Creative Context
Creative Context blends professional advice with a friendly, down-to-earth approach, making it a valuable resource for anyone navigating the complex relationship between clients and creative professionals. Through stories and practical tips, the podcast helps both sides understand each other’s perspectives and work toward more successful outcomes.
Creative Context
Hiring, Onboarding, and Building Creative Teams
In this episode, co-hosts Douglas Duvall of Motif Media and Eric Wing of Darby Digital dive into the complexities of hiring, onboarding, and managing teams in today’s creative and digital industries. They discuss evolving hiring practices, the impact of technology on skill development, and the legal and interpersonal realities of running a business.
Video:https://youtu.be/fQmhPKqAyBg
Scaling Onboarding (0:00)
Accessibility of Editing Tools (1:09)
General Onboarding Processes (45:36)
Challenges of Hiring and Firing (45:50)
Internships and Legal Considerations (46:09)
The Role of Resumes and Interviews (46:24)
Contractors vs. Employees (46:44)
Workman's Comp and Employee Liabilities (47:08)
Trust and Employee Behavior (47:32)
Business Goals (47:55)
📌 Topics Covered: onboarding, off boarding, hiring practices, probation periods, staffing agencies, workman’s comp, generational skill differences, technology/tools, business operations, personal updates
📢 Key Takeaways: onboarding complexity, hiring strategy, probation periods, staffing agency risks, workman’s comp realities, tech evolution, generational skills, transparency, business challenges, personal growth
Keywords: onboarding, hiring, probation, staffing agency, workman’s comp, technology, skill development, business operations, transparency, generational differences
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🔗 Connect with Us:
Douglas Duvall
motifmedia.com for high-end video production.
Eric Wing
withdarby.com for digital marketing and web development services.
We had a call, a scheduled meeting, and she basically said, From now on, you need to talk to my attorney. I'm going on workman's comp. My role, man, we're basically just sitting at a computer all day. I never thought I would have to worry about workman's comp. Sure we had an office like slip and falls were a reality, like that type of stuff, but it blew my mind.
Douglas Duvall:Welcome to Creative context. Today, we're jumping into scaling onboarding, bringing on new members to the team. There's a lot to bringing on a new member to the team, whether they're an experienced person that's worked at a lot of companies, or there's just maybe it's their first job. Their first job. There's a lot that kind of goes into that that you don't necessarily think about right off the bat.
Eric Wing:I think you know, we were talking a little bit earlier about interns, just like you're in the midst of onboarding and but no, you're calling him something different. What were you calling
Douglas Duvall:so it's a, he's a co op student, so he is,
Unknown:yeah, okay,
Douglas Duvall:but I've been super impressed, like, I won't say the school, because I don't, frankly, know it, and maybe it's best to keep it that way, but it's, you know, it's technically savvy, like he knows the software, and there's things I'm obviously teaching him, but like, overall, you know, he's pretty well developed, like I was nowhere near where he is when I was 17. And of course, there's, there's room for improvement on everything, but like, overall, I'm just super, super impressed. Yeah,
Eric Wing:that's awesome. I wonder. I'm curious about, you know, there's skill set, and then there's talent. And I wonder if your co op guy has just, just talent, right? Has that built in ability, and now he needs to learn the skills right, to kind of harness that, that talent, to funnel the talent in a way, and that would be picking up on that. Do you think it's like a just, he just was, just had, you know, like athletes, they just have some athletes just have talent, or musicians, and I wonder if that's what you're experiencing,
Douglas Duvall:yeah, I think it's, I think it's a little bit of both, because I am impressed to where he's at with his, like, skill set with editing, and I think it is a lot more accessible nowadays. You know, YouTube and true, yeah, like DaVinci Resolve costs, like, the full blown suite for DaVinci Resolve is $300 you can, you can have a very functional free version too. You don't, you don't have to buy the studio for 300 compared to Final Cut Pro in 2006 I think was like two grand, yeah. So think of what two grand was in 2006 and the likelihood of, oh, I, when I was a senior in high school, I or the junior year of high school, summer, I saved up money all summer to buy a Mac Pro. Well, it was right when they went from g5 to Mac Pro, yeah. Dating myself, and I bought Final Cut Studio, which I think if you bought it with Mac Pro, you got like $500 off, yeah. So that was the first time I had a system at home. I didn't need to be at school, and I didn't have to be on a gateway computer that would crash every time I exported something another. Get dating myself again. Gateway,
Eric Wing:Gateway, yeah. Gateway, wow.
