John Roescher: [000000] If your portfolio is not good, it's because you're not good yet. There's a lot of information in there. That's practice. Figure out what level of taste you want to be at, what level of craft and quality you want to be at, and be honest with yourself and then just put in the time. I mean, that's as simple. Put in the time practice cycles, reps make things, do things. Chris Do: Today I'm excited to welcome John Roescher, founder of Raw Materials, a design company known for its unique branding approach. He's also picked up D& AD Agency of the Year and also five Cannes Awards, five Cannes Lions. John, [000100] welcome to the show for people who don't know who you are. Can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your journey into the business that you're in right now? John Roescher: So my name is John. I am the founder and the CEO of raw materials. So there is a bit of a story there. I. Grew up in a small town in Texas and was going through junior high and high school in the early two thousands in the late nineties, early two thousands. And so I didn't know until recently how fantastic of a time that was to be growing up a kid in the United States. Just, you know, in the sense that the internet was coming online for the masses and for a young kid that didn't have much to do in a small town, that was fantastic. It was fascinating. So I got interested in technology and the internet and therefore design and software design and development, things like that. Very early taught myself how to code, wanted to design things. Started making websites for small [000200] businesses. This is cool. This is fun. Actually joined the military right out of high school, had nothing to do with that. And coming out of the military, there's a real problem for veterans. You dropped right back into civilian life and go make money, have a life. So I picked that trade back up. Just out of necessity, it was thrown back into in the, you know, 2007, 2008, 2009 timeframe when the iPhone was launching in the app store was launching another amazing time to be put into this industry. So I was fascinated. This is what I want to do. I was never a great crafts person or practitioner, but I was enamored by the craft and the trade and the things that could be made. It. And so I set out on a journey to enable creative people to make things, to do things. I desperately wanted businesses to understand and embrace good design, creative thinking, the creation of [000300] high quality, well thought through products and experiences for consumers. As I thought this, I mean, it was kind of those days, like, look at Apple, this works. Look at Microsoft, look at Google, look at Facebook. I mean, all these things we're having, you know, some of those companies were having their Renaissance and some of those companies were, were creating the Renaissance in the industry. And so that led me on a journey to how do I make great things? I started out as a, mostly as a freelancer and I ran into some barriers there. I knew there was a better way to do things. I didn't have a career. I wasn't great at doing things that way. I just knew they should be done that way. I had a hard time convincing companies to do them that way. And, and also the freelance life was a bit lonely for me after some time. We didn't have the community that we have today back then. And so it was really a lonely existence. So those things added up to me to start an agency. I said, okay, well, what do I need? I need people that are smart at various crafts. various trades within this ecosystem. I [000400] need a brand that I could use to leverage. Into convincing clients to take the leap to invest in doing things the right way. And I wanted a community around me. And so those things were starting agency. So I started an agency called handsome in late 2011, early 2012. And that was a great time. That was around the time when mobile was becoming a sophomore. Mobile apps are becoming a sophomore. I mean, it's like 2007, 2009, they launched everyone rushed to have one. And so there was this gold rush, 2012, 2013, things were maturing just a little bit. And so was this idea of quote, designed thinking and quote, human centered design, things that we kind of take for granted now. But these were pretty new, especially in the larger corporations back then. So a lot of demand for good design in 2012, 2013, 2014.[000500] And Handsome had a great run. Over the next 10, 11 years, we grew our client base, including companies like FedEx and Visa and Audi and Meta, and just for me, again, kid from a small town in Texas. Use the public library computer to learn how to code. Now is working for the fortune 50 creating software experiences for consumers of great consequence for those companies. It was a fantastic journey as we start rounding out. 2017, 18, 19, and heading into the COVID era, things at Handsome were booming. You know, the company was about 140, 150 people at its, at its max as a, as a design agency doing great work, loving it, great people, but I started to feel detached from. Why I got into this business in the first place, what drew me and think back to the early days of the internet and how fantastic and magical that was. And now we were being [000600] asked to scale things. We were being asked to take. Ideas and decisions and specifications that came from somewhere else in the company And implement those things. I felt like the role of design Had changed and as an agency I was kind of being especially because of our size I was kind of being pulled into that gravity And so we can get into in a minute, but that led me to metamorphosis Handsome into raw materials, which is the creative company that we are today. So it's a bit about my journey and why, why I got started and how I got here. Chris Do: Wonderful. Thanks for doing that. I have a lot of questions to ask you about your early days, because there's a lot of like parts that I have to like dig into and geek out with you. But ultimately, I want to land on all the branding stuff, the design stuff, the stuff that I get to see on your website is all the beautiful stuff that young aspiring agency owners or designers want to be able to do. So let's split this conversation into two parts. I know that you mentioned that [000700] you're interested in code and design and websites and things of that nature. What I don't know is, besides going to the public library, did you go to school for this? Did you concentrate in a specific major or is this all self taught? John Roescher: All self taught. I saw things. I thought those are cool and I want to know the people who did it and I want to know how it was done and I want to make stuff that looks like that. And then I just kind of connected the dots the best I could. In fact, I said, I never was, you know, I was never very good or trained, let alone professionally trained in anyone craft or trade. And so I looked, I quickly found my role as enabling those who were great at these things. And I think that helped me not have that professional or academic training. I just looked at myself as a, like, as a servant. Let's, let's help, let's help great creative people do great things because I know that's valuable to business. So yeah, no, no schooling, just right into it. Chris Do: That's crazy. Okay. It's even more remarkable because there are a lot of jumps here. Help me out here. So if I'm a young [000800] person. I'd say I'm in my early mid twenties and I don't have access to the education that some other