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Welcome to Founder-Led, featuring founders scaling 7 and 8 figure companies who share the strategies and mindset driving real growth.
Brought to you by LinkedIn Growth Engine. We help established recruitment and staffing firm owners land new clients from LinkedIn by turning their executive content and insights into a trust building inbound lead engine.
We partner with $1M to $20M+ agency founders to build visibility, authority, and trust that drives pipeline, without turning you into a “content creator.” Over the last 12 months, we've helped drive $20M+ in booked revenue from LinkedIn.
If you're done relying on referrals and want prospects coming in pre sold, you're in the right place.
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Rohan
Welcome to Founder Lead, where we sit down with some of the sharpest founder operators to learn what's working in their business today.
00:00:08:22 - 00:00:11:19
Rohan
This episode is brought to you by Frontier Studios,
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Rohan
a revenue minded content agency
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Rohan
helping businesses grow their visibility,
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Rohan
authority
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Rohan
ultimately their business from LinkedIn.
00:00:19:02 - 00:00:21:18
Rohan
So if you're ready to join over 30 founders
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Rohan
are turning conversations like this into real revenue
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Rohan
while spending less than one hour per week of your time.
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Rohan
Comment frontier below
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Rohan
someone from our team will reach
00:00:30:10 - 00:00:32:03
Rohan
Now let's get to the show.
00:00:32:04 - 00:00:44:02
Rohan
Today's guest is Nick, stage founder of The Grounded Company, a performance driven creative agency behind the work for brands like Dixon, flannel, the Chicago Cubs and Wayne Valdez.
00:00:44:05 - 00:00:56:17
Rohan
After spending decades as an entrepreneur, Nick started his own business at nearly 40 and built it almost entirely through relationships, referrals, and doing great work that actually performs.
00:00:56:23 - 00:01:08:01
Rohan
So if you care about founder led growth creative, that drives real revenue and why doing things that don't scale still wins. This one's for you. Nick, welcome to the show.
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Nick
Thanks for having me,
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Nick
Nick.
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Rohan
One thing I was really impressed with, given, you know, the growth of your business is you have a portfolio portfolio of a few businesses is you still really care about doing things that don't scale. And you had a really good examples around things that you've done. So I would love if you can start off by sharing a couple of stories.
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Rohan
It's almost like the anti AI thesis, which is why is it so important to still do the things that don't scale?
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Nick
Yeah, I'm definitely a believer in that. Maybe it's because I lean into my strength
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Nick
to. Maybe it's, I just felt like
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Nick
being in a sea of a million other fishes is boring. And I spent a lot of time as
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Nick
a marketer inside brands like Skullcandy and GoPro, and
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Nick
I just felt like I was being like,
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Nick
I wasn't.
00:02:04:18 - 00:02:12:14
Nick
I wasn't having conversations with people. They were they were just speaking at me. Not to me, not with me. And I didn't love that. And so I,
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Nick
I've almost like just gone full force the other way. And how do we do things that, that don't scale? How do we do things that are 1 to 1 and carry a lot more depth than one to many?
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Nick
So
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Nick
grounded turns 5 in 2 weeks and we've we've never really done things that scale. I mean, if you look at maybe by the time this launches, we'll have a website up. It's close. But our website is just a picture of me eating a quesadilla and it says like, hey, our websites warming up like a
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Nick
quesadilla hit us up on social media.
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Nick
We don't have a forum on there, so we genuinely
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Nick
like believe in this 1 to 1 mentality. It's about conversations. It's about relationships. It's about interactions. And the more in-depth you can go with those relationships, the better. One example
00:03:11:20 - 00:03:18:07
Nick
A few years ago, I started a podcast and I started a podcast.
00:03:18:11 - 00:03:27:05
Nick
We ended up launching like 20 episodes, but I probably did 60 episodes that never launched because I didn't care about launching the podcast.
00:03:27:05 - 00:03:46:20
Nick
I cared about coming in and meeting people and having really good conversations. And a podcast is a way that you can do that. You can get meetings with people that maybe you couldn't get otherwise. So I'd one on one reach out to people I was really interested in. I'd ask them to do a podcast with me. It was always in person and it was called The Lunch Break.
00:03:46:20 - 00:04:08:17
Nick
And so I would bring someone in and we would. I did two podcasts a day every other Friday, and we would do like 11 to noon, and then we would do 2 to 3. And in between the 12:00 to 2:00 time frame, I would take both of those people out to lunch. So we'd just like chat in between.
00:04:08:17 - 00:04:14:17
Nick
And I'd introduce two people that I felt like were maybe didn't know each other, but should. So
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Nick
those those don't scale. It's tough to dedicate four hours to a podcast where you're you're only interviewing two people and you're probably never going to launch it. But that podcast generated me over $1 million in sales, and I launched 20 episodes.
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Nick
The people that I ended up
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Nick
working with and signing were people that
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Nick
came on the podcast. It wasn't people that listened to it. It wasn't people that saw clips on social media. It was straight up people who
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Nick
came in. We built relationships with. We got to know each other on a deep level, and
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Nick
those relationships eventually turned into sales.
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Nick
There was no hard pitch. There was no there was no real even talk of business. We talk about whatever the guests wanted to talk about. We had someone talk about dinosaurs and religion and family and touring the country as a musician. So those were all sort of fun, unique things that we did that,
00:05:16:00 - 00:05:22:01
Nick
that where we took a platform that is all about scale and we used it without scaling it.
