How to Build High-Performing Marketing Teams for Maximum Success in 2024

Ben Yahalom: A little bit about us for those of you who are not familiar. True Classic started back in 2019 as a pretty amazing brand of trying to make everybody look good and feel good with the best t-shirt in the world. We used to be called True Classic Tees. And what made that t-shirt super special is that it was fitting really well for guys. It was tight around the chest and arms, looser around the torso. It felt really soft. It still is. Uh, soft to the touch, very breathable fabric, and it was offered at a really good price point. And the product market fit blew us away. We bootstrapped this brand and grew it past nine figures in two short years, profitably, which is pretty, pretty remarkable, uh, for all of you who operate brands, you know how hard that D2C game can be, especially when you're going into a commodity space. And there were no X factors. There were no celebrity endorsements. There was no unbelievable product innovation. There was no bunch of VC money flowing with that kind of like growth at all cost. It was hardcore execution. And frankly, one of the biggest things we have that goes for us aside from an incredible product, an incredible marketing, uh, team, it it's the creative assets that we we've developed. It's the way we tell the stories. And I know we're all here to talk about, uh, creatives. So I'm excited to dive to dive deeper. And myself, I'm just here to cheer on this amazing team we got. I'm here to support everybody, uh, on their day-to-day and make sure we keep doing amazing work.

Dara Denney: Amazing. Thank you so much, Ben, for that great intro. Now, I want to dive into hiring because a few days ago when we chatted, um, you said something interesting to me. You said that you thought the interview process was broken, especially for D2C teams. So I want to understand how at True Classic you approach hiring differently.

Ben Yahalom: Okay. So, first of all, I would say is that this is a people's game, right? If you're trying to build a brand, you got to build a team. And the quality of your team is going to be as good as your weakest link. And you need to really make sure that you're taking a very serious approach of like, how do I identify that amazing talent out there? How do you attract them into your brand to to kind of like build that amazing vision for people's dreams and visions to kind of fit within. And so on the interview part, you know, we've all been interviewing for for some time. It's very easy, right? To ask some questions and give some answers and sound smart. But the reality is that until you start working with someone, you really wouldn't know whether they're going to be a good fit, whether they're going to like working here, uh, whether they're going to create amazing value that is what every employer is hoping for. So we restructured the interview process here to focus on three things. Um, it's all under the umbrellas of aptitude and attitude. The first two are aptitude areas, which is wisdom and intelligence. And the third thing is a set of attitudes. We have six that we care about a lot. On the wisdom part, that's the starting point. That's what you bring with you to the job, right? That's all your experiences to date, your perspective, your judgment in creative's world, like your work to date, kind of like how you approach it, um, your portfolio. And that's to me a starting point. The intelligence part is your learning curve. It's your critical thinking, it's your analytical skills. It's it's how quickly can you grow from wherever you start. And your attitudes is kind of like what ultimately makes or breaks everything you got as a human. And for us, attitudes we believe deeply in is, for example, grit and resilience, because work is hard and a lot of the time you need to really push through and you need to persevere and you need to be sufficiently determined, right? If you're a creative, you might not get it right the first time around. What happens when it doesn't work? Do you come for the second time? Do you iterate? Are you relentless, right? And so those attitudes we've identified for us are what we believe to make, you know, those kind of like A players that we love and cherish. And and those are the three lenses we look through.

Dara Denney: Yeah, I think about the quote too, how you do one thing is how you do all things. So when I'm interviewing people too, I'm looking for, you know, what level of conviction they have, how methodical they are in their process and how they showcase empathy. Are there any specific experiences or companies or even hobbies or extracurriculars that you look for that kind of signal these positive attributes for high performers?

