Naila (00:16.389)
Welcome to Now and Air in the Future, I’m Naila Mir. Today’s topic is Building Together, How Community Leadership Drives Agency Success with Karl Swift.
HDco (00:27.869)
And I’m Quinn Harrington. Today we’re joined by Carl, my friend and mentor for 20 years.
Naila (00:35.867)
Call.
Carl Smith (00:36.226)
Hey Quinn, hey Nyla, hey everybody.
HDco (00:37.749)
Hey!
Naila (00:38.545)
Hi, thank you for joining us. So I’m the one kicking off with the first question. And we recently heard about you and your business and that you’ve rebranded from Bureau of Digital to simply the Bureau. What prompted this evolution and what was the response from your community?
Carl Smith (00:45.55)
All right.
Carl Smith (01:01.644)
What prompted it was that people who don’t know us weren’t sure they should say hello. So they saw the word digital and they were like, I’m a marketing shop. We do some web stuff, but is that like really a thing for us? And when you start to think about it, we were going through a rebrand with a great shop called Focus Lab and the person leading it, Bill said, well, the rebrand is for the current community.
but it’s also for the future community. So I started thinking of it as, okay, digital is like electricity. In 1901, when electricity came out, everybody loses their mind about how this is gonna revolutionize the world. There was a group that said, steam is great, we’re never moving to electricity, just don’t even, everybody slow down. There were chief electricity officers.
whose whole job was to implement electricity in a company. What was their transformation strategy, right? If you want to talk about electrical transformation instead of digital, we’re there now with digital. Every output has some form of digital. So not just thinking about right now, but if this brand is going to hold up into the future, that word digital is limiting and it hurts. So I will say from the community’s perspective,
I got some pushback. yeah. Because when you look at a shop that is more heavily into actually doing the code, that word digital is kind of a badge of honor. We’re in there, we’re doing it. We know the best way to use AI. We know the best way to hand code things that AI is getting wrong. know a shop that is focused on branding.
may have digital assets, but they’re not gonna understand that stuff. But I had a couple of conversations. I said, if you have to leave the community because we’re dropping a digital from the name, I understand. I think it’s silly. And they were like, well, we would never leave. I was like, thank you. It’s for the next group that’s coming in. Originally the name was Bureau of Digital Affairs. And when I took over, I dropped the word affairs quickly because we were asking people to go to tropical environments and spend a few days with us.
Naila (03:07.505)
Hello?
Naila (03:18.545)
Okay.
Carl Smith (03:25.682)
So maybe that might have been feedback for me, Quinn, might have been feedback for me. But yeah, so now just the Bureau and it just gives us so much more flexibility in where we’re going. The other thing is we’ve changed the mark. The mark was a shield and that was important 13 years ago. We turned 13 yesterday and 13 years ago we needed to be protected because we didn’t understand business.
HDco (03:26.23)
Mmmmm
Naila (03:48.101)
Carl Smith (03:53.934)
And we had to engage with each other because we all knew something and that helped us survive. But now we use words like utilization. Quinn, can you imagine us ever thinking utilization? Like even if you’re a small shop, it’s just not a thing. So, but now it’s a core conversation in the community all the time. So now the new Mark is actually a bird, right?
HDco (04:08.819)
Right?
Naila (04:15.12)
Hmm.
Carl Smith (04:19.552)
So, and it’s because it is time to explore. It is time to fly. It is time to flock, right? look for the give a flock stuff. It’s coming. It’s coming. But we are now agencies of a feather. So it’s exciting.
Naila (04:32.213)
That’s nice, yeah. It is!
HDco (04:32.498)
Excellent.
HDco (04:37.695)
You know, I think about back in the days where we were all ad agencies. And even if we didn’t really do ads, that was always the short answer, because I would try to give clients or potential clients or friends or whatever, you know, quick explanation. was like, what do you do? was like, well, we’re primarily a branding agency. And they would look at me like, what does that mean? I was like, advertising agency. They’re like, OK. I was like,
We do logos, brochures, and websites. OK. Yeah. And so I think a lot of times, we tend to, when we’re speaking internally or speaking to our peers, I’m like, we’re a digital agency, and there’s some knowledge around that. But I would think even amongst clients, there really wouldn’t be that much. It’s almost like a distinction without a reason.
Carl Smith (05:30.956)
Yeah. And when it comes to finding your positioning and specializing, it worked really well for about 10 to 15 years. And now it’s starting to fade off. know, just, just thinking about what you’re saying about how we introduce ourselves and what we do. I was in the back of a cab with Jeffrey Zeldman. So a lot of people listening probably don’t know, but Jeffrey was the person who he’s famous, right? He, he basically created web standards.
HDco (05:42.398)
Mm-hmm.
HDco (05:52.148)
Mm-hmm.
He’s famous.
Naila (05:56.721)
You
Carl Smith (06:01.154)
He created the way we build the web. He is one of the smartest minds and slightly off. The guy is off. JZ is crazy. It’s a known phrase. I’m in the back of a cab with him and the cab driver said, what do y’all do? And Jeffrey said, we make web pages.
Naila (06:01.712)
Okay.
Carl Smith (06:19.638)
And I was like, we hate it when people say that Jeffrey. And then I realized, no, you know what? He’s talking to him in a language he can understand. He’s being kind. And so for me, I love what you just said, Quinn, because that is absolutely such an eye opener when you realize to have trust, you have to be familiar, right? And so you have to talk to people in their language. You have to explain things in a way they can understand, and then they can trust you, and then you can collaborate on stuff.
