How Jon Bond Built a Billion Dollar Ad Agency (And What He'd Do Different Today)

Welcome to How to Scale an 8 Figure Agency 🚀 . My name is Jordan Ross and I am your host. And over the course of this journey, we're going to be interviewing 8 Figure Agency owners and going through the systems that I've seen work and we've implemented into our clients' businesses that have helped our clients add a half a billion dollars in annual recurring revenue over the last handful of years. I myself have already hit the 8 figures in annual recurring revenue and when I got there, I wasn't happy. I was stressed, I was dissatisfied and I didn't like the people I was working with. So I clicked the restart button and went from 12 million in annual portfolio revenue back down to the mid 7 figure level to a climb back again. And on this journey, I'm going to be documenting my process and how I'm getting back to the figures and bringing you expert industry leaders who will tell you everything they did to get there as well. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the episode. Most agency owners can't imagine ever hitting 100 million dollars a year. But today I have a guy who built his agency to a billion dollars a year in revenue and that's John Sturgeon. John is the co-founder of Kirshenbaum Bond and at their peak they were able to scale to a billion dollars a year in revenue. And today I wanted to bring him on because, man, how many times have you gone to listen to someone who scaled an agency to that size and he built, he sold, he's helping founders with marketing, he's doing board work and he's kind of post-economic. So John, dude, thank you so much for coming on, man. It's good to see you. Thank you, Jordan. New Yorkers who migrated west, right? I call us type L.A. because we're like type A New Yorkers, but now the edges are rounded off a little and we've been in Southern California. So it's kind of type L.A. now. Yeah, I quickly got out of the New York bubble like when I was a young, like even in college, I went to Ohio State and someone held the door open for me in my first day and I was like, whoa, that is crazy. And that was the first day of me migrating away from the East Coast. You don't have to sit in a restaurant with your back to the wall, right? Whoa. Whoa. That's it. So John, for everyone that doesn't know you, we have a lot of listeners of the pod that are younger agency owners who are coming up now in the 2020s. They might not know who John Sturgeon is because they weren't operating at the same time and they're not selling to the same type of market class that you sold. For everyone that doesn't know you, who are you? What was your agency? Well, let's see. I think the answer to them is the same because, you know, the eponymous agencies, you know, you were the agency. The whole personality was, you know, from the founders and the whole culture. What happened was this is the late 80s. We were kids in our 20s. So what did we know? But the agencies that were started then were think mad men, right? 40-year-old guys, and they were always guys, you know, had some business or they had big reputations. They were running these other agencies and they went off on their own, right? In the Ambassador Hotel and rented a suite and started an agency there. And they already had clients from day one, right? That was how people started agencies. Nobody in their 20s who no one had ever heard of ever started an agency. You know, I mean, literally people would say to me, do your parents know what you're doing? You know, all these kind of crazy things. So first of all, we created that whole genre. And our whole thing was very rebellious and very anti. You know, there's an agency mafia, right? And we were kind of, you know, outsiders. And our whole view was advertising. Nobody listens to advertising. People know that, you know, you're making stuff up to sell your products and services. So no one's going to believe that. So everything was kind of, well, what would you do if you didn't trust somebody? And how would you break through? True. So I remember when we launched the agency, the New York Times, which at that time, first of all, there were printed newspapers that everyone read. And what everyone read was the ad column in the New York Times that Phil Doherty wrote. And I remember him writing about us and saying, at sheer age, I got socks older than that. We started in, the agency was painfully hip. I mean, but the thing was that, A, you know, like all the media reps were all attractive young people in their 20s. They all started sending us clients. And all the best young people in the industry started coming. And within six months, A, there was a seven-page article in New York Magazine. And the headline was hot copy on us. And then Barbara Walters, who I think anyone still would remember her because she was, you know, around not too long ago, she did 20 minutes on us on national TV. And it was just boom, thing went straight up. And I used to explain to agency heads that building an agency, it's like professional baseball, you know. At each level, like single A, you have to hit 300 and beat the crap out of the competition. Then you get promoted to double A. And you have to do it there. And then triple A. And then the show, right? And it was sort of like, you have to reinvent yourself at each phase and the competition until you get up to the big, more famous agencies. And so, you know, that's a whole other story is like what each step was about. But I can tell you the first step was crazy, outrageous