How Jordan Diatlo Went From Layoff to Leadoff

Chris Whyte (: 00:00

But Jordan Diatlo, welcome to Why Design. We're in our kind of temporary home here in Manhattan, New York. you've usually made the journey. You've come from home, haven't you? But over in Long Island, Queens, New York is where your studio is. Long Island City. Long Island City. I know you're coming from out of town. It's OK. New Yorkers, we can be nice. So far, so good. Yeah. So I'm just going to quickly introduce you for those of those of you.

been running the studio since: 2016

Cool. let's do it. Let's dive in shall we. as with every episode of Why Design, we always start with Why Design. You what drew you into design in the first place? You know, I can see that you studied at Carnegie Mellon and Florence Design Academy, unless I got that completely wrong. No, that's it. But yeah, what first drew you into ID? So...

re, when I went to CMU, I was: 1000

I won't say I'm old. We're about the same age. we're definitely not old. Yeah, not old. Always messing around with Microsoft Publisher back in those days. I'm a 90s kid. Always doing my own things and doing it, just teaching myself design. And then when I got to high school, started doing Photoshop classes and started learning graph design there. Eventually I was the, this is really a really long journey, editor of the high school yearbook. And that was my first taste of

Chris Whyte (: 02:07

of getting to lead a design team. And I think that's where things really clicked for me and probably put me on my trajectory to where I am today. But coming out of that, I had learned a little bit about ID and probably didn't learn enough because I just didn't really like what I had been exposed to at that point. But when I went to CMU,

they put graphic designers or what they call communication design and ID on the same track in the first year. So everybody's just a design student. Through that year, I was exposed to projects that dealt with both and then dealt with just graphic design and dealt with just industrial design. And the things that were really appealing to me were the three dimensional problem solving. that's when, you know, throughout the year it was like a

slow build and then when we had to register for sophomore year and decide which track to officially choose, I had this like existential crisis. Like, I was so sure I would be graph designer, but I didn't really like those projects. The industrial design ones, that kind of like, you know, hit my brain the right way. And that's kind what you want out of design. And I think that's why so many people do design or want to do design is because that problem solving.

it's just a really enjoyable process and getting the results and doing it with just a little style too. Like that's what I love. I always think of it as problem solving with style.

Yeah, that's kind of what led me to it when I was a freshman. Of course, my journey was only beginning at that point, but that's really when I chose to do that. It's interesting. I was just thinking as you were talking, educational tracks seem fairly aligned up until that moment where both went to university because I was quite graphics heavy. I did Photoshop. I used to really enjoy putting together the early social media covers.

Chris Whyte (: 04:14

for our friendship groups and the MySpace page and in fact I remember being part of, they call it Young Enterprise, it was like a side project at school where you had to start a business and we did really well. created a, the school was really good for productions, like I think they were doing a production of Grease and we did the program for it. I project managed that and did some of the graphics for it and the layout.

It was like the editor. And then it all went downhill because then I studied management. I think I got the bug for, I enjoyed the graphics, but I enjoyed the management, the project management side. And then, yeah, my track took me down to sales and recruiting. It just sounds like, yeah, a lot more fun. I think there's still a parallel path in the management. I kind of see it as like the orchestrator here. You're pulling all these pieces together and weaving all these people together who are really good at their parts.

But helping them come together in a way that the sum is always greater than the parts, right? Oh, huge. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's cheesy, but teamwork makes the dream work. you got to see my studio's core values. And I always introduce one of our core values is team. Yeah. Together, everyone achieves more. And I don't know if this is a real thing, but I got it from the... It clicked for me, I'll say, watching the HBO show about the Lakers.

Okay, where magic Johnson is a rookie but he says that to the team before they go play in the finals or something Yeah, I always think of like the Showtime Lakers having the best teamwork and the best ball movement getting everybody involved Everybody is participating and everybody's having fun and they're winning. So yeah, I'm a big sports fan, especially basketball. Yeah I'll take the analogy further for the UK listeners. Okay, Leicester City a few seasons ago

2016 they won the Premier League, but they were the year before they were like facing relegation and they certainly didn't have the best kind of individual players in the in in the league. certainly didn't have the highest paid players, but they what they had was a manager that kind of brought them together for teamwork and they got each other and they worked super well and then they they were like underdogs. People made thousands of thousands of pounds betting on them because it's like a 501 shot that they'd win.

Chris Whyte (: 06:44

And that's the best when the sum is greater than the parts, right? Huge. I mean they're doing Dreadful now, it's... Fantastic. talk us through kind of your career journey then, you know, from those early days. Obviously you mentioned that, yeah, existential crisis. It's not graphic design anymore, it's ID.

You had early roles with Stephen Barry's, Jim Lahr and Poland Design.

quirky for a few years as well. so Stephen Barry's for those who remember came out with the starberry sneaker Stefan Marbury. He was a basketball player. I think at the time he was on the Knicks but more importantly, he was this guy from Coney Island homegrown New York hero. Yeah, he partnered with Stephen Barry's to come out with a $20 basketball shoe. And after that the company kind of blew up. Wow. But they oh man, it was crazy. They hired like 120 kids straight

of college. I was one of them. So it was a lot of fun. It was like a fifth year of college. Except now they're paying you not a lot. But something right. They've got to the cost down because it's $20 for us. Exactly. But they weren't really running the best business. They ended up laying me and I think like 90 percent of the company off. Yeah. Later that year or within the next year. So that was my first real taste of what the world is like getting laid off.

So I was doing footwear there.

Chris Whyte (: 08:20

And then my next job was, I took an unpaid internship with Poland Design, which was, thought, the coolest industrial design studio. Not so much from the outside, but once I was in and met the people, it just had the best vibe. The people were super nice, going out for drinks all the time, really, really good team collective and really, really amazing designers. But I wasn't very good. Good enough to get an internship, not good enough to

to get asked to stay around. And then somebody put in their two weeks notice right before I was leaving. So I got to stay around for a couple months. again, looking back on it, I know I was not even close to capable enough of getting a good industrial design job. There's so much work that just needs to be done, I think for anybody when you're leaving school, but for me especially. mean, the portfolios I see now are way better than what I had.