Naila (06:28.515)
Hmm.
Naila (06:47.729)
Yes.
HDco (06:47.731)
You know, about 10 or 15 years ago, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, which was our professional organization, shortened it to just AIGA. And then they became AIGA, the professional organization for designers. And what they were trying to do is really open it up to be much more broad. much like the Bureau, if
you were adjacent to the design field, you could still be a part of that and have a meaningful contribution, a meaningful role within the organization. And at first we got some of that same pushback, especially from the old guard. It’s like, we are graphic artists. And I was like, I haven’t called myself a graphic artist since I was in college in the 90s.
It’s a defunct, deprecated term. So I think this is a smart move and I really look forward to seeing the new rebrand. When is that gonna roll out?
Naila (07:58.481)
The positioning at the back.
Carl Smith (08:00.064)
Alright.
it is going to roll out over the next two months. So one of the things we realized was we are a small team that is constantly engaged with the community. So to make this happen, I’m actually releasing an explainer video to kind of share why we did what we did. And then we’re going to slowly start with the most important pieces. So for example, the website, all of the social stuff, anything new we create now.
HDco (08:27.219)
Mm-hmm.
Carl Smith (08:31.382)
will have the new branding. So, and you’re catching a little sneak peek there. I didn’t realize that exactly. That’s how it starts.
HDco (08:35.858)
I see is the. It could be it could be the new iPad, could be the new Mac. I don’t know. You’re just really.
Naila (08:38.129)
and be you.
Carl Smith (08:43.808)
It could be the new colors.
HDco (08:46.963)
Could be the new Carl, who knows. So Carl, you told us that you’re about to release a brand new research report on the state of digital services. What key findings surprised you, and what do they tell us about where the industry stands today?
Naila (08:46.98)
Ike.
Carl Smith (08:50.647)
you never know.
Carl Smith (09:00.611)
Yeah.
Carl Smith (09:09.368)
Yeah. So working with Promethean, Nick Petrosky over there is amazing. He does all of our research for us. The thing that really stood out to me was, okay, so first of all, digital services kind of leveled off last year. We’ve seen all kinds of weirdness since the pandemic. And now it feels like leveling off in since a pre-pandemic numbers. When a lot of that money from the government came in, people thought that was like a new normal.
You know, we had this big spike, everybody’s drunk on it. And then you realize, shit, that was just like a booster shot and everything’s coming right back down. So now it’s leveled out, which I’m a little surprised because some shops that I talked to had their best year ever. We had 151 shops that participated in this. So it’s fairly statistically relevant. And then the other one I would say is the shops that did grow were studios.
like zero to nine, they grew, right? They’ve led the charge at about like 16.9 % net margin or something. The industry was at like 14.6 based on our research. Medium and large agencies, for us, medium is gonna be 25 plus, let me turn that off. And then all the way up to like, had our largest shop in the community is 2000, right? They,
for the first time ever had a contraction in terms of net revenue. It went down and we had not seen that. One thing I wasn’t surprised by was shops that offer more services are healthier. Now specialists and positioning is important because that gets you the gig, right? Because you’re well suited to it. But if you specialize too narrowly in what you offer,
HDco (10:41.819)
Wow.
Naila (10:42.917)
Yeah.
Carl Smith (11:07.04)
If you are truly focused in on one niche, then you are going to do worse. So one of the things we say is you want to be a shop that looks specialized, but behind the curtain, you’re more, you’ve got a little bit of a generalist going on. And I’ll say,
Naila (11:25.231)
This is very helpful because I’m a little shop as well. Now that I’ve realized shop is agency. But yeah, I was excited to come on this podcast with you because I’m in this space. Branding I’m looking at. Have I got the right band? Am I specialized? Do I have a niche? But yeah, what you’re talking is really resonating.
Carl Smith (11:30.359)
Okay.
There you go.
Carl Smith (11:38.392)
There you go.
Carl Smith (11:42.082)
Yeah.
Carl Smith (11:46.882)
Well, one of the things that won’t or maybe will impact you, Nyla, is it was close to 70 % of the shops expect an impact from the budget freezes and the tariffs and everything that’s happening. We saw shops in Canada that were close to doing mergers with shops in America, and they stopped it. We had one shop in DC
HDco (12:12.134)
Wow.
Carl Smith (12:16.174)
Now this is extreme case. Very large shop, about 14 years old, think, built exclusively for government. That was their niche. That was their specialization. From day one, they knew how to fill out all those forms. They knew how to get on the right list. They knew all that stuff. Overnight, they lost over half of their projects.
HDco (12:37.659)
Wow.
Carl Smith (12:39.094)
and they were lined up for a merger. So that went away. So that is some of the stuff that came in and some of stuff the community’s talking about. So we’re having calls, like we call them WTF calls.
Naila (12:41.649)
Hmm.
HDco (12:41.904)
That is that is tragic.
Naila (12:53.865)
I like that.
Carl Smith (12:54.926)
And then everybody gets together and goes, okay, here’s my WTF. So yeah, think those are really the things, not surprising AI shops that are embracing AI are having a better bottom line. They are using it as a tool. They are using it to judge what they do in terms of research and things like that, but they’re not letting it be an output. It’s only an input. And then also we are heading for a very hot
Naila (13:18.555)
Mm-hmm.
