Little Talks
Sam Littlefield and Steve Roop chat agency and client happenings as well as cover digital marketing trends and news every Wednesday, live from Littlefield Studios in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Little Talks
WTF is LFG?
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Most companies have values. The bigger question is whether anyone can actually remember them.
This week on Little Talks, Sam and Roop talk about how LFG became a big part of Littlefield culture and why, six years later, it’s still something we use every day.
LFG came out of a pretty difficult time for the agency in 2020. As we rethought where Littlefield was headed, we also wanted values that actually sounded and felt like us. We landed on Littlefield Team First, Freaking Go to the Edge, and Gotta Adapt or Die.
A little dramatic? Maybe. David Littlefield certainly had some questions when he first saw the stickers. But nobody forgets it.
More importantly, we actually use it. LFG shows up in staff meetings, emails, client conversations, and even on our elevator button.
Because company values shouldn't live in a forgotten PDF. They should show up in how your team works every day.
See you next week for more Little Talks.
— Claudia, Sam, and Roop
Welcome to Little Talks, your weekly dose of marketing news, trends, and insights from Littlefield Agency. Grab your coffee, turn up the volume, and let's get into it.
SPEAKER_03You know, I'm sitting here, I'm telling Rupe that I'm probably gonna do a lot of talking. He like has this massive yawn. Barely responds. It's late morning, too. Good gravy. It's 1120. How many cups of coffee have you had today? I had three. Good. Wow. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, you're a little jittery. Yeah, I need a fourth. On that note, welcome back to another edition of Little Talks with Littlefield Agency. I'm Sam Littlefield with me, is my yawning partner. Roop. It just hit me.
SPEAKER_04I was taking the on slow because I hurt my back and then like exhale part.
SPEAKER_03Roop's got a tweaked middle back.
SPEAKER_04Uh lower level. Tell me your feelings. Lower left flank feels like fire shooting up my uh back when I exhale.
SPEAKER_03Does it get warm? Yes.
SPEAKER_04Oh, geez. Yeah. It's it's a torn or slightly detached muscle from the rib cage, is what they're telling me. Dr. ChatGPT says that's it.
SPEAKER_02Dr. Chat. Dr. Chat. Yeah, that's uh okay, getting better.
SPEAKER_03You know, it is getting better. Your hair flow. If you're not watching the video, watch look look at his look at that. I feel like at this point you're just trying to rub it in, man. Uh well, maybe. We've got uh hey, we've got Claudia back. Claude, it's nice to have you back on the pod. Give yourself something. Yeah. No, that's uh if if you listen to last week's podcast, Brandon had the applause. Actually, I think it was like for you being out or something for like a minute. He was all over the soundboard.
SPEAKER_01I was like, what? Yeah, he was like kind of dogging you to talk to you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, he did. So you just kind of have like a bug virus, like eh, just feeling like eh. Yeah. Kind of meh.
SPEAKER_01Just meh.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But it's not fun though. I do not recommend at August. That was what the problem was. It's like I literally was out for two days. Like just out to the world.
SPEAKER_03Did you eat?
SPEAKER_01Um, soup.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Oh gosh.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was super congested, I had a bad headache.
SPEAKER_03Did you like wake up, like eat a little soup, and just go back to bed?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Damn.
SPEAKER_04That's a winter illness.
SPEAKER_03I was gonna say that.
SPEAKER_01No, I was like, this is the flu.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And that sounds great when it's like, well, it never sounds great, but it sounds great when it's like, yeah, cold and crappy out, but it's a big side went out randomly.
SPEAKER_01I was like, oh my God.
SPEAKER_03The heck's going on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_03We need to sage you or you're good. You're feeling good. Okay, good, good, good, good. Well, it's we missed you last week. Interesting having Brainaback. He really doesn't talk. Thanks for talking on the mic. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01He only speaks in the soundboard.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. He only speaks in the soundboard. That's exactly right. We have a big week here at the agency. We are so elated and happy to have Klope is in the agency in Tulsa. You know, this is um this is an awesome client. We we've been working with Klope since uh we kicked off in the fall, I think about three years ago.
