Women Who Redefined a Business Model

Michael Mendenhall: We are back with PeopleForce Podcast by TriNet and I'm your host, Michael Mendenhall. TriNet is a full-service HR solutions company, committed to empowering small to medium-size businesses by supporting their growth and enabling their people. We work with some amazing small to medium-size businesses and I'm excited to bring their stories and their life here. You can catch new episodes of PeopleForce Podcast every month on Apple, Spotify, YouTube and Rise.TriNet.com. Come on, come watch these things. They're awesome.

Today I have the pleasure of introducing the co-founders of JOAN Creative—CEO, Lisa Clunie and Chief Creative Officer, Jaime Robinson. We're gonna hear about how she got her name. It's quite funny. JOAN is an independent creative agency and was founded in 2016. Their core philosophy is making legendary brands modern and modern brands legendary. Wow. JOAN believes in modernizing legendary brands by using the weapons and cultural IQ that have made modern brands sensations. JOAN's impressive roster of clients include eBay, there's a new campaign out on that, Fitbit, Google, Kraft and Heinz to just name a few. They have won numerous awards, including Campaign's Independent Agency of the Year in 2020 and Ad Age's Small Agency of the Year in 2022, among other honors. Lisa and Jaime, thank you for both being here.

This is gonna be an awesome conversation. I'm gonna go back to, let's maybe say we go back right to high school as your, yeah?

Jaime Robinson: Oh my god, way back.

Michael: Yeah, yeah. And you know, what were your dreams and hopes at that point as you were going into college? Did you know what you wanted to do? Or is this something where "No, I'm gonna figure that out as I go," did you do liberal arts or did or were you very specific about the track that you wanted to approach when you went to college? So let's start, you know, you can go ahead. We're gonna get to your name Jaime, in a second.

Jaime: Okay.

Michael: And how you got that name. But Lisa, go ahead.

Lisa Clunie: So for me, I wanted to be a broadcast journalist, my...

Michael: And here we are.

Lisa: And here we are, see it all happens. My grandparents were very close friends with Cokie Roberts, and I had gotten kind of bit by the bug of broadcast journalism. So that's what I thought I wanted to do. And I was really into politics, like really, like I picketed things. I was like kind of a little bit of an activist.

Jaime: She was also really into being a pain in the ass. Still is, by the way.

Lisa: I mean, a girl doesn't change, you know what I mean?

Jaime: She has not changed.

Michael: No. I was gonna say, picketed? And you said somewhat.

Lisa: I mean, the neighborhood may have had lawn signs being put in everybody's yard, you know what I mean? I dunno who would've done that. And to this day my parents say, you know, I still see stickers that you put around, you know, certain lamp posts and things like that in town, you know? Anyway, yeah, I was very into politics, very into broadcast journalism. So I actually went to college to do journalism. One of the things that they do right at the beginning of J-School though, is they teach you how not to have a point of view. Like you know, you have to like settle yourself down and just report the facts and learn how to be completely factual.

Michael: We've gone a long way from that.

Lisa: We are not there anymore. But I had such a hard time with that because I'm like, I am filled with point of view. I mean, right, Jaime?

Jaime: Yes.

Lisa: So I really, I really struggled with it. And actually, I ended up pivoting into marketing towards the end of college for that reason. It was a place to put more of yourself into what you were doing. But yeah, I thought I was gonna be a journalist.

Michael: Oh, we're gonna come back to that whole, you know, agency client relationship, you just brought something up. I can put a lot of myself into it and then have to like sell it to other people. Well, and so so you then graduated?

Lisa: I did, and I got, I was actually waitressing, so I put myself through college, working a couple of jobs and I was waitressing at the pasta house, which was at the mall. And my…

Jaime: It was a five-star restaurant.

Lisa: Five-star restaurant.

Jaime: Michelin, it was actually a Michelin star pasta house.

Michael: Oh yea.

Jaime: At the Peoria Mall.

Lisa: It was a negative Michelin Star, if there was one. But anyway, my roommate at the time got a better paying, she was working as a front desk person at an advertising agency and got a better paying job to work at the Eddie Bauer home store. So she says to me, do you want my job as a receptionist at the advertising agency? You can get off your feet as a waitress. And that is legitimately how I started in this business as a temp employee at the front desk of an ad agency.

Jaime: Because you got beat by the Eddie Bauer store.

Michael: Now, now, so you were there and then what agency?

Lisa: It was called Simmons Durham, and it has since been acquired by Arnold.

Michael: Okay.

Lisa: So it was a, it's now a part of Arnold and our biggest client was Jack Daniels.

Jaime: Mmm, it's good.

Lisa: And I, Jack Daniels was like a regional, you know, whiskey brand until it was bought by Brown Foreman and then distributed all over the world. So at the, that made sense, like a little, a little advertising agency and a regional kind of folksy whiskey brand. But what's funny about that is I had, in my senior year of college, we had all gotten email addresses and we had to use the computer. But everyone else was on typewriters in the rest of the world. And so I was there and I knew how to use, you know, a computer and none of the employees at the ad agency did, they all worked on typewriters. And so I became kind of the expert.

