The Right Amount of Awesome - Punch

Brian Tillman went from writing random product descriptions in a freezing warehouse to building a 50-person agency serving cybersecurity and tech companies. In this episode, he unpacks the shift from selling features to selling outcomes, why he walked away from growing to 100 people, and how “the right amount of awesome” became the standard for everything they do.

Episode Highlights

•  The real difference between selling features vs. selling outcomes
•  How Punch found its niche by following momentum, not forcing a plan 
•  The moment Brian realized bigger wasn’t better 
•  A grounded take on AI: what it actually changes (or doesn’t) 
•  The philosophy of “the right amount of awesome” and how it shapes decisions across the agency

Transcript

Russel 0:02

Welcome to An Agency Story podcast, where owners and experts share the real journey, the early struggles, the breakthrough moments, and everything in between. I'm your host, Russel Dubree, former eight-figure agency owner turned business coach, who sold my agency and now helps agency leaders create their ideal business. Every agency has a story, and this is your front-row seat. This is an Agency Story. Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Brian Tillman with us here today with Punch. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Brian.

Brian 0:39

Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Russel 0:41

Well, can't wait to get started. An amazing conversation today. So kick us off right out of the gate. Tell us what Punch does and who you do it for.

Brian 0:48

Sure. So Punch is a branding, interactive, and creative agency. We work with technology companies to help craft identities, build online presence, and produce the materials they need to go out and be successful. So we're a team of writers, designers, developers, multimedia producers. About 50 people. We started in 2014, myself and my co-founder, and, we have a big skew towards cybersecurity, some defense tech. Basically people who have complicated products who need to communicate them to very informed audiences, in a creative way. So, that's us in a nutshell.

Russel 1:23

I imagine there's no shortage of people that have complicated products that need a lot of help communicating that to their ideal clients.

Brian 1:31

D- for sure. And, and it's funny because, you know, sometimes engineers will want to provide like a very thorough technical description of how the product works and features and functions, and we have to remind- folks it's about the impact. It's what it actually does at the end of the day, like what difference does it make? You know, how is, how does somebody's life changed by what you do versus how does it work?

Russel 1:52

Just because it's an interesting conversation there, I'm gonna go a little off the normal beaten path here, but that idea that you shared of outcomes, not specs or not features, I don't know, was that Was there a time when specs and features sold, do you think, or is it just'cause the world's so much noisier today, we need the promise of an outcome? Where do you think how that has and hasn't evolved, that concept, over time?

Brian 2:15

Interesting. So I think outcomes have always been the most important value that a product can deliver. Like, to understand that I'm actually gonna get a benefit from something. Um, but I think trends over time, one of the most interesting things we've seen is- The transition from product-led growth to brand-led growth, we spent a lot of time... I mean, I, I can't tell you how many product one-pagers we made to talk about features of such and such that gets shared on LinkedIn, and everybody talks about differentiation through features and function. And then over the last few years, we've really seen a shift towards brand-led marketing, where you're creating a feel, you're creating a culture outside of your product, a sort of mindset, and that mindset is usually connected to the outcome that you deliver, whether that in cyber world it's about confidence and assurance and certainty and the ability to go about your business without having to worry. But that brand-led growth lets you become a participant in the field before you even start to have the features conversation, and that I think is really interesting, and it's great for agencies like ours who are brand-led creative agencies versus a performance marketing company that's all about measurement. So it, it gives a lot of freedom to do something really neat.

Russel 3:28

Hmm. That is a very fascinating way to look at it. Now I'm sitting here listening to you say that, and it makes a lot of sense that in this slightly noisier or maybe extremely more noisier world we live in, it's the newer version or the digital age version of establishing trust and connection that, maybe was a little more inherent in, in- Sure company or corporate or selling relationships that A little extra elbow grease on that front these days

Brian 3:54

And it, it's human appeal. It's like a right brain, left brain thing. You know, features and functions are, are a left brain activity, and brand is more right brain. It's more, intuition, feeling, and connection that opens up the door for differentiation through product features and functions. So to look at it like a top of the funnel type of mentality to hook people with something that entertains them, that inspires them, that makes them feel a certain way, and then lead them into, like, how is this different than the other things I'm looking at? We're seeing a lot of that direction these days.

Russel 4:27

Hmm. Interesting. Well, maybe we'll uncover more about that, but let me come back to your story and see how you even acquired all this knowledge that you're sharing here today. Tell us a little bit about young Brian and- how he came up in the world, and we'll get to all this agency stuff.

