Logan Lyles (00:03.055)
Agencies are often known for dysfunctional, toxic culture. Unfortunately, that has become par for the course for many of us who have been living agency life. Whether you're leading an agency, you've come up through the ranks working in large or small agencies. The stress of agency life can often lead to cultures that are unhealthy. How do you turn that around? And how has one agency become multiple time awarded as a digital creative agency. That's the topic for today's conversation with Kyle Duford, my friend, also president and executive creative director at the brand leader. He's also the author of Twice Found. He is a veteran of agency life and joining me on the mic once again, the first time on the agency builders podcast. Kyle, welcome to the show, my friend.

Kyle (00:51.856)
Yeah, thanks Logan. It's always a pleasure and I appreciate the friend comment because I do think you're a friend and I appreciate you.

Logan Lyles (00:58.792)
Hey, we got to know each other first through a podcast and it only makes sense that we have you back on the agency builders podcast now that I've been hosting this one for a few months now. And one of the things I always enjoy every one of our conversations, man, but especially I love when we get to record it and share it with others. And we shared this on the agency life podcast when you and I did that one probably about a year ago now, more than that even. And,

Kyle (01:21.625)
at at premium two.

Logan Lyles (01:23.209)
There was a story that you shared before we get into, you know, how have you guys been able to win best place to work so many times, not just among agencies, but an agency competing with other companies in building a best place to work. Talk about the seven needs of the new workforce. This list that you've been building before we get into all of that. There's a story that you've shared with me about

that I think is just kind of indicative of the leadership style and the type of culture you guys have been able to build at the brand leader. Tell us a little bit about that and then we'll unpack some of the things that I think will be applicable for listeners today, man.

Kyle (02:00.048)
It's a fun story and it's become kind of the go-to, as you said. We've mentioned it before when speaking, because it just really is indicative of the lack of human compassion versus really loving people the way I think we're supposed to love them, especially our colleagues and workforce that work for us. A number of years ago, we had a veteran PR guy and we hired him from somebody else, 30 year PR executive, VP at one point at Ogilvy. Definitely pedigree. And we brought him in for a reason, he was great. Well within the first week, he managed to piss off one of our clients pretty rurally. And the client called me.

And he was really pissed off. And I'm like, let me get to the bottom of it. Hold on. And I called him. And I called the account manager. And it's at night. I'm at home trying to figure all this out. And really what the guy did was by the letter of the law, he did nothing wrong. But by the spirit of the law, he was basically telling a client who was a burgeoning new business, taking on their first series A round, that they took the money a little while ago. And so to announce it now, no one's going to care. But he actually said that. And so.

That turned into this fight and argument and hangups and so forth, and then I was brought in. And so I call him up, and I called the account manager up. We have a little talk. We settle it out. I call the owner back of this other company, one of our clients, and we figure it out, and it's all done. And about two hours goes by, and one of our account managers is leaving. She was working on some stuff late here. And she calls me, and she goes, I was just leaving the office. And so and so, this particular gentleman was in the lobby still.

and I thought he left two hours ago. And she goes, and he's just bawling. And I'm like, why? Like what happened? Not even thinking that it's correlated to what happened earlier. And she goes, he told me he was absolutely convinced that he's getting fired tomorrow morning. And I was like, what? And it's, know, he's my age, maybe a little older, so he's 52 or so, and.

Logan Lyles (04:00.276)
Yeah, yeah.

Kyle (04:16.625)
He comes from the workforce that I came from, is what I'm in, which is where our parents, our boomer parents, really drove into us that you have to do X, Y, and Z right or you're going to get fired. And it's the same mentality that drove, you have to go to college, you have to have two and a half children, you have to have a car and a house in the suburbs. And so he was coming from that worldview.

And I wish I knew you were gonna ask me about this, because I would have pulled up the actual text message. But basically I wrote him and I said, hey man, rough day today, something like this, rough day today, we all have them, but I couldn't imagine anyone else on our team but you, so thankful for you. And that's it. Couple minutes later, he writes me back and he's like, what? And I said, you heard, it was something, it was something like that, And I said,

Logan Lyles (04:46.549)
Mm-hmm.

Logan Lyles (04:59.532)
That was probably about all he texted back was just what? Yeah, yeah.

Kyle (05:05.488)
I said, like I said, we all have bad days and you happen to have one today and I appreciate you. And the next morning he came into my office and he's crying, but now he's crying for different reason. And by the way, I don't think there's anything wrong with men crying. I think it shows a vulnerability in emotion. I'm proud to be a male crier. So I don't mind that at all. So he comes in, but this is a different side and he was so thankful and grateful. And I said, tell me why.

why this is new to you, like what's going on? And he's just like, no one's ever treated me the way you just treated me.

And I'm looking at this situation and I came from, you know my personal story, but the first part of my life I treated people really poorly because I was so insecure about myself and I lived with so much shame about decisions I had made. so to overcome that I actually kind of shut everybody out by making everyone feel weak and worthless in front of me. And it was an awful character trait. I was an awful human and I was kind of just a dick. And so I knew exactly where he was coming from. And because I was the person who would have treated him that way in the past. And I said, well, listen,

and when you're here, man, like I got you, know, all off you air cover as long as you need it. And as long as you're doing the best you can, trying your hardest and admitting fault and mistake, then I got you. Now, at some point, you might not have a job if you continue to be egregiously hurting our clients, but like I'm on your side. And that really to me was the starting point of understanding how we need to treat people at the office.

through grace, and that was kind of grace, right? Grace is defined as undeserved favor, and for me, extending that to him was a no-brainer, but to him, he was like, wait a second, in this moment, he just didn't get it. Now, it took about three months for him to know he was not getting fired every time he walked in the door, no matter how much I told him. He's still a good friend to this day, and he retired recently, but yeah, that's that story.

