Web Design Business with Josh Hall

376 - Are you a Web Designer or Brand Strategist? with Jacob Cass

• Josh Hall

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Web designers do a lot more than just web design…

It’s not uncommon for us to be graphic and brand designers, photographers, strategists, copywriters, etc…

So, should we call ourselves more than just a web designer?

Award winning branding and design studio founder Jacob Cass, who’s worked with Disney, Nintendo and Jerry Seinfeld, has done it all and has some invaluable experience and perspective to share when it comes to how web designers can position themselves nowadays.

One of the many things I learned from talking with Jacob is – if you position yourself in a way that’s right for you, you’ll watch your revenue climb, you’ll attract better clients and enjoy your work more.

Head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned along with a full transcription of this episode at joshhall.co/376


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Jacob Cass:

A few years ago where I learned about brand strategy and I came to the realization that I didn't know shit about brand and it just opened up this whole new world. And even today, after studying brand for so many years, there's always new facets that come up and overlap. So if you move more into marketing, for example, you'll realize that the associations between brand and marketing and how they work together and the intricacies of how brands can grow that's what fascinates me and there's so many subsets of that and so many things you can study and learn. And, as you heard earlier before, I love drifting between things like we do as creatives, and brand is so big that you can drift between all these things and offer as a client or you can coach on it. You can this. I guess there's subsections of where it's like business, design, marketing and so forth, and I think there's just so many subsets and that's what keeps things interesting for me.

Josh Hall:

Welcome to the Web Design Business Podcast with your host.

Jacob Cass:

Josh Hall.

Josh Hall:

Helping you build a web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle you love. The age old question are you a web designer or are you a brand strategist? We all know that web designers do way more than just web design. Now, some of us may be a little more marketing first and websites are a big part of the business, and then what I've found is there's kind of the other half of web designers where it's a little more design development first, and then you may dip your toe into marketing. Regardless, we're all doing way more than probably just building a website. So the question is what do you call yourself and how? More importantly, how do you position yourself to clients so you're not just an order taker or a task taker for pushing pixels around for clients' desires? So to get into this and to help you really nail down your position and what you want to call yourself, I am absolutely pumped to bring in Jacob Kass.

Josh Hall:

Now, jacob, if you've been in the design world for any amount of time, you may have seen him around. He is actually an award-winning design agency founder. He has worked with clients such as Disney, nintendo, jerry Seinfeld, among others. He's been in this industry for a long time, and the reason I mentioned that is he has come to some more recent realizations about brand and what he thought he knew about branding and what he actually realized he didn't know at all. So we're going to get into all of that because he's positioning himself a little more differently now and you can take the same exact approach to help you land awesome clients, especially those of you who are on the marketing side and are doing branding alongside web design, so pumped to dive into this one Super fun combo here.

Josh Hall:

And it was really awesome to finally have Jacob on the show. You can check out his website at just creativecom. That is his brand, branding and design agency. Again, that's just creativecom. We talked about some links and other things in the show notes for this one, which will be found at joshhallco slash 736. Without further ado, here is branding specialist. All right, that's, that's the new title. Anywho, here's jacob. Jacob, great to have you on officially, man. Uh, long overdue. I've been saying like I think I've seen your face around and different design summits and stuff for probably a good I don't know five or six years, so it's great to finally chat one-on-one man.

Jacob Cass:

Yeah, I can't believe it's taken this long. And yeah, we have been at the same summits for a couple of times, so it's awesome to properly connect. I've watched your videos in the past as well, so, yeah, let's do this.

Josh Hall:

I'm really excited to chat. We don't have an exact topic we're diving into, but we were just saying, you know, you and I are like slightly adjacent, with me being in web and you being in more brand strategy and design, although we have obviously a lot of crossover. So I'm kind of curious when, when somebody who is tech savvy and is in this world asks what you do, what do you tell them exactly? Cause you have a lot of things going on.

Jacob Cass:

I'm still figuring that one out okay, it's constantly changing and you know titles are titles and you know, depends on who you market into. It kind of adapts and I'm in a tricky situation because I'm serving two clients like business owners, entrepreneurs and also creators, with coaching and things, so and then I run, uh, you know, a few other services on the side in terms of, like, digital products and affiliate marketing and a community. So there is a lot of things going on. I love us the variety of it and that's like a double-edged sword, right, um, it takes away some focus, but, like I just enjoy the creative uh, or drift in between creative pursuits. I like to call myself a creative drifter and yeah, there's it. Um, has pros and cons, but I I feel like I can easily answer your question. I think my LinkedIn title says brand um, brand designer and strategist at the moment, but also I'm a business coach, I'm a community leader and so forth.

Josh Hall:

So that's probably good for the client side, but I feel like the uh, the term for all other designers, cause we all resonate with that as the drifter. I'm sure that scares the hell out of clients. I'm sure to hear a drifter, but we all know like after a few years you get an itch to either do something else or maybe add something new to your business or do something new, especially as a full blown entrepreneur like yourself. So I like that, I like the creative drifter. I might steal that and make it my own. You're welcome, go for it. How long?

Jacob Cass:

how long have you been in the design world? I started just creative design in 2007. And that is was my blog, which kind of evolved into my brand studio, where which is involved in community now. So yeah, 2007, I registered my business. I think maybe a few years before that I was dabbling in, you know, pirated versions of Photoshop.

Josh Hall:

Coming up on 20 years. Congrats, man. Let's just kick off with that. Like what? What are the biggest differences now in the world of design and branding? Well, you could throw a web in there too, if you want. Versus, you know, almost 20 years ago.

Jacob Cass:

Well, for context, my career has spanned from being a logo designer to brand identity designer, freelancing, and then my career jumpstarted when I got headhunted by an agency in New York and that's when I moved to New York. For about five years I worked as an interactive designer and throughout that time I was building up my own agency just to get some runway. And then I left to travel for a few years and that's when my business really catapulted because I had more time to focus on my business. So I did the digital nomad thing for three or four years. Then I settled back home in Australia and continued working for myself during all those creative endeavors I mentioned before. So that's the context for this.

Jacob Cass:

So if you look back on you know, you look back and try to connect the dots. It's it's easy to do that, but you know times are different, right? So blog I was heavily into blogging, blogging definitely not blogging blogging back then. And um, that's when I was very deep in the blogging and design world and things were very tight knit now back then. These days, content marketing is mainstream and there's so much noise it's ridiculous. It's like to even get the attention of others. So that's the biggest difference I see is that we're playing in a world with much more competition, but we also have much more opportunity back to back. Then we can dive deeper into that, but that's the biggest difference I see from back then to now, and we're talking, like you know, 15 years.

Josh Hall:

Do you think that holds true mainly just for, like, social media and online presence, or do you feel like that's also true in person like in-person networking and events, meetups and groups and feel like that's also true in person like in-person networking and events, meetups and groups and stuff like that?