00:05:22:03 - 00:05:29:20
Rohan
Let's actually pick it up from when you said like a good example, and then you got into the podcast so we can pick it up from there. If you just want to go from there, that'd be great.
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Nick
A good example is I took a platform that is all about scale and I didn't scale it. I started a podcast a few years ago. We had 60 guests and I think we only launched ten, 15 episodes. The goal was never really about launching episodes. The goal was about meeting interesting people that I wanted to build relationships with.
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Nick
So I didn't have my team reach out, but I went in LinkedIn, followed them, started
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Nick
interacting on their on their posts, slowly started to DM them, and then over time, I would invite them to come on the podcast and we called it the Lunch Break. And we did that for a reason. I would meet someone 11 to noon and we would spend an hour talking, and then I would meet someone from 2 to 3 and would spend an hour talking.
00:06:16:19 - 00:06:35:15
Nick
And in between I would take those two individuals to lunch. So the idea was all about getting to know these individuals, but also providing value and introducing them to someone who I thought they would have interest in knowing shared likes, business models, you name it.
00:06:35:18 - 00:06:41:12
Nick
The the other thing that we did that was very interesting though, is we didn't talk at all about business.
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Nick
We talked, we had a guest talk about dinosaurs. We had someone talk about a faith transition they went through. We had someone talk about what it was like being a musician and touring the country for 15 years. We just. And these are business owners, CMOs. They're successful, storied individuals. And we intentionally did not want to talk about work.
00:07:08:05 - 00:07:11:10
Nick
We just wanted to talk to them as people. Yeah. And
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Nick
while I only launched a small percentage of those episodes, we generated over $1 million in sales off of those. And it's not from people who watched the clips or the full video or the listen to the full podcast. Instead, it was from the people who came on the podcast, and I would never pitch them, but they eventually would come around and be like, hey, so
00:07:35:04 - 00:07:38:11
Nick
I'm actually thinking, I need this, I need that, that's what you do, right?
00:07:38:12 - 00:08:05:05
Nick
Should we talk about it? And I was just a believer that even if it didn't turn into a a deal, direct one on one with that person, it would still be a value add in. Getting to know someone, building a deeper relationship. And who knows, maybe they'd connect me to someone else. So I think that's a fun example of something that, yeah, I used a platform that scales, and then I tried to make it very much 1 to 1.
00:08:05:10 - 00:08:25:14
Rohan
Yeah, I love that. That resonates. And very similar example. You know, we have the podcast founder led and transparently it's been great. You know sales mechanism to of course have guests on. But some percentage of them want to grow their visibility, the authority and use our services to grow their business from LinkedIn. But I,
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Rohan
I find it's actually the people that I didn't think might have been potentially great fit for our services.
00:08:30:23 - 00:08:36:16
Rohan
And I'm like, you know what? I love their mission. Like this. This one gentleman is building a VR
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Rohan
headset helping children with autism and learning disabilities to self educate. Yeah. And it's providing so much of the data for, you know, people with special needs and some of these disabilities that are predictive of how they can get healthy and learn going forward.
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Rohan
And that is actually providing a lot of prognosis and diagnostic data for clinicians to be like, okay, here is a path based on your current state that if you take this, you know, technology solution, there's a path to them getting better and like improving their learning outcomes. So I thought that was so amazing. And like that's a story that needs a spotlight to be told.
00:09:16:17 - 00:09:24:09
Rohan
And I had no expectations. But it was just like such a great person to connect with. And like that's the whole point of it. And it also comes back to,
00:09:24:12 - 00:09:30:12
Rohan
yeah, it's like, what are our superpowers and gifts? And how do we,
00:09:30:15 - 00:09:42:09
Rohan
like, almost just be as insanely generous as possible, knowing that there's like so much abundance in the world and things will come back ten times as long as you don't think of, you know, the next step, monetizing the next step.
00:09:42:10 - 00:10:05:09
Nick
Yeah, yeah, I think I think you're right. There is so much abundance. And if you're willing to play the long game and do those things, I think it just there's also a level where like one too many becomes so diluted. And if you can find a way to be more potent that the better. Maybe one more example that I think is is fun.
00:10:05:13 - 00:10:22:08
Nick
I had decided that I was going to leave a company that I was the head of marketing at, and it was a, it was a mid-size company. It was doing, you know, 30 to 50 million a year. And I'd been there a few years and I'd liked it, but I but I felt like my time is running out here.
00:10:22:09 - 00:10:28:08
Nick
I'm getting bored. I want to try something new. And I knew that I wanted to be,
00:10:28:12 - 00:10:49:15
Nick
I wanted something different, but I wasn't. I wasn't sure if I wanted to start up or if I wanted, like, big, huge business. So I happened to be a contributing author for Utah Business, a local magazine here. And I went to the editor in chief and I was like, look, I think that there are a lot of these business founders up and down the Wasatch Mountain
00:10:49:18 - 00:10:55:09
Nick
that have like, wild, interesting stories nobody's heard of about side hustles, weird projects they've done.
00:10:55:10 - 00:11:07:22
Nick
If you're if you know much about, you know, Ryan Smith founded Qualtrics. He now owns the jazz. Yeah. There was a there was a tweet he posted as a joke that he was going to start a taco cart.
00:11:08:03 - 00:11:17:08
Nick
And I'm like, those are things like, is he just passionate about tacos? Should we do a, a an article about guys like Ryan and their taco carts?