Ben Yahalom: Yeah, you know, it's a great question. I actually feel like experience is really overrated. And if you think about entrepreneur, and even think about the world we're in right now, we all have to take a massive step back and completely relearn everything we know, right? AI is changing every single thing that we all have been quote unquote doing. And even though our industry is relatively new, it's being redefined as we speak, right? Even if you're a creative in the world of Yeah, I say that it changes like every six months pretty much. But it's going to and it continues on a very exponential learning curve, right? So in fact, if you actually might bring that perspective or experience or wisdom of how you used to do things, that actually might be even kind of like playing against you because in today's world, you kind of have to relearn constantly and bring yourself up to speed on like the the right thing quote unquote of doing things today. And so that's why I'm going back to like, do you have that attitude, for example, one of the things we care about is intellectual curiosity and growth mindset. Are you that kind of person who is very innovative and is trying to just get 1% better every day and goes out of your way to listen to podcasts and join the motion webinar to learn from everybody and ask kind of deep questions, right? And just be all about self-improvement. Um, and and like, and then how quickly do you grasp to new concepts? How kind of like how, uh, inclined are you to adopt new technology, right? Or to leverage that kind of like new tools, new processes. And so it's a little bit, it's a little bit interesting because I think that hiring in in today's world at least has been very kind of like resume heavy, what companies you worked for, how many years of experience you have, show me your past work, which is somewhat indicative, uh, but in reality, if you're thinking forward, right? It's like, how this is your starting point, but where can you take me from here with everything you've got. And for example, if you're in creative, right? Like, are you, do you have a big ego or do you care more about kind of like getting it right? So basically, do you care about being right or getting it right? If you're the getting it right person, there is a much higher likelihood that you will succeed here. If you're the being right person and you're just fighting for your idea or your angle above anything else, it we're going to have a little bit more friction because we are a getting it right company and our number one value is move the needle, which is all performance driven and and moving kind of like metrics, right? So just to give some color.

Dara Denney: Yeah, I think too, like especially as a creative person and when you're putting creatives out there to see how they're going to perform, anywhere from 70 to 90% of the creatives and messaging and new angles you're going to test, they're not going to be bangers. They're not going to, you know, some of them are going to be complete flops. Um, but some of them, you know, aren't going to like those aren't going to be winners. So I think it is really important to have people who are dedicated to that iteration and love more of the process as opposed to being being the person or having that ego that like got them there. Um, do you have like a process at True Classic for then how you can assess if someone is going to have that kind of aptitude or is there a part of your process when hiring that you give test projects or what does that look like?

Ben Yahalom: Yeah, absolutely. So, let me actually even think about if I can share that thing because I created one a few quick slides here, but we can think about this one together. So, let's start with the, let's start with the wisdom part, right? So that's the starting point. So that's how you think about all the boring interview processes, right? Give me your resume, tell me how many years of experience, where did you go to school? If in if in the creative world, right? Like show me past work, show me your portfolio of assets, like ads that you've been behind and all the stuff that we can see kind of like on the surface and that's where we project you from a starting point perspective. Uh, intelligence is like, how do we vet your ability to learn something that you don't know about, right? And it can be star-like questions, like situation, task, action, result, as like, tell me about a time you had to learn something new and what did you do and what was your approach about that. But sometimes we might do an assessment and we will give you a new data set that you haven't seen before and we will see what you're coming back with on the other side. We actually do assessments for everything we do over here at True Classic. There's no role we hire for without a practical assessment. And we want to see how quickly you can learn our business and how quickly you can adapt and uh, kind of like your approach. And the last part here, which you see is the attitude, which is kind of like over time, pending the attitudes you show, if those are the great attitudes we value deeply and believe are very important, even though you might be on a certain curve from an intelligence or learning perspective, you might completely outperform. And so as an example, I mentioned like I'll give you the number one thing which is grit. I cannot emphasize enough how important grit is when it comes to employee performance because at the end of the day, that person who is just so determined to succeed, who is so relentless in their approach, who is so exceptional and extraordinary, right? And if you think about exceptional, it's being the exception, extraordinary, you have to be extra, right? That that is like, that is gold, right? And so what I have found is that in order to find gritty people, like you have to have it within you. This is not something I can teach. This is not something I can coach. And so my, some of like I'll give you like one example of of one of my favorite questions is, I ask people to tell me about a time where they had kind of like their lowest low or they dealt with some extraordinary hardship. And I would say like, what was the situation? What kept you going and how did you ultimately overcome? And I get a lot of color from those questions, right? Do they show vulnerability? Do they show that strong why and willingness to persevere, right? Like did they did they push through and overcome like really meaningful challenges? And you know that like hardship builds character, it builds grit. And you know that those people who have dealt with hardship before are that much more likely to succeed the next time something is going to feel a little hard. And if you think about the gym analogy and we're all here about hiring athletes into True Classic, the weights never get lighter. You get stronger lifting heavier weights, doing another rep, doing another set, right? And you need to have that mindset of I'm going every day to the gym, getting stronger and getting better at my craft. And I'm that kind of person who's going to show up no matter what, I'm disciplined, right? So that's that's just kind of like more of an illustration of of how we evaluate different parts.