Douglas Duvall:My parents bought a gateway because there was a gateway store near the main Mall. It was like across the street from the main mall, yeah, the day after, or maybe not the day two weeks after, we buy the computer, the gateway store closes door, shot goes away. My parents, like, oh, we bought it because the service like, we could say, I'm like,
Eric Wing:remember gateway, they leaned into the whole like, cow, oh yeah,
Douglas Duvall:the cow. Yeah,
Eric Wing:cows in the past year and, like, their stores that were, like, black and white or whatever, but yeah, Gateway compact, like all those guys. I remember my I had a, my first real kind of, like desktop I had, remember the desktop replacement computers, they were still super heavy and big, but, like, I had a 17 inch sperion Dell and spirion the laptop was like when it was open, it was this thick, like when it was closed. You know, it was like, the thing weighed about eight pounds on my lap. But, man, that really changed a lot of i. Was able to do. And I went to Mac soon after, I think, I think maybe just a couple years after. In fact, I worked there, so I got a 25% discount, which was pretty nice, but, but, yeah, no, I think you're right. The the tools that are available now are much different. In fact, I've abandoned we don't use, we used to use, like, all of the Adobe Suite products, like, on a database, day to day basis. I was using Photoshop every day, and I was using Dreamweaver, and I was using Illustrator to do I never really, me personally, never got a lot into illustrators, more of a Photoshop guy, and then I had, you know, hired people or contracted people to do illustration. But don't use any of those tools anymore for the day to day stuff that we need. We just use Canva. You know, it's fast, it's good. You know, the big thing we were using Photoshop for was to remove backgrounds behind logos and, like, do layers. And you can do that in a wide variety of software is now and so, so, yeah, you're right. It's similar to, just like, you know, if you speak to a younger person in general right now, I feel like they're so much more intelligent than I was when I was their age. And I think it's just the availability of information, you know, like the tools, the access. Yeah, it's it's exponentially speeding up those learning curves that that people used to spend half their career acquiring, right and then they're more in demand later in their career. But now people are starting out with those skill sets just baked in, like, ready to go. And so you do read the headlines about Facebook, other like, you know, or like meta, large tech companies not even looking for college degrees anymore. You know this, you know, if you, if you're self taught, and you can do some of these, like, like, your co op guy, you know, there's so much value, and there's this limited supply of people out there that in the hiring pool. So it's, it's an interesting space, and it's cool that you're experiencing it kind of firsthand. It kind of firsthand in your in your office right now.
Douglas Duvall:I had no expectation of one way or the other, which way it was going to go, and so far, it's been very cool. And just like general onboarding, like I've hired four people in my life, so I'm not, by no means, an expert, and I've let go to people, one of which is a family member, which is hard to do, and wow, didn't want to do it. Just there's just a circumstance of what it is. And both those experiences, I know I talked about it before, both of those experiences were tough, but the onboarding process is like, you have to, if you don't work with an accountant, then you probably have some sort of HR, you know, software as a service that you set up to we have an accountant, so I'm not super familiar with it, but there's a process there to, like, get everybody's information and so they can get paid. You have to set up an email. You have to, if you have, like, we have, I realized I don't have enough shirts. Like, I have to get shirts made because I'm out of the normal sizes people were like, Yeah, and I'm small potatoes. So like, yeah. I remember when I got hired at the corp my corporate job, it was like, a day of like, I had to meet with HR, and I had to fill out a bunch of stuff and X, you know, there's a lot to it you don't necessarily think about, and then that's not even getting into, okay, let's go over our standard operating procedures. Let's dig into what your day to day is gonna you know, I mean, like, that's not even that stuff. It's just to get going,
Eric Wing:yeah, get paid, have communications. Like, yeah, the basic stuff, it's big, yeah, it's a lot. I've done a lot more just prior to or along parallel with my company, I was also hiring kind of Apple. Apple calls it the people manager. So I managed over 100 people at an Apple store. And so I learned a lot from hiring fares to hiring people, to performance corrective actions and firing people. I like to joke. I have, I have, I still have a good buddy who, I hired him, and then, like, two years later, I fired him, and then we became, like friends. I somehow was able to let that guy go in a way that, like we became friends after and so I take a lot of pride in that. I think it's a skill. It's a learned skill, I think, to to communicate to people, whether it's bringing them in the door or showing them the exit, like there's, there's ways of doing that with with respect, you know, and like a human touch, right? Like. Not just so black and white, and it's especially important, I think on the Well, certainly the exit. You don't want people leaving feeling really bad about themselves, but I think that the the entry into a business is critical, otherwise the exit could come quick, right? Like they're not going to feel supported, or you're not going to feel