Brian 4:43

Uh, young Brian. Well, young Brian as a kid was a outdoorsy, rabble-rousing kid and- Was he? and, we lived all across the country as a, a kid in different places and got to see different things. And after, high school, I went to college as a philosophy student, and leaving college as a philosophy student, what jobs does one do? Philosophy for money, not really a thing unless you- unless you're going to be a professor or something. And- You're

Russel 5:11

saying Socrates didn't make a lot of money or Aristotle- It's, it- or whoever those guys

Brian 5:15

the amount of times I say to my team, like,"Just think like Socrates. We have to help people realize that thing that we know we need them to know, but we have to get them to the point where they can realize it themselves." Like, that is actually a direct application to what we do every day. And when I left, I was like,"Okay, well, I can write a good paper. I'm a pretty good writer, so I'll look for copywriter jobs." That seems like a reasonable application of the skills, and so I started doing, product descriptions. I had this, this really interesting, more interesting story than enjoyable at the time, but a, a job when I was in Chicago where we had, a city block-sized warehouse full of the most random items from a carton full of human skeletons to, like, motorcycles and science equipment and beauty supplies and home goods and I was just going and looking at the thing and then writing a description about it, something that probably AI would do very quickly and easily today. The warehouse was, like, not climate controlled- and it was an old, it was an old brewery at some point, so the floors were slanted down to a drain. So my workstation was sitting on a slanted floor, so I had gloves on with no fingers so that I could type on my computer. And if I picked up my feet, I would slide down the floor, towards the drain. But it was the first time that I realized that, like, a writer has the ability to influence something. I mean, sure, it's trivial. It's selling, products, but it was really fun, and we got to bring some personality to the brand. And so, after doing that for a while, I was like,"Well, I'm gonna go work on some important stuff in Washington, DC," and so came and, um, got involved in PR and strategic communications and worked for several years at a firm. And then, we were like,"Man, we really need a creative director, somebody who can, who really gets it for design," and so- You know, this guy came in, and I was like suit guy dressed up and, very serious about the business of what we do. This guy comes in in like a hoodie, and he's unshowered, and sits down, and it was like the movie Step Brothers, like this moment where we just looked at each other like,"What is this guy?" And then we started getting to talk. We didn't hit it off immediately, but like as we started to work together, he was a designer with a development background, and me as a writer. We'd always kind of worked in a vacuum. And we started to think about, well, the medium and the message really are just two parts of the same thing. They're creating a user experience, these two things working together to create an effect in your mind. And so we just started thinking,"Well, what do you wanna do next?" And I was like,"Well, I really wanna start an agency. What do you wanna do?" He's like,"I do too." We kind of figured we could complete the full cycle. And so we left that firm and started Punch in 2014, and kept going after that. So there's definitely some childhood influences- that probably i- it landed this direction, but I think the big turning point was like philosophy school, taking an unfamiliar thing, f- having to learn it very quickly and then communicate it back to people who are very informed. That's the same principle we use every day today.

Russel 8:13

Okay. One, I just love the visual on your first jobs there. So when you were describing this warehouse, kind of no air conditioning, heating elements, I'm thinking hot, right? This is my Texas brain taking over and- Ah no, this is in Chicago, and you're near freezing. So.

Brian 8:26

Chicago summers are sweaty yeah.

Russel 8:28

As someone that has maybe- A less than on outside appearance, lucrative appearing major myself as a history major.

Brian 8:38

Yeah.

Russel 8:38

When you were getting your degree or deciding on that back then, like what was your thought process? What did you think you were gonna eventually do?

Brian 8:45

Well, I thought I was gonna be a rock and roll star, to be honest. I was just like,"This college thing's a joke. I'm just filling up time." I actually went to, I had a, like a full-ride academic scholarship to the state school where I went to high school in Nevada, and, um, as did many kids at that period, if any Nevada listeners of that generation are out there. Yeah, I went to school for a year and was like,"Screw this, I'm gonna be a rock and roll star." So I just, left and played music and traveled around and had, pretty am- amazing experiences. But, um, there was a particular school I'd read about earlier, and it just seemed like a magical place and ended up being one. At St. John's College, which shout out to the Johnnies of the world, um, you basically go on a survey through the great books of the Western tradition. So you start with learning Greek, and you're learning language and math and science and philosophy and this sort of integrated curriculum. Over four years everybody does the same course of study. Everybody reads the same books, and the classes are small, and you interact with what you call tutors, in a very, a direct way. And it was a f- massively formative experience. But, s- there's 86 kids in my class, you know? It's like a small group. You get to know people pretty well. So people who leave from St. John's of my generation became attorneys became teachers, professors, or Souls that went forth to wander. And so I took that latter path, but eventually, through writing and creative, found something really fun and rewarding.