Dara Denney: Yeah, I think that's interesting too because I think it goes back to your earlier statement about how like the team is really only as strong as the weakest link and like you need to have a group of people who experience that grit together, um, or else that process is going to start breaking down and maybe morale is going to get a little bit low. Um, I want to talk a little bit about the roles that you think agencies or brands specifically overlook in hiring. One of the things that I've been hearing a lot about more recently, especially on the creative end of things is the importance of hiring copywriters on teams or even the importance of hiring project managers to actually manage those projects. And I'm kind of curious to see if at True Classic you've been making any of those hires or if there's another hire that has really been an unlock for your creative process.

Ben Yahalom: It's a great question. And honestly, my perspective has evolved back to like being uh getting it right versus being right with probably evolves every week. I think my perspective is like so um what should I call it? Like I'm very open-minded. And so, um, we we I'll tell you my my two cents on that and then we can talk about specific roles and and agencies and what not. So first thing first is like, how do you open a role? And it has to be articulated pretty well of like, why do you hire? And to me, it's like there is a business need and a very specific thing you're trying to accomplish. It's either an opportunity you're trying to pursue that you're not currently capitalizing on or a problem that you have identified and are trying to solve. And so that will create a list of, call it areas of accountability, things that you need to address. In this particular case, maybe you say like, we have a problem within the creative team. We're not operating efficiently and effectively, right? We have lots of ideas, but we fail on execution or things fall between the cracks or we've done such an amazing job on the videography and the photography, but then the copy fell short or the scripting wasn't great. So you're like, okay, that's a problem. But then the question is like, how do we solve that? Now, we have a little bit of a hierarchy over here. We're a very lean team internally, very lean. And the first thing we're trying to figure out is technology. Is there any technology out there that can help us address the business need or capitalize on the opportunity or or solve the problem, right? Creatively, it's sometimes more difficult because technology is not necessarily going to replace that. But like at the same time, I would say like, you know, on copy, I think there are incredible AI tools these days that it might be might become your best your best copywriter, to be honest, if you're just feeding it the right information and then your copywriter is having a lot more leverage with technology and just reviewing, revising, refining, but they don't have to start. I I think anybody writing in 2024 should not start from a blank uh kind of like page personally. I agree with that 100%. Yeah. It just should never be the case, right? And so it's just a little bit of a, okay, can it be met? And then maybe you had one copywriter, but now they're elevated because they're powered by AI. The next thing we look at is externally, right? Is if it's not technology, if there is no tech to solve the business need, are there external partners? Are there external agencies to your point? Are there consultants, right? Like whoever that can help enlighten us before we bring a person kind of like in house. And that's how we, you know, we we've built a a fairly large business and we are only about 50 something people in house, which is pretty wildly lean from like a Yeah. I'm surprised by that knowing your revenue number and how much creative you put out. So congrats on that. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we're literally north of 200 million and we are only 50 something people in house. Um, and our team is amazing and our team is a team of leaders and strategic thinkers. And it just goes back to show that you can do a lot with with fairly limited number of people, right? And that actually helps us because it keeps the team more connected. As you add more members to the team, it becomes more complex. There's more relationships that people need to kind of communicate with one another. So if we if it doesn't make our beer better, we outsource this type of thing. So anything that's tactical, anything that can be resolved outside. And then we think about again, the strategic things in house. If we want to do something net new and we will open a role, um, and our expectations are really high of anybody that joins the True Classic team in house. This is a team of A players. This is a team of go-getters. This is a team of industry movers and shakers. And those are the people that we're looking to attract and retain and um, and frankly, they are hard to come by. They're hard to find. Uh, that's just the reality and I think a lot of people who are in this industry can can attest to that. So, um, that's how we're thinking about it from like a hiring perspective from roles within creative and to some of your specific questions. I think project management is very important. I think that execution is everything, but I don't know, I I think again, there's a lot of tech solutions out there of how do you enable a remote first company with better process. And if the process is really good, you might find that the project manager is is needed less, right? Because you have a system that helps hold everybody accountable. As simple as in like, here's everything that needs to happen. Here's who needs to do what and when. That organization alone can take you really, really far, right? But what happens in a lot of environments is that we lack the process. We lack the steps, we lack the checklist, we lack the ownership, we lack the deadlines, right? As simple as it sounds. And what happens with project managers is they they bring that forward and they instill that sense of accountability. So pending the team and how you know, thoughtful their processes are at, I think the the power of uh of a project manager kind of like increases or decreases, uh, just pending how solid the operational frameworks are at.

