer lab. And was like scouring Craigslist to find people I could design logos and websites for.

And that’s like how we got our first handful of clients was, was just kind of hustling through it and building things and connecting with brands and trying to put ourselves out there. And that’s, that’s really how it started.

Richard Matthews: That’s really cool. It’s a we ended up in similar places and have sort of a similar trajectory. I, I started my life off as a my [00:10:00] first creative endeavor was also photography. And I was like nine years old and my grandmother bought me a don’t remember what the size film it was, but it was like, it was like long, thin film.

And I,

Chris Jungjohann: Yes.

Richard Matthews: I can’t remember exactly what they were, but

Chris Jungjohann: Was it 110 I’m trying to think of the, I know what you’re talking about. It was, was it in like a

capsule

Richard Matthews: Yeah. It was like

Chris Jungjohann: like snapped?

Richard Matthews: yes, exactly.

Chris Jungjohann: Very cool. I know exactly what you’re

talking

about was my first camera. And I have,

Richard Matthews: I still have some of my first pictures that I took when I was like 9 and 10 years old. And

I had,

I had a bit of a talent for it. So like some of them were like, like I would frame some of my pictures from 9 years old, which is kind cool.

And I remember,

I was 11 when Digital cameras came out and I had done enough stuff with my film camera with my grandmother and she used to take me in to get my film developed. I didn’t have access to a darkroom or anything, so I didn’t ever, never got to experience that. But,

She saw my work with my photography stuff and she was like, I’m going to get you a digital camera.

And so for my 11th birthday, I got a,

A Sony. 1.3 megapixel camera that like had a memory card on. It had like a five megapixel, like, or a five meg card [00:11:00] on it, so you could take like four pictures. . That

was it,

was it?

But yeah, and then

I,

I eventually paid my way through college as a,

Wedding photographer and an event photographer, and I was this campus photographer for school and.

and eventually got into videography and all that kind of stuff. And

it,

it all turned into, for me, it turned into,

Building a podcasting agency, not a creative designing agency, but

you know, it was,

it’s all,

it’s all storytelling, right? It came back

to like

wanting to be good at telling a story. And that’s where I loved the idea of being able to tell the story with pictures and then eventually learning to tell stories with video.

And now our whole business is all about telling stories with podcasts.

So. Same kind of,

Same kind of.

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah, I love it.

Richard Matthews: Yeah,

Chris Jungjohann: we probably had the same crummy camera

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. Was yours one of the Sony ones?

Chris Jungjohann: it was either Sony or it was maybe like an HP or something. That was my first one. And then I think it was like 2004, 2003, I bought like an early stage,

digital, you know, DSLR, you know, which had interchangeable lenses.[00:12:00]

And that was like, oh my God, I think I, I took out a, like

a,

a full credit card to buy this thing. To just go shoot. And I was, and that was the fun part though, is like, but having multiple memory cards and having to load them in. And,

Yeah you know, it’s, it’s kind of reminiscent of where film was back in the day, but,

Richard Matthews: I did the same thing. I bought the Canon 20d in 2005. Like it was my first year of college. And I was like, I went to work and I worked so I could buy cameras. Like that’s my, that’s what I wanted to do was just buy camera gear and I couldn’t afford any of it. And so I bought this Canon 20D and I bought the nifty 50, which, you know, people who are in the photography world know what that means.

And started getting to work with, with that. And I remember I’ve done the math on it. I bought a 512 megabyte card for it, which I was stoked about. And it costs several hundred dollars for that card. And I’ve done the math. The cost per gigabyte then versus the cost per gigabyte today is about 8,336 times higher than what it is now

Chris Jungjohann: So, yeah. So what we missed the boat on was we should have started a, like a memory card company back in the early two thousands data[00:13:00]

Richard Matthews: when it was. But yeah, that was, that was my, my first creative thing. And what’s interesting to me is like my, my actual motivation to build a business was, I wanted to be able to afford camera gear. And so I was like, I want to get to the point where I could afford a $10,000 lens if I wanted it. And so like, that was my, my, my first motivation for building a business was, was buying camera gear.

Chris Jungjohann: that’s awesome.

Richard Matthews: I eventually got over that. And then, and then the smartphones came in the world and now my primary camera is on the back of my phone and it, Blows me away. So,

Chris Jungjohann: Right?

Richard Matthews: So anyways, what I want to what I want to get into then is talking a little bit about your superpowers that you’ve developed over the course of your career, right?

So every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that’s your fancy flying suit or you made with your genius intellect or the ability to call them thunder or super strength. In the real world, heroes have what I call a zone of genius, which is either a skill that you were born with or that you developed over the course of your career that really energizes all of your other skills.

And the way I like to frame it for my guests is if you look at everything that you’ve developed over the course of your career, there’s probably a common thread that ties all of those skills together, and that common thread [00:14:00] is probably your superpower. So with that framing, what do you think your superpower is in your creative design agency?

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah. Man, that’s a tough question. I think that I think that the thing that I would say is it, it’s to some degree, it’s storytelling. I think that’s it is being able to tell a story through whatever we’re creating. And being able to weave that through. All of the brands and partners that, we work with.

And that’s really the way we approach everything, whether it’s a website, an app or an ad or a video is that you’re trying to make that sort of human connection and that sort of narrative, you know, no matter what we create. So yeah, that, and I think just being able to sort of corral people you know, around and to, brainstorm and come up with ideas and to try to think about things from a different angle.

We kind of use that as our. It’s part of our mantra at the agency, but I would say that, you know, being able to come in and, and, and talk to a different organization and digest the information and then essentially use that data to tell stories and solve [00:15:00] problems is, is probably the superpower that I would be known for best.

Richard Matthews: I love, I love storytelling as a superpower because it is one of the Like, I don’t think people understand how powerful storytelling is, and so, like, the way I like to frame storytelling as a superpower is, like, if you look at the human race, the one thing we do that no other creature we’re aware of does is tell stories. Right, we tell stories. Storytelling is like, it’s, it’s the foundation of our, our super dominance as a species on this planet.