like you're, you're, they're, they're performing at the level that they said that they would in the interview process or whatever. So the the process, you know, when we were, when I was in the height of hiring for my own company, 2017, through 19, it was crazy. I mean, I got to the point where I just, I got like, I got like, interview fatigue, and so I changed how I was interviewing to just be a lot more direct. And it worked out for us. We still, I mean, the team is smaller now, but we still have all the same people. Well, we lost people during the pandemic, but the people that are still with the company were hired during that during that time and and really, what it came down to was I was really just kind of fatigued looking at resumes, and I almost didn't like I cared, but I almost didn't care about what the resume said, and what I did instead was my best to hire Ever. Was a project manager, and she became, like Project Manager slash personal assistant, in a way, like she was just doing everything and super valuable. And what I did for her, for her role, was we went into our we had a smaller conference room at that time with a huge whiteboard. And after, like, the after, just like the pleasantries, I stood up, and I just started listing all the things that I needed in that role. And it was probably say 20 things on the board. And then we and then we had a conversation. I'm like, are these things that you can do, and if not, are they things that you're willing to learn, you know, and so we had a conversation that centered around her personality, rather than, like, what she's done in the past, right? Like people, you're not, in my opinion, you're not going to get a lot of insight when people feel nervous and they feel like they're just going down a checklist of answering questions that everybody asks them they have, like, canned responses. And to this day. So I tried that approach two other times after that, with different roles, and it worked. You know, I think I was taking a gamble to a degree as well, because there are clues on a resume that you look for, like gaps between jobs. You know, you know, translatable skills sets to what you're asking them to do, but, but if I feel like and the point I'm trying to make is if you just have a human conversation with the person, like, Hey, listen, is this something that you feel like you can do? Do you feel like you can excel at this? Do you feel like you'll be challenged to the degree where you will be engaged in your job every day, or will you be bored to death? Right? Let's figure that out. You know, let's not wait until you're here because of what you're what you're saying. Yeah, you got to contact payroll. You have to, you have to set up all of their their communications like we had Voice over IP phones, and we had to get all that configured, and I had to get them a workstation. It's so much to bring somebody in to find out that they're not happy, or you're not happy, right? I think I just got fed up with it, and so I found a way that worked for us, and I got a lot of interesting feedback after I hired them, what they thought about that process. But, you know, it's good. In fact, we went through another hiring boom. I probably would do it in a similar a similar way, but for those listening, you know, it takes all shape and shapes and sizes. I think it worked for us. I was, I was the one that owned the company, and I was hiring the people. That's not always the case, right for you and I and the size of our companies, I think it makes sense. But maybe someone's listening that they have a hiring manager, or they have an HR person, or they have a fractional HR person, or whatever, the system should look different because you're not so hands on. You have to rely more on your processes making sure that those are solid and that the person guiding them through understands how they're guiding them, right? So, yeah, I think it's critical. I've only had one. I have never had like a co op. I was actually not familiar with what that meant until you described it to me, but I had one intern, which I learned a lot about. I learned a lot about the idea of what an intern is, and in the state of Massachusetts, they all had to be paid, which I didn't know that when she reached out, you probably get this. I still get it, like college students reaching out saying, hey, I want to get experience. Would you be willing to have me in as an intern? And she said. Paid or unpaid? No, I think I asked, like, are you expecting me paid or not paid? And she's like, well, of course, it'd be nice to be paid, but I'll be willing to do it for experience. So I took her up on that. I ended up giving her. I gave her, like, a bonus. I paid her. I didn't pay her on payroll, but I paid her at the end. It was like a two month thing. But through that process, I learned that if, if, if it had not gone well and she was dissatisfied in some way, she could have come back for was a lawsuit, because in Massachusetts, there's no such thing as pay unpaid interns, and the damages are like four times what their salary would have been. So Jesus imagine. And luckily, it was two months and not two years, right? But I think we're beyond the statute of limitations at this point. I think so I'll let these words fly out into the internet. But, yeah, it was something. But you know what it was at that time, I had just moved into a building I like to call that was like a little turtle in a big shell. I had no staff, but I knew I was going to and so I leased this standalone building, and she was my first person that I brought in to assist me, and she didn't produce a lot of results, but like tangible results for the business. But what she did produce was, like, clarity in my mind about how I want to hire people like she needed my she she basically worked right next to me because she constantly had questions and she constantly was she wasn't taking work for me. She was adding work to my plate. And I'm like, Ah, okay, so when I do start hiring people, I need to be aware of this otherwise, like, I'll never get anything done. And so that started my mind down this path of like, operating procedures, role like, job descriptions, you know, communication patterns, meeting, what, all that stuff. And so it was definitely fruitful for those reasons, and glad that I did it. But, you know, it would look much different if I were to do another internship,