people have. What are the things that you can recommend looking back on your life that I need to work on so that I have a portfolio that I can even get freelance work? Cause that's something that people are asking me all the time. Like, how do I get my first gig? Chris, look at my work. Is my work good enough? How come I can't get anything? What are they missing? What did you figure out? John Roescher: There's a couple of things. So one, like I said, a couple of times, I figured out what it was and wasn't good at, and then I had to make a decision, the things that I am not, I mean, back then, I'm not good at anything, but I think there's some, some insight there too, if your portfolio is not good, it's because you're not good yet, there's a lot of information that's practice. That's figure out what level of taste you want to be at, what level of craft and quality you want to be at, and be honest with yourself, and then just put in the time. I mean, that's as simple as put in the time, practice, cycles, reps, make things, do things. Always put yourself in a situation [000900] where you have to rise to the occasion.So there's a little bit of like, It's kind of synonymous with fake it till you make it. But that's a careful thing. If you're choosing to fake it till you make it, you got to know that's what you're doing and you got to fake it and then make it, figure it out, make it happen. So I think there's a couple of things in there, right? It's like being honest with what I, what I'm good at, what I'm not good at really being honest about what I want to do. Like I said, I love these things. I just. I didn't like, here's something I didn't like to practice doing certain parts of the trade. So illustrating, I liked illustration. I wanted to be a good illustrator. I didn't like practicing illustration. So that was an insightful, okay. I'm not going to be, I'm not going to be there. I liked wireframing. I kind of liked practicing doing that, but I didn't really like getting into the nuts and bolts and taking it all the way through to something that works and makes sense and is, and is incredible. Cool. Okay. I don't like practicing doing that. What do I like practicing doing? What is the actual day to [001000] day, hour to hour job that I like doing? And then just run with that. I think that that helped me. And so what I liked doing in this case was helping clients understand the value of these things, masterminding what all it's going to take to do it. And then finding the talent and enabling them to do those things. I loved practicing doing that. I felt comfortable. 25 years old in a room with a VP of product of a big company talking to them about what needs to be done Did not feel comfortable doing it. And so I just leaned into that and I think that's what I think back on When I think about that Chris Do: How does one who's mostly self taught have the confidence and the acumen? To be able to ask the right questions and to probe in ways. There's a big mystery here There's a I can't figure it out Like here it is the enigma because a lot of people who are exactly where you are at 25 Don't come to the same result or conclusion that you do. So help us unpack that, please. John Roescher: I think it starts with [001100] believing in whatever you're doing or talking, believing that it's needed, believing that it's valuable. Like I said, I knew I wasn't the greatest at it, but I knew that it was the right thing to do. I tried, I got out of the military. And one of the jobs I tried was as a car salesman. I decided to do something, I had to make money. So I said, okay, I'll be a car salesman. I sold zero cars in one month and quit. Okay. I was asked to practice by a general manager and froze up one of the only like two or three times in my life where I've had a panic attack and just frozen up because I didn't give a crap about those cars. I didn't believe in it. I didn't care about sales and I just froze up. It was impossible. But when it comes to this kind of stuff, I look at a company, I look at a brand, I look at a product and I say, I believe that there is a way to make this great. And then if it is great, It will sell more and it will provide more value to customers. And that gives me the confidence. And I can be honest, say, I don't know all the ins and outs of this, but I do know that it's right, and I do have confidence that given the right kind of investment in, in, in focus, we [001200] can find the right people to do this. And so it really starts with that. And like, and so connecting passion with something that you really believe in, you think it's true, it becomes a lot easier to navigate stressful and high pressure situations. Chris Do: Wonderful. Take me back to that time when, however you want to define it, that first big breakthrough where you're, Whatever size client doesn't really matter where you felt like, okay, this is good. Now I'm having this meeting. And then you walk away with that gig. How did that meeting come about? What happened during the meeting and how did it turn out for you? And give us a little context. How old are you? Where are you? How did this thing come about? John Roescher: That's a great question. It's forcing me to think back. The first time that really happened was with a company in Austin called Silvercar. It doesn't exist anymore because Audi acquired them in sequence of us working with them, not because of thework we did. I mean, we had a big, we had a lot to do with it. And so Silvercar was, you know, they were setting out to disrupt the car rental industry. So I don't know if you or [001300] listeners remember the company Silvercar, a lot probably do. It was a great, you, you go to, you use an app to rent an Audi. And you get an Audi. It's, it's a beautiful car. This was before Turo, so Turo kind of solved all this. But it was a beautiful car, very seamless experience, took an industry that sucked and everyone hated, that had no pressure to, to fix themselves, the car rental industry, and they solved it. Their slogan was car rental that doesn't suck. And I loved that. I loved going into that and saying, okay, you're doing something that is going to be successful because it is a good experience and that's your brand. Your brand and your experience don't live up to that. So here's my opportunity. Okay. Is everything that I believe in right here. So going in and selling that we could do that connecting with their executive team, your leadership and CEO to chief product officer, CTO, I was 27, 28 years old, we had a tiny office in Austin, Texas. [001400] Probably a dozen people or less, probably eight people. Everything's so bootstrapped and scrappy. Are the tables we were working on were Ikea legs with some desktop tables that we found behind a dumpster. I mean, this is startup world as early mid twenties and getting a project with silver car to do the brand holistic user experience and in the design of the key flagship touch point, which is the mobile application into it and. That moment of selling that was great. Connecting all those dots together, having a CEO that I thought was a very smart guy, very successful, very smart guy, but more of a business builder than concerned with these things. Get it clicked, okay, we're going to do this. That was great. And then we're off the races. Then we had to deliver it. That was kind of, I don't say fake it till we make it, but that was like, okay, here you go, there's the opportunity. And having the confidence in my team to kind of pull together, we needed to make that happen.