In this episode, Tim and Sarah discuss the essential lessons learned from running a creative studio, focusing on client communication, pre-production planning, and the importance of educating clients about deliverables.

They share personal anecdotes and insights on managing expectations, avoiding scope creep, and establishing healthy studio operations.

The conversation also delves into the branding and logo design process, emphasizing the significance of perceived value and setting boundaries in freelancing. Overall, the episode provides valuable takeaways for creatives and business owners looking to enhance their practices and foster better client relationships.

Tim (00:00)
I'm Tim.

Sarah Faith (00:00)
And I'm Sarah.

Tim (00:01)
And this is miked up marketing, a segment of the brand roots podcast. These are the conversations we're having anyway, whether we're deep in a strategy call, they're talking shop after a client meeting, but now we're mic'ing ourselves up and hitting record. We talk about the ins and outs of running a brand studio, what's working in marketing, what's broken and how businesses can actually grow with strategy that makes sense from stories about brand pivots to questions like what even his story brand or

Who are you really selling to? This is a space for honest takes with real insights. So if you're creative, marketer or business owner trying to figure it out while building something meaningful, you're in the right place. Now let's get into the show.

Sarah Faith (00:39)
We just want to start out by saying we have such wonderful clients and we have been blessed with that. We have learned so much. So these are just lessons that we're personally learning and we hope that they help you as well along the way. So we want to start off with first the first major lesson that we've learned in our journey as business owners and

is definitely number one is managing client communication and expectations. So this is probably our biggest early mistake was not managing how many voices had input. There were too many people involved leads to confusion and it kind of like diluted the creative vision. And I remember like specifically one time we did a photo shoot and there was

Tim, he's supposed to be directing, I'm being producer. And then we were trying to just work with that one client when it's their turn on camera. And then other people in the company were now actually taking on Tim's role as director and my role as producer, interrupting us. And it was actually making that person feel really nervous on camera. And I'll take responsibility for that one as the producer.

Tim (01:46)
you

Sarah Faith (01:56)
I should have said, know what guys, enough, please leave. Let's just have this one person, this one person be on camera. They don't need feedback from you because you don't even know what you're talking about.

Tim (01:56)
Thank

Yeah,

I well, I think with something like filming anything or even photos, it's, it's always going to make it so much more difficult with more people in the room. Just because you have this this critical eye, you know, you have these people who are they

Anytime we've filmed and I think this is pretty common that

When you get in the mindset of filming someone, especially for a lot of the stuff that we're filming for companies, they don't have experience on camera. We've worked with people who know what they're doing on camera. And so then it flows so much easier and better when we're filming with them. But for the vast majority of our clients, they don't have that. They don't know about camera presence. They don't understand about

Sarah Faith (02:39)
Mm-hmm.

Tim (02:50)
Tone and and how you should inflect in certain parts of when you're speaking to camera, you know like it and Because of all those things because it's a new experience to them It's like they feel the most insecure they could possibly feel when they're on camera because like all right in my do I look fat do I look? Not you know, like it's all these thoughts are going through the heads and so they're feeling so much already self-conscious But then you have all these other voices kind of chiming in

Sarah Faith (02:56)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tim (03:15)
And especially it's people who are not the ones creating the content. And so it makes it that much more difficult and annoying than our end when we're like, all right, let us do the job so that we can do this right. So the other person can feel comfortable on camera. and so I, that was something that, you know, I think I wonder if it's part of it, Sarah is that we.

Sarah Faith (03:27)
Right?

Tim (03:36)
I don't know it's like the people pleasing in us or the well, you know, because like, well, I don't want to interrupt or I don't want to like, maybe they, know, like, and we're afraid almost to like say, Hey, let's, let's just limit the amount of people speak. now obviously we have the confidence now to do that. But you know, as when you're first starting out doing this, it's just kind of like awkward saying, Hey, by the way,

Sarah Faith (03:41)
Definitely.

Mm-hmm.

Tim (04:03)
Maybe can you go in a different room actually? We want to make sure we're filming this ourselves and not having too many voices. any thoughts about that?

Sarah Faith (04:10)
Yeah, totally. Also, I remember during that specific shoot when one person would say would give feedback that is it supposed to be giving feedback? Another person would come in and say, no, actually, they should do it like this. And that even led to more confusion. And I do think part of it's the people pleasing. I think also with if you're a creative studio owner or an agency owner or a freelancer, even just like it's B2B.

Tim (04:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sarah Faith (04:38)
There's this weird dichotomy of thinking where, yes, you know that you're a business working with a business or an individual working with a business and you would think that you would feel equal to that business. However, because you are hired by that business, it's almost like you put them on the pedestal and it's okay, well, whatever they want goes. And that's actually then technically not B2B.

Tim (05:04)
Yeah.

Sarah Faith (05:05)
It

has to be equal. And it's a very hard thing to get in the frame of mind for. But I think it's a muscle that you just have to flex. And we've definitely become more competent. So I would say the solution to that is you just assign one decision maker on the client side and then one main communicator on the studio or the agency side. And that kind of leads to

another lesson under that that branch is with one project we actually told the client how many photos we took and it backfired. so with with photo shoots you know you you might promise let's say 30 photos but you're not just taking 30 photos you could you could take a thousand photos in a single photo shoot and we accidentally said yeah we have like

Tim (05:40)
you

Sarah Faith (05:53)
I forget the number, but I'll just say a thousand.

Tim (05:54)
Yeah, it was I was because I was removing some

photos from like my light room right now because my cloud storage is up. So let me shift stuff to local archive. And I was like going through them today, actually. And I it was like 1400 photos. And look, I'm not we're not putting this client on blast. It's it's our fault. This is something that, you know, in my mind, I was like, well, if I tell them like it's almost an impressive number and the number

Sarah Faith (06:01)
Yeah.

my goodness. ⁓

Tim (06:18)
the reason it was like a couple hour photo shoot of headshots and different stuff. And I think the photos turned out beautiful and it was great working with them. it's not, there's no, we love working with them. They're great and they're great on camera, but I had taken close to 1400 because I'm just trying to capture them authentically, you know? And so I'll do a burst mode photo, you know, and then it'll get like 20 photos in a second, you know, or, know,

Sarah Faith (06:27)
yeah.

Right.

Tim (06:43)
So I'm just trying to capture that. I guess, I don't know if it was just me trying to build like, you know, this actually how many we captured. And then the final deliverables are like, maybe 50 photos like of including all everyone's photos and the group photos and stuff. And then they're like, well, I expected more. And I'm like, yeah, that's probably the stuff I have my, my style myself. So another real good example of that is with wedding photography.

Cause they're probably taking thousands of photos over the course of eight hours or so.

Sarah Faith (07:06)
Yes.

They're not missing a moment. They're not missing a second.