Carl Smith (13:24.012)
mergers and acquisition season, the entire industry is going to shrink. Now, while that’s happening, new shops will spring up. That’s the way this always goes because people get laid off. They don’t know what else to do. So they spin up a shop. So I don’t see it as a long-term concern. It’s more just an evolution. And we see this like every five years. You see Nick Quinn, like,
HDco (13:46.66)
Right.
Carl Smith (13:47.554)
The bigs hire everybody away from us, the Googles and the Apples, and they see that we’re hot, we know what we’re doing, and they pull everybody away. And then they don’t take care of those people and they get frustrated. And what do they do? They leave and they’re, they’re priced out of the market. I had somebody come to me and say, I would love to come over. I only need like $400,000 a year. And I was like, brother, I would love to have $400,000 a year. You should hire me and I’ll do that. Right. So what do they have left?
Naila (14:02.523)
Mm.
Naila (14:10.779)
Yeah.
HDco (14:11.597)
Wow!
Naila (14:14.513)
You
Carl Smith (14:16.504)
but to spin off their own market. So, but for the next two years, I’ve seen, I’ve talked with a lot of brokers, ethical brokers, and they’re anticipating for the next two years, we’re going to have a hot mergers and acquisition season.
HDco (14:18.234)
Mm-hmm.
HDco (14:31.066)
Wow. You know, the advice I’ve gotten over the last 20 years is specialize, specialize, specialize. And it sounds like really solid advice if you have that right, you know, pipeline, the funnel, all that stuff is in place. It’s all working solid and you’re able to get that consistency of work coming from that one niche.
Carl Smith (14:39.054)
Mm-hmm.
Carl Smith (15:00.579)
Mm-hmm.
HDco (15:01.314)
In my career, having done a lot of different things, everything from branding website development, then moving into photography and video production has given me sort of a breadth of services that I can do one thing really well for a certain type of company, or I can do a lot of things really well for a smaller company. Most of my…
I will call them tier one clients like Nielsen or CoreLogic or TransUnion. They have fully well supported marketing departments. So they’re not necessarily going to hire me to come in and help with graphic design and things like that. But with the video production and doing it at the level that we do it at, that’s a perfect fit to augment a
a need that they have that they don’t want to necessarily staff in-house because it’s not consistent. They’re not needing this month after month after month. Otherwise they would bring it in-house and probably get it done cheaper. Not better, but cheaper. I felt that, and I concur with your approach, that appearing to be specialized but still having more depth behind the scenes allows you to be able to…
Naila (16:05.765)
Hmm.
HDco (16:25.104)
cross-promote services within your existing client base.
Naila (16:28.561)
It’s a bit like communications that I’m in. So I specialize in employee experience and embedding sustainability through employee engagement, but we do a lot of other things around it, from communication strategy and planning and intranets and leadership communication. So that’s why I was saying I resonate with you. So maybe I am down the right path right now where I know I’ve got to focus, but I do a lot more than that.
Carl Smith (16:29.389)
Yeah.
Carl Smith (16:58.734)
Yeah, I’ll just throw this out there that I think specialization is amazing in a healthy market. One of the things we saw in 2020 when the pandemic hit, we had some very profitable, well-run shops in tourism, in transportation, in hospitality. They did not do so well, but they
Naila (17:18.577)
Hmm?
Carl Smith (17:26.904)
pivoted quickly. can’t believe I use that word. I think it’s first time in 10 years. And they learned that they had other skills and other things to offer. One of the things I love about the Bureau is when somebody is in trouble, other shops come to help. So when had those problems, when those shops that were having tourism were having an issue, we also had shops in government and healthcare and all these other places that were just exploding. So instead of having people on the bench, they just teamed up until they could get their feet back under them.
Naila (17:30.353)
You
Naila (17:55.249)
That’s great.
HDco (17:55.67)
You know, one thing I think that’s interesting about the bureau that differs from a lot of peer to peer groups is say something, a peer to peer group like Vistage. Typically they create round tables with one person from each industry. So there’s never like a conflict, but with the bureau, everybody from a broad perspective pretty much does the same thing. So I love the fact that you have that sense of a…
Carl Smith (18:12.92)
Yeah.
HDco (18:24.585)
that collegial nature where we’re going to help each other out and we’re not going to worry about someone coming along and then taking this information and potentially using it against another firm to compete.
Naila (18:40.753)
Hmm.
Carl Smith (18:40.78)
Yeah, I mean, it’s remarkable. I get asked all the time, why does this work? Like, I really don’t know, except that everyone here feels the same way. We have people occasionally join the community and I let everybody in. I explained to the rules. First of all, the Bureau of I promise not to reveal anything a reasonable person would deem sensitive or confidential that you share during our time together.
It’s a verbal non-disclosure agreement. Whoever was there in the conversation gets to stay in the conversation. I explained we are a non-solicit community. There is no selling in here, except for one place. It’s a channel called Shameless Self-Promotion. And of the thousand people in that Slack, almost 900 opted into it. They want to hear what you’re doing. But to your point, Quinn, we’ve had one or two bad actors in 13 years.