And it’s because storytelling is a fantastic way to transfer culture. It’s how you transfer friendship. It’s how you transfer relationship. It’s how you transfer knowledge. Storytelling is like the baseline. Of how humans progress through history. And so it’s like, it’s like the superpower of superpowers.

And so, like, one of the things that I tell people all the time is like, human beings are a story born people and, and you could like, if you want proof of it, we, we judge the depth of our relationships based on how much of someone else’s story that we know. [00:16:00] And so, like, if I know your name and nothing else about you, I might call you an acquaintance.

If I don’t even know your name, and then we call you a stranger. But if like, I know your name and I know some of your stories. then were friends But if I know your name and I know all of your stories, and like, I can tell when you change details of your story because you’re telling to someone new and you’re testing them out, like, like, then we’re best friends, right?

Like

Chris Jungjohann: That’s a good

one.

Richard Matthews: Right. Like, so we judge the depth of our relationships based on how much the other person’s story that which we know. So come into business, right? If you are looking at how do you get a potential lead or a client to get to know a business, they have to know the business story, which means the business has to be good at telling it, telling the story and whatever meeting that it is, whether that’s, you know, commercials or their website or their podcast, or, you know, the ads that they’re doing, they have to be good at telling a story.

What do you think about all that?

Chris Jungjohann: I mean it makes it sound way cooler than how I said it, so I mean I completely agree. I think that’s the thing that,

You know, I think we try to connect, you know, people to whatever we’re doing in a human way, no [00:17:00] matter what it is. And I think that’s part of it is, you know, there’s a narrative and we even say, like if you’re.

It’s easier when you’re creating a narrative for like a video because there’s a beginning, a middle and an end. But we think of the same way when you’re engaging with an application or a mobile, you know, mobile app or a website is that what’s the story we’re telling from the top down? And as you scroll, like.

the hierarchy of the information,

How we’re designing and developing

that,

that human experience.

You know, and then in some instances,

it’s, it’s,

it’s really about, okay, we need to say who we are, what we do, how we do it, why it’s different. And then ultimately to connect, you know,

the,

the user, it could be something as simple as getting them to fill out a form.

It could be,

Answering,

An email, it could be opening the email and we might get that, you know, a hundred and however many characters.

To get somebody to interact

or, to read something a different way. So,

I liked the way that you put it better than how I describe it. And I might borrow some of that,

In a,

in a future state of [00:18:00] explaining why storytelling is so important to us.

Richard Matthews: Yeah,

it’s,

foundational.

It’s, I, it’s, there’s a couple of things I think are foundational to the human experience.

I think storytelling is one of them.

and so It’s something that I think everyone should learn how to do as well as possible is tell stories in whatever medium that you do it in.

And so

I,

I love that as a superpower. I haven’t had a lot of people come on and say that storytelling is a superpower. So that’s something we’ve gotten to,

Chat a lot about, but

Well,

Chris Jungjohann: I didn’t want to brag. I can’t fly, but,

It usually it’s a commercial and in a middle seat.

Richard Matthews: yeah,

yeah,

I,

I have a,

Recurring dream that I can fly like Superman that I’ve had like my entire life.

Chris Jungjohann: That’s awesome.

Richard Matthews: And it, it like regularly, I will fall out of my bed and then instead of hitting the ground, I’ll be like, you know, that scene in the thing where you like, they like,

Chris Jungjohann: Oh, yeah. It’s like that. Huh?

Richard Matthews: I was Oh, I can fly.

And then I like fly around and I’m like, I’m not sure why, but I’ve had that recurring dream probably a couple of times a year, every year since I’ve been like 10 years old.

Chris Jungjohann: That’s awesome.

Richard Matthews: One of

these days, I’m hoping when I do fall out of bed, that’s how it [00:19:00] goes, but we’ll see.

So to talk about the,

The flip side of your superpower, right?

So every superpower has their, the,

The fatal flaw, right? And just like Superman has his kryptonite or Wonder Woman can’t remove bracelets of victory without going mad. You probably had a flaw that’s held you back in your

Chris Jungjohann: Oh, yeah, absolutely. This one’s easy. Now, this is the easier question because the joke,

That I’ve heard,

Is like the incredible Hulk, right? That like, there’s a level of patience that I’ll have, but then

there’s a,

there’s a limit,

Where,

I wear my emotions on my sleeve and,

And I’ve been known at times to be

To,

to maybe express my emotions in an energetic fashion.

I’m going to leave it somewhat there. I’d say it’s something I’ve been working on my entire life.

You know, be

since,

since being a kid.

And,

and there’s absolutely times where,

It’s held me back

and, and it’s,

and it’s been a detriment to,

You know, things that I’ve tried to do in my career, but I think, you know, with age and becoming a parent

and,

and then obviously knowing that like, You can’t lose your stuff in front of your kids and then expect [00:20:00] them,

To, to not, right?

And I feel like that’s taught me a lot of patience.

You know, as well as just reading and learning and, you know, going through the process of trying to figure out like, okay,

what,

what are those small little activities you can do if you start to feel like something is overwhelming or,

Is,

is maddening, you know, that’s a

deep,

deep breath, a little bit of meditation.

There might be a step one, two, three before I say something,

But that’s absolutely something that I’ve heard my entire life.

And I know that,

You know, I’d like to think that. It’s because I, again,

I,

I like this, I’m a pitch it as that I, because I care.

And it takes a lot more to get me rattled today than it probably did 10 or 15 years ago.

But again, I think those are things that,

I think as human beings, we’re always working on.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. I know

the,

the emotional thing is like when you were talking, it reminded me of the scene from Avengers where the Hulk was like, I can’t remember who asked him, but someone was like, how do you control it? And he’s like, I’m always angry. And then he walks off and

turns into the

Hulk

Chris Jungjohann: Right. That’s a great line.

[00:21:00] Yeah

Richard Matthews: like punches the,

The big alien spaceship. And I was like

that,

that’s,

But it’s

managing,

managing your emotions is such a,

Important sort of. aspect, and I’m sort of on the other side of that, where I tend to be overly patient to the point where like I will let either staff members or my, you know, like people on my team or clients or even children, like push me past where I should.

