An Agency Story
An Agency Story
From Cookies to Code Before Age 25 - 118Group
The Secret to a Smarter, Stronger Team? Build a Learning Culture
What if the best agency investment isn’t more tech or tighter processes, but more learning? In this episode, Dylan Steven of 118Group shares how embedding education and autonomy into his team’s DNA has elevated their work and strengthened their connection. He unpacks how letting go of control actually led to better outcomes and why systems should support people, not restrict them.
Inside this episode:
- How a team book club turned into a powerful cultural cornerstone
- The subtle difference between structure and rigidity and why it matters
- The one shift that helped Dylan take a real vacation without disruption
- The journey of building autonomy without losing consistency
- Dylan and Russel make the case for shorter books.
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. From the excitement of starting up the first big sale, passion, doubt, fear, freedom, and the emotional rollercoaster of growth, hear it all on An Agency Story podcast. An Agency Story podcast is hosted by Russel Dubree, successful agency owner with an eight figure exit turned business coach. Enjoy the next agency story.
Russel:What if learning wasn't just a personal habit, but the cornerstone of your agency success? Welcome to An Agency Story podcast. I'm your host Russel. In this episode, I'm joined by Dylan Steven, founder of 118 Group, an agency that crafts websites for nonprofits and an agency that's just as intentional about how it works as what it creates. We dive into Dylan's philosophy on building a culture of continuous learning, where things like team book clubs and deep conversations aren't perks, they're the norm. You'll hear how his commitment to curiosity has shaped both the agency's growth and the way his team shows up every day. If you're looking for inspiration on how to grow an agency that's both productive and human, this episode delivers in spades. Enjoy the story. Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Dylan Steven with 118Group with us here today. Thank you so much for joining the show today, Dylan.
Dylan:Thank you, Russel. Glad to be here.
Russel:Glad to have you. Get right to it. Tell us what 118Group does and who do you do it for?
Dylan:That is a great question and it took me a long time to really put that together. I'm glad I can say it succinctly here. We build WordPress websites for nonprofits is ultimately our, our whole game.
Russel:It's not some three minute long spiel or something?
Dylan:I don't know who said it, but, um, I think they, the quote was, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, and so I try and use that for a lot of things. Having a simple way to describe what you do in, in, you know, a phrase, um, is super powerful. Conversations I have with people like you, it's, it's, you know, it's pretty easy to pinpoint exactly what it is we do. Hopefully you later have a, you know, what they call that Rolodex moment where you're like, oh, websites, nonprofits, Dylan. It's just, you know, creating some of those associations. So, uh, It's harder to do that when you have a three minute long pitch.
Russel:It seems so counterintuitive, this idea that simple is the hardest thing to do, but I think that is so true. It reminds me of that, the other quote I'm sorry if I had more time, I'd have written you a shorter letter, and how hard that is to really do.
Dylan:A hundred percent, yeah.
Russel:I'm glad you've done that hard work to get to simplicity and I, I can definitely see where that resonates. I'm really fascinated to get in the conversation today and hear a lot more about what you've done with your agency, but before we get there, I'd love to just hear a little bit about young Dylan and how he was coming up in the world.
Dylan:It's a pretty circuitous route to where I got today, and I'm sure if you asked me when I was younger if this is what I would be doing. I probably didn't know what I was be, I would be doing, but this might not have been on the shortlist. I, uh, basically grew up on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, uh, for most of my life. Went to a military academy for a year, um, for college, outta school, Norwich and Vermont. Spent a year there, learned a lot learned a lot about, myself in the process and then transferred to a, a more private school in, uh, Washington, DC, American. Spent some time there and then realized ultimately I just don't know what I want at this point, and I'm spending, uh, I'm spending a lot of money on the exploration stage when, uh, I figured that could probably be done for much less. I decided to leave school for what I, I sold it to my parents as a, uh, like a semester off, uh, which is how I got that through, that stamp of approval. But, ultimately ended up know, still on my semester off now.
Russel:Are they still waiting or are they like, Dylan, when are you going back to college? You promised?
Dylan:No, they're done. They like, shut down my email. They've sent me my transcripts. It's pretty much done over there. But I've, I've decided to travel and figured we can explore, you know, what we want to do and what interests us, um, you know, by traveling. A little cheaper than a$60,000 a year private school education, or, private college education. Did that, learned a lot. Came home. Eventually found myself, um, scooping cookies for a local bakery. When, um, the owner came and said, hey, I need a new website. You know, You're the youngest person in this room by far. Uh, Is this something you can do? Uh, That was basically the bar was, you know how old?