After that, I worked at a company called Jim Lahr that was footwear design.

Honestly, that was an experience that just helped me understand industrial design again going back to that feeling from freshman year of college Those were the projects that was the environment that was really hitting my brain the right way, you know, whether it's a Emotional core psychological core intelligent core. I don't know what it is, but it's just it's hitting all those marks for me Whereas footwear design just wasn't doing it. I did become

really sharp in Illustrator, Adobe Illustrator. That's the one thing I always say to people when they ask me, how'd you learn Illustrator? Well, I use it every day for at least a year there. But.

Chris Whyte (: 10:09

Basically I reached back out to Pollen Design and reached out to a couple other places. Hey, I'm available for freelance, even though I wasn't. Pollen Design eventually called me back or whatever we doing in those days and said, okay, we have one project for you. It's probably about five to 10 hours a week. If you want to take it, immediately said yes, immediately put in my two weeks notice at JMR. And then basically built up from there, starting with that one project, started freelancing for them a little more.

little more. Eventually I was still freelance but full time and was there for a number of months. And then I got an opportunity at Quirky. At the time, Quirky was this brand new startup. They had this tagline that was, we're designing one product a week. People on the internet are gonna submit their ideas to us and we're gonna design it. It wasn't quite so linear but the motto was good. They were really good at marketing and communication, I will say.

That came about through the Paul & Design Network, actually. A former intern from Paul & Design who had been out for drinks with that group. When I had been there, we met. He was working at Quirky. He pulled me in. Or when I interviewed, I guess. We recognized each other instantly. was a very small team.

And then, so I worked at Quirky for about three years. that's where I always say, I learned everything there. That was an extremely fast-paced startup environment. doing one product a week doesn't sound fast-paced enough, I mean, I So what kind of products were they then?

I think the common thread was some sort of innovation. I'll say that. For the most part, they started to develop core competencies over time, which were, they're very famous for the pivot power, PowerStrip, which I was the lead designer on. That was incredible experience of leading a design project when I was way too young and unqualified, but you step up when the space Best way to learn, it, when you're at your comfort zone? Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 12:18

I don't know if I knew I was out of my comfort zone, to be honest.

And they flew me to China a couple of times where I got to work with the factory on that one. Worked extremely closely with engineers and that really propelled the company forward, especially in the electronics or power strip kind of space or charging accessories. They were also doing a lot of kitchen stuff because when people are inventing at home, a lot of times they're sitting in their kitchen. They're either garage tinkerers or they're in their kitchen cooking or doing something and they have an idea of how it could be better.

So I think those were kind of the main areas they were playing in but it wasn't like anything was off-limits. It was really cool And the CEO was a young guy super energetic really pushing the company forward and Really putting the resources in the designers hands like we had a state-of-the-art 3d printer I mean they had the shutdown Broadway and crane lift this thing in through the window

It was nuts and honestly just an incredible place to work and I'm sure I know you're visiting New York, but as you network more you're gonna hear more about the quirky diaspora the tentacles of quirky that have spread throughout or interesting Yeah, cuz it blew up, know, I was there for three years about six people when I started Something like 90 people when I left. Yeah, I think they over the next three years went to like 300 plus people and eventually

solved. All startups, not all startups, a lot of startups. Most, like 97%. It's a good run. It's very tough. Yeah. So of those, I've just realized, sorry, saw the cash in your eye. It must be like a red rack to a bull, seeing a competitor's pin badge. not at all. Stuart just, I've just interviewed, he gave me a bunch of goodies, and one being a pin badge, which is quite cool, but realized.

Chris Whyte (: 14:21

I'm into another consultancy leader. We got to work on our studio swag. It's like a subtle kind of hint brings work. That's all cool. So

We quirky then like a product a week. I'm guessing a product a week didn't end up in production. No, it was a product. It started out where a product a week was getting submitted. And then honestly, they opened the floodgates. Let's do two products a week. Yeah, because they they knew that not everything was going to get to production. Yeah. And then after a while, it became let's just pick the good ideas. Yeah, why would we limit it to two ideas? Yeah, which, as a designer on the team, I was, you know, it's like, my God, are you serious?

It's like, looking back on it, I get it. I really understand. know, everything was broadcast over the internet. So competitors can see what we're doing. had to move super fast. I mean, it was honestly the best training ground for an industrial designer possible. So if you submit an idea, would you get royalties if it was successful? Yeah, that was their business model. And I think that there had always been what I would describe as cheesy companies that were doing that before where

you never knew if you were gonna get it and they were kind of shady and quirky was just so insanely transparent. They would put the picture of the inventor on the box, this guy is getting 30 % of everything you buy from our website, 10 % of everything you buy from the store, whatever their model was. It was really cool, really cool to put everyday people first and really cool to hook them up with not only expert industrial designers but expert salespeople, expert marketers, expert product developers.

I mean, quirky just attracted great talent. So it was such an insane learning experience. And you'll see like, I'm not the only person who started a company. There's so many people who have moved on to start their own companies from that company. That's amazing. Is it still going in any kind of shape or form now? Is it completely dissolved? In my first year of leadoff, I know that it had got sold at auction. So they went bankrupt. Right.

Chris Whyte (: 16:35

and it got sold off at auction and the new owners reached out to me because they knew that I was an alum and I had had some space from the company whereas other people were a little more fresh. And I did a little bit of work for them but you know after a while I knew it wasn't a long-term fit for me and lead-off. This was just really the first year where I was trying to just build a foundation, make sure we're keeping the lights on and we keep going. I don't know where they're at today.