[001500] That was a great moment. And then that led to subsequent projects with them and with Audi and gave us amazing case studies. And that, that was one of the big stepping stones for, for that agency. Chris Do: Were you involved in the initial outreach to them to even get that meeting in the first place? John Roescher: Great question. Because yes, it doesn't always happen. We have organic, we have referrals, you know, our business come to us in so many different ways, but it is those times where it is that cold direct outreach that turns into a major project that feels so good because you're, it's controlling it, you know, controlling your own destiny. Yes. That one old LinkedIn message to the CEO. Because it was a cool Austin company, a growing startup, LinkedIn message said, Hey, I think that we could help you. And that turned into that project. So yeah, I'm proud of that one. Chris Do: Wow. That's awesome. Was that literally as the simple message that you sent? I think we can help you. John Roescher: Something like that. Yeah. I think Chris Do: what you're doing. John Roescher: and I think we can Chris Do: help you. Yeah. Okay. [001600] Well, for people who have tried that same line of messaging and are getting no results, times are different these days because everyone is in your DM saying, Hey, we can help you. And for me currently, it's a big turnoff because it's like, I don't even know you. Okay. How about we talk first? Like, is there any interest from you or is it your, I'm a meal ticket, you know? So it's kind of tricky these days. How would you approach it in 2024 if you've. Spot is somebody that you really genuinely believe you can help. What would your cold outreach be like today? Would it be the same or would you change something?John Roescher: No, actually it would be the same. And I think it would be more effective today for the reasons that you mentioned. Everyone, and this kind of goes now into even some of the raw materials philosophy and what we're doing in design that is, that we believe in. It's a strong parallel, but It's a simple fact, but everyone's trying to over optimize. And the answer to these things, and cold outreach is the same, let's optimize this thing, let's scale, it's power in numbers. Oh, everyone is saying you need, you need to provide value, you [001700] gotta, you know, there's all these like methods and tools and tactics and things. Well, everyone's reading the same stuff. Everyone's doing the same stuff. The human brain is wired to recognize pattern. And so you just see pattern, you see noise, you block it out. What is different is saying, Hey, bud, really cool stuff. I think we can help. How many messages do you get like that a day? Or maybe, you know, me or anyone else. So that is just one example of doing something, A, that is different, B that is personal and genuine and C that relieves the pressure of having commit to, let me give you a demo or whatever your tactic might be. Those things, they exist because they work, but I think trying something different, trying something more genuine and personal and back to what I said before, truly believing. in what you're doing versus trying to win at a game. I think there's something in there for me. And that's a very [001800] personal thing. And that's just kind of my style in general. Chris Do: Okay. Now we move forward in the timeline. You grow handsome to a point in which it's like 140, 150 people. Something doesn't feel right for you. Can you articulate? What that feeling like, what happened? Like you're the founder of the company, right? And sometimes people have a hard time understanding this is sometimes the company becomes something that you're like, wait, this doesn't feel like the way it felt when it was just me and three people. So something happens, what were you feeling? And then how did you go about kind of morphing that into its next iteration? John Roescher: So there's something that I think about a lot when trying to help clients think about strategy, which is. It's just this two part philosophy. A, necessity is the mother of invention. So there's always a reason why something new exists. And then B, that no idea is ever as good as when it is first conceived. The problem is, [001900] you have to realize an idea into a real product or whatever it might be. And then, what's even worse, is you have to scale it. And realizing an idea, always Puts that idea at risk and scaling it really puts it at risk And so the best companies in the world are companies, you know, everyone says like ideas are cheap ideas are down a dozen It's really an execution. Okay, that horse is beaten But I think there's truth in there and like I think the insight is that what's hard Is maintaining the value and the quality of the idea as you go to realize it. And especially as you go to scale it. So back to your question, started handsome because I had an idea. It was a need in the market. 10, 12 years later, handsome existed so that handsome could grow. And so that handsome could scale, not for the reasons why we started it. And I think that's a thing that founders, you know, individual founders, companies, and the biggest companies in the world. [002000] I think even companies like Facebook went through a bit of an identity crisis, lost what they were, you know, they gave up the move fast and break things. And it turned into a extract as much as we can from what we've gotten. You kind of lose your way. Well, we're nowhere near the size of Facebook or non meta, but the same kind of thing was happening with handsome. The reason why that was happening was because I think that was happening in the design industry in general, which is. Because that was happening in the technology and other, and some of the larger industries in general as well. And so what I felt happening to my own self and my own, as I was existing in order to, when I was, the problems I was solving was how to scale this thing. I think the reason why that was happening is because the design industry was turning into a function of implementation and scale, and that's because the design was being employed by these companies who were trying to scale as fast as possible.And so I just kind of. Woke up and looked around and said, Hey, this is not what I wanted to do. And I, when I started out, so what is it that [002100] I want to do? Well, I want to use creativity to create things that are valuable and successful because they are different and they are the right thing and they're different and the handsome wasn't really geared to do that. So the question was, okay, well then do we just kind of reconfigure ourselves? Do we evolve ourselves into that thing? Companies can evolve and change. And we just got to a point where I said, okay, well, If we're going to be asking our clients to do this, we need to fully take. So let's completely change ourselves. Let's start over again. Let's create a set of principles and fundamentals that we believe in and let's build a company to do that. And it took us stripping the company down to basically nothing and completely changing our name, our brand, our reason to be a philosophy. And at a certain point. You have changed so much that you are not the thing you were before. And that's what led into, uh, to, to where we are today with raw materials. So that's why I kind of think of it as a, it is a brand new company. I call it a [002200] metamorphosis because there is a lot of connective tissue or, or, or leftover kind of DNA from. That are handsome