Russel:The name of the game day is simplicity. I think you did a great job there. When you think about that request, I mean, is there something you can tie back to your, your desires, your experience, your, just who you were as a person that says, this is why I took that opportunity and, and jumped on it because that, that seems like a very interesting way to start.
Dylan:A lot of big things come from a combination of inspiration and desperation. Desperation was the fact that, you know, I was 20, something scooping cookies in a bakery, still living at my parents' house. Here was this opportunity to, to learn something and do something. You know, and it was a brand that, you know, The cookie brand that I was working for, it was in Whole Foods stores around the state. You know, it was, It had some presence so I could build a bit of a resume and build some street cred if I was able to successfully work with this business. That opportunity was just too good. I was like, all right, I can either continue to do this or I can explore what this route looks like. It turned out it, it was a really good use of my skillset.
Russel:Inspiration meets desperation. It makes me think of my own journey. I mean, that was, That was really how I started my, my agency. I'd spent some time in the Air Force, got out, was trying to figure out where I was gonna fit in in the world based upon prior plans. And I didn't know anything about, you know, internet, web space marketing as well. I guess I too had an inspiration meets desperation moment.
Dylan:It's a good cocktail.
Russel:That does sound like a good, cocktail at a bar, but you're having a moment, so you just go and have a, uh, have a double shot of, inspiration meets desperation. If there's any bartenders out there listening, we just give us a nod here. I don't know if I missed in there, just like, what, when, when did it all become official? When would you say like, I'm a business now and I'm making this official leap?
Dylan:Basically, when I decided to stop, doing the scooping work at this bakery. I literally spent all day scooping cookies and then at night I was trying to build this website that had like a whole e-commerce, fulfillment, complex shipping, uh, set up and, and just trying to reinvigorate a brand that had kind lost its way online. Once I basically had enough work after that project with other clients that I was introduced to via this business. You know, I was working with the owner. She was like, I love what you're doing. I know these other people and it was literally on Main Street. I walked down Main Street to meet some of these other small business owners. It was really like local, small scale start. Once I had enough work there where I was like, look, I can't be scooping cookies during the day. I need to like focus here. I stepped away from, you know, that position and just basically tried to sustain myself entirely on, uh, this new kind of work, which was a combination of web branding and then also video. I saw the power, the, the utility of video and, I kept getting asked, do you do videos? Can we incorporate video into the website? Then I bought some equipment for video and started doing some of that stuff on the side. uh, It was kind of a, you know, a moment where I was like, all right, I'm going to only do this. It was kind of a leap of faith. That's basically when I was like, all right, I'm taking this very seriously now because, um, you know, I, I can't afford to play around with it anymore.
Russel:I guess it's fortunate for you, probably, I'm guessing the scoop or, uh, cookie scooping was not a high income bar to overcome per se, so you didn't, you didn't have to spend too much time on that front. I mean, Obviously, you know, you're going back and you'd spent a lot of time trying to find yourself. Did you have the, the, the kind of real time realizations like, oh, I found it, or was it just an evolution and this is more hindsight but like how conscious of a thought was that for you?
Dylan:Not very conscious. It's an ongoing journey, right? It's like I'm still, I'm still working on it. I'm still trying to figure out, um, you know, life introduces new events and new chapters and we're forced to figure out how we fit into those new chapters. I'm getting ready to have my first kid in uh, a few months.
Russel:Oh, nice. Congratulations.
Dylan:Thank you. And I'm already, you know, finding a new version of myself in that context, right? Okay, who am I as a father? How do I balance that? What do I wanna be, you know, like how do I want, what values do I wanna stand for? And so I don't know if I've ever come to a, I have myself, you know, figured out moment, but I certainly, I look back to like who I was coming outta high school and early college days and I'm like, wow. There was a lot of fog there, you know? And now it's like, it's a little less foggy, you know? I have a, a, a clearer sense of the road.
Russel:I wish, honestly, as a society we could more embrace this idea that 18 is not, is not the age that we're all gonna naturally have this figured out. Some maybe will, some maybe won't. But if we all can embrace this, this period of discovery, and not just try to go down the factory path of college to either immediately to your employment for life or whatever that case is. Spend some time finding yourself.
Dylan:A gap year, like, you know, should be required. It's like before, before kids, take on this, the, these loans and this debt that they don't really understand, you know, they, they can't really understand the implications of that and what that looks like long term. It's like, take a gap year. That's my biggest piece of advice when I'm talking to young people who are in high school and are not, like, don't have a clear path. They haven't wanted to be a doctor since they were six years old. They weren't dressing up with like stethoscopes and, and like white, you know, white coats or wanted to be like a, a zoologist or a veterinarian, right? There's so many avenues, there's so many paths that people can take that they don't even know exists. Take a year off and get out of your hometown travel, go to different countries, see how different people think and work in different cultures. You'd be surprised by like the version of you that comes back from that. That's my advice to anybody in that, at that kind of position in their life where they're kind of young and figuring out what the next step looks like. Take a year off.
