A Lean Approach to Adapting Agency Changes and Innovation With Kevin Barber And Chris Dubois

In this episode, Chris DuBois, CEO of Lean Labs, and Kevin Barber, Head of Growth at Lean Labs, join Gray to discuss the challenges and opportunities of leading an agency through change.

Show Notes

Kevin Barber is the Head of Growth at Lean Labs, focused on helping innovative companies make their marketing profitable so they can scale. Father of 3, lives in Tampa, FL, and loves bikes, boats, and building brands.

Chris DuBois is the CEO at Lean Labs, helping build growth teams and websites for brands that deserve to win. Father of 2, and husband of 1. Lives in Portland, Maine, and enjoys exploring the outdoors, and reading a good book.

In this episode, Chris DuBois, CEO at Lean Labs, and Kevin Barber, Head of Growth at Lean Labs, joins Gray to discuss the challenges and opportunities and the nitty gritty of transitioning from one role to another and the importance of having the right role for each team member.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• How agencies are adjusting to the shifts brought about by the pandemic.
• The criticality of having the appropriate chief executive officer for Lean Labs.
• Chris's journey to becoming the CEO of Lean Labs.
• The effect of the transition to Kevin's leadership.
• The responsibilities that were delegated during the transition.
• Kevin's perspective on the distinctions between being an agency owner/business owner and a CEO.
• Chris's personal path before joining the Lean Labs team.
• Who Lean Labs is intended for.
• The purpose and function of Sprocket Rocket.
• Lean Labs' future partnerships with Impact.
• Lean Labs' priorities for the year 2023.
• The most vital skills that Chris was able to swiftly acquire.
• The growth priorities for 2023.
• Strategies for keeping the team aligned in the face of change and innovation.

Presenting Sponsor: ZenPilot

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Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Sprocket Rocket Website
• Lean Labs Website
• The Growth Playbook
• Growth Grader
• Kevin Barber's LinkedIn
• Chris DuBois LinkedIn
• Gray MacKenzie's LinkedIn
• EOS Tools

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All right.

Welcome back to Agency Journey is your host
Gray MacKenzie from ZenPilot.

This week I get the pleasure
of bringing on a couple of good friends

from the Lean Labs crew, Kevin Barber

and Chris DuBois from Lean Labs.

Guys, welcome the podcast.

I'm excited to have you here
and do a three way podcast.

It's been a while
since it's been a three way.

Yeah, so be fun because I did.

So I wanted to bring you in
for a couple different reasons.

One, the love story is awesome.

Kevin We've

we've chatted on the podcast

before, but you guys have me,

I mean, there's a whole bunch of just
kind of evolutionarily labs that's come up.

But also one of the topics
that I feel like I'm talking to agency owners

more and more about in the last
probably year and a half,

I feel like COVID made people reevaluate
a lot of things is

I don't just want to exit the business,
but I want to end off

some of the day to day responsibilities.

And so some of the evolution,
Chris, of your role in that as well.

Kevin, why don't I toss it to you
first, though?

Can you give us kind of the
what is Lean Labs today

and kind of overview of your role versus
Chris's role?

How do how do we get to where we are?

Yeah, sure.

So for anybody, not less, not not aware.

So I started in Lean Labs in 2013
as the founder

and then and as a founder,
typically you would take that CEO role.

But I, you know, I also recognize
and we can talk about this

maybe a little bit later in terms of
what is what is even the goal of a business.

But but for us in our phase now, you know,
nine years in next year, we turn ten.

You know, we're in a phase where

the CEO role is not appropriate for me.

And I went out seeking out who
who would be appropriate for that role.

Right.

So Chris has been on the team
for for several years.

And the the deal is, is that,
you know, his leadership background

and skills and ability to be patient
and cool in all situations, which I lack

is is enables

him to be simply
a superior team leader than me.

Right.

And then also I enjoyed

I enjoyed working the team
when we were seven or eight or maybe nine.

But now that we've crossed the 20 mark that

that feels like that takes me off of my core
skill set.

So, you know, it's really,

I think, the job to always have
all the players in the right position.