That's my long-winded way of saying that. That's cool. cool. I hope they are still going in some shape or form, but obviously you then, very quickly after that, you moved on to Johnson & Johnson. Yeah, you know, after Quirky, I'm going to be honest, that was...

It was tough to leave, but I just found it really tough to fit in anywhere else because Berkey was such a weird, unique place where, especially in the beginning, they wanted people who were really different and who would push back and do their own thing and drive their own projects. And that really fit me so well. So when I'm interviewing at all these other companies, I could always get in the door for an interview with some of the best companies, but I could never get a job. I realized after many months,

like, OK.

I'm not actually a good fit at any of these companies, I see. So I started freelancing for some of my own clients and for some design consultancies locally just on like contract work. And honestly, at that stage in my life, it was just pretty lonely. So I took a freelance gig at Johnson & Johnson for about half a year. And then I got connected with a company called Soles that did 3D printed orthotics. And I just thought, wow.

Chris Whyte (: 18:25

on the cutting edge of this new technology for manufacturing, it's a chance for me to design in a totally different way. Where I have to work with engineers and design and code something that will be driven by an algebraic equation, often known as this algorithm, that is going to execute my design. But it's going to execute it all different ways.

I mean, this is just like totally the opposite of I'm designing something in SOLIDWORKS and we're gonna send it off to get cut and steal. It was so different. So I took that. That was also a startup though, I'll say. And like we already touched on, not all of them last. I came back from New Year's break, January 4th, they lay off almost the whole company.

Now the thing for me, I really wasn't too happy there because again, I'm realizing like, I don't really fit in at yet another company. But also I was expecting my first child, my daughter was going to be born at the end of January and

kind of later in the year with Soles, the year before that, they gave me a little raise and I said, okay, they're paying me, let me be a responsible adult. Don't worry about your day to day Jordan. You have a kid on the way, you gotta make money and bring home money. When they laid me off, a weight was lifted off my shoulders. It was so counterintuitive to most people, but again, I don't fit in anywhere, I'm not normal.

I was so, so, so happy. You have no idea. And if any of the people from Saltz are listening, you might know that already. You might not. don't know if that's... It's been a period of time that we've been of waters under the bridge. I think we can be honest now. Hey, they laid you off after all, so don't feel bad. No. I'm very transparent. That's the thing. So I was so happy.

Chris Whyte (: 20:39

And of course I knew like, okay, this is awesome. But I do have a kid on the way, you know, two to three weeks this is happening. So I did do a little bit of freelance work on the side while I at Soles, usually one project at a time. So I had that going on. Just immediately hit up my network from when I was doing the freelance after Quirky. And just let everybody know I'm available. I'm here. I didn't think that I would get a full time job and also just didn't.

those experiences just felt like I can't keep interviewing like I did after quirky I'm not fitting it anywhere let me let me just try this yeah ever since those yearbook days I knew I wanted to try to start my own company you also should know I come from a long line of entrepreneurs okay my dad's an entrepreneur my grandfather's an entrepreneur all the people my grandfather's generation were entrepreneurs because they came to the US a lot of them came from Cuba okay we're also

Jewish, so we're like getting double discriminated against in that generation.

Yeah, they had to start their own business. And then my dad being around that, he always told me, it just felt like the only path was to start my own business, because that's just everybody I knew. And then when he told me that, was like, well, if they all did it, maybe I should do it one day. So it just felt like, OK, even though I had a kid on the way, that is the worst time to do it. It also felt like the best time. It's highly motivating, You've got some kind of peril.

Yeah, and you know what? That first year was so great because I was in charge of my own work, life balance. I really got to balance it well. My wife ended up leaving her job, take care of the kid full time for that first year. I got an office. That was a five minute walk from our apartment. I saw both of them so often. Every single day I got to spend so much time. It was great. It ended up being so great. Was I making tons and tons of money?

Chris Whyte (: 22:43

No, but there's no time where I'm ever looking back and saying the money was the best thing in my life. You look back and you say the family and the time, the people, that's always it. Absolutely. You'll never have enough money. Exactly. That's the cruel thing about money is that there's never enough. But equally, you'll never have enough time. So I'd prioritize time.

So those are the shaky grounds that lead off got started. That is great. I want to flip it around slightly. So obviously, you haven't really fit, by your own words, you've not fit in with cultures. So flipping around now as a business owner with a small team, how does that play into how you hire? Because you're

Are you building a team of odd ones out or are they a team of people that kind of are your kind of odd one? I don't know if I'm getting that across right, but you know. Yeah. I don't know if there is any way to word it right, but I know what you mean. I would say it's definitely everybody is their own person at the off studio. The values that we have are not about.

Do you like this movie or whatever? It's more about what is driving you at the end of the day and what kind of life do you want to live and what kind of world do you want to have? What do you want to do with your day every day? And that's, you know, one of our core values of design excellence. We all really, really, really want to make great designed objects. Another one is positivity. That's a huge one for me. I think.

some of the places that I've worked in the past, none specifically, but I know as a designer, we always think something's not good enough or we look at everything and think, how would I design that, right? And I think there's two ways to phrase that. It's not this sucks, that's garbage, that's trash. I like to look at it.

Chris Whyte (: 24:48

How can we make this better? What would we do better? Or what would we do if we had the chance and the opportunity to design this? How will we go and make it better? Yeah. That reframing is infectious as well, isn't it? Absolutely.

I read into NLP like years ago, I used to work for a search consultancy and we went all in on kind of NLP and on psychometrics and you know, just repositioning, swapping out one or two words in a sentence, that essentially mean the same thing, because can have such a big impact on the way it's delivered, the way it's received and that was the classic kind of class half.