Russel:I think that's great advice. I don't know how many young folks listen to the show that are, that are in that phase, but if you imagine there's a lot of parents of young folks so, um, per Dylan's advice, mandatory gap year. I know you're well read and, and well learned, and I want to, I want to dive more into that. It makes me think, there's a book called Range out there and it's really great at embracing this concept of how important, um, really the jack of all trades mindset is. You're picking up perspective, experiences, all kinds of things that you can bring into your pattern recognition for whatever your core expertise is and that they actually find people that specialize too early, too young, um, often lead to burnout. They don't, you know, really get to anything significant level. They don't really even appreciate the thing they're doing anymore, even if it maybe is even lucrative for them. Have you come across that book?
Dylan:I think I've sampled that book and it, it always brings up an interesting tension for me because on the business side, on the business strategy side, I believe greatly in the power of specialization and positioning and narrowing your focus, right? Picking a lane. That's like been a huge evolution for us is like instead of being the jack of all trades, like we do web design, SEO, pay per click, social media, for everybody, all businesses. Moving from that to like a more narrow lens, I think is a critical move on the business side. But from a personal perspective, the range and the jack of all trades experience that I, that you bring to the table and you're, as you're evolving, I think is super useful across, you know, what you bring to a business. There's that, that tension between specializing from a from an agency strategy perspective, which, you know, if we're trying to make this relevant to, to your show, you know, that specialization being like a critical, in my opinion, a critical focal point and like a junction for people, and that also that kind of, that jack of all trades personal perspective and how, the different philosophies for the different levels of zoom, really. I don't know. Does that resonate with you at all?
Russel:Absolutely. It makes me think of, we talked about this a lot in our business. We called it the T-shaped concept. We didn't coin that by any means. I can't even remember where it originated from. But this idea that you as a person, your knowledge is this, the shape of a T and the horizontal is the breadth of experience and the, and the, the vertical portion is the depth. We were always big and, and, and, right, you need both. Kind of along the lines of what you're saying and, but, but yes, ultimately, I'd probably be more in the camp of start general, and, and there's a lot of value in that. I always think of like, very few agencies start out extremely specialized in position, and I think that's a good natural journey that they go on because, um, it helps them, it gives them a lot more of that depth of experience or that breadth of experience when they do decide to specialize that they can bring it all, bring it all home.
Dylan:A hundred percent. The agencies are extensions of the owners, right? They are literally birthed from the owners.
Russel:It's a child.
Dylan:It's a child, right? It's like you can't take the owner out of the agency. You know, and Obviously you try to get to a point where there's more separation between the owner and the actual agency, um, but in that way, yeah. I think most agencies, unless the owner has had prior experience, you know, they've, they've been in other agencies or they've, this is their second or third agency they're starting and they're like, I know exactly what my market is and exactly my positioning and where, how I wanna like, you know, set myself up. Most agencies are gonna go through a, we do mostly everything for anybody who will say yes and who will take us on and will do let us do the work. And I agree. I think that, that's where you learn. Those are the trenches, right?
Russel:Those are the trenches.
Dylan:Those are the trenches where you kind of really get this, like you get the, this sucks moment or you get the, wow, this is, this works moment. Ideally you use that to make a strategic, you know, shift at some point. That's the goal, at least I think. So I agree.
Russel:I love that. Just traveling down the line, line of, and you, you shared, you, you're about to be a, a new father, which obviously just a huge life moment and a huge life changing moment that you, you can and can't expect and what that will look like. But my wife always, and I, always talk about that our children will be something because us, because of us or in spite of us, and we don't always know what it's gonna be. And It makes me even think back to the correlation of our agency as well, or, or our business is gonna be something because of us, or it's gonna be something in, in spite of us.
Dylan:Interesting. That's an interesting one.
Russel:What is your agency because of you, and, or maybe more interestingly, what is your agency in spite of you?
Dylan:Oof, man. Because of me, you know, I, my agency reflects a lot of my values, right? Just from, uh, how I like to work and, you know, what I believe in and how I extend that to my team and the clients we work with. There's a direct tie, um, to that. And then I think, uh, What is my agency in spite of me? It's probably, um, more well organized than, you know, than I would than it would be if I, if it were birthed directly from me, right? Fortunately, I've surrounded myself with incredible team members who, um, like systems and like processes, and I'm someone who likes to like throw paint on the wall and, and see what's see what comes out of it. And so, my agency, in spite of me, is a very kind of focused, organized, or, uh, organization, is maybe my answer to that.