Tim (07:13)
Yeah. And with that you would think, well they have, I'll get 5,000 photos. But in reality they're whittling it down to the best of those, the, the, the, photos. Cause you know, even a lot of those photos, it's like you're kind of half blinking. You're like awkwardly smiling. It's you're capturing those, the bad in between moments, you know, cause there's a spit is just flying across the room.

Sarah Faith (07:19)
Yeah.

Wedding. Yeah. Wedding. Yeah, wedding cake is coming out of your mouth and it's stuck in your teeth.

Tim (07:41)
But like, and

because there's a difference between the good in between moments and the bad in between moments. The bad in between are like the awkward, like, that that's a really awkward ugly face you're making. The good in between is you didn't realize someone's taking your photo and you smiled in the most pure way, you know, and that's, that's what I love, you know, being able to capture that. So, so

Sarah Faith (07:47)
Totally.

Right.

That was definitely

a big lesson because it became a negotiation point. They're saying, well, no, I want to see more because you told me that you took this many photos. And this is actually a very common thing, a story that I've heard from other photographers or agency owners. And so what we we the lesson was, OK, we need to clarify up front.

Tim (08:08)
Yeah.

Sarah Faith (08:25)
how many assets they'll receive. So if we promise 100 photos, they know that it's not. And then if we take a thousand photos, it doesn't matter. They're only getting

Tim (08:37)
Yeah.

Sarah Faith (08:37)
a hundred. And we then keep that number internally. we and a good rule of thumb that we have followed in our business is we really try to over deliver. So

Tim (08:42)
Yeah.

Sarah Faith (08:52)
I think every single client we have worked with, if they ask if the deal is 50 photos, we'll typically give them 100 or like we really just try to give more than is paid for. That's our hearts. But we don't ever want to overexpose our process. so there was that. And then I think a final lesson just under the same branch of managing client communication and expectations.

Tim (09:09)
No.

Sarah Faith (09:20)
was we missed a follow-up after a shoot once and it left the client hanging. Now there is some grace I give us on our end for this because around that time there was a huge family emergency that our family went through. For anyone who doesn't know Tim and I are actually brother and sister-in-law. He married my sister and ⁓

Tim (09:32)
you

And she's my annoying sister.

Sarah Faith (09:46)
And she's my, no, she's the best. Deborah's the best. And well, that's awkward. OK. I thought you were talking about Deb. I was like, no, she's wonderful. ⁓ Well, obviously. And you did. And anyway, so Deborah is is just.

Tim (09:49)
was talking about you.

Obviously, I married the best one.

Sarah Faith (10:05)
Yeah, she's great. But so Tim and I were brother and sister in law. And so we have the same family. And during this time, we went through a, yeah, basically a family tragedy. And our focus had to go to that. And I had to, you know, fly to a different part of the country to go, you know, kind of help take care of it and stuff. And so it just, you know, in a perfect world, we would have followed up with

this one client after a shoot and we didn't. And so the lesson was, look, even if you think you're done, always follow up. know, just even like a post shoot check in is a must. But that was that was definitely like I think a regret that we both had. So and that kind of I'm curious to hear from you, Tim, on like what's something that you look back on and you're like,

That was definitely a lesson or lessons learned.

Tim (10:57)
Yeah, I say this is probably the more or less important things this next lesson and I recently talked with a kid and there's a kid I mean I'm a 30 years old everyone who's lower like younger than me as a kid's basically ⁓ he must have been in his early 20s and you know, that's basically a child so He's in college and you want to ask me some questions just because you know i've been doing this for about a year but even though this doesn't seem very long at all, but and it's not but we've it's like

Sarah Faith (11:11)
Yeah.

haha

Yeah.

Tim (11:24)
A year has been like, it's been like 10 years compact into one year. This is how it's felt. But as soon as access for wisdom and something I really hammered in was this exact lesson actually was clarity and pre-production before you ever step onto a shoot, before you step into meeting with the client in person, like you need to get everything all your ducks in a row because this is where you really can kind of align with your expectations. You know, I and it kind of

blends really nicely with that first lesson you talked about before, which is, hey, how many photos are we expecting? And sometimes it's hard to know that. I think you just have to say this is the amount you're getting. if it's a photo shoot of, let's say, five employees in a group shot together, so we're going to do two locations for each employee. We're going to do five photos for each of those scenes or three, whatever.

and then we'll do five corporate head or corporate just group shots, you know, and that way you have a firm number. And then like you said, Sarah before, like then you can just blow them away by adding extra on top of that. So I would say, you know, the lessons always like under promise over deliver. And, but that also, all that stuff comes in pre-production. So, you know, and so some of these, the notes I have here, like,

When working with, you know, some content creation or video over clarifying upfront saved us, could have stayed us. There's a couple of times where it's like, it's, it's stuff. It's like, that makes sense. Why did you think about that sooner? But it's like, unless you're in a, I don't know. It's sometimes like, it's hard to see the forest of the trees, you know? So like there's this one client that we had and it was, we're filming of it's, it was a video series that we did.

Sarah Faith (12:55)
Yeah, totally.

I know what story you're going to share.

Tim (13:04)
And the videos, think, turned out great. They were about this product. And we used one of Sarah's other sisters or older sister in the video. she looks like a mom. And she had ripped jeans, which is like, I would say 99 % of people that it's like, it's not even, you wouldn't even think about it because you're not looking at ripped jeans and thinking one thing or another. But with this client,

Sarah Faith (13:09)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Tim (13:30)
And I'm not using conservative as a derogatory cause I am conservative, but this client was overly conservative when it came to the video and they saw the video and they were like, you need to crop these photos or videos because her jeans are, you know, they're holes in her jeans. And to be fair to them, it's like, wasn't tiny holes either. So it's like, all right, well, I get it. You know, it was frustrating for us, but

In hindsight, just now because that adds a step now in a good way to our pre-production. Now we know we need to clarify wardrobe, you know, like, what are the what's the expectations for this character that we're putting in this video for this brand ambassador, you know, because I get it, you know, I think a lot of people and rightfully are so rightfully so are guarding their brand, you how their brand is viewed.

And if a mother, you know, with ripped jeans is not again in their brand image, I guess, you know, right? Well, I can't fight you on it. And so so that was one of the big lessons. with that comes like specific wardrobe, like I was saying before, like wardrobe and the content style and having kind of a list exactly of what you want for the videos, ⁓ color palette, you know, for the do's and don'ts.

Sarah Faith (14:26)
Yeah.

Mm.

Tim (14:44)
setting even a pre-production question here to cover all these things. What's allowed, what's not allowed preferred tone, you know, branding boundaries. And like I said, clarifying actor's dress code, you know, like can we wear this? Can we not wear this? You know, and I would say the lesson should be lean conservative when it comes to clothing choices, because you're almost never going to go wrong if you lead conservative. Um, but do you have any thoughts on that, sir?