Michael: Selectrics?

Lisa: Yes, exactly. So I was like the person they gave everything to kind of get it into the computer. But then I stopped just typing and started commenting. You know, I think what you're doing here is a little off, you know? And I had all these, come to think of it, I was really like ballsy for being like 22 years old with not a day of experience.

Jaime: You were a Gen Z before Gen Z. You were like, um, I actually am the CEO happening right now, and you're like 20.

Lisa: I would rephrase this paragraph. I don't think it flows. But anyway, I guess I showed my chutzpah and they gave me a assistant account executive job from that.

Michael: So, now you’re selling.

Jaime: Now she’s selling.

Michael: That’s the word.

Lisa: Yes.

Michael: You’re account exec, you’re selling.

Lisa: Yes.

Michael: And you’re gonna sell more.

Lisa: Yeah.

Michael: Jaime, Jaime.

Jaime: I have always weirdly wanted to be in advertising, like…

Michael: From the beginning.

Jaime: No, from the beginning I wanted to be a movie star. And then I saw this movie, Baby Boom, we are very much dating ourselves.

Michael: Yes.

Jaime: But do you remember Baby Boom with Diane Keaton?.

Michael: Yeah.

Jaime: And she was the tiger lady and she was so, she was so like in control and cool. And I didn't know, she was one of those weird things, like, is she a creative, is she an account person? She was like all of them, right? Because that's what in movies, it's everybody's…

Lisa: Heather Locklear in Melrose Place.

Jaime: Basically you do all the jobs, right?

Michael: Yeah, yeah.

Jaime: And I was like, that is awesome. She's got the shoulder pads. So obviously it's all about the wardrobe. She's got the shoulder pads, she's...

Michael: I remember those shoulder pads.

Jaime: And I was like, that is awesome. She's got the shoulder pads. So obviously it's all about the wardrobe. She's got the shoulder pads, she's...

Michael: I remember those shoulder pads.

Jaime: Holy shit, oh my goodness.

Michael: Joan Collins.

Jaime: Joan Collins. One of our Joans, is it Joan Collins, right?

Michael: Yes, yes.

Jaime: So yeah, so I really loved it. And, but then I went to, like, in high school I did like a, one of my, this cool girl named Stephanie Mahudi, if she's listening, she's gonna be like, I can't believe Jaime's talking about me still. But she was so cool. She had like purple hair and Doc Martens and she was part of this marketing club called Deca. And so I joined this and you just made like, it was like a marketing competition in high school. Could anything be less cool? I'm sorry, this is so not cool. But I joined and I started writing ads and I was like won New York state first place two years in a row. And then I went to, then I went to regular liberal arts college for creative writing. And then I was creative writing in English. And then I was gonna be an economics major because I thought you needed to do that to get into advertising.

Michael: But back when you got into advertising, it was pretty male-dominated.

Jaime: Oh, definitely.

Michael: Do you, did you feel any of that, any kind of discrimination as you got into, or did you feel like, hey, these are creative organizations, they're a little bit more open?

Jaime: So I, it's so funny, because I think for so long my reaction has been like, no, no, because I think for a very long time I've been trying to like bury that a little bit. I wouldn't say that I felt discrimination, especially at like, you know, in any like, real sense in, well I have had some explicit, but in the beginning jobs it was more like subtle. It was more like I came in, okay, nobody in advertising wears like, I had like a business suit with a, with like regular skin-colored pantyhose and a briefcase. And I came in for my creative job and my like heels. I was like, clap, clap, clap, clap, clapping around. And I looked around and everybody had like, Converse and all, they were all men. And so I was like, I've got to be more like them. And so I started to really, what my mother would consider the time of my like wardrobe downfall where I was just like, I was like, so grubbing, you know, grubby. So I think it was more about just trying to put that, put the side of me that was anything girly or feminine aside and try to, you know, swear more than they did, be more vulgar than they were.

Michael: And they're people that don't believe in your idea, don't believe that your company will succeed, won't fund you. And you scrape by and you have a passion and you're mission driven and you're gonna make this work. And it's not always easy. And most of the people we talk to, there are those hurdles. There are those, you know, things you have to get through. It'd be interesting to hear now that you've, you know, gotten into this with your company JOAN. Knowing that you've been in big agencies that have been acquired and reacquired and reacquired. Do you feel that that has helped you relative to JOAN, the company you've created? And then if so, what is it that you learned? Because you hear so much about creative being diffused in these big agencies, creative people being frustrated. Talk to us about your experiences in the big agencies, what you learned and what you want to do different with JOAN.