Or,

and, and,

and so I go the other direction and I realized like sometimes

I need to,

I need to actually like step up the energy and step up the,

The response to things like, no, that’s not acceptable. We need to not do that.

Or things like that. And so like,

I, I,

I find that,

Really interesting and like to the other thing that like sort of stuck in my head was like, how you’re like your children.

I got four of them. My youngest one is just finished being a toddler the other day. She turned five and. Man, like they have

really,

really big emotions and very small bodies to hold them all

in

And [00:22:00] that’s been like, same kind of thing, like learning how to coach them through their emotions has made me so much better at being able to manage my own.

Chris Jungjohann: A hundred percent. Yeah. I think that, you know, again, and the way that you look at it and the perspective of parenting is that I just, I love to sponge it and watch I watching them learn and unlock things

is,

is the most fun. And then, and like you said, as you know, the, as they grow and the more their personality develops and then they start to say and do things, you’re like, where did you get that?

And you’re like, Oh wait, no, you’re just being me. And a little petite, Adorable little version of me,

Or my wife, right. Which is the other side of it that like I have two kids and,

And they’re both basically, you know,

Reincarnations of each other. So,

Or my wife and I,

which is,

which is the greatest, but yeah, I think that they teach you so much in theory.

In terms of patience and, you know, and learning and virtue. And,

You know, again, it’s one of the greatest things in the world.

Richard Matthews: Do you have daughters?

Chris Jungjohann: I have one,

you know,

my son, I have an older [00:23:00] son and,

And my daughter’s younger, she just turned 10 a couple of weeks ago.

Richard Matthews: So I have three daughters and I’m just curious if you’re,

If you’ve ever done like, they get to the point where they just have emotions. And they just need to like feel them. They need to go through them. so for the longest time, I was like, here’s, you know, it’s pretty trite, right, but like try to help them fix it.

And you realize that they don’t want to fix it. They just need to feel things. And so now we do things I call, we throw pity parties and I’d be like, just come sit on my lap and you can cry on my shoulder and I will sit here and have a pity party with you,

Yeah,

like the two, three, four year olds, Man, they are here for pity parties.

Chris Jungjohann: that’s really funny. Yeah, the, the emotion that the emotion swings are, are, are crazy. And I think I just try to, for me, I just take it in stride. I grew up with two sisters and a single mom and my grandmother lived next door. So. For me, I was, I was surrounded with understanding, like in a situation where I was like, Oh, Hey, like emotions are for everybody.

[00:24:00] And, and you have to just listen and learn. And and that was, I think the best part of, you know, growing up in that situation you know, and then being able to look at my daughter and be like, How does it make you feel? Cool. You don’t feel great about it. That’s okay. It’s okay to feel that way. So as soon as you just let it, you got to let it go.

Richard Matthews: So how has learning how to, to manage those emotions for yourself? How has that translated into like, I guess, either impact for your team or how you coach and train your team to, to handle the same kind of things as they’re, they’re dealing with the big projects that you guys work on.

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah, I think, I mean, I think it’s, you know, with, in regards to how the team I think interacts or reacts to those things that again, early on you know, and I’ll, I’ll say 10 years ago I may have been quicker to make a decision or acted more emotionally. And I think now I’ll look at something and, and digest it a little bit, or, or maybe have a little bit more perspective.

I hope. You know, as we talk through things that I’ll even joke, I’ll say like old Chris may have gotten really pissed off about this thing or said like, [00:25:00] Hey, this is an epic failure. Or you look at you know, I think in some situations you have to look at, even if someone makes a mistake that there’s, it’s not just one thing.

It’s, you know, a lot of times it could be a series of conversations or, or misses. And we just have taken that sort of team mentality. I think. Overall is, is that, you know, we win as a team, we lose as a team. It’s not about one individual person. I think you could, you know, we use the sports analogies a lot.

It’s. Like any, any, you know, a basketball game. It’s like that if you miss the last shot of the game, somebody might look and say, Oh, it’s that person’s fault. And it’s like, well, if, if these other 16 members made foul shots throughout the game, then we wouldn’t have been in that situation. It’s, it’s never one person.

It’s, it’s always a team aspect. So I feel like that’s another part that, that, that maybe has shifted you know, in the way we approach things. And, and then I hope, you know, we collectively You know, take a breath and and think about something and try not to act emotional. I think the other part of that is as [00:26:00] you know, because we design and make and create there’s a human relationship between the things we do.

And if someone comes up with a great idea or does a design that they’re really excited or proud about it sometimes doesn’t always hit the same way with the client or a partner. And they might not have the same interaction. So you, to some degree, you have to build a little bit of a tough skin to be able to separate yourself emotionally from your work.

And at the end of the day, you know, we, we always preach that you have to put yourself in the perspective of not just the, the, the client or the partner we’re working with, but who, who might be the end user, who, who’s the consumer. You know, of this product or logo or system. So that’s something that we try to instill.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I know that’s one of the hard things when you’re working with with people. Like your, your clients or your partners or something like that, where you have to do that constant sort of like training that, Hey, what we’re creating is not for you, it’s for your customer.

Chris Jungjohann: Yes.[00:27:00]

Richard Matthews: Right. And having it be for your customers is, is like, that means you may or may not like it, but if it works for your customers, that’s what matters, right, it, you know, in, in the ideal world, you are your perfect customer and you’re just understand that. But that’s not the way that, you know, the world always works.

Yeah. So like that, that’s interesting. And then the other side of that, that that I just wanted to hear you pull out a little bit on what you’re talking about is on, on the side of like working with your team, you realize that like communication and the way that you handle things like emotions or the way you handle things, like with the client rejecting things that, that, that comes down into the culture that you’re building into the company.

And it’s one of the things that like I realized recently that, you know, our company has grown a lot over the last year that I have to, like the way that I communicate with my team it’s something that I have to teach my team how to do if I want them to communicate with each other that way.

Chris Jungjohann: Right.

Richard Matthews: It’s not just going to happen. And, and so like, you realize it like, Oh, things like, how do we handle communication? How do we handle, you know, emotional [00:28:00] things? How do we handle like that? Like that kind of stuff you realize as a CEO, it’s part of your job to coach and train and build your team up to do those things and to be in charge of the culture of your company that way.