Jacob Cass:

I don't do much in-person networking here in sydney. When I lived in new york I I was, you know, every weekend was like a networking event. It was just crazy because everything is so condensed over there in manhattan that is. But, um, I, I'm pretty much a digital uh native and I do all my connections through through the web. So I'm pretty much a digital uh native and I do all my connections through through the web. So I'm pretty biased to that.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, I only asked that because I see so many members of my community killing it and in a lot of different fields as far as marketing, but the surefire one is in-person networking. Like I don't know many barely any of my students who haven't stuck with networking and they're not super busy and they're not getting a consistent pipeline of clients, and I think it's probably a testament to how, like, what we're used to in the online world is still fairly different in the in-person B2B space with corporate business people, because they go to networking groups and event meetups and things in person, and I don't know if they're meeting that many more web designers today than they were even maybe 10 years ago. So I do feel like, despite online things being more cluttered than ever, in person I almost feel like there's even more of an opportunity to stand up.

Jacob Cass:

Yeah, I really enjoy it when I get to an in-person event. There's just not as many in Sydney versus the states that I experienced.

Josh Hall:

Gotcha so different times. I mean gosh, we could take this into so many areas with AI and everything else going on. But tell me about your experience in web. How far did you go down in the world of website and UI and UX and design?

Jacob Cass:

Yeah, so how far do you want to go back? Geocities, myspace I grew up with that sort of stuff, so I was heavily into customizing my MySpace profile. Learning HTML and CSS are the basics of it.

Josh Hall:

By the way, how many designers do you think got their start doing that? Because that was my story, that was so many web designers' story was you customize your MySpace page and somehow they made it, so people just figured it out.

Jacob Cass:

Yeah, I have no idea, but that's how I got into it. And a bit of web design on the side, and then Photoshop as well, and then logos and music, cd covers and things. So that's how I started just dabbling in the creative industry. I never really knew about graphic design as a career back then. I was just dabbling in the creative industry. I never really knew about graphic design as a career back then. I was just dabbling and having fun. And then my careers advisor told me about you know, graphic design as a career and that's when the light bulb went off.

Jacob Cass:

But to come back to your question around web design, that's how I got started. But then I worked on my own website, just Creative, and that's where I learned about blogging and WordPress. So it's really about learning how to use WordPress and themes to customize my own website. That's how I got into web design. And then that kind of exploded and I ended up working for an agency in New York. So I went from being a design student to working for brands like Disney and Nike and Coca-Cola and Nintendo like dozens of Nintendo websites, which was really fun, and that's where I cut my teeth in the web world and created so many websites, mainly UX and UI, not so much development. We had some programmers and expert developers there, but yeah, that's where I got into web design.

Josh Hall:

What type of websites were you doing? Were they like products associated with some of those big brands? I'm always fascinated when somebody has a Rolodex, like you have, of these huge multinational companies. What type of work were you doing for them?

Jacob Cass:

Yeah, so it was all across the board. Nintendo was all gaming websites for their platforms. For Coca-Cola it was like Olympic websites. It was like Powerade websites. We had some whiskey brands in our portfolio Cutty Sark was one of them so we're creating websites for their products. Generally they're a beverage or a game or that sort of thing. We had a few real estate sites as well, and Facebook apps. They were a thing back then. So Disney had one like a storybook app within Facebook. I'm really dating myself here, but yeah, those are the sorts of projects that the agency had and they were a digital agency kind of ahead of the curve for that time. And that's why they headhunted me, because I was so heavily into social and into digital that I got their attention and yeah, that's what we focused on.

Josh Hall:

What were you posting on social back then? Were you doing? Thought leader examples, design tips, tricks. I would never call myself a thought leader.

Jacob Cass:

back then I was literally sharing my design studies. Actually, I was still a student at university and I was sharing my design process and blogging. So I was heavily into logo design back then and I was sharing a lot on logos. But just in the background I was working on websites as well. So it was kind of like logos and websites and that's really how I built my online brand or personal brand back then was through logo and identity design. So what makes a good logo? What makes a bad logo? How much for a logo? So, like, all of my content was focused on logos for a long time and that worked really well for search. So I've had a lot of um, a lot of leads through search back then as well. And, yeah, just through that I built my creative design business. Logos went into identity and that went into website. So that was kind of my creative business back then.

Josh Hall:

I know our mutual friend, James Barnard told me the same thing that he just killed it with SEO for logo designer. That is not uncommon. A lot of graphic designers I talked to who have even the baseline experience of web design do tend to kill it on the SEO world because it seems like most graphic designers just aren't focused on that, Whereas most web designers are. So I feel like what an edge up for brand designers and logo designers to just focus a little bit on their SEO game to stand out like that.

Jacob Cass:

Yeah, man, it was much easier back then. These days there's so much more competition, we have AI results and you have to pay to play in most instances, and google these days is favoring um, excuse me forums and, uh, community platforms versus, uh, small to medium size blogs, which, which, where, which my blog fell into. So I was number one to three on so many key phrases for a long time and a couple of years it kind of just dropped off and it tanked my whole SEO marketing strategy, unfortunately. But I had to pivot and that turned into a summit and so forth.

Josh Hall:

Has that helped with SEO? Because I've actually. I mean, I've seen some of that, but I've still found that, at least for my content of that. But I've still found that, at least for my content, I'm still getting decent rankings on some things, especially if it's just like truly authentic and real, like google is. Despite all the ai slop that's going on right now, it is doing a pretty good job from what I see, with, like filtering out the duplicated stuff and just the straight up chat GPT answers I've actually seen. I guess it may depend on the term and the phrase, but it does seem like they're still prioritizing good human read content. I don't know exactly the situation with your drops.

Jacob Cass:

Yeah, so it changes definitely on the key phrase that you're looking for, absolutely, but just for some context. So our site now gets like six to ten thousand a month, but we were at one stage getting a million, uh, page views a month.

Jacob Cass:

So it's, you know, it's a huge, huge drop off in terms of the, the traffic and that was because, oh, go ahead sorry the reason behind that is because our site was heavily focused on affiliate marketing, so we had a lot of content focused on, you know, like listicles or best laptops for designers and that sort of content dropped off. Some of the like evergreen content is still doing okay. You know how much for a logo design, for example, could be doing okay, but then you get so many other big players come in. You know 99designs or Fiverr or HubSpot or anything, uh, could be doing okay, but then you get so many other big players come in you know 99 designs or a five or um HubSpot or anything, and you know Google prototype prioritizes these huge ugly much better content because they have better resources and the research, well-researched keywords and everything. So it's getting much harder for smaller businesses to compete in, in my opinion. To say, a couple of years ago, I that makes sense.

Josh Hall:

As far as the listicle kind of thing, Um, I mean, I used to blog for elegant themes when I started using Divi for a little while and it was a very different ball game even then. Um, still well under a decade ago, with like the listicle type size, you could get stuff to rank pretty quick where I totally agree. Now that's a different, that's a different beast.

Jacob Cass:

But yeah, totally, and you know best font articles are best, um, you know best gear for designers. That sort of thing is what we were focusing on, and we do have evergreen content and some of our old articles still rank, definitely, um, but yeah, I'm just saying it's much harder to compete these days.