Lisa: Yeah. I also love big agencies in a way because I think that they are, can be really world-class. And I would say my big agency experience was very much that. I worked with just tremendous thinkers and incredible talent. However, it's impossible to make change or it's impossible to evolve. You know, it's like turning around a cruise ship that just doesn't want to go anywhere. And so the inertia is kind of real.

So if you're a rabble rouser or somebody who wants to just come on, this is like old business now, let's go, let's go. You kind of get met with a little bit of a brick wall, you know? And so a lot of people who are entrepreneurial in spirit end up leaving. So for me it was about learning the excellence and then bringing that excellence to a place where I could be more nimble and free to actually move with the pace of business, move with the pace of change. And now that change is happening so fast that infrastructure is actually a critical risk for businesses, I think.

So I think we're very lucky to have, what I think Jaime and I have done is hire world-class talent and given them the room and the latitude to move as fast as they need to move. Which is I think the secret to a lot of our success.

Michael: Yeah, 'cause you, you know, we live in a world where agility and velocity are competitive differentiator. And the ability to move, like you said, very quickly. We have come through extraordinary times. Even in the last three years, you wound up with COVID, so everybody went remote immediately. A lot of people weren't prepared with the technology to do it right away. So there was a lot of cumbersome maneuvers that happened within organizations till they got it all straightened out. Then it was, oh, now we're remote, now people don't wanna come back to work.

So now you have this sort of hybrid thing and people trying to figure out how to make that happen. But you know, the employees were like, "Nope, we don't wanna do that anymore. We sort of like this work-life balance." And then we've come into financial crisis, which has affected a lot of small businesses. It's not over, you know, we certainly see that this has been rolling and could continue and we could go into a deeper recession. Where, I want you guys to walk us through when we talk about change and the agility and velocity, where you were, what you had to deal with, as running a small company and any changes you had to make in how you work?

Jaime: Yeah. I mean, I think the nature of a seven-year-old company like ours is constant change anyway. But you're right, there's been so many conditions on that that are pretty unusual, you know, colliding together. And the advertising business is a pivot, pivot, pivot, pivot, pivot kind of business anyway. So there's a lot of that already baked into it. We entered the pandemic with one day of remote work already. So we were giving people Fridays from home, if everyone did their time sheets. It was like a, basically like a forcing mechanism to get people to do it. And it was gamified. So like if any one person in the company didn't do their time sheets, nobody could get the Friday off.

So it was a self-policing kind of thing, right? But because of that, we actually knew how to have remote meetings, because Friday was always like that. So pop up the Zoom, do a Google hangout, you know, we were using all collaborative software already. So in some ways we might have been better prepared for a fully remote world than others who didn't have that. But we do have a large proportion of our staff who live in teeny tiny apartments in New York City. Some of them with roommates that they found, I don't know how, you know, not their best friends, you know, you know what I mean? Or couples that broke up or I don't know what. there was a lot of, I would say emotional challenges during that time of not having space, of being afraid, of being with people that you don't feel comfortable with or not being with people and wishing you were with people. And missing humanity. And I think as leaders, that was probably one of the toughest things. I mean, just being a good employer and being a responsible human being who helps these other people to make it through and hopefully even thrive was I think, I think traumatic for everyone. I honestly think that there's probably be...

Michael: Well this is why mental health has risen to the top really in terms of businesses and there's a lot of attention on it. A lot of that is has to do with the impacts of COVID and what people experienced, loneliness. You bring that up. So there's a lot of that that's being dealt with now and companies are now having to deal with it in a more responsible way.

Jaime: Absolutely.

Michael: What creative, I mean collaborative.

Jaime: Yeah, yeah. How do you, how do you do that? You know, it's interesting because our productivity did not at all suffer during the pandemic. In fact, I think we were like incredibly productive. We were able to get out so much, we were able to win pitches. It was really, I think it was from a, from like a numbers perspective, it was actually pretty freaking good. What I think we miss is the human, the way that collaboration in person, creative jam sessions feed your soul and also the lateral thinking that the chaos of a conversation can bring. Because in these sort of appointment-made brainstorm sessions that would last 30 minutes, an hour, it's a very focused linear process. But when you can sit down with someone, like I was just, I was in with so many people that I didn't even expect to be in my office today. It's just magic the way the combination of thought and of what if, and "Hey, hold on a second, could we do this?" And "Hey, could, hey, come over here, come in here, come and talk, let's talk about this thing."

That is, I think the magic. And the thing is, we got on, all got into this industry not because we thought it would be easy. Like no one, no one ever thought it was gonna be easy. No one pretended it was gonna be easy. And it is not easy, but it is gratifying because you can create things with people who are outside of you. Your own body and your own head and your own Zoom screen in a way that is like incredibly fulfilling. And I think that that collaboration and that connection between people to build ideas is like such a gift. And so even though we were really profitable and like successful during the pandemic, I think emotionally and like soulfully, it was, it was a deficit.

Michael: So let's go to the name JOAN. How'd you come up with it?