creative work, making clients famous that no one ever heard of, like Kenneth Cole. And, you know, then that wasn't enough. We had to do the next thing, more sophisticated, more sophisticated, more sophisticated. And that's kind of the story. I appreciate the first high-level InCap retro intro. And the lens I'm curious about for your growth are like, it's a different time and era and style of business being a digital marketing agency versus a traditional advertising agency. But the principles are the same, right? Like a lot of the things I heard you say, do really good work for clients, be able to get really good PR and also big deals. The principles are the same. And I want to scope up from a high level. You scale to a billion dollars annually. I would love the framing of like, what was the economic model of getting to a billion dollars from you? Like how many clients was that? How many? I don't know if the team members are relevant because I'm really focused. I'm really, I think the framing that's super relevant for said, and you give me your opinion would be size of client, size of contracts. Sure. I'm happy. I can answer that very well. So, you know, the beginning was a lot of fame versus a lot of fortune. You know, we sort of played bigger than we were and had a lot of fame, but we didn't have big clients, right? So we kind of had to grow up. So getting the bigger clients and not wearing, you know, red high top Converse with shorts to meetings, you know, that took a few years. Then there was a big move, which was I started spinning out all our different departments into their own agencies. Like the media department became Media Kitchen, which became a big media agency. A few other areas and kind of building on my philosophy was I want the client to be my banker. So I had one client that went out of business and their head of PR was really good. And then I had Hennessy Cognac and I convinced them to do this PR promotion project for $7,500 a month. And then I paid her, her name was Felicia Stingoni, the $7,500 a month. And all of a sudden I had PR and promotion. And then I just sold it to other clients and built it up. So again, I made the clients into my banker. Okay. That's a huge thing. And you can do that. If you want to have a new service, you find a freelance person. And today it's easier than ever because everyone's freelance. It's so easy to find freelance work. Yeah. The answer is always, I can do it and then go figure out how to go do it in order to find the person. You never say, no, I can't do that. You know? So I had, you know, five different agencies and they all were out pitching their own clients. And I'm cross-selling them and upselling them. So like one that had a digital agency and they got BMW. And then I cross-sold BMW and we got the whole BMW account, which paid us $25 million a year fee. Okay. So pretty crazy. So, you know, there was a quadrant of good work and good money. And you want as many in the good work, good money area, right? You might have a couple where the work isn't as good, where the money's really good. And then you would have some where the creative's really good, but the money's not. And you wouldn't have any where there's no money and no creative, right? So you have to have a portfolio. There was a day. Okay. Now I'm getting to answer your question, right? So first of all, we had diversity because of the different agencies that we had all running around. So, you know, instead of 10 clients, we had like 40 clients that way, which is great because agencies are all vulnerable. You know, Jay Shai had said every agency is three phone calls away from going out of business, right? And you got to realize that you're only renting these clients. So when you get a new client, you can't say, no, we're not pitching for a while. We're going to absorb at six months. I go, that's great. You can tell your clients to all stop firing you and stop getting new CMOs. That's not, that's a terrible idea. You know, you have to always be pitching because you're always losing business. Even if you don't know you're losing it, all change is negative for agencies. There's almost no change that's ever good. But anyway, this is leading me to think Garrison, this fantastic consultant I had. And one day he uttered the immortal word, resist the temptation to fuck mice. What a line. It's one of the great lines. That's why I still remember it. It was like 25 years ago. So I'm like, yeah. Because we would always talk ourself into all these dumb little clients and why they were cool and this and that. Right. And we said, no, we're going to aim big. And so at our largest year, we had a lot of big, huge clients. BMW, Wendy's paid us $11 million a year. Revlon, $9 million a year. You know, these are big, these are pretty big numbers, right? And can I ask you a quick question? Like in the midst of this, how long did you go from like inception bootstrapping out the gates to like you land your first seven figure client? Because I think the bell curve of today's agencies, there's so many, like there's a disproportionate amount of agencies today compared to like 80s to 2000s because digital marketing made it easy. Anyone could start it. Like the 99% of them are all including myself, right? Like even who I service, right? I'm not servicing the nine figure agencies, even though we've worked with them and I'm not selling seven figure contracts. It's every agency for the most part, besides the smart few have five figure contracts or sometimes six figure. How long did it take