Russel 10:16

Yeah. So. You're exactly where you needed to be or intended to be one way or the other. But what a cool journey. I, I did not know this, rockstar Brian. Okay, that's a- Ah that's a, that's an image there. D-

Brian 10:26

d- yeah, d- don't, don't spend, uh, too much time YouTubing. There, there- may or may not be some, evidence out there, but.

Russel 10:31

Noted. Noted. Not, not typing YouTube right into- my browser right now at all. Well, coming back to, starting the agency. Yeah. Sounds just you had found the right person, a convergence of, a next-level thinking.

Brian 10:45

Mm-hmm.

Russel 10:45

What was the first, I don't know, few months like? What was getting up and running like for you guys?

Brian 10:50

Okay. Yeah, yeah. Here, so, you know, December Well, we started hatching the plan probably October, so 2014, and then December made the deal, and then officially left our previous agency in January. And remember telling my wife, like Sorry, my fiance at the time, who I'd recently proposed to, saying,"Hey, I'm quitting my job. We're gonna start this company. It's gonna be great." And she's like,"Do you know how much a, a wedding costs? Are you nuts? Uh, like right now?" And it was kind of like, well, there's never a right time, but this is the time, so we're, we're gonna go for it. And I probably wouldn't have been able to pay for my wedding had we not have started. And so that... And w- brief story about that in a second. But, the first couple months we had a few small projects, through people in our networks. And this is probably a message for anybody who has been in a similar position of being, management at an agency and then going off to start one's own company. We were very intentional about trying to set that team up for success and not taking clients. There was NDAs and stuff, and we were very strict about honoring that, but also ethically, like, we're gonna do our own thing, and we wanna make sure they're set up for success, and that we're starting our own practice from our own identity and our own path forward. So, we had a few small clients to start, and then in March of, that year, we had our first real big company that was a cybersecurity company that, the CMO had worked with my co-founder when he was a freelancer many years before, and reconnected when she saw that we had launched Punch. And she totally called us out. She's like,"It's just you guys, right? There's nobody else." We had friends on the website to beef up our

Russel 12:30

team. Oh, yeah. Your we was quite large, uh-

Brian 12:33

Yeah, yeah. And so- you know, I put on my fanciest, uh, you know, like, kid suit to go- Oh, yes and, like, go and have this meeting, you know?

Russel 12:40

Yes.

Brian 12:40

And, she's like,"It's just you guys. What happens if one of you gets hit by a bus?" And we're just like,"Well, we're just gonna cross the street carefully and..." You know? So that- Wear all the

Russel 12:48

safety gear.

Brian 12:50

Yes. So that, that was a, a huge initiative for us, and it really was a formative time because it opened up a ton of doors in that industry and in cybersecurity, and also, uh, made connections with people that would last continuously in many different interesting ways. But the, the wedding story is there's a big cybersecurity conference called Black Hat that happens every summer. My wedding happened to be on August 1st, which was the day that the conference begins, and we had to get this website launched before the conference would start. And so I was, in field enjoying this moment, and my co-founder was off in the bushes working with the client to make sure that we could get the website up before the conference. And unbeknownst to me until the, till I found out the next day, but that's the kind of stuff that, it's gotta... Things can't not happen- No when it comes to deadlines like that, and, you're beyond accountable, so.

Russel 13:43

Yeah. I think we launched one of our first ever websites we... I think it was our first actual official launch was New Year's Eve, yeah. So I know that feeling all, all too well. Yeah, yeah.

Brian 13:52

You gotta- you gotta make it happen,

Russel 13:54

yeah. Yep, yep. So it sounds like you, you- Kind of landed in your positioning pretty early on in this, or am I hearing differently?

Brian 14:03

Well, as far as positioning goes, or when you think about, like, audience, um, in the early days, w-we put up on our website every possible thing we knew how to do, and the goal was, let's widen the net and see what sticks. Yeah. Like, I could probably log into Google Ads and conjure up a pay-per-click campaign. I don't really know how to do it, but yeah, I can probably do that, sure. And then, um, we opened the doors to all audiences, B2B, B2C, you know. Our... Actually our B2G, business to government, people who are government contractors practice continues to thrive and started very early because it's a very specific type of business. But, over time, Like in those early days, we had... We were doing a bunch of like medical technology related work, and then the cyber stuff came on, and it just happened that the medical stuff went away, and the cyber stuff took off. It wasn't a passion driven decision. It was opportunistic. But through that, we really learned a lot about it and met really interesting people, solving really interesting problems, and it became, a great interest over time just through exposure and learning. Yeah. So as far as our positioning, it was a matter of try everything, find what works, and then really hone it. And so today we don't really take work from, like, a retail shop on Main Street or something. That's probably not a fit for us, and we could advise and help, but, like, we've got a really good model for a certain type of company, and there's a lot of them, and we hope to help them all.

