The D2Z Podcast
Gen Z entrepreneur and DTC agency leader Brandon Amoroso talks with some of the best in the marketing world. Brandon and guests reveal their top business-growth strategies for anyone in the online space–whether you are a brick-and-mortar business looking to scale or an established online business trying to grow. Consumer marketing is under constant and dramatic change, so Brandon aims to tackle new problems with a fresh Gen Z mindset. The D2Z Podcast delivers insights, strategies, and tactics that you can use and aims to shift how you think about business and your relationships with your teams, partners, and customers.
The D2Z Podcast
Building a Resilient Business Steeped in Culture - 143
In this episode of The D2Z Podcast, Brandon Amoroso speaks with Mack Garrison, co-founder of Dash Studio, about the importance of a Gen Z mindset in business growth. They discuss Mack's entrepreneurial journey, the significance of company culture, maintaining authenticity in a remote work environment, and the impact of AI on creative industries. The conversation also touches on generational differences in content consumption and the challenges of managing client relationships in creative work.
Here's What You'll Learn:
❗Mack Garrison emphasizes the importance of company culture in creative industries.
❗Authenticity is crucial for building a successful team and brand.
❗Feedback from team members must be acted upon to foster a positive work environment.
❗AI is changing the landscape of creative work, but human storytelling remains essential.
❗Generational differences affect how content is consumed and created.
❗Creating opportunities for team connection is vital in a remote work setting.
❗Proactive measures in HR can prevent burnout and improve team morale.
❗A structured creative process can help manage client expectations effectively.
❗The future of creative storytelling relies on adaptability and understanding diverse audiences.
❗Community and shared experiences are key to successful creative collaborations.
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to the Podcasting Journey
08:40 Transitioning from Agency to Podcasting
12:44 The Power of Guest-Centric Podcasting
21:35 Identifying the Right Businesses for Podcasting
Mack Garrison:
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mackgarrison/
Dash Studio - https://www.dashstudio.net/
Brandon Amoroso:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonamoroso/
Web - https://brandonamoroso.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bamoroso11/
X - https://twitter.com/AmorosoBrandon
Scalis.ai - https://scalis.ai/
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to D2Z, a podcast about using the Gen Z mindset to grow your business. I'm Gen Z entrepreneur Brandon Amoroso, former founder of Electric and now the co-founder of Scaleless, and today I'm talking with Matt Garrison, who's the co-founder and director of content at Dash Studio, which is a high-end animation and motion design studio built around making incredible content.
Speaker 2:Thanks for coming on the show. Hey, thanks so much for having me, Brandon. This is going to be fun. Looking forward to the conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so before we dive into things, can you give all the listeners just a quick TLDR on your background and entrepreneurial journey?
Speaker 2:Ah, absolutely so. I went to NC State University, coincidentally rocking my wolf pack here today on my sweatshirt but graduated college of Design, found the love for motion graphics. Didn't even know that was a thing when I was first coming out of school and that led me to working in-house at an agency for a number of years. And there's two things that really struck me at this agency. One was how kind and welcoming everyone was in the community. School can be challenging. It's competitive, and to come into a space where everyone's like, hey, let me show you some tricks, let me show you a way to help yourself in some of these things, that was a very warm welcome that I don't take for granted.
Speaker 2:The other thing I saw that, unfortunately, is the nefarious side of agency and creative work. For young creatives coming into the marketplace. It's like, hey, here's some pizza and beer, go work all night and get this stuff done. And it really ate me up and truthfully, brandon, it put me in a bad place. I had burnout and I was struggling with. Did I really want to be in this field? And that's ultimately when I decided to make a change myself and that there's a better way to do this and that. Great work and wonderful people makes the best type of content, and that's what led us to starting Dash Studio back in 2015. With this belief in the power of creativity and community, I want to bring together the most creative teams I can with clients who want to work in an intimate relationship with those creative teams to make the best work, and we're lucky to have been doing that now for 10 years, coming up this October and excited for what the next 10 or the future holds after that.
Speaker 2:What are some of the things that you've encountered along your journey that you did not expect that were sort of gotchas oh, that's interesting. Like just over the last 10 years, what are some like business takeaways to like that.
Speaker 1:Look back on Again, you would avoid maybe doing you know.