Jaime: So when we first started, Lisa and I were talking about what our name can be and you know, we were one of the very few agencies, and we didn't even know of any at that time, that were founded completely by women. And the convention in advertising is to name it after the founders, right? I had come from Wieden + Kennedy, Lisa was at Refinery before she, that she was at Ogilvy & Mather. And so, you know, just name an agency back then, they were all mostly named after the founders. There were exceptions, but, and so we were thinking like, should we name it after us? And you know, like, we thought about that for like a second and then were like, oh, nah, it doesn't feel like, it doesn't feel like, it would feel like it'd be too much about us versus about spirit that we wanted to evoke.

And so we were talking about people that really inspired us. And you know, in like the middle of the night one night, I kind of woke up, I'm like, oh my god. Like I had this kind of weird like divine inspiration. Like so many people that Lisa and I talked about yesterday were named the same thing, which was Joan. And so, you know, we had like Joan Rivers who we were totally inspired by and she's just like foul-mouthed and, but honest, right? She totally was like, “This is my perspective.” And nobody was doing, everything was “Take my wife, please,” right? And she was like, no, this is what, this is the wife's perspective on that, right?

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jaime: So it was like revolutionary, right?

Michael: Yeah.

Jaime: The way she, the way she looked at the world. And then, you know, Joan Jett, who like, has like been a huge inspiration for me and for my daughters and like we have a big Joan Jett poster on our wall. And like she was told by, when she was little, you have to play violin, 'cause little girls play violin. And she said, I wanna play guitar. And god bless her parents, they said, Joanie wants to play guitar, we're gonna give her guitar. So she became this amazing kind of rebel.

Michael: Yeah.

Jaime: And then, you know, Joan Didion and you know, just thinking about how an essay of Joan Didion like three pages long, you're like, oh my god. I just get the soul and the imagination and the, I'm so there in that moment.

Michael: Joan of Arc.

Jaime: Joan of Arc, well yeah, Joan of Arc, right? Joan of Arc and Joan Baez and Joan Armatrading and Joan Chen and like Joan Collins, of course.

Michael: Yeah, yeah.

Jaime: Shoulder pads and diamonds.

Michael: Yeah.

Jaime: We love it, we can't be mad at it. So there were just so many Joans. And so we kind of were like, what is the thing that links all of these women together? And actually a lot of them were women that had gone into male dominated fields, but they were going to make change and they were gonna do it their way.

Michael: Do you only hire women?

Jaime: Oh, no, no, no, we have a lot of incredible men. Men, Joan, as a matter of fact, as we were looking at it, we were talking about Joan Miro, the Spanish painter, the surrealist.

Michael: Yeah, yeah.

Jaime: And he was the godfather of surrealism. So, you know, we're, we strive to be a very diverse company. And it's interesting because I think there have been times where, I think early on we had a very, very female heavy creative department, for example. And one of the things that we really try to do is to bring in people from all different backgrounds and actually, surprise, men are part of those different backgrounds. You know, we can't be balanced and we can't be diverse if we only have one point of view. And our philosophy is different points of view is what makes it interesting. Again, like that collaboration, that spark, that's what we're looking for.

Michael: So the two of you get together, you're gonna form this company? Where'd you get the funding?

Lisa: Oh, clients funded. Clients funded. So we started with a couple clients. I think our first actual thing was for Netflix. And then we did something for Adidas right out of the gate.

Michael: Yeah.

Lisa: And then we had a friend who was in, at General Mills, who gave us our first big shot with a really big thing to do.

Michael: Awesome.

Lisa: And before we knew it, the whole General Mills business was going into pitch and we won seven brands that came off of that. And from all of that we were off to the races. We didn't take salary for eight months.

Jaime: Yes.

Lisa: Or something like that. So there was also every single dollar that was...

Michael: That’s what I mean, yeah.

Jaime: Reinvested.

Lisa: You know, reinvested.

Jaime: Those were lean times, beans for dinner.

Jaime: But you know, when we first started we did have some offers to bankroll and Lisa and I were like, if we don't build this brick by brick, if we don't actually do this, then we will never be able to have the independence that we're looking for.

Michael: So you didn't have to have investors on a board telling you.

Lisa: No, no. I think the other piece of it is that, as Jaime mentioned, we really wanna make JOAN a home for outsiders. You know, people who haven't seen themselves represented or wish to be represented differently and they can find a home and a place to exercise their self, their voice at JOAN. And because of that, it's incumbent upon us to do this very well so that we can set the, we can show others that they can do it. You know, if a whole bunch of other people who consider themselves outsiders start agencies after they've seen JOAN, that would be the best thing ever, you know?

Michael: Now you've been awarded, and I talked in the intro, you know, small, you know, small agency of the year, and you've, I mean, accomplished quite a bit, because I only have one Cannes Lion. I think you have over 20 or something, correct?

Jaime: Thirty.