Josh Hall:

You? I mean, it sounds like you got thrown into the deep end with working with huge brands Disney, coca-cola, etc. Like were you doing freelance other than your own websites on the side professionally to make money? Did that help? Like I can't imagine. What were you like early 20s, mid 20s?

Jacob Cass:

I was early 20s burning the candle at both ends.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, Like I don't know, a 22 year old getting Disney. You know, like I can't imagine the presser, yeah that had to come with that.

Jacob Cass:

You got access to their whole database in. You know the, the 3d characters that you, you know, you see on TV. These are like ultra. I just remember like seeing them. You could zoom in forever and ever and ever for like how high depth they were, like the characters, um, like a 3d, 4d kind of looking characters, and I was just blown away on how much detail each character had versus what you just see on a screen. Right, you know it's like a small little pixelated thing, but literally you could zoom in forever and you had this whole database you could type in each character. You download it. So it was pretty, pretty fun.

Josh Hall:

Wow. So when you were getting some of these projects, like, did you have any where you felt like you were just way in?

Jacob Cass:

over your head or where did some of your confidence come from? Yes, definitely, definitely when I. When I first got told about this, these gigs, oh, another one that came up was Jerry Seinfeld. So I got to work with him on his communities and cars, getting coffee brand, and that was like one of those like, oh man, this would definitely not happen if I was still in Australia. Like just the access to those sorts of clients and I'm very grateful for being a part of that agency. I stuck with them for a number of years because they did have a really nice Rolodex.

Josh Hall:

Did you struggle with imposter syndrome? I know back then we didn't call it imposter syndrome, but did you have those feelings or how did you get past, like I mean, yeah, those are, like you know, worldwide recognized brands. How did you, as a young 20, something.

Jacob Cass:

It is definitely intimidating and I can't say that I was the world's greatest designer by any means we had. I was a junior designer and we had senior designers, art directors, creative directors so I'm not going to take ownership for all of the designs I had help. So, yes, there was definitely a lot of learning that went on back then and I made a lot of mistakes and definitely created a lot of crappy designs. But with the help of others, I grew much faster and I actually knew more about web design than anyone else in the agency, so I was kind of like the guy for web. But they also had the thinking and the art direction and the creative direction skills creative director skills that helped guide me or eventually with like brand and logo and identity and design versus just going all in on web design.

Jacob Cass:

I always had loved logo design. I don't know what it was, but that was where my heart went throughout my studies and identity design and typography and that's just what my heart went to and I really enjoyed that side of things. Web design I learned just to build my own website, but also clients kind of needed their site, so it was just one of those things that you learned along the way to accommodate each client and I still love it today. I still build my own websites. I don't program them, but yeah, I'm always experimenting in Webflow and I haven't gone into Figma yet, but Divi and those kind of platforms. I'm always trying new things and I also just love customizing or building my own website from scratch.

Jacob Cass:

These days I even do it in Illustrator, which many people would laugh at. But I love Illustrator because you have so much control over type and I'm just quick and I know the program. So the tools change but the fundamentals don't. And yeah, I think, just to answer your question, I had to think through this. I think it was just a natural tendency to go towards what I love and web design was kind of just a secondary thing which I also love. But brand over I'm not really answering this very well, but I think brand was just an overarching thing that I love the most and that's what I kind of grew to.

Josh Hall:

That's cool, that's yeah, nothing wrong with that. That's the same thing I teach a lot of my members who do a lot of the different things is I feel like it's pretty common for creatives to get to a point where you'll like a lot of things but you have to decide, like, what do you love doing? Like, what do you really like? A lot of people like doing a website, but yeah, if you like branding more and that is really what you want, then by golly do that same thing in the pockets of web design.

Josh Hall:

Like there are people who really love ux and UI, there's people who really like the development and the coding, there's people who love SEO and hate SEO. Like you really can just kind of decide what you want to do. That's actually one of the coolest things about the overarching industry of design that I feel like, is you can really you can pick and choose what you want to do. I mean, I don't know how exactly you instruct with your mentorship program, like how you guys figure out your ideal services, but I love that about this industry. Like there really are so many options to do what you want to do.

Jacob Cass:

Yeah, josh, I've kind of consolidated my thoughts now, and the reason why I love brand is because there's many rabbit holes that you can go down, and since the beginning, logos are a small part of that, but the overarching theme, I think, along this whole journey has been brand.

Jacob Cass:

And it was a few years ago where I learned about brand strategy and I came to the realization that I didn't know shit about brand and it just opened up this whole new world. And even today, after studying brand for so many years, there's always new facets that come up and overlap. So if you move more into marketing, for example, you'll realize that the associations between brand and marketing and how they work together and the intricacies of how brands can grow, that's what fascinates me and there's so many subsets of that and so many things you can study and learn. And, as you heard earlier before it's you know I love drifting between things like we do as creatives, and brand is so big that you can drift between all these things and offer as a client or you can coach on it. Uh, you can this. I guess there's subsections of it's like business, design, marketing, uh, and and so forth, and I think there's just so many subsets, and that's what keeps things interesting for me.

Josh Hall:

So that's why I've gone to brand to answer your question, kind of thought about it more yeah, well, I mean, sometimes you have to be prompted for these type of, especially when you're looking back at a 10 to 20 year journey. I do think it's good. Sometimes you have to jog the memory and be like, yeah, why did I make that decision? So yeah, and sometimes it's not super clear. It seems like you just kind of follow your gut on what you want to do and then you don't really know, like I'm sure we've all made those decisions with our business where we're like I didn't really think about it, I just kind of did it, it just felt right. So yeah, that makes sense. What does a brand mean to you? Like you mentioned some of those subsets, I'm always interested in the term branding because, like you said, it is kind of I mean, I view it as kind of an umbrella term that encompasses a lot of different things. What are the key components of when somebody says brand?

Jacob Cass:

Well, you mentioned branding and it's about shaping the perception of a product or service, and the act of branding is creating those memories in the mind of the consumer. So everything you put out and don't put out is going to craft that perception, and it's different for every single person. So you have to intentionally craft that perception through the act of branding. So that's what it's all about, and there's many nuances of that, but at a high level. That's how I see branding.

Josh Hall:

And is that everything from design, copy messaging, web print, testimonials, style guide, brand, you know like is everything basically in a business part of the branding?

Jacob Cass:

Well, it really is, because everything is part of the brand, right? So it's like the customer service, the business, the print collateral, or you know everything. The customers say sorry, or the staff say and do or don't do. So it's part of the experience, right? So, absolutely, it's all part of the brand.

Josh Hall:

I actually I love that you mentioned the whole customer experience thing, because I think that's so easily overlooked when somebody thinks about their brand and how, like you said, they're perceived. And I learned a lot from this. By Derek Sivers Are you familiar with him at all? Author of so a couple of no, no, so a couple of great books for entrepreneurs. He was the creator of CD Baby, which was the largest independent seller of music online. My old band used to. That's how we sold our albums before we got a record deal. And what I learned from him with a couple of books that he wrote when he built CD Baby it wasn't about the logo. The name was cool, it was memorable. It wasn't about colors or typography or any of that. It was about 100% customer experience.