Chris the CEO, right player, right
position me not as CEO and I am formerly

the head of growth and that puts me
in doing the stuff that I really enjoy.

So so that's the deal.

Yeah.

What was Chris, I come to you
about what the road looks like in a minute.

But Kevin, did you look externally before

deciding to promote Chris?

Well, so I am always going to make
the very best choice available to me, right?

The and but

it was relatively clear to me
probably a year.

I mean, Chris has known
this was a path for a while,

but it was relatively clear to me
probably two years ago

that that that's where we would be going.

So so yeah.

But yeah,
I considered the entire planet, right?

So like in terms of
and I'll always do that for every role.

So right. That makes sense.

Chris Kevin, you said you knew that
this could be

could be a path or part of a path, like it's
just something he's wanted for a while.

What does it look like today
in the day to day for you to

to move from what you were doing into this
role, maybe just talk about that transition?

Yeah.

Well, first I just found out that

Kevin looked at the entire population
of the world and chose me.

So that's a that's a win.

Um, yes.

I mean, we, we had talked about
so like before

stepping up to be CEO as head of operations
here.

And I did that for two and a half years.

Um, so I, Kevin, I have already been
kind of doing a lot of this

that we're still going to be doing.

And you hear a lot of people use the U.S.

system as a visionary integrator combo,
although I don't think

Kevin's a fan of being called a visionary,
he still is.

I prefer looking at it like the revenue
generator profit optimizer.

And in that sense, we've been doing that
for four years, right?

Kevin finds ways to sell things

and all these cool programs
and we're building out these other brands.

Then I'm looking at the team.

How do we make this more effective,
more efficient

so that, you know, bottom
line is looking really good.

And so as we move into the CEO role, it's
doing a lot of that still maybe

looking a little further out and also
focusing more on assembling the team now.

Right.

Like who do we who do we need on board in
order to make all these these things happen?

And then as

Kevin starts working the like building
get growth as a brand and filling that role

as head of growth, I can keep helping
to make all these things happen here.

So Kevin, this is your time investment

like average weekly
hours worked changed at all. Hmm.

That's interesting.

So I'm a

I'm a I'm a hard worker.

So so the the deal is,

is that probably not a lot yet,
but I know that I have a little bit more.

I'm working on becoming the person that knows
I have more freedom to step away.

And not everything has to be addressed
for the team.

Every single minute of the day, and that
freedom is already showing up a little bit.

And part of it is me
just giving myself permission.

All right.

So like, for example, one thing we did

this year is I took off from the
end of June until mid-August.

I opened my laptop once.

What did I open it for to make a presentation
I wanted to make,

you know, so so that was pretty awesome.

I didn't use my phone quite a bit
because I enjoy working,

checking with the team,
doing stuff like that, you know. Right.

And so I would say that though,
I'm probably unlikely to slow down

in a substantial way for several years,

I enjoy this sport.

What that that resonates with me a lot.

What were some of the tangible things
that got handed over in Chris in your role

changing from leading operations
to now taking over the CEO role?

Yeah, so I think

a lot of the tasks we almost we're slowly

kind of handing some of these things over
because we knew at some point

this would be the case where I would step up
and move ahead of growth.

And so

but now

managing, you know, all of the team reviews,
all of the I'm looking in the books

a lot more for the revenue numbers,
making sure everything's looking good.

Um, I'm doing a lot more with clients
across the board

rather than just the ones that I'm kind of
directly responsible for and assisting with

and helping the team have everything
they need to be successful.

There.

So I'm also building those,

those relationships,
working client expectations, stuff like that.

Um, do you have a routine around like

having to check in with every client once
every six months or once every three months?

Is there anything in

not necessarily in stone,
but like here is a common practice

versus just have you get to touch base
with this person?

Yes, we're checking in.

So obviously the team,
if they get any red flag, stuff like that.

Right, they can

tip us off and we we jump in.

We assist as as necessary.

We're checking in
for like probably quarterly,

which is a client check in every
so often, also joining with our sales teams

just to make sure that we have total
alignment for,

you know, between marketing
and sales on everything going on.