Douglas Duvall:especially with chat GPT. It's like, what is a resume really going to be, you know what I mean, like, I think what a resume is is really going to, I guess in some way, it's already LinkedIn sort of hijacked what a CV or resume is, right, like, because it's effectively a living resume, right? Right, yeah. But I think there is going to be more of, like a not to get into waters I don't really understand. But like a blockchain, in a way, like, there's going to be a very transparent way to see, okay, this person worked there, like, right now, you pick up the phone and you call, right? Like, Hey, did so and so work here from such and such states, right? Yeah, like, of course. But I think there's going to be, like, a much more, like, transparent, direct way, it just shows the past, right? Like, hey, this person worked here. Hey, this person, and it's going to be more about what you were talking about. Like, hey, maybe do a little problem solving, creative problem solving exercise, and you have that list of things that they're going to be responsible for, and, like, it's going to be this more of an interactive setup than, like, cold, like, the same 10 questions. And, yeah, I like where you're going with it. I think the resume effectively is dead in a way. I and maybe I'm an idiot, but I, I don't, I don't think it's carries the same weight it did when in 20 years
Eric Wing:ago. No, no, yeah, 20 to one or
Douglas Duvall:in two year 2000 the resume is probably very important, but I just don't see it that way anymore.
Eric Wing:No, it's too limiting. It's too from a hiring manager's perspective, a resume, the resume is built if the person, if the applicant, is skilled in their job search, the resume is, is basically bent for the position that they're hired they're being interviewed for, right, right? They're changing the things to make it and so, so I guess all intents and purposes, the resume is in favor of the applicant, not the hiring manager, right? And so when you ask questions based on what that person wrote down, you're getting responses that they've prepared for a lot of times, and you can still get good information from that. But when you when you keep the resume turned turned face down on the table, and you have a. Conversation with that person. That's real, that's real, and there are people that can handle that, and there are people that can't handle that, right? And that's how you can quickly weed weed out. Like, okay, if they can't handle speaking with me off script, how are they going to be speaking with a client? You know? Like, you need that ability to kind of think on the on the on the fly, right for sure. And once you have that, you've established that, like, human moment of like, Okay, we're here together. We're just gonna have a conversation, and you feel good, and you in you then proceed to saying, Here are all the things I need you to do. How do you feel about that? They're a little bit more like, there were some people that were very candid with me when going through that process, and others I could tell were just telling me what I wanted to hear. So you, once you can read the room, you can start tailoring your non resume interview based on what you're receiving from them. And I don't know it's a bit like performance art in a way, I will admit, you know, there it's I don't I'm not rushing out to be doing this anytime soon. It's not something I enjoy, but I happen to figure out a way to get the right people. And you know, Ben still with us. It's been six or seven years now, and he can't, he was part of that batch of hires. And so, yeah, yeah. Basically, I took everything that Apple wanted me to do and didn't do it because I thought that Apple was just like a it was like a hiring mill constantly. Every Sunday night was was trying to hire like five people, and it was just constant. And so you just, you just roll the dice on all these people, and then it's hard to fire people later. It's like, especially in a corporate setting like that, it's really hard. You have to have a paper trail for months before you can even start the you know, depending on what it is, if it's like attendance, like, you can get rid of them three strikes. You're out that type of thing. But if it's job performance, you really need to document that.
Douglas Duvall:Yeah, and then that's like, attitude, right? Like, if someone has a, you know, bad attitude, or whatever that's there's not really a way to document that. Like, right, right? Yeah, yeah has to be tied to, like you said, attendance, performance, an egregious action, right? Like, yeah, yeah, or stealing, or assault, or, you know, something that's like, you know, very clear that's inappropriate in the workplace. But like, slow to slow to hire exists for a reason? Yeah, I think, I think primarily we're, we're also going to kind of do, like a contract basis first, right? Like, kind of work with us for an extended period of time on a hourly contract and project by project, yep. Does this person exemplify what we want? Yep, and over a couple months, the the Act will go away, right? The people that are truly dedicated will shine through. And you know, that's that's definitely a way to do it as well.