Naila (19:22.609)
You
Carl Smith (19:37.742)
that I had to tell to get out of the pool, right? Sometimes they would get hired and not do the work. Sometimes they would hire somebody else and that person wouldn’t pay, but it very, very limited. And it was very public. I never shamed anybody, but I just said, Hey everybody, this is a reminder. We just had this happen, blah, blah. So, and we’ll get to it later, I think, but for me, this is very much the future, right?
HDco (19:40.109)
Mm-hmm.
Carl Smith (20:06.988)
We have to work together. have to be able to sustain each other. We have to be able to level it out when one person’s in trouble and somebody’s in trouble with too much and somebody’s in trouble with too little. We have to find a way to work together.
Naila (20:19.085)
Quinn’s always talking about the human connection when it comes to the Bureau, which is what we were thinking, what I was thinking about. So with all this AI and tools and automation, how do you see, you know, your agency leaders balancing technology with the human elements of leadership? And how do you keep your community going in that, you know, human-centered way?
Carl Smith (20:24.32)
Thank
Carl Smith (20:42.392)
Yeah. It’s interesting, Nyla, that AI is a tool that can take so many painful hours away from us. It really takes away the fun, right? And you can still do anything you want, but you’re going to get left behind. That’s the challenge, right? It’s like if somebody was still at a drafting table instead of working, you know, in whatever the current hotness is, Figma or whatever, right?
It’s like, they’re never going to catch up. They may be crafts. may, they may be able to do well, but when you start looking at AI and you start looking at the shops that are using it effectively, an example is power shifter run by JP Holika created a video for a client, 100 % AI client knew it was going to be AI took. think he said about 300 hours.
So it wasn’t quick, but the script was generated and then fixed by humans. The video was created and then fixed by humans, right? To me, leaders are still those visionaries. And we’re now, I was talking yesterday, one of our sponsors, Parallax, they’re about to announce a new AI tool. I doubt I’ll get in trouble for this, but.
It allows project managers not to have to worry about the math as much as the people. Now, LLMs are horrible at math, right? But there’s AI out there that can do it. But so when they see that somebody’s overloaded and somebody doesn’t have enough work to do and the AI can start to make recommendations, hey, Tom is going to be done on Thursday, Bill might have to work the weekend, you know, and then share that with
the PM instead of the PM having to take the time to sit down, go through a thousand can’t charts, hate their life, wish they’d never done this, right? Now they’re able to just say, there’s something I can fix. There’s something I can help with. So as leaders and the human part of the future for this is that we have to get better at soft skills. This shouldn’t be called soft skills. We have to get better at communication and engagement and encouragement.
Carl Smith (23:06.53)
And in that sense, coaching, we have to really be better at that. And I will say one of the things that AI helps me with is communication. Like I have a hard conversation I have to have, and I put it into chat GPT and I say, do I sound like a jerk? Right. And it says, no, you sound like yourself. And I’m like, wait a second. What? Come on, Chad. No, this, this is you.
Naila (23:23.962)
You
HDco (23:27.678)
You
Naila (23:27.994)
Am I?
HDco (23:30.601)
No, this is how you always sound, Carl. I mean, it just…
Naila (23:32.913)
You
Carl Smith (23:35.65)
But yeah, so for me, especially right now, when I see these shops and I see how they’re using it and what they’re doing, it inspires me. The other thing that I love, and Quinn, you’ve lived through this, right? I mean, even though you’ve got a lot of stuff that’s more on the branding side, you did a fair amount of web stuff. And when responsive came out, responsive came out, it changed everything. Web standards came out, changed everything. HTML5 came out, it changed everything. Mobile came out, it changed everything. There’s always another wave.
HDco (23:52.714)
yeah, still do.
Mm-hmm.
Carl Smith (24:05.39)
So everybody who’s sitting there like, missed it, I messed up. No, things change yesterday that people who are really experienced don’t know about yet. You can get in there, you can still be the specialist. I think ultimately we see that AI is a tool. Somebody has to know how to wield it. We know what’s gonna be effective. We know how people wanna consume. Somebody has to write.
Naila (24:13.711)
Hmm.
Naila (24:23.259)
Yeah.
Carl Smith (24:33.23)
somebody has to correct the mistakes. That’s our role now. And I see us as not being eliminated, but being supercharged.
Naila (24:34.299)
Yeah.
Naila (24:44.049)
Yeah.
HDco (24:44.254)
Yeah, I totally agree. I’m getting ready to give a talk down at Flagler College. It’s called AI Now, Near, In the Future. And I delivered a talk to, which was actually the catalyst for the name of the show. So it kind of like serendipity. was like, what if it wasn’t just AI Now, In the Future? Maybe it’s communications now, Near, In the Future, or recipes now, Near, In the Future. Who knows? but anyhow, so I gave the talk.
Carl Smith (25:08.489)
Hahaha
HDco (25:15.006)
to the graphic design students down at Flagler and sort of preparing them for what is the state of AI today? So this was a year ago. What is the state of AI in the near future, three to five years? And then when you’re my age, what will be the role of AI and graphic designers as co-collaborators? And so of course I used AI and I asked, you know,
Claude and ChatGPT, I was like, what do you think? And the answers that came back were surprisingly insightful. Now, whether AI is lying to us or not, I don’t know, we’ll find out. essentially, for the younger generations that are coming up, they need to learn to develop their own aesthetic, their own sense of taste, their ability to be able to influence
and determine what is good. Because when I get stuff back, sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised, and especially in the sort graphic photo creation, I’m usually disappointed. And I know that technology is going to change over time, but I think it’s so important that where we are as leaders having done this for a really long time,
Naila (26:15.311)
Hmm.
