How to Build a 9-Figure Performance Creative Team | Joanna Wallace
How do you build a performance creative team for a DTC brand?
Start with the most experienced hire you can afford, a director-level player-coach for nine-figure brands, a senior agency-trained strategist for smaller ones, and let them build the team top-down, using freelancers to fill gaps while full-time roles get approved. Match output goals to headcount, because ad volume is determined by team size, and vet every candidate with a paid assessment that tests both craft and how they use AI. Building a performance creative team starts with hiring the most experienced brain you can afford, a director-level player-coach, then filling in strategists, editors, designers, and a creator manager around them.
In this episode, Andrew Foxwell and Brad Ploch sit down with Joanna Wallace, who founded the creative department at HexClad and served as VP of Creative Strategy at Birddogs, to map out exactly who to hire, in what order, what they cost, and how to test them before you commit millions in ad spend to their strategy.
We discuss:
Why going cheap on your first creative hire is the most expensive mistake in DTC
What a creative strategy director actually costs in 2026 (It's not what you think) and why
Why your ad volume is determined by your team size, full stop
Why agency experience beats brand-side experience for strategist hires
How to run paid assessments that expose AI-generated word salad
The coordinator role: the smartest entry point into creative strategy
Join The Scalability School Newsletter: https://www.scalabilityschool.com/scalability-newsletter
Connect with Joanna Wallace: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannasloamewallace/
Joanna's creative strategist evaluation template:
To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email Andrew@foxwelldigital.com
To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck
Learn more about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com
Learn more about the The Hive Haus Creators Community at http://HiveHausUGC.com.
This episode of the Scalability School podcast is sponsored by NorthBeam and they just launched Northbeam Incrementality. Northbeam Incrementality gives you easy, automated, self-service incrementality tests, while protecting you from the major mistakes so many people make while running incrementality tests. Your MTA handles the daily tactics, your MMM guides the long-term planning, and Incrementality provides the causal truth. It’s a closed loop that allows you to scale what works and cut what doesn't. Right now when you head over to www.northbeam.io/incrementality, they’re offering Scalability School listeners 50% off unlimited tests for a year when you join. Just tell them we sent you!
Scalability School is the podcast for DTC media buyers and e-commerce operators who want to scale profitably — hosted by Andrew Foxwell, Brad Ploch, and Zach Stuck.
Chapters
00:00 How to build a performance creative team for a DTC brand
02:02 The #1 hiring mistake: going cheap on your first creative hire
03:04 What a creative strategy director costs in 2026
05:06 Player-coach: what the director does in the first six months
09:10 Why ad volume is determined by team size
13:13 The hiring order for seven-figure brands
18:18 Why agency experience beats brand-side experience
21:21 What nine-figure creative teams do differently
25:24 Sharing creative learnings across the whole company
31:27 Where to find great creative strategists
37:36 How to evaluate candidates with paid assessments
41:38 How to break into creative strategy (the coordinator route)
47:43 How to keep a creative team from burning out
Full Transcript
(00:00) simple product shot. Easy. Crushed. Crushed forever that that gum put on the website on many different pages. Then it got when they started to do out-of-home and they were wrapping trucks. They had that quote on trucks. And then it became a billboard in Times Square with that cop. And that is like the perfect example of how your creative strategy team needs to be infiltrated with everybody.
(00:23) We need to be telling we need to be getting our own post-purchase surveys, asking the questions about your ads, what is appealing to you? What annoys you, what messaging is your, you know, like moves you the You have so much data access and then you have so much data to share. that is successful. Companies understand that and don't silo their welcome to another episode of Scalability School.
(00:57) Man, it is just awesome to be with you, Brad. And we have special guest and smart person Joanna Wallace, founder of Creative Consulting here, who is one of my new favorite people and is very funny, is very, very lovely, very smart. Was it to science? Founded the creative department at hex clad, was a VP of creative strategy at Bird Dogs.
(01:23) Now she's doing tons of shit everyday, dose a lot of other smart people and is a person that is. We're here to talk about building a nine figure performance creative team and how you do this because people are like, how do I staff for this? Because everyone's like, I'm just gonna hire a career strategist. And you're like, what's the move here? How do you do this? So that's what we're talking about today.
(01:45) what who to hire, in what order and how to test them, where to find them. You know, every brand makes a lot of the same mistakes. So let's talk about this. Joanna, what is the most common mistake you see brands making when they start building a team? Okay, so I think the number one mistake that I see is people trying to save money with their hires off the bat.
(02:08) The creative strategist role is expensive. Like to get a really good experience person. It is very expensive, however, to go for somebody who's junior and less experienced, who's less expensive. They're the ones making content that you're throwing millions of dollars behind. So to me, it's not only just a salary to think about.
(02:29) It's like, who's who are you investing in with all of your ad spend? And I think that I, I really advise people to start with the director level. If you are a nine figure brand, I really think that this is the right move for you if you're a smaller brand, I understand if you want to start with more of a senior strategist who is a bit less expensive and a bit less experienced, but truly, truly, truly, I always recommend to people you have to start with the most experienced brain that you can afford.
(02:59) And the reason is because, again, all this money gets spent based on their strategy and the younger, not the younger, but the less experienced you are, the less likely your strategy is going to make the most of your dollars. What? I have two immediate questions. This might be a little bit specific, but like what should somebody maybe in this director level like is there a range of salary to expect.
(03:21) Like like what is expensive mean relatively. Yeah, I would say that. I mean, I really see the biggest difference in the price range is the size of the brand. So you'll see larger brands like that's a that's a 200,000, that's a 250. I mean, you know obviously like bonuses can be within there and, you know, equity and all of that.
(03:41) But I would say that you're not going to get a really, really serious killer for less than like 180. And people don't want to hear that. And I'm really sorry. But the fact of the matter is it's a very, very, very in-demand job. And the people who have the experience and the logos and, you know, the cachet, like they're very in demand.