Josh Hall:

And I learned a lot as a customer back then because we didn't even think about it. We were just like we don't have a record deal, but we want to sell our CDs online and I don't know if there was another option than CD Baby. So I remember we went with that. But it was also like I mean, I was an idiot online, like I what? I was not a tech person and we figured it out, figured out how to upload the artwork and do all that stuff made it really simple. And I do remember the support was awesome, like they were cool. They were a lot of them were also musicians and they would chat with you and they'd be like dude, your album looks sweet, congrats. Listen to track three. That was killer. You're the drummer. They would do that stuff and make you feel awesome, even if you were just a crappy local garage band. All that to say, I learned from that experience branding on a different level than what most people think it was, customer service and how you're treated.

Jacob Cass:

Most people think of branding as the logo, fonts, colors. That's what most people think, and when you peel the layers back, there's so much more than that and that's a big part of our job is to educate clients that there's so much more than just the logo, fonts and colors. That's just 10% of what a brand is, and customer experience is a big part of that. But to to to really craft a brand that endures you, you really need to have strategy. You need to know what your brand uh, you know what your company stands for, what value it brings. You have to understand your customer, who you're trying to serve. You have to understand your customer who you're trying to serve. You have to understand what makes you different versus all the competitors and the category out there. So that's all like the strategic internal aspects of a brand, and we're not even talking about logos, fonts or colors at this point.

Jacob Cass:

You have to understand your brand story. You know what is the message you're trying to send. You have to understand your overall tone of voice. You know how you show up, how you talk, and then your brand identity. And your identity is more than just logo, fonts and colors. There's a big portion of it, but there's other aspects you know the audio side of it, something people often overlook and I like to kind of refer to identity, as, like people, right, every brand has a personality, just like a human does. So if we can create our brands more like a human, they're going to be more relatable as well. So that's the idea, and then you move into marketing and all the touch points and so forth, but that's, in a nutshell, what a brand is all about. You have to go through those steps to really craft a brand that endures.

Josh Hall:

Now you have a personal brand but you also, I think, with some of your endeavors, have a bit. I mean, you have just creative. But how do you, how do you see and how do you work with the kind of marriage of a personal brand, like your face, and you're very clear, it's very clear when you go to Just Creative that Jacob is behind the brand, like your founder, the CEO, all the things. How do you manage? Or what are your thoughts about being a personal brand but also being a little bigger brand in yourself? And I'm selfishly asking this on behalf of a lot of my web designers, students and members who also have like a bit of a personal brand, but they may have a company name behind them but, like with me, I'm balancing joshhallco and Web Designer Pro, which is my community, which has become like it's my main thing and its own thing. So I'm like right in the heat of like figuring out how to remain, like keep them separated slightly, but also remain the brand. What are your thoughts on how to marry those two?

Jacob Cass:

Yeah, these days, personal brands are really growing. I see them as like a flywheel right. Like the personal brand grows the business brand, the business brand grows the personal brand, and they work together. There's different ways to structure it, so, as you said, like they're separate, for me it's uh, together. So just creative is my agency, is my personal brand? It's me, my hair, my face is heavily prominent. I run a lifestyle business. I don't have employees, and that's how I'm positioned. So you have to understand what your goals are. There's pros and cons of both, but it really does come back to who you're trying to target and how much they overlap as well.

Jacob Cass:

So some other examples to consider. You know you have Elon and Tesla. You know you're seeing how Tesla is tanking based on the popularity of Elon going down. But likewise, you know Virgin and Rich and Branson. You know he has dozens of companies, and you know Virgin and Rich and Branson. You know he has dozens of companies and his personal brand has more followers than all of those companies combined. So there's different ways of thinking about it, but at the end of the day, people connect with people and that's why personal brands are much more important, in my opinion.

Josh Hall:

Did you ever have like JacobCastcom? Did you ever run design stuff through just you as a freelancer?

Jacob Cass:

No, it's always been through.

Josh Hall:

Just.

Jacob Cass:

Creative. So that's just the brand name and there's pros and cons of that which we could talk into. But yeah, it comes back to how you're positioned, who you're trying to target and also your other companies. So how closely are they related? And, you know, do you want to manage multiple accounts or do you want to manage one?

Josh Hall:

Those sorts of questions, yeah, Well, you set us up for that Pros and cons personal brand versus a business brand. What are your thoughts on that?

Jacob Cass:

Yeah, Well, I think everyone has a personal brand, whether they know it or not, and it's your choice if you want to grow it or not. And that comes back to this idea of branding. Right, we want to craft that perception. So, if you want to be known, if you want to have a personal brand and there's many benefits of that right your trust goes up because you're seen as an authority, you have influence. That's the idea behind a personal brand. And if you show that you know your stuff, then that's going to feed into your agency or whatever else you're growing as well.

Jacob Cass:

So I see it as a huge plus to have a personal brand, because it's going to elevate your company and any other services that you offer and anything else you bring out in the future as well. That's why branding is so important. It's a long-term play. It shows that you're an authority, you have influence, and that builds the trust and you're going to have a much easier time selling whatever you're selling or whatever endeavor you're going on about. So that's how I see it. The cons is that if you have two, you have to run two at the same time and that takes more effort. But the personal side is much more personal and the company is a little bit more buttoned up and you have to be a bit more formal, I guess, in a way. So there's those sorts of nuances that you have to be careful of and how you communicate and so forth. So yeah, there's a whole bunch of things we could tuck into, but I think that's a good high level.

Josh Hall:

Well, I think you've done it good for future endeavors because you're a drifter with the fact that you are very prevalent on your, your business site. So if you were to, like, do something completely outside of even the design world, I would imagine your name could, like you could remove your name and you would still be known like, you would still have a following outside of just your, your, your main business, the main product. I'm curious, though, like if you were to do you're in sydney. So if you do like I don't know jacob cast, you know boats or something, or surf or whatever like, if you, if you did something that's completely outside of design a passion project or whatever would you buy a new business name for it? Or would you do like a jacob cast, like completely personal brand?

Jacob Cass:

approach it'll probably be like just boats or just keep the just the just uh part of it all, right all right.

Jacob Cass:

yeah, I think there's some legs there, um, in terms of the system. So, yeah, that could be one idea, but it it, at the end of the day, you have to look at this strategy in terms of who you're trying to connect with and who you're up against. Because if there's yeah, there's so many nuances and I think, if we just want to tie it to our name, there's a bit of ego to that as well it may not necessarily be right for what you're trying to do, but there's also brands that do this quite well. You know, virgin comes to mind and you know, but, yeah, who knows?

Josh Hall:

That's good. Yeah, I like the just just. You keep the just just flamingos, your flamingo shop, confuse everybody. Uh, yeah, it is interesting. I mean I remember toiling with this when I started doing online education because my my web design business was a business name in transit studios, and I'm really glad I did that in hindsight because I was able to sell it in 2020.