Isn't it exactly it's it works. I think so much of design is communication. Yeah, I mean

Obviously coming from CMU, they call graphic design communication design. Yeah, but even the industrial design I Always tell my team we are doing so much great work But when we get time to presentation we have to communicate that great work And so much of communication is verbal so much of it is body language in design that so much of it is visual Yeah, but you're telling the client things you're telling the user things With your design whether it's visual,

It could be smell, could be color. There's so many cues that we have to use to communicate. And of course, yeah, verbal communication is probably the most baseline. Yeah. Huge. So you touched on the values there. And you kind enough to let me take a photo of them yesterday, which has gone out. Not sure when this episode will air, but we'll probably repost the...

Chris Whyte (: 26:35

the photo when it does but talk through your values then and you know, as we discussed yesterday, some people have kind of moved away from that it became a bit of a cliche to have your values on the wall, you know, it was the HR thing that didn't really mean anything, it was just there in the lobby. But in my experience, you know, if you hire and kind of try to hire based on kind of the core values that actually are core values rather than just buzzwords,

you know, that's where you are going to find kind of the misfits that fit, I think. maybe talk us through your kind of, you know, your values and why you've already touched on a couple. Sure. So I think it's really important to first understand why you need to have core values, right? So exactly. I like it. So

You're right, it can't just be HR buzzwords that might get a little excitement, but ultimately it's empty. I looked at it like, okay, I wanna build the studio up a little more. I wanna bring on more people. I even might be more stepping.

into more of a business role, less of a hands-on design role. So how am going to get the right people to be here? And then think about, what are the things that are most important to me about Lead Off Studio? And as we scale that, what are the checkpoints that I'm going to be making sure that everybody here has? Part of it was also looking at the people who have worked at Lead Off Studio, who worked, who were successful. And some of the people who were not successful in trying to really

Analyze that why were they not the right fit? So we we do have five core values Kind of before you give those sorry sure When it came to choosing the core values was that an exercise that you? Kind of like you reflected on that you did self or did you involve the team in kind of coming up with the the values as well? Yeah, actually I did involve the team. Yeah So this was while I was in a class called the Goldman

Chris Whyte (: 28:54

SACS 10,000 Small Businesses. It's a class for small businesses, for founders or CEOs of small businesses who are looking for help and guidance on how to scale. And scaling, can mean 1,000x, it can mean 2x, it means whatever you want. That's the beautiful thing about that class in particular. They really give you the framework and let you define it, which I really love.

I would work on it at the class and then I would bring it back to our team, which was, I'll say, two and a half people at the time. We had one person who was part-time coming on to full-time, ended up not staying, but for life reasons, not for reasons. And yeah, we went through them and there were some that jumped on or fell off. It was important to me not to have too many also. And I wanted to cut it off at five. I don't know.

my personal, don't want too many things there, gets complicated. But.

You know, I definitely wanted them to buy into it because I wanted to make sure I felt like the team that we had at the time was my foundation for how we're going to grow. And if I could just replicate, you know, the three of us keep building that again, not doesn't have to be the same taste of movies. I'm really the only one who likes basketball. They think I'm crazy when I talk about it. But, you know, the people who.

strive for design excellence who are positive people. We always say with team.

Chris Whyte (: 30:35

somebody else's achievements on our team should be just as important to you as your own achievement. If somebody's project wins an award, that should be a moment to celebrate, even if you weren't involved in it. And if you truly feel that way, then you're a good fit for this team. And I will say, like knock on wood or leather, I think we actually have that team right now. It's amazing. And I'm so hesitant to like touch this chemistry. so the other core values, Tikkun Olam,

It's actually a Jewish cultural value. Literally translates to repair the world. I always think of it as leave the world better than you found it. So what are you contributing to the world? Whether it's huge, whether it's big, whether it's small, just leave a positive impact on this world. And I think that for a lot of designers, we automatically feel that way. But I want to make sure that you need to feel that way for sure.

work at lead off. And then the other one is growth. So on the sign that you took a picture of, we three parallel lines, individual, studio and client. Obviously, the clients are coming to us looking to grow their business. Usually their business is focused around a physical product. And we are another sports term where the lead off hitter for them. It's a baseball term. Okay, I don't know how is that where the came from? Yeah, that's where it came. Okay. I always thought also,

lead off hitter in baseball is really like the only one with some swagger. Right, okay. I like it. So the clients coming to us to grow.

the individual has to want to grow and can't just be okay with, I'm here, I made it. It's like, no, like what's next for you? And that can be professional, that can be personal. It's something I ask my team. I meet with each person every quarter and we talk about personal goals. Sometimes they're very career oriented, sometimes they're totally personal and like.

Chris Whyte (: 32:38

That's cool. Thanks for putting on my radar. Let me see what I can do to help. Let me see what lead off can do to help. And then of course we want lead off to grow as well. It's so easy as a manager or leader of people to when you're having those sit downs to focus on business subjects. I think the employees kind of fall into that kind of trap as well as I can only talk about business here. I only talk about kind of what I'm employed to do. But you know work and home and life you know they're all intertwined anyway. They all

they'll impact each other to a certain degree. as a boss, you know what makes them tick and what they're driving towards. If there's some way you can positively influence that in kind of what you're doing and how you're leading them or the kind of opportunities you give them that are going to have a beneficial impact on the business as well, then it's, why wouldn't you kind of want them to talk about that?

back to what we were saying about my experience in that first year of leadoff.

And exactly what I said, I wasn't making that much money. That's okay though, but that's not something that I look back and think about the hardship I think about. I got to spend so much time with my daughter in the first year of life. That is so amazing. And I want to make sure that when people have goals in their personal life, we're supporting that. It's so important. Oh yeah. That's the thing that kind of...

ing that. So, you launched in: 2016

Chris Whyte (: 34:32

What was the initial vision for the studio? Sounds like that maybe came a little bit later in terms of the vision, yeah. And how has that changed? I guess there's two signposts there in terms of the visual vision, if there was one, and then the more refined one, what does that look like now?