(04:03) And you, you they're not going to especially because there is such a trend right now of these it's kind of a brain drain of people going out on their own. There's a lot of people leaving agencies, leaving brands and going out and building their own thing. Those are often some of the best, best, best people. And if you want to pull them back in house to go for a full time job, you really do have to make it worth their while.
(04:27) They're getting other offers. Yeah, that makes that makes a ton of sense. I don't know what the word cash means, but I'm somebody listening. Definitely does. Probably. Probably most people listening. But I understood the other things you said, so that's just not me. It's fine. It's fine. Perfect. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
(04:42) Then the other thing I'm curious about, and maybe I'm jumping ahead. So it's things that will get to. But like when you if you go straight to director and we're talking about kind of this like, you know, this is the people that are going to be able to go straight to director are probably already in eight figures.
(04:54) Nine for sure. What does the what do you what do you expect out of the director. Are they writing. Are they writing briefs to start or are they immediately going and building the team? So it really depends on how much you're willing to invest up front in this department. So what I advise brands is if you're hiring a director first, this person is going to be a player coach.
(05:16) And they need to understand that. And they're going to move into more of purely management, purely strategy and higher ups. But if you're starting from scratch, this person does have to be able and willing to both create ads and oversee the strategy. And that's really important because I wouldn't want somebody coming in as a director who isn't getting the muscle memory of making ads for my company.
(05:37) I think that's really important. Takes one to know one. You know, if you're going to review other people's ads, it's more helpful if you've done it yourself as well. The other thing is that, like so this will move into the you know, it may seem like, why am I paying 200,000 for somebody who's going to make my ads? It's because that's moving into the actual job.
(05:55) You're giving them the title. They are going to work into the responsibility because they have to build that team. So after six months, they will have a team. They will be in a management position. You will feel like, okay, the salary matches, but their first job is to do two things. It is to build the foundation and it is to continue to get ads out the door.
(06:14) And the foundation is the higher level director level work, and the getting the ads out the door is like a strategist senior strategist work. But you can't just stop making ads and focus on foundation. And if you don't do the foundation, you may run on vibes and luck and instincts, but that will run out. So it's very important that, like this, this director is going to be in charge of the yearly strategy, the quarterly strategy, the long term strategy for this department.
(06:43) And they really need to be able to think high level and nitty gritty. And that way when they start to bring people on, they can offload the less expensive parts of their job because you do not want to be paying a director to do admin. You want to get admin off their plate as soon as possible because you're paying them for their experience and something very expensive, and that is not it.
(07:05) There is a cheaper person out there who can do your naming conventions. So that's my thing. As quickly as you can ramp up to let the director be a director. And the way that I did this at Hex Clad, because I was the first creative strategy hire, I came in as the director of Paid Media Creative, and at the time they were using agencies and kind of like the the growth team was kind of covering and all working together to get internal ads and review the agency ads.
(07:33) But it wasn't anybody's true role. And so I came in and the first thing I did was immediately hire my go to freelancers, my go to senior strategist, my go to incredible editor. And what I said to them is like, it's going to take a while for HR and all the moving parts to get a full staff higher. I'm going to fill in the gaps with a bunch of freelancers so that I can do the expensive work, and I can outsource the cheaper stuff, and we can move faster.
(08:01) Yeah. Makes the time. Let me just start back. So you have, you know, somebody hiring director, you're like, I need to go ahead and continue to build this out. I think that there tends to be this feeling where people feel like they need a creative strategist. Why? Right away. And I don't know, I think it's maybe a misunderstanding of what the roles are of these people.
(08:21) And they say, I need to make more ads. I need to get more stuff out there and make more concepts and everything. And I'm going to hire creative strategists. And your point is, actually, you need to hire a director so that there's a systems being built and then go and hire, like in your case, what you've talked about.
(08:38) These freelancers fill in the team from the top down. Fill in the team from the top down. So how are you assessing what is actually needed in the organization when you go How are you assessing that. How are you holding them to, you know, different accountability metrics like founders are always like look like we're going to bring these people in.
(08:58) It's great. We're going to make more ads and therefore going to make more money and be able to add more concepts out there. So how do you get the team like rowing in the same direction on that? How do you get them all understanding? How do you get them to how do you assess like what the need is and then get them to move forward successfully? So I think the first big thing is how much are you spending a on meta, let's say in particular, how much are you spending is going to determine be a big determining factor in your ad volume.
(09:24) But what I think that people don't really want to talk about is your ad volume is determined by your team size, and that's full stop. And so adding all these, you know, being like more and more and more volume, volume, volume, every time you do that, outside of the capacity of your team to think through and strategize every concept, the weaker and weaker sauce all of your ads become.
(09:47) And then again, you're spending money on stuff that doesn't matter. So I think to answer your question, I go in there and I say How much are we making? How much are we capable of making now with who you have on your Or has it only been an agency? But let's say you have one person in your department, which is usually what it is, you know, what's your actual capacity and what goal do you want to get Usually I have to then say you don't actually need as many ads as your goal.
(10:10) You do not need 2000 a month. It's going to be okay. And from there it becomes, okay, let's figure out I'm sorry. I'm trying to I'm trying to figure out the best way to explain this, but it's you need to have a team of strategists. You need to have editors and you need to have designers. You also really need to have somebody who is running your UGC, you know, reaching out, doing the contracts, casting, doing all that nitty gritty communication with talent that takes a lot of time and energy and a lot of teams like to shove that into that giant
(10:46) JD for a creative strategist. Because if you look at JD's, for creative strategists, it's hilarious. It is literally like you are going to be like a policeman and a fireman and a CEO and the president. Like, that's what I'm saying because it's like, seems like it's all over. Like I saw I saw one last week, four pages long, the JD yeah.