you to get that first seven figure deal? Okay. Then let me come back to the difference between then and now, because there's some major differences. It's not the same. Three years. We were in a competitive consultant-led pitch for Hennessy. We were pitching against the best agencies of the day. And what we presented was really good, but not outrageous, crazy, like people figured we were going to do because we weren't stupid. And we won. And then we won spirits market of the year twice. And the work was fantastic. It was really good. Anyway, it was innovative, but in a different way because we created this Hennessy martini to turn it from after dinner drink, which is boring and old to a hip, you know, before dinner cocktail in a martini glass. And we did these turn of the century posters for Hennessy martini. Today, you can buy these posters for 300 bucks. So, like, hey, when you do an ad that people are going to pay 300 bucks to buy, that's pretty damn good. The caliber of work is literally legendary, like iconic, really good work that you're producing. You went all the way up market to the world's largest companies. One of the things we spoke about last month when I was doing my event was like, oh, yeah. Wait, can I answer your question first, Jordan? Please, John. Today, it's much harder, I think, to get those size clients for agencies. And those were in the general creative area, which is the most competitive. I think today you're much better off with a real specialty. Let me explain what I mean, right? Everyone can do everything today, but that doesn't mean you do everything well. And by the way, being able to do everything doesn't mean you're going to win clients with 90% of those things. You've got to find the tip of the spear, the thing that you do better than anyone in the world. And you've got to lead with that. And you've got to get so when you search for that, your name pops up on Google. So tip of the spear, your positioning isn't what you can do. Because remember, everyone can do everything. So people are too focused on that. You've got to have a positioning that really is that really fine point that's going to get you in the door. And so it might not be about the seven-figure client, you know, or because it might not be as many seven figures as I had. Because if you're in a narrow area, you know, unless that's a vertical like farmer or something like that, right? But the whole point is to get to where people call you because of the thing they know you for, right? When I was doing it, there weren't as many specialists, right? So we were a general creative agency. And so we had a tip of the spear, which was edgy. It was literally really the edge was what we were and innovation. But it's better today to have a more focused specialty than it was then and to really beat on that. Now, the reason why this is so important, okay, is you need to get found today. It's very hard to cold call your way into business because most of the business you win are people that have either heard of you or you know. And most of the time when you're in a pitch, for most agencies, you know someone in the room. So if you cold call and you do get in the room, you're probably going to lose because it's an agency that knew someone in the room. So that's very, very important. So you need to get in a world of search. You need to get a place. You need to get to a place where they call you because you're famous for a specific thing. You're never going to win when someone says creative agency and then there are a thousand that pop up, right? So I hope all this is making sense. So I think it's more about that, right? And having business that just finds you, you know, or it makes it easy to create relationships and get meetings because you have a real point of difference that's, you know, defendable over time. Anyway, that's my advice. First off, I appreciate you calling me on and being like, hey, man, let's finish this point first. So thank you for that. And then number two, it's actually really intriguing for me to hear like, I think as a founder like anyone, you hear a billion dollars and it's like, that's awesome. And it's also cool to hear like, hey, what I'm interpreting, I'd love your clarification. How I got there on my first rodeo, if I woke up and I was 25, 30 years old today, I wouldn't do it that way. What taking that, like extending that point, how would you scale to a billion dollars again today? Or would you, would you, would you pursue that? It depends on what kind of agency you have. You know, like what's your agency do, right? For real. And what's your, if you had to say, what's the tip of the spear for you, what is it? There's a lot of ways to get there. We've historically been in the operations and management consulting firm for agencies. So we've helped the founder exit their operations so they could actually grow a business because the agency is always the business. I saw AI coming in 2024. And now we've taken that same principle where the AI and oper, AI consulting firm, but for agency operations to add a million dollars in EBITDA to your company by removing the founder and like also increasing capacity by 50%. It's a, it's a mouthful. And because it's evolving so quickly, we're still in this exploration stage. Wait, you mean removing the founder just from what their day-to-day stuff is? Not like they retire? No, no, no. Correct. Yeah. Like work on the business. Don't be the fulfillment. Don't be the strategist in the room unless like be the brand, you know, be a CEO. You would