Logan Lyles (07:01.424)
that's awesome. And I love that it continued on, you know, it's tough to hear that he was kind of still like waiting for the other shoe to drop for like three months, but like, it's interesting to me that as much as he was caught off guard by the grace that you showed him, like, yeah, you shouldn't have said that to a client by the letter of law. didn't do anything wrong, but from an account management perspective, yeah, you shouldn't have said that that way. You shouldn't have gotten into an argument with the client, right? He was shocked by the grace that you showed him.

Kyle (07:07.92)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle (07:24.293)
Mm-hmm.

Logan Lyles (07:30.214)
by the same token, because in your own personal journey, where you had come as a leader, it was almost a no brainer for you to show that grace. We'll get into how you mix that with accountability to what you were just saying there, Kyle, but, you were equally shocked. Like why would he be in the office? So upset? Why would he be saying, well, for sure you're gonna, you're gonna fire me. Right. and it's kind of the story of.

you guys bridging that gap between those two different ways of looking at how do we function as a team? What is the culture that we have? You and I have talked about this before. I think there have been other folks that have come into your agency and like looked around and, you know, asked, well, what are we going to do when we have to, you know, work through the night though, like those sorts of things, right? Like, what do you think it is about, working in agencies that oftentimes

Kyle (08:18.763)
Yeah, good memory.

Logan Lyles (08:24.655)
leads to this culture where there is no grace. There's, you know, not just accountability, but just pushing people to the point of burnout. What do you think are some of the things that we need to address as agency builders ourselves if we are going to shift from that one perspective to the other that was so, you know, brought to light by your story and this employee's.

Kyle (08:47.41)
Yeah, that's a good question. You know, I just got out of a meeting before we started talking and I use these words and I use it often, that if you do what you've always done, you're going to get what you've always got. And there's this kind of like fraternal pass down that happens in agency, like in many aspects of our world and human nature where it happened to me, therefore it's gonna happen to you. When I was an intern at...

whatever, Carmichael Lynch, not me, as an example, they made me sleep on cots and stay until midnight. And so when I became an account manager and then this and then that, and then whatever, creative director, whatever, I made my people do it because that's a rite of passage. You have to do this. And it's just, and then that person grows up and does the same thing. I was fortunate enough to...

not come up through agencies. And I've had a couple different types of careers within my career, all somewhat related but also different. And I kind of always dropped in at the top or the middle. And because of that, I never had to go through that period where...

I was a writer and then I became a head writer and then I became an editor and then I became an associate and then I became the... I dropped in in a magazine as editor-in-chief and so I didn't have to go through that. So when other people were expecting that, I was dumbfounded. Like, this is happening? Like, this is not a fraternity? What are you doing? And that's the same thing that happens in the agency world is people are...

saying, this happened to me, therefore it needs to happen to you. And this particular gentleman, we're talking about the Grey story, you know, he worked at Ogilvy. If he would have had that same conversation with a client there, he most likely wouldn't have a job the next day. But we're talking about as much as I love David Ogilvy and what that company's become and everything, you know, there's a very old school mentality of how...

Kyle (10:41.316)
of how people did things. And again, if you do what you've always done, you're gonna get what you've always got. And I don't wanna get, as an end product, happy clients, but unhappy staff. Because to me, I'm not gonna have happy clients much longer after that. So to me, it's kind of a no-brainer.

Logan Lyles (10:56.958)
Yeah, to me, I think there's something very practical right there. I've been in leadership within agencies at times of high scale and at times of high employee turnover. And I can tell you exactly what you just mentioned there, that high employee turnover is going to lead to high client turnover. I think that's the case for most businesses, but you think about it in an agency, it's even more so, right? Because I want to use this

Kyle (11:09.169)
Mm.

Kyle (11:21.489)
Yeah.

Logan Lyles (11:24.708)
term not to be taken too far, but essentially the people are the product, right? We're not delivering this product. We have the deliverables, the outcomes, right? But the experience with our team really is the product that our clients are purchasing. They want to get to that end result, but you can't really kind of separate that from the experience that they're having with your team. And so by investing in employee experience, you're going to improve the client experience. What do you have to say on that? I can see your wheels turn it,

Kyle (11:35.858)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle (11:52.698)
Well, no, because I'm thinking, two things I want to say. One is in our pitch presentation, our initial discovery deck, whatever, capabilities deck, whatever you want to call it, one of the slides is a slide of kind of our awards and it's our values, our six values, and just a snapshot of some of the best places to work awards. And I always tell the client, or the potential client, as it were.

Logan Lyles (12:00.692)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle (12:14.994)
The reason I show this to you is because I firmly believe that if I have happy staff that loves to come to work every day, they're gonna do their best work for you. If I don't have happy staff, if they come in begrudged, if they come in really down and somber and no one addresses it, that translates into their work for you. So you need to know what kind of place I run so you know what kind of people we have. So that's number one. And number two is, you're right, in some way it's awful and I might.

get a little heat for saying this, but a lot of creative work these days, it's kind of homogenized, somewhat boring, and mostly commoditized. Everyone thinks they can do it, is the barrier to entry is very low, with all these new tools at your disposal, even Photoshop almost does it by hand for you. Everything is so quote unquote easy, that unless you...

Logan Lyles (13:06.101)
Yeah. Where AI video is going to be in 12 months is going to be crazy. It's already blowing our minds, right? Yeah.

Kyle (13:09.616)
Yeah, it's already crazy. And we saw Coca-Cola just release an AI video. And people said, well, it wasn't quite accurate, but it was a good start. imagine what happens in, like you said, six months, 12 months, two years. Yeah, it's insane. So what's the differentiator? Well, one thing AI can't do is it can't think like me.

Logan Lyles (13:22.133)
This is as bad as it's going to be, right? Yeah. From a quality perspective. Yeah.

Kyle (13:33.882)
Because I just said I have unique experiences. so as executive creative director, as the head strategist here, I have the ability to look at a problem and try to come up with a solution based on what I know, audience and persona and so forth, brand obviously, and match that with what I've seen in my life, which AI can't do. So that's a huge piece. I bring that experience. That's me. That is not a commoditized output or product. I'm still going to give that to you as the agency.