Russel 15:33

Well, for the longest time, I asked myself this question, and I think the answer formed itself over time of could a company start out right out of the gate and be super positioned and- Yeah you know exactly who they wanna serve and how they wanna serve them? And the answer I really have come to is, no, you can't. I mean, unless you're just really- Yeah parlaying that from a previous experience- Oh that you've gotta go through this discovery process, you gotta just, Yeah part luck and part, you know, just what naturally fits your own skill sets and desires and passions and, and- Yeah just embracing that process really seems to be what works best.

Brian 16:09

Well, I, I think that's, that's really accurate, and we see that a lot with,, especially... So w- we're early stage founder-led, VC-funded cybersecurity companies or technology company, startups. A lot of those, type of businesses are driven by the founder's own identity and knowledge and expertise, and so there's a lot of human person that's coming through in branding and messaging and positioning. Mm-hmm. But at the same time, there has to be alignment with the audience. And sometimes that's misaligned at the beginning, and you don't know yet until you're like actually in it and you're getting people to review the product and seeing what features you might have thought you needed might be different one than what the actual buyer requires or, or your preferences might be different than what makes the buyer tick. And so you gotta be able to be open-minded about that and ready to make a change. So at the end of the day, you gotta sell your offering, not promote... Like your vision has to be malleable to what the market needs.

Russel 17:06

Yeah. Well, I, I sit here and think, our listening ears have to be pretty, pretty- Yeah tuned in so that we don't try to force our own way into it, but that we hear what, I feel like exactly what you're saying, the, um, what our potential ideal customer is saying what they need and being willing to adapt to that, even if it doesn't necessarily 100% align with what we were doing before or something like that. Yeah.

Brian 17:30

What you might have

Russel 17:30

thought. Yeah. Hmm.

Brian 17:31

Yeah.

Russel 17:32

Okay. Well, I mean, as you said today, you know, size-wise and roughly, gosh, I didn't, my math wasn't quite mathing, but now I realize that's 12 years ago, when you started- Yeah, crazy since, you know, to get to the team size you have pretty good growth trajectory and trend. Was there a big leap in there anywhere, or has it just been gradual over the- Yeah last dozen or so years?

Brian 17:51

Uh, well, interesting. So, um, you know, when we started, we're like,"If we get to 20 people, man, we will have made it.""That is the biggest possible thing I can imagine." And, uh, and then, you know, we did, and then we're like,"All right, well, now we gotta figure out how to make this scale even more." And then we kinda got to a point where we're like,"Actually, hold up a minute. Maybe we don't actually wanna grow more than this." Certainly always wanna grow revenue. I mean, of course, it's, we're a business. We wanna, do well. But there's a thing that happens as you start to grow where more people require more structure, and more structure requires more process and more systems and, more management. And management is important, but the ideal agency culture is a group of elite people who are, who are more capable, and no offense to in-house, creatives- no offense, but who are more capable, and than in-house teams because they're able to jump back and forth between a lot of different things and are able to move quickly and make critical decisions effectively. These are people who are experts in their craft but don't necessarily need to be managed to their outcome. They should be turned free to do the best in creative work. So there comes a point where just by volume of humans together, it can become more and more complicated to have that freedom and individual, contribution as you get larger. And so for us, there was the early period maybe 2015 to 2020. In 2019, we did the... It was like going into the fifth year, we just re-upped our lease on our suite office- Uh-oh. and expanded and kicked out walls and bought all new furniture and finishes, and we're like,"We can only be together in the same place." And it delivered in December of 2019, and so for- Ouch January, February, and part of March, we all worked together in this sweet new space. And then we pretty much went remote. So that coincidence happened at the same time that, the world was changing at that point. Everybody had to be online, and the work that we do is for creating experiences online. And so that period of time ended up being a big growth moment for us because not only was everything digital from events through, brands and through product design and everything, but also there was a big influx of capital into the market with a focus on security and technology. And so those factors all came together, and so within a year or two, we had doubled in size to meet demand that was a result of, people were stuck at their computers. There's more projects to do. All of those factors worked together to create a growth period. And then...'23,'24, we're kind of plateauing. Then'25, we, like, really turned the lens inward, and we're like,"All right." And so, you know, I mentioned, um, our, uh, first client, the cybersecurity company where we launched on my wedding day. That CMO, the pieces just aligned to bring her on internally at Punch as our COO for this last year to help us refine processes, set up some systems, and We thought at the beginning of the year,"Let's be a 100-person company, and let's set all this stuff up to get there." And so we did, and she was massively instrumental in helping us solve some things and figure out some things. And then through the process, we discovered,"Well, we're actually like... We might not wanna be a 100-person company."