Carl Smith (26:27.95)
you
HDco (26:38.793)
We have the benefit of that experience doing things in a somewhat analog environment. And we will be the ones who are remaining to help guide our clients in the industry as to what are the standards that we’re using these tools from an ethical point of view, you know, from a cost point of view, from, you know, is it right to even use the tool for this right now?
Naila (27:05.647)
Hmm… Yeah.
HDco (27:08.73)
The new generation, they need to learn that and they have to know that they cannot rely on AI 100 % to say, statistically, this is the best design based on market research because just because it’s data-driven doesn’t mean it’s good. And oftentimes, the data-driven approach has really hurt iconic brands, like take Nike, for example. I mean, they’re re-,
Carl Smith (27:14.882)
Yeah
Naila (27:31.738)
Yeah.
HDco (27:34.932)
but going through a whole like almost taking steps backwards and saying, you know what, maybe this over-reliance on data, know, driven creative and marketing wasn’t the best move for us.
Naila (27:46.865)
It’s a good point that it comes back to what Carl was saying, the softer skills, because the newer generation, obviously my 10, 11 month old baby knows how to swipe a phone already, right? But they’re so digital, they’re so digital, they’re so stuck in that, they’re forgetting that communication, talking to one another, resilience, support, they need to be taught that. And we’re working in organization, so I use AI.
Carl Smith (27:59.009)
Naila (28:13.521)
Now I have learnt how to use it for the benefit of myself, right? But I have to be careful, right? So I have to look at the client’s policies. What do they say about AI, the use of AI? You have to be transparent about the use of AI. So there’s a lot of other things to learn on the way and think about.
HDco (28:15.773)
Yay! Finally!
Carl Smith (28:34.37)
What, you know what I’ll share that with the Bureau a year ago, a year and a half ago, we started using ChatGPT to basically assimilate all of the conversations from the week, put them together and share them back to the community. But we had two people in the community who raised their hands and said, this violates the Bureau oath because ChatGPT and OpenAI are now taking the conversations that we had and they’re putting them out there for training data.
And the conversation has left the group that had it. Now they didn’t mind if it was anonymized and shared with everyone, but there are people talking about layoffs. There are people talking about, you know, all kinds of sensitive things, letting go of a client, selling their shop. So they don’t want anyone to have that information that wasn’t in that conversation. So now we’ve come back and God bless Merida Thuram.
Meredith, you’re watching this. She is the newest person on our team. We hire once every eight years. So she’s two years into this. And Meredith basically takes all of the content, over a thousand conversations a week, anonymizes them by hand. Like goes in there and does find replace, right? Then puts that into chat GPT, has it write a roundup for a Sunday night delivery. And then Lori Averitt,
who’s been with me since before Engine times, looks at it fresh, never seen it before. Looking yet to see did we accidentally leave something in, but also are there hallucinations in here? anything not make sense in here? So it’s a two human, one AI process that actually it does take longer than the way I was doing it because look at me, right? I was just popping it in there saying, let’s go. So this has been a game changer and actually led to a new level of membership.
HDco (30:12.434)
Mm-hmm.
Naila (30:13.553)
Mm-hmm.
Carl Smith (30:29.784)
called cruise control, when you do not have time to engage in anything, you can still every Sunday night hear about everything that everybody’s talking about and know what the decisions are being made and all that sort of thing. So we had people that would leave because they couldn’t keep up. It was too much. It was too noisy. They’re coming back now.
Naila (30:47.17)
Mm-hmm.
HDco (30:49.842)
That’s awesome. There’s a solution to that, we’ll get into that in the near future. Let’s properly introduce our guest, Carl Smith. Carl Smith is the founder of the Bureau, formerly Bureau of Digital, a community where agency leaders and their teams find connection, growth, and friendship. Having experienced firsthand the isolation that comes with running an ad agency, Carl has dedicated himself to creating spaces where leaders can find genuine support among peers
who understand their unique challenges. Before founding the Bureau, Carl spent 13 years as the owner of Engineworks, a digital agency. His background also includes 13 years as Senior Vice President at Huss Jennings, where he was responsible for interactive media and heavily involved in new business development. Known for his authentic approach to leadership, Carl focuses on what truly matters in business, real human relationships.
Through the Bureau, he facilitates small impactful events, collaborative programs, and vibrant Slack community where agency owners and digital professionals can share insights, celebrate successes, and work through challenges together. When not bringing people together or planning the future of the Bureau, Carl can be found running, recording, or sharing stories on stage about authentic leadership. His mission is simple but powerful, ensuring no leader ever feels alone in their journey.
And I did not know this about you, Carl, but you studied theater, obviously advertising and tourism at University of Florida. And Carl currently lives in Jacksonville, Florida. So Carl, you recently, what?
Carl Smith (32:28.366)
Wait, wait, slow down. Thank you. Thank you, sir. I am going to have my mom watch this now. I tell her people like me, she doesn’t believe me. So thank you, Quinn. That was lovely. Thank you.
HDco (32:37.36)
Okay, good, good, good, good.
Naila (32:37.794)
Yeah
Mmm. Aww.