Speaker 2:Oh, 100%, it's actually. I'm actually speaking about this at South by Southwest this year, but it's about the importance of culture and I think even with the best intentions, folks who start a company to unite teams and bring them together can easily let that fall by the wayside if they're not prioritizing HR. So what I mean by that from any creatives or agency owners out there is you got to make space for one-on-ones, you got to check on how people are doing on that burnout. You have to give them growth opportunities and what their career paths look like.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of times young entrepreneurs get caught up in this idea of just the company. It's all of us, it's together, and I think there's a word people have tossed around family. That kind of comes across toxic in the creative space. It's a community and that's great. We have a good community. But you have to really be keen on where people are, how they're doing and where they're progressing. So I think if I would do it over, I would put more emphasis on that a little bit sooner, and I think we operated too far into that startup mentality as we were scaling and just really needed to give some of the structure that goes along with growth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's. I've definitely seen. You know the pizza and beer and the whole term family gets around. I know you can get. You can get exposed pretty easily now if you don't actually put your money where your mouth is.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent Authenticity is more important than it's ever been before. You know, building a company around who you are and being authentic to that. You can't just say that you're building good culture and then not invest in it because it's just the right words to sound. Everything has to be a through line. Your authentic HR has to reflect the authentic, creative your operations. It's all in tandem with one another and I think you have to be aligned and at least know what you're building. It doesn't mean that you can't have different modes and methods and what that culture feels like, but as soon as you're not authentic, I think you hit the nail on the head. Brandon, people recognize that name dip.
Speaker 1:How you know. You mentioned authenticity and culture and you guys have obviously grown quite a bit from what I'm assuming is just you at the in the beginning. How do you keep that authenticity and culture as you're bringing in, you know, new team members, especially if I mean, are you, are you?
Speaker 2:remote or hybrid or oh my gosh, that's a great question. So we are. We are remote exclusively now since the pandemic Um, and our team is spread all across the East coast in different States at this point. So we operate in six different States and it was a lot of trial and error, cause I think there's two sides to every coin. On one hand, it's like, oh, we need to create events and opportunities for connection, but then if you're doing it too much, or it feels like the generic Zoom call to like happy hour Zoom call, like no one wants to do that. Right, people want to have their own space and time. So it was really listening to what the team members wanted.
Speaker 2:We do a standup every morning to get a little bit of face time. You know it's only about five or 10 minutes. We run through what we're working on for the day, so everyone's on the same page. But we also integrated some other elements to that. On Mondays, people have the opportunity to share a photo from what they did this weekend, and I know that sounds really cheesy, but you know, if someone did something fun, they want to share about it and talk about it. They have the opportunity. But if they didn't do anything and they don't want to have the eyes on them as they're telling a story or a forced story. They don't have to.
Speaker 2:We started doing Tuesday Inspiration, where we rotate throughout the staff to share something that's meaningful for them. One of our art directors just became a new dad, talked about the creativity of children's books. We have a producer who just is trained to be a yoga teacher, so talked about mindfulness and meditation, these little bits that are important to them. We do recaps on the end of the month to talk about how the company is doing. So there's clarity on all phases of what we do, from HR to operations, sales, creative, all those pieces.
Speaker 2:And then we also run through all the work that we've been doing Because as a growing agency sometimes you're unaware about what your peers are actually working on to highlight them and give them a shout out for the great work they're doing. And then the last thing we just started doing recently was learning lessons, inviting outside professionals to come in for a little 10 to 15 minute presentation on a topic that we feel like would behoove the rest of the staff to learn. So all these things didn't happen overnight. You kind of have to elementally try them, introduce them, see if they're working and if they're not, just, sunset it, but if they are, keep them going. And I think that proactive nature is what can help build that culture, even when you are remote.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you know, start slow and then expand from there, versus trying to do like if you were starting a new business. You wouldn't want to do everything that you just mentioned, because you're probably not going to be able to do all of them consistently, and then it ends up being worse than if you had just not done it to begin with 100%.
Speaker 1:I found that you know the gradual and also trying to get the team members feedback around what you know, because not every team is the same. You know my business was a Shopify plus agency. Everybody was pretty much under 30 and relatively, you know, creative type San Diego, la, san Francisco based. There was a definitely an archetype there, sure, and so certain things they responded to better than you know.