00:11:17:08 - 00:11:18:07
Nick
And
00:11:18:12 - 00:11:35:05
Nick
the editor in chief was like, yeah, done, let's do that. So I make a list of all the companies I want to work for, and all of the CEOs that I'd be interested in, in working with. Yeah. And I start reaching out to them and I'm like, hey, I want to do an article in Utah business. It's a little different.
00:11:35:06 - 00:11:41:17
Nick
Here's where it's at. And nobody's going to say, no, nobody. So
00:11:41:21 - 00:11:49:19
Nick
they said yes. And then my one requirement was, Will I need to come in person, and I want to be able to take a photo of you for the article.
00:11:50:00 - 00:11:56:07
Nick
And so we went and I would interview these people, and then I would just transition the interview into,
00:11:56:12 - 00:11:58:06
Nick
gosh, I really like what you're doing.
00:11:58:11 - 00:12:16:14
Nick
I'm looking I'm I'm on the prowl. And I know that this is a job that you are hiring for. Let's have a conversation and ended up getting three offers from that. And I ended up taking one of those jobs and being a CMO of a startup tech company. Yeah. So rather than
00:12:16:18 - 00:12:26:05
Nick
blasting my resume, rather than going on LinkedIn and putting a green circle, not that any of those things are bad, but I was like, boy, that's going to be hard to be seen.
00:12:26:06 - 00:12:41:10
Nick
How can I get one on one time with these people? And I just I used what I had. I happened to be in a contributing author of an Art of a magazine, and so I used that to my advantage. And I think it's moments like that that if you if you identify
00:12:41:13 - 00:12:54:12
Nick
something that you already have access to and that can separate you from the crowd, you can go have conversations with gigantic brands, big CEOs, big, big roles, whatever it is you're looking for.
00:12:54:15 - 00:12:55:04
Rohan
Yeah.
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Nick
You can get yourself in and have really meaningful conversations with those people.
00:12:59:20 - 00:13:02:20
Rohan
Yeah, that's that's a great point and such a great lesson for,
00:13:02:23 - 00:13:19:08
Rohan
you know, people of all stages growing their business, whether someone's earlier stage and they've just been sending out thousands of resumes and DMs and not getting anywhere, like what is a side door? What is another entry point that is less crowded, that you just need a bit of creativity and ingenuity to reach a set of people?
00:13:19:08 - 00:13:43:12
Rohan
And if you do that, what I found from my experience are the people that I have so much respect for and would only dream to work with or have on a podcast. They are actually they know what it takes and like the struggle and the challenges to to grow and, you know, make something of yourself. And so they're, you know, very receptive to wanting to have a quick conversation to see if there's an opportunity for mutual fit.
00:13:43:16 - 00:13:44:05
Rohan
So
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Rohan
yeah, I love that. And then of course, like later stage being able to partner with the right people to have like win win or just be a value to others. And of course, going back to once you be a value to others, like things will pay themselves back in, you know, multiple times. So I think that's a great, great story.
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Rohan
00:14:01:05 - 00:14:18:04
Rohan
One thing that really stood out from our conversations is, you know, you've got this sort of like holdco model or multi company model that you have, but it's not like a traditional portfolio company where they're independent companies that operate themselves and silos, they're more
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Rohan
kind of complementary in services. And there's this flywheel in terms of the customer lifecycle as they can use complementary services.
00:14:24:17 - 00:14:33:21
Rohan
So maybe talk a bit about how these companies came to be, how they fit together and how you think about building them up.
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Nick
Yeah.
00:14:35:09 - 00:14:40:07
Nick
I started the grounded company a bit opportunistically, but
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Nick
I did it based on partnerships and word of mouth, and
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Nick
I realized that those were just really easy to close if if I came highly recommended from an agency that's doing X, and I'm doing Y
00:14:56:23 - 00:15:00:02
Nick
with that. So easy to be like, oh, you like X? Yeah, I love those guys too.
00:15:00:03 - 00:15:19:11
Nick
Here's how we work together. Here's what that looks like. And then I've got X in their ear like, hey, you really got to work with Nick in the grounded company. And so my close rate was through the roof. So I had that in the back of my mind when I started grounded and I, I was getting all my deals through partnerships and recommendations.
00:15:19:16 - 00:15:39:07
Nick
And for a while I thought, well, I'm going to pay that forward, right? We're a creative agency. I think that the the world that we're living in now, people are coming back to specialty. They don't they don't want an agency that does everything. They want an agency that knows who they are, specializes in certain things and does it.
00:15:39:11 - 00:15:46:04
Nick
So we're a creative agency thrown through or creative agency. And of course, we started getting a lot of clients
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Nick
asking us about, well, do you have a good paid media buyer? We love the creative, but they had buyer we're working with maybe not so much right now, whatever it might be. And so I just started recommending ad buyers that I'd worked with with other companies and had success with.
00:16:02:06 - 00:16:15:12
Nick
And I genuinely was like, I'm gonna I'm going to just like, pass it forward the same way that the other agencies recommended me. I'm going to recommend someone else. And I got to a point where I had one ad buyer who was
00:16:15:17 - 00:16:21:02
Nick
doing a great job, to be honest about, great job. But I
00:16:21:07 - 00:16:26:09
Nick
one thing I did to to protect it is I wasn't super
00:16:26:12 - 00:16:27:13
Nick
into
00:16:27:17 - 00:16:35:20
Nick
the referral rate, but instead I would sign the client and then I would outsource the the freelance ad buyer.