(11:06) I was like, what? Like how much you can pay this person. They're like 120. I'm like, no. Yeah. And what you've just created is a cycle of replacing that person. That job is going to be backed up on, on the board next year, because what you've done is somebody is going to say, I'm going to suck it up and do it, and then they're going to burn out.
(11:26) And the most important thing is not getting a billion ads out the door. The most important thing is building a team and a system that is sustainable. And that involves emotional intelligence and people skills and the things that people are like, I don't care about their feelings. Well, you need to because you to have a functioning long term department.
(11:47) It is way more expensive to be replacing your your team members. And that year or two years of knowledge of your brand is is going to take a while for that next hire to recoup and catch up. so having having that crazy JD, to me, the way I see it is listen, let's see who's out there. They don't need to have everything.
(12:09) And the reason is because they're probably then they'll be a generalist and just kind of not great at anything. Also, pick the most expensive, important elements of being a strategist, and that's what that person should be doing and hire and fill in around. So for example, if I'm hiring and I know that, you know, I'm very I'm a great writer, I come I come from writing and I so I'm a good scripture.
(12:37) I'm really good with strategy. I hate production, like I'll do it, but I'm not good at it and I don't know how to work. This is not this is hypothetical and I don't know how to work with creators very well, but damn am I good at the rest of this stuff. Hire me. And then your second hire is somebody who's really good at production, and then your third hire fills out whatever those other two people are missing.
(12:58) So as long as the ecosystem as a whole has all those skill sets, not one person has to have it. It's the same way that we look at at our ecosystem of ads. Your ad portfolio, right? Every ad has a different role. Not every ad is a bottom of the funnel. Bye bye bye and has the highest conversion. They are all doing different work and you have to have that diverse ecosystem. Okay.
(13:19) So you kind of laid out like okay, if you can go director level, great. Like you should do that first because that makes a ton of sense. And so I have a couple of questions off of that. But maybe there's like a quick way to speed run through at the different tiers and maybe seven, eight, nine figures. Not the actual tier of laying this out, but hopefully you kind of see what I'm going for here.
(13:38) But a lot of people that listen to this are in the seven figure range or cracking into that, and they're working on their way to get to eight. Let's say they can't go to the director level first. What are the order operations for them and how should they be thinking about it. And then if it makes sense to lead this into your answer, like what is what is the catalyst actually like drive the growth for that department that's going to take the business to the eight and nine figure range from a creative perspective.
(14:03) Okay. For the second question, if systems. So I think that you can have a lot of talent in the room who gets away with for a very long time doing well because they make good content. But ultimately, if you're not sitting down and doing deep, deep, deep research on your customers and your industry and your product and reviews and all of that, and if you're not analyzing your ads properly and then taking those learnings and applying them properly and really splitting your time between scaling what's working and then also building out
(14:35) into these new personas, expanding your audience. I see that a lot of people get stuck in. They just start repeating what's working, and they end up with 1 or 2 personas and they burn them out. And they haven't expanded to the five other personas that are living in their reviews, that are living in their post-purchase surveys.
(14:53) And so when you get when you don't have a system of analysis and communication and sprint planning that has true intent behind it, you're just getting spaghetti at the wall and you're also with what happens is you kind of meander, so you're following the data, and then three months in you're like, wait a second, we've only made if I'm going back to hex bad, we've only made nontoxic ads for three months.
(15:21) What happened? Because nobody's sitting bird's eye and saying, hey guys, we're going to do one third of scaling and we're going to do two thirds of testing this month. And there's a lot of variables that go into that. And I think that especially when you have junior people, they don't always know how to say no and push back to higher ups as well.
(15:36) And that is a really big problem because creative strategists aren't necessarily understood. And it can easily if you don't have enough of a backbone, you can easily get turned into the marketing teams like production extension, and you just end up filling in content for marketing calendars. So you really need to have somebody who is willing and confident enough to push back and say, no.
(16:01) Is this going to move growth forward? What is the actual priority here? And I need to put strategy ahead of vibes. If you're in this seven figure range and maybe director is like slightly out of reach or completely out of reach, and you need to go somewhere. And you know what's interesting? I know I'm doing this tangent thing again, but it's like Zach is not to glaze Zach while he's not here, because it's like my least favorite thing to do.
(16:22) But the exact a great example of this is like, Zach is really good at the marketing side of things. And so like he knows what it takes to like, scale up the marketing department. And he's a great example of like what founders in kind of this like era of DTC can look like. Not saying that's the only route. And so like he was able to get you know, I mean obviously hired great people.
(16:40) But before he did that, he he was able to do a lot of this himself. So if you're in the seven figure age, back to my question. It's like who do you look for first. And then I have some follow ups for there. But who do you look for? Who do you look for in that range? All right, friends, quick break. This episode is brought to you by North Beam, the marketing attribution platform that we love over here at Scalability School.
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(18:00) Incrementally. Was broken. North beam fixed it. Yeah, what I would do is I would if you're going to hire one person, that person needs to have agency experience. That person preferably has agency and brand experience. That's the dream. But if you have to choose, you always have to choose. I mean, everyone has their own free will.
(18:18) I would always choose agency and there is a learning curve for both. However, the learning curve for an agency person is they have worked across a billion different clients. They have seen what's working in life insurance and figured out how to translate that to cosmetics. They have it exposed to so much data and people who are in-house unless like oftentimes you're homegrown and you're teaching yourself first of all.
(18:47) And second of all, your learning depends on who was teaching you. And you're only learning from really one person. So maybe you reported to me and you learned and stuff, but you also only learned my perspective. And that is not enough for you to be a well-rounded, critical thinker strategist. You have to you have to learn from multiple mentors.
(19:09) You have to see different ways of doing things. So when I'm looking for somebody, what I would do is I would look for a senior strategies to lead pods who's taken on the priority clients at their agency, the one who's trusted that person may not have personally set up the systems, personally led everything, but they have experience mentoring and and having some direct reports.