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah. Absolutely. I think that’s one of the things that I think also you as a takeaway, even early on is that you can’t just expect things. I think that. As a, as a small business owner, there’s times where, you know, you’ve got your hands on a hundred different things a day and you might be moving really, really fast, but if you’re not expressive of a specific task or feedback you know, somebody may be waiting for that.

Or again, as you said, it’s, it’s part of the coaching process, right? That it’s not just leading by example, but also, you know, setting those examples and communicating through that and, and trying to teach. You know, for, for us right now, it’s like we’re trying to coach you know, not only the, the team members that are, you know, relatively fresh out of college, which is a totally different perspective, but those that have been with us, you know, for 6, 7, 8 years of how to lead, right, [00:29:00] what are the things that we can do and, and how can they help drive us forward in the work we’re doing and, and allow me to take a step back and, and be just like a fly on the wall and be super proud of the work we’re doing, which is.

Yeah. It’s part of the exciting part too.

Richard Matthews: I’m, I’m getting there. Like we’re, we’re more and more of the stuff the team is handling. And like, as we build more things, I’m realizing that like, part of the, part of my biggest realization probably over the last, I don’t know, even just two months of my business is realizing that like, as an entrepreneur, you have all the things that you have to do, but then you have like the couple of things that you’re really good at.

That like when you do those things, it moves the needle. And the more and more that I start to get the things that I just have to do because it’s part of growing a business off of my plate and onto people for whom it is their highest and best use, the better our business gets.

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah.

Richard Matthews: And it’s, it’s a, it’s a really interesting thing to manage because you have.

You have, you know, every time you get it off to somebody else that that’s, you know, it increases your expenses and it increases all other [00:30:00] things, but it also increases your output and increases like the value that your company has. And like, it’s a weird sort of like thing to balance and to realize like, okay, I need to like, I’ve gotten to the point now where like, I know personally, like my biggest goal is how do I get everything else taken care of so I can only do the two or three things that I’m like really, really good at.

because that’s what really moves the needle for the company.

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah. It’s a big challenge. And I think that’s one of the things that I think I, I use the example all time that I think early on. And I can’t remember where I, I, I heard or read about it or where, who’s given you the piece of advice, but it was as an entrepreneur, like surrounding yourself with people who are better than you.

Yeah. At certain tasks so that it’s, it’s way easier to offload that type of work. And I think I, I really realized that early on with, you know, the first couple of designers and, and, and, and technologists that we hired that they can take something. An idea and visualize it in ways that I never could, or they could [00:31:00] take a design and build and code faster and more efficiently.

And I think the same to be said about, like, for your example, it’s like finding those other things that somebody could help with that they’re passionate about to make those things their best trait. But it’s also part of the challenge in early stages of running a business is, you know, letting things go, adding expenses, and then, you know, Working through those for sure.

Because I think everybody who goes through the process and, you know, in the beginning stages, you, you wear all the hats, right? It’s, it’s yours, you know?

Richard Matthews: Yeah. It’s yours. You are everything. And. And, and once you get used to like wearing the hats, then it’s sometimes it’s hard to realize like, Oh, maybe it’s time to take this hat off, right. And maybe it’s get someone else into that. And it’s, it’s an interesting thing to sort of manage as you, as you grow.

And I’ve noticed it becomes for me, it was like, we hit like 10 employees and it was like, it started to become really apparent where I needed to get things off of my plate.

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah. It, it comes, it becomes real quick. I think that’s the other part of it too, is that we went, we went through a pretty rapid growth, you know, [00:32:00] early on, and then we probably kind of leveled off and found our groove. And but yeah, it was like that jump from like, you know, 4 or 5 people to 10 or 12.

And I was like, Oh, we had to like really figure this out. Now it leveled up to another place where I, I, I don’t know that I was prepared for you know, and that’s, I think that’s what happens. It’s natural. I think in a lot of businesses as you, you catch a wave and you’re, you’re in a groove and then you grow and and you, there’s growing pains and just like anything else, I think again, for those folks, I apologize to anyone who worked with me early on because.

I’m sure I was stressed out and not super pleasant all the time. I hope that we figured things out a little bit more, so,

Richard Matthews: I’m, I’m doing a martial arts with my son. And one of the things that has been really interesting to me is like, every time we master something and I get good at it, Our, our master is like, he’s like, there’s the next level. There’s always another level. And it’s like, there’s always another form of hard that we haven’t got to yet.

And like, I keep seeing the parallel to the business and like, I’m like, we’ll accomplish something. I’m [00:33:00] like, man, this was a really big hill to get over and like, figure out all the things and we get it all there. And like, as soon as you get there, you’re like, here’s all the problems that exist at this level.

Right. It’s a whole new set of heart that you got to figure out. So. I want to talk a little bit then about your common enemy, right? So every superhero has an arch nemesis, and it’s the thing that they constantly have to fight against in their world. In the world of business, it takes a lot of forms, but we like to put it in the context of your clients.

And it’s a mindset or a flaw that they come to you with. that you have to fight against so that you can actually get them the result that they came to you for in the first place. So that framing, what So what do you think your common enemy is in your business?

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah, and that’s a, that’s a really good question. I’d say more commonly, Upfront, we hear you know, a lot of our clients and partners are, you know, business owners, entrepreneurs C level executives, chief marketing officers, marketing directors. And a lot of times we hear upfront well, we know what our problems are.

They’re A, [00:34:00] B, and C. We know who our clientele are. We know who our customers are. And I think a lot of times that sort of. Blind direction of just assuming that, that they know, or that, that, that upfront, that they have a really great understanding of that. And then at times in our research and discovery, we find and we unlock these other things that, that nobody was thinking about, or there’s a new market, right?

And I think a lot of times we’re brought in because either sales are stagnant and someone’s looking for a new strategy or. You know, it’s, it’s a technology that’s, that needs to be re, you know, redesigned or rebuilt because things change all the time. So I feel like that, that feels like a common enemy upfront, right?