Dara Denney: Yeah, I agree. Um, and I think too, like when I look at like agency processes when there's tons of different teams, maybe then a project manager would help a lot more for that accountability versus just managing one team and like going all in on one brand. Um, but we've talked a lot about operations. So I do want to dig into your creative operations process at True Classic. So I'm going to share my screen. I'm going to show you from a bird's eye view the way that I think about creative process, right? This is something I've shared before in these motion calls, but at the top here, we can see that I've boiled down the creative process really into a six-step process, going from researching. So this is where you're doing your in-depth customer research, then road mapping. So you're taking all of those great ideas that you got through your brainstorms and your research and you're actually mapping them out and prioritizing them. Then it goes to post-production, QA. QA is when, you know, you're looking for the dumb stupid mistakes, but you're also looking for performance opportunities to really increase the longevity of that creative. Then you're launching content, analyzing it, and then it goes all the way back to the beginning research. So my question for you is how similar or dissimilar is your creative process at True Classic and what are your thoughts on this?

Ben Yahalom: Yeah, I think it's pretty similar and I love the main buckets here. I think research is so important. And I think it's actually really underrated because creatives what they do best is they create, but the direction and strategy should all come from research, from consumer, from data, right? That is really where the rubber meets the road. And if you are, even if you go like one of the core values of True Classic is go fast because we believe that done is better than perfect and we we believe in speed and we think that speed matters, it matters a lot. But if you're running super fast but not in the right direction, uh, you may not run, you may as well not run at all, right? And so that first bucket is actually, I can't emphasize the importance here enough. And I think that when I look back at our work and not every single thing we do is amazing, right? But if I'm thinking about the stuff that really resonated, it always was rooted in a really deep consumer insight. And that consumer insight was so valuable in getting every single person around the room really kind of like on the same page of what are we trying to communicate. And it's typically as in like, you know, hey, what problem are we trying to solve? Can we articulate a problem statement? You know, as simple as that. And can we really refine what is that problem for that consumer? And you know, a lot of people will do research and then we'll say, okay, the target consumer for True Classic is a male between 25 and 54 and I'm like, la la la la la la, like I got this. But that doesn't tell you anything. Who is this person? How do they feel? How do they want to feel? How do you make them feel? Or how do we want to make them feel, right? And how do we take those really like emotional elements into account when we come up with a creative idea? That is what's going to make a big difference. And I actually have one example from Father's Day, if you want me, I can try to play it. I think we have it in the in the deck. And just to show like one thing of what how powerful kind of like consumer centricity can be in advertising. And I can share you this example that has been done brilliantly by my team here and and big shout out to them. They're literally best in class. Um, and and we can kind of talk about a little bit of the consumer inside there and we we can play it together if that sounds good.

Dara Denney: Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, let's do it.

Ben Yahalom: All right, let's try it. Let me know if you can hear it.

Ben Yahalom: Was there echo by the way or was it just in my ears?

Dara Denney: Slight echo, but I think we, I think we got it. Yeah.