(19:36) You're saying agency people, the agency experience, you're looking for somebody who hasn't built the systems, but they've experienced and they've kind of like osmosis. Yes, yes. Okay, so here's the thing. By the time you get to be a senior creative strategist, you have seen everything done wrong in every way. You've seen some people do some things right, and you're like, I'm going to pocket that.
(19:55) If I get to rule the world, I will use that strategy. But mostly you've seen stuff that you've been frustrated about and you haven't had the ability to change. That's what happened. So I got hired by I have been a senior, I've been a director, but I have never, you know, built everything out. I never built everything out myself.
(20:12) I'd been a part of the teams building things out, but how I learned to do that is I've seen I've gotten all the data on how I do it wrong. I hate everything everyone's done. So I'm going to do it my way, and I'm going to learn all those lessons and just not repeat them. And that person is if you find somebody you can tell in an interview if they've just, they've got the goods.
(20:33) I hate that phrase, but you can tell if they're like smart and you can tell that in ten years they're going to be somebody and maybe you'll end up working for them, but they don't necessarily have the exact resume yet. That person is goal. Give them a chance, they'll be cheaper. And that person can set this all up.
(20:51) If they've been at an agency, they've seen the machine run. They can take the good parts, leave the bad parts and build it themselves. People are amazing when you, you know, especially if they're young and you can get them. I think that's that's totally true. I mean, this is why the people that I feel like hire great folks for their organizations.
(21:11) A lot of times the people that are the most excellent come from sometimes not even the industry. And they like, know that they're really talented and they can do certain things and they can get it done, and they bring them over here and they're like, oh, they're great. Me come to. It's just because they have built systems.
(21:24) They know how to do it. They're hungry. And that's I think that's that's a huge hack in hiring actually. What are the things what of the organizations you've seen? What are they that are doing really well in terms of success in revenue and net profit, like, you know, Tam growth and everything else? What are they doing in their creative strategists teams or, sorry, their creative teams that other people are not doing? The reason I ask this is I think you look at our other co-host, Zach Stack, right? And what he does in In Mars, Man
(22:02) and in hollow. And you know, what they've done is they've upped the amount of production and they've made the amount of ads important. But it not necessarily just seamount but like net new concepts and net new persona unlocks as one. And they've they've also seem to there's an incentivize plan really incentivized plan of like yes this has done well.
(22:30) This creative has done well. And you are going to be rewarded for this. I'm just curious, like, what other things have you seen that looking at all these organizations that have been absolutely incredible. But what are they doing that are, you know, that others are not in their creative department builds? I think a big thing is they understand creators and creator partnerships.
(22:50) It's so huge and it's so hard. And that's why I say, please do not put that all in your strategist, because that's a full job, especially with, you know, at the meta conference earlier this year, which we were at like learning about just how much priority meta is putting into partnerships and creators and how it really is the future that is so easy to screw up and that is so easy to do well and grow exponentially.
(23:15) So the companies that I think are having success are the ones who have created a creator pipeline that makes sense, that scalable, which can be very hard. But I think that's I think that's massive. I think the other thing that they're doing is they have quarterly plans. Man, it is so easy in this industry fashion plan week to week.
(23:37) Man, I didn't even think of doing quarterly plans until I got the hex. Glad. I mean, to be fair, when you're at an agency, you can't. You can have a quarterly plan for what your agency is going to do. But yeah, that's a so that's a huge thing is like people don't necessarily this job is so heads down hamster wheel or hamster wheel that they people don't often have time to look up and learn and see the big picture.
(24:03) So people don't have time to learn AI, right? They're doing the job of five people. It's one job, but they're doing the job of five people, and then you expect them to also become an AI expert. Like, when are they ever going to sleep, see their children? Like, that's not literally. It's a choice between keep your marriage and learn AI.
(24:20) Obviously you're going to learn AI, and that's and that. And that's why I chose to just quit my job, learn AI and keep my marriage. So I mean, there's that alternate door, door number three. Yeah. But so that's, that's that's really huge that I, I think they're also it's that they are they are pushing forward with the AI, you know, even though everybody is doing so many jobs, there's somebody on the team whose job it is to be forward thinking on AI.
(24:49) I think putting that on everybody individually to become an expert individually is not fair and not going to work. And I think that the companies that really have, you know, AI and like engineers who are building stuff for the company, we're going to automate this for you. We're going to clod code this thing for you.
(25:07) We're going to make your life easier. The ones that are succeeding are the ones that are learning how to automate the things that can be automated, but they don't put that on people who that's not their job. They have somebody who genuinely is forward thinking and focused on this. The other thing that I see is communication.
(25:25) So when I walked into Hex Clad, it was like a kid in a can I curse? Yes. It's like a kid in a motherfucking candy store. I walked in and I was I was like a kid in Costco. I was like, oh my God. The world is my Easter. Every single one of these departments has has data and information. And I got really excited. And so like the first, you know, first thing I did is I set up these meetings monthly meetings with like the retention team and with the website team, the Crow team, the Costco team, the product team, and I.
(25:58) It was incredible because really creative strategy your that department is the testing ground is the guinea pig for your entire company. So the more information and the deeper in research. So like that's where the product team comes in. I used to have meetings with the product team where we would just grill them about like, okay, wait, so like the different layers of the knife, like, can you explain this more to me? Because the strategist has to know more than like literally anyone except for the person who built the product
(26:27) and needs to make sure it's like FDA approved. So like you need to know the most besides the product team. So the thing is, it's yes, you need to communicate with the other teams and you need to kind of get some cohesion. And data needs to go both ways. But truly, the majority of your data is coming from the creative strategy team.
(26:44) And what you need to do is use that as the testing ground and disseminate the data. So if I've found an amazing headline that unlocks a new persona and the the website should be using that on their website, whether you're going to make a landing page for it, whether it's going to go in the home page where you're just going to sprinkle it in somewhere.