Is that maybe knowing the business too well or being so ingrained in it that, that you’re blind to these other things or, or to new opportunities that seems like one. Yeah. That we, that we hear a lot. And again, I think that’s where we come in and can provide this sort of new strategy of saying, well, just because you’re talking [00:35:00] to this particular person doesn’t mean.

That they’re not digesting, you know, media on their own at night. And I think again, that could be something as simple as building a really good case study for you know, creating ads on TikTok or Instagram, or that could be in other instances, like we know our buyers are in these buildings and we’re going to buy these billboards right outside.

You know, and, and thinking about that maybe is a different angle that, that they haven’t thought of before.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, that makes sense. So the common enemy is sort of a blind assumption that they know what they know. Right. And,

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah. And

Richard Matthews: there’s a danger to that assumption that you probably, you may not know what you don’t know.

Chris Jungjohann: yeah, and I think some of it, a lot of times it’s not that they, they know so much about the expertise in that, in that industry or that category. But ultimately they’re coming to us because we’re, they need help solving a complex problem. So I think that’s one of the things too, that we, we spend time you know, in interviews and discovery sessions.

And we talk to not only, you know, the folks [00:36:00] that make decisions, we try to get perspective from everyone in an organization. And ultimately if we can get in front of their buyers and users and start to do surveys or interviews to find out like, what do they actually think? What, how do they actually interact with this?

Where else are they perching this? A lot of times unlock something that we, that we didn’t know. We didn’t know. And again, we get the, the, the privilege to present that up and say, Hey, we found this new opportunity and we’re going to craft it or package it in this way.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I’m going to talk then about the flip side, right? So if your common enemy is what you fight against, then your driving force is what you fight for. Right. So just like Spider Man fights to save New York or Batman fights to save Gotham or Google fights to index and categorize the whole world’s information.

What is it that you guys fight for with your agency, your mission, so to speak?

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah. And, and ours is, you know, to do the best work we can. To drive results with whatever we do. I think that’s the other part too, is that we have really, really talented team members. And we could go out and just make really fun and [00:37:00] engaging you know, videos or content on social media. That, but if it’s not driving a result for our partners, it, it feels kind of flat, right?

It doesn’t feel like it drives for their mission. So I think, again, doing the best work we can to drive results. And then part of our values is to do good. And it’s not not necessarily just like doing good work, but, you know, fundamentally believing that what we’re doing is doing a service, you know, and not necessarily all of our clients and partners are.

Our nonprofits or our charities and things like that. But we do have a lot of partners that are in that space. And the way that I also think about that is it’s like, if we can provide a service and or optimize a campaign, or if we can build a system that makes it easier for someone to do something who may not have been able to do it before.

Then that’s a win for us too. So I feel like that’s. Part of it, you know, maybe in the background and and selfishly, I worked, you know, at, at some agencies and early in the day, and we worked on some, [00:38:00] we were trying to build really great campaigns, but some of the products and services were a little icky.

And I think that’s the other part is like, I don’t necessarily want to work with products or services that, that, you know, damage the earth or hurt people or give people cancer. I just, it doesn’t seem like a great move. Energetically and, and ultimately, you To work with good people. Right. So that’s also part of it is you know, work, working with good people and having partners that value us.

But that, you know, treat us with respect. And at the end of the day, that’s, that’s part of the, the whole mission, vision, values.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So my, my question then is I’ll just on that side with mission to do good in particular. I, I know, like I have a similar kind of thing with our, our company is that we talked about like, Hey, the, the work that we do is not It doesn’t end with us, right? It’s got a ripple impact, right?

Because it touches our clients. It touches their clients. It touches all the people that they interact with. And so like, we have, [00:39:00] we have a responsibility to ourselves and to our clients to do good work. And so it’s like, we want to both do good and do good work for them. And I, like for us, it’s been, it’s always been sort of a number one kind of, kind of thing. I’m just curious on your side, how has that sort of impacted what you, like the businesses you choose to work with? Or, you know, do you, do you have like red flags that that keep you from working with people or that make you want to turn, turn down?

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah. I, and, yes, and usually those are easier to sniff out upfront. And you know, in our industry, we get invited, you know, to bid certain work or we’ll get an introduction and say, Hey, I heard of you or. Through this thing. And, and sometimes and we’ve been burned before where someone will come in and ask for a, a full blown strategy you know, with an opportunity, but we’re also talking to these other groups.

And we’re asking everybody to give us a three year roadmap for marketing. It’s a pretty aggressive ask for a pitch to, potentially not [00:40:00] get anything in return for. That’s typically a red flag. You know, I think the other part is that sometimes we’ll entertain even a, a conversation or in that first 5 or 10 minutes of a phone call.

I feel like we can, you know, start to ask questions in the perspective of, are they really going to value what we do? By asking questions about what they’ve done in the past, where their success lies. And other times there’s been folks that have come in that have just been offensive in general.

Like, and I know it sounds kind of wild, but like, you know, we’ve had a group come in and you know, maybe we talked to the, their head of marketing and, but they bring a team in and, and there’s been a couple of people that are, Just, you know, offensive or making jokes or off color comments. And it doesn’t really sit with us.

And so there’s times where we’re like, Hey, this doesn’t really align with us. Like, Hey, I’ll do respect. I know I’m leaving money on the table and Hey, from a business perspective, this could be lucrative, but it doesn’t, it doesn’t really fit who we are as an agency. And the last [00:41:00] thing I’d ever want to do is put somebody here in an awkward position where they feel like they have to do something that they don’t want to do.

Or that doesn’t align with, you know, with their core values.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. And so like that, well, it’s really important. There is like, you have core values as a company, which means that your staff has core values. And if something comes in that doesn’t fit like it just, it won’t fit for you, it won’t fit for the rest of the team and it’s just, it gives you, it gives you like a guiding post to.

You know, to follow,

Chris Jungjohann: Absolutely.

Richard Matthews: I actually had a a really interesting conversation the other day that was on a, like, I don’t think we’ll work together kind of thing. We got on a, got on the sales call and, you know, we record our sales calls. It’s just, you know, standard operating procedure. When you get on the call, it pops up and says, you know, Hey, we’re, this is being recorded for quality assurance kind of thing.