Russel 21:15

Yeah.

Brian 21:16

We might wanna be the thing that we know we are." And, like, through this reflection and discovery, we're like,"Oh, crap, we actually, like, we actually do know who we are. We actually do know what we do best, and we should focus on cultivating the talent and giving people the resources to do the best stuff that they can." And it was a really important probably... you look at that 2020 period was hugely formative, and then 2025 was another one. That just helped us, reflect and reset. And then the other, of course, elephant in everybody's room is the influx of AI and new tools into what we do that happen at the same time as that reflection, and it's just a wild new world for us today than it was even a year ago.

Russel 21:56

Isn't that the truth? Yeah, man okay, so a couple thoughts that might be worth zeroing in on there is, I think what you said, like certain scales of size require just a com- a different structure, a different outlook, um- Mm-hmm different inlook even, um, in the business. What was the first inflection point where you said,"This, the structure we have had before will not be the structure we can continue with," or where it all started to break?

Brian 22:26

That was a matter of volume, I think around 2019 or 2020. Um, and we had always operated with, like, a single project manager and a, ton of designers and a ton... And then, it more business came in and stuff, and we're- that just became untenable for one person to do all that stuff. And at that moment we're like,"All right, let's take the eight-person team model and just replicate that over and over. So let's look at how we can hire," and we called it, like, the squad model. That's how we can- Mm-hmm hire in squads so that there's the different functional expertise, uh, working together as a team. Now, at Punch, like, yes, there is a lead designer on a project or a lead writer or something, but a lot of people are gonna contribute. But we needed to operate in a more structured model, so that was probably the first time that we did that. And then again with this last year's change, we turned our model to what we call strategy led, so versus, just exclusively project manager led, which changed the structure and how we respond to things and that alongside with enhancing our project management systems and stuff, was a time of change. But, it was really that realization that, like,"Oh, crap, we can't handle this now. We gotta scale, and when we scale, it's gotta be as groups to be able to meet the demand and replicate the way we did it in smaller sense."

Russel 23:49

Yeah. We ended up in that same token of when it started to break down a little bit of moving to the squad pod model, a multifaceted skill sets coming together to work on work. Mm-hmm. And big fan of the, just the decentralized construct, in any growth model for a business, specifically an agency. So- Yeah and certainly seen a lot of folks have success with that. Something else that caught my brain or my attention that sounded interesting there is when you said that you're, this kind of the last iteration that you'd gone through, and you were setting yourself up for, doubling even from where you are.

Brian 24:23

Yeah.

Russel 24:23

And, and you did all the work to set that up, and then decided you didn't. It makes me think of the analogy that someone shared with me one time of, look, if you wanna lift 100 pounds easily, you don't see how many times you can lift 100 pounds. You learn to lift 200 pounds easy, and then that makes the 100 pounds even easier. you, you set everything up to be 100, and then found out that already works really well to be at 50 and,

Brian 24:47

Yeah

Russel 24:48

why make that leap then at that point?

Brian 24:50

Yeah, I mean, One Of the things that I enjoy most about the work that we do is we get to work on a variety of things and get to become dangerously knowledgeable about a lot of different things, and that's from the external, client-facing perspective. And internally, we get to work directly with a lot of really exceptionally talented people. And I was finding, like, there were, hiring decisions that I wasn't even aware of, and people that were just, like, not... I mean, and that's unfortunate, and, my fault in a lot of ways for not doing outreach and stuff. But, like, it's fun to be able to have a, a team of folks and you work with, and you actually care about their success, and they care about yours together, and that gets more difficult as you grow larger. Um, this is also a challenge for the remote team. You know, we're, at this point, we're all fully remote. I mean, we have a, a headquarters, but, the team's spread out, and it's more difficult to go to bat for the person that you've never met than it is for the person who's sitting next to you, you know? And so we've always had to work on ways to bring folks together across distance through some kind of shared feeling that what they're doing is important, and that they're recognized for that.

Russel 26:00

Yeah. In that token, are you doing... whether it's once or maybe a little more often in the year, bringing everyone together, or are you just truly managing this 100% remote?