Speaker 1:Current team were like 20 people instead of 50, but it's 20 people who are extraordinarily technical right very like developer focused, and so it's totally different, like there's actually far less like rah, rah, rah, right, but we've been able to break down the barriers a little bit just by trying to be a little bit more like casual and fun with things and trying to poke fun at people, crack some jokes. I'm always making fun of myself, making fun of my co-founder, my brother, and like it helps the team feel a little bit more, you know, at ease, especially when you know there's there's tight deadlines when it comes to software and software, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think it's like you know you kind of alluded to this it has to change as the team changes. You know, when we were four people versus eight, versus 12, it's a different set of systems that work well. And I think one thing that I've learned that's really important is if you ask for a team's feedback and you get feedback, you need to be ready to implement that feedback. I think I don't think there's anything worse than higher ups asking how you feel, or take this survey, or doing these things, and then things feel stagnant, like there's no change. You know, getting feedback, I think, is a great idea, but what's more important is making sure that you enact that feedback or you make moves on it, cause I feel like oftentimes that's not the case. It's just very passive, like how do you feel about this and then nothing happens, we.
Speaker 1:It's just very passive, like how do you feel about this? And then nothing happens. We did a submit three things that you think we should be doing, that we're not doing exercise, oh yeah, okay. And so we got at the end of that business. It was probably like 140 different suggestions, wow yeah, and uh, I didn't do it anonymously because of that exact reason, if and so, basically, we took the 140, we put it all into a slide deck and I went through it over like an hour, hour and a half call and called out like how we were addressing it, how we were thinking about addressing it or how we're like not addressing it. Some of them were really valuable.
Speaker 2:Others were like pay for my college debt? Yeah, Like not that was not going to happen.
Speaker 1:I'm like, well, we actually have better health insurance plans coming out, so like there's a way to you know, spin anything. But, uh, I wanted to know who suggested it, cause I want to be able to work with them on actually implementing it within the organization and have them take ownership of what it is that they think we should be doing, which you know there's. There's. There's definitely a a time and a place for anonymous feedback for other things, but for something like that, I found it to be more valuable to be able to actually get it from the person that was suggesting it.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent and, honestly, we did something similar where we had a mirror board set up and what should we continue doing, what should we stop doing, what do we need to do more of? And that actually resulted in something that we, for lack of a better term, call our total HR scoring system, and so the system itself has a few different definitions based on like what the staff really liked. So some of the things on here are like our reviews that we're having with the staff are timely and the overall action items from our one-on-ones are generally met. You know you're able to have a monthly one-on-one with your manager. Monthly reports highlight company status and project report was provided.
Speaker 2:A few opportunities for digital hangs outside of our morning stand up, and you know we aim to have at least one mental health day a month, and so that's a score of a two. So it's one out three, one, two or three and that gets a score of a two. If we exceed that, maybe do more, go above and beyond it's a three, and if we aren't hitting that marker, it's a one. But it's a way for us to get an aggregate score from all our team members to hold management accountable on are we doing the things that's important to the staff. And that's where it goes back to not losing the importance of having everyone on the same page, because if we just disregard some of these things and we're just exclusively pursuing work or exclusively pursuing growth, you're going to have a team that leaves because they're not happy, and so this ensures that leadership and management are on the same page, and if there is a dip in a score, we at least recognize it right away and can jump on it to make any changes that we need to have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and being proactive about it versus you know, being reactive is extremely important.
Speaker 2:It is. You know what's really funny, brandon is like when I started this I mean my background's creative you know it wasn't much business had to learn down the fly. It definitely was not HR related. And so what's interesting to me is like I feel like there's a stigma with HR that any creative marketer entrepreneur has that are like, oh, that's not really for me. We bring that in when we're a certain size. The reality is like anything you know, creative is problem solving. So we just looked at that and we said, okay, how do we approach HR in a creative way? And that's what I would encourage your listeners to do If they're growing their own agency or growing their own company. What's the right fit for you? What are some systems you think would work well for your team? And just be creative about that. That doesn't have to be a set standard, just like there's no set standard in entrepreneurship. The same goes for HR. There's some best practices, but you should feel empowered to find and create the systems that you need to make your own studio or agency successful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was definitely not a one-size-fits-all approach for that Right, so many different personalities and types working within the org. But as it relates to the actual deliverables inside of the business working within creative obviously a ton has happened in the last even decade day probably, but really over the last few years when it comes to advancements in technology, ai, both from like an internal operations standpoint, but also in terms of actual like work output, all facets of industry. How has that sort of played into? You know, both sides of your business, both the deliverables that you're putting out the clients but also the way that you handle things internally.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, what a great question. I think something that shouldn't be lost on anybody is that AI is having an impact on folks. If it's not directly, it's definitely indirect. For us, most of the clients that we work with tend to be on the marketing side of companies. They're hiring us to create video content for various needs, whether it's highlighting internal marketing endeavors or trying to do sales and launching things on social or pre-roll ads. So AI is not at a place that I believe it's taking animator or videographers jobs yet, but it's empowering them to make tools that move quicker. But what it is doing is it's siphoning resources away from marketing teams that would otherwise be spending that on us. So we've seen a categorical shift in lower budgets in the motion space which I'll call an umbrella term that houses animation, video and interactive that those budgets have gotten a little bit lower and it's required creatives to figure out ways to be more efficient to get that profitability back. So for us, what it's done is created an audit of what we do, how we work and ask ourselves can we work faster in certain areas? That's where we've started playing around with AI when it comes to process pieces. That's when we've looked at some of these new tools and new tech to see if we're able to move a little bit quicker so that we can be more efficient and make more profitability.