And yeah, I'll join
some like campaign strategies,

stuff like that just to listen in.

But one of the important things
that's probably will resonate with agency

owners too is you don't want to necessarily
attach yourself,

the owner, as what they're paying for.

You want it to be the outcomes
that your team is able to deliver.

And so we have had that before
where clients just want to talk to Kevin.

They think they're paying for like Kevin.

And so trying to avoid that with me
where no, you're getting the growth team

at Leanne Labs
and we're able to provide everything you need

and we'll pull in everyone
that we need in order to make that happen.

And so leaning on

that, yeah, we jump in whenever we need to

and the client knows that anyone on the team
can help resolve their problems.

Yeah,

well, you guys have done a course
I've done on it.

Leanne Labs,
which I want to get to in a second.

But I think one of the last questions
that I had, you have both mentioned,

hey, this is coming for a while
and what have you.

What was what was that timeline first?

And the second part of that question,
I mean, Kevin, maybe I'll throw this to you

is, you know, what would you do differently
or how would you if you're talking

to another agency owner who's like,
I'm I'm still passionate about the agency.

I'm not trying to exit this thing
or switch careers or do whatever else,

but I don't like
this is not my zone of genius

to handle
all the all the CEO responsibilities.

What should they think about
or do differently based on your experience?

Right.

So so let me zoom out real quick
into like my view of what

why do you even have an agency
like it in you?

The listener might have an agency
for a different reason than I do,

but I look at having a business

as a vehicle to ultimately achieve, you know,

significant wealth and independence
like that is my goal, right?

So as a result of that,
if you think about, you know,

Robert Kiyosaki is cashflow quadrant, right?

So like when you own a business or agency
that you run

and you're the CEO of,
you own a job, you are self-employed.

Does it make sense?

You're not a business owner,
you're not a business owner.

And tell that agency you can go away from it
for six months, nine months, come back in.

It's bigger, right?

The decisions were made.

People were hired, clients acquired,
you know, results achieved without you.

Right.

And at that point,
you dream business owner and

and then from there, like,
like my ultimate intention

is to make it down into an investor
to where I have multiple businesses

that, you know, at a young age
I was in network marketing, truth be told.

But someone said that, hey, you're, you're,

you're job to be wealthy
is to create an income producing asset.

And you take the income from that and you
put it into another income producing asset,

and then you take the income from that

and put it into another income
producing the asset.

If you do that enough times,
your asset can be wherever you want.

And I was like, That sounds good.

I'll do that.

So for us,
you know, Lean Labs pays for the party.

It is what drives our client results.

It drives
our revenue and enables us to invest.

We launched Sprocket Rocket
several years ago.

It's, you know, seven figure thing,

you know,
and it's a design system for HubSpot and,

you know, that is
that is our second income producing asset.

Our third income producing asset is
get growth, which is our accelerator.

And that's for working with brands that go
through growth, through workshops with us.

So we're
branching from 1 to 1 into one to many.

Our fourth one, not much talked about,
but it's it's brand new.

We just did a joint venture with impact.

So like the the deal is is that
we're creating we're creating the businesses

that have their revenue
generating income producing assets

that I personally do not have to be a part
of every piece of it.

I do not want to own all those jobs.

And and then at the end, there will be
ultimately a CEO of all of them.

Right?

Right. Like that's that's the mission.

And then I love creating

systems and growth maybe stronger
on the ideas than the actual complete system,

more of a starter than the finisher on that.

But I love the concept
of creating the strategy

and the workshop
in the first part of the campaign.

And then I love other people to finish it,
you know,

and that that puts me in a spot
where I enjoy work.

So that that's also important too.

Yeah, makes sense.

Chris Kevin as are

as are so-called
visionary did not answer my question

about how long it happened
but the context was really helpful.

So I'm going to go to you

to finish the finish the answer
since you're the closer here,

how how long was it coming
and is there anything you would change

and kind of handover process?

So probably a

but a year maybe.

I don't even know.