00:16:35:20 - 00:16:49:11
Nick
And so at the end of every month, I would pay the ad buyer what the clients had paid us sub 10%. And I'm going through the numbers. And I was like, Holy crap, I just sent this one ad buyer
00:16:49:14 - 00:16:53:04
Nick
a check for 25 grand last month. It's like.
00:16:53:05 - 00:16:53:17
Rohan
Wow,
00:16:53:20 - 00:16:54:16
Rohan
what?
00:16:54:17 - 00:17:05:08
Nick
What am I doing? I should just start my own ad agency. Like, yeah, I have the I own the contracts. It's 25. I could go higher.
00:17:05:11 - 00:17:16:22
Nick
Yeah, I could go hire someone and pay them half of that. And I already have all the business tools at grounded. Like my margin is suddenly incredible. So
00:17:17:02 - 00:17:19:13
Nick
I had thought about doing it underground.
00:17:19:13 - 00:17:28:17
Nick
It. And then I had reminded myself like, no, people want specialty. So I went out and I found someone who was spectacular as a performance marketer,
00:17:28:20 - 00:17:40:18
Nick
truly great and looking to step out of the world of freelance and into the world of entrepreneurship. Because yes, you're working for yourself. But running a business is different than being a freelancer.
00:17:40:22 - 00:17:43:21
Nick
Yeah, and I found someone and it was like,
00:17:44:00 - 00:18:09:16
Nick
well, look, I already have a book of business. I already got 25 grand a month, and now we can do ads and we can do these other things. Let's just start cross-selling against it. So that person became the face of the business a little bit. And any time a client would, would come to grounded and then ask about performance marketing, I'd be like, oh, well, there's this other agency adapted, full transparency, I own it, it's a separate business.
00:18:09:16 - 00:18:16:06
Nick
It's a it's a separate team. We run things very differently. But here's how that works. And
00:18:16:09 - 00:18:42:23
Nick
it's been wildly successful. Adapted brings business to grounded grounded to adapted. We have a lot of clients that are on both. And so we've done that with creative and then with performance cricketing. We've also done that with a retail broker. So I own a portion of an agency called fusion, and we help brands get on shelf at Walmart, Sam's Club, Costco, you name it.
00:18:43:03 - 00:19:10:22
Nick
But it's fun because grounded is doing like the brand work and the packaging design. And then fusion, that agency is going and selling into retail, but ground is even making the pitch decks like so. Everything is cohesive and working together. There are three very separate companies run very differently, but if you think of them as a Venn diagram, the middle section there is the common ground, which is we're going to help brands grow.
00:19:11:02 - 00:19:34:07
Nick
with that vision in mind, my goal is to then say, well, what's the next circle that I can add to this Venn diagram? It just has to overlap with two other circles. So a really easy example that we've already kind of hinted at is if grounded is doing the package design and fusion is doing the cell in of said packaging,
00:19:34:11 - 00:19:42:14
Nick
what if we just created a packaging company and then we were printing all of the coffee bags for our clients?
00:19:42:14 - 00:19:54:09
Nick
And yeah, then it grows and it's like, well, if I'm printing all of the bags and I'm selling it into retail, what if I started a three PL and I was also storing and shipping everything for them? So
00:19:54:12 - 00:19:55:01
Nick
the
00:19:55:04 - 00:20:00:02
Nick
it's easy to snowball and be like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this.
00:20:00:03 - 00:20:10:07
Nick
And the lesson I've learned is it's good to have that vision, but I have to move slowly and methodically, and I can't start another
00:20:10:10 - 00:20:18:02
Nick
branch of of this portfolio or company with inside this and tell the existing ones are truly running,
00:20:18:05 - 00:20:29:17
Nick
operating smoothly and with without a lot of flaws because starting a new business, even if you're doing it with an existing book of business, it's still a ton of work and really hard.
00:20:29:17 - 00:20:36:04
Nick
But this idea does take away one challenge, which is I think most people
00:20:36:07 - 00:20:47:04
Nick
start a business and then they try to go sell it. And what I'm more interested in is how do I sell a service? And then once it reaches critical mass, how do I then start a business?
00:20:47:09 - 00:20:50:17
Nick
So I try to remove that risk and that friction.
00:20:50:17 - 00:20:56:08
Nick
I don't have to go get money. I don't have to get investors. I don't have to I don't have to put my own money. Like
00:20:56:12 - 00:21:06:17
Nick
if I can't sell it, I'm not going to start it. But if I can sell it, then I can fund it itself and I can move the business, but it just can't come at the detriment of the existing businesses that are working.
00:21:06:20 - 00:21:07:17
Rohan
Yeah, I
00:21:07:20 - 00:21:31:09
Rohan
that is such a powerful story. So a few things stood out there in the earlier stages. When you're starting grounded, it sounds like trusted relationships are really important. And I totally agree with that. When we have, say, agency partners or partners that offer complementary skill sets to our services, we can make that introduction. They go a long way and they convert pretty high.
00:21:31:09 - 00:21:55:14
Rohan
So I think that's a key insight because we're providing value to our client. We are almost like seeing where their business is going and be like, hey, you're going to hit this bottleneck. Let me make an introduction so that you kind of hit the ground running with them. So that's really interesting. You also talked about the importance of specialization and being known like best in class for something that's like maybe uncomfortably narrow at the time.
00:21:55:14 - 00:21:56:09
Rohan
But
00:21:56:12 - 00:22:09:01
Rohan
there's when you have a number of customers that pass through it, there is this flywheel that kicks in, I think sometimes even of restaurants that do it well, you know, like Raising Cane's like chicken, their world class of chicken fingers, and
00:22:09:05 - 00:22:15:23
Rohan
traveling to like, Paris like steak, fruit. There's one restaurant that only does steak and fries and like, they're known for, they have, like, lines out the door.