Speaker 2:And I think probably the biggest change I've seen is there was a time in my life where there was just one big hero video someone would make and a couple of cutdowns you put up on YouTube and that's that. Here's the reality. We have a generation of baby boomers that are still in the workforce, you've got Gen X and millennials who are decision makers, and you have Gen Z who are now becoming decision makers and owning budgets, right? So that's four generations in the workforce. All four of those generations digest content differently, and so you really have to think about this like a digital content shelf.
Speaker 2:You can't just make a single item that works for everyone. You have to tailor it for the baby boomers that might be doing email or gated content, or the Gen X millennials who are doing Reddit and Google searches and YouTube, or Gen Z, who's doing in-app or influence recommendations. So your content really has to be curated and tailored towards each of these pieces, so you have to have a shelf full of all these assets. So, on one hand, while there's maybe a little bit of fear that budgets are shrinking and there's more people in the space than there's ever been before. There's more of a content need than there's ever been before, and that's what makes me feel empowered about the future for the video space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's a great point that there's so many different generations that are in the workforce right now, and also, I don't even I think they need to like redo the generations, because the time windows are way too wide at this point.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, 100%.
Speaker 1:I'm technically Gen Z, but if I meet what I would classify as real Gen Z, we don't even speak the same language. I mean, it's truly horrifying the difference between me and, I don't know, an 18 year old.
Speaker 1:I think the generations need to be down to like four years or something even though I know even the difference between somebody who's in high school right now and somebody who's like in the sixth grade. You know my family friends, their kids. They are like on totally different planets when it comes to content consumption, the way that they talk, act, things they care about, because they're like real time all the time, getting fed information from so many different sources in a way that has never been happened well, and we're in um, we're in space.
Speaker 2:Now I think we're into a new generation. Any kid born this year is uh generation beta. So we've just entered the new generation old generation has a tough road ahead yeah, I know you can already see how they're going to be made fun of when they're in middle school.
Speaker 1:Yes, the kids are mean. They're mean. Social media makes them even even even more empowered.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. Not to date myself on your show, but I remember going through middle school is tough already, but you know I didn't have any devices or anything like that on me. Now, the social presence and the brand that people are essentially building for themselves at such an early age, it's definitely a mixed bag and that's a whole conversation, I feel like itself.
Speaker 1:That could probably be its own podcast by itself, but I, you know I'm very far away from having children, so I won't have to deal with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got some time before you have to worry about it.
Speaker 1:Exactly, but I think, as it relates to AI, um, obviously it can help a lot. I still think, though, that it's a little bit overhyped on on social media.
Speaker 1:You know you'll see people talk about, you know, the death of b2b sass. You'll see, like the tombstone meme, uh, circa 2026, I'm like I I don't. Do you have you actually worked with the ai tools that you're thinking? You're going to do that because you know, as are going to do that Because you know, as it relates to like creative as an example, I've passed around with them and they're like not that great, maybe a starting point or can help you. But, like you know, we're trying to do some explainer videos for, like, our product feature releases.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:The share on LinkedIn and the thought that we could just use the software for you know, a couple hundred bucks, or maybe even less, to create that and for it to actually look and do what we wanted to.
Speaker 2:That's not a reality, at least not yet right and I think like another thing to remember is like everything is kind of like a pendulum and swings back and forth. I mean there was a time not too long ago where maximalism and really bespoke creative everyone was searching for. You know, I think of like the Terry Crews old spice commercials where, like he's playing like drums, he's connected to all these things. I mean just massive exuberance Right, and now we're in a place where UGC content is on the rise, user generated content. People are whipping stuff up with, like you know, riverside putting things out there, it can happen really quickly. Whipping stuff up with Riverside putting things out there, it can happen really quickly. The reality is it's a novelty at first and then after a bit it becomes the same and people look to differentiate themselves. There'll be a swing back, I think, to more bespoke creative.