days, but it is only those core things that drove me to start back You know 12 13 years ago not a lot to do with what we were doing in the recent years Chris Do: Take me through some of the strategic and emotional things that you had to process in order to go from handsome to raw materials because i've had cycles in my career where i'm like Yeah, this is not fun anymore. I'm not sure what happened to this company. And it's not even anywhere near, it's like one 10th of the size of your company and thinking, Oh my God. First of all, the need to like, just keep things going becomes the overwhelming driving force, which is not a good reason. And you talked about that. It's like, you just feed the machine and you're like, why am I even doing this? And I'm not getting any joy from this or very little joy. And something had happened, but even saying like, who are we going to keep? How do we phase this down? What's the external communications going to be like? There's all those things and I'll voice [002300] it. Some people, myself included, feel like the fear of failure, the perception of failure. It's like, no, it's just not right for me right now. It's not because I can't do this. But it's just, it's not what I want anymore. And if I'm going to pursue this creative life, I want to make sure it's filled with the things that give me joy. Otherwise I get a corporate job somewhere. So can you take us through a couple of things? Like, cause you obviously had to let people go. Cause you said you, you dropped it way back down to almost nothing. So that impacts the lives of people. Let's talk about that first. Like, how do you feel about that? How do you execute that? Because that's a really tough thing to do. It really is. John Roescher: And that was tough for a lot of reasons. I mean, it was tough for the people that were affected by it. It was tough to, you know, quote, kill your darling kind of thing. It was scary. The thing that made it all make sense was coming down to a core truth principle. If you believe in it, there's a thread here that you've helped me uncover. If you really believe in something, then everything [002400] exists to try to make that thing happen. Then all that makes sense. And the people and the businesses and things that are affected kind of comes to this, this, this idea that something should exist because it is, because it's wanted and because it is needed not exist because on kind of false or fake pretenses. This thing is okay, but it exists because I'm good at selling it versus this thing really should exist. And it's, it's level of success is, is more representative of my ability to realize it in less than my ability to keep something alive. So I think that finding that core truth, that core principle was the answer to all those questions you've just asked. And that, that was a process. That was a little bit of a journey for me. And I, it wasn't the first step in the journey where I thought, or I looked back to why did I get into this business in the first place, there were a couple of steps before that. It was a, what kind ofbusiness do [002500] I want? Wrong question. Okay. What kind of lifestyle do I want? Wrong question. Those are important questions, but later. And I just kind of walked myself into, okay, well, I am only going to be successful if I am making something that I think truly should exist. Everything else should be just a process of helping that thing exist. And then that's what led me to think back to why I did it. Back to John Rocher in junior high at the public library being fascinated by websites, whatever those were back then. Let's bring that energy back to today and that kind of attitude of I could go get a corporate job or I could cash out and that's a real good option for me. So let's do this exercise and only doing the thing that you really believe in and should exist. There was a moment during COVID that was very difficult for Hanson, as it was for almost everyone in the early days of COVID. Thought the world was ending and it did kind of stop for a second. And that means [002600] revenue stopped for a second, big companies pulled back on projects and budgets. And so we were faced with some very hard decisions and my COO, who still is COO of raw materials now, Jennifer Allen, helped me think principally and just saying like, you know, so the way I describe it is a business should only exist to the extent that it can generate demand for the thing that it sets out to do in the future. Which is actually agencies and service people, service providers in general, whether you're a freelancer or an agency really are susceptible to this thing where you're doing work that quote pays the bills, not quite the work you want to be doing. And it's so easy to get lost in that. So easy to kind of lose where, who you are and where you started. And it's so hard to pull back out of that and build a brand and build a business and build a portfolio out of the work that you really want to be doing. It's kind of a very simple business. It's like you use a portfolio to convince [002700] clients that you are capable of doing that kind of work. So it makes sense that you need a portfolio that is best representative of the exact kind of work you want to be doing. But if you're filling your time, or if you're, I mean an agency is just kind of the same thing as a freelancer, just more people, more hours. If you're filling your hours doing work that isn't what you want to be doing, sure you're making money, sure you're staying alive. But you're not helping your case. You're not building your book, you're not building your brand. And so, anyway, long story short, that principle will only exist as a result of your ability to generate a demand for the exact thing you want to be doing. If you can't, Then a, it's not needed or wanted and you're kind of wrong, maybe wrong, bad timing. I think the whole world needs this and like, okay, well not really, or you're not great at generating demand for it. And those two things are true. It is possible to exist without those things being true, which is what I'm saying. Some people are just really good at selling things. [002800] Or some people are willing to do things that aren't what they want to be doing. So that was a journey I had to go through with raw material to say, okay, What do I really think needs to be exist? I analyze and six in and assess the industry I worked with pablo marquez the chief creative officer of raw materials jennifer allen chief operating officer All three of us came from different parts of the industry long careers and we all came to the same conclusion There is this thing, there is this problem to solve. It will always be a problem to solve and we should solve that problem. Raw materials should only exist as a result of our ability to generate demand to solve that problem. And so then it was a process of which of these clients do we feel like align with that, which don't thank you. Nice to work with you. We've helped you, but we're going to do something different. And then which of our team were either up to that task. ready for that journey, suitable for that journey, or [002900] were a part of those clients that worked with that. And it helped give that conviction. I don't like letting people go, of course, no one does. But no one wants to be a part of something that's wrong. And so only what's right, that helped make, give clarity on making hard decisions and has given us the confidence to navigate the last18 months or so of raw materials. Because