00:22:15:23 - 00:22:20:17
Rohan
So there's something about that specialization that's really interesting.
00:22:20:19 - 00:22:29:16
Nick
Well, and I think when you do that, it helps you identify a little bit like the contributing author thing. Like it helps you figure out
00:22:29:20 - 00:22:39:07
Nick
what just makes sense. Like a million years ago, I worked at Zumiez, the the skateboard snowboard retail shop in the mall, and I managed like
00:22:39:11 - 00:22:43:11
Nick
Idaho, Utah and Nevada. And the founder,
00:22:43:14 - 00:22:56:06
Nick
Tom Campion, a stud, asked me to join the board of his nonprofit called the Z Foundation, and he was super passionate about helping those in need stay.
00:22:56:06 - 00:23:26:03
Nick
Born during winter months. He's from the Pacific Northwest, and he was like, I want to, I want to, I want to help people stay warm who are living on the streets without a home. And he's like, Nick, I, we do private label for zoomies. I have relationships with these these manufacturers all over the world, and I can clothe someone with a hoodie, a beanie, a pair of sweatpants, socks and a glove for $11.
00:23:26:06 - 00:23:38:09
Nick
He's like, let's leverage the relationships I have to go start this other thing and help. Right? So he did it in a nonprofit, charitable way. But the lesson that he that he provided was like
00:23:38:12 - 00:23:49:23
Nick
my relationships and the things that I'm good at for zoomies, I can use those same things for something totally different and, and make a massive impact.
00:23:49:23 - 00:23:54:03
Nick
And that works on the charitable side. And it also works on the for profit side.
00:23:54:06 - 00:23:55:11
Rohan
Yeah. So
00:23:55:15 - 00:24:00:09
Rohan
that made this a great example. I know many of our listeners are also business owners, and
00:24:00:14 - 00:24:05:06
Rohan
many of them will say, you know, finding the right talent is one of the hardest things
00:24:05:10 - 00:24:24:00
Rohan
to grow a business, right? It's ultimately like growth lever, but also can be a bottleneck if you don't find the right people. So how have you gone about identifying that talent that maybe are at a certain stage within an organization or a team where you felt they had potential to now bring them in in terms of like this ownership potential at a partner company?
00:24:24:03 - 00:24:26:20
Nick
Yeah. Good question. I think
00:24:27:00 - 00:24:45:04
Nick
the first thing that I, I do when I so we've talked about the businesses that I've done this with and it's been successful. I can tell you I've tried with a handful of others and it just hasn't worked. Maybe they should have just lived underground at all along, like an example would be I started a video production company that was separate.
00:24:45:06 - 00:24:51:03
Nick
I just put it underground and at some point it didn't make any sense to to have it. But what I learned is
00:24:51:07 - 00:25:03:03
Nick
as long as I'm open and honest with the client about me trying something new, there's a lot of grace. So this video production company, I don't know if you know the brand thread wallets, I happen to be chatting with them.
00:25:03:04 - 00:25:06:21
Nick
We're like, we didn't know each other, but we had become friendly.
00:25:07:02 - 00:25:19:03
Nick
And they reached out and I talked to them about what grounded did. At the time. We didn't have video as an option, and they were like, oh man, we've got all the design team we need. What we really want is video. And I'm like, hey,
00:25:19:07 - 00:25:20:15
Nick
I'll be real with let me pull it up.
00:25:20:15 - 00:25:25:12
Nick
And I pulled open a Google like spreadsheet
00:25:25:17 - 00:25:32:11
Nick
that had all the math because I'd been thinking about how do I start this side video production group?
00:25:32:15 - 00:25:41:08
Nick
And I'm like, look, I don't have this, but here's what I'm thinking and here's what I would price it as. And we started having conversations and they're like, oh, dude, that probably wouldn't work.
00:25:41:09 - 00:25:49:19
Nick
But this would. And also they're giving me like real feedback around this idea of starting something. And
00:25:49:23 - 00:26:03:18
Nick
they're like, dude, it's a shame that you don't have it. And I'm like, well, I don't have it because I don't have any clients. I would you see the math right here? I'd be willing to give you a 20% discount if you took a flier and you let me build it, like I'll deliver against it.
00:26:03:18 - 00:26:08:05
Nick
But I need one client first. And so thread said yes.
00:26:08:08 - 00:26:27:13
Nick
So the reason I share that story is that comes back to how do you find the right people. So grounded is owning that contract and doing something that's new. I don't go hire someone. I brought in three separate freelancers and I had them all working on the project, and I'm pressure testing which one's working, which one isn't, and one of them clearly wasn't.
00:26:27:13 - 00:26:32:21
Nick
And I'm like, thanks. And, you know, we ended up doing this with thread for like six months and
00:26:33:00 - 00:26:47:20
Nick
you end up finding out like, well, this person right here, they're they're gangster like, they can do the job. They fit the culture. They've got the mindset. And when I would when I would go try to find these people, I would let them know, like, this is a trial run.
00:26:47:20 - 00:27:07:22
Nick
What I'm really hoping to do is start my own business. I'd love it if if it worked, if I hadn't someone like you that was the right person to then step in and essentially like be the GM. And that's how I find those people. At adapted, we have brick, who runs everything. She started as a freelance ad buyer for me.