Like your standard standard thing. And she gets on and, you know, And she’s like, can you stop the recording? And I was like, well, sure, but what for? And she was like, I don’t want I don’t want the recording company stealing our ideas. And I was like, I feel like they don’t have the resources [00:42:00] to go through all of our call recordings and find the ideas you’re talking about and steal them from you.

But

Chris Jungjohann: shoot. I have not heard that one, but yeah, I’m not surprised. I think that we’ve heard a couple of things like, Oh, we don’t want to put anything out there in a certain venue or something, cause we don’t want our data to be leaked or those sorts of things. So I could see that being a, I think somebody says something, somebody said.

Richard Matthews: I want to talk then about some practical things. I call this the hero’s tool belt. And just like every superpower or superhero has their awesome gadgets like batarangs or web slingers or laser eyes or, you know, big magical hammer you can spin around and fly with. I wanna talk about the top one or maybe two tools that you couldn’t live without in your business.

It could be anything from your notepad, your calendar, to your marketing tools, to something you use to actually do your product delivery. Something you think is essential to getting your job done on a daily basis that you couldn’t live without today.

Chris Jungjohann: that’s a really good question, man. These are all really good. So the first is my calendar. So I live and die by my calendar. To the point where you know, my, my wife and I will have creative. Conversations around, if something’s not [00:43:00] on my calendar, it doesn’t really exist to me because I, it’s what I do before I go to bed.

I look at my calendar first thing in the morning, look at my calendar and I get my day framed. So that feels like it maybe, I guess it is as a utility that it’s in my tool belt for sure. The other thing is, I think, you know, for, for me I’m a big proponent of, I used to be. A pen and paper notebook and idea generation.

And I would carry that everywhere. And I still have a lot of those old ones, but, and I don’t know if it was maybe, you know, 8 or 10 years ago, we started, you know, maybe longer. Using just the Google suite of everything, right? So like for me, I take all my notes in, in, in Google docs, I do everything in Google sheets, Google slides, and I love it because I can open it up on my phone, my iPad, my laptop.

I don’t, all I have to do is log in. I could be somewhere else without my own laptop or computer and I could still get in. To my notes or look back or refer to something. So like that, that connectivity I think is [00:44:00] instrumental to success. That’s probably where I spend the majority of my time, you know?

And then outside of that, if there’s another one, I would say. A physical thing would be a whiteboard because it, it has. Literally unlimited opportunity to sketch, to ideate, to brainstorm. And again, the bigger, the better we have them, you know, and we have them in every room here in our office and I have multiple whiteboards at home.

And so that for me, I also feel like, I, I don’t know what it is about it, but it helps me get going. Even if I’m just writing notes or doodling there. So that I feel like that would be the other one. Maybe those are the top three.

Richard Matthews: so I, I love all of those. My the first one, the calendar, this might surprise you. We’ve done 250 of these episodes, probably 80 percent of the entrepreneurs that we’ve been invited on say their calendar is their number one thing that they live and die by their calendar.

Chris Jungjohann: It makes sense.

Richard Matthews: it’s super common and like to that end, like this weekend, my family left me alone for several days.

So I was like, I was at home for my, for [00:45:00] like three days. And one of the things I built was like, I built an entire calendaring software for our company to make calendaring better and more easy. But like. I’m the same way. Yeah. I liked, I liked the, you’re framing creative conversations with your wife. I know exactly what you mean, because I’m like, listen, honey, if it’s not on the calendar, it does not exist.

Chris Jungjohann: It doesn’t exist.

Richard Matthews: We’re 15 years into our marriage. And it’s like, it’s still the one thing that I’m like, I’m like, it’s gotta be on the calendar. And she’s like, but I hate your calendar. because it’s digital. She’s a pen and paper kind of person. So it’s in, it’s like a planner book. And I’m like, like, if I’m the kind of person that if I take it from my head and I write it on a piece of paper, it’s gone forever.

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah.

Richard Matthews: Like it’s got to be on the digital calendar where it’s going to ding me on my phone and ding me on my watch and I’m going to get dinged about all the things because it’s, that’s just how I have to manage my day.

Chris Jungjohann: Well then the kid, and I think also because of, you know, with kids, that’s the other thing too, is knowing key milestones and things, or even to the point where I’m like, if there’s, you know, between the kids, youth schedules, between youth [00:46:00] sports. Training and all that kind of stuff. Like, I like to be able to view it.

You know, so that that’s a huge part also is just knowing, like, you know, we invite each other to events that sometimes are not even events. They’re just things on our calendars like that. We’re holding. As a thing, it’s like, Hey, remember to do this thing.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, I actually my, my oldest son is 14 and he just sort of like, it like clicked for him that I’m a, like my, like I live by my calendar and he was like, he needed my help with something. And so like today, actually he got on our family calendar and he blocked off an hour of time for me to help him with this thing.

And he put in the calendar thing, like what he wanted help with.

Chris Jungjohann: That’s amazing.

Richard Matthews: I just dropped it on the calendar and like at that time I was like, I’m here. What do you want? He was like, oh, it worked. And I’m like, of course it worked. I told you I live and die for my calendar. So, and we went and he was, he was doing some filming stuff for, he wanted me to help him film some stuff for some animations he’s working on.

Chris Jungjohann: Oh, cool.

Richard Matthews: yeah. So he’s using his, his own body as a Like a structure for his his animations. [00:47:00] So he’s like, he’s, he’ll like do the motion that he wants to do. Because he’s like, I don’t know how to animate it, but I know how to do it. So he’ll film himself doing it and then animate his character over the top of himself, which I was like,

Chris Jungjohann: pretty smart. That’s pretty smart. That’s awesome.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, I thought it was pretty genius. So, but anyways, yes, calendars are huge. The Google suite, holy crap. That is one of those things that is like, is, is changed everything for our business. We automate all sorts of stuff with that. We automate our calendar stuff. We automate our Google drive stuff. All of our client stuff is taken care of with a shared Google drives.

That’s one of those things that like for the price that they’ve charged us for that. It’s like having. Enterprise level software for, you know, 10 or 15 bucks per person on our team. It’s insane.