But I have 26 other people here who have unique experiences who do that as well. So for me, the agency world today is about personal relationships. It's about emotional connections. It really is what a brand should be doing as well. So I'm trying to connect with our client and, you know...

Agencies like us, mean, honestly, we're a dime a dozen. You can find a great agency, and really great agencies. I'm not putting us down. I'm saying there's a lot of people who are as good or better than we are. Well, not many better, but you know what I mean. Yeah, just a little bit. And so you have to talk about who you are as a company.

Logan Lyles (14:35.311)
Let's walk that back just a little. No, I got you.

Kyle (14:45.18)
to your employees and to your clients or to your potential clients. Otherwise, you're just another thing out there that's just noise.

Logan Lyles (14:53.784)
I like the way that you frame that Kyle in talking with your prospective clients and who your team is not kind of just blazing past that. think you can in kind of showing your awards and kind of talking about your team. It can get a little navel gazelle gazey right like just look at us look at our awards right. But the thing that I think you did differently there that I think a lot of agencies miss in their presentation or their capabilities deck as you were talking about is this is what this means.

Kyle (15:10.321)
Mm-hmm.

Logan Lyles (15:22.927)
for you. This is why I'm talking about this. This isn't just to talk about us and brag on this person or that person or our agency as a whole. It is to talk about, you know, this dynamic. And I love what you said there about, you know, the emotional connection. I've heard it said before that sales and probably marketing as well isn't about the conveying of information. It's about the transfer of emotion. Right. And I think that that translates into the emotional connection that are

Kyle (15:45.681)
Yes.

Logan Lyles (15:51.728)
clients have with our team members. And I couldn't agree with you more where if people are happy coming to work, they're excited about the work that they get to do. They're going to drive better results for their clients. That kind of leads us into you've been working on this list that you were talking to me about. You recently posted on LinkedIn might be the foundation of a new book potentially. I won't.

you know, give too much away. I'll let you speak to what you want to. but you're calling it the seven needs of the new workforce. How did this come about? And then let's kind of break it down. because I know that you're passionate about leading this new workforce with, millennials who are, you know, moving up the ranks, you know, like myself approaching 40 having been in leadership for a bit. but Jen Z here in the next few years is going to make up a really significant portion of the workforce as well. So.

It's a long long question, but talk to us about how you came to this list and then we'll unpack it.

Kyle (16:53.042)
where you had mentioned our Best Places to Work awards, one from Ad Age, four from Outside Magazine, a bunch from South Carolina, where the agency is based. And a lot of people were just saying, how did you do it? How did you turn it around? And it wasn't a turnaround as much as it was an addition to what we had already. We had a great team, but it lacked a little bit of...

I've been in a lot of creative agencies and I've been into a lot of really cool places in my life and I've seen really wonderful designers or writers or artists and photographers and they always had things around them that was like inspirational.

And you can see I got a lot of Charles Anderson stuff behind me. He's a good friend and an amazing designer and did all that French paper stuff you see. And you go to his office in Minneapolis and it's just loaded with old retro art posted on the wall everywhere. And I'm like, where is that? So here, when I came here, there was a lot of, it was just a lot of quiet and there was a lot of white space and there was a lot of this. And it was like, we just do our work. And I was like, what? I was like, what the hell's going on? And so.

I was trying to create a place that people wanted to come into physically, a culture that physically walked into the space. And so we redesigned the office a little bit. We painted the walls differently. And I encouraged people, like, bring in your stuff. I've got Funko pops all over my office, and people have things on their desks and tchotchkes, and it's now becoming that thing. And in process of that, I started just looking at the people that we were hiring.

adhering to our new core values, which are now four or five years old, and trying to figure out how do these things mesh? How do people, values, and the physical space come together to form culture? And partially because of that story that we started off with about the PR gentleman.

Kyle (18:48.146)
And partly because of those things that I saw, something just happened magically. And I can't tell you exactly what it was. We kind of stirred the pot and all of a sudden when the smoke settled, it was like this place that people really felt comfortable and safe. And so when people ask me like, what did you do? I'm like, well, I don't really know. And they said, you might want to think about that and articulate it a little bit more because I think you're onto something. And I had been reading a lot of books and a lot of really good authors that I believe in and love and obviously reading like Malcolm Gladwell and what was my tipping point for the cult, all these things.

And what it boiled down to was seven key, what you mentioned and I call needs of the new workforce, which is kind of late millennials and all of Gen Z. And I've given many talks about this all across the southeast and really what it comes down to is this new workforce is so different. If you think about Gen Z, and I've got six children.

and the oldest is at the very end of Gen Z and the youngest is at very other end Gen Z and so six of them all firmly in this group so I care passionately about this group for a reason. And what I've realized is they grew up on technology.

that no other generation before them has. Everything they've done, the iPhone was invented right when they were born. And so everything else since then, know, fast-paced internet, geo-targeting, Google, Amazon, and then all the things in many ways wonderful inventions since then. We're talking Uber and DoorDash and Peloton and blah, blah, all these things you never needed to leave your house for. So technology is not only just pervasive, it is interwoven in their lives. And in some way, maybe a little metaphysically, kind of in their

Logan Lyles (20:25.812)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle (20:29.108)
their soul. It's kind of like everything is done. Pictures of them were posted when they were two years old on Instagram and Facebook and it goes on and on and on. And you match that with the fact that, and you mentioned it, that a lot of the workforce is coming in. The last time I gave this talk, which was early this year, it was, know, 5 % of the workforce was Gen Z. And I would say that by middle of next year, so 2025,

Logan Lyles (20:35.604)
Yeah.

Kyle (20:54.738)
more than 25 % would be Gen Z. And if you combine that with millennials, 62 to 65 % of the entire workforce is these last two generations, which my generation knows nothing about. And so...