have a lot of independent agencies, I'm guessing, right? Our bell curve historically has been 1 to 3 million or 80% because that's like the, that's like business purgatory. Okay. So, you know, there's, if you look at the SIC code for agencies, there's like 30,000 agencies in America, you know? And, you know, 29,000 of them are in the size you're talking about, right? So, you're really talking about selling something like a software company would sell, you know what I mean? That's got scale and mass and lots of salespeople and all of that sort of thing, right? That's a whole different approach to get to be big. I don't think you're ever going to get big doing that one at a time. Or, you know, I joined the 4As and I go present at the 4As conference and I joined Network One based in London that has 1,500 agencies. You're going to have to sell a lot of agencies, you know, in mass. Anyway, that's to me, that idea is something that needs to be approached in a way that no one approaches anything in our business is my net. So, I would love to, you know, on a separate conversation, I'd love to maybe do a deep dive on me. We'll talk about it. It's just as an example, you know, everyone's got a route. It's not the same route, you know, to get there. You're saying figure out your tip of the spear, which is your calling card. And we have a lot. I would say the bell curve, like the majority of who we actually see, they do have a niche, right? They are the, we just signed a $12 million a year agency. They're law firm marketing agencies. Granted, that's a very populated space. Within that world, they're search and they do really good work and they're growing. We have another client, they do 11 mil. Wait, is that one of the people that does those billboards up and down everywhere in LA for accident attorneys? Not one of those. I was wondering who they are. Every billboard in LA is for accident attorneys, by the way. I haven't met them, but I did meet a billboard guy in LA. So maybe he's the guy. But could you expand on the topic of like, let's just say you woke up and you know what? You got to redo as an ad. I asked you once like about your journey and you just said, you know, Jordan, I'm like, I'm really just now. I know advertising. So you're a really good marketer, a really good advertiser. How would you redo it with the same skill set? You are John Bond today, but now you're 30. How are you redoing it? Well, first I have to have an idea. You know what's funny? This morning, literally, I had breakfast with Martin Sorrell. And I was literally pitching him on agencies that he should write a check for me to help run and start. So yeah, it happens to be fresh in my mind, right? So I'll just spit out a bunch of, I mean, literally, I just spit out all this stuff to him about six hours ago. But it's the thought process, right? And again, you also have to play to your strengths, right? So one idea is to scale what I'm doing now, which is get a few million dollars and do marketing for founders, but also make investments in their company. So you're a hybrid VC agency. And that way you can say, okay, I'm going to invest $250,000, but I want to do all the marketing for the next three years as a contract, right? You're already going to make the money back. And I want extra stock for doing that, blah, blah, blah, right? So that's one idea. Another idea that I had is, you know, it's interesting with AI because now we're moving from inputs, like here's how long it takes me to do it, right? Or hours to outputs, like here's what you get. Here's 87 videos I made to the ultimate output, which is results. I think it's a great time to do an agency that's paid 100% on results. I think that's a really great idea. I think that would do really well, right? We could explain, you know, you got to manage your downside and not get screwed by the client on your upside when you hit these numbers and they're paying you all this money. But that's a separate conversation. You got to do what the wall's- I know one in New York City, by the way. Oh. It's a fun note. You might enjoy meeting him. I'd love to. Okay. I'll have to tell you on the side, but he's an affiliate marketer. His close rate's 100%. I actually had him on the pod last year because he's like, you pay me nothing. I front all the money and you pay me on performance. Right. I'm with you. But you can do that for almost any part of marketing now, not PR as much, right? You know what's funny? When I present this to agency people and they go, but it might fail because the product was bad or the distribution. I go, yeah. And when were you in the meeting when the CMO goes, you know, it failed, but it was all my fault. And so you're getting, you know, a raise. You know, in that meeting? You're going to get fired anyway if it doesn't work. There's no downside. It has to work or you're not going to be there. So what the hell, right? Anyway, so that idea and a few other ideas. But the point is, you see where the wind is blowing and which leads me to another one of my enduring principles, which is the near future. You know, when you bet on the far future, you lose all your money because it's too early. When you're playing in the present, you can't get, you know, get any share because it's too competitive. The near future is just what's hitting, but not everyone's great at it. You know, like TikTok three years ago, Facebook ads 10 years ago, you know, things like that. Because what happens is there's a curve, it's hot, and then it becomes mainstream and then it declines. But