Russel:All right. I like this. Yeah, I mean, It makes total sense, right? If you're, If you're a little bit more kind of off the cuff, uh, ad hoc that your agency will have to be more organized. If it's gonna survive and live, uh, that's a, that's a great, man. and I, And I know I threw a tough question there, and I, I will say, you pulled that off brilliantly.
Dylan:Too kind.
Russel:But I, I think that so many people have to resonate with it. I know that's kind of even somewhat the entrepreneurial, not, I don't wanna say typical, but maybe, prevalent, I guess you could say is right, we're visionaries and thinkers and we're always far forward and, and then, yeah, the agency has to be organized.
Dylan:Agreed. It's a constant tension between the entrepreneur and the operator, which I think, um, you know, I, I remember reading, um, the E-Myth a long time ago, which was foundational to me at some point. The idea of, you know, sometimes you have this op, you have this owner who spends too much time in the operation, delivery, stage or role and not enough time in the kind of like strategy, vision side. It's a tough little place to be. you know, we're Owners are still operators, right? They're still picking up the phone, dealing with client issues, dealing with a billing issue that a client might have, like an invoice that didn't go through. I mean like really granular stuff. Then also they're trying to like, look at the, they'll separate the forest from the trees and look at the, the vision and where we're going and what our strategy is. It's a constant tension between those two, um, and sometimes we're better at one thing versus the other. There are some owners who are excellent operators and, they are the best operators of their agency and maybe they're neglecting a little bit of the entrepreneurial side and taking risks and, uh, exploring new avenues and, and looking long term. And then you have some entrepreneurs who are, you know, and I've worked with some of these people on the client side when we were working more with small businesses, who are disasters from an operator perspective. I No organization. No real kind of, uh, administrative skills that know, companies require. You need to know yourself. You need to find out where you land on that, that vision, and then supplement your, your gaps. Ideally with a team, right? Which is what I've tried to do, is like I'm, you know, is bring in people who are really organized and, you know, really detail oriented to supplement my, my operation gaps, um, so I can focus more on the, the entrepreneurial side.
Russel:We need an entrepreneurial gap year apparently as well. At some point in your business, you gotta take a gap year.
Dylan:Or a gap month.
Russel:Gap something.
Dylan:Gap summer, you know, is like, see what happens. Roll the dice. I think that's a super good kind of stress test, uh, for an organization. I just took two weeks off, uh, to travel with my wife ahead of having a, a child before when we, like you said, I have no idea what fatherhood looks like. I have no idea what life looks like post birth. I'm kind of naming it, you know, PB and we'll see, we'll see like how things change at that point. We figured while we can, let's go on a little trip. I was gone for two weeks and honestly I was resentful with how little was required of me. I was like, I kept checking my email and checking my inbox and checking my Slack and being like, there's gotta be a problem. I gotta jump into I'm, I need to be useful here. My team was just, you know, autonomous, right? A small party was like, it's almost like I can imagine when your kid leaves the nest. It's like, well, I'm kind of, what do I do? I'm, I'm not like, as critical to this organization as I thought I was. It's both a really good thing, but it's also kind of a moment of like, oh, okay. That's different. I used to be the only thing that mattered, you know?
Russel:Oh gosh. I always thought of parenting and managing people as so similar, but I've never really even thought about parenting and running a business as the same thing. You're bringing up all kinds of ideas on that front. Obviously you've had some success down this route, and I get the sense that, you know, very, maybe early on, or you can tell me otherwise, that you have tried to treat this business with a, with a lifestyle centered approach to some degree. When you think back on just what, was there something key you did or, or something that really sticks out that maybe allowed you to have that two week vacation where your agency kid didn't quite need you as much as you'd hoped? Or maybe you're super proud of? However you wanna look at that.