Logan Lyles (21:07.486)
And oftentimes we're conflated to I'm an early millennial, right? Like I said, I'm approaching 40. And one of the things that just kind of gets under my skin a little bit, I don't take it super personally, but I'm like, I want to jump out and correct it. They're like, I hear people say like, all these millennials, you know, coming out of college. I'm like, we're not coming out of college anymore. Right. And there are differences between Gen Z and millennials. And this is why I say like, it causes me to kind of call a timeout and interject into the conversation, not because

I want to be labeled right according to my generation or something. But to your point, I think it was so helpful in talking about what are some of those timeline markers in recent history and how do they fall for Gen Z and how does that impact the way they view the world and therefore the way that they work. Right. Because work is a big part of our life. And for millennials, I can remember I was I was in college when Facebook first came out. I can remember when Facebook was just for college students. It wasn't even for everybody. Right. I can remember my first

Kyle (21:39.218)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle (21:44.369)
Yep.

Kyle (22:02.384)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Logan Lyles (22:06.73)
cell phone, was, know, the little Nokia with, know, where you could just play snake on it. if that right. And you paid for, for not only minutes, but like 10 cents a text that that sort of stuff. And I can remember pre social media. can remember, remember dial up internet. Gen Z doesn't remember that transition, right.

Kyle (22:13.042)
Ha ha.

Kyle (22:18.386)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle (22:26.724)
No, and they don't even, it's kind of like me talking about, you know, like the invention of the telephone, you know, to my parents when I was younger. It's like so far away that you don't even think about it.

Logan Lyles (22:32.897)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I heard something about Gen X the other day is like, why is that? Why is Gen X so angry? Well, you know, they had to replace all their records with cassette tapes and they had to replace all those with CDs and now they had to replace all those and now pay for streaming services every single month.

Kyle (22:52.57)
Listen, think our generation is great. The Gen X because, you know, listen, I was...

Logan Lyles (22:54.485)
You

Kyle (23:02.514)
privileged and I do say it was a privilege to to grow up in a way that I mean and my Contemporaries will tell you this we actually there's a few of us in the office We laugh about this because we're about the same age and we we kind of think about this a lot You know, I would ride my bike until you know, the lights went out. That was kind of the cue to go home There was nothing else to do We had three stations on TV if you could even get them if your rabbit ears were tuned the right way so we

Logan Lyles (23:24.675)
Yeah. And if the president was on it was, you know, it was toast. He's on every channel.

Kyle (23:27.731)
Yeah, there's a whole thing you can watch. I mean, I remember when MTV came out and it was like, I mean, was, mean...

Logan Lyles (23:32.813)
Yeah.

Kyle (23:34.894)
Amazing time, but we saw the invention of cable television, the invention of CNN, all that stuff. That same explosion of technology, and yeah, you're right, we had to keep changing our audio files from one thing to another. I was just at the tail end of 8-Track. No one who's listening knows what 8-Tracks are probably, but I was just on the tail end of that and then all the way to MP3s and 4s, whatever we're on now. But that's what happened with Gen Z, where they're literally in the middle of this explosive

Logan Lyles (23:53.774)
Right.

Kyle (24:05.629)
in a very different way, AI technology, advanced learning and so forth. But you look at all that and where they come from, 9-11 happened right when they were born in the beginning of Gen Z and all the international problems we've had since then, wars and...

Presidential problems and all these things plus a shitload of national disasters in the country and like just I mean They've gone through a lot and they they've kind of banked on their technology to kind of escape this world Like I would escape on my bicycle Well, that's what I was that's what I was getting to so they are the most I just wrote this down because this is in my talk as well They're the most depressed the most anxious the most suicidal the most medicated

Logan Lyles (24:39.961)
Yeah. Yeah. Anxiety is super high among Gen Z. Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle (24:55.28)
group of any time in human history. And if you let that sink in for a second, that's the problem we have right now. And...

To me, again, having six children firmly in Gen Z on all sides, I look at this and go, we have a chance to fix this. And a little bit of your generation, obviously, but I think we almost as Gen X have a need to, ourselves, to fulfill the potential in these children and young adults. And I take that very seriously. And it might sound hokey, it might sound kumbaya, but if you look at where they feel safe.

Well actually, take a step back. If you ask them why they're so anxious and why they're so depressed, you know what the number one reason is? 75 % of Gen Z says the number one reason they're so anxious and depressed. You wanna know what it is? Mass shootings.

Logan Lyles (25:46.737)
Interesting.

Kyle (25:47.762)
Public mass shootings, school shootings, concert shootings, it doesn't matter, it's shootings. And so do you blame them for wanting to stay home on their computers or their iPads? Like they don't wanna go anywhere, they wanna order in. My middle daughter loves DoorDash, doesn't understand that paying $20 for $6 meal makes no sense.

But regardless, they don't want to go anywhere. there's this fear. Some of them don't even know it's their core fear until they're asked about it. And there's other reasons as well. But it's world wars. Some of it is the economy. But most of it is this weird thing out there, this ethereal thing that they can't touch or see or feel or taste or hug or anything, but they know that it's there and it could happen to them. And so...

Logan Lyles (26:16.955)
Sure, sure.

Kyle (26:34.636)
I'm on a bent to ensure that when they're in our building that they have a safe place that they know they're loved, they know they're cared for, and they don't have to worry about those things. Now obviously I can't control, you know, if somebody walks in our building and tries to do something, you know, horrendous, or I can't control the natural disasters we just went through, Hurricane Helene here pretty miserably, but...

Logan Lyles (26:57.04)
Right, right.

Kyle (26:59.243)
If I can have them feel comfortable, feel safe, feel wanted, feel important, feel desired, any number of one of those things that we had so freely as children, then I believe we can translate that into a good workplace culture and then they do great work. And so to me, everyone benefits from it and you learn to love your staff in a different way.