Yeah, roughly a year.

We'll go with that.

As far as changing like with process
between Kevin and I mean I'm

so I, I got started working with Lane Labs

coming off active duty in the Army.

I had you know did seven years
infantry officer despite popular belief

running around with a rifle, blowing stuff
up and jumping out of airplanes is not

it doesn't correlate
very much with marketing off the cuff but

yeah so I already had to like double down
and learn everything I could have.

So I mean, I like
this is a very small portion of the books

I've read and courses I've taken
and everything just catch up on marketing.

And so as soon as we started talking about me
stepping up to the CEO

role is like, All right, what do I need to do
to be successful in this handoff?

And so what is Kevin doing on a day to day
basis that I can start pulling over

and start learning? What are what books
can I read, what you know,

what course it's going to take there? And

so I think
it was pretty easy to do the handoff.

Yeah, I think we even did it probably a bit
earlier than we had initially planned

because we just felt it was a we're there.

Right?

It's kind of like when you have like
imagine you have you're single, you have kids

and you're dating someone
and you know, after a long while,

you announce to the kids that you're going
to go ahead and get married.

And they're like, Yeah, okay.
I kind of saw that coming.

And and like, that's kind of what it was like
for like we had our meeting with the team

while we were inbound to formally announce,
you know, Chris, the CEO.

And they're all like, Yeah,
we pretty much saw that playing out.

Although I don't believe it was ever
mentioned.

Yeah.

You know,
and so we've been working towards that.

How did you guys first get connected?

So my first marketing meets infantry
officer story, so it's not not surprising.

Yeah.

So my degree is in English
and the first time I was considering

leaving the military,
I wanted to find a remote job.

So I spent more time at home and applied to
lives as a content copywriter and was hired.

I worked with Lean Labs for a bit,
but as a an officer in the army,

you don't get to choose when you leave.

You got a request leaving and they denied it
for multiple years in a row.

So I had to call Kevin.

Hey, I can't do the two job things,

you know, until this happens.

But then come 2019, when they finally said,
All right, we'll let you go

this time, I called Kevin
to get a letter of recommendation.

He's like, Well, actually,
maybe we can make something work here.

And so,

so ran.

Yeah.

And then for me, like, that's,
that was the easy, easy decision.

You know, one, obviously he can do the job.

He's undersells his ability
to do marketing. Right.

But he was already doing the job
just like in terms of running the role.

But I knew he had leadership expertize
that greatly exceeded that.

So coming on in Leanne Labs,
he became the integrator, right?

I have no issue with that word integrator.

I think that's a good word.
Just don't call me a visionary.

I like I like head of growth.

That's the title I like.

But so back to Chris.

Like, you know, I would love nothing

more than to build a team of veterans
that love to

take accountability on their work
and do great things.

And like,
I would love nothing more than that.

So so that was an easy decision
to bring Chris on, recognizing his skills

and set him up to go and do things that,
frankly, he's going to massively outperform

me in.

Sure.

Let's talk about the portfolio a little bit,
because I think your point is

super well taken. But

regardless of how

he stumbled into running agencies
or service based businesses or whatever,

whether you came into it with the idea
that, hey, I'm trying to build this cash

producing assets and I'm trying to create
independence and create wealth or not.

At some point,

hopefully most people are waking up
to do all this work.

Like hopefully there's a great a great payout

from it that's coming as well.

So the portfolio was really interesting.

I don't know about the joint venture
with it. In fact.

So as much as you want to share them here,
but let's just take them one at a time

on the lean lab side right now.

And I was going through
some of the funnel last night

and looking at some
of the materials right now,

just kind of the lean lab service

bucket, whom I was just for in a in a box
so that everyone's familiar.

Let's let's start
there and let's go to the Sprocket Rocket

and talk about what that looks like.

Sure.

So the lean labs dot is pretty small.

It's the center of the bull's eye.

So we're looking for funded startups
and tech scale ups like that.

Is it? So it's very specific.

One of the challenges of the Lean Labs

is that we get a lot of leads
that don't meet that criteria.