Speaker 2:Here's one thing that is through and through Anyone listening to this that's worried about the future. I think you can hang your hat on this and feel confident that if you were a good storyteller and you can help lead people and chaperone them into the ambiguity of the unknown, you're going to be in great place, because that's what clients are coming to us for. They're saying I know I need something. I know it needs to be creative. I don't know what to do. Can you help me? That's really what it comes down to. So be a good storyteller and be able to navigate ambiguity, and you'll have success in the future. Hands down.
Speaker 1:How do you deal with the client? Uh sort of relationship, especially as it relates to uh creative, because we always shied away from creative, because I personally much prefer things that are objective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hard data, you know will run your crm or will completely overhaul you know your your online shopping experience. I can point to conversion rate or I can point to revenue uplift. I can point to numerous stats and use those as very black and white. But anytime we try to dip our toe in creative, I just want to bang my head against the wall because half the time they don't even know what it is that they want in said creative. So how do you, how do you, how do you deal with with that and that like sort of juggling act of a client expectation?
Speaker 2:It is really interesting and, honestly, a good metaphor for it. It's kind of like being cooks in the kitchen at a really great restaurant. It's like well, not even necessarily a really great restaurant. You're cooks in the kitchen and you're dependent on the servers for what they're putting out there. Right, so you can make all this great content. But if it's not run in the right way or advertised right way, or has the paid media behind it, it might not be the best dinner for the customer, right? And so you're correct, it is incredibly subjective, and so our job is to make something that is so subjective as objective as it can be.
Speaker 2:And the way we do that is through a few things. One is data-driven creative. So taking the data where we can get it we don't always have it. Being the cooks in the kitchen, you know we have to use our 10 years of internal data that we have, but trying to get the data on what's performing well and where it's performing well and use that to the best of our ability. And the other piece of it is systemization. You know you can take some subjectivity out of things when you present people with like choices at different stages and trying to direct them on what's next.
Speaker 2:So for us, you know our process breaks down into discovery why are we doing this? Who's it for? What's the purpose of what we're making? Ideation what do we think is the right fit for this project? Then we get into messaging where are we going to say is the voice more thought leadership or is it more casual? Then it's pre-production. It's all the steps to go into producing the video. Production is where we've mapped everything out, now we're running with it, and then final files is where we create all the various cutdowns and toolkits and where it lives. And so, by creating that simple structure, it kind of keeps things in bounds so that, even though there is subjectivity, clients have the ability to weigh in. As we move forward, each step builds on itself. So by the time we get to the end, you know there's less surprises than you might have in the first round.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that makes sense. Less of a. Oh my God, what the hell did you make?
Speaker 2:Yeah right, Nothing's coming out of left field, hopefully.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Um, I really appreciate you hopping on with me and sharing all these insights. Um looking forward to uh to watching your journey and uh to see you guys grow. But before we hop, can you let everybody know who's listening, where they could find you and connect with you online?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, absolutely. I think the area that we're probably most engaged is on Instagram, which would be dash underscore NC, so D-A-S-H underscore NC. We're really active there and you can find our other channels through that entry point. But I will give a shout out to an animation and motion design conference that we throw biennially. That's happening this year June 11th through 13th 2025. It's called the Dash Bash and it's an inclusive motion design conference that's built around this idea of community.
Speaker 2:So the thing that I'm most proud of, brandon, with this is that we've all gone to a conference. We've all seen someone up on stage who's showing off how great their work is and it's like cool, it looks great. I could have seen that on your website. What we really try to curate is folks who have been in the weeds on some really great stories either someone who started a studio and it failed. Why did it fail and what could they learn from it. An immigrant creative story. Someone who came to the US to make a career as a creative and what that process and journey looked like. So a lot of our speakers haven't typically been on stage before, which creates a really good storytelling environment, and on top of that, you get to hang in my hometown of Raleigh, north Carolina, with three to 400 of some of the nation's best motion designers. So if you're a marketer and you need to hire some creatives, it's a great place to be.
Speaker 1:If you're aspiring creative and an agency owner this is a really great spot to learn some details on how to continue to be successful. So that's the Dash Bash you can check it out at wwwdashbashnet. Awesome, that sounds like a great, great time. I might have to check it out. Check it out. I appreciate you coming on For everybody listening. As always, it's Brandon Amoroso. You can find me at brandonamorosocom or scalistai. Thanks for, and we will see you next time. Thanks, Brandon. Awesome, I think.