Brian 26:10

No, we definitely get together at least once a year, um, and we'll have everybody... So we're based in the Washington, DC area. We'll have folks come in, and we'll do some fun activities and stuff. And we have, a team in Peru also, and so I, I wanna say this on record, but we're hatching plans to us all do the holiday party this year down there, which would be- Oh pretty, pretty neat. Um, don't quote me, Punch team, uh- but we might. At every notes. We've been talking about it for a while, and, and it was one of the most fantastic things was when we finally got to m- Our CTO, from Peru, l- lives there, and he met My co-founder Joe serendipitously in the very early days of Punch and has since, built out an ex- exceptional team, and we all operate on US East Coast time zone. We're all on Slack. It's as if there are no borders or- Mm-hmm barriers. Um, and when we all got to meet, when he came up for the first time, it was just really magical to the person you see every day, across thousands of miles to actually get together and hang out and have dinner. Yeah. It's just a, it was really fantastic. So, um- Yeah we do try to get together when we can. And then we've also, because we're remote and, and the team's distributed, we've, tried to do regional hiring where we can so that, there's a cluster of people in North Carolina, for example- Mm and a cluster of people in Florida who a- at their discretion might wanna get together for lunch one day or something, you know? Like it, they're not going into the office at the same time in the same way, but there is still the chance for at least some proximity, which I think is, is important.

Russel 27:36

That's an interesting take. But I don't Think I've quite come across that regional hiring approach for a remote company, but, sounds like a really cool concept.

Brian 27:45

Yeah. Yeah. Who knows, maybe there's a day where we do an office again. There was so much that was fun about that, but brain, computer, internet is really what we need, and that can be done anywhere, as long as those three components are at their peak, it can be really good. But you guys, w- w- you were in Texas then. Was it an in- in-house team all the time or?

Russel 28:05

Yep, in-house and then same construct. Had... We got a year in our kind of big luxury space that we spent all the now- Yeah feels like an, an insane amount of money on given- Yeah where the world's at today. But, so we got a year in that space, and then everything changed, and now that is no more. I know the exact feeling there. And I was probably getting close to the point where I was transitioning away, so this world that you're living in was new to me from running an agency, quite honestly.

Brian 28:33

Yeah, yeah. Because we, we did have to keep the office for, there was, you know, five years on the lease, and we would use it f- we, we would come in periodically and stuff. I lived close by, and so during that time- Have a safe, quiet place to bring the kids that wasn't the house. So there was, Pictionary on the whiteboards, and all that stuff was... So, so there were some fun memories that were probably unexpected, but it still got some use.

Russel 28:57

We had to make do and, yeah, same approach. I think we had one guy that pretty much just consistently went in the office, and so we, we said this one guy had basically a 10,000 square foot balcony view office.'Cause he was the, the only one that used it, I'm sure it was- Yeah uh, he, he shoulda had his own podcast of what it was like to be there.

Brian 29:14

Seriously. There'd be a lot of echoes in that room.

Russel 29:17

Yes. Uh, absolutely. Well, there's two other topics I wanna make sure we get to, and, and the first one you basically already dropped is, the hot topic of the day is all things AI. What's it going to do? Mm. How's it affecting agencies? How are we leveraging, not leveraging it? All the questions. How is Punch approaching this, and what does that look like in your guys' world?

Brian 29:38

So it is, at this point, integral to our world, and I'd like to make a brief statement before saying how we do it and what we do. But I, sometimes I get these questions about ethics, the ethics of using AI or the ethical questions around this, and I just think that is the wrong perspective. I don't think this is an ethical, issue. I don't think there is a... It just is, the way, in the way that using Photoshop is not an ethical issue. We as creatives are presented with tools that help us realize the vision that's in our mind. And those tools have always been on a progression from like Quark and Microsoft Paint and stuff to, Photoshop and the Adobe Suite and the brief sort of, the turn into Sketch period for a while, and then XD, and then, uh, Figma has been, a huge asset. And now we have tools that can allow us to prompt our vision to life. We always look for a balance of talent and technique, especially with designers, so talent and technique. And so high talent, high technique has always been the most desirable. High talent and low technique is more desirable than high technique, low talent. And so today, technique is democratized. Everybody in the universe can have access to things that require technique at a much lower point of entry. And talent, and that gap between technique and talent is so much higher now, the people with talent can do so much more, so much faster, so much more capably in an interesting way because they have that intangible quality. So, I once had this, this client say like, he was asking about why our video production was good, and he's like,"How do you guys do it?" And we're like,"Well, you know," we're kind of talking about the process, and he's like,"I get it. I'll buy a camera. I'll buy a camera, and I will be able to do exactly what you guys do." And- we're like,"Yeah."

Russel 31:33

Yeah.