Sarah Faith (15:11)
Totally. I think it protects you as the business owner or the photographer, the freelancer, because what we have found is that when we ask people one time, clients one time, like, Hey, what are your expectations of this? They don't say much. And then after there's deliverables, all of a sudden, they have all these standards, all of a sudden, they have all these opinions. And it's like,

Tim (15:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, there we go.

Sarah Faith (15:38)
Well, why didn't you tell us that first from the the from the get go? And what we have what we found is just you have to almost like spell it out and think of things that they're not really thinking of. Part of that story was before we even did the shoe scripts had to be written. We do script writing for our clients for their videos and.

It takes a lot of work off for people. It's a huge undertaking, but I remember writing these scripts almost like immediately and I sent them and they were approved. And then once they were delivered on camera, it was, wait, can we switch this and can we switch that? And it's like, wait a minute, you approved this though. so it's almost like you have to...

Tim (16:19)
you

Sarah Faith (16:23)
have every part of the project go through all these checks and balances and question if they really mean it when they say, no, we don't have any expectations. No, we give you full creative freedom. I will I will never believe a client if they say that, because I just I know that in their heart of hearts and in the soul of who they are, they definitely have some kind of expectations and maybe in

Tim (16:39)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Faith (16:50)
defense of them. Maybe they don't even fully know what they want until like it's shown to them and they're like, well, I just I didn't think about that. And so it's a learning experience. But yeah, I think that just that goes into that same vein of just because like over clarify like almost I'd rather annoy them in over clarification, then not do that at all. And then

Tim (16:54)
Yeah.

Sarah Faith (17:14)
Now it costs our studio more time, money, resources to try to fix what they were not willing to communicate.

Tim (17:17)
Yeah.

Yeah, then kind of with that same thing with about communication is communication from our end like The big lesson that's the thing that everyone always talks about when it comes to creative studio or freelancing is it's scope creep and scope creep is creepy and scary because It's scope scare yeah and

Sarah Faith (17:32)
Yeah.

It's scary. It's our personal hell. We hate it. ⁓

Tim (17:46)
I think, you know, I talking to my friend Sam about this. Scope creep is what happens when the client is either too... Kind of like what we saying before, like the people pleasing thing. Scope creep happens when either you're too shy or too insecure or whatever to stand up to a client or when there's no clear boundaries drawn.

and the client might want to cross boundaries that they don't fully know are there, even though they might have an idea. And so, you know, we've dealt with this definitely before and it's so the lesson, you know, from scope creep is again, clarity and pre-production.

if you're doing a video series, don't just say, we're going to do, we'll do some videos for you. What you want to say is we're going to do five videos of this and three videos of that. And within that you have the most expectations already upfront, you know, and I get early on, know, cause I think what other clients are people who don't own the studios themselves, what they don't understand is you're

Sarah Faith (18:34)
Yeah.

Tim (18:52)
You're usually in competition with a lot of people to get the job and for stuff like you know for me and Sarah like we are obviously an early a young studio and We have experience obviously doing the work the technical components to the work we do like the work we do good as well The work we do good The creative work that we do we have expertise in we've been doing it for years

So whether we're designing something, we're doing videos, or the copywriting and marketing strategy, like we've been doing this for years. So that's the stuff we're super confident in. But the stuff that we're newer to is, is the B2B part of that. Working with clients and making sure we're, we're, you know, winning projects for them. And, and the, and this is why people fall into scope group, ourselves. It is because, and this is what I've done. I've done this a few times.

Sarah Faith (19:30)
Right?

Tim (19:38)
and I'm most guilty of it. It's because what I want to do is if I throw in this free thing, we'll win the bid. All their objections will be thrown out because, well, okay, well, that's valuable. in hindsight, I'm I'm glaring at my older self. It's like the scene in Interstellar.

Sarah Faith (19:40)
Yeah. Just kidding.

Right, yeah.

Tim (20:00)
where he's in the Tesseract He's like, no, no. And I'm, that's me looking at myself, drafting up the contract, uh, and not being, you know, I would say that's one of the perfect examples of images of not clarifying things because you're like, no, clarify. You're going to, you know, saving yourself so much heart and soul, you know, your, your, so much time and energy. Cause you're like, this project was so much bigger.

Sarah Faith (20:01)
Yeah. No! No! The worst.

Yeah. ⁓

funny.

Tim (20:28)
than I thought it was going to be. And not even just bigger, it's so much more time consuming than I thought initially was going to be. And so because of that, because these projects are bigger, then we realize it's so much more time consuming and becomes more expensive for us. It's not like we're working hourly or something, it's just like, that means we can't either grow as a company if we have to work on certain projects. I can't dedicate my time to the entrepreneur part of the business.

Sarah Faith (20:30)
my goodness.

Totally.

Tim (20:53)
or I can't work on other clients work because I'm stuck on a couple projects. And it's not like we have a team of people, it's like, it's just us, you know? all that to say is if there's one lesson for creative studios and freelancers, it's please, please, please define your terms, all of them, define everything, lock down your looks, lock down the brand voice, lock down everything in pre-production.

before you even start shooting or roll up to a set and you really need to qualify and educate in a way your clients which you know Sarah if you have any thoughts leading to the next one.

Sarah Faith (21:30)
Yeah,

the the visual of interstellar that scene. It's I think people could apply that scene to so many different aspects of their life. Looking back at past mistakes, it's like, no, no. But yeah, just set boundaries. mean, be firm in that. And I think actually people will respect you more and you'll respect yourself more and you'll feel more confident. And it's hard saying no. It it. ⁓

Tim (21:54)
So true.

Sarah Faith (21:55)
It's so hard to say no, but you don't want to be a pushover and you want you want these businesses to respect you just like you would want to respect them. So I think it kind of leads nicely to in into the next lesson, which is presenting and educating your clients. So this kind of every because everything that we do

Tim (21:59)
Yeah.

Sarah Faith (22:17)
we have to give like a preface to it. So just like how we were talking about the, hey, we need a preface, all these standards and everything. What you also need to do is give preface and context to what you're actually presenting on those deliverables. One time, story time, one time we didn't present a logo properly. We just like sent it to them and that was a huge mistake. So,

Tim (22:39)
Yeah.

Sarah Faith (22:44)
anyone who's worked with us besides this one client, they know that we do a whole beautiful presentation on the logo. Tim, it's actually one of my favorite parts of the journey because Tim will actually educate them on what a logo is. And I've actually learned so much about this. And I've I've I've been reading books on logos because Tim takes care of the graphic design. And I'm just learning so much. I'm like, wow, like logos are not

Tim (22:52)
Thanks.