sometimes it's about to hit, doesn't quite hit. So you got to make a good bet, you know, NFTs. We thought, but then, you know, the metaverse, we thought. Then it was the year of mobile for like 10 years and then it was the year of mobile. Jeff Bezos didn't build Amazon by being the smartest guy in the room. He built it by building systems. In his own words, good intentions don't work, mechanisms do. And that's the whole game. Most NGOs are stuck at seven figures because they're running their business on poor, ineffective, or non-existent systems. There's no repeatable way to analyze data, to root cause constraints, to build the correct strategic plans, to source, hire, onboard, train, retain, develop, manage talent, and clients. Everything is dependent on the founder showing up every single day and willing their business to success. If you want to hit eight figures in annual revenue, you need my 13 systems. Not 12, not a couple processes, but all 13. When you plug all of these into your business, when you identify what you don't currently have and build all 13 of these systems so you can truly scale, you will stop firefighting and start compounding. That is the difference between running an agency job and running an agency machine. If you want to learn all about these 13 systems to get your business to the next level, go to the link below and get my ebook on the 13 systems so you could finally build a business that worked without you and hit eight figures. In 2024, I found out that I had four years of tax returns filed wrong because my IRS CPA didn't bother to make sure my taxes were correct. The guy that I thought I was safe with, the guy that used to work for the IRS, screwed me. Because I assumed he was actually making sure that the taxes he was filing were accurate. And to my surprise and my detriment, he didn't even care to look. Not because he's incompetent, because he was too busy. He was booked with clients out the wazoo and he's not an operator. He did not know how to actually scale a practice. And this is the issue with the financial services and accounting industry. And this is exactly why I started Eight Figure Finance. Led by an amazing forensic accountant, CPA, Ben Sternberg, we have been delivering exceptional service and finances and books and taxes that you can trust with your agency. And not only your agency, your life. If you're unhappy with your accountant, CPA, or bookkeeper, or if you want an external party to validate and make sure your finances and books are actually correct, go to eightfigurefinance.com where we will review your finances, P&L, and books complimentary to ensure you're not getting screwed. So, what I'm hearing, one of your biggest principles before the near-term principle is leverage within the offer. So, pay me on performance. Don't pay me at all. You mentioned equity. You said there were a few more. And then also riding a near-term wave, right? And that's part of the reason, personally, I went into the world of AI. I'm like, we're all new to market. I was first to market for agencies, but we don't have to dive into that. But that... Wait, when did you adopt AI? How long ago was this? We rebranded fully in November. We took on our first AI consulting and development client. That was an agency Q2 of last year. So, about a year in. But at that point, when we rebranded, we were still the first publicly facing... You couldn't Google AI debt firm for agencies. There wasn't one that exists at that time. Yeah. Yeah, but you hit it as the wave was coming up. You know, when ChatGPT came out, about three or four months before ChatGPT came out, I hosted for brand innovators a whole day on marketing AI. No one showed up. Nobody cared. It was three months... It was. It was three months too early. You gotta catch that wave, you know? Just before it breaks. Do you have an eye for it now that you've seen multiple cycles? Yeah, because I always say, I've seen this movie. I know what's gonna happen. I've seen the movie before. You know? I don't know how long the movie is. Right? Could be long. Could be short. You know? Like, AI is a movie that'll never end. So, what do you think, based on your vantage point, is the near term, tip of the spear, and, like, that ultimate leverage? Well, there's more than one, right? I was spitting out a couple of things. You know? Well, the confluence of things like AI, which means you can make stuff for next to nothing, combined with greatly enhanced analytics means that we can measure what's working and not. Not marketing metrics, because the only way to do paper performance, it has to be metrics that Wall Street values. Real metrics, right? So, if I said to you, okay, you know, I'm going to do your direct-to-consumer advertising, you know, and I know your ROAS is 2.0, and I know I think I can get 3.0, and I take 20% of that, you're still ahead. Even though you paid me a shitload, right? You paid me 20%. So, you went from a ROAS of 2 to 2.4, and I got 0.6, and I just got paid, and I'm getting paid more than any agency ever, right? And you just went up 20%. Bingo, right? And then how would I know that's going to work? I would not know it's going to work. I'd have to test it. So, maybe I risked $5,000 or $10,000 to do micro tests for a month to see if, in fact, I could get the ROAS enough over 2 to make it worth it. I'm just giving you one example off the top of my head, right? But it has to be that the things that are in place now weren't around. You couldn't do it five years ago. If it's something you could have done five