Dylan:I didn't even realize I was building a lifestyle business, uh, for a while. I didn't even know the term lifestyle business until a few years into the whole, uh, into, into operating, and then when it, I found out what it was, I was like, yeah, that's, that's basically what I want. I think you need to decide what you want your relationship with work to be like. Do you want work to take up a huge portion of your life and neglect a lot of other things that you could find interested in? Or do you want work to, to fit in neatly into, uh, a more of a canvas of interests and desires and opportunities? Part of that, like this is birth for me thing is like, I'm someone who really values flexibility and freedom. I didn't really even realize that until I was in a military academy and you, I had absolutely none of it, and I was like, wow. This is not who I am. This is not what I want. I'm someone who needs to be, needs to have that flexibility and that freedom to figure out day to day like what my life is gonna look like. The military idea wasn't gonna work, like a corporate ladder wasn't gonna work. This business has been birthed largely from that desire to be flexible and have freedom and be able to take time off and, and work from anywhere. And, um, I think the biggest thing I've done to set that up is to, uh, provide complete autonomy to my team. They are totally, you know, even from, everything from invoicing clients, to scoping work and providing quotes to firing clients. I hand over the keys to the castle. I think. The biggest mistake a lot of people make is hire great people and then like, hand them a script or hand them a process or a system. You hire great people so they can bring their greatness to the table. You don't hire'em so you can smother'em in, bureaucracy and rules. And that's another whole conversation point, is that tension between systems, processes and kind of creation and how, like you, there's a delicate balance between the two. But to answer your question about how I set up a business that provides me with flexibility, it is largely down, comes down to the autonomy I provide, the autonomy and trust I've put in my team to, uh, get the job done. Obviously you gotta hire good people for that to work. It's, you know, those two things.
Russel:Very curious there. I mean, Did you start with that methodologies, or would that, did that become an evolution of like where you were, where you're trying to meddle too much or a helicopter agency owner, um, or something along those lines to actually bring, come to that realization?
Dylan:More parallels to parenting, huh? I definitely did not start with this kind of, uh, I thought that Businesses to be successful, businesses needed to be very rigid. From the outside, again, without going to, like, without much experience in the, the, the business world, I thought that um, you know, you needed to have a lot of control. You need to have a lot of, you know, systems, processes. Again, I do think those things are important, but it's the level of them that I think people can kind of get wrong sometimes. We used to track every minute that people, you know, worked what they tracked, what they worked on. I used to have complete access to every inbox, reviewing every email that went out. It was, you know, Sauron's all seeing eye. For my Lord of the Rings fans out there. And then I just realized like, I'm spending, I'm spending so much time doing this, and they're spending so much time just complying to what I'm asking them to do. It's like, how much time are we losing, like just with this machinery that, uh, could be better spent, you know, val, on value creation for the people that trust us with the work. That was a gradual realization and then that, you know, I just was continued to be proven right by my team that these are the right moves over time and now it's, now it's my personal philosophy.
Russel:Do you, again, trying to kind of decide, and I, I'm, I probably know the answer. Everything's in evolution. There's rather these defining moments per se. But I think that sometimes evolution, the hard part of it can be is reversing a trend or um, you know, breaking habits and things of, of kind of the standard operating procedure. When you think back, how did, how did you break those, those habits? I mean, that was, That's some real rigidity that you're talking about there.
Dylan:That's a good question. Like you said, everything kind of, it's all kind of, you know, fuzzy. There's not a lot of concrete, right? It's just like, you know, day to day in and like seeing, having experiences with my team day to day and like subtly nudging me one way or the other. I can say that like I was just tired of being on the hook for everything, right? Being responsible for every urgent page. Every time it's like Saturday and like someone's website is down and like, I'm like, you know, hiking with my wife or something, and now I'm stressing about this, that, or the other thing. Every conversation with a client about their website, just like wanting to be less involved, ultimately led me, it's like, okay, I can either do less work or I can empower my team to take over more of that work. I think just probably a couple of burnout experiences. I I don't know if you've ever experienced the, uh, the, the burnout cycles where you're like, you just get deep into a burnout and it's like, how am I ever gonna get out of this? Then somehow you find a way. But I think a couple of burnout sessions, I was like, hey. I don't wanna be the, the, the, the base on which everything else is built. I'd rather, you know, pull myself out as much as possible, provide value where I can provide value, and then give everyone else an opportunity to shine.
Russel:I'm sure I've brought this up on the show before, um, the idea that the, the formula for change is that your dissatisfaction has to be greater than your resistance to change or the status quo. You had that moment it sounds like, and that force said no more, not enough. I'm gonna recap. I was taking notes as you were kind of explaining this, and I think some really great points that you made is one, starting off, what do you prioritize? If you prioritize money, you're gonna chase money. But if you prioritize a sense of wellbeing in your life and your overall goals, that, that's important. Complete autonomy, ultimately, whether you can start there or not, but giving that to your team. Focus, do the hard thing of figuring out how to hire good people, but then give them the autonomy to be successful and, um, avoid rigidity. Find that balance of philosophy and methodology and approach and process. The pendulum probably shouldn't be too far in either direction. And then last but not least, probably in that vein of when, if it's not taking us in the direction, how can we recognize the burnout in ourselves? Take a step back, take a gap year, take a something, um, so that we can come back with, with fresh eyes, fresh perspective, and change the status quo.
Dylan:Hundred percent. Wow. You just outlined my next book or my first book.