Michael: 30, 30. Not easy. You know, being, you know, in the theatrical film world, you know, a lot of people covet this. But there's a lot of creatives that are like, that's nice to be recognized, it may help with business development, but that's not what's so important. How do you think about that?

Jaime: We do work that, we do work that we think is gonna connect with the audience and like that we love, right? And our philosophy is that we want to do that work that is for that reason, for like a pure reason. Now if we win awards, that's awesome.

Michael: It's just so, it's just so many of them in, even in, you know, when you think about the theatrical world, you campaign for them.

Jaime: Yeah.

Michael: The Oscars, you campaign, the Emmys, you're campaigning. And it's probably a little bit like that in the ad world as well. And so I'm not, you know, diminish it, it is important, but I just wanted your perspective on it.

Lisa: I think that Jaime's right, we wanna be really proud of the work that we do. And that's what's first. And I think also, and maybe this is founder issues, but when our client hires us, we are responsible for their growth and their business.

Jaime: Yeah.

Lisa: It's not like some anonymous company with an anonymous boss or something like that. Like we are looking at our clients going like, we will help you. And so that responsibility we carry really, we take really seriously. So that doesn't mean doing lame work, it means doing amazing work, amazing work that really transforms their business. And the kind of awards that we wanna win for that are awards that balance how creative we were, but with how effective we were. That's the gold standard for us is making sure it's performing.

Michael: Well probably helps with retention too for you.

Jaime: Absolutely. So both client retention and people retention. So one thing that's actually been a new development over the last couple years is that even the creative awards, they demand results. So you have to fill in the results on the little form.

Michael: We know this.

Jaime: You know this, yes, yes. And the case study needs to make a deal. And I'll tell you, I'm in a lot of juries, and if you see something that doesn't have results at the end, you're like, hmm, I wonder what, you know, or in the write up you're like, I think that maybe this was kind of bullshit. So that's one thing. And then the second thing is, you know, I know personally when I started winning that is when my career options change exponentially. And it's not that I want people to have that so that they leave, but I want them to, because I don't want to. But what I tell them is I wanna have to fight to keep you.

Michael: Yeah.

Jaime: And I want you to have the confidence to walk in and say, actually I know I know what I'm doing, I know what I'm doing. Because I think one of the things that's a vicious thing about creative people is they live, and almost everyone that I know, lives with a constant imposter syndrome or vacillating between I'm the best thing in the world and I'm the worst thing in the world. And what we wanna try to say is, you're probably somewhere in the middle. But like there is some actual proof that you are the best thing in the world sometimes.

Michael: Well, I think you have to, because most of the creative people that at least I've worked with in the film business are all insecure underneath.

Jaime: A hundred percent, you know? It’s true.

Michael: So you talked about data. How has data changed the ad world?

Jaime: Well, I mean, I'll tell you as a creative input thing, I, and everybody at JOAN like loves data. As a matter of fact, some of our most interesting work comes off of interesting data points that we found that have nothing to do with the things that we were looking for. So I'm just talking about inspiration and then I'll leave you to talk about measurement, because that's the hard stuff.

Michael: Well, I wanna go into that.

Jaime: Alright. Okay, so yeah. So I mean, but I will say there's two things. From an input perspective, the work that we do will be amazing when it is creatively amazing and it is effective. And if it is not effective, it is not amazing. And that is period, right? That is an end of the story. I think the most important thing is to identify what is your KPI at the offset? Are you looking for, is the data you're seeking actually conversions? Are, is it website hits? Is it actual purchase at shelf? Is it share of search? These are the kinds of things that we need to know in advance. We can engineer any amazing creative idea designed to hit that.

Michael: So many people and it'll probably come to you, they try to separate brand from demand. So they're separating, you know, engagement and conversion to brand and they're like, well, we don't want brand, we need to convert. What's your opinion about that? The idea that they separate this.

Lisa: Well that doesn't make sense to me at all. I understand why people do, but I think that they really mean awareness or something like that versus a brand. You know, a brand is a living, breathing system by which all the aspects of something are linked together and you have an emotional response to that, like how you know, that's what a brand is. And so the brand can create demand, the brand can create conversion, the brand can create consideration or...

Michael: Reputation.

Lisa: Yeah reputation, absolutely, a hundred percent. So for us, even the most like lower, lower funnel piece of creative can have a point of view from a brand. And actually if you're only doing one thing like converting without it, it's, you're gonna get a low quality lead, you know? You, yeah.

Michael: Or you can commoditize.

Lisa: You will commoditize, yeah. And the lead won't be invested. You know, what you want is to find long-term value, right? Long-term lifetime value of your audience. And sometimes you obviously just need a lot, but you want each interaction from a brand to be meaningful, leave some sort of stamp.

Michael: So get back to data. So it's sort of changed everything. I mean, we now have amazing insights. It's really allowed for personalization, which we've seen becomes very important. So you're a marketer one, right? How much of that plays into the work you do?