it's been hard, but having that, that truth and that passion and that purpose has been, that is the answer to all your questions. Chris Do: So the three of you got together, shared a vision, defined principles that you want to live by, and then made the decision, like, these are the clients we want to keep, these are the team that are most aligned with what we want to do. And is it then a gradual wind down or do you just call everybody one in at a time? It's like, okay, this is kind of handsome going away. Thank you for your service. We're doing something different. John Roescher: It's a little bit of a both. It's a gradual wind down. I think there's some tough, tough, tough but important topics. You know, I think decisiveness and clarity [003000] are very important as a leader when people's lives and livelihood are on the line. So being honest, being swift, being decisive is always the best thing, providing clarity and transparency. So with those values in mind, I think the best way to handle something like that is as many people at once as fast as possible. And no blowing smoke, no being opaque, no pretending. And so that helped, you know, these are hard things. You got to do hard things. So having values and principles and employing those as strictly as possible, really helped you do the right thing while doing the hard thing. And that's, that's how we, we did our best. Chris Do: You do and I'm right there with you. Did you have a couple of people who did not take it? Well, and how did you respond to that? John Roescher: No one takes it. Well in these things I'm not equating it to the same kind of experience but as a as a freelancer who then turned into an agency owner Rejection and getting fired getting [003100] rejected and getting fired is part of it's part of my job We're pitching clients. We're trying to keep business. And so I think it's always hard. It's an emotional, hard thing. You, you, you get, you get scared, you start to doubt yourself. You get angry. You want to, you want to blame someone and all that's totally fair. I think everyone has a bit of that. That went through that process. I don't know what everyone really went through internally, but I think going back to those, those principles and trying to handle it the best way we did. Yeah. The best way we could, I think, helped quite a bit. I think again, like having those reasons. Having them be for the right reason and then communicating that I think helps everyone, you know, stands the best chance of helping everyone deal with it in their own way. But The Futur: it's time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.[003200] Chris Do: Are you committed to making 2024 your best year in business? We want to help you make it happen. With expert guidance, a supportive community, and exclusive trainings, the Future Pro membership was created to give you everything you need to take your business to the next level. Go to thefuture. com slash pro to learn more and join us inside. Okay, back to the conversation. The Futur: And we're back. Welcome back to our conversation. Chris Do: Last question on this, and I'd love to talk about branding and the kinds of things that you're doing today, is from the moment in which you woke up one morning or Maybe woke up in the middle of the night and said, this isn't right. I don't want to do this this way anymore. To [003300] the point in which raw materials is created. What's the timeline on that? Like, how long does it take from this doesn't feel right in my gut. We need to do something. A lot of the planning, the definitions, and then now we're raw materials. How long did that take? John Roescher: Well, the real answer is it wasn't a clean or clear process. and didn't sit down with a brief and conduct a strategy and creative exercise to figure this out. I would be interested to, to know what would have happened if we did it that way. It was more driven by feeling, you know, there was a, there were different moments that happened. It's a journey, right? So I think there was a big moment. I believe it was in 2019 when I said I need apartner in this that that has done this at a large scale in the big leagues, Jennifer Allen came from RGA, long career at RGA and in other other types of bigger agencies. I need someone like that who wants to build this. This [003400] thing from even back then I was this is not what am I doing here? I'm building a machine It's not what I really want. Okay, so there's that kind of that feeling that happens and then we get to a point We're like, okay things are successful here from an economic perspective and from a brand building perspective. How are we going to use this? So I think that was really, you know, at the beginning of 2022, I think we can think, you know, six to 12 months out, which is as an agency, it's hard to do that day to day week to week. I think we can just look 12 months out. Let's really start to do some vision here. So I think that is, I would say that's the moment when Jennifer and I said, all right, what are we going to do with this thing? And so we thought, okay, well, let's, We want to be doing better work. We want to be working with better people. We want to have projects that are more true to what we believe in. Okay. What's that going to take? Well, let's find a chief creative officer, creative partner. It can be at that same level with us that has done it, done these things. And so we set out to [003500] find chief creative officer, then Pablo Marquez joins, and then that was, The moment where we're like, okay, you know, he asked some great, great, very hard questions. What the hell do you even want to do with this? Why are you doing this? I thought you said you wanted to be great. What is this? We building a business and we doing great work in business as a result of that. This is a really good, hard questions for us to answer. That's about the time when I started thinking back to, okay, Thanks for asking me that question and being a good chief creative officer, helping us do a bit of a creative process here, existential kind of creative process. And so I started thinking back to why I started as, as Jennifer, as Paula merged those things together. That led us to the May of 2023 when raw materials launched. So for the year before that, when is the whole time where we were defining what raw materials was going to be. In early in that process, we decided to completely change from handsome and started out as a rebrand. Handsome, [003600] as I say, we quickly found ourselves like we got to get rid of Leo, if we want something different and new, we got to not try to change what exists, truly create something new. That was about a year process. And then may of 2023 is when raw materials actually launched after a year of kind of business and brand. defining and designing. A year before that of thinking about what we really wanted to do, what really needed to exist in the industry, what we wanted to do personally. So I would say, if I had to say, give a time frame to it, it was about a two to two and a half year process from like, something's got to change to raw materials launches. Chris Do: Thank you for taking the time to kind of explain it in a more nuanced way, because a lot of times people think, Oh, It's a linear path and it didn't sound linear at all. I was going to say it took you almost four years, but something feels funny. I think I'm going to do this and that turns into this. And then I bring the right people and then they bring clarity. And then all of a sudden we