SPEAKER_04Oh, wow, that is.
SPEAKER_03We have uh Adrian and Justin and Tiffany and Donna and Jen are all here. And the interesting uh company dynamic for Clope is uh you've got a few of them uh coming from Pennsylvania, Mountaintop, Pennsylvania, and then you've got a few of them coming from Mason, Ohio. So they all uh flew down yesterday, uh met in Dallas, um cruised on up here to Tulsa, landed middle of the afternoon. And I'll give them credit because uh you didn't come to Mountaintop with this last year. You did a great presentation virtually, is um they have to drive a couple of hours to Philadelphia. So they were up in Adam at 3:30, 4 in the morning yesterday to catch a flight out of Philly to Dallas. You know, that's East Coast time, you know, go going back in time. And then here in Tulson, we had a wonderful dinner at the summit club last night, kind of did a Tapus arrangement on 31, just you know, ordered a ton of dishes, everyone took a couple of bites. And uh now we're now we're uh guns ablazing. We're gonna have an episode here soon about this uh for 2027 planning. So we've got Glope in all day today. Uh we got uh most of the day tomorrow before they fly back to their respective cities. But um, you know, I I think you can echo these sentiments. It is so great to have a client that values the the face-to-face interaction. Yes. I mean, it's as we just alluded to, it's a heck of a trek for them to get to our agency headquarters here in Tulsa. Um and God, they're just good people and they're really smart people, and they're just a delight to be with. So Klope, I'm gonna we're gonna send this to you. I know you're on the the distribution list, but um, you know, Jen and Tiff got to actually see the podcast studio and told them that where the magic happens, the roopster, you know, it gets gets going and super excited. So we just we love having them here in-house. And happy 2027 playing it all who celebrate. It's back to school week. You don't really know that anymore, do you? No, it's not a good one. You're Mr. Empty Nester. Yeah, it's it's my it's my world right now. I'm living in it. It's a good world to be living in, though. I get to. True. Don't have to. I get to. Yeah, you love to. Chase Wilson. Um so for those that are gearing up for 2027, we we will probably go into that here soon. I would imagine in the next week.
SPEAKER_04The problem with it is is everyone that I think we would want to pull in or is involved is in the middle of it.
SPEAKER_03We can the time's kind of BS our way through it. Yeah, it is. I would love to have Chris, yeah, maybe Kelly.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, maybe play the Sam card. You can get them to come in here.
SPEAKER_03Uh is it a Sam thing? Uh they don't listen to me. They don't listen to me. Claudia. They don't listen to Claude. Um we have a a very entertaining topic today. Claude, take it away. She's done it. Okay, yeah. She's got it. Um Roop, would you read the topic and vi just slowly? Read it, read it slowly.
SPEAKER_04Today's the title of today's topic and script is WTF is LFG.
SPEAKER_03L-O-L-G-T-G-B-R-B. Yeah. All the acronyms today. W TF, why the face? Why the face? Why the face? Tell our listeners he told me this yesterday. This is great.
SPEAKER_04Oh, uh yeah. So there was an old uh modern I guess it's old now, modern family episode where the dad, Phil Dumpy, is talking about how cool he is because he knows all the slang the kids are using. He goes, L O L, laugh out loud, WTF, and you know it's on ABC, so you're kind of worried. And he goes, Why the face? So his kids have lied to him about what these things are about, and he thinks he gets it, and it's hilarious. So every time I see WTF, Why the Face?
SPEAKER_03Why the face is LFG? Um Let's Freaking Go, right? LFG. So uh you want to go back in time? I I just want to say if the setup for this, do you know if you know what LFG stands for? Turn over your paper. Uh this is uh by the way, let's freaking go, and we've adapted them and we will get into this story. But Roop, okay.
SPEAKER_04So LFG has a lot of meanings, obviously. There's a special one for Littlefield, but I think uh the thing is anyone that meets Sam or knows Sam for more than three minutes is probably gonna hear him enthusiastically chant the LFG, right? Well, this is the one. Or Tom Brady. Or Tom Brady.
SPEAKER_03Tom Brady's a big LFG guys.
SPEAKER_04And Deadpool last year.