Heck, we do a lot of meetings
that don't meet that criteria.

So part of the part of the growth part

is that, you know, because we have
that lead flow last year we sent,

you know, we have five partners in growth
that are other agencies

with other disciplines and, you know,
with with similar strengths and processes.

And we set about 800,000 in revenue
to those to those partners.

So like, so recognizing that
we have lead flow that like excess lead flow

is part of part of the motivation
of setting up get growth.

And when we, we send clients
through workshops and set them up

with the appropriate partner, that's not us.

So that's one system that we've set up.

And then also we've been doing
designs on HubSpot

since 2015 is
when we were exclusively HubSpot for CMS.

So doing Sprocket Rocket only made sense
to build our own design system

when it really was for us
and they're like, we could productize this.

Gary Vaynerchuk came to an inbound years ago
and he said, If you're not working on

a strategy that puts your business
out of business, don't worry somebody else's.

I was like,
what would what would just really,

you know, really change the game and building
bespoke websites

on HubSpot like a killer design system
that would change the game.

So like so we went and built it.

What is the Sprocket Rocket business model
today?

Is it upfront pricing per
se or per se pricing, monthly pricing.

Right.

What's the revenue per?

Yeah. So

up until now, just recently, it's

been simply you buy a license
and it's forever access, right?

But we spent gosh, I think the entire summer

doing weekly office hours and Ames
where people can come in

and explain to us what they're dealing with
and what they're looking for.

So we're actually, you know,
we're actually going to be rolling out

a SAS model here and we're going to run that
for we have a 75 day test.

We're going to be running
to see how that plays.

We did a

we did a prior SAS test, just a really small
one, and all of them are still doing it.

So 100% retention with no system whatsoever.

So small, small, you know, fits

you can kind of on your two hands sample size

but but the deal is is that right now
it's buy a license you have access forever.

We have kind of small, medium, large.

And then in terms of the tier of product
and then we're we've

launched a really successful agency program.

We were really
we thought agencies would be a pain.

They're the best.

They're kicking butt.

And it's
now more than 50% of sprocket rocket.

Wow. That's cool.

How much are you willing to talk about
this collab with impact?

Oh, I don't

I don't think I mean, we don't want it
to be a secret part of the agency journey.

If you go long enough and meet enough
people, build enough friends.

I mean, I've had merger
and acquisition conversations

at least a half a dozen times
with really great people.

But for whatever reason,
I don't see a co-owner thing.

I guess it's just autonomy, right.

And but but the idea of, you know,

impact and lean labs

coming together and making something together
is really exciting.

So we did that.

We've launched Impact Labs

and Impact Labs is we're going to be
we have the systems and tools,

their sprocket rocket
and team members to create websites

and an impact is pushing in
their direction are incredibly strong

and coaching and mentorship to coming into
teams and and helping them do inbound well

and then and then forward
they have a lot of lead flow just like we did

that doesn't doesn't tap that dot so
so for all the website work

you know we're set up at impact labs
in the system for for doing that

which is going to be a lot of fun.

Yeah. That's what makes a ton of sense,

especially with

the, you know, the deal volume
that they're throwing off,

plus what you guys have in the system
to go to go deliver on that.

Yeah.

And I've liked Bob

ever since the moment that I met him
other than his age, that annoys me a little.

Every other part of every other quality
he has is fantastic.

So for some reason, Chris's age,
I don't have to bring it to him all the time.

It also still offends me. So. So there we go.

Yeah. That's awesome. What?

I mean, where as recording this, we're,
you know,

almost halfway through Q4 here in 22

years, we're looking at a 23.

What is Chris,
I'll throw it to you first for the lean left

side, like big priorities,
big pushes on that side.

And Kevin, I'd love to hear like
with the portfolio, what are we pushing on

kind of next?

Yeah, specifically on lean labs

pushing

through, continuing to systemize
everything that we're doing.

We we've been able to get some great results
and we want to make sure

that we are codifying the path
that we took to get those results.