Brian 31:34

Go for it." Um, and I think that analogy works with the use of AI. It's not that getting the tool is gonna give you the outcome. Like, you're not gonna get a camera and all of a sudden make a cinematic masterpiece. You have to have vision and narrative and storytelling and use of light and the right locations and all these complicated things. The same is true for AI. It's just a tool, and it's the next evolution of a tool on the progression of the tools of our trade. That said, we're doing cool stuff today that wouldn't otherwise have been possible. And having that fluency, it's not just, you know, go prompt something to life. It's a matter of taking the prompt, refining it, taking the output, bringing it somewhere else, refining it further, modifying, dropping it into Vectorize in Adobe, pulling it back out, making it awesome bus art or something, you know? There's, um, there's some pretty neat things. Well, I don't want to give too much away, but the way that websites are created is gonna change permanently. The idea that WordPress has solved for, which is create a website that non-technical people can use and manage. That principle, can now be handled with a prompt instead of opening up the back end of the site, going and find the text box you want, open the text box, change the text, click update twice. If you don't click update twice, doesn't update on the live site. So all that goes away, and not only can you make changes, you can also implement vision. And so the ability to create websites in that manner is really exciting, and that's what we're working on now, and we will see a whole lot more of going forward.

Russel 33:12

Well, I, I love that, just the insight. There's a billion things you can do and not do with AI right now, and, but I think it's more interesting, the conversation, how you started the approach, the, I guess, ethical side. I don't know. It depends on how you think about it ultimately, and if you think about it as a tool, we've had no shortage of tools invented in changing the paradigm of how we go about this over the last 20 years. but i'm sitting here thinking, I'm wondering, like, agencies and marketing and Digital technologies had this massive shift over the past 10, 20 years. We're just constantly living in this world of innovation and change, and how much maybe AI is scaring the rest of the world that hasn't been on the forefront of all the change in technology, and is that where more of the fear is coming from? But agencies are navigating, reacting to that, that fear or concern or in some cases overplaying the democratization of, because I have a camera, I can make great photos. Well, no- Yeah you still can't.

Brian 34:10

Yeah, I think looking at it as a tool to bring to life the vision in one's mind is the right way to look at it. It's not a replacement for human ingenuity. In fact, it's an aggregator of human ingenuity. Mm-hmm. Like all LLMs are doing is taking all the available information, fusing it together, and making a recommendation from it. And that is dependent on humans having created, and the output is dependent on humans having asked for an answer. So it's not a replacement. We produced yesterday a Really cool LED screen presentation for a client who's exhibiting at a AI conference in Washington, DC, and one of their products is a, a software that allows humanoid robots to communicate, to read the brainwaves of their soldier handlers. So the world of AI that we use is about creativity. The world of AI-

Russel 35:08

Yeah

Brian 35:08

it, it expands much farther beyond that, you know? And so, like, I think the idea of people being replaced by AI is not accurate, at least for us. Like, we are enabling people to do more. It's not taking our jobs, it's enabling our jobs to be even more effective. Now, will people hire us to do the mundane stuff that we probably used to do? No. They're gonna do it themselves. They're gonna prompt it up, you know? Mm-hmm. And so what we have to do is figure out how can we create something super interesting and relevant that they can't do themselves at a quality level that they can't do themselves, you know?

Russel 35:42

Yeah. Which comes back to, I think, just the origin of our conversation, the outcome's not the, not the means,

Brian 35:47

that's exactly it. At the end of the day, technology companies need to sell their product. Yep. And so they need their audience to feel the need for it, they need them to see why it's different and better, and they need a good way to get in touch so they can make that deal.

Russel 36:01

And my take is, right, and it seems like you might fall in this camp as well, is look, as long as the end product is still for humans, we're good. And when the- Ah when the end product becomes for robots, okay, maybe we've got a, a more worrisome shift on our hands. But, uh- Yeah, like

Brian 36:15

the, the, the Maltbooks of the world, where it's the social media for AI to meet other AI- to become friends and develop relationships.

Russel 36:25

Yeah, exactly. Good, a great way to put it. Then Skynet is born. But one other thing I just, I think is just a really cool concept and philosophy that I, I have to make sure we get to is what you had shared with me is have a pretty cool just overarching philosophy. But, speak to that a little bit and how that manifests itself in your business.