Ben Yahalom: All right. So so let's talk about this for a second, right? Father's Day comes around and like, you know, one approach that any team can take is like, oh yeah, it's Father's Day, let's make a promo and let's tell them what products we got and it's buy it for your father, right? And another is to go and say, let's go fucking deep. Who is that father? What does it look like in their family? What does the wife want for the father? What does, what does the mom want? What does the son want? How do we bring that story to life in a way that if you are that father or any family member for that matter, you feel it and that resonates with you, right? And we literally created all these personas and created this like family thing, you know, of like, let's make it a family gathering. And by we, I I take no credit for this just to be clear. It's just a bunch of genius creatives on our side. Uh, and and Nicholas who is just amazing and and the whole team over here. But I'm just saying like, we took a very different approach and we told a family story for Father's Day. And that video went viral and it's one in my opinion, one of the better videos we've we've done recently. But if you really zoom out and start unpacking this, it's not just about thumb stop rate or whatever hook rate or whatever you want to call it or the play through rate or this rate or that rate. It's about how do we tell a story in a way that ultimately resonates, right? And even if you think about the algorithms these days, if you think about Instagram or TikTok or what not, you'll hear them a lot about, um, the importance of shares and how much shares are are basically ruling the algorithms these days. What do people share with other people? It's either things that they want to do together or things that they're like shocked by and like, I you wouldn't believe this, right? Or or or things that like they got entertained or educated by and they want to kind of like like share that learning with someone else. There's a few of those kind of like elements that people people do that. But in this particular case, like so many people can either see their their dad in it or they are the son in it or it's the wife in it or you name it in it. And that makes for a great content, for great content. And and that's just kind of like to bring that consumer centricity forward. Think about that for whatever brand you represent or work on and whatever moment, if you dive really deep into this consumer and try to think about a way to kind of like illustrate that in a way that that resonates, that box of research will turn into gold in all the steps to follow, whether it's the scripting or the photography or videography or the QAing or the editing or any part of the equation, but but the the core has to be really right for it to ultimately land. And if you don't get the core really right, all the rest of the work is frankly like not as effective or productive.

Dara Denney: So how do you make, how do you make sure that your teams are injecting this customer-centric, um, approach to creative throughout the process? Is there a certain person where like that's their job to make sure that happens? Or is that something that has been inspired for all team members to check in on at every step of the process?

Ben Yahalom: It's a great question. So it starts back with, remember when I talked about attitudes? I said one of the things I'm looking for is intellectual curiosity, right? I want to see what questions people ask. And I want to see how curious they actually are. Not because I asked them to ask or not because I, you know, challenge them, but I really want to know, are are you really consumer-centric? Are you really curious to understand that person that you serve? Do we all realize that we're here to empower people to look good and feel good? And if you don't know what makes them or empowers them to look or feel good, how can you do that? We're not here to just create content or spend money on on TikTok, right? And so that is where it starts. And you cannot train that, by the way. I I can try to encourage that, but someone needs to be just intellectually curious and like the right human, right? That I am here to serve. I am here to understand that person. So beyond that, there's a few tools. So one tool is, I think at this point not as underrated, but it used to be underrated is the post-purchase survey. But a lot of people just use it for, they just use it for attribution, right? How did you first hear about us? What brought you to the site today? Those are boring questions. I mean, important questions, not to be clear, boring from a consumer insight standpoint because it doesn't tell you much. But what, but you can ask deeper questions. For example, like, who did you purchase for today? Is it for yourself or someone else? And who is that person? Is it your husband or your dad or your son? Uh, like you can just go a little bit deeper and then you start to actually profiling people and understanding like, well, we have a gifting audience. Let's see who this gifting audience is. And I'm thinking right now Q4, right? Like, you got to really understand your gifters. You got to really understand when they come to your site. You got to understand what pages they land on and what they're adding to their cart and what they're buying. Like there's a lot to understand about them. But beyond anything and all the surveys and we do consumer surveys. So we do the post-purchase survey, which is should be table stakes for everybody. And if you don't have it, look into this. Think about some good questions to ask and start learning about those consumers. Um, beyond that, we're doing dedicated research. So we'll have sometimes we want to double click into something and we want to learn more. So we'll field that, we'll do all that stuff. My favorite though, above all, is that every time we're doing all hands, which is once a month, we do it digitally every, basically we do it quarterly in person and then every month in between, uh, digitally. So we meet 12 times a year. We bring the customer in. And every single time I bring another customer. Oh. And so, and I and I do interviews. And I sit there, so most recently, uh, Jared came in here, um, and it was an incredible conversation. We talked about it for almost like 45 minutes. I literally, I I pulled up like the Shopify history. I looked in different orders. I asked a bunch of questions, like, how did you first hear about us? But like, what was it? What what made you believe? What was your experience when you unpacked the the package for the first time? Did we meet expectations? Did we not? How can we do better? And then I shut up and then I let everybody ask a lot of questions. And the questions were amazing. The product team starts to engage with the consumer or with Jared on like the types of products and fabrics and colors and what do you want to see more of or less of and why this or why that. And the brand team is talking about, you know, angles and and creative and even like the first one was, um, we learned from that he came from TikTok and like the creative team was like, what ad did you see? And what got you? And it was talking about this was one ad literally three plus years ago about like push-up bra for men. And like how it like really hit him and like first thing like and he clicked and bought and like and you have just so much color from talking to people. Guess what? You're trying to solve their problems, right? You're trying to understand them. You might want to just talk to them and see what you learn. And and as simple as that sounds, it just doesn't seem to be that common of a behavior. And I think to myself like, we are all consumer brands, right? Like we need to talk to those customers. This is about those customers. This is about those people. Um, and so those are some some ideas of how to do that. Uh, we also bring people to try our products. We bring fit, um, fit models to fit every single product and every single body type. We're not doing kind of like grades. So we'll bring a smaller person, a medium-sized person, a larger person. They all also have different preferences. What we might think is like a good fit for a medium might not be the good fit for the 3XL. And we got to talk to the 3XL person and we can understand them and how they feel, how they feel about their body and how they feel about the right fit and how they feel about the company and a bunch of different things. So, as simple as it sounds, speak to your customers. You're going to come on the other side way smarter. And one of our values here is lead with empathy and it starts with obsessing over the customer.