Sarah Faith (23:09)
all the same and it's the visual representation of your brand. It's the first thing that people see. And Tim will do a beautiful presentation on before on like, what kinds of logos and you know, all the differentiating aspects of them. And when it came time to the presentation, we didn't present it. And so the client, they didn't have a

and understanding of what that logo meant. And actually, think looking back, Tim, I think it's one of the best logos you ever designed. Like I loved it. And I remember you put it in context, like in a picture of what it could look like for them if they were to utilize this. But we didn't we didn't give a presentation on the creative decisions that were made to get to that point. So they didn't understand.

Tim (23:47)
you

Sarah Faith (23:59)
And so clients don't just need deliverables and design work. They need context. They need to be educated. It's like how I kind of compare it to I recently went to Italy and I went on a tour that was so cool. It's probably one of the coolest things I ever did in my life. And the tour guide said something interesting. He said, you can't come down here. I went into these catacombs underneath the city of Rome.

And he said, you can't come down here without a tour guide. And it's not because it's dark. It's not because you'd get lost and, everything, even though that's part of it. He said, you don't know what you're looking at unless you have someone to explain it to you. And I used to be kind of against tours. was like, I don't need a tour guide. I'm a traveler. I can see the world by myself. I now want to do tours in every city because I learned so much.

from that tour because I had someone who was educated in that area to show me everything that they knew. And he had spent thousands of hours in those catacombs. Like he was passionate about it. And so now I got like a semester's worth of education just from that three hour tour of learning about these catacombs that are under the city of Italy. And

It reminded it kind of reminds me of that. It's like you have to educate people because they otherwise the client they don't know what they're looking at. Sometimes some logos are very obvious like Coca Cola. It's like it's Coca Cola. You know, there's not really like a lot of thought process from the onset that goes into it. But if a logo is more abstract or it has a little more creative imagery to it, you need to let that client know. And we just

We didn't do that. that was a big mistake. Any thoughts from you on that? Because you were the one who initially created it.

Tim (25:47)
Yeah, I mean, I would say the problem with that went a little bit further back and it kind of goes with the previous lesson about like aligning expectations within pre-production because that was one of those things that kind of threw in as like, let's win this bid kind of thing, you know, like, hey, let me do and I did it for a couple of reasons. One, because I wanted to have more logo design work in our portfolio. And two,

Sarah Faith (26:04)
Yeah.

Tim (26:11)
because I wanted to win the for the project. so with that client, with that logo I designed, it was...

I did, we didn't do the normal process we did for logo designs. You know, that's where I had this idea and I designed it and I'd been working on it for a few weeks at that point on and off and, then I presented it and we didn't present it and how we normally present it. And so because of that, because we did do a lot of the earlier leg work that we can normally do with our branding projects, because it was kind of this free add on I did, it kind of devalued our work.

Sarah Faith (26:48)
Right.

Tim (26:49)
and and um and that was the big thing i think it really it devalued the work and they didn't understand the value of it really and you know i'm reading uh expert secrets again by russell brunson and it's funny a lot of it's so funny man i i'm man girl um sis

Sarah Faith (26:59)
Right? Yeah.

Great book.

Sarah.

Hello?

Tim (27:14)
But in the book, he talks about a lot of stuff. Obviously he talks about building frameworks, which is something that we're actively doing for ourselves as a support group. And then also talks about starting a podcast, which again, we just started again. So I'm like, Oh man, this aligns so perfectly. Uh, Hey, and then the other thing he mentions is that he has these like $50,000 mastermind things for the year. And he says that he's invited like people

Sarah Faith (27:29)
Hey.

Yeah.

Tim (27:43)
like his family for free, they'll sit in there. But none of those people have gone on to make multimillion dollar businesses, but the people who have paid to be there, they're the ones that value his words and really put it to work. So I would say that's like a kind of a tangential, tangential lesson in this, which is they will value it if you give it value.

Sarah Faith (27:56)
Right.

Tim (28:07)
And if it's this free thing, it's in this nebulous and you're not and If it's free and you don't give it proper value They won't value it and that kind of goes with the presentation component too because it's like if the presentation is part of the the thing that gives a value, know, like You know, it's it's kind of like we've talked about You know, like when they've put like these like

Sarah Faith (28:15)
Bye.

Absolutely.

Tim (28:28)
Foot Locker shoes and they'll put it in like this really high-end store and they it's like and Those shoes are worth a hundred times more than they would be if they were you know at Foot Locker or you know so anywhere ish pay pay less or whatever and and so with these shoes the value came from the perception of the value not because the shoes are any better made or worse made whatever it's

Sarah Faith (28:32)
Yeah, I saw a video on that, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it pay less.

Tim (28:54)
The value is strictly something that is given to them just by the context. And when you remove the context or you remove the presentation as it in the fullness of it should be, then it's like they're not going to value it, especially when you're not, when it's something that's given for free, you know, so.

Sarah Faith (28:59)
Bye.

Yeah, that case study that Tim's referring to is I literally just watched that the other day. It was like two days ago or something, and it was payless. And then they took thirty dollar shoes and put them in this store called Pellessie, which is more Italian sounding. And they they decked it out and they had like security guards everywhere and like gold emblems on the wall. And and then they ask the

customers, how much would you pay for these shoes? And one of the girls is like $300, $400. I would definitely pay 500. Like it's the quality is unmatched. They put their money where their mouth was because they actually handed their cards over. And so the store starts making thousands and thousands of dollars. And then they reveal to them, hey, guys, these are from Payless. And the look on these people's the looks on their faces is priceless. So

Tim (30:00)
You idiot!

Sarah Faith (30:04)
But you're right, it's all about perceived value. that was, yeah, that was just definitely an interesting, unique experience. And so we just know, okay, you we have to, whether it's an add on or not, no matter what we give the same presentation, but I agree, you value things when you pay for them. so, and that kind of, I wanted to touch on another lesson under the same vein, which is,

We once underestimated the scale of a website project. And this is, I think, collectively, like our biggest regret as a creative studio. We're just like sharing all the little secrets here. We wanted to be honest because I'm like, hey, if this helps people, then it's worth it. So we don't want to act like we're perfect because we're not. But.

This seemed like a very simple project because we had done a previous website that was smaller, but we got the hang of it. We had done our own and it seemed simple. And then it very quickly became overwhelming because we didn't fully plan the scope in detail, which kind of circles back to that initial scope creep issue. And then we...

should have been more transparent about timelines, workload, and the client's role in like content and feedback. And there's different aspects to a website. It's not just, you know, we're not using like AI to build this. we, Tim was designing it. I was, you know, helping come up with like the layout of it. Tim created these beautiful graphics we were doing.

copywriting, research, all of this stuff, know, then photography to really make it worthwhile. And I think something that we learned that is, again, I like it's funny, all these lessons kind of coincide with each other, but we should have gotten the client more involved in the creative process of it, because

again, some of these clients are like, no, no, no, it's fine. It's just like kind of whatever you pick. And then you present something, they're like, well, that's not what I had in mind. what did you have in mind? I had this in mind. Okay, then why did you tell me that? But in their defense, it's like, well, we should have asked and really, we should have spearheaded that. And it's almost like you have to interrogate them like, no, tell me what you want now. And

Tim (32:12)
Yeah.