(27:02) If I have a learning that this works, this should be everywhere. And I've used this example before, but at hex that I thought it was just like so we add those working. It was a static. It says the best cookware on the fucking planet. Gordon Ramsay simple product shot. Easy. Crushed. Crushed forever that that gum put on the website on many different pages.
(27:22) Then it got when they started to do out-of-home and they were wrapping trucks. They had that quote on trucks. And then it became a billboard in Times Square with that cop. And that is like the perfect example of how your creative strategy team needs to be infiltrated with everybody. We need to be telling we need to be getting our own post-purchase surveys, asking the questions about your ads, what is appealing to you? What annoys you, what messaging is your, you know, like moves you the most you can.
(27:52) You have so much data access and then you have so much data to share. And that is successful. Companies understand that and don't silo their teams. Is there a is there a way you like okay, there's two five questions to that. And then there's a bunch of team questions I'm selfishly curious about. But in terms of like disseminating information, how do you disseminate the information across the organ to how do you decide when, like what is the scale that says this has been the top spending ad for three weeks, or it spent X amount
(28:22) like I'm sure it's relative to the brand, but when do you decide that it's worth sharing? Or is it just like, hey, we have these, we have these monthly standings where a bunch of people on the team, we share all the interesting insights, and then somebody somebody picks the yeah the learning. Yeah. So I think there's multiple ways you can do this.
(28:39) And I think it really depends on the culture of your company. So I think that some people have like the slack channel where you just dump winning stuff and people either are really good about it or mute it. I personally think that I like a monthly meeting or at the very least a quarterly meeting, depending on the department.
(28:59) I think, like certain departments need to be communicating more frequently than others. But like, I would have a monthly call with the retention team and we would just go through, hey guys. These are the patterns of what's working that we're seeing. These are the patterns you're seeing. I think it would be good for you to test this top performing language as a subject line.
(29:15) If you guys are interested and then they can do their own decision making. No, that doesn't work. It's retention. It's returning customers that doesn't make sense, blah blah blah. But it's not about like specific ads so much as it is the trend. And it's the the overall learnings of like people are really responding to this value prop and let's hit it harder for retention for like the Costco team that I met with them, like not very often, but the reason why I went to them.
(29:41) And I think the reason why also I worked with like the Amazon team, the Amazon team, it was like very, very siloed. And we got together and it was so exciting because it was like, let's share learnings. You are a team, like a small team. Also, let's just recut our ads the way you need them. Like, why are you making stuff separate? Like share the love.
(30:01) It takes my editor five minutes, I got you, you know, and I met with the Costco team because I'm like, listen, if Hex Club started at Costco and grew clearly these guys selling on the floor know what they're doing. So what are you saying to these people to get them to by? Because I should be using that for an I should be trying that out as an ad.
(30:20) Yeah. I mean, so much of it like we've talked about this before on other episodes, we had Harry Dayan and he was talking about how important doing real research is within writing a great copy and writing great, like writing great briefs, essentially. And a lot of it is not just the traditional stuff of post-purchase surveys or building a tool that looks at Reddit and scrapes other stuff, which is good and like can be helpful and useful, and I think that's okay.
(30:49) But also sitting down and actually truly understanding the product and ways people are using it and how and the concerns that people have. And, you know, combining that with that, add comments and other things is incredibly powerful. And I think that's a massive unlock that a lot of folks don't do as much. I think it's also I think your points around also building what are other people doing.
(31:15) You know, obviously it's just it's planning related. It's it's being strategic and going through and and and communicating like it's all it all makes sense. I think it's it's cool to hear that none of this is out of reach for anybody. It's not like there's some secret sauce, you know I think great. And that's okay.
(31:33) I mean, yeah, like, I think you're creative. There's this, like, there's this feeling that other people have all these creative things that they're doing or systems that it's a great way that people have that people have gotten a lot of people on the email list makes them feel behind, you know, but it's like, not necessarily it's an industry of film.
(31:49) Oh yeah. Yeah. That's that's so true. So and so let's talk about hiring these people like and actually finding great people. Like where are these people. Because when I was doing recruiting, which I'm no longer doing, but I am I'm sort of doing it with, with a partner now. And I didn't have one before we'd get it, we'd get a thing for a creative strategist, we'd get a gig and then go out and post it on LinkedIn or whatever, and I'd get like 50 people emailing me.
(32:21) And some of them were not actually creative strategists. Like they they had done stuff with big brands, but they it like wasn't real actual data e-commerce stuff. Right. And I was like, you know, this position requires like in the JD, like requires four years of experience on an e-commerce brand. And people are like, well, I worked at L'Oreal and I'm like, I don't care.
(32:43) I mean, it's like irrelevant for this. Yeah. And they're like, I briefed TV. You know, I'm like, that's also irrelevant. So not how do you find these people? Like what? And, you know, how do you truly find great folks? Like, where are they hiding? So especially with AI bullshit, artists are getting much better at bullshitting.
(33:04) And so I think like for me, the biggest red flag is when someone's title is like, I can turn extra Roas and I'm just like, no. First of all, even if you can, I don't like, you know, I'm sorry. I'm sure there's plenty of people who are delightful who do that. Maybe you guys do, but so there's a few places that you can find them.
(33:27) And I think the I think why like some recruiting people struggle. Is that like you're saying there's, it's it's it's hard to sift through who has actually had the correct experience. So I think there's two types of people out there. They're the people who are heads down, not interested in having their name out there, just want to do good work and go the traditional route of just quietly being awesome and going job to job. Fine.
(33:51) They're harder to find. Then there are the people who are active on LinkedIn, active on DTC, Twitter, you know, really putting their brand out there. And those people are obviously easier to find and easier to evaluate because you can go and look at their posts and say, does this person get it? Can I tell if they're writing with AI? Are they a good writer? You know, what are they saying? I literally have gotten job offers too soon in the process, because my LinkedIn essentially was like two rounds of interviews
(34:23) because they could glean so much information about me and my skill sets just based on that. So I think that looking for the people who are talking the talk and feel very legitimate in it and then and their resume matches, I think there's a lot of people who talk. And then you look on their LinkedIn resume and you're like, so you've worked for your 24 and you've only worked for yourself.