Dara Denney: And I think that's, that's actually really great tactically. Like, a question that I always think about is how can you, how can you get your teams to be bought into that level of customer obsession? And I think that that is like honestly the biggest change for many brands moving into to Q4 is how they're thinking more about that gifting segment. Um, but now what I'd like to do, Ben, is we have a ton of questions to go through and I want to pick out a few of them, um, so that we can, you know, interact with people directly. Oh, here's a good one. I'm kind of curious on this one. Um, let me see if I can get these Q&As up here.

Ben Yahalom: All right, Q&A.

Dara Denney: Yeah, right?

Ben Yahalom: There's a long, a long list. You pick. Actually, there's some awesome questions.

Dara Denney: Oh my god. Yeah, there we go. There we go. Whoo. Where, so where does your team look for creative inspiration? I used True Classic all the time for my creative inspiration. So where does your team look for creative inspiration?

Ben Yahalom: I mean, you already mentioned, uh, Foreplay earlier. Uh, I think it's a great tool. Uh, we I I look for ads everywhere. Yeah. Everywhere. And by the way, not just apparel ads. I'm just looking for good storytellers, right? For good ads that tell a compelling story that I feel is like, you know, consumer first, that resonates really well. And it doesn't have to be necessarily in in clothing. The other thing I would, so I would say social media for sure. You can obviously go on like the Facebook ad library. You can use, you can use tools like Foreplay and others. Um, and and you don't have to necessarily only follow brands. You can also follow, uh, creators. For example, and I don't know if we'll have time for that. It's about two minutes, but one of the creators that Ryan, who is the founder, uh, chairman here at True Classic, um, landed on the other day was Zachary and his handle is MD Motivator. And his tagline is kindness is cool. And the guy's just creating the most insane content. And all about just doing good in the world and and spreading kindness. And it was so touching and moving for us. And we're like, we need to work with this person. He is telling unbelievable stories. And that wasn't even our own team, right? This is like, let's find a creator that we believed in that aligned with us in terms of kind of like values and what we're trying to do as a brand. And that turned into just like a remarkable story. So if we have time, I'll play it. Um, but that that is kind of like my my two cents there. And I would say that it's not necessarily that we look up to specific, um, brands or creators. We look up to specific pieces of content. There are some brands, inclusive of us, that have some amazing content and some not so great content, right? And so it's like you have to kind of like like apply your own judgment of like what great content look like, right? And and does it does it provoke, does it evoke the right emotions? Is it centered to consumer, things like that.