SPEAKER_03And Deadpool.
SPEAKER_04Yes, that's right. So um I thought we would talk about what LFG actually means because we use it a lot. We do. It's it's all around the agency. Uh we use it in emails and in Slack and we have clients at the end of the year. Clients use it, yeah, all over the place. So LFG is quite the same. So what is my my paper's upside down? He always thinks we don't know these things, but this is one of the few um things at the agency we've tried to pass out there as an agency culture that everyone remembers and everyone knows. We talk about it at every staff meeting. LFG. Littlefield team first. Boom. F is freaking go to the edge. And G is gotta adapt or die. I was there when these were born.
SPEAKER_03I am very proud of you. Overjoyed. Um so Rib Rib said, you know, let's freaking go. We've adapted these as you just heard, little field team first, freaking go to the edge, gotta adapt or die. And we have them outside this actual uh podcast studio, it's on it's on the walls. And um, as we talked about traction a couple of weeks ago, uh part of your vision traction organizer is your actual values. Um I actually think we even like threw out F for Claude and she she nailed it last time. So that was awesome. Um I want to take you back to the summer of 2020. And uh at the time we were down to our good gravy core people. I mean, we went from 28 to 14. Um and we were there that summer and we had limited client work and the world is trying to figure its way out. And what we I was like, we need to take a hard look in the mirror. We had cut a department, we were adding a department. Kelly came in and started our media department, Chris started our analytics department. So we were just in all sorts of uh what would you do? Transition. Transition. So I said, Hey, um, I want to go through an exercise where I, as in St. Littlefield, was actually not a part of it. And I said, I want to hear from our core team of 14 people. You know, what do we what do we plant our stake in the ground as an agency? And during that time, uh, it was you and Rocco and Brock did a really nice job of facilitating conversation and kind of you know working through some things. Let's just call it our own internal stakeholder interviews. And we came up with our brand purpose of reimagination. And uh and that was something that we, okay, you know, at the end of the day we're here to reimagine things for our clients. We're not in we're not inventing things. I don't know, but now we are with Cloud.
SPEAKER_04Sometimes, yeah.
SPEAKER_03AI Cloud. Um so that's kind of fun. But hey, at the end of the day, we're reimagining marketing strategies, we're reimagining the way you go to market on things, whatever it may be, and we're we are trying to help you sell more stuff, Mr. and Mrs. Client. So we went through that, and then as part of that, we said, hey, um, we uh I got on traction about a year and a half later.
SPEAKER_04Which we did a podcast on a couple episodes ago. Yep. Yeah, check it out.
SPEAKER_03Actually, I had someone literally just email me at magnet agency about the accountability tool in traction. So um shout out to that magnet agency, Rach and Aaron. Um it it's it's a wonderful thing all around, but we got to our values, and in traction, it's like, hey, persistence, trust, respect stuff we've tried before at this point. You know, um perseverance, and and that's that's great. And and and by the way, you're listening to this, you're probably rolling your rolling your eyes. You may have company values that are those, and and that's that's okay. But I was thinking, I was like, man, I want something that really sticks with our people. And I don't God Rub, how how long did we how long did we mare like work through that session that morning? We came up with it. Yeah, I was and I was hell bent on getting the LFG.
SPEAKER_04Probably an hour or two. And yeah, that's two. That was the thing. I think the ni I don't remember them, but the initial three It was like team first, yeah. They they didn't fit your battle cry.