Lisa: A lot. I would say, first of all, insights as you mentioned, is a key thing to making great ideas that stick. And then figuring out how, what degree of customization that has as it goes kind of closer down to the purchase moment. Whether that be a segment cluster and understanding what drives a particular segment or shared mindsets. How can you find some commonality in the middle funnel and then in the very lower funnel, ultimate personalization is really important.

And you can do that through all kinds of different automation, automated ways of working as well. And you know, I think that the trick is that, is your idea big enough to encompass all areas, all aspects of the funnel, of the marketing ecosystem, and making sure that you are not trying to make a TV commercial do this tiny little thing on the end, you know? Sometimes the form factor needs to change and the messaging needs to sort of simplify or ask for the sale or whatever it may need to do. But it should somehow be linked together through a consistent red thread of some sort. So yeah, it's pretty much a lot of what we do.

Jaime: Yeah.

Michael: Yeah, no. It's interesting because I was with Steve Jobs and he had, they had brought the researchers in and they were talking about a product and the research and he basically looked and said, do you believe the research? And of course they said, well yeah, absolutely. It's, you know, we have the right universe, it's representative of the market and you know, this is what they're saying. And he goes, no, that's not what I asked you. I asked you if you believe the research. And they said yes. He goes, research is a look at the past, people can't reference the future. And if we're creating the future to solve for a problem for them, they're not gonna see what that solution is. We're going to help them find that. And he goes, be careful how you look at research and how you interpret it. And I just thought that was an interesting moment. You know, when you think about certain parts of data that you're looking at to give you insights.

Lisa: A hundred percent. I can't, I think that that is absolutely true. And I think there are very clear parts of research, like your AB testing.

Michael: Yeah.

Jaime: Okay, fine, right?

Michael: Yeah.

Lisa: But when you're doing ideas the world hasn't seen before, you have to be very careful, right?

Michael: Yeah.

Jaime: Any kind of research is meant to give you information as a decision maker. But ultimately…

Michael: But JOAN is pushing that.

Lisa: JOAN is pushing that.

Michael: Right? You're pushing those boundaries.

Lisa: You have to if you’re going to be innovative.

Michael: Yeah. And how difficult is that with your clients who have, are having trouble seeing what that's going to look like and what it's going to do?

Lisa: I was gonna say that, you know, there are lots of different types of clients and some clients that are extremely cautious or data reliant may at the end of the day pick a different agency. Like when we pitch, we talk about joyful rebellion, we're pushy, we're pushing, we're gonna push, push, push. We are not going to be irresponsible though.

Michael: Yeah, yeah.

Lisa: So there's this kind of balance of it. But if you're a marketer, and there are many marketers like this that really are like, I don't have an opinion, let the data tell me, right? They are gonna feel more at home with an agency that lives in that kind of programmatic space or performance marketing space and less leap oriented. We are much more about culture, taking a big step forward.

Michael: Well I think it's about risk. When you're talking about those marketers, and it's interesting 'cause Bob Iger said, you have to take risks. You have to know, and you have to be comfortable with failure. And I think a lot of people are not, because there's a lot of companies that don't accept failure.

Jaime: The thing is doing something that is average is failure. Why would you accept just this? And it's funny, I think about how much money is spent in this world on creating communications and you just say you've just dumped $50 million down the drain. Where you could have done something experimental or something new and potentially had some kind of exponential result.

Now nobody says you have to take your entire marketing budget and put it on something new. But I think any marketer who's not trying new things, part of their marketing budget, is missing out on a trick to radically reinvent the brands that they're working on and make those big leaps forward that make a difference, you know. We're addicted to looking for new things at, whether that's a new way of looking at the conversation or new perspectives from maybe people that haven't been represented before or new formats. And the reason why we're addicted to that is because I, well I think personally we get a kick out of it. But I also think that it's effective.

And it goes back to evolutionary stuff. Like when we were on the Serengeti and we were like, you know, barely troglodytes, we were looking for the patterns in the grain. And when a pattern in the grain, as the wind would blow, would shift one way a different way than the other way, that new way, that would mean that there would be a giant animal there coming to eat you. And so I heard a biologist talking about this and it is the reason why human beings are predisposed to look for the new. And that is to me the greatest media multiplier you can ever have. Get people to look for the new.

Michael: Let's get to, I could talk all day on a lot of topics. You, I have another one I wanna talk to you about, but let's get to AI. It's all over the news. You know, you had the man who actually created the algorithm resigned from Google, he thinks it's too premature. Now it's sort of like a horse race and people are just moving fast. You know, Sundar put out a document that I was reading about some of the concerns and the need for regulation. But it can't be, you know, general regulation for every industry that's going to be tailored by industry, whether you're life sciences, you know, or you're in technology.