HDco (32:43.046)
well, Claude did a great job of writing that for me, so… yeah.
Carl Smith (32:47.47)
And I approved it and said, send it back to him. He’s good.
HDco (32:52.55)
Okay, Carl, you recently made a LinkedIn post that really touched me. It was about how we met. Can you briefly tell us that story?
Naila (32:53.457)
you
Carl Smith (33:02.414)
Uh, yeah. So when I started engine, was leaving Hus Jennings, an advertising agency I’d been at as you know, that would have been, uh, so I left in 2003 and, uh, yeah. Is that right? Yeah. 2003.
HDco (33:08.869)
And what was that?
HDco (33:15.077)
Mm-hmm.
HDco (33:19.334)
So that was two years after I started my agency.
Carl Smith (33:21.954)
Yep. And we were going in all in on flash. And we would also edit videos, do anything anybody would give us a dollar for. And so when the first thing I did was I said, there are so many folks who say they’re doing this. And believe it or not, I looked in the yellow pages, right? And in the yellow pages, they were probably 20 or more. So I called every single one.
Naila (33:23.121)
Okay.
Carl Smith (33:49.216)
And said, Hey, I’m Carl. We’re engine. This is what we’re doing. I’d love to talk and see if there’s any ways we can either work together or if I get a lead that’s not of interest to me, I can send it to you or anything like that. Of everybody I called Quinn was the only one who said, yes, let’s do it. And I, I’ll let you share it. But one of my favorite things was you came in one day and there was an estimate on my desk. And I think you were pitching the same project.
Naila (34:06.446)
Hey.
You
Carl Smith (34:19.372)
And you looked at me and said, can I look at that? And I was like, yeah, sure. don’t care. And you did. And you look back at me and you said, I think I found the problem in my estimating. And I’m like, yeah? And you’re like, yeah, I left a comma off.
HDco (34:22.949)
Hahaha
Carl Smith (34:34.806)
And I was like, yeah, people want to feel like they paid the right amount, you know? But I think over that time, I mean, I think it worked out really well for both of us.
HDco (34:48.024)
It did. And I’m so glad that I answered the phone that particular day. At the time, I was still really involved in AIGA, and we always had a very collegial nature within the group. was kind of like the opposite of advertising, which is like kind of very backstabby and screw your fellow agency over at all costs. But
Carl Smith (34:52.066)
Hahaha
Carl Smith (35:08.334)
Unbelievable.
HDco (35:14.585)
Yeah, we’ve had a lot of fun over the years and I’ve enjoyed seeing your progress from client services to now leader of this well-known digital community now, broader than digital community. Okay, so let’s quickly go around the room. I kind of want to find out what everyone’s been up to lately.
Naila (35:37.893)
Really? Who are you starting with?
HDco (35:39.757)
I’m pitching to you, Naila. You start first.
Naila (35:42.001)
Okay, so what am I doing, what I’ve been up to? I have been focusing, so the one thing I wanted to do this year was to get a new client, so not be dependent on one large client, even though we have multiple projects and we got there. So hopefully we’ll start next week. Yes, I know, exciting. But I want to stay small and do meaningful work and purposeful work with right leaders.
HDco (35:59.097)
YAY!
Naila (36:08.207)
you know, authentic leaders. So this is why I’m connecting very nicely with Carl and his conversations right now. And then other than that, it’s the fasting month. So fasting every day so far. So yeah, energy goes. It’s like from five in the morning till six in the evening. It’s okay. It helps cleanse the body and everything else. And then of course the baby, right? She’s still keeping me up and busy. So that’s, that’s nice.
HDco (36:37.902)
So for all you audio nerds out there, you’re hearing any like, yeah, that’s Naila because she hasn’t had a drink of water since this morning.
Naila (36:41.649)
Yeah
Carl Smith (36:45.568)
okay.
Naila (36:47.279)
I forgot to wake up.
HDco (36:47.332)
How about you, Carl? it’s okay.
Carl Smith (36:50.95)
obviously I’ve been working a lot on the rebrand, I’d say from a bigger perspective, I’m working on stepping back from being the forefront of the bureau a little bit, mainly because we’re growing faster and I’m becoming the bottleneck. So I had somebody else lead an event for the first time in February, one of our business development events, and, they crushed it in the post event survey. Somebody rudely wrote, it was the best event the bureau has ever put on.
Naila (37:05.873)
Mmm.
Naila (37:19.931)
Well…
Carl Smith (37:20.322)
And I called them, I corrected them, said, no, sir, no, sir. But no, but it makes me so happy to see that the community is standing forward. And it’s hard to step back from something I’ve been so passionate and engaged, but I know that if I want the Bureau to succeed, I can’t be the only Dread Pirate Roberts, right? I’ve got to back up and let other people do that. The other thing as part of that, because I’m not traveling as much, I’m leaning out, you know, I’m being more of a dad. My kids are grown.
HDco (37:38.67)
Mm-hmm.
Naila (37:49.091)
Mmm.
Carl Smith (37:50.126)
Quinn, we have this in common, I think. And I have a 23 year old in New York and a 21 year old down the street. And I am, I think when I was younger and they were younger, I wasn’t the best dad. I was gone a lot. They loved me and actually lifted me up on a pedestal. And I am now explaining to them why that pedestal is not real. And we are going through different things to just try to support each other. And
HDco (37:52.078)
Yes.