So now that we have this

and then when we look at tapping
into some of Kevin's site here,

some of the other brands that we're
we're building, like we can leverage

everything
Lean Labs is doing in order to support those.

Yeah.

Doing that
where we work with ten brands at a time.

And so just being able to spend the year
working with ten brands and crushing it and

hopefully people keep staying on our waitlist
ready to jump on

as soon as we got an open slot. And

yeah, how

do you I'm assuming you fill
those ten spots on a rolling basis.

Well,
I mean, we're kind of bringing them in on a

consider it like a B team basis.

So so our B team is nine K 12 K per month.

Frankly.

And then when you move into our ten X program
that starts at 18 K Month,

those are the one way limit to ten.

And and the deal is, is that

we have to be seeing profitable
customer acquisition happening before

we can move into the next program, you know,
scale something that's not making money.

Right.

And so that's that's
basically the way that's structured

and yeah, the

like while we're building these other brands
like I'm still I'm head of growth

not just not just whatever so I'm that what a
one of our most important clients

this morning I'm still going to jump in
and make sure things are going well.

It's not my client, though. Right.

And and the deal is, is that we learned
so many lessons that we can apply

to other clients in our own businesses
that will never shut down.

But we may get to the point

where just the criteria
to be a lean lambs client becomes very,

very tight.

Right.

And now that we have five partnerships
with get growth, frankly,

we can send that lead flow 2 to 2 others
or one of them does SAS tech.

Right.

So, so that will just continue to go
that way.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Chris what

Kevin when we come back to you
for their support for you

kind of hey, here's our big goals.

Here's a stuff
I'm I'm excited to push on. But

Chris, what are the like?

It's just been super cool from my perspective
to see a lot of the, you know, the systems

prior to, you know,
you guys have made the move.

You're running on click up.

But even prior to that,

some of the structure that was in place

and obviously like thoughtfully designed,
you guys run liquidplanner if I'm remembering

right back in the day,
you know, and have a lot of that built out,

but what are some of the transferable skills
or most important skills in pulling it out?

I assume a lot of that stuff and natural
been towards

the organization comes from your background.

There's probably some selection
bias there in terms of

how you became an infantry officer in your
your service.

But what are the what are the big skills
that you feel like you've been able to take

and apply really quickly in a short
timeframe to the agency space?

So as an infantry officer,

they're going to like beat this into you
in your first like after basic course.

Is that you, you're a
an expert in synchronizing assets

in time and space, right?

You got to make sure that when you are
calling someone to drop some bombs,

there's not people walking in right there and
you're like timing everything and doing it.

So you keep moving so that you're constantly
on the offensive, seeking that initiative.

Not that we need turn this into like a a war
chat and get everybody.

Well, it sounds cool.

Sounds cool.

And like, that's what I want
Leanne Labs doing. It's just a metaphor.

Not real bombs.

More like. Like marketing campaigns.

Bam, bam.

Yeah.

But so being able to look at everything
going on at once and saying, how do,

how do all these pieces fit in on a actual,
like, kind of plan, like on a timeline

in the

various directions that they have to go right
across platforms, everything else.

How do we bring this together in a way
that we're actually achieving that

that end goal, staying on the offensive
continually moving forward,

being able to adjust as we need to

and hit that. So that's one area.

The other the other piece is getting
the feedback, just being able

to receive feedback from clients,
from the team, from the market

and then not be, like I said, that
going to get offended by that.

My last job in the Army,
I was working with drill sergeants every day

and so there is very little chance
that someone's

going to say something
that offends me at this point.

But being able to like take that in

action, it

figure out what do we need to do to grow so
that this doesn't this isn't an issue again

or, you know, what is working that we can now
double down on

and I'm putting it into play fast
that speed to action.

Right.

And just being able to to get something
and not sit on it for a month

which like yeah
we still have some issues with that where we,

some things might sit there for a bit
and we're working on, on those.

But like the faster we can take action
on everything, the faster we can learn.

And so I'd say those are,
those are probably the best skills for

cross functioning here.

Kevin

The rest of the portfolio here in the 23,
is there one

that's got your main attention or so?