Dara Denney: Yeah, I'd say like my process is consistently like going back to the platform and seeing like what's getting the biggest emotional reaction from me or triggering the most empathy from myself and my team. And that's how I direct them to do that. I know, um, Melissa actually just shared the link to that TikTok that you guys, um, collaborated on so that, um, people can go look at it themselves. Um, she just shared it again. Thanks. Um, another one that I want to ask is, how do you help your team work through creative burnout? I think too, when we're looking at big sprints like we are now, um, burnout is a phrase that I hear quite a bit. So I'm curious to hear on the True Classic team how you guys mitigate that.

Ben Yahalom: It's a chal, it's challenging. Uh, there there's just no real, uh, way around that. I think that like by helping people reframe, I I am a big believer of psychology and I'm a big believer of like framing is is everything, right? Like is your glass half empty or half full, right? And so if you're feeling, if you if your team member might come to you and say like, you know, I'm feeling really overwhelmed, right? How can you help them reframe that? And maybe it's like, congratulations, you're in high demand. You're valuable. You're needed, right? I like that switch. Yeah. And and it's like, that is an amazing thing. Now, let's talk about this together and figure out what is on your plate, how can we prioritize that better and and move forward in a more manageable way, right? It it's the like you just helped like look at the same situation from a different lens that is way more positive, right? Like you mentioned Q4 and it's like, ah, I can't believe I I have to do this. This is just too much. And you go and say like, you don't have to do anything. You get to do this. This is a privilege. There's so many people who would love to to be able to do what you're doing, right? And and how do we kind of like view that in in a really positive way? Because it truly is a privilege and there's truly like, you know, so many people who would love to, uh, work on the True Classic creative as an as an example. Um, and beyond that is just being really supportive. If you need time off, take time off. We're very autonomous. We're remote first. There's no like set hours or set things that people need to do. Uh, we value more than anything like moving the needle. If you need to go out in nature and clear your head and come back refreshed, like absolutely do it. You don't have to ask for permission. It's like, it's it's on you. Um, and you know, those are just some some tips on on how I think about it. But I'm going back to the grit conversation and why it's so important because work is hard. But if you are a growth mindset and you find joy in up-leveling, in building that stamina, in being able back to the gym, like lifting heavier weights and feeling stronger because now you can handle that, like that's grit. That's what's going to keep you going. And again, you got to obviously take the breaks when you need to take the breaks. Don't just keep hitting the same, you know, heavy weights and and and hurt yourself, but, um, but yeah, come back tomorrow or the next day and keep training.

Dara Denney: Yeah, I really like that. It's interesting too how much the, um, like the company culture can actually help frame people's mind for burnout. Um, I once worked at an agency really early on in my career where Q4 and especially Black Friday, Cyber Monday was like this all day, all night affair and it was very tense and people were very serious and it just like everyone just kind of felt on edge throughout the process. And then when I switched agencies, people were like, oh yeah, like we're going to work a little bit longer hours, but honestly, like it's awesome to see the results come in and like crush it for our brands and it's really not that big of a deal. And I was like, I remember like going into that first Q4 and I was like, oh my gosh, like there's another way for this. So I think that like your creative leaders can really set the tone for like how the work and how crunch times feel for the rest of your business.

Ben Yahalom: Yes, I agree.

Dara Denney: Let's see, we have another one. I think, uh, this one is kind of funny. What is your controversial take on finding high quality talent? Do you have a a controversial take on finding high quality talent?

Ben Yahalom: Oh, I have lots of controversial things, I guess. Uh, what is my controversial take on finding high quality talent for your team? Um, I don't know if it's controversial, but I think it's a fair game, right? That's kind of like where where my mind, uh, goes as in like, at the end of the day, employment, right? It is is a company and a person feeling like for a given amount of time, it makes sense to join forces to for the employee for the talent right to find joy in like in the work and and in helping in our case like people to feel good and look good and obviously get compensated and the company to benefit from the talent and from everything that that person brings to the table. And I I think that fair game nature of it is means that like, you know, sometimes you might get people from and and we get a lot of it. I get a lot of it, uh, from amazing companies who you might be, you know, really good friends with the founder or the CEO or whoever and they want to come work for you. And what do you do about that, right? If if they if they love it and want to do that, it's a fair game. Is it controversial? Perhaps, I mean, I wouldn't go and poach from any one of my kind of like friends, uh, companies, but when they raise their hand and they want to come join the the work, it it perhaps it's controversial, but I think it's fair game. Uh, and I would say even right now, like we're looking to hire, you know, uh, leaders for to lead the brand. We have a brand director role. We we're looking for a leader for the creative director role and, um, and it's interesting, you know, every single time you have an an open role, it's just interesting to see where, uh, where people raise their hands and where they're coming from. And it can feel a little bit awkward, right? And especially in our world, like we're all super tight little industry and you kind of like know lots of people and it's just, it's just interesting. So, um, yeah, that's probably what where my mind goes. It's it's a little awkward, I guess, if you end up like hiring from another company where where you know the people really well.