Logan Lyles (27:22.322)
Man, it's so good. And I know we're getting more. If you're listening to this, we're getting more psychological and sociological than we typically get on the show. But I think that it there is a through line here. And it's super insightful in just some of the stats that you mentioned and one of the main fears. Kyle, I think a lot of people maybe were, you know, surprised by that. And we don't want to, you know, we're not trying to paint with.

huge brushes here that you know, every Gen Z that comes into your company is super anxious. Just like not every Gen X is angry based on my joke earlier, which that was a joke by the way. I just just so you know, Kyle, don't I don't think you're angry or any of my Gen X friends. But I thought that that was one. It was just funny and it showed kind of, hey, this was the technological changes that Gen X went through. I kind of explained what millennials went through. Gen Z is kind of on the other side.

Kyle (27:46.268)
Mm.

Kyle (28:08.102)
Hmm.

Logan Lyles (28:14.817)
of things are where things are now moving at such a rapid pace that before that that point, like you said, with that iPhone coming out right when they were born, they don't remember anything before this. They don't remember pre 9 11, all of those sorts of things. So you kind of alluded to some of them on the list, but what are the list of seven of the needs of the new workforce, Kyle, for folks who are taking notes?

Kyle (28:36.465)
Yeah.

Well, this will make sense to you because after just speaking about creating a safe work environment, this hopefully makes sense. So number one is trust. Without trust, I think there's nothing anyway. So trust is first and foremost. It's trust that you're getting your work done. It's trust that you're going to be on time. It's trust that you're going to have somebody's back. And it's not just me trusting you, it's you trusting me. It's making sure that you understand that I will do the same things that I promise and establishing that relationship. So trust is very important and that's why it's number one. Grace, we alluded to.

Logan Lyles (28:44.212)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle (29:09.728)
Grace is number two. Grace, you know, that undeserved favor. The fact that we all make mistakes, we can learn from them. Let's just not do it again kind of thing. Empathy is number three. Empathy to me is so very important because it doesn't mean you have to have gone through the thing that your employee has gone through. We actually had a really, really, really rough year this year with a couple deaths in our staff's family and also one suicide by one of our own staff, which was, I mean, really, really rough.

And you don't have to have gone through a parent's death to understand that one of our staff whose parent died is affecting her in this way. But you can have the understanding that you didn't have to go through it to know that what they're going through is tough. So empathy in that reason, you know, it's...

It's just a huge piece because you never know what people are going through at home. Okay, four, acceptance. We are very affirming here, which is not very popular in the South. A little bit more popular, we are in Greenville, South Carolina, but in general. It's not very common to accept people of different religious preferences than Christian that's typically here in the South, or homosexual, or...

on and on and on, different handicaps, anything. You come in our door and you want to work with us and we think there's a trade-off here, we'll pay you for the value you bring. I don't care what you look, smell, dress like, it's none of my business. But we also want to create that space for them where they feel they are safe, where they feel that they're important regardless of what society says to them outside of our building. So acceptance is very, very important to me.

Rituals from recognition. This is where it gets fun. This is the small rituals that gives people many milestones to look forward to. We go and have Bagel Thursdays every Thursday morning. It's a simple, nonchalant, $50 a week expense for us. But the day that I thought...

Kyle (31:17.06)
everyone realized we have bagels every Thursday morning, so I'm gonna take it off my calendar, and I removed it. Everyone freaked out. They were like, what are you doing? There's no bagels. Like, we can't do this, what are you? And I'm like, well, I just took it off the calendar. I figured it was so ingrained in our culture, we didn't have to block every morning off on Thursdays. Rituals are very important. We also have a holiday award that goes out every year that they vote on, kind of based on some baseball awards. So it's like gold glove, the person who always gets the task done, MVP, rookie,

Logan Lyles (31:20.865)
Yeah. Yeah.

Logan Lyles (31:44.531)
yeah. Okay.

Kyle (31:47.024)
year, most improved, things like that. And that kind of ritual of doing it every year is super, super important. But it's also part of a recognition of your hard work. But recognition is more than the award. The recognition is in our daily lives, privately exalting people and, sorry, publicly exalting people and privately rebuking people, making sure that we celebrate wins together. We recognize people. At the end of every team meeting, staff meeting, we have something called shout outs. And we just give a shout out to some

like, hey Logan, thanks so much for helping me this morning. I want everyone to know that you saved my butt. Or it could just be something everyone already knew, but I just want to say, hey again, I really appreciate what you did for me. And that could be work or personal.

Number six is vulnerability. Vulnerability, talked about men crying earlier in the show. I think being vulnerable is super important. Being vulnerable to say, don't know the answers all the time. Being vulnerable to admit your weaknesses and faults. Being vulnerable to let somebody else speak into your life and your professional life so you can learn and grow and be a better human, a better colleague, a better worker, a better designer, a better copywriter, whatever it is. But it starts with vulnerability. Understanding your weaknesses and your faults, we all have them. It's just, you know, in making sure you don't

play those up. You play up your good bits and you ask for help on the ones you're not so skilled at. My business partner here is so great at so much stuff. Where I get to do more of the personal things, be a little bit more of face of the company, but I can't do the stuff he does. He is so talented that I have to admit and be vulnerable and say, it bothers me that I'm not as good as finances as you or him, but thank God you're here because that makes this better together.

and I don't have to be great at everything. I have to understand what's happening, but I don't have to be great at everything and I don't have to be good at everything. And so that takes a leap. And the last one is transparency. And I think transparency is super important. So it's kind of like showing the kimono, letting people know that.

Kyle (33:49.68)
this is happening, X, and Z. We're making this decision because. We're doing this because. We went this way because. We're thinking about doing this. What do you think? We're thinking about doing that. just, and you had mentioned earlier, and maybe this was off the air, I can't recall, but you mentioned earlier that a lot of Gen Z, they want to text first before you call them because if they see you calling, they panic, right?