So when I started the studio, absolutely no vision. right. It was very much like, well, let me see what I can do. In that first year, we were OK. I think towards the end of the year, started hiring some interns to help me out. The next year, my wife, Jessica, joined the studio full time. And she had always pitched in that first year too. So we always say she's co-founder.

And then we hired our first employee after the second year. And that's when I started to think a little bit more about, okay, where do we actually want to take this? And I think I always had a vision in my head of like what I wanted or what I could see. But it really wasn't until I was in the 10,000 Small Business Class that...

As a CEO, well first of all, I think you need to think of yourself as a CEO if you're running your business. One thing that they told me right away is you can't be the CEO and the president. And I think in small studio terms, I would say the design director is kind of the president. So.

One change that we've made in the last couple years, we did hire design directors, so this way I can run more of the business and help us achieve those growth goals. And also just work more with the clients on their business and be more strategic to them, rather than focusing on each minute detail of the design, which as a team we do, but doesn't need to necessarily be me. That's the power of the team.

Chris Whyte (: 36:31

Anyway, I know, I go off on tangents. I love it, it's great. When I actually got to sit down and think about it, what I really always loved in those first couple years was working on health and wellness products. And that kind of became a directive for how I wanted to...

push our studio forward. I kind of looked at the landscape of industrial design studios. Now, if you ask any business advisor, they're always telling you, you need to pick a niche. And that is so antithetical to creatives. We want to do everything we can and then some, and then give us something new when we're done with that. I, you know, when I was in that class, I was really thinking, okay, let me work with the framework here and I can always ditch it if I don't like it. I looked at our portfolio.

I looked at the products that we had done. I looked at the clients that we'd worked with. The health and wellness ones really stuck out to me. Whether it working with Roman and helping them blow up. I we started working with them when it was two founders. Now they're worth a couple billion dollars. They're humongous now. And they're like sponsoring college bowl games. Working with Dane Products and helping them also kind of blow up. They had two products before us and then we worked with them on their two next products. One of which is

still their best seller to this day. And it's kind of become like their flagship product that they're known for. Yeah, and they're absolutely a leader in this actual wellness space too. So so cool when people come to us and say, you guys designed Dame? So we just wanted more of that, products that actually help people or working with clients that are looking to help people. And that goes back to the Tikun Olam. So all these things are kind of weaving together at the same time, how I'm envisioning the company, but also how do we build the framework to

build towards that company, towards that vision. So the first thing was...

Chris Whyte (: 38:30

somebody used the phrase once, niching down. I don't necessarily think of it as niching down. I think of it more as actually communicating the niche that we were already thriving in and what we want to do. So it's clear positioning, isn't it? And that's a topic that comes up in a lot of conversations I have with studios big and small. But that's often where

companies that are struggling, know, because all these are struggling because they'll blame the market, you know, it's because they don't have a clear position. They don't have a, you say niche, I say niche, know, it's called holding on. Well, in my heart, I'm just the dude from New Jersey. I pronounce some things. Well, it rhymes better as well, doesn't it? Alex Moseley says the riches are in the niches. As soon as I say the riches are in the niches, it's like, what on earth is this guy talking about? I can't come up with a better rhyme.

But it's true. You don't need to please everyone, because you never will. But you can take a small market. The industry that you're serving is bloody huge, isn't it? But it's not the whole market. But you can get more of that small and do better and quicker and have better results for everyone. The health and wellness industry, part of deciding to really focus there

also was that it is far reaching. It covers a lot of ground between fitness, pharmaceuticals, sleep, I mean there's so many different things. Wellness, kind of just, covers many, many things in the abstract. But we just love doing those products and really love getting into the mindset of somebody who's trying to improve their life with a product that our client is getting to them.

I think it's great what you're doing. we bounced around my kind of play order here slightly which is wise me as well. kind of purposely dived ahead because you're talking about your values and like now that's section four we're only on one.

Chris Whyte (: 40:46

I do want to touch back on that though. I see your team's quite small on our job, but when it comes to hiring and thinking specifically around values and the alignment there, how have you, since kind of training and sharing the values, how has that impacted or how do you implement that into your hiring process? Well, from the start, we put it...

right there in the job ad. So it says, want people who use design to make the world a better place. We want people who are striving for design excellence. We want people who notice when a teammate achieves something and they're maybe even more proud of that than their own achievements. Obviously, if people send that or feed that back to me in a job application, I take notice. If they mention that in the interview,

They don't have to mention those things necessarily, but I am kind of keeping an ear open for them. And to try to see how do I find out about these things that are kind of more ephemeral or abstract? Because it is a little hard to know. Have you got specific questions or tasks that ask people to do specifically to try and tease out where they might align or not so? I never ask people to do tasks because I

I've been in that position and it's, in my opinion, a little demeaning. Designers have portfolios and if you don't have a portfolio, then you're not gonna get a design job with us. I would think with most studios.

But that should be enough. If you haven't put together a portfolio that really demonstrates what you're capable of, then that's, like I said, designs communication. You got to communicate that. Absolutely. I interviewed, I think it was Christian Reed, who mentioned that he'd been building a portfolio from high school. Any project he did, or at school, or on the side,

Chris Whyte (: 43:00

he just got in the habit of storytelling. So when social media took off, he already had all these stories that he could start sharing. And his portfolio, says he was never more than kind of an hour away from having an updated portfolio, but he'd always have something that if he was on a conversation, he could send over something that was pretty recent. Whereas, I'll speak to designers who are fully into their job search and say, give me a few days to update.

portfolio. It's like, why are we talking if you haven't got them? Are you really searching for work? You gotta be ready. Any opportunity. You gotta go. But yeah, it's interesting your take on the tasks. It's a fairly controversial kind of topic. know, you've got people who swear by it, people that will set. Some companies, I think it's a bit of a power play to be honest with you in terms of, you you can't join this. This is what I did to get to this company. I had to spend 10 hours doing this task.