years ago, it's probably not the curve going up, like you were saying with AI, right? You had a good idea, but more important than the idea, because that, no offense, that's not genius, was when. You did it at the right time, right? And you also picked a niche that's not everyone and their brother saying, guess what? I do AI videos. Yeah, I know. Anyway, so, sorry, go ahead. I think anyone that's listened to enough podcasts or interviews, like there's a way that those who are ultra successful, which is what you've had in your career, a way of simplifying the game, which I think you got the way you describe it and play the game, simplified vantage point. What was it about your journey on the way to doing a billion dollars a year that are growth principles that are kind of evergreen, beyond near-term, wave, tip of the spear, leveraging the offer? What are other growth principles, whether it's around the speed? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, that's a really good question. And I'm going to try to give you growth principles that are universal and apply to everyone. When I said tip of the spear, the other thing I meant was decisions are made by groups these days. So you need the like universal soundbite that explains to the group why, you know, Jordan Ross is the expert at this and that's why we should do it. And we're going to find a billion dollars to our bottom line. No one disagrees with that, right? It sort of is universal. You know what I mean? So that's one. One that a lot of people aren't really good at is culture. Let me explain why that's so critical. First of all, that's all an agency really is in the end of the day. You know, our culture was acceptance. You know, back then you could have been the person that was the oddball, you know, the black female that felt no one listened to her. You know, the gay guy, whatever, back then, right? This was in another era. And you'd show up at work. And all of a sudden, you could be the same person out of the office and in the office. So that agency had a culture that was, they could interview people and go, that's a KB person. That's not a KB person in a second. You know? And so people were fans. It had a cultish quality. And cultish qualities are viral. You know? And this is even before social media or the internet. And people talk about it. And there's a buzz. And the thing is that it starts in the agency world. And it doesn't take that long to get from the agency world to the client world. Because those worlds overlap quite a bit. And people go back and forth. And people like to talk. So you have to have a very distinctive culture. You know, it can't be that bullshit. You know, here's our principles. Equity and this and that. And the sort of integrity. All this bullshit. No. It needs to be something like I could describe. Let me put it this way, okay? On our 10th anniversary, Trevor, who was our black, cross-dressing, gay receptionist, put on a blonde Marilyn Monroe wig. Sat on my lap and Richard's lap and sang, happy birthday, Mr. President, same way Marilyn Monroe did to JFK. That's culture. Okay? That's culture. So it needs to be as clear as that, you know? And then the culture needs to spread, you know, which is, how does that get? And that's called reputation, right? Another thing to do is to keep in touch with everyone you know. You know, everyone that's been in business for more than five years knows a thousand people. But you only keep in touch with a few of them. You got to consciously keep in touch with as many of them as possible. Even if you send an email, I'm going to a conference to a hundred who are in that city. And you go, hey, I'm here. So I'll catch up or whatever. And it's got to be non-pitchy, like personal, right? You got to keep the relationships are always eroding. You have to kind of keep popping them up all the time. So that's like half a job of an agency CEO. You said like you're going to take away all the crap from them. But that they have to, you know, keep or have someone who helps them. So anyway, you know, that shameless PR, because, you know, PR is not expensive. You know, yeah. Doing something that has equity, like you can do it all the time, every quarter, every year. What's the thing that's famous, you know, that I can do all the time? That's important. Things like that, like Collins Design Shop. Brian Collins at Cannes for the last two years has rented this incredible villa and turned it into Collins House. So, you know, instead of trying to compete with $10 million Facebook installations up and down, you know, on the water side, he went a mile in and rented this incredible villa for $30,000 for the week. And that's where everyone wants to go. And then he programs it and he has music and everything else. So that's a kind of overview of some of the things I think you need to do. I really love that you mentioned culture because it's not discussed until it's like too late usually. And usually the ones who nail it, nail it. Like obviously you had a really distinct culture. I love the repeatable PR component. And like even how like, man, my brain is just like there's just ideas of that's popping up with my head like on the villa component. I think that's also brilliant. Which one of those three you mentioned are you like most passionate about for us to spend our last part of this conversation in? I think it all comes out of culture, you know. So Brian Collins is a very erudite, high-end design person. So the villa is beautiful. And, you know, if you were an ed tech company, it