Josh Hall:

And then when I it's so funny, we're really diving into this because I was recently thinking about that time and whether I wanted to go full into a brand name for my online education or just personal brand, because I was all in on Divi and I had bought DiviWebDesignerscom. I had started the Divi Web Designers Facebook group, which is still one of the biggest Divi, and I had bought DiviWebDesignerscom. I had started the Divi Web Designers Facebook group, which is still one of the biggest Divi groups out there. I was pretty much all on board with going all in on Divi Web Designers. But now I use Circle. I still use Divi. It's a part of my tool stack, but I'm serving web designers using platforms other than WordPress.

Josh Hall:

Now too, in hindsight, I'm so glad I chose to go with a personal name, just because I didn't know where it was going to lead.

Josh Hall:

And then I for me personally, I finally landed and found the name Web Designer Pro and realized like this really encapsulates what I'm doing over here.

Josh Hall:

So that's going to be its own thing, and I'm kind of moving towards keeping joshhallco a bit open-ended, more as me as an entrepreneur, not out of boastfulness or pride, but just out of purely optionality, like I don't know actually what joshhallco is going to look like in the next five to 10 years. I don't have a vision exactly for that because I'm a bit of a drifter too. I know that Web Designer Pro is what I do here. That is super clear there. But now I'm doing brand partnership deals and getting a little more into entrepreneurial consulting and community building, which I wasn't anticipating at all. I'm getting flooded with questions and consulting options for community building and I'm like I really yeah, thank goodness I didn't limit myself. So all that to say, say I think, for anyone deciding, I think that's we've probably outlined some pros and cons and good ideas to think about the pride, the, the selling aspect is something important to consider as well.

Jacob Cass:

I didn't bring that up before. If you're building an agency or something else that has your name attached to it, it's it's going to be harder to sell that with your personal name. There are some nuances around that, like if it was like a last name, for example, that was a little bit more abstract. But you know your future. What am I trying to say? Like the fact that you may want to sell in the future is important to consider.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, and I think we see that in, like brick and mortar stores and blue collar businesses, to where a family business may keep the name going, but I don't know how many online entrepreneurs are thinking about an online business as like a family business.

Josh Hall:

You know what I mean. Like I don't know what your plans with kiddo, with your kiddos and family are, but it seems like that's different. Like I worked with a company called Terrier Steel third generation Terrier. Like I was working with a third generation, their dads, grandpa, you know, their grandpa started it back in the teens or something like that, and they served both world wars and they had an incredible rich history and you know it was like a proud family thing. I don't know if, like, my kids are going to grow up and you know it was like a proud family thing. I don't know if, like, my kids are going to grow up and you know, take on the web design business podcast as a, as a proud, I don't know maybe that would be pretty cool, but I don't know, it was like a hugely successful business, like a steel business, and you're getting.

Jacob Cass:

You know you have a huge inheritance. There's a lot of motivation to keep it going.

Josh Hall:

So I get, so I get that maybe less, much less so for like a podcast and web agency kind of this is no offense to us. I mean, hey, if web designer pro makes it three generations like that freaking awesome yes, it would be although in 50 years, I'm sure, I don't know what the term web designer would be. They'd be like oh, you used to build websites. That's adorable, as they're like, you know, in virtual headland or something I don't know.

Jacob Cass:

Or like typesetters. I can't even like I've seen some old typesetting for newspapers and like imagine doing that as a job. I just can't imagine it so manual. Anyway, that's what they're going to be saying. In 50 years, we could just like type in, you know in from our voice, like, hey, siri, make us a website for this brand, create us a logo.

Josh Hall:

And then boom done, it is Well speaking of AI and technology. Now how is that filtered through in the brand world? I mean, I think, like good luck AI trying to help a brand with all the things we talked about.

Jacob Cass:

I mean it can do some things, but yeah, ai in particular and it's a pretty broad term. But in terms of, like you know, gpt, I've created custom bots and experimented heavily with that. I use it every day chat, gpt and similar tools. Did you do that for?

Josh Hall:

ideation and ideas.

Jacob Cass:

Ideation, copyright, copyright and improving my um, my ideas and the. I've also used it for gen ai, so you know mood boards, uh logo ideas as well, and created custom gpts for those particular things because I found the default settings were just is horrible. But in terms of where it's going in branding, I think it's going to be very powerful in terms of strategy and helping inform decisions using synthetic data this is something I learned from Mark Ritson recently and inputting data to create scenarios to provide feedback on a particular strategy right, so it's going to help with making decisions. This is like the strategic side of branding. On the visual side of things, it's already helping. You know we've seen ads from Coca-Cola that are purely AI-generated and ads are coming out with AI in them, even movies. So things are definitely shifting in terms of the visuals, but also on the strategic side as well.

Jacob Cass:

Something that's for everyone now is the ideation getting feedback, getting ideas and pumping out content that's much faster than it was before like incredibly fast. But there's also cons of that, like there's just so much junk out there and really things are shifting in terms of having information these days. It's what you should be sharing about how you do things and your perspective and your story and how you approach things, not just here's some information, because the barrier to entry is so low. Now that sort of information is so readily available that people are pumping out the basics and they can seem like an expert by just using, like some copy that they've grabbed from ChatGPT. So I think these days we have to show our expertise and how we do things based on that information. So that's the shift I see at the moment.

Josh Hall:

Well, I'll give you a real world example of that. Last year I did a few videos for Circle on how I use it to build my community Web Center Pro and I looked, I did a little bit of research on like other Circle videos that were comparable and similar and it was a lot of what you just said. It was just basic, bland. Like you could tell, they either rushed it or they just did some chat GPT and looked at some of the top features and a lot of them are similar as other ones. So I just completely did like here's exactly how I do it, this is how I'm running it today and those are the top videos.

Josh Hall:

Now, when you search Circle Online Platform or Circle Community Builder, Circle SL and that's where I'm getting a lot of these leads for a community consult, consulting now and I only say that to say real world experience stories and, like you said, Jason or Jacob, your experience, your story, like that is what resonates. That. That is that is the key to stand out from AIs. I really love that you hit on that because I feel like you know, in branding and design, anyone could look up ChatGPT and get some help, but Jacob has a certain way of doing things and you, more importantly, have decades now of experience with being in this industry, which accounts for a lot.

Jacob Cass:

So, yeah, good reminder. I'm completely on board with that.

Josh Hall:

So, yeah, enough said on that yeah, well, I mean, that's the biggie, I think, for designers too. I think we need to know, like, what do you tell clients when clients say, are you worried about ai? Or can I get a tool to just build a website for me? The real question is, how can you defend yourself from ai? How can designers you know be on the front lines against AI and defend themselves?

Jacob Cass:

How can we defend ourselves? Well, if clients are coming to you saying like I can go to AI for this, let them do that, let them go.

Josh Hall:

Come back in three weeks.

Jacob Cass:

Yeah, they're not the clients for you. So, you know, I'm pretty transparent with clients sharing that I'm using AI to improve the process, or I'll show like this image is being created with AI, but we can, you know, purchase an image or get photography done, so it's just being transparent with it. But, yeah, I don't think AI is taking our jobs anytime soon, like the bottom rung definitely, but not for, you know, the creative thinkers and the strategic thinkers, the folks higher up the ladder, I think, are quite safe.