have a plan and it just, it's [003700] rather amorphous, but you, you kind of had that, maybe that gut feeling I told you that this isn't right. I don't know what the answer is yet until you get there. John Roescher: Yeah. So the things that made all that possible, it is, like I say, I would be really curious to see what happened if we did a more formal, rigorous, creative process, the kind that we ask our clients to go through with us, but I think the things would be true in a, in a, in a more rigorous creative process, the kind that we ask our clients to go through. One is clarity on the goal. And that was that something feels wrong. What am I, so the goal is what I really think should exist. Let's make that thing. Okay. Then it's. Open mindedness, which is really in a, in a, in a commercial or kind of project environment means trust and faith in the process. You don't have to be too open. You gotta be a bit open minded if you want creativity to do its job, but it's really, I could call that more kind of trust the process, have faith in the process, rigor is called for. So trust, do the rigorand trust the rigor, and then just [003800] have so much conviction and belief in what you're doing that you do it to a level of highest level of greatness. That you possibly can just go all in on that and that's what happened That's and I do think that still applies very much though to a more, uh, rigorous of fixed project environment Like what we do raw materials Chris Do: Okay, you've done the very difficult thing that very few people are able to do You kind of ripped off the bandage and was like, you know what we're gonna bring this down to nothing We're gonna rebuild We're going to make more strategic decisions that are aligned with our principles, and we're going to build it back up. So let's not jump to the future. That was the hardest part. And thank you for outlining kind of what had happened and telling us the behind the scenes look, which we very rarely get a glimpse at, at the scale in which you're operating. So what is raw materials today? How many people are involved in. Is it realized in that initial conception or the idea that you had and how does it match up to that? John Roescher: So what we're setting out to do with Raw Materials is to create a creative company. And we only barely know [003900] what that means, which is part of that open minded, fluid nature of things. But what we do know is that we want to build a company that exists based on the belief that creativity, when harnessed and applied in the right ways, exists. Is I truly believe is source of the greatest potential value for any endeavor. So the idea is use creativity and a serious way to create things. And if you do that, right, those things are valuable and things that are valuable can be monetized if that's the goal. I think that as an agency, which I think what is a design agency, creative agency, it's, um, it's projects, it's SOWs with clients. I just try to boil it down. So, so I think that that's a great vehicle for that. Clients have a need, they have resources, they have reach, they have problems to solve. So a creative company works well as an agency for clients. But really what Raw [004000] Materials is, is trying to understand and explore what it means to create the environment and conditions for creativity, really create value, and then, you know, you know, make things of value and monetize that. Raw Materials is, you know, today it is an agency, we have clients. We're doing digital product design work, largely, as well as brand work, mostly in conjunction for clients, uh, like, you know, Peacock and Netta and Google and 7 Eleven, you know, big companies, big consequences. And, but we're also doing things that are, are realizing and exploring that idea in other ways. We're building a creative community that's in it. That's going to have its own life, its own soul. That is going to, um, you can be fueled by, by raw materials to go and explore that idea in different ways. We're doing projects and creating things that aren't for clients that are solving [004100] problems that we think need to be solved, whether we monetize those or not. And then who knows where it goes. So the number of people that are involved, you know, I think it's, it's I'm happy to say that that's a kind of a hard question to answer If you really wanted to get into some spreadsheets and say how many FTEs are doing things Which is one way to answer that question. Let's play about 30 30 to 40 people at any given time at the moment The number of people that are involved in in a broader scale could easily easily If you double that and I think the idea is that we can help and influence and support creatives Um In ways that can kind of be larger than ourselves. So that's why that number can kind of be hard to answer. Yeah, so that's what we're Chris Do: doing. Did you have to get rid of the old space and move into a new space? Or are you still in the same space? Or how are you operating today? Well, COVID helped us out with that. John Roescher: We left our space. Handsome left its space in, uh, March of 2020 and never have been back in a physical space for any permanent period of time. So we have [004200] people now that helps us have big, uh, you know, tenets of raw materials is find the best talent in the world and enable them to do the best work of their lives. And we're true to that. We do find the best talent that we possibly can, regardless of where they are. Wehave people working in Europe and South America, Canada, you know, all across the United States. So, there's no way to put the genie back in the bottle on that one. So, we'll have to find other ways to be physically present. Chris Do: What do you do to have that same kind of culture that That you have before when everyone's remote, we have the same problem. COVID, everybody's scattered like the wind. And we started asking ourselves, do we like to be in a commute? Now, do we want to live in cities where the quality of life isn't matching what we want? Or we have elderly parents. And so everybody just left. Then I had this building. I'm like, what am I doing with this? Okay, well, now we got to get rid of the building. And we go through this whole process. But there is something I really do miss, John, which is, walking by the team and it's like, what are you working on? Oh my God, that's really cool. Who did this? This is super [004300] awesome. Or Hey, there's this resource that I have or this thing that might make your thing a little bit better or easier. I do miss that. I'm not sure I miss it so much that I want to create this giant operation or even have a building just to have a building. And so what do you guys do to, even with the 40 ish people to keep that culture John Roescher: alive? These are great questions, and I think mostly I don't have answers to them, which is an honest answer. And I think the reason for that is, I think there's, we're, it's kind of a paradox or a conundrum. I believe that the best work happens when people work together in the same space. I also believe, at the same time, that all of the best people don't live and can't live in the same place. So, what do you do? Do you get the best people to work on a problem as possible anywhere they are in the world? Or do you get the best people that, to work on a problem that are within the same locale? And I'm not, this sounds a bit facetious, I actually don't know [004400] quite the answer to that one. It's a lot easier to experiment on the former, which