SPEAKER_03I think it's it was team first, go to the edge, and adapt. Adapt, yeah. Yeah, that that's what it was which which again I think are uh was just a little more um pertinent to us as an agency, and we liked them. Actually, Roop, can you run and on my actually Claudia, can you run to my desk real quick? And there is a uh there's a picture frame with the note card that says LFG. You'll literally see it front and center on the left-hand side of my desk. I thank you so much. Um as Claudia's getting that, so I'm I'm sitting there and I'm I've got this note card. And I I literally wrote LFG, and I'm just like, I'm looking at our values, which we felt good about. Yeah. Um and the whole thing about the values, right, is you live your values, you have to communicate your values internally. Thank you, Claude. You are the best. And um, but most importantly, right, like if if you're not ingraining these, thank you so much. We pass that over here. So I actually had Sarah get us a picture frame. I'm I'm holding up here on the camera. This was the this is the OG. You see L and F and G, Littlefield team first, freaking go to the edge, gotta adapt, or we die at the time. And I think we just got the we, so gotta adapt or die or die. Um and I was like, man, there's there's something to this. And Rocca is super skeptical. He's like, dude, why do we have to say freaking go to the edge? I was like, because I can't think of another F and I'm not gonna say the F word. Um so here, we'll we'll put that we'll put that front and center here. So we went back to the agency, and um we're gonna explain our values here in a little bit, but as we went to the agency at Staffing, I said, hey, you know, I we really like these core values. And I think in the past, you can speak to this. We'd come up, we'd do something like this hey, what's our brand purpose? What's our core values? And what would happen, Rupe?
SPEAKER_04Uh first off, no one rolls their eyes harder at this stuff than me again. I just don't like it. That's okay. On a piece of paper. No one references it again, it's done. Totally. That was what was different here. And I think the difference was we did push it a little, we went a little further over the edge with it in its creation. Totally. So it wasn't just that like here's what we believe, it's like here's what we believe with some personality, and uh ties into the slogans you use and vernacular we all know, including Phil Dumfey on Modern Family. Yep, yep, yep. You know, it made it it made it something more tangible, more real that we all could actually feel as we work and interact with clients and each other every day.
SPEAKER_03And I think you know the the big thing for us is we didn't want to go and you know, ta-da, unveil these, here's our values, you know, print it out, put it in your desk, yeah, to your you know, BS, whatever. I'm gonna forget about them. Um I'd love to see them actually if you do. If you can dig them up. But what we what I thought about is you know, how many times does it take for someone to see something and also um listen to something over and over and over again until it's it's almost death by a thousand paper cuts, but this one in a good way. So it's like, hey, we're gonna start off staff meetings, we're gonna go, we're gonna do shout-outs, we call them tribal stories, and you have to call out L F and G. Um, you don't have to, it's encouraged. Um but that has been a great reminder of Littlefield Team First. We can go to the edge. You know, uh Claudia did this and she she knows she adapted, and this is just the way that we evolve as an agency. So I want to walk you through the values. Littlefield team first, it it may sound uh different to you because we have a different meaning to it. You think, oh, it's you know it's all about Littlefield. No, that's actually that's not the the point of Littlefield Team First. Team First is in the sense of if Roop and Claude are working on something for a client, and let's say they're not thinking of the collective team, and like, ah, you know, I that my deadline says this, but I'm I I'm pretty busy, I'm gonna do one, I'm gonna do one more day. Well, if they don't get that piece of content over to the paid media team to talk to through keywords, they're they're now delayed. Um and then they're delayed and the account team and then clients, and you see the the kind of chain reaction here of you are doing your job as an individual here, but we are a part of a greater team. Um so little field team first is I'm looking out for my teammates and making sure that you know is uh part of the puzzle. I'm do I'm I'm filling in my spot, I'm doing what I need to do to get and set and achieve said deliverable.
SPEAKER_04It's team over individual.