Josh Hall:

How are you on time? By the way, Jacob, Do you have a hard stop at the top of the hour? I'm in test.

Jacob Cass:

No man, I could talk shop all day. But up to you, my friend.

Josh Hall:

Cool, cool, we'll keep it Rogan style and just go for three or four. Yeah, no, I just wanted to hit on a couple other things here, because we're touching a lot of really important topics. I'm sure you see this as you're mentoring designers and stuff. But what do you see? Like I think on that point, I wanted to ask for folks who want to know from somebody who's been in the industry for a while, like you have, what do you foresee over the next, maybe know if you could forecast, even if we look at the next three to five years, with all the other stuff we've talked about, like I guess the question I have for you is, like what do you see? Where do you see designers and predictors? How do how do they stand out over the next few years? Is it what you just mentioned, like becoming a thinker and becoming more of a strategist, with all these things in the mix? What do you?

Jacob Cass:

yeah, I think we can become more strategic for sure as designers and not just be order takers. Right, you know, do this, you know, give, get a brief, do this. I think that you know it can work for some if you're super talented, but the basics are going to are already eroding, right. And when I say the basics, like people are going to canva and online marketplaces and getting just graphics completed on the cheap on the fly and that kind of work is eroding. So you're, we're kind of being forced to go up the value chain in terms of becoming more strategic and becoming a partner with a client, versus just executing on a brief like create me a flyer, create me a logo, because you have to consider that once they've, once you've completed that project, you're going to get back on. You have to get back on the flywheel again and start marketing, get new clients and it's just it's.

Jacob Cass:

It's a tough place to be in. So if you want to be have a more of a sustainable business you're if you want to have a more sustainable business, you're going to have to go up that rung and become more strategic. And there's many ways you can do that and you could go all in on brand strategy, or you could just become a little bit more strategic and learn more about business and marketing and the cross-section of that, and how it works with brands and how they grow. Or if it's on the website, um, how it works in with their business, how how can they uh connect with the customer on a deeper level those sorts of bigger questions. If you can advise on that and help your clients and sell that through, you're going to have a much more uh, much easier time with your, your business.

Jacob Cass:

So that's where I see things going. Also, uh, communities, I think, are going to be huge. There's just so much noise and shallow conversations going on on, you know, social media platforms. You know little emoji great job. You know there's no real connection. It's just like likes and taps, and I think people are thriving, uh are really looking for that connection and feedback and guidance, and that's where I think communities are really going to excel in the coming years, where that connection is more prevalent and you can get that feedback and guidance versus just some shallow conversations.

Josh Hall:

Perfect segue into what you have going on, because I wanted to ask about. Well, first of all, I'm kind of curious what made you dip your toe into the community world, because community is hard like I don't know what your experience has been so hard so far, but it is not for the faint of heart it's. I've sold a lot of things and I'd say that community is potentially maybe the hardest thing to to build. I agree with you mate.

Jacob Cass:

It is bloody hard because the reason why is that it's ongoing, it never ends and everyone has a different understanding of value. People are there for different reasons. You have people that are super engaged, they're super users, they attend everything, they absorb everything. You have the lurkers. You have the commenters. Everyone has a different way of interacting. Some people may come there once a month, other people every day, right, so how do you provide value to those sorts of different members? You have to have different ways of providing that value, whether it be live workshops or replays, or resources or checking in or having accountability, like there's so many different levers you have to pull to really get that value across to each individual, especially if it's a paid membership. You have to really be dialed into each member and I think, yeah, it is hard, and how I got into it was during COVID.

Jacob Cass:

I started two masterminds and well, I started one and that sold out very quickly, so I started a second one at the same time. So we had like a pro group and a beginner group or emerging group, I should say, and that I did that for two years through COVID. Every single week I ran a mastermind and we had that connection because we're stuck indoors. And that led into building a community for designers and that went really well. But I kind of burned out a little bit and lost the passion for it because I set the price a bit too low for the amount of work that was required and I totally underestimated the work involved. So that was my mistake. But I learned from that. And then I ran a summit recently and from that I learned what creators are really looking for, what designers are really looking for, had a lot of conversations, got a lot of feedback, ran surveys and just tried to understand what people really really wanted out of a community and out of a membership. And that segued into my latest release, which is called the Brand Builders Alliance, which is a community membership for brand builders so designers, strategists, entrepreneurs, marketers who want to master branding first off and also build a thriving, creative business.

Jacob Cass:

So there's a lot of communities out there that focus on one or the other like here you can learn branding, here you can learn business, but there's none that can like join them. And I found this sweet spot for brand builders that you know they're creative service business professionals and they love brand, but they're generally on their own and they want a community to connect with and grow with and learn from. So that's where this Brand Builders Alliance came from and, yeah, it's going really really well, loving the feedback coming in and people are enjoying the experience. So it was really about listening to what people are looking for, finding a gap in the market and building for that. And, yeah, that's how I got into community and, yes, it's still a lot of work. I have a team working with me now to help with all the members and the marketing. Well, actually, I'm still doing the marketing, but, like the community management side, I needed a lot of help on. So, yeah, I'll leave it at that.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, because you said earlier you're still a lifestyle designer strategist doing a lot yourself but for the community, did you feel, did you learn pretty quickly on with those masterminds that you needed to get some, some paid help and some team help with that?

Jacob Cass:

The masterminds were easy, to be honest. It was you attended or you had one set time a week and you attended and you kind of did like hot seat kind of coaching, and that was easy because everyone had an attention. You came to talk and you left. The community side of things. You have your content, you have the forum, you have discussions boards, you have members messaging each other. People are there for like other reasons, right, everyone has different reasons. So I find the community a little bit more challenging because of that.

Josh Hall:

That's a good point. I've absolutely, absolutely, 100% found that as well. Last year I went to a tiered model for Web Designer Pro. One of the main reasons was because of that, because it started with just all my courses, the community and coaching all in one, with just one offer. And then I just found so many people who were like I just want, I just need the courses for a little bit. Or some people were like I'm just all about the community, like courses are great and I need coaching every once in a while, but I really just want the community. And some people are like I just want Josh.

Jacob Cass:

I just want, josh, I just want to DM you when I have questions. Maybe it's in the course, that's fine, but I just want to DM you. So now there's an option for all three. I think that may be in the future as well, having a lower tier offering that doesn't have coaching and the live events just has the content available. But really right now I'm focused on the community aspect and making those connections and that's what people are really looking for, at least from my surveys and things. So that's the focus now. Eventually, once it grows, I think, past the 200 person mark, that's when I'd open up it to like a lower tier. But yeah, we're not there just yet.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, no, I totally agree. I mean, that's how I did it with Pro as well. If I was advising you, I'd say, yeah, if it's, if it's working and it's more of the high tier members right now and that's what's thriving definitely build that up, cause, yeah, you get a wave of their. The early stagers, the what did you call me Emergers? Um, it's a different ball game. It's a. If you're supporting them in any form of coaching and stuff, that's it's. It's even more so time intensive, because they're generally the ones who have the time to like be really active and ask the questions. And, uh, you're shaking your head, I know you've seen that as well. It's. It's the people who are more experienced who generally dip in to like get what they need, and then they're busy, um, whereas, yeah, they're early stagers. Yeah, you need, like, yeah, you just need a support system for them.