Sarah Faith (32:20)
So we would have gotten the client more involved in the deliverables and assets needed to complete the project. So for example, just like as a lesson takeaway, if you're working with someone, let's say it's on a website and they say, we need this website by May 1st. Okay, then we can get that done. And then there's two other, there's another party involved in this. It's not just you.

they have to send you things, whether it's information about products, pictures, videos, like there's stuff that they have to fulfill on their end. And you say, hey, I need all that information and all those deliverables by April 1st. And they agree to that, but then they don't send it by then. Guess what? That has now pushed back the due date because they're not fulfilling their end of it.

Tim (33:08)
Go.

Yeah.

Sarah Faith (33:13)
And

that's where you have to kind of checkmate them in a kind way and be like, look, if you're going to hold us to the standard, we have to hold you to the standard because it takes two here. Because if unless you're working all day, every day, internally in that company, you're not going to have access to all those things. don't know. Like we've worked with some companies that I'm like, I don't know anything about how this product works.

but I'm learning it, but I have to rely on that business owner to look at my script and be like, this is accurate or it's not. Because how would I know that? Like, I don't know how shed doors are created. Now I do, because we've worked with a shed company. I didn't know how like skid steer attachments were made. Now I do, because I've seen it. But from the onset, you just, don't know. And...

Tim (33:47)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Faith (34:02)
We know how to do the skill sets of marketing, the skill set of design, the skill set of making videos, the skill set of making viral videos, but we don't know like the ins and outs of how their business works. So that's where it comes down to you have to hold them to a standard too. Yeah, it's all collaborative. And yeah, go ahead.

Tim (34:08)
you

It's collaborative. Yeah.

And, with that, like

it's as a studio, I would say 90 % of the time it's like, it's the studio's fault, you know, like, because it's like, it's like when people get mad at kids, when it's their parents who should be, you know, like controlling their children, like it's like, what, is it? My kid eats? It's like, well, are you feeding them?

Sarah Faith (34:32)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tim (34:45)
junk all day and when they don't eat dinner you just give them junk food anyway. Yeah, then you're the problem. You know, like, it falls on you as a parent. If your child's misbehaving routinely, you know, sometimes it's like, all right, there's their hormonal, there's stuff that is beyond your control. Like my daughter could be that way, where it's like, sometimes she's just in a mood and it's not because we didn't, we're not raising her right. It's just because she's growing and she's in pain and she doesn't know how to express it. But

Sarah Faith (34:51)
Right.

You

Yeah.

Tim (35:09)
Other times it's like, all right, well, are we making sure that she's not being spoiled? And so to bring it back to our clients is like, if we're not managing expectations, if we're not communicating timelines and the levels of participation from both ends, if we're not setting the scope properly, and if we're allowing clients to push back too much where they are kind of

Sarah Faith (35:22)
Yeah.

Tim (35:34)
not intentionally necessarily, but they might be taking advantage of it. ⁓ Then it's, it all comes down to the client or sorry, it comes down to the, the business, us, the studio, you know, the creative, like if we're allowing them to walk on us, it's us, we can always just stand up and say, Hey, don't walk on me, you know, even if it's accidental, even if they didn't see us on the floor, you know? And so, ⁓ so I'd say that's, that's really, you know, that lesson.

Sarah Faith (35:38)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Stop that.

Right, right.

Tim (36:03)
It just comes down to pushing back in a healthy and respectful way and say, look, we need to realign our priorities. We need to realign the timeline because this is collaborative. We are relying on you to help us because we're helping. We're helping you. It's, know, and here's the part that's kind of tricky. Like you mentioned before, like they're paying us to do a work for them. So some people, they allow themselves to feel like their employees.

Sarah Faith (36:25)
Yeah.

Tim (36:29)
But look, I'm no one's employee. We work for ourselves. We work for ourselves. That's the, and that's the reason why we work for ourselves because we don't want to be employees anymore. know, we've, we've, we've felt what it feels like to be an employee and not be respected. And yeah, we got stories. Sure. We'll talk about them. but, but with that, a lot of freelancers, they'll allow themselves to be put in this place of.

Sarah Faith (36:44)
Have we got stories for you?

Tim (36:53)
you like, well, I have to, do work for them kind of, so I guess I can let them boss me around and tell me, they need X, Y, and Z, even though that wasn't part of the deal, even though they're not paying for that. But like the kind of buck stops with you. You have to demand respect and you have to demand and just say, look, we're partners in this. We're not, we're not, one's not over the other. We're, we're, we're collaborating together for the success and benefit of your business.

Sarah Faith (37:08)
Yeah.

Right.

Tim (37:20)
So.

Sarah Faith (37:20)
Totally.

And our clients have like historically they've just been so wonderful and like, yeah, like I really don't have like complaints and like we're the chokehold of the business. So if something's not working, we ultimately look in the mirror, even though that's hard, because nobody wants to take responsibility. Hey, but like.

Tim (37:26)
We've had the best clients. I talk about that all the time. The best clients.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is hard for you to look in the mirror sometimes, right?

Sarah Faith (37:47)
I'm telling I'm telling

Tim (37:47)
And myself.

Sarah Faith (37:48)
your wife. But like, I really think about that sometimes that I'm like, if I want something to be better, I have to be honest. And there's actually a lot of freedom and being honest. And we just ultimately want to do good work and our best work. not perfect. But where the nice thing is you can always pivot. Like I've told this to Tim so many times. I'm like, look, if something's not working in the business,

We're not a tree, like not to be no pun intended, because our name is Stump and Rube, but like, but we're not, we're not a tree. It's not like we have, we, yeah, we can, we can pick up and leave. We can move, we can, we can change things. And if we don't want to offer a service one day, we don't have to offer it. If we're like, hey, we're done with this kind of work, we can be done with it. That's the freedom in it. So all that to say, just encourage feedback and push clients to be involved creatively.

Tim (38:17)
We can be replanted.

Sarah Faith (38:38)
prompt them with specific questions. Don't be afraid to ask for clarity. And then obviously like your tone matters in that communication. So we just always wanna aim to be sensitive to that. I know another lesson, Tim, you wanted to talk about is the branding and logo process. So I'd love to hear some of the lessons on that.

Tim (38:58)
Yeah,

yeah, I would say that.