Chris Jungjohann: It is a little crazy. It is a little crazy when you think about it, like everything that it powers and even if the effective, like, again, we always say for our team, it’s like everybody makes sure you share things because like, heaven forbid, something happens. Or you have a personal emergency and you need to be out of the office.

Like, but if I, like, if I need to get to that thing to, to give to our [00:48:00] client like all that stuff in the cloud helps, it just helps everybody automate collaborate. Like that’s just the, that’s the most important part.

Richard Matthews: If you haven’t yet check out the shared drives feature because the shared drives feature means you don’t have to share things. So if you create everything in the shared drives, the drive is the owner of the file, not the person. And that’s what, that was like a gate changer for us. So now every client has a shared drive and everything that we create for them goes into the shared drive.

And then. Everyone who is, has access to the drive can access those files and you can separate them like with, they have their own permissions, moving that out of the my drive into the shared drives thing changed the game for us.

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah, no, that’s a good point. Cool.

Richard Matthews: So, the the you’re, so you’re, you said you whiteboard was the last one and whiteboard tells me a little bit, you’re probably a visual kinesthetic learner. And I’m an auditory learner. So whiteboards do nothing for me. But what I have learned recently is [00:49:00] transcriptions like to be able to just talk out loud for me is one of those tools that has been over the last couple of months has been game changing for me. So I’ll take, what I’ll do is we have, I have an app called live transcribe and I’ll just set it in front of me and talk through an idea or talk through something that I want to get done.

And then use tools like ChatGPT to just like. Analyze the transcript and turn it into like useful data. And that has been game changing for brainstorming for me

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah,

Richard Matthews: Like I, I could not brainstorm on a whiteboard if you paid me because it’s just not the way my brain works, but

Chris Jungjohann: that’s funny. Yeah. And I have the opposite where it’s, there’s times where the, the project team will be describing something to me. And I’m,

Richard Matthews: you’re

Chris Jungjohann: you know, and then someone’s like, Hey, Chris,

Richard Matthews: so

Chris Jungjohann: And I was like, yes, I need to see what you’re talking about and whether that’s a document or it’s a whiteboard or something.

Yeah. I’m very much a visual. And the same thing is just for me, it’s, it’s just taking notes, like jotting down, like I have a [00:50:00] Google doc. That’s just, I call ideas and it’s just a, it’s just a laundry list of stuff. But I’m going to take that. Maybe the, the live transcriber, I’m going to do more of that because I feel like That’s another thing that would be easier than typing.

Because a lot of times I come back to that one bullet point that I thought was the next game changing million dollar idea. And I’m like, I don’t know what this is. Was it the idea for a t-shirt or was it an idea for an app? And I don’t know that I’ll ever remember.

Richard Matthews: I’ll, I’ll give you my my 32nd version of what I’ve done to like, make this really good for myself is whenever I have ideas, I’m trying to try to train myself now to like, Oh, that’s a really good idea. And to just pull up my live transcribe thing and talk until I’ve run out of the things I want to say about that idea.

And then I set up a share sheet. On, Because you know, with Apple’s iPhone, you can set up share sheets and like run processes on it. So I set up a share sheet that shares it into into my automation system. So you could like send it to Zapier or wherever you want. I send it to Natan. And it, so the transcript goes into [00:51:00] Natan and then it, One of the features that you, you know, one of the like actions that I have to take on there is I run it through ChatGPT with some instructions of like, Hey, here’s Richard’s thoughts on an idea, take all of this and process it and like give a detailed synopsis of what that idea is.

And then I have it, send it back to me in a Google document. And so it writes it into a Google document and shares it into Google docs with the. The synopsis and my ideas.

Chris Jungjohann: I mean, that’s pretty brilliant.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. And so now I go from like, I don’t have to, I don’t have to like figure out how to sketch my ideas or figure them all out. I just talk through them.

And then when I’m done, I just go share ding. And it ends up in my ideas folder with a synopsis and the transcript that I can then, you know, do other things with in the future. That’s, that’s been my, my game changing whiteboard, my, my version of whiteboarding, audio whiteboarding.

Chris Jungjohann: Very cool.

Speaking of heroic tools, I wanna take a few minutes to tell you about a tool we built that Powers the Hero show and is now this show’s primary sponsor.

Commercial: Hey there, fellow podcaster. Having a weekly [00:52:00] audio and video show on all the major online networks that builds your brand, creates fame and drive sales for your business. Doesn’t have to be hard. I know it feels that way because you’ve tried managing your show internally and realized how resource of intensive it can be.

You felt the pain of pouring eight to 10 hours of work into just. Getting one hour of content published and promoted all over the place. You see the drain on your resources, but you do it anyways cuz you know how powerful it is. Heck, you’ve probably even tried some of those automated solutions and ended up with stuff that makes your brand look cheesy and cheap.

That’s not helping grow your business. Don’t give up though. The struggle ends. Now. Introducing Push Button podcasts, a done for you service that will help you get your show out every single week without you lifting a finger. After you’ve pushed that stop record button, we handle everything else.

Uploading, editing, transcribing, writing, research, graphics, publication, and promotion. All done by real humans who know, understand, and care about your brand. Almost as much as you do empowered by our own proprietary technology, our team will let you get back to doing what you love while we handle the rest.

Check us out@pushbuttonpodcast.com slash [00:53:00] hero for 10% off the lifetime of your service with us and see the power of having an audio and video podcast growing and driving micro-celebrity status and business in your niche without you having to lift more than a finger to push that stop record button.

Again, that’s push button podcast.com/hero. See you there.

And now back to the Hero show.

Richard Matthews: So I’ve only got one more question for you and that is your guiding principles, right? So one of the things that makes heroes heroic is that they live by a code. For instance, Batman never kills his enemies. He only ever brings him to Arkham Asylum. So as we wrap up the interview, I want to talk about the top one or two principles that you run your business by.

Maybe something you wish, you know, when you started out your agency all those years ago.

Chris Jungjohann: man. That’s a good, another really good question. I don’t know that it’s, I don’t know that it’s, it’s really changed. I think at the end of the day Like our, our, I guess the, the biggest principle that we have in terms of, you know, if you take the mission, vision values and distill that down and pull that back, you know, our last value as an agency is to have fun.