Russel:There we go. It is funny. I really want to be on this notion more, right? Books, I feel like this is the way content is going. We need to normalize books being like 15 pages. To your point, simplicity. There's so many books I read out there that's like, man, the first 20% when they were just really fleshing out their concept. That's so good. And then the next 80% was them feeling like they had to meet, had to meet a, a page threshold.
Dylan:That's funny. It's like, there are some books where, like, from front cover, from like first page to the last page I'm in. I can think of a couple like Deep Work by, you know, Cal Newport's books. I feel like he layers in a lot of nuance over time that, you know, is very valuable. Daniel Pink, I feel like writes books that, um, I can, I can sink my teeth into for a long time. Same with anything really. Coming from, the, Blair Enns and, and, uh, some of the Win Without Pitching people, but there are also a lot of books where, yeah, I completely agree. I get like 20 pages in. I'm like, I get it. I've got it. This is the message, and then it's, it's like 120 pages of filler, right? People feel like if they're gonna charge. X, Y, or Z for a book, um, you know, they need to fill it with a certain amount of stuff, and I think that that's like pricing and philosophies around value. I don't know if you ever read, uh, Pricing Creativity by, uh, Blair Enns, but it's a PDF. It's not very long. It's like a PDF. He charged$60 for it, for, for like a, you know, which, and his, his point was there is a lot of value in this book that is not related to its length. That was a learning lesson for me too. It's like, what, how do we price things? How do we value things? Do clients pay for time or scope, or do they pay for results? Getting back to your comment. I completely agree. I think, uh, you know, there are a lot of books that could be, you know, TLDR could be probably a series of tweets even, but, uh, but yeah.
Russel:My favorite is a book where, honestly, the title really probably tells me about 95%. Do you have a title book that comes to your mind that's like, hey, I got about all the value from the title itself?
Dylan:Yes. Profit First. I don't know if you ever read that by, uh.
Russel:I have, yep.
Dylan:Mike Michalowicz. In the first 30 pages I understood, and it reframed my perspective on profit and, and operating a cash, uh, based business. That was huge for me. I got it in the title, you know, like, like you said, uh, a couple of his other books. No offense to Mike Michalowicz, but um, you know, probably could have been half as long and just as valuable.
Russel:Mine is called The Gap and The Gain. You might need one more sentence to really get it. But, uh, the idea that, um, probably not think this, I always call this like the curse of ambitious people, but that we tend to focus on the gap between where we're at and the goal. We don't focus on the gain. So We might be 90% towards our goal and we've, we just zero in on that 10%, but rather than what the, the getting 90% of the way there, that's pretty darn good.
Dylan:Can you be ambitious and be happy? it's a tough tension. I think people, entrepreneurs and agency owners, uh, you know, running an agency is hard. It's like winning in this game, there's a lot of agencies, the material is complicated. It's always evolving, you know, technology, trends, culture, it's always moving forward. It's a hard game to be in. If you're gonna succeed in it, you, you almost have to be the gap. People who pay attention to the gap, and, and you can be miserable that way. But you can't run a successful business if you're, if you're miserable either. So it's like how do you leverage that attention to the gap? How do you give it some space, but also be satisfied with the work you've done in such a way as to keep you motivated and keep you interested and keep you in the game overall, because if you, if you wake up every day and you're just, you know, pissed about what you're not doing right. It's a real hard reality to to, to trudge through.
Russel:Oh, that's terrible. Honestly, I think to your point, you can't get anywhere if that's where your reality is. Screw any business goals about growth. Make your goal about how to get your mind right, because I think it's gonna make it even worse if you, if you go down a path of trying to grow and you're gonna be more frustrated, get your mind right, uh, I think is so key to this. Man. There's so, so many topics. I want to go down with you,. I think obviously a, a another keystone from our conversation is just, you're well read. You've clearly spent a lot of time learning and educating yourself, which I think is so huge. The hard knocks is already gonna teach everyone a lot, but we have to compound that with so much other learning. I think that is so critical, in, in this hard business as, as you said. Was that natural to you early on? Why has that been important to you? I'll even ask, load the question even further a little bit. I know you've got some cool things where you bring the team along that journey as well. I'd love to just hear about your culture and philosophy around the learning process.