wouldn't have been as good a fit. Then I would do robots that walk up and down pitching you or something, right? You know what I mean? So it has to come out of the culture, you know. And then you have to figure out how do I make this culture famous and sticky, you know. And then ideas will come out of that. I have a definition of what I perceive as culture. How do you define what culture is? Culture is the values, the real values of the company, not the thing they put on a wall. It's the choices they've made. We care about this and not that. That's what culture is. You know, and people know cultures of some of the big companies. You know, in Amazon, it's all about measurement and testing. And you have to write everything in a one-page memo that makes an argument and all that, right? Which is how Jeff Bezos' brain works. It all comes down to the founder. I learned culture because when I started my career, I was in Amazon. I was just like, people talk about it. It's like we have to have a good culture in this warehouse. Is there a time when it's too soon to do culture? Because when I started my, I quit Amazon in 2020. I was very passionate about this topic. Like super passionate. I was even consulting like eight and nine figure agencies on the topic of culture. Like that's how passion, I loved, and I still love the topic. What I found in myself is like to grow a company. Like you made a comment when we spoke maybe a month ago. It's like, you know, running an agency humbles you. Like all business is, it's a slog. And it's a lot of effort to invest into like culture. Or for me, it's like, it's so much effort to invest into management. There was a time in my career I loved and really wanted to be a manager. And I'm at a disposition today. I'm like, I don't know if I, I don't love it. And I'd really love the people side, but it's like so much effort to the probable return is hard. At what point is it relevant or critical for an agency to really start to get extremely intentional around culture? When you don't know everyone's name. In other words, it happens automatically until then. But also, so I don't know when that was like 15, 20 people. But I think today it has to be earlier because if you're not all in this little shitty office that most of us started in, and it's virtual. I'm not a big fan of this 100% virtual thing. I have to say, this makes me sound like an old guy. And the reason is culture. I think like people have to go through the battle in the, you know, together in an office, at least a certain amount of time in order to build trust relationships and efficiency together and culture. So I think there has to be some critical mass of people in the same physical space for at least some of the time. I agree. I used to not, I used to disagree. And now that I've done virtual working for six years, I could feel the difference, especially with kids, especially with the pull of my wife's, the boundaries get hard to stay consistent in a home office when there's a, when there's young children in the house and the influence around micro habits too, especially like the, yeah, I think in person is a great idea, especially in a virtual world. I know a guy who started an agency and he had like an extra room that he started it in. And he used to get dressed in a suit and tie and go sit by himself in the room just so he understood he was there to work, not to watch Netflix or play with his dog or everything. I thought that's brilliant. It's a good mental priming. What are some of the, maybe one or two stories that take this culture idea that allowed you to grow to a billion dollars that really illuminate it in a concrete manner on the way for life that you guys did at KB? Oh, sure. Yeah. You know, rituals is a big thing. We hired this woman, Kiki Kendrick from London. We had a lot of people from London that had great people in our world. And she instituted this thing called drinks trolley every Friday afternoon. So she'd put a British flag on a cart and put all these drinks, you know, alcohol when people drank alcohol. And she'd walk around the agency, push it. And then whatever drink you wanted, she would make it. You know, she was like an amateur bartender. So drinks trolley. Eventually, it migrated to different bars. Today, and I mean now, 10 years after the agency got merged into oblivion, somebody who worked at that agency who people know died. And there was a post on Facebook. Tomorrow night, at one of those bars, 150 people will show up for drinks trolley in memory of Joe Smith. Tomorrow. I've seen it happen quite a few times. Wow. I have full body chills hearing how like something that happened in your company transcended even like post acquisition, like to the end of someone's life, did this culture take itself? It's fascinating. Totally. Because people will say that's the best place they've ever worked and the best experience. And you know who says that the most? The people that complained the most. Because that was the only place that they were allowed to complain and not get fired. Would you say you had fun running your business or like what looking back on it or me? Oh, boy. That's a great question. I'm going to ask you something too with that. But yeah, it was a lot of fun. And it was a lot of stress. Running an agency is about like the most stressful thing you can do. You can't do it forever. You know, you only have a certain due date, right? Because you're in a vice, right? On one side, you have clients that want more, more, more, and they want to pay you less, less, less. And