[00:54:00] And I believe that if I wake up someday and I feel like I don’t want to do this, like, this isn’t enjoyable anymore, then it’s time for me to get out. Right. I think you hear that from professional athletes is that there’s like a click Where they either go out on the field for the last time and they realize they can’t play anymore.

Or they just wake up one day and say, I don’t have the passion or the drive for it. We get to do really cool things for a living, you know, as a, as a creative agency, you know, we, we design the things that people use and interact with. And we try to, we try to make ads that make you want to click and buy, or we come up with the radio scripts that we hope people use.

You know, you sing the, the jingle, you know, 20 years down the road. I can still recite everything that I saw on Saturday morning cartoons when I was a kid. And it’s

Richard Matthews: do I wonder who? What’s in a wonder ball?

Chris Jungjohann: it’s, it’s, but it’s really fun. I think at the end of the day, you know, we have a lot of fun doing what we [00:55:00] do. And we really get to create these engaging experiences.

And, and that is the thing that’s probably the biggest is that we not necessarily in the, in the business of entertainment, but. You know, our agency is called recess and the reason we call it recess is because what we get to do is fun for a living and what we get to do for our clients, we only get to spend, you know, maybe a half hour or an hour with them every week, but that half hour, an hour should be awesome.

It should be a break, should be a break for them. It should be an opportunity for them to turn their, their, turn their business brain off and enjoy, you know, our company and creative ideas and the things that we’re pitching and, and designing. You know, and that was something that was really at, at the guiding principle of who we were from the beginning was, you know, to make it fun, make it engaging, have fun doing it.

And there’s days where it’s not always roses and and in, in sunshine, but those, those days far supersede and outweigh the ones that are challenging. So, that’s, that’s probably maybe the [00:56:00] one I would say. Yeah.

Richard Matthews: I love that. I have a, one of our, our things that we talk about all the time on this show and also like as a company value is giving yourselves permission to play. And the on the, on the permission to play, it’s one of those things that I, like, I’ve always believed myself and it’s something that I’ve seen happen in my life is that.

As entrepreneurs and as business people. And it’s like all the work that we do, we like to our default, like modus operandi, I guess, so to speak, is that we like to work hard and then reward ourselves with play. If we do a good job with our hard work. And then the problem with that is, is that we never are satisfied with our work because we’re creatives who we never play, right?

And we never give ourselves that. And so what I, what I’ve started to realize is that if we really want to be successful, you have to have play as the foundation of doing good work. Right. And so you have to build that permission to play into your life, whether that’s, you know, going, you know, I like, I like the way you guys do the ease in and out of your, your office days or those kinds of things that you’re, you’re, you’re building play as a foundational aspect of the work that you do, which means that you [00:57:00] probably do better work in every category.

So I love that.

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah. It’s a lot of fun.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Well, I think that’s a great place to to wrap our interview on, on permission to play. So I want to talk one more thing. We wrap all of our interviews with a simple challenge. I call this the hero’s challenge and we do this to help get access to stories we might not otherwise find on our own because you know, not everyone else does the podcast rounds like you and I might do.

So the question is is simple. Do you have someone in your life or in your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? First names are fine, and why do you think they should come share their story with us here on The Hero Show? First person that comes to mind for you.

Chris Jungjohann: Oh my goodness. I would say, you know, I have a group of CEOs that, that I work with or sort of an advisory committee. And I think about you know, maybe somebody I’m just going to pick on Bill because he’s a, he’s a writer. It’s a similar business to us. And he just has a great passion and energy for what he does.

That that’s the first person that comes to mind.

Richard Matthews: Awesome, why do you think you should come share a story with us?

Chris Jungjohann: I think he’s got a great story and I just, he, he’s a really good storyteller. I think that’s the [00:58:00] other part of the process. I, and for me, selfishly I would love to watch his episode and just hear him answer these questions and go through this. Becuase he, I think he’d say like, it’s a really good question.

And I’m glad you asked me that. He just, he has this really amazing calmness. And again, I think he’s a brilliant and talented you know, creative business owner and, and it would be really fun to hear. His origin story and how he answers all your questions.

Richard Matthews: Awesome, we’ll reach out later and see if we can get an introduction, maybe he’ll come on. They don’t always do, but when they do, we get good stories out of it. So, in comic books, there’s always the crowd of people at the end who are cheering and clapping for the acts of heroism as we as you know, at the end.

So what I want to do here as we close is find out where can people find you if they want your help, if they want to work with Recess Creative, you know, they want to light up the bat signal, so to speak. And I think more importantly than where is who are the right types of people to reach out and ask for your guys help.

Chris Jungjohann: Yeah. So I love that. That’s great. So really anybody who has a need for, you know, branding, [00:59:00] marketing creative strategy, website design and development being a good more a full service agency. So anybody who’s in that world of marketing design or in need of design any, you know, again, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, even just for someone who’s looking for advice.

And that’s one of the other things I love about what we do. And personally, I love talking to other business owners because it’s a, it’s a unique club that we’re kind of all in. You know, again, in, in terms of what we do everything can be seen and, or found at RecessCreative.Com That’s our website.

All the social channels are just RecessCreative and we keep it pretty simple. It’s a first name basis. So it’s just Chris@RecessCreative.Com It’s pretty easy.

Richard Matthews: Awesome. Well, we’ll put your website down in the in the show notes below. So if you’re watching this and you want to have some fun with your brand and creativity stuff for your business, definitely take the time to reach out to Chris and their team. You’ve heard a little bit about who he is today.

And Chris, we appreciate you coming on and sharing your story today. I really enjoyed getting to hear a little bit of how you built what you’ve built and what you’re, what you’re doing today. So appreciate that. Do you have any [01:00:00] final words of wisdom for our audience before hit this stop record button?

Chris Jungjohann: No, I just say, okay, if you’re going to do anything, go out and have fun, no matter what it is you do. And thanks for having me on.

Richard Matthews: Awesome. I love that. Thank you very much, Chris.

​

[01:01:00]