Like designing logos is one of my favorite things to do because being a designer is one of favorite things to do. And maybe I love being a designer because at the root of it, I love being an entrepreneur because entrepreneurship or business ownership is all about solving problems. Graphic design is all about solving problems. It's not about art. It's not about looking cute or whatever. The sole purpose of being a graphic designer is to solve problems visually.

Sarah Faith (39:05)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tim (39:27)
And obviously that goes back up to entrepreneurship and business. The best business ideas are the ideas that solve the biggest problems for the biggest amount, a group of people, at least, you if you want to be successful, you know, to make money. ⁓ and so with that love of design, logos very much are solving a problem for a company and logos are

Sarah Faith (39:41)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tim (39:50)
The whole thing about a logo is you want to represent the brand visually. Period. That's it. It doesn't mean anything necessarily, you know, and for every single one of our clients, I give for the most part, I give this logo presentation that goes over what a logo is, what it isn't, what the best kinds of logos are. And I go through the whole thing just to kind of get them on that playing field of like, all right, you understand now what a logo is and isn't.

Sarah Faith (40:07)
Mm-hmm.

Tim (40:15)
And I give examples of the different types of logos and

And so I always try to clarify that with people that the in McDonald's, that doesn't mean anything. It's, it's, they're arches. There's no real deep meaning there. You know, like there might be visual call outs, know, but like, you know, obviously yellow is really synonymous with hunger and same thing with red, red and yellow. And that's why those brand work colors work so well with McDonald's because I'm like, make you hungry. You know, I'm almost getting hungry now to talk about it.

Sarah Faith (40:43)
Mm-hmm.

Tim (40:44)
But, but all that to say is when designing a logo, the meaning is great if you can do it, but it doesn't have to. But something I love to do is I love in just intertwining meaning into the logos and brands and visual identity. love doing that. And so I'd usually try to be clever with the designs. Like one of the first logos we did as a Stumper Root.

Sarah Faith (40:58)
Hmm.

Tim (41:07)
It was for our client health Haven advisors and that logo. I was really proud of it. They are a company that they specialize in providing administrative services for healthcare practices and hospitals. And so we actually helped come up with a name health Haven advisors. Um, and, and even with that, obviously with the, uh, came to logo and branding and that was the second part of it. And, and so with the logo.

Sarah Faith (41:10)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Tim (41:35)
It is a six-pointed, it's like an asterisk almost, the design of the logo. And it was something I had thought about where I'm like, how can I really intertwine this meaning into it? Because, you know, healthcare, obviously everyone uses, can use some kind of like a plus like for health, obviously, people use that plus a lot. Like American Red Cross and there's other companies that copy that same kind of visual style. But what I did was I took

the shape of the, you know, the star of life, they call it. And what I did was I separated it in such a way where it illustrated the top of it was the sun, the middle part was a mountain, and then the bottom part was a home. So it was kind of like this painting, picture of this haven, this beautiful imagery.

Sarah Faith (42:09)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Tim (42:27)
And we kind of assign different brand pillars to each of those components of the logo and

Sarah Faith (42:32)
Well, their tagline was where health care excellence meets its haven because they wanted to show this all in one service and it's all covered under one roof. And so we took that, you know, the name and then the tagline and then you created like imagery around that. And yeah, it was really beautiful.

Tim (42:50)
Yeah. And, and

when we presented that, those logos to the client, he literally like got teary eyed and it was like, man, what a, what an incredible feeling it is when you can make a logo that so represents how he feels it should. And truly it was such an amazing feeling. And, but where I didn't do that was with another client and

Sarah Faith (42:58)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tim (43:14)
You know, it's frustrating because like, I did put a lot of work into this and you know, if a client doesn't like the logo, they're right. You know, if they don't, if they like it, they're right. If they don't like it, they're right. And it's a hard lesson to learn because you're like, well, I'm the designer, so I'm right. And I may be able to, I may be right in saying it's a good logo, but that doesn't mean it's the logo they would want for their brand.

Sarah Faith (43:21)
Right.

Tim (43:36)
because the logo is representing them. know, like if, I designed someone's outfit and I think they look great and they could objectively look great in that outfit, but if it doesn't feel like them to them, if they're not going to say, know, I don't really like this, then they're right. It's like they get to pick, they get wake up every day and they get to choose the clothes they want to wear. So they're right. You know, and, with that is a logo because that represents your brand. That's like, that is the clothing of your company. You know, it's like,

Sarah Faith (43:50)
No.

Mm-hmm.

Tim (44:02)
You know, I'm wearing our own logo right now. Like this is something that we represent ourselves with. You know, have the logo right here. Sarah doesn't have hers, you know, she has a, and that's upside down. but, but a logo is something of deep importance because in theory you shouldn't really be changing that at least not very often if you're doing it right. And, and with this logo, I really try to put a lot of deep meaning into it. And I think the logo is very successful. I do stand by that.

Sarah Faith (44:09)
I have a sticker. ⁓ sorry.

Yeah.

Totally.

Well, yeah, I remember three concepts of a logo were presented. Tim first showed it to me and I told him I think they're going to go with number one because it embodies their story brand, which is another thing that we cover story brand. We'll get more into that. It's like your brand's unique story and message. And it's

Tim (44:30)
And I really do love that.

You talk about healthy.

Sarah Faith (44:52)
how you differentiate yourself from your competitors. And it's a really cool concept of framework. But we I said, I think they're going to go with number one. And then they ended up going with number one 100 percent. And I think that's the power of just having good story, good visuals. It's like it all just kind of coincides together. You can kind of tell when something's a little off in branding or the logo. It's like

it's not that it's bad, it's just maybe not them. And truthfully, all three of those different logos could have worked. They're, they're on our website. If anyone wants to go to stumpandroot.co, you can look at our case studies of our past work and just see some of these visual representations of what we're talking about. And those three examples are there. But yeah, they went with the first one and they were able to see it in context. And that was really cool.

And that was, yeah, I'll never forget him getting emotional about that. That was really special.

Tim (45:46)
Yeah,

and and because I did that the right way we had three full concepts this other one I only had one concept I'd showed them and and And we talked about this example before but essentially like they weren't fully on board the logo It was something we threw in there as a free add-on a different not health haven the other company and I was really frustrated and disappointed because I'm like, well I put in so much time and If they're gonna say well, maybe we'll commit

to the logo if we see it can be really good. And like, I'm not no shade on this. We love this client actually. But it left me frustrated and the only person who's to blame is myself, you know, and I'm like, and so I would say follow your process even if it's for free, you know, even if you're like, well, they get a lesser version of it. No, they should get the full thing. If you're promising this thing, do it fully, you know. And so if I'm giving someone a free logo, let me give them three versions of it.

Sarah Faith (46:21)
Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Tim (46:37)
and let me hear their feedback and respond to it. you know, and the other way it's like, they also need to be committed to changing their logo if that's what you're to be doing. So all it's to say, follow the process, stick to the process. And usually almost, you know, nine times out of 10, it won't fail you. And something that is said routinely by many experts with entrepreneurship is that you fall to the level of your processes. You know, if you're

Sarah Faith (46:44)
Yeah.