00:27:08:03 - 00:27:08:16
Nick
Yeah, but.
00:27:08:16 - 00:27:13:08
Rohan
But how did you find her? Was it Upwork or was it another company that you worked with? How did you find.
00:27:13:12 - 00:27:23:19
Nick
It was the same way I find business. It was asking or asking people I trust who's great. This is what I'm looking for. Who do you know who's great? And then I give those people a chance.
00:27:24:00 - 00:27:24:14
Rohan
yeah.
00:27:24:14 - 00:27:50:02
Nick
I don't. I didn't put a job description out. I didn't I didn't post on LinkedIn monster. Nothing. It just like one on one quiet conversations with people I trust and I thought were great. Honestly people that it's an old recruiting trick from my zoomies days. If there was a store manager running a competitor, Paxson and I, every time I went to that mall, they were great.
00:27:50:03 - 00:28:09:17
Nick
Their store looked great. Then I'd just be like, hey, look, I'm looking for an incredible store manager. And I believe great people know great people. Do you know anyone? And truly, I'm just like, hoping that they're like, hey, I might be interested, you know? Yeah, but if they're not interested, they almost always know somebody. And so I just did that.
00:28:09:17 - 00:28:16:01
Nick
I started asking around and people like the person I asked his name is Tom.
00:28:16:05 - 00:28:26:13
Nick
He was one of the head ad buyers at Harmon Brothers. He's now a head ad buyer. Chambers, like this dude, is unbelievably talented. And he was like, he was like, oh, dude,
00:28:26:17 - 00:28:34:17
Nick
Brit is your girl. She's incredible. She's she's got all the right things to be the right ad buyer and to grow the business and the mindset.
00:28:34:19 - 00:28:41:00
Nick
And so I met her and she started doing it. And now she's running. She's technically running. Adapted for us.
00:28:41:05 - 00:28:42:05
Rohan
Yeah. Wow.
00:28:42:09 - 00:28:59:16
Rohan
That's such a I mean, that's that's so valuable to learn from someone else who's steep in that field, who knows all the people and has worked with many people, many of whom probably haven't worked out to find that that diamond. Right. That'd be so hard to find otherwise. So that's such a great gift. Yeah.
00:28:59:17 - 00:29:01:23
Nick
Well, you have to because like,
00:29:02:03 - 00:29:03:06
Nick
the, the,
00:29:03:09 - 00:29:06:18
Nick
the the wildest part of all of this is
00:29:06:21 - 00:29:22:16
Nick
I own a creative agency. I'm colorblind, and I'm not a designer. I own a performance marketing agency. I don't have a Facebook account, and I've never run a paid out in my life. I can't, I can't do it. I don't know how, but I know how to find people.
00:29:22:16 - 00:29:41:07
Nick
I know how to sell it. I know how to build those relationships. And then you just trust those individuals, and then you you empower them to get better and to help make their team better. And if you do that, I think it takes away a lot of the scare. Like you can own a business without being the best at that thing.
00:29:41:09 - 00:29:47:04
Nick
I'm not a creative and I'm not a digital marketer. I'm an entrepreneur. And that's that's very different.
00:29:47:07 - 00:29:55:12
Rohan
Yeah. And now those companies operate under those leaders and your time involvement is fairly minimal, even though you are an owner in the company.
00:29:55:16 - 00:30:19:01
Nick
Yeah, Mike, my involvement on the product is not great, but on the relationships, like I still meet with my clients every month I, I, I sell I don't have a sales team. I am meeting with my team and talking about culture and their growth and their development. But I'm not over. I'm not looking over my design team shoulder, being like, hey, the kerning on that's off.
00:30:19:01 - 00:30:33:22
Nick
But no, I have a creative director who branded Ghost Energy. He branded pride. He did the snowboard designs for Rossi Skis for ten years. He's insanely talented. He's
00:30:34:03 - 00:30:44:18
Nick
to say he's 100 times what I am in design is not doing him justice. So but what I provide him is an opportunity to lead a business without running a business.
00:30:44:22 - 00:30:56:22
Rohan
Yes, yes. Yeah, that makes sense. And so what would that just to kind of double click on that. What would their scope of responsibilities be around leading the business without running the response, running the business. Where does that break happen.
00:30:57:01 - 00:31:10:18
Nick
Yeah it's all about product. It's it's all about the results. Right. So Kit, my creative director at the Grand Company, when we hired him, I was like, look, our creative is out of six. I need it to be a ten.
00:31:10:22 - 00:31:12:16
Nick
How can I help you make it a ten?
00:31:12:19 - 00:31:16:22
Nick
What do we have to do? And he was like, we have to build an internship program that's stronger.
00:31:16:22 - 00:31:28:12
Nick
We have to have better internal feedback loops. We need better briefs. We need all these things. And I'd be like, cool, you tell me and I'll help you build the things that I can help you build. So you can go be the guy to execute
00:31:28:17 - 00:31:34:12
Nick
you. Go do that. And me and the operations team will take care of all that mundane stuff that you don't want to do.
00:31:34:12 - 00:31:43:20
Nick
So you can just do the things that you do to make our product better. And I believe truly, as an entrepreneur, my job is to set a clear vision,
00:31:44:01 - 00:31:53:18
Nick
and then it's to listen to my team and help them knock down hurdles that they can't knock down on their own. And and then the fourth thing is like, get the hell out of their way.
00:31:53:21 - 00:32:10:01
Rohan
Yeah. Got it. And so in their role are they focused more on those like IC, like the production, the creative, are they in front of like in Figma doing a lot of the design work and then maybe working with a core team, is that kind of how they spend most of their time? And you handle the operations and PNL and all that or less?