(34:45) No. Yes. I think the best creative strategist, if you really if you really want a killer, that person has to have agency experience. Like at some point they don't have to come directly from it. But like I, it's a really hard sell for me. Maybe if you've worked at like Jones Road or Hex got under like the best of the best maybe.
(35:04) But like, you still have only heard from one perspective. So, those people are easier to find and assess just right off the bat. Then, you know, the secret ones are harder, and those are through word of mouth. And what it is, is I, you know, working at two started getting started at tube science. Tube science, like our cohort, you know, everyone just spread out and became super successful at various brands, various agencies.
(35:28) So like my personal network grew wildly as we all went off and did our own thing. So I now have a large, trusted group of people who I know can do the job. Then I have the second layer of the Kevin Bacon, which is the people I trust. Trust those others, trust these other people I've never met. That's the you know, it's still it's still social proof.
(35:50) And those are the people. So it's really it's mining your network and mining other people's network to find people who have been vouched for. And I really, really think that's that's the key. And even if they are hiding, you know, like the friends of friends can find the ones who are under the rock doing the good work and just being quiet about.
(36:13) I just usually look at who comments on Denny's YouTube videos and then try to hire them, because at least I know that they're following Da. And I'm just kidding. I think that's true. Like, so you're going in the network and you're saying you're going to your network and you're like, hey, like, look, I've, I've, I'm looking for somebody that can do these things.
(36:29) They do not anyone. And I think, I think that's true. I mean, ultimately that's a great, great way to find great way to find great people, but also building your network. So what I do is I drop things, but then when I do after that is I focus a lot on building relationships on LinkedIn. If I'm seeing your content and I respect you, I will, I will like, I will comment and then after a while I'll just cold message you and just be like, hey, I love what you're doing.
(36:55) Let's get on a call. I'd love to understand you better. Boom! New person in my pocket, you know. So it's really all about when you see greatness, you have to go towards the greatness and meet them. Yeah. I mean, I call that the unicorn riding the space bus. No, I'm just I just made that up. I'm trying to make you feel better about using phrases you never use, but I say that all the time.
(37:15) So that's that's what we're. So it's about, you know, like, you just you have to you have to be on those platforms and see who's talking and then kind of filter douchey. Nice. Yeah. And I know you have you have a system for this which feel free to speak to as much as you like, but like how do you tell if they're full of shit? How do you evaluate them? Yeah.
(37:39) So and I and I say this to a lot of brands and this is I've worked with brands on this too, where if you're a brand that doesn't have anybody expert in-house on this, if this is like your first major hire for creative strategy, and you don't feel like there's somebody on your team that can grill them and really takes one to know one and like, test you, I really recommend bringing in somebody from the outside who is an expert to do a round of your interviews.
(38:05) Just get in there and just, you know, really ask them the hard stuff and then report back to your team and, and explain to them you know what you've learned. Record the call. Whatever you want to do, have the other person have the founder on there as well. But I think that they need to be grilled by somebody who can really ask them the hard questions and know if their answer is good.
(38:25) The other thing is that you have to do an assessment, and you have to do a paid assessment, and to emphasize that till the day I die, because a paid assessment is a sign of respect, and it is a sign of the beginning of a respectful, collaborative relationship. If you start off the bat not valuing the person's time and work, they now have the impression of, I don't know if you're going to value me next month if I get the job, how is that? What is this culture like if you're not, you know, respecting incoming people's time?
(38:58) And I think that throwing a couple hundred bucks at a few top contenders is such a small investment into immediate respect and a desire for that person who now wants to work there more because they have such a good first impression. So then once you pay them, the actual assessment is it's really important to to see like, yes, can they do the nitty gritty work? Let me make sure that they can write a headline, but also like do they understand the bigger picture and do they understand like the philosophy and the like,
(39:31) core principles of what we do. So like I have a, I have a couple that I've, that I've built out, but I think the thing that I've recently added that I think is super, super important is at the top. I say, how have you used AI for this evaluation? And that's so important because so many of these hiring managers are telling me, like, I just get like a 25 page document back that's like 23 pages longer than it would have been two years ago.
(40:01) And I'm looking at this and I'm like, yeah, it's deep, but like, this is just AI. That's not impressive. So basically what I want to see at the top of this document is do you know how to use AI properly? Do you know when to stop? And do you know when to start? Because if the person says, I didn't use it at all, I'm great.
(40:17) Don't worry, I didn't use it at all. They missed the point. The point is you need to be using it. You need to know how to use it. If they said I let AI do everything, that's too far. So I think that's a that's a really important thing. And then also having a meeting to discuss the assessment and really kind of poke holes to make sure can they present what they wrote.
(40:37) Because if they can't present it, most likely they didn't write it. And I will admit that I'm the first to admit that I've gotten myself in a situation where I'm presenting something not in a in a job situation, but I'm presenting something and I am like, I this is word salad. And I miss that. This is word salad.
(40:57) And now I'm halfway through saying this paragraph and I did not write it. And I'm an asshole. So you can catch people in that situation. So wait, so just just jumping in. This will be linked in the show notes. But you have an evaluation template right that you sell I do. Yes. Okay. So just for those of you that are listening to this, that's there for you and I do like I sell them, then I also grade it.
(41:18) So it's like, you know, you can you need an you need the right evaluator to evaluate the evaluation. Yeah. I mean you have a one time flat fee, $50,000. You help people hire. Yeah. Just one conversation. That's it. Thank you. Minutes, 15 minutes. If you go over, we send a 20% additional retainer on top of that. Yeah.