Eric Wing:Yeah, I recommend that we were doing 90 day probation period for all new hires, and we all, all of them made it through, except one. There's one woman we hired for advert to do, like to run like meta ads. She she wasn't a good fit. And it was a beautiful thing, because when you have it in writing that you've got 90 days. When you come up to the 90th day, that paper trail I mentioned before, you don't need it. It's, it's already been established. She signed off and agreed to a probationary period. And so it was just like a it was actually very gentle and kind, you know, we both understood it wasn't a good fit. Had coffee, let her go. Moved on, you know, and, and so, yeah, I agree that that probationary period, it looks different. Maybe it's 30 days, or it's 90 or whatever, but it's a again, it's all about making sure that you maintain the control, not the employee. Yeah, that's, that's that's the and I found victim to, I mean, if we go way, if we go even a little bit further back, I worked with a higher I worked with a staffing agency. Oh, my God. Anyone listening to this, including you, sir, do not work with the staffing agency. Holy moly, like you. I don't know if you've Are you familiar with how they operate?
Douglas Duvall:Yeah? So they, they charge you, like, say, the person wants 100k they'll charge you 130k Yeah. They take 40k and give the other person 90k like, yeah. There's some, some shenanigans like that,
Eric Wing:yeah, and there's a. All sorts of fees, and there's all this stuff they the benefit of it is, like, if you don't, if the work, the person doesn't work out, they don't have a contract with you. They have a contract with the hiring agency, the staffing agency. So I send one guy back. I'm like, Oh, you're not a good fit. And I didn't have to even tell the guy. They told the guy for me, he just stopped showing up, you know. And like, they took care of health benefits and things like, there's some benefits to it, however. They tie you into a contract, too. And Whoo, did it get expensive, you know? So I actually had to buy out the employee. I kept one employee from that process, and we had to break the rules a little bit. He's not supposed to divulge how much he's making, how much they're paying him, right? But once I figured it out, once he told me we struck a deal where he got a significant raise and I got a significant discount, and it was, it was a beautiful thing, and I was a breach of contract also. So hopefully we're beyond the statute of limitations on that as well. But, but, yeah, that was a real trap. I spent so much money out the window during those days, but again, that similar with the intern. It really paved the way for me to say, you know, for course correction, okay, we're not going to go that route anymore. I'll just start interviewing people on my own, but, but, yeah, I don't recommend anyone unless for like temp, like temp work, like, if you have someone going on maternity or or paternity leave for six months or three months or whatever, and you want To bring someone in, yeah, staffing agency might work, but if you're looking to just hire some of your first employees, I say go contractors. Contractors are the least risk, because you can just let them go. Just stop giving them work, you know. And then I recommend hiring those contractors, if they're open to it, as your first employees is less risk.
Douglas Duvall:That's that sort of stuff's never interested in me. I almost went to them as a someone I knew early on was like, Hey, check this company out. They can get you into sort of regular work. And I just never liked the dynamic of it. So I just, I kind of just ended it, you know, I went through a couple of interviews, and I'm just like, I don't, I don't want to do this. This doesn't feel it doesn't feel right. I don't know, yeah, I know it's worked out great for some people. I'm not bashing it. It wasn't a fit for me. You want
Eric Wing:to hear something funny? I speaking of staffing agencies, and I think the guy that I like, died. I told he was, like, two weeks in, we hired him for, like, to do a direct mail campaign for us, like he was stealing envelopes and, like, writing address like he it was, like a low, kind of, like a entry level job and but he had trouble with those tasks. So I told my rep at the agency, like, okay, we're not going to have him back. We're just going to eliminate the position altogether. And, you know, whatever, it's all set now. This was in like, This must have been like, January of 2019, oh no, no, no, no. It was like the spring of it must have been like, Yeah Or no, excuse me, January of 2020 February 2020 like in there somewhere, and then we all know what happened. March of 2020 basically the world shut down, right? And oh my goodness. So I was like, maybe, like a lot of people I was getting, I was trying to support restaurants and support my boredom with takeout. And so I got takeout for the GrubHub one night, and it was him, it was the guy. He delivered my food. And it was just like, so awkward. I'm like, Oh, how's it going, you know? Like, okay, you're doing this now, you know, it was just like, like, the odds. I just thought the odds were incredible that you'd be the one that comes back around. But it was cool. It was like, in this little way, to have some closure, you know, like, but yeah, I guess the lesson learned there is, like, never burn any bridges. You just don't know how that person might show up in your life again, you know, like, yeah, recognize my address and done something the food or, who knows, but so yeah, as a good guy, good guy, instant workout
Douglas Duvall:at the end of the day, it is business. So, yeah, it's a tough Yeah,
Eric Wing:yeah, you have my mind going now on, like odd situations that, like staffing situations, like, I was high. I was interviewing a woman one time, and she decided it was a good idea to tell me that she was pregnant. And that's a you got to be really careful when you when they tell you that, because they can then come back at you for. Discrimination for not being hired because of the fact that she was pregnant, and that was a real eye opener for me. I had to tiptoe around because I didn't hire her. In fact, the next interview was that the dynamite project manager I told you about, and so that's a delicate situation when people tell you certain things, whether they are just telling you because they wanted to divulge. They just want to make it like they want to be transparent. Like, by the way, if you're hiring me, I'm, I'm going to be going out on maternity leave at some point. Like, that's a responsible thing. It can also be a device, right? And it can be a trap if you don't handle that properly. And so, but the other big learning with staffing stuff was workman's comp. Have you dealt with any of this?