No, so I don't that might have been okay 15 years ago, but it's you know, it's not very inclusive Yeah, I mean even in the business world design should be getting more respect And I think that it that has grown tremendously over the years even in my not super long career But

I mean, it has to come from within also. I designers need to respect other designers and respect their time, respect their talent. Look, we get a lot of portfolios emailed to us if we put up a job ad, hundreds.

The good ones are there. I don't need to ask somebody to do a task. We can see what people can do. In terms of hitting those values in the interview, usually we ask people to walk us through those projects. We can really tell how their teamwork is when they talk about collaboration. We do ask about collaboration.

Chris Whyte (: 45:02

I mean positivity is kind of one that you get from talking to people and just understanding Hey, this is their hour to impress you. What kind of vibe are they bringing to the table? Right? it's a much easier when we're in the room with somebody but you know part of the positivity one is we want to be around people who We want to be around positive people, you know, absolutely So they spending time with people and you know, I think

Some of my clients, some of the people I've worked with over the years, they will have long processes, not necessarily in terms of testing, but after a second stage, they'll perhaps they go out for lunch or have a four hour session so that the interview mask tends to drop a little bit, you tend to get more of a personality. Designers tend to be pretty good at just being themselves and open, but there's always an element of kind of...

interview performance as well, which is very difficult to keep up. It's the same like, just having spent that time with you yesterday, having kind of met you online a couple of times as well, it makes this whole experience a lot more natural and the rapport so it's...

If you're going to spend some time with someone. Absolutely. I mean, we do a couple of rounds of interviews, for sure. Usually you're interviewing me at least once, not twice or three times. And then you're probably meeting with the team or a couple of members from the team. we all talk about, do we think that this person is touching on all the core values? Do we think that they're going to bring something unique to the team also? That's really important. Cool.

the topic of portfolios and I know you're a very positive person but this is like a little safe space to have a little moan. This is a new section we decided to do just in the last episode actually. What other things have you seen I guess more recently in applications or portfolios in particular that you really kind of think...

Chris Whyte (: 47:16

Why have they done that or you know things that really turn you off? We've all turned around to a positive at the No it's okay. I see this as critique and how again just giving back to the community. So there's the positive spin straight away. These are things that I would have wanted to know. I think that well all right my strategy or my strategy that I share with people and what they should do with their portfolio.

Think of it like movie poster, movie trailer, movie. Send out the movie poster. Get somebody to look twice at it. Maybe that's in the email, maybe it's a JPEG in line in the email or whatever.

something that gets our attention. Then send us the short portfolio, the movie trailer that has the explosions and all the cool stuff. It makes us say, wow, this designer has a lot of talent. I want to know the stories behind these projects. And then come in for the full movie, that's the interview, and tell us what each project is about that you're putting in that movie trailer, right? That's interesting. And by movie trailer, I mean PDF or something quick.

I would say the things that go against that grain that I notice. A lot of people obviously have a website, which can be fine.

just make sure that your website has extremely easy user experience. If it's hard user experience, it's bad. You're out basically. And then I would say a lot of designers, especially young designers, industrial designers in particular, are not graphic designers, so they shouldn't overdo it on the graphic design. I always say make your portfolio Craigslist if you need to.

Chris Whyte (: 49:08

Make it about the images, make it about the typography.

The other one that's just really tough and I think always a challenge and if somebody does this well, it really stands out. Showing research in an engaging way. For a lot of designers, and again, especially young designers, you've been through this whole project. It was an epic long project and you want to tell everybody every last detail of it. But sometimes that's pretty boring to read and it's not engaging. It's really hard to communicate that stuff visually in an exciting way.

I was thinking at the end of the day, like, our job's exciting. We're making exciting stuff. We want people to look twice and go back and pick up our product and think, wow, this thing's so cool. How'd they think of this? How'd they design this? We want things that last and have that impact. So that's all part of the communication. And hey, being able to communicate some research is very tough. I always think, what are the key moments in the research? And really try to...

that hit on that. And don't worry about all the data collection and pie charts and line charts and things like that. That's the stuff that will scroll right by. That's really interesting. by the way, that's not to say research is not important. It is important. Absolutely. It's just always a challenge to send it to somebody who is uninitiated.

I think it's choosing what to share. It's showing that you can do it. You don't need to show every single step of the research or all your data. Just the fact that if you've got some kind of snapshots of the key exciting bits or the challenges, you could infer that there's been a bunch of less exciting stuff that's gone on there that wouldn't necessarily make a cool story in your portfolio. always think save the research for the in-person interview where you're

Chris Whyte (: 51:12

really going into and this is how that was made. This is all the thought that went into it. Absolutely. Yeah. I on websites as well. I always advise designers, industrial designers and kind of techie design engineers if they keep portfolios. PDF is your friend here because when you come to storytelling, PDF is a very easy one to control the narrative of the story and the flow. As soon as you send someone to a website, especially if it's like a

template like a gallery website you lose control of where that person clicks they might see a little thumbnail or something they think is interesting but doesn't actually show kind of the stuff they need to see to determine whether you're a good candidate or not it just might be that that one was shiny but doesn't show the right process and then they've only got a certain amount of time before they've got to move on to the next website so you could make them even though you could be perfect whereas I like

Yeah, your analogy of the trailer. I used to say that to juniors as well, his site. But I do the one pager. I like the poster, trailer, and movie analogy. Because it's right, isn't It just works. Awesome. OK. You did a really good job of turning something that could be quite a whinge section into something totally positive. So I love it.

So we've covered off quite a few of these sections here that we've kind of flowed organically through it. I want to talk about positioning it a little bit more though. Am I right in thinking you've recently hired a marketing coordinator? Yeah. Cool. OK. Because I know we had a few issues with these notes, didn't we? Don't worry. Just going to dive in before. What are you talking about, Chris?