(41:39) Yep. That's it. If you don't pay within 24 hours, there's a $5,000 late fee. Yeah. It's great. I have a selfish question. My, my I don't she probably won't listen to this. It doesn't really matter. But my sister in law, she is like very interested. She just graduated. She's like super interested in getting into creative strategy.
(41:57) And obviously it's like really difficult because brands want to hire people that know how to write scripts and do all these things. And so there's there's probably a really interesting entry point into this. And so like I sent here's all the amazing people that make content on YouTube. I was one of those people.
(42:11) Motion makes a bunch of great content. There's like a bunch of amazing people that start following. But yeah, I guess like, how do you suggest people get into it? Yeah, I think the courses are great, I really do. I think they're helpful. I think learning from everybody you can see out there is great, but I really think you first need to go to an agency.
(42:27) So either I would I mean, if you're more interested in more like content creation, maybe go to like the, you know, the UGC side of it, but really honestly go to an agency and be a junior strategist, be a coordinator, be an assistant. It does not matter. Work your way up, but you need agency experience and you honestly need to do it when you're young because it's freaking exhausting.
(42:50) And like that young person, energy really makes it easier to get through. Like the tough times. Yeah, that makes it sound of sense, I think I haven't, I mean, maybe, maybe a lot of people share this opinion, but like, I've shared the exact same opinion for a long time. I've never worked brand side except for things that I personally own.
(43:11) And I've always been I mean, I've always been agency side, and I just feel like it's, you know, I mean, the frustration understandably from, from clients and brand side is like, I don't want junior people on my account. And so like, you have to be careful about that. But at the same time, like there's no better way to speedrun knowledge.
(43:26) Like, like you were saying earlier across a bunch of different things because you get exposure and access to just like things that don't, people don't get to see. I just think agencies are incredibly cool because you just you just see so much shit like across the board of everything. And so that's, that's yeah, super interesting.
(43:43) What is what is the type of role. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Exactly what. So what is what is the role that you apply for. Like you got no experience is a junior creative strategist. How do you how do you show that you're like how do you show your good enough for junior crave strategist. So that's that's trickier. I feel like that would end up being like evaluation based.
(44:02) But what I like to I really try to get people to hire coordinators. And the reason is because there's a lot of coordination that needs to be done that ends up being busy work for people who, like I said, get paid too much. And I think the coordinator role, what I'm looking for doesn't actually need direct response experience.
(44:22) What I'm looking for is, do you have the seeds of what you need to become a strategist? So those seeds can be different? Like editors are phenomenal, can be phenomenal strategists. But like, did you write for your school newspaper? Can you give me samples of your writing, even if it's not doctor writing? Like I want to see how you work with words.
(44:44) Are you hyper organized? Tell me how you organize your life. Tell me, what platforms do you use? Tell me what AI you use. You know. Are you creative? Can I you know. Do I have evidence that you've been creative in your life? Did you do you know comedy, sketch comedy group or improv or something like that? It's really about the.
(45:03) Do you have the seeds that you need to then create the strategist, because you'll create the strategist at the job. And why I like the coordinator is like, while you're doing the busy work, that person to me, the coordinator is like making sure that, you know, a little bit of project management, but it's also a lot of research.
(45:22) You know, there's a lot of research that you continually need to do for a brand. And that's like competitor suites and ecosystem suites of trends and like organic trends. And what of all the thought leaders told me, we need to do right now. And, you know, all that stuff that needs to consistently be refreshed.
(45:40) And so strategists often just don't have the bandwidth to do that. And it's the greatest way for a young green person to start understanding what the hell we're doing. So they start being the person who's like, I think this ad from dermatology will work really well for, you know, AG one, if we do this and starting to connect the dots between how can I adapt things? Then they start to pitch ideas, then they start to be given a brief, then they start to be given a full edit.
(46:11) So you learn on the job while you're being while you already have the seeds of the things that people need. And the other thing is, young people who are chronically online are so valuable, so valuable because they are the ones who it's so much easier for them to be like, hey guys, here are ten trends because I know them.
(46:30) Because I was up till three in the morning. And not everybody on your team has to be a TikTok expert. You don't need that. Like I said before, it's the pie, right? As long as somebody in there is a TikTok expert, the other ones can focus on other things. And young people naturally generally end up being better TikTok experts I have, I think that's so totally agree, and I think that those people can be really, really, really valuable to any team.
(46:58) And I think that's a good hire for anybody to have somebody junior who's on and then they grew up because they grow. And also like you're also getting an influx of new concepts that are on brand that algorithmically are going to help you. And as we all know, like it's challenging to come up with concepts, you know, I mean, it's an hard part of doing this.
(47:20) It's creative work. It's coming up with like like coming up with brand new stuff. You're like, I never thought of that. And so yes, I agree with the people that really love it. It's the best part about doing it. So I have a sort of a last question here, which is who talked about building the team. We talked about where we find these folks, talked about kind of how different ways you can build the team, how you're measuring them a little bit, those teams that start in one place and then accelerate to continuing to be like,
(47:50) wow, they're really, really good. And they're not burning out, which is like a real challenge. How are they being taken care of? How are they being staffed? How are how are the how is that creative department being stewarded? Is it that the founder is giving them more hires when they say they need more hires? Is it that the founder is involved in it? Is it, you know, like what are what's happening to support those teams to become excellent as time goes on? So if you've hired correctly and you trust your hires, which please do trust them
(48:31) until they've proven that they should, they've broken your trust because otherwise, like you're never going to get anything done. So trust your hires. And if they're telling you we can't get to this like we are burnt out, we can't do the research we need. If you want us to hit that volume, here is the consequence.
(48:49) Here's what you're going to lose because it's not both, it's one or the other. And a lot of times these companies promise new hires, promise new hires, promise new hires. And it just get the can. It just it never happens. And that's when you lose people because they feel lied to and they feel like you don't care that they are on the edge of a mental breakdown.