Douglas Duvall:Not, not directly? No, my world,
Eric Wing:man, we're basically just sitting at a computer all day. I never thought I would have to worry about workman's comp. Sure we had an office like slip and falls were a reality, like that type of stuff, but it was a real tricky situation where this girl was a big time gamer. She always talking about how she games all night with her husband and all this other stuff. She was also our video editor and our photographer, and she started developing something with her. I think it was like bad case of carpal, carpal tunnel, carpal tunnel syndrome or something. She She developed these issues with her wrists, and was claiming that it was because of the work that she was doing at the agency. And I had so much trouble buying that. And I knew, like, I just knew that it could be, yeah, it could be, like, all the time pixel pushing and like, video editing was starting to wear and tear on her body. But I also know that playing video games for hours and hours and hours also is a similar repetitive action, and using the same hands and the same tendons. And anyway, one thing led to another, and shortly into the pandemic shutdown, she we, we had a call, a scheduled meeting, and she basically said, From now on, you need to talk to my attorney. I'm I'm going on workman's comp. And it was like it blew my mind. I had never been in a situation like that before, where I couldn't talk to my employee anymore, and I had to deal with her, her attorney. You know, it was the most bizarre thing. She ended up getting a settlement. And I think she scammed the system. I think she, she she scanned the system for 50 grand. And, but I will say, the beauty of having workman's comp insurance is I paid nothing, you know, nothing. It just they, I was like magic. They just paid her. And, but, like, I guess, if there's any, anything to take from this for people listening and and having building teams is like, yeah, that's a real reality. Regardless of the type of work the person is doing. They whether it's legitimate or illegitimate, they still might have a case, you know. And if I couldn't imagine, if I didn't have working as comp insurance, I think it's an I think it's like, mandatory to have it, but if I didn't have it, I would have been on the hook for like, 50 grand or something. I probably would have had to go to court and do all this stuff. No, thanks. You know, that's that alone. If someone had told me that prior to hiring people I might have not have I don't know my business might look different right now, because it's like, it's kind of scary man, like workman's comp settlements in, like, business taxes, those are the two things that I'm just like, oh, keep them away from me. They're, they're just like, I don't enjoy either one of those things. Like payroll taxes. It's like, it seems like high rate robbery.
Douglas Duvall:And when you're, I know it's easy to sort of get for some people to get upset at their you know, the company they work for, the owners, or the, you know the people in charge. And it's like when you there's there's a side of things you don't see that that they've dealt especially if they've been in business a long time, that they've dealt with and there's a reason they are the way they are. Yeah, and I'm not excusing people who do inhuman, inhumane things and are, you know, abusive to employees. I'm not excusing any of that. But, you know, if someone's like, a little grisly or a little curmudgeony, it's like, well, you know, they've been burned, you know, to the tune of, maybe, you know, 50 100 grand or plus, you know, and, yeah, yeah, there's, there's things you don't, you don't necessarily, you don't always want to be the person at the owner's shoes,
Eric Wing:you know. Yeah, I can see why. Companies do a good job of creating layers, right? You create layers between yourself. And it's the liabilities. Yeah, it
Douglas Duvall:all. It all boils down to, you know, we're a country that loves a good lawsuit, and it reflects in every, every piece and layer of life,
Eric Wing:yeah, yeah, something else comes to mind. Oh, go ahead. No, that's really it. Yeah, we're really digging into the learning curves that I dealt with, like eight years ago, or I don't know, a number of years ago now, and one of them was the our accounting software, web based, you know, username, password, somehow, you know how in Chrome you can sync, you can sync Chrome to like a user, and that user has, like the credentials and like All your saved stuff. Well, somehow one of my employees, I had to share a password or do something, and he ended up, like syncing his browser with my user account, and he found his way into the company accounting software. And what the reason why that comes to mind is because he didn't know the big picture, like he saw the amount of revenue coming into the business, but he probably didn't spend a lot of time looking at the revenue going out of the business. Right? At that time, payroll was something like 20, $25,000 a month in payroll, right? And when it came time for review. He I didn't, I didn't pick up on any of this at the time. I had to, like, connect the dots looking back. But there was a