on the other side, you have the stars of the company who are being offered double the salary to go down the street. And how do you keep those two together when they want to both go, you know, the pressures on them to go leave you, right? That's really hard. This is one of my insights this year. Going back to the in-person and then to the fun point, I think it's really hard not having a business in person because the chemicals that get released in our brains when we have a positive experience, it's amplified in an office. And it's really isolating when you're like having a win and it's just you in a home office. Really stressful. I think everyone can relate to that. Really fun. It sounds like you also made it fun. Like, it sounds like fun was a little bit, a lot of bit intentional, actually. It sounds like, which speaking it out loud is extremely rare. Like, you hear about fun businesses. You know, people put a foosball table in there and think that's making it fun. My philosophy was people in the office are cooler than your friends, so why go home? How did you make that happen in conjunction with, like? Not consciously. It just was who we attracted and who, you know, it was a lot of people who didn't fit in anywhere. You know, like the pirates, not the navy, you know? But that was that culture, right? You know, people, and it was very diverse. All different kinds of people. But people have to want to be there, right? And that's the whole thing. There might be different reasons and different kinds of agencies that have different reasons why people want to be there. But there's certainly some things that I saw at big holding company-owned agencies that we didn't do. We didn't have politics. I know everyone's like, no, I'm telling you, we didn't. It was all about the work. And if you do good work, great. And if you don't, tough. Oh, real simple. Were you guys quick to fire your employees who, like, couldn't execute? Yeah, a lot of times we'd hire people that weren't a fit, you know? I was 0 for 3 on Harvard people. I used to call them the dumbest smart people I ever met. Oh, really? I made it up, but maybe someone else can do it. Similar, same, same, different. Not the same quote, but like the same. Same sentiment? Yeah, hire from Ivy League and you don't get what you think you were going to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, because they can, because the American education system is about rote memorization. I throw it at you, you absorb it, and you spit it back. But advertising marketing is about new things. It's not about spitting back the same. They would be like if the client briefed me and I went, and I just gave them their brief back. No, you're supposed to take it to a whole new place anyway. You're like such a fun character, such a fun hang. So it's obvious that it's like so intuitive, me saying that out loud, that yeah, obviously you built a fun culture because I feel like it's also a reflection of who you are. It sounds like that culture attracted really good people. So when you were going up market and you were doing these massive accounts, you had really talented people who were working their face off, I would imagine, making an assumption. But they're having a fun time because there's cool people around. And because there's this culture and camaraderie, they're willing to work harder for each other and get better results. And then that, it just became a self-fulfilling prophecy, it sounded like. It's exactly what happened. It's so rare. Do you think you could redo that again today? Not the same way, but like in your own way of 2020, the 2020s with John. I don't know, actually, because that's a reflection of my personality. So I don't know if I could create a, I mean, I could probably help create a radically different culture. I just don't know that I would want to be there every day necessarily. Like I could say, look, we're going to do a culture of experimentation, right? Like Amazon, we're going to run as many experiences as possible. No idea is a bad idea. Everything has to test and, you know, build a whole culture around that, right? Validate, you know, everything. Don't believe anything. I could create a culture around that. I don't know that I want to work there. And I'm the person to be the CEO, but I certainly could help create it, right? So that's a good question. Maybe as you are advising and working with these founders, it's something I'll circle back with you on in a year, two or three. But John, I'm looking at the time. I want to make sure I'm respecting your time. This was a really cool conversation. I think the conversation is completely reflected on the size of what you scaled to. It's no, it's like apparently obvious. The sophistication and like just the uniqueness at which you have within your mind manifested in a business that became so successful, exited successfully. And I appreciate your like simplicity behind it all too, right? The principles. Like it sounds like you're very conscious about the principles you have. So thank you for coming on, man. For anyone that wants to follow you, get in touch, learn more, you know, where do people find you online or in person? LinkedIn is good. Easy to find me on LinkedIn. I have almost the maximum number of contacts. I think I have 29,000. You can only have 30,000, I'm told. Or I hate that. John at bondsworld.ai also. Cool. I'm going to check that out. Well, John, dude, this was great, man. Thank you so much for hanging out. 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