Brian 36:45

Yeah. I think we're referring to the idea of the right amount of awesome. So this has been a principle that we've just kinda, you know, operated by from the beginning, and- There can be excellence at many levels. There can be excellence that goes above and beyond what's needed. There can be excellence that is of minute detail as a component of what's needed. Um, but what makes the most difference for people, what makes the most difference for our clients, what makes our operations the most efficient is doing the right amount of awesome. So doing exactly what is needed that is, delivers value that is unexpected, is still above and beyond, um, but not to the point of excess, to the point of creating extra work on the client or creating extra work on ourselves. It's about doing the right amount of awesome to achieve the goal that the client needs, make sure that it's something unique and special and meaningful, but also, not overdone. I can remember a conversation with a, a designer, v- super talented designer when we were in office, and this person would just continue to rethink, what she was working on, continue to rethink it and rethink it and rethink it. And at some point we're like,"You just gotta know when it's done. And when it's done, it's gonna be good, and you're gonna feel it, and that is the right amount of awesome." You can continue to reiterate, but that's not productive. At the end of the day, we gotta generate a product that's gonna be meaningful for folks. And so, it's how many words you use in an email. It's how clearly you message something in Slack to your peer, and it's the amount of effort you put into a single social image or a entire brand aesthetic campaign. So it's about the right thing at the right time.

Russel 38:26

Beautiful. Well, I love a good loaded- phrase or value like that, that it can be- Yeah so, weaved into the fabric of everything you do as a business. I thought that was really cool to hear. Thank you for sharing that. And I know we could've continued the AI conversation for 76 more hours and not probably had a shortage of, topics within that, but, as all good things come to an end, one last big question for you, Brian. Are entrepreneurs born or are they made?

Brian 38:53

Hmm. Um, uh, made. Um, I mean, we're all born with inherent characteristics, and inherent abilities and things that give us talent, but you have to choose that you're willing to do the hard stuff. You have to choose that you're willing to do what others won't. I was just talking with a, a founder yesterday, uh, who had to go set up a trade show because his team was off working on something else. You gotta do the stuff other people don't wanna do. You gotta be a generalist, and you have to be comfortable with that. I had this, philosophy of like, there is no such thing as work-life balance, there is only life, and you choose how to spend it. And the entrepreneur, chooses To never give up and to learn to manage the aspects around that so that they can be successful. You're born with ability, and you're habituated to have drive, and circumstances force you to make hard decisions. And some people choose this path. And, uh- Good for them. It's, it can be pretty fun.

Russel 40:01

Yep. Yep. I love that. Wonderful answer. Wonderful answer. Awesome. If people want to know more about Punch, where can they go?

Brian 40:09

Addsomepunch.com. So our website is addsomepunch.com. Find it on the World Wide Web. You can, I mean, I, welcome to email me at brian@punchteam.com and connect on LinkedIn. But addsomepunch.com is where you'll find out more. You'll see what we do, meet the team, see some example work. And, if you're in Washington DC area, uh, or in Maryland, where I live, and you'd like to get some coffee sometime, just, let me know.

Russel 40:37

Sweet. Sweet. Well, I will have to take you up on that myself, next time I'm in the area. Wonderful. Thank you again, Brian, for- Sure taking the time out of your schedule to share so many wonderful things about, some pretty cool views on AI to highlighting just the different stages that you have to go through on this growth journey, and then last but not least, be the right amount of awesome. What a great concept to take away, and really appreciate you taking the time to share that with us.

Brian 41:03

Well, thanks for having me, Russel. I really appreciate it. Good to talk with you, and hope to talk again soon sometime.

Russel 41:08

Likewise. Likewise.

Brian 41:10

Thank you for listening to An Agency Story

Russel 41:12

podcast, where every story helps you write your own. Subscribe, share and join us again for more real stories, lessons learned, and breakthroughs ahead. What's next? You'll want to visit anagencystory.com/podcast and follow us on Instagram@anagencystory for the latest updates.

Brian 41:32

I'll show you this real quick.

Russel 41:34

Yep.

Brian 41:35

This is a poster on the wall we had for our 10-year, I don't know if you can see it on video. The team went around, and each person drew a memory of something that happened, whether it was in the office or related to a project. And so things like one time a snake came through my window while I was on a client call, and the guy on the other side was like,"Well, just, uh, let me see you catch it." So I turned it around and went to work. Oh my gosh. To like, my chair used to make this noise, and when my chair would pop up, everybody would be like,"Uh-oh." Something's gonna happen. We had a, a funny story with the kids and some banana bread once. I wrote a jingle called Proofing Starts With Me to remind everybody to proof their work. Joe, my co-founder hates cats, and, we refer to him as cool guy. We, yeah. There's ch- I mean, like, the, the fun thing about this is that there's so much shared experience with everybody that we have these moments where we can joke to each other, and, everybody knows what the reference is. Yeah. But so anyways, this was a nice memory, I thought.

Russel 42:33

That is really cool. And, and many stories baked into that in of itself, but send me a picture of that. I will be sure, and the folks listening, I will put that up on the podcast- Yeah post, when we launch this, and you can go check out- Yeah and relish in some of Brian's memories as well.