Dylan:To your point about the importance of, of books, I mean, um, I can plot on a chart, you know, the key moments in 118Group's history. I can relate it directly with one or two books, right, that I read that changed my perspective on certain things. I could draw that graph for you, like a, almost like a Candy Land board game where it's like, and then he gets, he reads this book and he takes the ladder shortcut and now he's, you know, further along the journey. It's indisputable to me, the value in that. You read the right books at the right time, uh, and it can completely reframe your entire perspective. Another question around like, has that always been part of me? Yeah. I mean, I've always liked to learn. I've always been a learner. I've always been curious. And I think that that's, like you said, a huge part of it. You learn a lot while doing the work, but if you're not, like you said, supplementing it with other ideas coming from other places, then you're missing out on a huge part of the, the equation. um, I really love it, I, I, I run a book club with my team. Right now we're reading a book called Scrum, um, you know, and there's, it's two factors there. It helps us learn, you know, and evolve. But also for a remote team, like we're completely distributed, we rarely see each other in person. It's a reason to get together, chat about some material, some ideas that isn't just like client work and stuff we're turning around or like, how's the weather, you know, where you are, right? It gives us opportunities to dig into something that connects us a little more. They love it. They look forward to those meetings'cause we, we kind of like sit back, relax, have a cup of coffee or, or if we're doing it late, it's a beer or a glass of wine and we're chatting about, you know, we start, we might start talking about the book and then we veer off to like how a client relationship connects to the book. It's a really good cultural tool. I don't have a whole lot of those in my tool belt. I'd like to have more, uh, but the book club is one of them.
Russel:Man, I love that. If I could go back in an agency, just from hearing you talk about that right now, I would start a book club, hands down. I would do that. That's awesome. And just some, I mean, So many things you share, it just naturally creates a culture of learning, but just all of the conversation that happens in an agency about clients, right? If we can apply that to things we're learning and reading, that's like, I don't know, that's like, that's like super nitro power juice.
Dylan:A hundred percent. It's hard because with, I don't know if you've had this experience, but with a very remote, uh, distributed, I like to call it distributed'cause it's less sad sounding than remote, but with like a distributed team, uh, it's hard for spontaneity. If you're having a meeting, it's like, well, what's the agenda? What are the topics? We have 30 minutes, we gotta run through this, that, or the other thing. It's hard to create space for, uh, for some of that new stuff. Some of that spontaneous discussion or ideas or sharing of concepts or philosophies and so you need to create space for that. At least me personally, I do. If every one of my meetings with my team is like, follow some strict agenda, you know, I'll throw myself out of like, you know, a four story window. Again, it's a tool. It's just a format that, uh, you know, is pretty straightforward. Everybody either has been in a book club or know, pretty much gets what a book club is about. You assign, you talk about, you assign some reading chapters, you get together, you chat about it, you underline some stuff. It solves a couple different problems in a, in a distributed team, you know, kind of style.
Russel:I think it just culturally speaks to, when we go back to hiring, that's what, that's the kind of things that invite the type of people that you're probably gonna want to hire as the people that are interested in that. They're not just showing up for the job as a transaction, but they want to be enriched, not just transactionally in, in their bank accounts, but they want to be enriched in the mind. That's such a good way to, to do that. I guess I'll give myself a little credit. We had a concept we called Lifeblue University, where once a week we would, um, we would have like a lunch and learn session. We'd talk about some businessy type stuff, but we'd also just talk, bring in a guest speaker that talked about, somebody that, actually was an art collector of homeless signs and they just came and talked about that experience. People just loved, loved just getting enriched. I don't know another way to put it.
Dylan:I love that idea also of bringing in like, just, you know, an outsider to come and chat with your team about, what they're interested in or what their field is, or what their industry is or whatever. That's gotta be very interesting. I'd love to at some point pick your brain on that a little bit more.
Russel:Absolutely. Pick away. We will have to wrap up for the day, otherwise we could do it on here, but, uh, we'll we will make that a segment for part two down the road. A couple more questions to round things out. One, I'd just kinda love to hear how you're looking at the future of the business. What are your long-term goals and plans? We'll start there.
Dylan:There's like kind of the, the answer that's a little like woo woo, which is, um, you know, my, my goals for 118Group, um, you know, I'm, my headlights of the car, you know, that's looking at the road right now, it's like the farthest out it's looking is, as long as my, as I'm doing work that is meaningful to me and that is rewarding and like you said, that I'm enriching myself and my team through our experiences and the projects we're working on. Then I'm on the right path. As long as my headlights, I can see that far, you know, far ahead. In terms of the more concrete area, you know, we, um, we just acquired an AI chat bot plugin for WordPress that we're trying to learn. We're trying to learn how to run a, a software agency and not just a service-based agency. Which is a whole different ball game, you know, like developing a software product, um, where we're, you know, like we have smaller customers, smaller one, you know, subscriber bases. Trying to like, continue to learn in that way by injecting some, like, new challenges. That's huge. and Then our goal is to, is to work with, you know, bigger and bigger brands on the nonprofit side, right? I'd rather do three projects a year that are like high ticket value than do 10 smaller projects a year. But to do that, you really have to establish yourself in the industry and, and develop those right relationships. We're just on that journey of putting ourselves in front of bigger nonprofits that value what we do and uh, and then being able to focus our efforts on a handful of clients instead of, you know, servicing 10 to 15 a year, uh, which, you know, fragments your team, fragments your attention. It's harder to do good work when you split it up across, you know, 15 different projects. And we've seen that trend, right? We've started to get work on fewer and fewer projects that have higher and higher value, and we see ourselves doing better and better work. It's a real positive cycle, right? Because then you launch a project, you've done really an ex, excellent job. You've got a, an, um, an, a team member or a, a client that will kind of support you throughout the future. Then you have a portfolio piece. It's all part of that kind of narrowing our vision that I, I'm starting to take to just about everything now.