Logan Lyles (34:13.657)
yeah. Yeah. I literally had that when I was leading a client service team for a previous agency. and I was calling one of our account managers and you know, it didn't need a zoom meeting. were a fully remote team and I was just like, Hey, let me just call them up. And we had that conversation, but later she, either brought it up in a follow-up conversation or slacked me like, Hey, when you just call me, it kind of stresses me out. Like my shoulders go up. and I was like, you know, as a millennial,

Kyle (34:27.015)
Mm-hmm.

Logan Lyles (34:42.938)
I kind of get that maybe, you know, more so than, know, as Gen X you grew up, it was only the phone, right? I grew up, I started to text as a teenager, right? But not as early as Gen Z where that's kind of the default. And so, yeah, you're exactly right. I hit that where even between millennial and Gen Z, I didn't kind of realize those communication preferences or just kind of those defaults that we used that were different, that were pretty generational. There's nuance between individuals, obviously, but...

I think that is one. So I'm glad you called that out.

Kyle (35:13.474)
But if you think about how anxious they are, What we're seeing is the surface level. We're seeing the runny nose, not the cold. And when you call somebody instead of texting them, that's the symptom. The real root of it is this anxious, petrified, scared to be who they are, not knowing, especially in our political environment right now, who they can trust, if they are one of those kind of...

Logan Lyles (35:17.084)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle (35:40.754)
Marginalized communities that I mentioned that we're so affirming with and they don't know who they're speaking to and they're part of that community They're petrified to open their mouth. They're petrified to dress a certain way to do X Y & Z and It's so polarizing that if you almost don't give them a heads up like hey I'm not mad at you, but I'm calling you for blah blah blah they I mean it's it's it's a very difficult thing to overcome which might not be Easy for people listening to understand and sometimes it's not easy for me to understand remember. I've got these kids that I call

Dad, just text me. I'm like, what are you talking about? What do want for dinner? That's all. But the only thing I can equate it to when I was growing up was when the principal called you into his office and your stomach dropped and you were like...

Logan Lyles (36:16.125)
Yeah.

Kyle (36:23.89)
shit, like I did something wrong, or you know, whatever. anyway, together those seven, grace, trust, empathy, acceptance, rituals and recognition, vulnerability and transparency, is not just what they need, I believe it's what all of us need. And we have to freely give it back and forth and understand. Now, it's not romper room, it's just not everyone can do anything, it's chaos if you do that, so you have to have a structured system. know, certain people make the decisions and other people participate and other people are due.

and so forth, but if you can explain that in your worldview without making them feel uncomfortable, then you got something really special. And you merge that with the safety we talked about, with the culture and the things and the bagels and the music and the Funko Pops and all that stuff. And you create a culture that is almost, almost unstoppable. And if you had skill to that mix, and if you hire the right people, then like us, you become a really, really powerful agency that can do really great things for your clients.

Logan Lyles (37:23.964)
Man, there's a couple of things I want to dig into there before we get to our final segment. Kyle, you were just talking about making sure that people understand that they're accepted, that there's grace, there's trust. But here's still who makes this decision and how things work and the rules of the road. I think in a previous agency, I was a part of, we leaned very much into a lot of these.

Kyle (37:28.082)
Sure.

Logan Lyles (37:50.281)
Not to say we won as many culture awards as you guys have at the brand leader, but I think in part because we were driven by leadership that really did care about our team that we saw some of the needs of Gen Z. But I think one of the potential pitfalls is as you open the kimono, as you said, and you give that transparency, sometimes one, you're given some transparency to folks who are younger in their career and they don't understand what things mean. For instance, like they see

Kyle (38:15.548)
Mm-hmm.

Logan Lyles (38:17.736)
we're doing well. Like, look at what this client we just, we just landed. Why can't everybody get a 20 % raise tomorrow? Right. Well, that doesn't mean that's how much money, you know, is at the bottom line, those sorts of things. So how do you mix kind of that education with, Hey, here's still the rules of the road with, you know, the right amount of transparency. Cause I think there is a, maybe it's not a balancing act, but there's multiple things to kind of consider in the, communication, if that makes sense.

Kyle (38:25.169)
Right.

Kyle (38:46.146)
It makes total sense and we go through this a lot. know, the number one thing before you even get to that is how do you balance a culture where you want to love people but you still have to discipline them and critique them? You know, that's a really tough situation. Exactly.

Logan Lyles (38:56.116)
Yeah. Grace and truth, right? Like, you know, there's grace, but there's a call to, know, to use a Christian term repentance. And if you're, you know, not of that faith tradition, just accountability, right? For changing the actions that you both agree weren't the right ones in that situation. So anyway, with that context, I'll let you keep rolling,

Kyle (39:15.034)
Yeah, no, but that's exactly right and understanding that, you know, it's...

It's not just a handshake deal. We're running a business, right? We want to run a business the most effectively we can. We think that's with you in it. We think that's with you being treated a certain way in it. But also we have a deal that says we're gonna give you great clients and a great job and great benefits and pay in exchange. You're going to give us this much of your time and you're gonna work this hard and blah, blah, blah. So it is a trade off. Sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes that's a difficult message to get across because I don't want to stereotype

Logan Lyles (39:23.808)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle (39:51.044)
Gen Z, because they are one of my favorite generations, but there is a little bit of entitlement. It's so easy to get things in every other part of their life. You dial it up, hit a button, click on this, right? It's almost like, why can't I have what you have? There's no explanation. They literally don't understand it. And so I believe education in that sense is really important. And when it comes to the larger question you posed, it's really about

Logan Lyles (40:00.576)
Yeah, DoorDash and everything else you were talking about earlier, right? That they've grown up with.

Kyle (40:20.38)
trying to set the stage of what we're trying to do here. And I just went through this big exercise with a lot of the leaders here, the directors, trying to explain that when our schedule is booked, and when there's no room to squeeze things in, and we expect this many hours because we build our budget based on available time and capacity, and we're looking at utilization and all that stuff that we hate to track.