Tim (47:02)
If you are failing, if something gets messed up, you can always fall back in your process and you'll be still good to go. But if you fall and you don't have any processes, you're going to fall really far back and you don't know, you won't know the way out and processes give you the way out. So, ⁓

Sarah Faith (47:17)
Yeah,

definitely. I love how you said all that. Yeah, there's just so many. I feel like even each of these lessons could have their own podcast episode. But just for the sake of time, we wanted to share just a summary of them. Another one, it's it's pretty short, but it's just it's having professional conduct. I think this is just something like that every business owner

freelance or creative, just it's a continuing lesson that everyone learns. I think when you get to know clients, there can kind of be this relaxed vibe that's in the atmosphere, which is a good thing, because it's like you're getting comfortable with each other. But sometimes it can be easy to

Tim (47:55)
Thank

Sarah Faith (48:04)
I could see where it could be easy to let professionalism slip. And especially with like words that come out, whether, you know, it's maybe venting or, you know, just saying something that you're like, wait, I probably shouldn't have said that or, and sometimes like, people don't understand jokes. Everyone's humor is so different. Tim and I are not from the

Tim (48:21)
you

Sarah Faith (48:27)
area where we live. We were in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I'm from originally California. Tim's originally from New York. And we just have different humors, like independent of Lancaster and Lancaster like really grew on me. It's a it's a beautiful place to live. But it's a you know, it's just like a different culture in terms of relationship and

communication, I would say that that's independent of what I grew up with and especially Tim, like being from New York. So I think just as a quick lesson, like you just want to always be careful with what you say and that not everybody is going to understand your humor or you could mean something as a complete joke or you're just saying something kind of in passing and then someone hears that and they're like.

Tim (48:52)
.

Sarah Faith (49:14)
wait what and they don't, if they don't know you well, they don't have a frame of reference for that. And so again, it's just, it's something that we've like learned over this almost past year is like we've been in business for almost a year to the date and which is really exciting. it's just a little lesson, but our words have power.

Tim (49:18)
Thank

Thank

Sarah Faith (49:33)
you know, there's death and life in the tongue. And we always just want to make sure we're lifting people up and encouraging and just being careful of what we say and everything, which

Tim (49:33)
you

Sarah Faith (49:43)
would lead then next into. Kind of our one of our final lessons, which is healthy studio operations, so I'd love to hear your feedback on that, Tim.

Tim (49:45)
you

Yeah, this is one of those lessons that it should be in place for multiple reasons. One, it should be a place so that you can have healthy work life, like work home life boundaries as well. Like, and especially when it's such a small operation, it's not like we have an office we go into and our computer stay in the office and everything stays there. We work out of our own individual homes, you know, like

Sarah Faith (50:03)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tim (50:22)
My office is downstairs in my house and like it's something I can easily because you sometimes I will take my laptop upstairs and work for a little bit you know and I try to set healthy boundaries so I'm not working too much because I have a daughter and I have a wife I'm like I need to set proper boundaries for that but with that comes several lessons that you should take if you're a freelancer ⁓ especially if you're working with someone else.

Sarah Faith (50:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tim (50:46)
You know, I think it's different if you're just working like as a solopreneur where it's like, becomes harder, but I would say to the best of your ability, separate everything out of your personal life from your work life. And so that means like me and Sarah, since we're family, we just would text as opposed to messaging or emailing in a different platform. And with that, just.

It's hard to separate like family talk with work talk, you know? And, so something I was pretty big on implementing, like, all right, let's just use Slack. Let's just anything that we're talking about work. Cause also it's easier to catalog stuff like, well, when did I, when did we talk about this in the middle of like, see like parent, like stuff about like our family going on and whatever in the middle of like our text conversation. it's like, right, but I need to find this one thing we're talking about for our client. And so.

Sarah Faith (51:14)
Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tim (51:36)
So with that Slack use use actual software for work, you know, general, you know, like I would even have, I would go, I would say, don't use discord because that even that's a little too casual. You know, I would say use the tool that works best for you, but I would say use something that clearly distinguishes work from home life. Cause even discord, like I use that personally, you know, so I'm like, all right, if you can create that line as solid of a line as possible.

Sarah Faith (51:42)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tim (52:04)
If that line can be as, you know, like, it's immovable and you know the clear distinction between work and home, the better it's going to be. Especially like, you know, like the elephant in the room is like, me and Sarah are a man and a woman working in a studio. And so with that, we have to create these healthy boundaries to not cross because, you know, people assume all kinds of things or it can appear this way. And so

Sarah Faith (52:20)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tim (52:30)
out of protecting my marriage, protecting the appearance of both of us. So we are above reproach in those ways. We just need to set those clear boundaries for the benefit of both of us. so what that is, instead of using FaceTime, use Google Meet. Or we're using Riverside for this. Or instead of using text message for work stuff, you're using Slack. And I think also setting

Sarah Faith (52:38)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tim (52:53)
healthy boundaries, unless it's an extreme like emergency, don't text after work hours, you know, because nine times out of 10, you don't need to text about something unless it's like, Oh, by the way, the photo shoot that's coming up at six o'clock in the morning, I need the answer right away. And slack, you can have a slack where it doesn't send notifications after a certain time, you know, and that

Sarah Faith (52:57)
Right? Right.

Yeah.

But yeah,

you have a 99 % of time, like there's not really an emergency. Like if you're doing your work and everything, then it's not an emergency. I think actually it's been such a game changer having that because that's kind of, and it goes into kind of like the last lesson of like the freelance myth, which is like, you can work whenever, wherever, but that, because it was so hard to separate.

Tim (53:18)
Yeah.

Sarah Faith (53:40)
work and just like your regular everyday life. And like I remember. So Tim and my sister, they have the most beautiful little daughter. And I remember one time we were like texting about a photo shoot and like to remember to bring something. And then I was looking for the like address of the photo shoot. And then you sent a picture of like you, Deborah and your daughter. And it was such a sweet photo.

And then I'm like getting distracted looking at the photo and like, you know, and then it's so it's just it's like it's nice to have everything organized with Google me to what we do. And this has helped us so much is so we actually record all of our meetings. We use a software it's called Otter. AI. Yeah, we're not affiliated with them, but we really like it. It's called Otter. AI and.

Tim (54:24)
Mm-hmm.

Hey, hold on. If you do want to use it, I can send you an affiliate code. So if you're reach out and we'll, get some kickback.

Sarah Faith (54:35)
Yeah, so just reach out. ⁓

yeah, I didn't know you had an affiliate code, but yeah, it's.