Jacob Cass:

Otherwise you take it on yourself. They're the ones that come in and absorb everything. They're very active and they have more time, as you said. And the advanced people? They probably come in and watch the replay at 2x speed, duck in and then come back and see an event they want and then RSVP to that and then you won't see them for a little bit.

Jacob Cass:

So that's how it goes and that's exactly what I was referring to, like with the different values and the different um, uh, I guess levels of experience is really important and, like I, when I positioned this, I was really tiering it to intermediate, to advanced or even mental level pros. But in that process you do get a lot of, you know, really passionate, ambitious, emerging creatives that want to level up faster. So we did a survey and we literally have 25% of every single kind of level inside, which I think is good because it allows this cross-section a nice cross-section. But I'd love to hear from allows this cross section a nice cross section? But I'd love to hear from you how you manage the advanced folk and give value to them but also for others as well.

Josh Hall:

It's a very tough line to balance, for sure. What's interesting in my experience with Pro is I did the same thing. I ran a survey last year and I can't tell you how helpful that was, because we got like real feedback and real data and what I learned was we actually had almost 50% of what was in our pro were the like emergers in some sense. But because of the way it was structured, they made progress so fast. So some of them, within six months to a year, were either on track or already exceeded a six figure business. And then suddenly they're like they're a pro, like very good. One of my members she just in over, just over a year just had her first eight K month coming from no design experience last year.

Josh Hall:

So I didn't like the. The challenge that I had was to separate the two. I was like I don't want to separate them completely. It's a wonderful mixture, but you don't want the beginners to take over all the forums and then leave the advanced folks out. You don't want all the advanced people talking advanced stuff and the beginners are like, oh my God, what did I get into? So it is really tricky, I think, for every community that is balancing beginners with advanced folk you do have to kind of strike a healthy chord and maybe just have segmented places or segmented forums where the advanced folks know where the advanced folks are and they can talk.

Jacob Cass:

The fact you're saying I was literally just having this conversation with my manager, like what? So segmenting was like it could be good, but then I also don't necessarily want to segment, because I want the beginners to learn from the advanced people. But like is segmenting something you've done?

Josh Hall:

So I've experimented a couple ways with that, but what has worked really well is by just having a coaching tier, which is mainly just the more established folks. Some emergers can get in there. But, um, it's priced at a point where, like, it's 200 a month right now. So for folks who are just cutting their teeth in design, that's not sustainable typically. So what I've found is they're the ones who are coming to our weekly group coaching calls and they're the ones who have direct DM access to me. So those two metrics alone have helped me keep track of the more advanced folk and then they're just naturally connecting with each other.

Josh Hall:

So we don't really have dedicated forums yet right now. It's something I may think about. But, to your point, I don't want a bunch of really good chatter over here that the rest of the community can't see. So it's worked out really well. But those two things direct coaching with me and then our weekly group coaching calls, which only the coaching tier gets that is what has helped me, like retain the folks who are of that caliber, yeah, and there's probably a lot of ways to go about it, but that's definitely, you know, what worked for me, with being able to do it without say you know, without saying like, oh, nope, not allowed, you're not to this point yet, which I did not want to do okay, nice, good to know cool well, I'm sure we can talk shop on community.

Jacob Cass:

Oh yeah, maybe off offline. But um, yeah, a lot to say on that and a lot to learn as well.

Josh Hall:

Yeah well, I think we're all. I think, with community, it's like we're all learning. I think with community, it's like we're all learning. I mean no one you know since when, like no one can say they're a community expert. I feel like, because it's really fairly new in the sense of community now, like you mentioned, versus like it's not a 20,000 person Facebook group. Community is a very different thing, different beast by nature, but it is awesome. Like it really, once it starts to cook and become its own thing.

Josh Hall:

It really is incredible, my, my personal involvement is much more low low key than it was three or four years ago.

Jacob Cass:

Yeah, I love to hear that. Um and yeah, just seeing like members started, like members creating events and interacting, that's like it's so rewarding to see that and that's what community is about. And it's not like a faceless Facebook group where it's just like you're another number and I've grown huge six-figure Facebook groups and the engagement is so low and people don't see each other and the comments are just like they just get hidden. It's silly, right? It just doesn't make sense. Why would you build up a community that doesn't? You know there's no cross pollination at all.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, and you have to love people like you really do. I mean, I get that sense from you. I don't think you would have dipped your toe into a true community unless you really wanted to help somebody, because you could have easily just done brand services and then high ticket masterminds and did a little bit of coaching. You have to really love people and love seeing their progress. As a community builder. I've seen a lot of people already get into it and I'm like you should probably just be a create, like a creator or a product person or like yeah, like yeah it takes a certain way to love it and you know I only got into coaching during COVID and yeah, like, yeah, it takes a certain amount of time.

Jacob Cass:

You definitely have to love it and you know, I only got into coaching during COVID, but I really loved it. And to see the impact and transformation of people I think is really powerful, and that's one of the biggest values is empowering others, and community is a great, great way to do that. So, yes, absolutely, you do have to have a passion for it. You also have to price things appropriately to get the to reinvest right For a community manager and your time as well and that's the mistake I made in the beginning is just I underestimated the time involved, and you know all the value, what were the?

Josh Hall:

what were the time sucks for you? I'm just curious Was it your personal engagement and posts and coaching and support? What was?

Jacob Cass:

probably that I'd give too much, that I spend too much time there and want to help everyone the constant wheel of either understanding the value, getting events sorted and marketing as well and for the return, that I wasn't as much as I was hoping for when you know you have so many other lucrative things that can be done right versus helping people, which I love to do. But you know there has to be a good balance and I've learned from that mistake. I've spoken to consultants about my challenges with the past community and I've overcome them for well, working on overcoming many of them for this next phase in terms of getting rid of the things I well, getting rid of the things I don't enjoy, posting replays and just getting systems in place and those sorts of things it just took some thinking about what was working, what wasn't working, what I liked, what I didn't like, and then creating a plan on how to actually make something that I do enjoy and can provide max value to the customers.

Josh Hall:

Well, I think it's good that you came into the community world as a seasoned entrepreneur, because everything you just said there I know you learned with your business. I think somebody like getting into business as a community builder like I would run an agency well before I started a community. For sure, Just cause you'll, you'll, you'll cut your teeth better.

Jacob Cass:

It's funny you say that, because I've never really had the inkling to build an agency. I've always just wanted to be like a soul, like a lone wolf kind of soul flyer. But when it comes to the community it's like the complete opposite. It's like you, you're getting more team members and you have more people in that you have to help. So it's kind of like well, I think it's it's a different.