You know, it's really, it's not because we don't think you're doing your job, it's because we're just trying to figure out how to help you do your job better. And so we can be budget conscious. We can know when there's gonna be a slow month and plan for it. We know when someone's on vacation and therefore those hours have to be made up someplace or we need to change expectations.

Logan Lyles (41:07.374)
so that someone doesn't end up sleeping on cots and working all night, right? Like you can even use kind of the old school way of approaching it and say, we're doing these things that might feel old school or big brother to avoid even worse sort of situations, right? I think that's part of the message to this younger part of the workforce.

Kyle (41:10.694)
That's right. That's right.

Kyle (41:18.98)
Mm-hmm. That's right. That's right.

And you know, I'm not gonna say that we have all the answers, gosh we don't, and I screw up more times than most people, but, well thank you, I need it every day. But when...

Logan Lyles (41:31.364)
There's grace for you too. You and me both.

Kyle (41:37.682)
But when you explain it in those terms, sometimes they've never even had the opportunity to be told that this is what's happening. So I'll give you a quick example before we go into our last segment, and your last segment. It's not my show, it's your show. You may not know from the way this is gone, but the, you know.

Logan Lyles (41:51.309)
You

you

Kyle (41:58.098)
Using the 1440 hour rule that a lot of agencies use, that if you take the number of work hours in a year and you minus three weeks vacation and maybe a week of six days, you get roughly 440 hours. And we base capacity based on that on down. So we start at 1440. And if you're senior level and you need to be more meetings, your capacity might be 75 % versus a new designer who's just doing design work all day long might be 95%. And so we talk through this. And I've been letting that sit in.

Logan Lyles (42:22.189)
Right, right.

Kyle (42:28.072)
trying to explain like, that times our hourly rate times this, and this is where, this is the ballpark of where we think we can be. Now, that's based on the bottoms up with our staff going up. And if we have clients first and we work our way down, we do a top down model, then it depends on how many clients we have, what they're paying us, what the deliverables are, and so forth. And that was last week. And then this morning, just before I walked in here, we had a follow up to that, because we're trying to figure out better process, better scheduling for our team. And I said,

You guys remember that I went off a couple of months ago and people not put in a full eight hour day.

and they'd come in at, some people would come in at nine, nine fifteen, and you know, we're totally amenable to that. Like, I'm not a serpent, you I want them to come in and enjoy their morning with their family or get their workout in or whatever, but then put in an eight hour day. But some people would come in past nine, take an hour lunch and leave them before five. So they're already starting the day less than eight hours, and then they take out of that by spending some time at lunch. Now, go ahead and do that, but if you don't make up that time, then what that does is it takes that 1440 and

drastically drops it even further. And so, put it in that context, there's a couple of in the room, even this morning, just looked at me like some light bulb went off. They're like,

the hours, it's not that you want me here to work my ass off because you're a slave driver. It's that those are the hours I contracted to do or I signed up to do with salary. And if we don't do that, we can't charge this. it's just sometimes it's just explaining to them why you do things. Again, goes back to that transparency. But there is a lot of education. And just like when I was younger and I started my first job, there's a lot there's a lot of different education that I needed than than we're teaching people now. So I don't know where that's

Kyle (44:14.804)
going, but there's a lot here to unpack. at the root of it is all about how can we care for these people so they grow up to be better versions of themselves. And in our small way, we're not egotists over here, but in our very small way, how can we help them, how can we arm them with the tools to be better people so they can be less anxious, so they can be more productive in their personal and professional lives. And that's really what it's all about.

Logan Lyles (44:17.64)
Mm-hmm.

Logan Lyles (44:43.524)
stuff man. I and I think you're exactly right there could be you know multiple follow-up episodes just digging into each one of these areas but I appreciate you going with me kind of pulling on that thread of you know grace and transparency from this full list of seven trust grace empathy acceptance rituals and recognition.

vulnerability and transparency. think even that is a great framework for a lot of leaders to think about. And you've given us some insights into managing and leading Gen Z. We could talk even more about hiring, firing, holding accountable, rewarding and incentivizing all of those sorts of things that come into building a great culture. For now, the, go ahead. Yeah.

Kyle (45:17.126)
Hmm.

Kyle (45:23.826)
you

Let me say one thing before we move on. Again, we don't corner the market on this and we're learning every day. And so if somebody is listening and they have experienced some things that are different than this, gosh, I'd love to hear about that. I'd love to learn challenging moments that you've had with your staff and how you went through it. Staff that especially under maybe 26 years old and what that looked like for you because gosh, this works for us. I'm not saying it works for everyone. And I would never say that this is the way to do it. It's a way to do it. And I'd love to hear about it.

Logan Lyles (45:30.068)
Yeah. Yeah.

Logan Lyles (45:53.458)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love it, man. All right, well, with that said, let's head into our rapid fire round. Kyle, we're going to hit you with five more questions and then let people know how they can stay connected with you if they do want to continue this conversation on leading Gen Z, building a better culture in their agency. All right, number one on our list, Kyle, what's one book you often recommend, especially to other agency owners and leaders such as yourself?

Kyle (45:54.053)
ways as well.

Kyle (46:18.384)
Wow, yeah, I would say the brand book, which is my second book, which is all about understanding brand. And we send it to all of our new clients. yeah, a little pitch for me, but I would say that. And any one of the Gladwell books I love because it's just really helpful on how to understand people and process and strategy and statistics in a fun way. So I would say those.

Logan Lyles (46:44.276)
Yeah, cool. Awesome. Number two, speaking of transparency on your list, I always love to hear what other agencies and members of the agency builders community are trying to tackle. So Kyle, what's the next challenge you and your team are focused on tackling either this quarter or as we record this, you're looking into Q1 of 2025.