00:32:10:02 - 00:32:34:21
Nick
Yep, yep. I do all the all the boring stuff and I let Kit do all the creative. Now I'm in brainstorming and we're, you know, at the pre-production phase. That's fun for me. And I have some skill there. But he's he's got his team, his process. They're responsible for quality design being delivered to every client that that's his.
00:32:34:21 - 00:32:48:00
Nick
That's it. That's his second focus. His first focus is how do you take and elevate each individual on the team, like grow the team, make make the team better. And in fact, we talk a lot about
00:32:48:05 - 00:32:58:14
Nick
not just onboarding new people but how we off board. I'm a big believer that how you offered a team member is more important than how you onboard.
00:32:58:16 - 00:33:05:01
Nick
It sends signals to the team that's still here, and it lets people know that this is my dream.
00:33:05:04 - 00:33:17:01
Nick
It doesn't have to be theirs. It's just a part of their dream. It's a step towards their dream. And so I want them to come in at the grounded company or Adapted or fusion
00:33:17:04 - 00:33:20:10
Nick
and progress on their in their journey and get closer to their dream.
00:33:20:10 - 00:33:39:18
Nick
And when it's time for them to go somewhere else, we need to celebrate the hell out of them. We need like, I love our alumni. I talk to our alumni almost as much as I talk to the team that's still here, and cheer them on. Support them. If they launch a new brand, I'm buying at full price, like, whatever it might be.
00:33:39:19 - 00:33:41:07
Nick
I want to be
00:33:41:12 - 00:33:54:03
Nick
in support of their dream because as long as they were grounded, they were a part of my dream. And I think that that that's something that I work with the the people who are leading the teams and the product is like
00:33:54:08 - 00:34:00:22
Nick
make great product, but but more importantly, help help the people become better people at what they want to become.
00:34:01:04 - 00:34:23:17
Rohan
I think that's so powerful because any high performer that comes in, they they're there to do meaningful work and have an impact. And of course, at a certain point in time, you know, they might want to find the next opportunity and sort of find someone who's so aligned, a leader who so lined with their growth and getting them closer to their dream, is such a great way to start off a working relationship.
00:34:23:18 - 00:34:31:06
Rohan
Of course, you know, they're there to do the job and like be a value to the team and the organization. But there's a clear
00:34:31:09 - 00:34:37:21
Rohan
kind of like exit plan, like should they choose that down the road. So I think that's really powerful.
00:34:38:00 - 00:34:40:10
Rohan
Nick, as we start to wrap it up here,
00:34:40:14 - 00:34:55:22
Rohan
one thing I wanted to touch on is you talk about this idea as someone who runs a creative agency, the idea of, you know, sometimes fast, creative, outperforming, overthought, creative or overdone creative.
00:34:55:22 - 00:35:17:09
Rohan
And oftentimes when I think of our business, a lot of the founders we work with, we create posts on their behalf, and it's based on the stories that they're telling and their voice. And oftentimes there is this perfectionist tendency, and there's a lot of over editing, which can take away from the rawness of the message. And it's usually the things that we get out based on what they have said.
00:35:17:09 - 00:35:27:12
Rohan
That might be a bit polarizing, that gets the most reaction. So maybe talk briefly around where you've seen that fast, creative actually perform better than the overthought stuff.
00:35:27:15 - 00:35:32:14
Nick
What you're seeing a lot of it with AI. As AI is getting better and better,
00:35:32:19 - 00:35:35:13
Nick
it's more and more polished and it's less and less soul,
00:35:35:16 - 00:35:53:23
Nick
and AI just doesn't have a point of view. AI doesn't have soul. If you gave five different AI platforms the same prompts long enough, you're going to get the same output. So I think, I think speed sometimes can manifest itself into soul.
00:35:54:01 - 00:36:09:17
Nick
But one thing that we try to help our, our partners understand is most digital assets. Now, if you're talking about like product packaging, that lives a long time, but if you're talking about an ad, an email,
00:36:09:22 - 00:36:11:14
Nick
you talk about the things that are like
00:36:11:17 - 00:36:14:22
Nick
genuinely driving revenue consistently for you.
00:36:15:02 - 00:36:16:21
Nick
The shelf life on those things are
00:36:17:00 - 00:36:18:13
Nick
shorter than they've ever been.
00:36:18:17 - 00:36:40:10
Nick
They just are. So if you understand that, then it gives you a little bit of freedom to say every asset doesn't need to be perfect, but what every asset has to be is intentional and with soul. So if you create it with soul, then then it's human, it's real, and people resonate with that because people buy emotionally and then they justify with logic.
00:36:40:10 - 00:36:45:07
Nick
Just look at the ups and downs of Tesla and how that's happened. Yeah,
00:36:45:12 - 00:36:50:15
Nick
but but you also have to design with intention because you have to be able to put it out there
00:36:50:19 - 00:37:00:20
Nick
knowing what you're evaluating and then reacting to how it performs. So if you can do that fact, if you can get more reps in, you're learning
00:37:01:00 - 00:37:09:19
Nick
way faster than you are by just living inside your own four walls in a and and like a think tank going like, I don't know, man, I think we need to tweak it.
00:37:09:19 - 00:37:10:13
Nick
It's like,
00:37:10:18 - 00:37:15:20
Nick
you know, who will tell you if you need to tweak it? Your customers if they click it or they don't, if they don't click.