That's cool. Okay, so yeah. But that what it does is it actually summarizes your meeting for you and it gives a action items because like if you're having an hour long meeting, then you're going to forget stuff and like, it's just it can get a little chaotic. And so what it does is it will distinguish voices. So it'll be like, okay, well, Tim, your action items are this.

Sarah, your action items are this. And then if you're in a meeting with a client, it will say what they need to do. It can summarize emails and stuff so you can send followups. It's really cool. what those things have done, Slack, just having like, okay, don't text after a certain time, using video calls and recordings with Otter, is that

It's made our meetings more impactful and intentional and productive and we're getting work done. And that has helped the studio. then just personally, it's like, wait, I don't feel like I have to have my phone on at nine o'clock at night in case something happens. you know, you just, it kind of goes into that last thing. Like I said earlier, it's like,

The hardest part, I think about being a business owner and freelancers definitely deal with this. Tim and I actually were both freelancers at one point before Stump and Root. Tim was working with design clients and stuff. I was doing coaching and helping people with their social media, Pinterest, all that stuff. And it was fun. But part of why people get into freelancing is to create more freedom.

And then ironically, you become a slave to your work because you feel like you can't shut it off. So it becomes your ball and chain where it was once supposed to give you liberty and having boundaries just for yourself. Like, forget if you were working with other people just for yourself will give you so much freedom. think a big myth in business, but in life is that

Tim (56:26)
you

Sarah Faith (56:43)
If you have parameters in your life and boundaries that that somehow limits you. No, it actually gives you so much freedom because the greatest version of you is not the, I get to do whatever I want version. The greatest version of you is I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to I'm not going to hang out with someone like that. I'm not going to take on that kind of client. I'm not going to answer that text at 10 p.m. because I need to get good sleep.

Tim (56:59)
you

Sarah Faith (57:10)
it you put up these standards for your life and then it actually elevates your life and then you can show up more freely. So that's just, that's something that I think is probably the hardest part arguably and it's definitely something that I've struggled with. I know Tim you have too, but if you can get that in check, then you will have a more successful business. And as a closing thought, you are

Tim (57:30)
you

Sarah Faith (57:34)
You want to have the you want to set yourself up for the business that you want, not that

you have, because like one day, like we do want to grow Stump and root like we would we would bring on another person to hire and then another person and. We're not we wouldn't be texting with them, we wouldn't be Face Timing them, so it's like, well, why don't we just implement those things now? So I think I wish we had implemented that sooner and.

Tim (58:00)
Yeah.

Sarah Faith (58:00)
Yeah, it's just been so great having it. really grateful for it.

Tim (58:04)
Yeah. So just kind of closing, closing on all these kind of lessons we've talked about, there's been so much and there's a lot more, you know, obviously I think every day we're learning a new lesson of entrepreneurship, but also running a creative studio because they're kind of the same and they, think they're, can apply to both. but definitely specifically with running a creative studio, there's so much that you don't know that you don't know until you're doing it. And some of the

the biggest lessons, at least the ones that stay with you are the ones that cost you. thankfully the cost hasn't been that heavy. It's usually it's been time, time costs, which technically is a money cost. You know, there is a dollar to that,

when we talk about client work or with like, like kind of wrapping up conversations with, with, when we had a meeting or just going over projects that we're working on, it's like we're talking in a podcast, you know? And so that's kind of the benefit of now we're starting a podcast. Like, you know, who, why does everyone, does everyone need a podcast? No, but I think that we are the experts in our own fields. And I think we not just want to,

brag or be some like, look at us, we're so big, whatever. But we want to share the wisdom that we have. also part of it is like building in public. You know, that's kind of mentioned the expert secrets book, that's something Russell Brunson was big on. And he mentioned this book as well as is built in public, you know, like people want to, people cheer on people who are building a public. I think that, you know,

Sarah Faith (59:31)
Hmm.

Tim (59:33)
It's not just us. I know something I do on LinkedIn as well. Like I love seeing people grow in their businesses and love seeing them grow in their offerings and being successful. And so with these lessons, I'm really hoping and praying that they spoke to you in a deeper way and because they're speaking to us every day, you know, and, and so now we have a good outlet for us to not just keep the wisdom to us, even though we do have conversations with other people. And I do try to,

Sarah Faith (59:49)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tim (1:00:00)
give my the wisdom I've learned and the ways that I can to other people. But I think it's kind of the perfect outlet for us to, you know, talk about a process, talk about growing a studio and lessons with that. And also marketing know-hows and, and things that again, we have these conversations ourselves. We are talking about marketing and, and latest ad campaigns that really made us excited or whatever. And

Sarah Faith (1:00:22)
We're books we're reading. We're we're both avid readers and listeners of audiobooks. So like these are just come. I read with my ears and like, yeah, they're just conversations we're having anyway. Like we I think that actually kind of is what bonded Tim and I was I was like, oh, wait, like he's actually into a lot of the same things.

Tim (1:00:28)
I read with my ears.

Sarah Faith (1:00:44)
that I'm into, we're actually very, very, very different people. We hold the same values and things and Christianity and our beliefs and stuff. in terms of, he's from New York, I'm from California. just have kind of different, we're different people. Yeah.

Tim (1:01:01)
personalities.

Sarah Faith (1:01:04)
I'm very sensitive. Tim is very blunt. He hates coffee, which I think is so weird. I think it's so weird because you you fit the like LinkedIn. No, wait, let me just say you fit you. No, that's not what I said. You fit the like LinkedIn business owner vibe. The only thing that you don't fit into is that you don't drink coffee. That's just so weird. So anyway.

Tim (1:01:06)
I'm very offensive.

Racist. Racist. You're gonna say, you're Puerto Rican so you should like coffee.

Sarah Faith (1:01:30)
I just had to that out there. what bonded us, what bonded us were these, yeah, just like these conversations. I was like, wait, he like is into funnels and he understands branding and like he actually values it. That was, I think, the light bulb moment for us because we have worked with companies that do not care about branding and design and marketing. They say they do.

Tim (1:01:32)
Well, now I'm offended.

Sarah Faith (1:01:53)
but in actual practice, they didn't. And I'm talking before Stump and Root because we actually worked at two different companies with each other prior and then had just kind of our own journeys and stuff even before that. So all that to say, we're just grateful to kind of finally hook up the mics and just share the conversations that we've naturally been having. So.

We hope that you enjoyed this podcast and you can find us at stumpandroot.co. I am Sarah, this is Tim, and we're just so grateful to be able to share this podcast with you guys. So thank you so much for listening.

Tim (1:02:22)
.

See you the next episode of Dragon Ball Z.

Sarah Faith (1:02:34)
Okay, don't do that. You have to edit that out.

Tim (1:02:37)
Bye guys.

Sarah Faith (1:02:37)
Okay,

bye guys. gosh.

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