You've hired a marketing coordinator to help with visibility. Is it too early to see the impact in that? Or how's that changing things in the business? It's definitely too early. They came on about a month ago. OK. It would be unfair. That would be unfair. Honestly, not even a month ago. It would be completely unfair for me to expect anything to show from that. The first thing that they've done, I'll say, is just

Chris Whyte (: 53:34

Start the engine again. Yeah, very dormant Instagram. That's that that was my first task for them Yeah, hey this thing's been asleep for like two years. Yeah, just turn on sleep Get it moving again, and then we'll figure out some KPIs and yeah do from there Well, I'm in a similar position. I've had someone for about six weeks and it's This there's lots of content and video stuff that I've created that hasn't gone anywhere other than my hard drive or the one drive So genies all on that

I guess I'll repurpose the question then. What was it that drove, or at what point did you realize actually I probably need someone to come and do this stuff? Yeah, so I think as a business owner or CEO, anytime you have this feeling, it's kind of a sign that you need to. There's a long list of marketing things we need to do.

Anytime I try to them myself, it takes me a very, very long time. My core competency is industrial design. I can do that fast and efficiently. I'm confident in it. When I do marketing stuff, even if it's like submitting for a design award, I'm like pouring over the little, the phrasing and the words and making sure everything is absolutely perfect. I'm like.

I know there's people out there who are much more efficient at this than me and who actually know the ins and outs of this without me having to go and read and completely educate myself on this because I'm already wearing too many hats. I can't take on another hat. So that's that's basically it. That's kind of the red flag for any higher. Yeah. If you ever at your desk kind of clutching your hair, just go.

Why has it taken me so long to do this? It should be a straightforward task. Yeah, it's, it's a hard thing to recognize, but also kind of take action on, I think sometimes, especially when you're a small business. But that's the key to scaling, or one of the key scaling is delegating. And I'm sure it came up on your course as well, didn't it? So awesome. So let's talk about

Chris Whyte (: 55:52

kind of Jordan outside of work then. So you balance in studio life with being a parent, a partner, you've kind of integrated into the New York design community as well. You just kind of like getting out and networking. How are you balancing leading a business with everything else in life now? It's very different to when you started, isn't it? yeah, yeah, tremendously. Well, I have two kids, so.

I said this to somebody recently, they told me they're a couple weeks away from having a second kid. It's way more than just plus one. It's a lot more. So yeah, to be honest, I have two kids, so don't really have a life.

Family time is a huge, huge part of my life. I really lament the days where I have to stay very late. And I think now that we have a team, or bigger team around, it's...

pretty infrequent that I have to stay very late. And I also tell our team, don't stay late unless this is mission critical. I always say, just design, for the most part. We're all going to be OK. Yeah, the world's not going to end if this deadline goes on Monday rather than Friday. Yeah. But yeah, mean, outside of.

running the business and having two kids. I'd like to ride my bike sometimes like to watch basketball. Yeah, it's kind of thing. Do you get to get many games? No, not really. I haven't been to a next game in a while. You know, I started going to Liberty games with my daughter about two years ago. And that's been really cool. Liberty the college. No, Liberty is the WNBA. Oh, okay. So they play at the Barclay Center in Brooklyn. That's where the Brooklyn Nets play. We went to a game, I think,

Chris Whyte (: 57:47

two years ago or three years ago for the first time. And they only sold tickets for what's called the lower ball, the lower half of the stadium. Yeah. And then it's been very cool to see the transition where we went to a game towards the end of the last season, which they won the championship. Completely sold out stadium. Yeah. The full stadium. So it was wild. It's great. Is it the same? No, I've only been to a college basketball game. went to see Texas long haul.

versus Chicago State and the atmosphere was wild. Very different to the atmosphere in sporting events back home but it was just unreal, fantastic. But it seemed like everything just stopped, every few minutes just for a time out and a little dance for the cheerleaders and someone celebrating something. It was just an experience. Is it the same in women's basketball?

Is it kind of? Yeah, I would say the it's really cool to see the NBA is absolutely taken off. think obviously Caitlin Clark is kind of like the big name, but There's so many other good players. Yeah, and I think it's just all coalescing at the right time Yeah, the atmosphere it's really different from

the Brooklyn Nets and from the New York Knicks. Those are the men's teams in New York. I'm guessing you're a Knicks fan giving you a t-shirt. That's right. We just got knocked out of the playoffs like a week ago, but it's OK. It was a great success. was like.

It's been a rough 25 years. So it was nice that they made it this far. But no, it's actually interesting. I think the WNBA crowd is definitely younger and way more, I mean, obviously there's more females. Or just a better balance, I would say, in general. Whereas I think the NBA, probably less balanced. But it's interesting because the WNBA crowd, the Liberty crowd that I've experienced, I don't know if this is everybody's experience,

Chris Whyte (: 59:57

way crazier than the Nets games. The Nets games are probably the most tame. And then the Knicks, they play in Madison Square Garden, so it's a different stadium. I think that one is just, I mean, it's just noisy, no matter what. I went to more games when the Knicks were really bad. But even some of those games got crazy. If the Knicks were starting to make a little run, it's just absolutely nuts. Because I think New York just loves basketball. That's the thing.

I it to football in the UK. The women's league is getting stronger and stronger. The women's England team did quite well, in the Euros a couple years ago. And I went to a women's team, friendly, probably about two years ago. And compared to the men's sport where it's quite...

tribal and some of the class can be really nasty. And vulgar in terms of some of the chants, know. The women's it was just like a carnival. was like it was just great party atmosphere. There's Mexican waves going around the state. It was friendly. So there's nothing on the line, but it's just absolutely fantastic to be in. That's how would say the difference. I've seen between the Knicks and the Liberty. Liberty is way more family friendly, way more of a positive fun time. And the Knicks like

Yeah, you hear some people yelling some things at the players, but that's New York. Yeah, you got to come to play. Awesome. Right. We're coming towards the end of our time. I've thoroughly enjoyed sitting down with you again on this. But let's talk just kind of round this off with.