One of the big goals for the, for
the other suite, the rest of the products.

Right?

So basically the what I've been working on
for the last 11 months,

I can draw on a single sheet of paper
and it's a little bit

a little bit depressing,
but I'm pretty excited about it.

It's finally coming together.

But what we've basically realized
is that when we struggle

with clients, we're bringing them in

and and there are still
some foundational components that that

they don't exist the concepts,
but they don't exist.

Right. I can't link to them.

We're not tangibly using them.

So so some of the I want to go super long
but the idea is, is the whole idea behind

get growth is to have the workshops that
literally create our ideal client, right.

So there are six steps
that if someone has those built in,

it makes them frankly ready
for what we're good at at Lean Labs.

And I'm, I'm building
the get growth workshops in order

to whether they work with us or not, there's
no prerequisite whatsoever, no intention.

We're only going to get more picky
on who we take on.

But I'm going to solve for those six dots
so that brands have have the things

they need to go to to any agency
but do so successfully.

And that's really fun.

I get to do that as well as I continue

now instead of having to jump in
and get in the middle of every conversation,

I just get to throw
these little penalty markers.

I got a yellow one, I got a red one,
I got a throw them on the field, the team

and I probably throw as many or more

on the field
now like, Oh, here's how we could do this

better, here's how we could do this better.

And I have an entire operations team CEO
that gets to take care of it is pretty fun.

So so while not filling that program,
still paying attention

to what's happening at Lean Labs,
showing ideas

how we can position what we do, how we do it
or just how we talk about it.

Right. That makes sense.

All right.

I'm going to to last questions
and to wrap up with

here, pace of change, pace of innovation

is something

a ton of agencies struggle with,

especially as they're
growing internally for us.

And then pilot, you know,
there's a lot of stuff

that we do where we should be the guinea pig
and we should pilot this out first

before we teach other agencies to go do it.

And so we put our team
through a lot of a lot of changes.

How do you deal with that?

Because I think all three of us are wired
the same way.

We're all optimized.

We all want to like that's great
that we're 97%.

But what really irks
me is like there's 3% still to get to and

we all want to get to that 200% mark,

especially as the team is grown.

How do you keep the team

employed, keep them on on

pace with you as you guys are pushing things
and optimizing things quickly?

So yeah, yeah.

So first we just spent a year

plus we're figuring out career vitals
using our, our own website as a guinea pig.

We did a complete revamp of the website,
new design, everything,

and stripped everything
that could potentially hurt our career.

Vital scores out just so that we can learn
if it has any impact.

So we can start doing it for our clients.

And the team has kept up

for the most part, like just being like,
what else can we remove from here?

How can we, you know,
how can we change this design?

So that actually looks good
even though we can't have certain animations

and, you know, things like that.

But we're
constantly challenging on that front.

We have a professional development program
here as well where we want the team,

we pay the team
every quarter to go read books, take courses,

but then to take that information and
actually put it into an application exercise.

How would what items
would you take from this book?

How would you apply them here at Lean Labs?

What can we do to test whether it works?

And then we learn a bunch of things
really fast and we have

you know, we're up to 23 team members now.

And so when everyone on the team
is starting to do these things

like it, it is easy for everyone to keep up
because we're learning

all this stuff really fast.

And I think it's a benefit here
that everyone wants to win.

So yeah.

It's a risk, right?

So when you make changes, you do does

people or people come and work
as entrepreneurialism

a company because they want some stability,
they want some security.

And, you know, the pace of change of Kevin
Barber creates instability.

Right.

Doesn't so much destroy security,
but it creates instability.

And so we need to be careful.

I have a little note on my wall
about how people view change.

I view change as necessary, immediate,

and like the moment I speak it,
it's already happened in my mind.

And that is not
that's not how others receive it.

So so I think tuning in to that,
Stefan on my team here to show me that

he's like, hey, when you make this change
and you make this change and you make this

change, I know that those are set for you,
but you just kind of broke the team and

and so, so like,
I think that that's something

that you do
have to pay the roll out and time it

and they need the story
and then they need reminded Chris.