is what we've been doing so far. I don't know that in our future we aren't going to try to experiment with the latter and try to do things to help people be physically together as much as possible. It hasn't been our focus for the first few raw materials, but it is a great question and a problem to solve that we haven't solved yet. Chris Do: Okay, I appreciate the honesty there. So then I'm going to ask you a super nerdy question, okay? If you don't want to answer or you're like, no, you need to talk to the CTO about this. What does the tech stack look like so that you can do work remotely and still feel connected? I'm always curious. The nerd in me is like, what is the tech stack? How do you guys collaborate? John Roescher: I think we're doing most of the things I would, I would imagine everyone else is doing, but let me maybe I'm wrong in that. You know, I think we, I'll say this, I think we're fairly unsophisticated just in the sense that we like to find the most basic tools and then using the best way possible, I think. So we're Slack, [004500] we're Figma. I think things like Git and things like that have helped development environments quite a bit, and that's been around for a long time, but nothing sophisticated on the kind of productivity and teamwork side of things. And then also I think leaving it up to teams and individuals to kind of figure out what's best for them. I think that's a pretty big thing. We're pretty fluid and open. We don't impose. Everyone must. You speak jam every time, no matter what, you probably find a dozen different things being used at any given time. It's just whatever is, I'll put it like this, it's whatever is best to solve the problem in the moment and building a culture then that's kind of strong and resilient enough to, to exist and thrive in an environment that is a bit more fluid or ambiguous. What do you do for files like shared assets? Transcribed Again, it's pretty fluid across things. I mean, we have, if it's documentation, [004600] we're fairly standardized in the Google docs. If a lot of the file work is done in in 1 Figma. So a lot of the files and assets can exist there. So doing a lot of digital product design and then as it is other types of media. I think it's going to mostly exist either between a file sharing and slack or storage in Google. Chris Do: You mentioned something about these principles that you and Pablo and Jennifer sat down and talked about. I think you mentioned six, but maybe I wrote that down wrong, and I wanted to follow up with that. Was it six? And what are the principles? And if that's not interesting, it's fine, but I don't want to leave that open thread because somebody's going to be yelling, Chris, why didn't you ask about the principles? And here I am asking about the principles. John Roescher: Well, I, I think it's best to have a single, like I was saying before, the, the best thing you can do is have a single core principle or truth. And for us, that is summarized best as when everything is the same. Different is [004700] the greatest opportunity, and that's synonymous with creativity is the source of the greatest. Potential value in for any endeavor is kind of the same thing. One is more of a means to an end, I guess, but I think that generally is the core principle. Then everything else is to support that. I said, finding the best talent. And enabling them to do the best work. That sounds like a nice little tagline that any agency could and should say and believe in frankly, or any creative, but what is different is that we have made it our, our work at the moment, our life's work at the moment to really explore and enable that as much as possible. We are obsessive over those things, finding the best talent. There's a lot in there. What is the best talent? What does that even mean? Where are they? How do we find them and know that we found enable them to do the best work? What all goes into that? What is even the best work? How do we create an environment? [004800] A lot of that's, you know, Jennifer's role as the chief operating officer of a creative company. That's a lot of what is the absolute best environment for great work to happen? Not how do we scale quarter over quarter or what systems do we use so we can squeeze as much margin out as possible? Okay. I mean, we do some of that stuff cause we have to as a business, but that is the inconvenient afterthought of everything it is, what is the environment that will do the absolute best work? So I think, you know, those are some of the core principles, but it really comes down to helping create different. For in any of the work that we're doing as a means to an end of creating value and then everything is just kind of trying to figure that out and apply that whether it be for clients or or working for ourselves or otherwise. Chris Do: Well, I guess I know you're saying it kind of sounds like a. I think that every company should say the best talent, but then you have to make decisions that align with that, allowing people to work remotely because the [004900] best talent don't always live in town. In fact, most likely they don't. And then being kind of agnostic about the tools that you use and not saying you have to use this tool set, whatever works for you works for us. So you're kind of building that into this. I forgot to ask you this one question is when you have client meetings, I assume you have client meetings where you have to go somewhere. I don't know. Maybe it's a new world. We don't have to do that anymore. Do you do that? And where's the team? How does this work? Do they, are they in town? Do they fly in and then you do the big meetings or no? John Roescher: So I'll answer it in a couple of ways here too. And it's like one, like, I clearly believe in thinking this way, I'm going to go back to the principal answer. It is always going to be what is going to create the best work. For some reason, I think that that is not the first question that an agency, especially the larger you get, again back to the whole goal becomes scale. The goal may have started out as I want to do the best work and then the goal turns into scale. But we're trying to maintain as much as [005000] possible what's going to create the absolute best work. And that becomes the justification for anything, including the expensive task of flying half a dozen people from various parts of the world into a single place to meet with a client and co work together. 