What's next? I you're always talking, we spoke yesterday about the long game and, you know, around values, partnerships, positioning, but in the more kind of immediate term, what are you most excited about in the next 12 months for yourself and lead off? So what I'm really excited about

Chris Whyte (: 01:02:04

We haven't had a lot of products added to our portfolio or projects added to our portfolio in the last year or so, or two years. We're going to have a lot of stuff come out. About two years ago, we started doing branding for our clients. Awesome. So the backstory, a lot of our clients, especially after we start doing our design work for them.

They love us, they want us to do more. Hey, you know what, I'm starting this business, can you guys do my logo too? I used to always turn them away. And then they'd come back and they'd have a logo and sometimes we'd just feel like we could have done better than this. So I started to really focus on, okay, how do we add this? And now we have...

think we have like five or so products that all followed that exact storyline where we started doing the product design and then, hey, we could do your logo too. We could do your whole brand. We can create the visual look and feel of what you are trying to launch here. So I'm really excited to see these products come out and into the world and see how people react to them. That we've done the full service, industrial design, brand logo, we've done the packaging.

And these are all in the health and wellness sphere. it's amazing. It's gonna be really excited that this is where I've been trying to focus the company and now we're gonna actually be able to Really present that to the world. That's gonna be so rewarding. Yeah to see that kind of bad plan kind of come to fruition and be able to share it as well because I guess the most of work is done now you're just waiting for it to go well, it's done but also for a lot of our clients we work on the manufacturing as well. Yeah, so

The fun part is the design, the manufacturing is like now we're in the trenches, now we're trying to get this out. We're working on all the nitty gritty with engineers, with the factory, with our client, making sure they're always, their business is protected and taken care of.

Chris Whyte (: 01:04:09

But yeah, we're going to see some things coming out, and I'm really excited about it. You have to keep me posted so we can share it. I'd love to see that when it comes out. Yeah. And then we'll tag it, yeah. I was going to say that the cool thing for me, I really want to see, can people identify the brand by looking at the product? And can they identify the product by looking at the brand? Because the feedback that we've gotten so far when I show people any of these NDA levels.

case studies is they say that we've done a good job at tying those together. I'm excited to see will that actually come to fruition? Will the general public feel that? That's exciting. I look forward to see that. final question.

books or podcasts that you're kind of listening to or would recommend anyone really listening to to kind of add to their reading or listening list? Design focused? to you. Well, for design focused, think Hartmut Esslinger, the founder of Frog Design, he's wrote a number of books. Honestly, I recommend all of them. Yeah. There's some repetition between them, but that's OK.

They're honestly great as...

somebody who loves design but also is interested in growing a business, but also is interested in how do you give your clients deeper service than just here's a nice looking object. I mean that's really what Frog Design did so well and was able to scale to a huge size. I have no ambition of going that huge, but I mean he's like the original I think. Really, really one of the best.

Chris Whyte (: 01:06:00

I'll double down on that. He was recently on Dan Hardin's podcast, the WipSaw founder. Yeah, I'm interviewing him Thursday on video. not, well, I'd love to get him in, he's the other side of the country. So I believe that Dan used to work at Frog Design for a decade or so. So he knows Hartmut Esslinger very well and was able to interview him really, really well.

They said at the top of the podcast, he doesn't do many interviews. I thought that was, oh, that got my attention. mean, Dan's an industry legend though, isn't he, as well? So it's like two legends kind of coming together. Yeah. Yeah, that's going to be awesome. Again, as a designer who is also a founder, these are two people that I definitely look up to. So to hear them talk with each other on that podcast, that was great. I highly recommend that one. Brilliant. Well, yeah, it's coming on the show. We've got Brett Love Lady as well, who have already

interviewed so he's stacked up. So I don't know if you know those guys but I'll definitely connect you with them as part of podcast community. So yeah, that would be awesome. And just anything else that's really stuck with you recently that you think is worth sharing whilst we've got the mics and the videos.

Chris Whyte (: 01:07:26

Definitely put you on the spot there, wouldn't it? No, that's a tough one. I don't think there's anything that's sticking out of my mind. Honestly, thank you for doing this. Thank you for having this podcast. This is really fun. Yeah, it's great having you in. Really cool that you're giving designers this platform to talk to people. And honestly, I know for aspiring designers, it's hard to find content where you're hearing directly from other designers or people who have started design agencies. I was always grasping for that content when I was in my.

you know, my footwear transitioning to industrial design days, like how do I break into this? And I think just the more insight, good insights that we could get to designers in that position, it's just gonna be better for the industry. You're gonna have more people, better people, design. Absolutely, Even if, you know, one thing I love about this podcast is, you know, when people take it upon themselves to reach out to my guests, whether they be connected to the show or they've just listened, hear stories like every week,

about people that have reached out to guests. And generally speaking, the people I interview are nice kind of people. They want to give back things, and they'll give their time for people. I think that's, obviously we want some nice key takeaways from this. They make great little short videos and kind of content. But there's nothing like speaking to a founder and getting that. But I think a lot of people don't know where to go. But yeah, thank you so much for being on the show.

Yeah, we'll catch up soon. pleasure. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. These will continue. Oh, hang on. I'll put in some of these. I don't know if I've mentioned these.

These are Percy pigs. There's no pork in Sponsor? No, so these are vegan. candy. So they are candy, yeah. You give them to my kids. Give them to your kids. They're completely vegan, so they're all kind of about as friendly, probably full of sugar. But no artificial colors because they're from England.

Chris Whyte (: 01:09:27

Yeah, a friend of mine, he's a Brit that lives out in Chicago. I meet up with him at the end of the week and he put on the group charring, can someone bring some Percy pigs? Because they were supposed to be coming over, but then they've changed their mind temporarily, I think, because of the tariff situation. But they're highly sought after.

So enjoy, it's my gift to you. Thank you. And your kids, let me know how your kids are doing.