Josh Hall:

Uh, it's a different mechanism too, because when you're a service provider, you can stay a solopreneur and niche down and have higher rates and literally just work with less, but like there's just less people you're talking to. But as a community builder, even if you're not coaching them one-on-one, you're still. There's still like a hundred people in your mind or you see them all the time and it's it just takes more bandwidth. So I definitely have learned that as well. It's even different as a course creator.

Josh Hall:

I mean, I had over 2000 students in my courses, just the courses alongside my community, and I see their names when they order, but I don't really know them, I don't know their story, I don't know where they're at in their business pros and cons to that and. But yeah, it's a whole different world when you have them together and you start to see people and you get to know them, and then it's awesome. But it's also literally it's like a bandwidth filler. So, to your point, I think that's what people underestimate. It's like every new community member, depending on their level of engagement, is, I don't know, maybe a half an hour to an hour more of your time a week. So you do that at scale. That's where people get into trouble.

Jacob Cass:

Yeah, that's why the lessons I learned last time and that's why I have a community manager and I'm training to help with that sort of thing as well. So, provide max value to the members is the biggest thing I'm trying to train them on, and we have like a whole system, like a member lifestyle tracking system that we've put in place to understand what each member is looking for, what type of member they are. Have they engaged? Have they filled in their for what? You know how? What type of member they are, have they engaged? Have they filled in their onboarding form? Like, have we sent them a check-in DM? Like we've got a system in place and that's helping a lot. So, with the bandwidth in your mind, because you don't have to remember it, we have, like we have someone else like doing it, which?

Josh Hall:

is that's killer? Are you using Circle? What are you using? What's your tool?

Jacob Cass:

stack. We are using Circle and then Airtable for a database.

Josh Hall:

Gotcha Cool. Yeah, it's fascinating, man. I mean I just chatted with Chris Doe recently and he's kind of in the same boat. They're figuring out their community too, which is very small. It's funny because somebody of Chris Doe's stature is running a community that's smaller than mine and it's a similar price point. I like, wow, that's kind of wild to think about. I mean, it's a different, bit of a different is this the pro group you mean?

Josh Hall:

yeah, it's pro group. Yeah, it's pro groups like 250 people. Um, yeah, and it's, I think, 250 a month, so it's very comparable. Um, so it's kind of interesting just all that to say, like somebody of that magnitude and scale online is is still probably intentionally running a smaller community like that.

Jacob Cass:

Yeah, I've heard different theories on this and the idea of community, like larger communities, you lose the connection and that's the double-edged sword. It's like if you grow to that size, how do you actually provide value and give the coaching support you need to each member needs when you have that many people? Yeah, so I've spoken to people, have been part of it. There's a lot of great content in there, but they just lack that kind of like close support. Yeah, and that's why they've moved on as well. So it really depends on what you're looking for. I think that would be a really great place for someone like early in their career, where they just consume all the the content but may not necessarily get all the guidance that they need.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, I can't say too much cause I haven't been in there, but from what I gather it's more of the intermediate. It's kind of cause he wants to get people. He told me in our chat that he wants to get people to 20 K a month recurring. So that's pretty like that's. You know, that's like a meat, that's like an intermediate, that that's pretty, like you could still retain closeness and that's kind of the balance I've struck with. Pro. 250 to 500 is like you're going to need to probably really be intentional about grouping and making sure people are aligned with who they can find easily and they know who the people who are there most are 500 to 1000 is. I think that would still be considered a smaller community they can find easily and they know who the the people who are there most are 500 or a thousand is. I think that would still be considered a smaller community compared to others, but I think over a thousand is like I don't know if I would run a community over a thousand.

Jacob Cass:

Yeah you know what I mean. We've worked at ours max, at 200. That's our maximum and just to keep things close, close knit. But I agree with you, it's, there's challenges that come with the scaling of it yeah, interesting.

Josh Hall:

Well, like I said, we could rip on this all day, so, but this has been great. I love chatting community, obviously, yeah, man. Uh, well, jacob, it's been great. Dude, thank you so much for your time today and, uh, I really enjoyed getting to hear your story and how this has played out for you. Some really really solid, timely thoughts about personal brand and and a more you know, business brand and branding in general, how that all lays out together. So, yeah, where should people go?

Jacob Cass:

Yeah, um, if people want to connect with me, just creativecom is my main website. There is a freebie on there called the Branding Briefcase. A pop-up will come up to download it. There's a whole bunch of things in there for designers, creatives, branders, e-books and PSD files and scripts and all that sort of stuff is for free, obviously in exchange for an email address. The Brand Builders Alliance community you can visit at joinbbacom to learn more. It's for brand builders and creative service business professionals and, yeah, I'd love to connect with you If you have further questions. I'm pretty active on Instagram and LinkedIn and email as well.

Josh Hall:

Heck, yeah, man. Where did the flamingo come, by the way?

Jacob Cass:

The flamingo. Yes, just creative has a 3d mascot flamingo, uh, for for our brand. And yeah, it just came from a few years ago. Um, it came out, it uh. Our brand has always been pink since like 2007.

Jacob Cass:

And I recently did a job for a client and they had a mascot and I was like we didn't, we didn't have a mascot, what would it be for our brand? And I just put it out there randomly, like sharing Flamingo photos, and like, oh, this is cool, and if I was doing like a Photoshop mock-up or something, I'd use a Flamingo. And everyone just started sending me Flamingo things. This reminded me of you, this reminded me of you, and this Flamingo really got stuck in people's minds. So it kind of just became a small mascot for a couple of years, just on the side. Whenever I was like creating things in AI or experimenting, I'd use the flamingo and just share that and it stuck. And then AI came about and I just created all these hundreds of different mascots to find the one that could actually suit for our brand. And then I found one and then hired a human to actually bring it to life like a 3D model and we animated it and we're actually printing a 3D model of it now.

Josh Hall:

Oh cool.

Jacob Cass:

Yeah, so that's where I came from and we kind of leaned into it more and we have some fun phrases like stand the flock out, let's flaming go, and there's a lot of puns you can have with.

Josh Hall:

Oh, oh, dude, the dad, the dad puns are endless, yeah yeah, absolutely has a lot of legs, that's yeah, there, it is all right. Well, we're off the rails now, so that'll probably be good, but great stuff, man.

Jacob Cass:

That was awesome all right, thanks you guys.

Josh Hall:

All right, friends. Well, I hope you enjoyed this one. I would love to hear if this gave you some clarity or helped you at least figure out how to position yourself if you're doing both branding and marketing and design altogether. Leave us a comment at joshhallco, slash 376, which is where the show notes for this episode will be, along with all of the notes and links we mentioned. And again, you can go check out Jacob at his website, just creativecom. Links to all his socials and to connect with him will be both there and the show notes for this episode.

Josh Hall:

So a big thanks to Jacob for coming on here on this one and for sharing. Look at somebody who's been in the industry as long as he has, and as a total pro, I think it's super cool to see how they're continuing to evolve as well in this industry of design, whether it's web, whether it's graphic, whether it's branding or all of the above. So can't wait to hear how this one helped you out. All right, friends, I will see you on the next episode or via the comments at joshhallco, slash 376.