1 If that isn't going to create the absolute best work, but just seems like something that will make the client feel better or something that will help morale. It's not going to, I think a lot of times. Getting on Zoom and opening up Figma, opening up, you know, whatever the tool of the day is, we do a lot of strategy work, we do a lot of design work, a lot of development work. It's whatever the tool of the day is. Opening that up on Figma with a client and getting to work kind of hand in hand with a client usually is going to create the best work. And that doesn't require you to be in the same space with a client. Um, asking someone to fly from Poland to New York, For kind of a political, social reasons with a client, [005100] you're not going to find that here, you're, you're going to find us kind of going back to that principle. And so then it becomes easy. Our decision becomes easy. Do we do it? Do we not do it? How do we do it? And we just kind of blindly follow those principles and it's worked out for us. Chris Do: That's wonderful. I love that answer. Is this something that you walk clients or prospects through before you get involved, because some of them are like, what, what do you mean? You're not going to meet with us. John Roescher: Yeah, absolutely. You know, our work starts the very first conversation we have with the client. And I think our work starts with the brand that we build. I think that's kind of a fun kind of way to think, too. It's like, the end product, and Pablo, something Pablo's really helped me, you know, you think you understand this, How you can say it and then you find yourself not doing it. Truly, everything that you do affects the end product. Every meeting, every email, every proposal, every edit of a spreadsheet, one way [005200] or another, affects the end product. And if the principle is create the absolute best work possible, You need to think about everything that you do all the way through. And that includes the brand that you build. That includes that first sales call. And so the easiest thing that I know what we do is we let the client in on that. One of the very first things we say, uh, you know, on the first call is like, just so you know, we're going to treat this as if we're doing the work together. So let's go on this journey starting now. Let's talk about the problem you're solving. Let's talk about the environment that's going to need to be created to create the best work. And then there's a bit of that kind of self selection, kind of validation through the process. That's a bit of an educational process and also a bit of is like, let's get in and create that culture together starting as early as possible. So then it's not a surprise when we come in the end and say, say, Hey, why don't you all come in and spend a couple days with us here. Why? Like, how's that? You know, honest question. How's [005300] that going to help the work be better? Oh, this is why. And it might be because our stakeholders really want to see your face around here. And if our stakeholders don't see you, then we're not going to have as easy of a time getting buy in on the things you make, which means we're going to have to make more sanitized, generic stuff that they're not afraid of. Good answer. We're going to hop on a flight. We're going to be there because it helps create the best work possible. And as we scale as a creative company, working as an agency, We're going to maintain that that posture that culture and that will be the challenge because I again I think as you scale as you get more owners as you get, you know, you're beholden to Keeping employed dozens and dozens of people Etc. That principle gets is one of the first things that starts to degrade. Why are you doing this? Because of a number, not because it's going to make the absolute best thing that is most successful possible. And it just keep going back. If that's always what you're doing, every [005400] hard decision is going to be made much easier. You can have much more confidence and the clients are going to completely understand. It's the, uh, that's the, really the driving answer behind everything for all materials. Chris Do: For my last question for you, I'm going to ask you something I've never asked a podcast guest before. And it's the Dan Sullivan question. Are you familiar with the Dan Sullivan question? 1 The Futur: No. Chris Do: Okay. He's like the, I guess the king of coaches, uh, for people and very successful and a prolific writer. His question is this three years from now, you and I are looking back on the past three years, what has happened personally and professionally that's made you really happy? So now we're in 2027 towards the third quarter. And you started this thing, I guess it's been about 18 months or so about this idea, but living in these principles and making every decision grounded in this one core idea. Take me to the future. Look back and tell me what's happened. What do you see? So, John Roescher: [005500] what would make me happy is that big things have happened. So, we've got big, iconic, legendary projects out there in the world that the industry is looking at and saying, There's a renaissance here. This is what's needed. We need more creativity in the design of our experiences and products. We were so sick and didn't know it, of the sameness that proliferated. Digital experiences, digital products, and in a lot of cases brands. Design of our everyday things became such a saturation of sameness. And we, we didn't know it. We didn't know it. We know it now because we can see what has happened here, both by raw materials and the effects of what we've done. And we're looking at a set of case studies or examples out there together and saying, that's it, that's what was needed that happened. And it happened because of the things that we said in this podcast interview in [005600] 2024. So big things happened. It proves these ideas and you talk so much, John, about these principles and staying true to those principles. You did stay true to them. Look at those effects. Look at what happened. That's iconic. That's legendary. Now let's go through the next three years and build on that and make things, uh, make the, make the things that we use every day better and better. Chris Do: Super cool. So you have this hypothesis That you're like, I think it's going to work, but now we need to see it at a big scale. So it's like, it really did work this, all these decisions actually led to the best possible work to be done by the very best, most talented people and in ways that kind of stayed true to that. And then everybody in the industry is looking at like, Oh, we want some of that. What has happened here? Let's let that be the beacon or the high watermark to see, like, if we can't catch up or play in that same sphere, that was a really great answer. John Roescher: Boom. You got it. That's exactly it. That's a, you've been using some of my own words. I think it's raw materials [005700] is. I think all business is an experiment. I like to be honest with myself about that. So what is the hypothesis? And then the whole point is to prove it. So we're looking back three years from now, we've proven it. We've created a starting point that is much better than we are today or three years ago. Chris Do: John, thank you very much for sharing so openly and tackling some of the difficult questions. I had no idea where this conversation was going to go and I feel much clearer and more enlightened about like somebody who is at a scale much bigger than I ever was to kind of hear the trials and tribulations you went through and I wish you nothing but the very best for the next three plus years. Thanks a lot, Chris. John Roescher: This was fun. My name is John Rocher. You're listening to the Future. The Futur: Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already subscribed to our show on your favorite podcasting app, and get new insightful episodes from us every week. The Future Podcast is hosted by Chris Doe and produced and edited by Rich Cardona Media. [005800] Thank you to Adam Sandborn for our intro music. If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reviewing and rating our show on Apple Podcasts. It will help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better. If you'd like to support the show and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit thefuture. com and you'll find video 1 courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and the creative business. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.

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