HDco (38:04.537)
Hmm.
Carl Smith (38:19.34)
That’s a huge part of where I am right now is I’m just trying to really, really support my family as much as I can.
HDco (38:26.084)
Well, you know, trying to find that work-life balance is an ongoing challenge. You know, it’s interesting that you bring up trying to take a step back because some of my conversations lately with colleagues and also my favorite chat bot, Claude, is like, OK, so here I am. It’s been 20-something years doing this. I’ve had, you know, for about 10 years, I had a team of people that
Naila (38:26.139)
That’s great.
Carl Smith (38:29.592)
Woof.
Naila (38:45.873)
you
HDco (38:56.472)
did the bulk of the work and interactions with the clients. And basically I came in and I looked at designs and signed some checks. And then I’m like, all right guys, see you later. And that was great. And although having that enormous overhead felt like a challenge today or a challenge then, I went micro, got rid of my office, totally remote, all that.
Carl Smith (39:06.446)
you
HDco (39:25.955)
Today, about 15 years later, now I’m starting to think, what would that look like if I had that again to where, not a huge agency, but just enough support team to where I’m not in the trenches on the day to day. And so I was talking with Claude and I was like, how do I make that happen? And Claude’s like, well, let’s do some financial modeling. I was like, okay, what’s financial modeling? Like I understand.
Naila (39:50.256)
Yep.
Naila (39:53.841)
You
HDco (39:55.107)
that’s projection, but I have no idea how to do it. So Claude starts walking me through it and looking at the breakdown of agencies like mine, like what’s labor, what’s overhead, what’s profit, all this kind of stuff. Claude’s like, yeah, just upload your P &Ls and we’ll get real granular on that. And I was just like, really? So I feel like I’m talking to a fractional CFO.
Carl Smith (40:15.491)
Hahaha
HDco (40:23.587)
for some of these big thinking ideas. you know, also this podcast is just launched. I’m looking at possibly starting to get onto the public speaking circuit. I kind of got roped into joining the Speakers Academy and didn’t realize how transformative it would be for me and learning more about myself and telling my story and all that. So all those things I think will help to…
broadening the branding of Harrington Design Company and myself and maybe it’s time to let a younger generation come up with ideas for logos and know the latest and greatest about AI and all the things that we do in video production.
Naila (40:58.776)
Yeah.
Naila (41:11.277)
It is a step though, isn’t it? Because I’m in the same space. Last year I was all about, okay, I need to get into the boss mode, running an organization. I’m not going to get into projects. Then I had to look at profitability and then I said, I need to do some projects myself. And I’m now back into that mode as well. I need to step back. So more clients, more projects, bring other people in so that I can just manage the client and the business. But it’s not easy to step back, Carl.
HDco (41:18.102)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Carl Smith (41:18.859)
you
HDco (41:25.526)
Mm-hmm.
Naila (41:40.687)
Right? Especially when you’ve been in the details and the weeds of everything, not weed weed, but weeds of everything. How do you do it? How do you step back?
Carl Smith (41:41.037)
No.
Carl Smith (41:50.572)
Yeah, well first of all, WeedWeed will help. I’ll just say. So, Quentin on me for a lot.
Naila (41:56.913)
I’m based in the UK. I’m best named in UK. Can’t happen.
Carl Smith (42:00.892)
so, can’t happen. Got it, got it. Okay. Well, come over here for a conference. I did want to say one thing, Naila. You said something and the universe heard it. You said you wanted to stay small. Should not have said that because now the universe is going to open the floodgates of opportunity. It’s what happens every time somebody innocently says, I don’t want to grow. I want to stay small.
Naila (42:16.976)
Yes.
Carl Smith (42:28.864)
I said that once at Engine and we ended up around 40 people. So, Godspeed.
Naila (42:32.315)
Mm.
HDco (42:33.312)
Yeah, Carl always said, he’s like, I don’t really want to be more than five or 10. And then one day, it’s like, Carl, what are you doing? You know, and he’s like, I’m growing. I’m just responding to what the clients want. And I was like, all right, all right.
Carl Smith (42:39.256)
Dude.
Shit.
Carl Smith (42:47.502)
Yeah.
Naila (42:47.601)
Okay, we shall see and then maybe I’ll join the Bureau for some advice.
HDco (42:49.921)
Yes.
Carl Smith (42:52.802)
There you go.
HDco (42:52.918)
Well, Carl is the charter member of the Bureau of Quinn and Nailah, so we will work on this together. All right, let’s move on to our next segment, the near future. Carl, the Bureau has built a powerful peer-to-peer community model. How might communities like yours reshape professional development and business strategy in the next three to five years?
Naila (42:56.721)
Cool.
Carl Smith (42:58.702)
There you go.
Carl Smith (43:16.984)
Well, I think it’s kind of happening now and it will continue to evolve. I think the biggest change is that for us at almost 1500 people, we’ve had to learn how to scale intimacy because when you get too big, nobody wants to talk except for a handful of folks. So I think what we’re going to see happen and Quinn, you may remember I had this idea of the jellyfish Alliance a long time ago. It’s kind of what the Bureau is.
HDco (43:46.498)
Mm-hmm.
Carl Smith (43:46.79)
and the jellyfish Alliance was that there would be key shops who stayed together and helped each other through different challenges. Right. That’s what the Bureau is. I think as we move forward, collectives, communities, real communities, not, not brand groups, not people who are signing up for online courses, but folks who are there to help each other, to have a common purpose. I think they’re going to get smaller within a larger organization.