(49:10) And like, that's how people leave. So you really need to listen. If your team is saying, I need something, if you can't give them a full time hire from the US, I understand, you know, that's there's some red tape you got to go through getting that shit approved. Give them a freelancer budget, big government. You got to give them a freelancer budget.
(49:32) You can pull people from overseas. There are ways that you can afford the help, but you cannot afford to not give them the help. And that's just so dangerous because it's just it's so common. That's what I say is not sorry. What? That's why I say it's so common. Like, you know, talk to a person in creative. Oh.
(49:53) How's it going? Oh it's crazy. It's like. It's almost like there is a disconnect between what the founders hoping that they do and like, how they really grow and what the thing, what, like how they're being resourced. Everything comes down to research and strategy. And if you are overtaxing people so that they can't do the research and the strategy, they are not going to create as good ads.
(50:16) You do not have the foundations of smart creative strategy that you need to have long term success. So maybe you have really talented people who, because they have to throw it at the wall because they don't have time and stuff is working, that's great. That's going to run out. That's not forever. And it's just like an ad can be on top of the world today.
(50:34) And then it starts, you know, fail. It starts going down in performance. You don't want to wait until that performance is completely hit zero. As soon as you see that start to dip, you need to get that next winner up there, that next iteration. So yeah. Yeah. And I think that also the thing is that AI is not the answer for everything.
(50:55) It speeds things up, sure. But saying you don't need more people, you can just use AI is not the answer, especially if you did not budget time for your team to immerse themselves in how to use AI. So that's not fair. And honestly, sometimes AI is more expensive and more time consuming. Like hit me up with a with a good designer that I have a relationship with way faster than working with an AI platform, trying to get an image that I want way faster.
(51:25) And if they're from the Philippines, honestly, probably cheaper when you look at the tokens. That's totally fair. We usually Andrew's been a minute since we've done beefs, and I think we actually should flip it on its head. Maybe we maybe we should do flowers this time around. You know, a little vinyl negative.
(51:43) But the beefs, maybe we should be dabbing people up. Yeah. Or something. Something up. You can help AI if you want to join us. Ernie, is there anybody that you want to send flowers to? It can be yourself. By the way, if you're like, I'm fucking great, like me, I'm doing awesome over here. Yeah. Who do I want to send flowers to? God, they're so, so many people.
(52:09) It's not a specific person, but I want to send flowers to. I have a community of women who have been who. We started this little community in the beginning of the year. It has been the most incredible, supportive community I've ever been a part of. I think it's probably like ten of us on a on a text, you know, group text, the amount of supporting others, you know, like helping others shine doesn't dim your light or whatever that is, raising all boats, all those metaphors.
(52:41) It's been so beautiful to see each other, see us help each other. So Egoless cop on calls to teach somebody things that you. You've done the work and learned code, Claude. Code, whatever other people have it. Let's bring trade. You know, I'm going to teach you guys this. I'm going to be very generous with my knowledge and not gatekeeping it.
(53:02) And it's been so supportive and so wonderful, and I've learned so much, and it's truly been a game changer for like, my sanity and my joy with the job. So I recommend everybody get a little bit of a support. Brad, who are you giving flowers to? Your nobody know I'm a beef sky, so I don't have anybody to say good things.
(53:23) No no no positive. No no no no no. I put Johanna on the spot and she had a great answer and I don't I actually don't have anybody in mind. There's just so many great people I don't want any. Yeah. No, there's, there's, there's so many great people. There's great. It's a great great a lot of great stuff out there.
(53:38) You know, look, I had a meeting with a meeting in Salt Lake last week with founder members. It was about 40 of us, and then about five members from e-commerce, fuel. And people that I want to give big flowers to are those that showed up and gave presentations that we're really, genuinely, tactically helpful to. A lot of people like walking away like we had one member who Tori Roque, got on the got on the whiteboard and started teaching.
(54:09) Like his his thoughts on how to go through assets, like tons of people got a lot of interesting ways to think about stuff from that. I thought that was really cool. Like we had a woman, Ali Parmalee, got up and talked about using AI or what you can't use AI for rather and like what? And it was really useful, like really interesting, helpful stuff.
(54:30) And I really feel like the event has kind of turned into a little bit of like what I've tried to curate is like a 1920s Parisian salon online or I mean in person, like today, like of just a lot of intellectual diversity, a lot of thoughts where you're kind of like, that's interesting. You know, I never thought of it that way.
(54:47) People are like, would you add, by that way, after I'm like, no, I wouldn't. But like, that's the point is it's different, you know, so trying to give flowers all those people and obviously then actual real flowers to Gracie because she did all the event planning. So she killed it and everyone loved it and it was great.
(55:05) So yeah. But I'd like to. Brad, you want to give me flowers? Is that what you're saying? I mean, yes, always. Literally every single episode. Suck up. Joanna, thank you for joining us. Thank you for being here. If those of you want to learn more from Joanna and you want to know more about her, all of the information you need is in the show notes.
(55:24) Thanks for being here. Yeah, of course I am. Thank you so, so much. This is delightful. I could talk about this all day. And, you know, people who put up with my bad jokes are my favorite people in the world, so they love it. We're into it. All right, everybody, thanks for listening. Bye. The only way that we grow this podcast is by you sharing it with your friends.
(55:47) Honestly, like reviews kind of don't really mean anything too much anymore. They're really meaningful, but they don't do a lot for the growth of the podcast. And so sharing YouTube links, sharing Spotify links, sharing Apple, whatever we call it under the podcast app now, anything you can share, the better we're going to be.
(56:05) Guys, anything else you want to say on this? Yeah, please go check us out on YouTube. Rack up those views for us. We'd love to see it and then subscribe. Make sure to subscribe on YouTube as well. And I relentlessly refresh the YouTube comments because it dictates my mental health for the day. So please say something nice about all of us.
(56:20) Thank you everyone. Thanks for listening. Honestly.
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