SPEAKER_03Team over individual. Um Littlefield team first, right? Like with our clients. Our clients are very much part of our team. So we just just got to make sure that um someone used the word symphony this morning, orchestra. We're all part of an orchestra, and if some someone's off, um it's not gonna be a beautiful sound, right? We talk about freaking go to the edge, F. Um, I always tell prospective clients, I remind our current clients, our job is a great agency. And an edge could be very it could be media strategies, it could be a way that we do content differently. It could be creative. You know, a lot of people think it's our HR department. It's alright, yeah, it's alright, yeah, totally. Um, as I tell prospective clients, we will take you to the edge, right? You close your eyes, you see the beautiful mountainscape in the distance, you got that tingling feeling and you're a little nervous. Um, we will never push you off the edge with different thinking or different work if you're not ready to jump off the edge, right? To fly what I say, fly. When you're ready to fly, right, we're ready to fly with you. Um, there are numerous examples, we won't go into the detail today, of taking clients to the edge over and over again over the years. Um, I've been here for 10 years, I can think of a million examples. And a client's like, love it, we're not there yet. Let's let's let's let's uh put that on the back burn a little bit, but let's let's come two years later. Hey, we're ready to go. We're ready to fly with you. That is our job. Because if you're un, we don't want to make you uncomfortable, Mr. and Mrs. Client, right? That's really important. And then G, roopster. Gotta adapt your die.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. That one it sounds harsh. Uh yeah, the die parts. But you're screwed. There was a lot of ways we read that one. And one was as an agency, we needed to be adaptable and um have some versatility to us. Totally. One of the things we felt like was already in our DNA since the agency's been around 46 years now. Um, we have to. Thank you. The math is easy when it's 1980. Um but you know, you have to be adaptable to survive and to live as an agency, or we die. But there was also a concept of we as uh as individuals need to be adaptable to situations and to each other and to clients and to the work and and technology and the trends and things that change. Or if if we aren't constantly learning and evolving ourselves as um good stewards of brands and employees of Littlefield, um we would eventually die.
SPEAKER_03I look at uh I look at the 80s and 90s, right? We were a general branding agency in the 2000s, early 2000s, um account planning research insights became a huge thing, right? Like you had to have the insights to back your creative strategy. You look at uh early to mid-2000s.com, right? Never had we had how many developers did we have at one point?
SPEAKER_04I think like six or seven.
SPEAKER_03Six or seven developers on staff. You go into the uh 2010s with all all things social media, and then here we are in the world of AI. I it's really interesting because a constant for us has always been adapting. If if we'd have not adapted over the years, we would not be here as an agency, agency, aka we would die. Um in the theoretical sense.
SPEAKER_04Aaron Powell Correct. We would live on.
SPEAKER_03I look at this just since we established these values four-ish, five-ish years ago, is adapter die is so much different today in the world of AI. I mean, we are adapting at a pace that we have never adapted before. We have to. Um the morning session for our Klope meeting, right? We're talking about all the ways they as a team, the internal marketing team, us as an agency, both teams together, like all the adaptations and everything that we have to be doing as we look forward and move brands ahead. So again, a little a little extreme, the die part, but um at the end of the day, though, we have to live our values. And if we are not adapting, we are dying. And what I think is really important about this, uh you can find these on our website. You can we are so we are obviously very open about these because we are podcasting to the world about the about these values.
SPEAKER_04It's one of the hashtags we always use when we're we I I sign off a lot.
SPEAKER_03When I'm uh you get a couple agency emails, all agency emails from me a year. And it hey, just got off a you know, great trip, great prospective meeting, and just just a good come up to 30,000 feet. Where are we as an agency? And I always sign off LFG. I won't do it every email. Um if I'm very excited for a client or a prospective client, I will straight up say LFG. We just did a whole um uh proposal pitch and the whole idea is LFG. And they don't at first like, ah, these guys are just crazy. Let's freaking go, right? Like they're just super pumped and animated. But once they get to the meaning behind LFG, that light bulb goes off. It's like, ah, like they're not only my hype men and women, like they're living their values, and that to me is very cool.
SPEAKER_04It also just occurred to me, Sam. Do you remember you bought stickers with the Littlefield logo and FG on it?
SPEAKER_03It's on your looking at my uh this this is actually super cool. Um and then I've got a quick story. So on the I'm sure I'm pointing at my laptop here, and I've got on the upper right, it says it's our LA logo, Littlefield Agency. And then um someone like made this really cool like splash FG. So it says LFGA. Um and again, I put I was so obsessed, I have them all over my desk.
SPEAKER_04You put them all over the I put them on the coffee maker.
SPEAKER_03I put them uh by the way, elevator the elevator button before you click down. And it's a again, it's this constant reminder of LFG. Did I live my values today? Guess what? We're all human. We're not gonna live our values every day. It's inevitable. But what I want people to do is claw when Claude gets on the elevator at the end of the day and she pushes that button, even though she sees that damn sticker every day, it's a reminder of, hey, did she uh did she go to the edge today? Maybe not. But tomorrow's a new day and we're gonna we're gonna live our values.