Dara Denney: It's awkward, but I feel like it's inevitable. Like just because the industry is so small, like I've worked with, like I'm seeing people's names pop up in chat and I'm like, oh yeah, like I've worked with them. Like, we've worked together. And it just kind of all like as you progress, like becomes smaller and smaller, especially the more you move up in your career. So I think it's an inevitability and like having those honest conversations and not being too precious about it or like taking it too personally, I think is also been key in my experience.

Ben Yahalom: It's it's never personal, which I think is what everybody fails to sometimes, uh, realize. It's just never personal. It's more like, yeah, let's let's flow with life and help people, you know, capitalize on their full potential and do the work that makes them happy and that's all we can do, you know?

Dara Denney: Yeah, exactly. Um, I'm going to answer, I'm going to have two more questions. Let's do this one. I think this is a good change of pace. What's the biggest red flag or green flag that you've had in interviews?

Ben Yahalom: Interesting. Red flag. Um, it's a good question. I I would say that the big, you know, most people when they get to me, they they're professional interviewers, so I don't think I'm like spotting crazy red flags, but I would tell you that I've gotten crazy red flags from back doors on on talent. Um, I won't I won't name the individual, but as far as like a person who slashed their, uh, colleagues' tires in the parking lot and like things like that, you know, where it's like, okay, if if we if we learn about those types of things, it it becomes really concerning. Um, green flag is all attitudinal. That's to me what gets me the most excited. When I see entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial individuals who who want to make a difference, who want to solve a big problem, who brings that passion, that positive energy, that can-do attitude, that excitement, like it gets me excited. Energy is very contagious. And so those to me are, like I'm looking for personalities. Like one of my questions is like, what do you want to do? Imagine money is no object. Imagine you're you don't have to do anything. What do you want to do? What does it look like? And you learn just so much about who people actually are, what gets them moving, what gets them going. And if I hear the right things that I'm looking for, those are to me the types of of green flags that tells me that they would do really well over here.

Dara Denney: Yeah, I love that. Um, tea, by the way. One more final question. Um, and I think it, you know, let me, hold on guys. Okay. I'm going to do the highest one that's been up here is when researching, when do you look for or where do you try to find consumer insight? I think you've given some really great examples about post-purchase surveys. Are there any other like types of websites or, um, AI tools that you try to help leverage when looking for more consumer insight?

Ben Yahalom: Yeah, it's, I would say post-purchase survey. I would say dedicated surveys. Uh, it can be through your email list. We use, uh, we use Qualtrics. Um, you, I I think a lot of consumer insights too can happen just online. Are you reading reviews? Go look around, see what the one-star reviews say, what the two-star reviews say. There's a lot of insight there. There's a lot of problem statements that you can kind of like extract from that. Um, bring the customers in when you go out in the world and you ask people like, have you first, have you heard about True Classic? Have you tried us before? Like turn this into a conversation. You can learn every day from people in the wild. Um, I I certainly do. And so it's it's almost like a mindset rather than a tool in my opinion. There's just a variety of tools that are at your disposal.

Dara Denney: Amazing. Yeah, I love that too. So I'm going to stop sharing these. There we go. I can see you like full screen now.

Evan Lee: Dara, Ben, you two are absolutely incredible. Like thanks for, thanks for coming and sharing so much knowledge. Dara, you hosted incredibly. Ben shared so much insight, so many insights. Chat, like let's just show them some love. There's been so many good things. Let's just end with some love here, okay?