But there's going to need to be some and it's going to have to have parity globally. But we're so far away from that yet. It's very interesting. I've, you know, I've tested it creatively and I went in and said, I want you to create an episode of this series that's on Netflix that does this as a follow on. And it came back with all the dialogue, all the action, amazing concept. I'm like, my god, like, so, and you know, I said, let's see if it can do a press release. Now you have to prove, because there's, there were some mistakes, but it was amazing how fast it did this. What do you guys see that is sort of the negative and the positive of AI in your business?

Jaime: I mean, we're very interested in it and I would say I was a really big naysayer of it for a long time. And then chat, the ChatGPT thing came out in December. And actually I started to get really interested when I started seeing like Midjourney and Dolly and I was like, okay, let's play around with this. When I saw ChatGPT write a poem in front of my eyes, I was like, this is magic. And for me, I'm like, you know, I feel like whenever I'm in the presence of magic, I don't, I can't ignore it and I wanna know how to play with it. And I'll say it's not perfect. Like I asked it, this is actually a fun game. Ask it about, ask us to tell your bio, about who you are? And I would say…

Michael: I did that.

Jaime: Yeah, did you? I was like, "Oh, Jaime Robinson is a creative genius in advertising." I'm like, thank you, yes, go on. She was born in Australia and then she moved to South Africa. I'm like, wait, no she didn't. And I'm like, this is.

Michael: No, that's why I said you have to proof.

Jaime: Yes you do.

Michael: But it's amazing what they capture.

Jaime: It's, it is amazing.

Michael: And where does it capture?

Jaime: I don't know, I mean it is incredible. I think that the, where we, how we're using it is like a way to help break the blank page, as a way to get unstuck. Nothing is going to be perfect and you still need curation and you still need to take what it is and bring it up as to build upon it. To make it something that is so perfect for the moment and the client and the audience. But I think there, I think it's very interesting. As far as the taking over the world stuff. Boy, I don't know, I think it's interesting that the movie Oppenheimer's coming out right now. Because I feel like there's a lot of parallels there. And just watching the trailer again this weekend, I was like, wow, this is, there is a...

Michael: But he felt, the guy that resigned, he felt that it could undo democracy.

Jaime: It's, I think it, I think that there are some, I think that there probably are some serious concerns that need to be addressed way above my pay grade.

Michael: Yes.

Jaime: But I don’t know how at this point.

Michael: Yeah.

Jaime: 'Cause I think it's, I think the genie's out of the bottle.

Michael: Yeah. Well, awesome. So, so this is sort of like an interview. I'm interviewing you, potential supplier to TriNet. Awesome. But you talk about your people. You know, we launched this campaign. We really believe that is the sauce that makes these companies great. The diversity, the ability for them to really follow a mission and have a purpose. And a lot of companies lose their purpose along the way. So I'm gonna ask you about your purpose and ask you about your people. You've grown, you know, quite a bit. And that's a great thing. So talk to us about where you find your people. How do you retain your people? We're fully employed basically still as a country. We have 10 million jobs that are unfilled. The skill sets are very different for those jobs. We're gonna see more of that. And so how do you manage that?

Lisa: Managing people is both the most beautiful part of the job and honestly the hardest, the hardest part of the job. We do have a mission-oriented business in that we believe people who've been on the outside of the boardroom really deserve to be in the boardroom. And especially as we think about culture, it never really was a monolith, but it's certainly not now, right? It's a bunch of subcultures. And so if you don't have a really diverse group of people around the table trying to help a brand connect to culture, like you're missing a big trick now. So for us that's really, really important. And when we think about diversity, it's also diversity and skills, you know, so trying to find people from atypical pathways is really important to us. Making sure that we're not just replicating the agency business just in a smaller form. Like, oh, you worked at all those places, we'll come work here. Well then what's the difference?

Michael: Do you ever hire outside the agency?

Lisa: All the time.

Jaime: Oh yeah, definitely.

Lisa: All the time. And I think it's the mixing of things. We've got filmmakers and journalists and artists and different, we have an AI expert.

Michael: Oh, that's awesome.

Lisa: You know like different types of people around the table. That's the electricity that actually unlocks culture. You know, sometimes they have to learn how to work on a brief, 'cause you know, you haven't come up through this business, you don't know what this is, what is the, what is this paper, you know? And you have to tell people, you do have to acknowledge that there's a brand. You know what I mean?

Jaime: I actually the other day was like, "Hey, I love this TikTok, do you think we should put the brand in there somewhere? I'm just saying like, I don't know."

Lisa: So you have to make a group of people together, some of whom come from this business and they know exactly. How to work on a brand and how to deliver what advertising needs to do. But then you wanna compliment that. There are people from all different parts of culture to make sure it feels like not, you know, marketers in a boardroom coming up with ideas they think culture will love.

Michael: We've seen things that are like, so the benefits that you have. We've seen what would be potential employees move to a company because this other company didn't have in vitro. They didn't cover in vitro. Now you see a lot of these states, a lot of these, you know, areas and regions in the country not covering women's health or not supporting transgender. And so you're seeing a lot of movement in organizations and geographic regions by, people are like, I won't live here or, and so how important are benefits that you provide your employees, critical to retaining them and making them happy?