SPEAKER_04You know who made that?
SPEAKER_03That that's it you're a sticker.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, the Courtney hates it. Courtney hates it? I think so, but I I I did that.
SPEAKER_03Well, so here's my fun fact David Littlefield, who's just not like overly communicative on these things, gotta love them, uh came up and was like, these stickers. No, it's it's uh you know, L LFG.
SPEAKER_04You could not turn around without seeing it.
SPEAKER_03My man was fired up. He's like, yo, he's like, dude, what are you know like it's just gener It's this generational mindset? You said WTF? He said WTF touche. He said WTF. I was like, no, Dad, there are values. He goes, let's go are our values. And I was like, ah no, they're not. Little filthy and first ring can go the edge copy after I. And he goes, Well, you know, people don't know that. And I go, exactly. It's that hook. And we tell them that. And by the way, our clients love it. Kid you not, like a week later, um, it was, it may have been Trent, it might have been Sean Hubbard. I think it was Sean, and like signed off an email LFG. I hit the forward button so damn fast. I was like, hey, just letting you know, like, I'm not crazy. Um, but it the reason that we bring this up, uh, call this a fun, entertaining, filler thing. It's important for you, you know, as uh marketing teams, you're part of great organizations. What are your values? Do they resonate with you? Um and I think if they can resonate with you all internally and not resonate, inspire, right? Like at the at the end of the day, like they these values need to be somewhat aspirational. Because we can all, I mean, our values technically do have um it connotes perseverance and trust and all that stuff. It's just such a more fun way to say it. So as you're thinking about values, whether it's a marketing team, if you're a leader of your organization, you're like, ah, you know, a time to dust that off and think through that. The biggest piece of advice is what is relatable and what's aspirational. And then two, don't communicate your values at one staff meeting or you know, you send out an email, hey, these are our values, and then never do it again. Um, I think companies win. I mean, there there's truly statistical data that companies with a brand purpose and values in tough times usually outperform those without. Um so if you can live those values, establish those values, and communicate them, I think a lot of good things happen.
SPEAKER_04It has for us. It has for us. It has for us.
SPEAKER_03No, it has for us. And as we go over our vision traction organizer, the one thing we breeze through is values, everyone's like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Like, and uh, why at this point would we change our values? It's always a good conversation to have. But to us, it's like, nope, we nailed it. Yeah, we got it right. I think our clients would say that it's fun to introduce those to our prospective clients. It was fun. Tiff and Jen have not been up here and here at the agency and just walking them through that. And I did and they're like, hey, what's your podcast topic today? I was like, actually, it's literally about LFG. So uh again, we take we take great pride in them.
SPEAKER_04And that's that.
SPEAKER_03And that's that, baby. So um so ne let's we're gonna solidify it here right now. Next week, 2027 planning.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_03It is time, it's back to school. Everyone's in that mentality. Um it's back to school in the Midwest. So some of you might be later this month or uh right around Labor Day. But um, we got a lot of uh moving pieces. We're moving, we're grooving. It's that time of year to put our heads down, and it's a mad dash to the end of the year. Um so we're gonna talk all things planning. TVD if we have a guest, probably not Chris, maybe Kelly, maybe just you and me.
SPEAKER_04Maybe just us. And then probably the week after or definitely the week after that. Unbound. Yeah, unbound, inbound. Inbound, unbound. It's weird. We'll talk about that too. HubSpot's marketing conference.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, it's gonna that's that's coming up real quick and um give give you a preview on what we're excited about, and uh and then we'll be back to you then. So, Claude, welcome back. I'm glad you're doing better. Glad you got some good rest. My friend with his back pain, do some stretches.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I need to stand here real quick.
SPEAKER_03Want to make sure you're okay. And to all our listeners, thank you so much. We love that you are tuning in with us on a weekly basis. Love having Clope here at the office. We'll catch you next week. Bye bye.
SPEAKER_00And that's a wrap. We hope you found a spark of inspiration for your marketing strategy. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us at Littlefield Agency to keep the conversation going. Catch you next time.
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