00:37:15:20 - 00:37:16:06
Rohan
It out.
00:37:16:06 - 00:37:24:09
Nick
There did you got to change it. And guess what? If they don't click it, it means not that many people saw it anyways. And those who did see it
00:37:24:13 - 00:37:28:03
Nick
think about like, I mean, I drive 20 minutes to work every day
00:37:28:08 - 00:37:37:06
Nick
between the ads on my podcast, the billboards, what I wake up to in the morning looking at social media.
00:37:37:08 - 00:37:47:19
Nick
You know, if I flip through a mag, I still like magazines. If I flip through a magazine, if I'm listening to the radio, like when you really, truly think about it, how many ads have you seen
00:37:48:00 - 00:37:50:18
Nick
today? It's 1221 my time.
00:37:50:21 - 00:37:54:14
Nick
I think it's fair to say I've probably seen hundreds.
00:37:54:18 - 00:37:56:19
Nick
Yeah, I don't I don't remember most of them.
00:37:56:20 - 00:38:10:16
Nick
So give yourself that freedom to move fast, learn, see what's working. Double down on those what's not working. Tweak and adjust and try again. So as long as you're moving fast with intention and with soul,
00:38:10:20 - 00:38:17:23
Nick
you have an advantage over everyone else who's just using AI or who's like perfecting every pixel before they hit go.
00:38:18:02 - 00:38:20:15
Rohan
I think that's a great point. And you hear people who are
00:38:20:19 - 00:38:40:00
Rohan
prolific but also deliver very high quality in terms of their message. I think of someone like Hermosa as an example. It's really like elevated, you know, business building and strategy and the marketing behind it. He talks about like quantity is the path to quality. And there's so much stuff that's on the cutting room floor that's shipped.
00:38:40:00 - 00:38:56:23
Rohan
That was, you know, in his opinion, not the quality that it is today. And this so many people will say that the same thing. I like what you also said around there's some stuff that has a much longer shelf life. So yes, if you're thinking about product packaging and a retail store, that needs to be much more thoughtful.
00:38:56:23 - 00:39:02:11
Rohan
But if it's a quick post on TikTok or a LinkedIn post that's going to live for 24 hours,
00:39:02:14 - 00:39:08:08
Rohan
you know, just get the core message out there. It doesn't need to be overengineered. So I think that's a great point. Yeah.
00:39:08:09 - 00:39:25:03
Nick
A million times over. If you look at Alex Hermosa or Gary Vaynerchuk or any of these guys, they now have a have the resources to invest in fast and super high quality. But they've also learned what that means. And
00:39:25:06 - 00:39:32:11
Nick
if you go back to the early days, I mean, Gary vs early early stuffy like, dude, this is terrible.
00:39:32:17 - 00:39:53:06
Nick
Yeah. But he was doing a hundred of them a day. So he was learning. He it's it's a little bit like working in-house for some agency. If you're early in your career, I would highly advise you to work at an agency because experience only comes with time and exposure, and no one can change time. But you can change exposure.
00:39:53:07 - 00:40:07:09
Nick
You can exchange exposure by getting by working with ten clients instead of just one brand. You can get exposure by launching 100 videos instead of it ten videos. So find a way to get exposure as fast as you can because that that actually
00:40:07:12 - 00:40:12:19
Nick
accelerates your experience in ways that no other form can.
00:40:12:22 - 00:40:17:10
Rohan
Yeah, yeah, that's such a great point and great lesson, which I would second.
00:40:17:14 - 00:40:32:02
Rohan
Great. Well, you know, Nick, as we start to wrap it up here, one question I'd like to ask our guest is if you could put a message on a billboard in a crowded and busy intersection that someone would again see that advertisement day in, day out, as they walk by.
00:40:32:02 - 00:40:35:09
Rohan
What is a key message or narrative they want to get out into the world?
00:40:35:13 - 00:40:36:23
Nick
Yeah, I think it's.
00:40:37:03 - 00:40:40:03
Nick
Don't be afraid to be yourself because you're awesome.
00:40:40:07 - 00:40:45:04
Nick
Like, there's just so much imposter syndrome and
00:40:45:08 - 00:41:09:06
Nick
negative self-talk and and doubt that we put on ourselves, and we're our own worst critics. 99.99% of the time. And if we can just recognize, like you are who you are, you're enough and you're freaking awesome, then I think everybody would be a lot happier and would probably be would probably be a lot kinder to one another if that were the case too.
00:41:09:09 - 00:41:10:01
Rohan
Yeah,
00:41:10:06 - 00:41:34:05
Rohan
that's a great note to end on, and I completely agree, especially in a world that, you know, there's more AI, there's more information, there's more knowledge, there's more intelligent on tap. It's the expression of our unique ability, which is going to be messy. Oftentimes that is what people connect with. And it's really transmitting our true gifts and help us find our genius where we can be of value and help people.
00:41:34:06 - 00:41:43:18
Rohan
So I love that. Nick, thank you so much for joining. We'll make sure to link your website and LinkedIn. Is there anywhere else you want to direct folks if they want to connect with you?
00:41:43:20 - 00:41:50:17
Nick
Now hit me up on LinkedIn. Our website should launch on March 23rd. The grounded company. Com.
00:41:50:17 - 00:41:51:07
Rohan
So
00:41:51:10 - 00:41:54:15
Rohan
great. Well thank you. Nick, for sharing all your insights.
00:41:54:17 - 00:41:56:02
Nick
Yeah, thanks for having me.