Chris always has that.

He has a great line
about there's two ways to learn something.

You want to throw those out?

Yeah, you can learn anything quick
with blunt force trauma or repetition

and so on.

Yeah. So

we're changing. Why?

We're changing and then and then.

And we'll keep going. That no more.

The moment the market is innovating
faster than you are, you're dead. So.

So we are looking to make a lot of changes
and and continue leveling up.

And that that's that's the purpose.

You know, innovation is is 50% of what
a company does.

Right. Right.

That's awesome.

I think the

one of the common pieces of pushback

I hear in the day to day is
things are changing fast.

We want to be innovative, having basically
be system driven at the same time.

And it's easy,
I think, for myself and to be like,

that's the only way you can be innovative.

Like, how are you more innovative
if you're not systems?

Or How is any of that
going to get rolled out?

Clearly, people but it can it can either feel
like a huge obstacle or hurdle

or feel like
this is the this is the way through it.

Yeah.

I think having that core team
that's that sticks

is absolutely critical
to be either systems driven

or and or innovative.

Like if you can't if you can't maintain
that team to where you can be,

have all of the context, understand what
and why change to make that happen faster,

then it gets really difficult.

So part of it is is being able to hire
great people, keep great people.

They need to see their vision
and your company so that otherwise

at some point they have to leave
because they couldn't see their path.

You know, in the case of Chris and CEO,
like I would

I would challenge like who's
going to be on your leadership team?

We reformed our leadership team this year.

You know who's going to be on that?

Do they know do they know their criteria,
their stick of what they're looking for?

What is the plan? Two years, three years out?

It's our job to cast that vision,

not just for the company,
but for the members of the team.

And so they can see themselves in it.

You see all the me if you
if you hire high performers and ambitious

people who, you know, on paper is like,
that's all who we want to hire.

Like you will naturally lose them.

You have to lose them if you can't grow fast
enough to to create opportunity

to keep them.

So there's some like, just like innovation
is key.

You're dying.

If you're not innovating, if you're not
growing, growth is not optional,

which is what your whole business exists for.

So now this is the second question I had,
which is much easier other than lean labs.

Lean hyphen labs dot com.

I know we went back,
we bought the we bought the original.

So it's lean labs dot com also so
there you go.

What did you really regret.

Yeah how have you hyphen
and that that is annoying.

Woof we.

Oh but it is redirects just redirects.

Yep. That's awesome. Good.

Good for you.

I feel like I've had a handful conversations
to do recently about buying domains and

and just the negotiation process.

Oh, man.

Well, let's not talk about how much money
I've spent on domains.

I was listening to
that for a different podcast.

Right.

You can drive a really nice car
for what I'm fitting in domains.

Where else?

Where else should I think

sprocket rocket for agencies is like
if you haven't seen Sprocket Rocket,

checking
that out makes a huge amount of sense,

which is if I'm responsive,
I think it's the echo, right?

Yeah, it's echo.

I continue to make the owner of the dot
com and offer

every single year
I have a talent earlier every single.

I'm like all this lease it for me

if you redirect it
because if you go to it, it's nothing.

I mean, Carolyn,
if you're listening, I'm still ready.

So there you go. That's awesome.

Anywhere else that we should point people
to who want follow.

What we're really starting to do,
we're just a little to the loop,

just a tiny bit late,
but we're breaking out with

with on our socials, with our LinkedIn,
Chris's LinkedIn, my LinkedIn

I after being marketing for 20 years,
I'm now publishing every day.

So I would say, you know, connect with Chris
and I.

We love having conversations
with other agency owners.

We're in multiple masterminds.

I'm now running an agency mastermind.

That's it's pretty fun.
So we would love to hear from you guys.

That's all

cool. Well, guys, this has been awesome.

I appreciate you making time to jump on
this story, dig into the some of the behind

the scenes good stuff I got to learn
and always appreciate talking with you guys.

So thanks for that.
Thanks for joining us on podcast.

It's a lot of fun revenue.

Thanks, Craig.

Appreciate you.