really odd negotiation coming from him on pay the word choices, his impact on the revenue brought in like this. And it always kind of like sat with me, a little bit weird, and then after he after, he ended up leaving shortly after not being he just wasn't, because he he had this idea the company was making so much money, and he wasn't getting a large enough piece of that, right. And but because he wasn't transparent about where he was coming from, I couldn't address it. I had no I didn't know. I didn't know. Like, I could have addressed that to make him feel better or whatever. And so anyway, after the fact that he went on, it was during our little bit of an exodus that we had during the covid where people were moving and people were changing their like, nobody wanted to work. Remember that? Like, nobody wanted to work. Everybody wanted to collect. Wanted to collect it was blah, blah. So anyway, he left during that period, and for me, like a month after, when I had his computer, because we were reimaging all the computers from the staff and stuff like that, I realized that his browser was logged in, and you just kind of connect the dots. You look at the browser history and like, you like, Ah, okay, it makes sense now, you know. And this came up just the other day where Ben, actually, he needed to log into something for Grammarly. We use Grammarly, and I felt it rise up in me. I'm like, No, I can't let this happen again. Like, I'm like, don't let this sink to your computer. And so, yeah, these are all the little things that, you know, I think people listening to us, they might, sometimes I listen to an episode and they think that we just have it all figured out. Well, you know, we might have things figured out because we've taken the lumps all these years of making these mistakes and trying to manage people. It's like a constantly moving targets.
Douglas Duvall:You know, that kind of shows his character, right? Yeah, and you didn't know till after the fact, and it worked out he left, yeah, but, like, you don't know people's intentions. You know, I probably am more trusting in general, then maybe someone would say is good for me. But like, once you know someone, you can trust them to be who they are. Like, I know this person is going to do this thing right, yeah? But like, you just don't know what someone's intentions are, yeah, and it's not always good. Like, if that had happened to me, like, if you helped me log into something and it synced to your thing, I'd be like, as soon as I found out, I'd be like, log out, log out, and I would have sent you a message, Eric, when we were working together earlier, it logged into your account. I just want you to know if anything showed up on your end of logged out, you know, we can, we can wipe my computer. Like, I would have been, like, overly, like, I want nothing to do with it. That's just me, yeah, that's probably you too. Like, I don't want to be logged into your thing. I don't want to know any of it. Like, yeah,
Eric Wing:I've thought about this so much, and I'm like, what would I do in the city? Situation, right? You realize you have keys of the kingdom. What are you going to do? But the keys weren't handed to you. You found the keys, right? And, yeah, I agree with you that what, what? What would prevent me from pursuing something like that is, it opens me up for like, personal liability, right? Like, if, let's say, let's say I was working for someone who did nefarious things, and I wouldn't be involving myself in that, whether it's, you know, like, if you can't, like, what is it plausible, plausible deniability or whatever? Like, if the fact that your computer is logged into the same account where there was an issue, you are just as guilty as the person that probably committed the crime or whatever Right. Like, I want nothing to do with any of that stuff. And that's, you know, besides the moral implications of it, that those were some of the things that crossed my mind. Like, I just you're better off not knowing, you know. So, yeah, wow, we dipped into some interesting stuff today. Always therapeutic.
Douglas Duvall:So I think we've, I think we've summed up our thoughts pretty well at this point. So you have anything going on or interesting you want to talk about?
Eric Wing:Yeah, I don't know, just like changing the season. Just, you know, I find that, like, I find that the summertime, my brain is a little expanded. I'm not thinking so much about work. I certainly show up every day, do a good job, do the things I need to do, but I'm not thinking about expanding or growing the business so much, you know, and so looking at some of my goals, and looking at some of the ideas I had, you know, in the spring and before, like a summer fever, and finding that I've got the mental space, I've got the space to start thinking about that stuff again. And so I'm excited to dust off some of the ideas and specifically around partnerships and just like business development stuff. So it's kind of finding my mind kind of going in that direction now that the weather is turning and like kids are going back to school and stuff like that, just has a vibe to it, you know. So, yeah, what about on your side?