Lisa: Yeah, we pay for benefits for everyone and then we pay partially I think for families. Something like that. And so the number one thing that we put as a priority is making sure everybody gets their benefits and at no cost to them. So that is super important. And then as a seven-year-old company that's starting up, we think about like what else could we be offering that is within our, you know, fits within our P&L.

Michael: Yeah.

Lisa: Put it that way. So for example, we've shipped breast milk all over the world for somebody.

Jaime: Yeah, this is true.

Lisa: We, you know, we try, we try different things that are responsive, responsive to the needs of our community. So we have a very open door in terms of like what people feel that they need or would like and we will customize based on those things.

Michael: Yeah.

Lisa: I think it is an important part of being an employer today.

Michael: Yeah.

Jaime: And I'll even say, you know, we just actually did a survey about the things that people really love about being at JOAN and actually one of the ones way up top right, right around the same place as the doing great work was the benefits coverage. And I'm pretty proud of that and I know Lisa is too. I'll also say you mentioned the pandemic and the shift that we had there. One question that we really thought was our kind of summer Fridays policy. Because the same thing happens in the ad industry where some people could take off every summer Friday and some people can't take off any and it starts to breed resentment. And so we actually change the policy to a different thing that would enable everybody to take off in some way. So all of our Mondays are three day weekends. Like, so if you think of like Martin Luther King Day or Memorial Day, those have gone to four day weekends. So we actually have Friday, we're actually closed Friday and Monday for those kind of three day weekends, several times of the year. And then we are offering off the summer, the week of July 4th completely off. The whole company will shut down and therefore everybody can take it off. It was something that people really also responded to very well, because it's like unfair if the same people have to take, you know, can take it off and some people cannot. It just breeds this deepening mental health, these deepening mental health issues, you know?

Michael: It was, it was interesting. My sons work for Google. And my son was telling me this. He goes, dad, I mean you can't believe this, 'cause he worked at Oracle before, which was completely opposite. And he was leaving and he was gonna take a Friday off and then he said, here's my cell phone number so that you can reach me. I go, no, we don't have anybody's cell phone number. And he's like, what? He goes, it can wait till tomorrow, there's nothing that urgent. And then he goes and they go also at like six o'clock you shut your laptop down, don't send us any emails. It'll all be dealt with tomorrow. And my son was like, my God, this is awesome. Like I'm not being harassed all night long. And I, it was fascinating, I told our CEO, "Hey, where are we on this?" Anyhow, but it, but that stuff makes a difference.

Lisa: It really does. We have a desire for everyone to shut down at 6:30 and the only emails and Slacks that should be sent after 6:30 are ones that must be addressed. And if not, they should be schedule sent for in the morning. Because sometimes people work on weird times, you know, I gotta put the kids to bed, then I wanna hop back on or whatever it is.

Michael: Oh, that’s nice.

Lisa: So, we do try to encourage that. It's a self-policing thing, which means that you find yourself veering off the road and then you gotta come back, you know what I mean? It must be enforced by the culture for it to stick.

Michael: Yeah, that's awesome. Where do you see, you know, to sort of end this, JOAN? Like how big, do you wanna stay small? Do you wanna get big, do you wanna be bought? Retire then? Like where do you see JOAN going?

Lisa: I think what we would love to see is JOAN be a Hall of Fame agency. A very, very famous, a very influential agency and it would be the first one fully founded by women to be in that, in that spot.

Michael: That’s awesome.

Lisa: And again, I think to the point earlier is, and that it spawns a new birth of all of these new founders that demonstrate a new step forward for culture.

Michael: But also you redefine the business model.

Lisa: Yes.

Michael: From what an agency is.

Lisa: That’s right.

Michael: And so I think that that's an important takeaway as well.

Lisa: Yeah.

Michael: Women who have redefined a business model. Well listen, thank you both for being here. It was a lot of fun. We went way over the time. I'm looking up there, I'm like, oh my god. And I could go down 10 other topics, but that's not gonna happen. So thank you guys so much.

Lisa: Yeah.

Michael: Women who have redefined a business model. Well listen, thank you both for being here. It was a lot of fun. We went way over the time. I'm looking up there, I'm like, oh my god. And I could go down 10 other topics, but that's not gonna happen. So thank you guys so much.

Jaime: Thank you.

Lisa: Thank you for having us.

Jaime: Yeah, that was really fun.

Michael: I wanna remind everybody that our PeopleForce Podcast by TriNet is committed to helping small businesses and their leaders with timely and relevant business content. That's why you gotta listen to this. You're gonna find some great insights. The PeopleForce Podcast drops new episodes every month and we hope you continue catching our new episodes on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and Rise.TriNet.com. To get relevant SMB news and info, make sure you subscribe to our podcast and to our newsletter at TriNet.com/insights.