Russel:Awesome man. Man with a plan. Sounds amazing. Can't wait to hear how that looks like in the future. We might have to have you on for round two to talk about that.
Dylan:Thank you. I'd love to.
Russel:Last big question for you, Dylan. Are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
Dylan:I think they're made. I think entrepreneurs come in many different flavors and styles. There's a lot of different ways to be an entrepreneur. You can be an introverted entrepr, introverted entrepreneur. You can be very out, you know, outgoing. You can be very organized. You can be very disorganized. You can be very charismatic. You can not be very charismatic. I've worked with a lot of businesses. I've seen every different version of an entrepreneur. I think they're made over time rather than born. I don't know. What is your typical take on that?
Russel:Oh man, I, I just always just listen to that question. The type of answer that I've always resonated with is, sure, I think there's some natural characteristics that make someone more willing to just take the kicks in the, between the legs that come with being an entrepreneur and, and being able to brush those off and, and whatever. But I also think there's people that are completely risk averse that they just are way better at preparation, uh, than the other folks. Ultimately, whatever set of characteristics make us natural. I've always just really identified with the, the good ones are made. I kind of say, it doesn't matter whether you're born or made, if we're talking here today, you're probably made because otherwise you'd be doing something else.
Dylan:It's hard to ignore the role like luck and life plays and everything, right? If I had zigged rather than zagged, you know, maybe I would've found myself in a career instead of kind of a, a, you know, running a business, right? I think there's probably a lot of entrepreneurs who are in some larger corporation who are, who treat their roles in an entrepreneurial way, but they're not technically, you know, running their own business, but they're running their own team. It's hard to, to slice and dice that. But, um, I think luck and, and just the, the, the kind of, the, the, the waves of life play a huge role in that as well.
Russel:Absolutely. Great thought there. I have the craziest zig and zag story I think you can have from a business perspective, but I'll have to share that another day. If you wanna know more about 118Group, where can they go?
Dylan:The best place to go is our website, 118Group.com. If you wanna follow me, it's just, it's the two first name guy. Dylan Steven, D-Y-L-A-N-S-T-E-V-E-N on LinkedIn. I'm typically trying to share some of my, you know, some of the work we do and I'm always looking for, uh, for new inspiration on there. Those would be the two best places to find me.
Russel:Another simple way to remember you, the two first name guy. Great moniker. Wonderful conversation today, Dylan. I mean, Just so many great insights. We unlocked all these new thoughts on my end about the relationship of parenting and running a business and all the similarities there, and just about the importance and the idea of simplicity, how to build a lifestyle business. If you didn't take something away from, for the folks at home today, uh, re-listen because there were a lot of great nuggets. All in all wanna say, just thank you so much for taking the time to share that with us, Dylan.
Dylan:Thank you Russel. You've been, uh, a wonderful host
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Dylan:I think you asked, asked about like, you know, when were these moments where you just, you made bigger decisions, like what were the, the focal points or like, can you map any focal points that kind of changed your perspective along your career? When I found myself, uh, getting stuck in meetings with, a psychic medium who was looking for my work, um, who was charging more than I was, um, you know, was charging 250 bucks an hour, I think I realized I need to, I need that, that was a pause in a, in a moment of self-reflection for me. When I was getting out, charged by a psychic medium, I realized I need to, to make some changes.
Russel:That could be a real wake up call.
Dylan:It was a wake up call. I was like, wow, okay. And also that taught me about the, taught me a lot about the, uh, the perception of value. How important that is, uh, in terms of how, how people spend their money and what they spend their money on and how much they'll spend. That was an interesting learning moment for me.
Russel:Wow. Now my real question was, did you use their services in the process somewhere?
Dylan:I can't afford their services. That's the thing.
Russel:The trade wouldn't work out at that point in time.