Kyle (47:05.21)
Right now we're really trying to tackle our process and our scheduling.

because as you know, we use teamwork and it's become an easy way of throwing things on people's calendar without having human interaction with them. And so we have a lot of our staff walk in on a Monday morning and see 13 hours on a day and they're already dejected. So we're trying to throw that whole thing away and start again and figure out what that looks like. So that's the one at hand, that's for this quarter. And next year, we're always trying to grow, to do better work, bigger work.

Logan Lyles (47:18.77)
Yeah.

Kyle (47:39.105)
national TV spots we're working on. We have a couple bigger clients and we're always looking to work with bigger companies that like our creativity.

Logan Lyles (47:48.585)
Yeah, cool man. All right, number three, I always love because I'm a bit of a tech head as you well know at this point in getting to know me, Kyle. What's a tool you've been recommending to friends and especially agency peers lately? This could be part of your tech stack or down to an app on your phone that you find helpful or at least interesting.

Kyle (48:07.312)
Man, I wish I would have known these questions ahead of time. I would have actually thought about it. I think I did that the first time we spoke. I knew them all in advance. You know, I'm always using different things. I'm an early adopter. I try things and throw them away if they don't work and try them again and whatever. Currently I'm trying, I can tell you what it's called, it's right here on my desktop.

Logan Lyles (48:10.165)
You

Logan Lyles (48:28.014)
There we go. Okay.

Kyle (48:28.686)
Akaflow, which is a A-K-I-F-L-O-W. It's basically a way that you can block off your calendar, ties into your Google Calendar, sends you alerts for reminders and events. when you schedule time to work on something, like, hey, I just need an hour to work on a proposal. You're working on proposals today. This without.

blocking off your calendar completely, says it reserves space for you, for yourself, and then challenges you to know, I'm very early stages on it, but to me, that's what I'm looking at right now.

Logan Lyles (48:53.794)
Yeah.

Logan Lyles (49:00.437)
us man I think that's a great recommendation off the cuff as it were. All right number four if you could ask one question Kyle of the entire agency builders community so we've got agency founders we've got COOs we've got different agency leadership and some folks who are closer to the client account managers project managers that are in the in the space as well but mostly leadership folks if you could ask them one question what do think you'd use that one question on?

Kyle (49:27.41)
You wanna send me some leads? That's what I'd say. That's what I'd say. No, listen.

Logan Lyles (49:29.165)
There's an honest answer. I love it, man. There is a good bit of, you know, referral business that often happens within the agency builders community. So quick shout out if you're listening to this or you're watching on YouTube and you're not a member of the agency builders community, hit me up on LinkedIn. Shoot me a DM. It's it's open and free. Well, it's free, but it is invite only because we want to make sure it's only agency folks in the community.

But those sorts of conversations are happening. So quick shout out there. I'll turn it back to you Kyle, sorry.

Kyle (49:59.118)
No, think, I mean, I'm serious, but also in more seriousness. The biggest thing I would ask is, you know, how do you balance your work-life schedule when you're a leader? And it's really difficult. You know, you've got a lot of hats on. So I'm just always interested in how do we all keep our own mental health in check and what we do. So I've got a routine, because I struggle with depression and anxiety myself. you know, sometimes people in this position deal with it in different ways.

Logan Lyles (50:02.892)
Yeah.

Kyle (50:28.852)
I'm always up to learning more.

Logan Lyles (50:30.926)
Yeah, I love it, All right. Number five, I think I asked you this last time when we were on the other podcast, but who's one person you would want to thank or mention that's helped you in your own journey as an agency leader?

Kyle (50:44.038)
You know, I know who I said last time and I stick with that and that's my business partner, Jeff, but I have to say for this one, in particularly the year we've had, and particularly because of the ups and downs we've had emotionally with a lot of the loss we've had and personal things that have happened to myself and our staff, I would have to say my wife, you know, she's...

When I get home every day, or when she gets home, because we don't always, it's not like she's home, she works as well, but when we chat multiple times in the day or when we get home at night, she's the first one that I'm able to talk to honestly about, it's lonely at the top, right? So when you get a chance to be with the person that's your best friend and your partner and things, and I don't think a lot of, enough of us think the people at home, because who I am in my personal life drives who I am in my profession.

and not the other way around. So I'm looking for that help of ensuring that I'm on the right path, ensuring that I'm following my own guidelines, the way of life that I've purported to be about, that she prays for me, that she checks in on me, and me for her. But for me this year,

Logan Lyles (51:51.694)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle (52:00.346)
I couldn't have gotten to where I am. I couldn't have gotten to where the business is without her. And I know Jeff, my business partner, would have said the exact same thing about his wife. And I think that's super important.

Logan Lyles (52:09.511)
Yeah, I think that's a great addition man and a great spot to wrap up the conversation as we talk about relationships, which are at the core of the culture that we're trying to build in our agencies. And I think you've given folks some insights to think about and some practical things to apply. So thanks for joining me on the mic yet again, and your first appearance on the agency builders podcast now with me, Kyle, for anybody listening to this, who doesn't yet call you a friend. What's the best way for them to reach out or stay connected with you, man?

Kyle (52:36.486)
Find me on LinkedIn, Kyle Duford. There's only one of me as far as I know and you can find me that way. You can find our business at thebrandleader.com and I'm also on intro right now so you can find me at intro.co slash Kyle Duford.

Logan Lyles (52:49.682)
I love it, man. I highly want to encourage anybody listening to this who doesn't yet know Kyle, call him a friend, reach out. has a great connection in the agency space. You'll learn a lot and be blessed by his connection and friendship. I promise you that. And on that relationship note in the community, if you're not yet a member, as I mentioned earlier, the agency builders community, but you're listening to this or you're watching Kyle and I on YouTube, hit me up on LinkedIn. I'm pretty easy to find as well. Logan Lyle's last name is L Y L E S.

Kyle (53:03.491)
Thank you.

Logan Lyles (53:19.976)
And I can get you an invite to our agency builders community with that Kyle. Thank you so much for joining me, man. This has been a blast.

Kyle (53:27.26)
Thanks brother, always a pleasure.