Douglas Duvall:It's like that getting back to school mindset, you know, yeah, for sure, that's that's sunk in a little bit. You know, we've had a couple cool days, and the I wake up in the morning and it's pitch black, so it's, yeah, very depressing.
Eric Wing:I just said I this morning. I'm like, oh, it's not quite as late as it was in July.
Douglas Duvall:Sucks, yeah, but it's crazy how fast that happens. But, yeah, now just just looking for it personally I have my house is I've been renovating my house the last three years, or something insane. Works really picking up over there, and is really gonna accelerate in September. So there's been a lot of that going on in my headspace. Uh, once that is done, though, oh, my god, weight will be shattered, shattered and lifted off my back. Nice. Thanks. So that has taken a lot of my mental, emotional bank account, as you would say, yeah. But once that's done, yeah, feel a lot
Eric Wing:better, good. Yeah, I want to come to your housewarming party.
Douglas Duvall:Yeah, you'll certainly be invited. I think we get back to f1 this weekend. No, no. Two weeks. Let me see, might be two weeks out now.
Eric Wing:Yeah, my guy, my guy, came in second in the Tour de France again this year. Okay, there's one guy today. Today. PA, gotcha. He's a Slovenian dude, man. Nobody can beat this guy. He's like, he's either, like, doping, or he's just got, I don't know. He's a superhuman. You should see the way he cycles. But my guy, Jonas, the the Denmark guy, couldn't get him. So, so, yeah, the tour is back. When? When? Where are they? Where are they resuming? What country are they going to be
Douglas Duvall:in? It's the Dutch Grand Prix. Is the next one? Okay, at Zander root circuit. Cool. And it's two weeks, so a week from Sunday, and that's back. Got it? Got it? Kind of be nice. I've been, I've actually, I actually had a moment this past Sunday. I'm like, damn it, it's a summer break. Yeah, yeah. Have you seen the movie? By the way, no, I still haven't seen the movie. Yeah, same
Eric Wing:here. I I've been hearing about the soundtrack. I guess people talk about the soundtrack quite a bit. It's a good one. I guess
Douglas Duvall:I. Did watch a YouTube video of Brad Pitt in lando's car. Yeah, he took it around for a few laps, and it's cool. He actually got in there. I don't know. I don't know if I'd be brave enough to do that, honestly.
Eric Wing:I know, right. Did it show how fast he was going when he was in it?
Douglas Duvall:I can't remember. I mean, he's not getting, yeah, he, you know, the people in his years, like, Okay, this is a good stretch for you to push it. Push, push, yeah. Like, I don't think he was even getting close to, I think his last lap, they were pretty impressed with what he did. But like, you know, it's just, it's, yeah, I'm impressed he got in the car and actually did it. Yeah, it's an animal of a machine.
Eric Wing:Yeah, it's not like driving your sedan. It's a whole other
Douglas Duvall:even a supercar, like, where things are familiar, right? Like when you have a
Eric Wing:tiny steering wheel, yeah, and all the buttons
Douglas Duvall:sitting and it's hot down the line.
Eric Wing:Yeah, in fact, like, Yeah, and you, like, your center cockpit to you, like you're not sitting over to the left, you know, like, there's so much. But I would also imagine it's not, you don't have to do too much to get that thing to, like, a buck 50, I mean, like, it's just like wants to go, and it's almost like you have to restrain it rather than push it right, right, like a horse.
Douglas Duvall:Yeah, I should check it out. But yeah, yeah, me too. We're almost back to back to racing.
Eric Wing:Cool, cool. Yeah, I'm gonna try to tune into the second half. I'm
Douglas Duvall:Douglas Duvall, motif media. We're based in Boston. Do high end video production and podcast production. We do podcasts all over the US people. Some people are based in Arizona, New Jersey, New York, Chicago, Tennessee. The hosts can basically be anywhere nowadays, nice, and we get it done. Nice, nice. Yeah,
Eric Wing:I'm Eric wing, started Darby digital about 17 years ago. We do web dev, software, digital marketing, AI consulting. Ai consulting is becoming a becoming more of a focus, and maybe we can do an episode on that sometime. But, uh, but yeah, we work with people around the country, and, yeah, looking for more opportunities for speaking engagements to to inform people about AI. So always open to those
Douglas Duvall:Well, if you've listened this far, we appreciate you giving us a subscribe on YouTube, creative context podcast, and following along if you're on YouTube, we have an audio version of this wherever You find podcasts, and we'll catch you next time you
Unknown:you.