Naila (44:05.617)
Mm-hmm.
Carl Smith (44:16.47)
larger entity, it’s happening at the Bureau. We have a biz dev community and a PM community and an operations community. I think those continue to evolve and actually get smaller within a larger group and support each other the whole time. We’re seeing it right now with some of our biz dev folks who are, they have a monthly call and they are kind of assigning each other different things to do.
So one person is going to check out a new tool, another person is going to check out a new resource, another person is coming back and saying, this is what I found. So now you don’t have to be under the same logo to get the support that you need. And as AI does become a bigger play, as clients do get a little finicky, finicky-er, if that’s a word.
Naila (44:56.08)
Right.
Naila (45:06.161)
Mm-hmm.
Carl Smith (45:07.948)
this need to have that core group to lean on, not just for commiseration, but to be able to lift each other into new opportunities and options. I think that’s really the future. I’ll say there’s some great ones out there. think what Drew is doing at AMI is really good. Tom Becker at SOTA. Like if you’re a larger agency, what SOTA’s got going on is amazing. Although I often say SOTA is not good for you kids. But sorry, I think we’re going to see that. Like just…
smaller groups that are dedicated to each other that help out, like an EO or a Vistage, like you mentioned, Quinn, but actually in the same space.
HDco (45:45.887)
Okay.
Naila (45:46.981)
So what other advantages do smaller shops have versus the larger ones?
Carl Smith (45:55.19)
flexibility, without a doubt. Yeah, I think if you are less than 10 people, you only go out of business when you quit trying. Right? I think you can always make it through. You can always get to that next paycheck. You’re going to suffer because you penalize yourself to support the team. You won’t realize for a long time that that’s actually hurt a lot of people you care about. Okay, now I’m having a therapy session, but
Naila (45:56.475)
flexibility.
Naila (46:01.265)
Mm-hmm.
Naila (46:06.737)
I like that.
Naila (46:23.887)
You
Carl Smith (46:25.304)
But no, think that’s really it. Smaller shops are more flexible. They’re leaner. They can shift. They can get product out faster. Larger ones have politics. They have back channels. They have people who don’t like that so-and-so got promoted. They have to have all hands meetings. They have all of the stuff that keeps them from being flexible. And they have processes for changing processes. Whereas you would just be able to say, yeah, let’s do it.
Naila (46:37.849)
Hmm.
Carl Smith (46:55.906)
So I’m a big fan of small. And I also think you don’t make incrementally more money as your company grows. You just have to spend incrementally more time, right? to keep everybody happy. You become a camp counselor in a lot of ways instead of a leader.
Naila (47:11.921)
Mmm.
HDco (47:16.199)
One of my clients, she’s the CMO of a big data analytics provider, and she talks more about building community than anything else. You know, it’s not about like, you know, the latest and greatest and marketing strategy and stuff. She’s like, no, it’s about building a culture. And I was like, I thought that’s what HHR did. And she’s like, mean, to some degree, but not, not really. It’s kind of up to the
Naila (47:40.112)
Hmm.
HDco (47:44.892)
you know, communications, which, and this company falls under marketing. That’s where it all happens. And fortunately, that’s what my co-host does. So if I ever have any problems with like, you know.
Carl Smith (47:51.182)
Yeah. Well, want to throw, I want to throw one thing back out there. You’re talking about the future of communities like the Bureau. And I don’t, think one of the things that makes the Bureau different, it makes it more human. So almost more like a social network than we are a community. That’s slack. We just had eight people ask if we could have a gardening channel.
Naila (47:55.057)
That’s exactly what we do!
Carl Smith (48:21.858)
These people don’t work together, right? But they want a common experience. They want to share something. Like most company websites have a pets channel. We have one for the Bureau, right? We have a travel channel, a Are You Here channel, like all this kind of stuff. But I think when people start to ask for new things that have nothing to do with business, that to me is success because now we’re talking to the humans. We have a real human connection. And that to me is
the groundwork for any type of collaboration.
Naila (48:53.903)
love it. So this is my language, this is our language because I always say it doesn’t matter how digital you get, the companies or the people that are going to stand out are the ones who are still got the human connect, where there’s people at the heart of it. So that’s where my space is always going to be. Yes, I’m going to get on the bandwagon of AI and any digital that comes my way, but I’m always going to be a people, human person making connections. Yeah.
HDco (49:22.782)
Well that brings us to our next segment, Nyla, called Across the Pond. And normally we have a break from our boring business conversation, but we want to talk a little bit about the differences between UK, European agency culture, and American agency culture. So Nyla, why don’t you kick us off with some thoughts about some of those differences.
Naila (49:24.721)
You
Naila (49:50.075)
really worked in American agencies although I’ve worked with people so Quinn you’re one of them and then at Unilever we had in the Tartan ships team we had someone we worked with very funny but his he was very different to how I would work right so he would spend hours discussing an image and I froze
HDco (49:57.362)
Mm-hmm.
HDco (50:13.886)
she froze a little bit.
HDco (50:18.898)
Yeah, we can still hear you though.
Naila (50:20.913)
Alright, that’s good. This is my wife playing up hints. But yeah, we had different ways of working and different personalities. So he was very, I’m going to discuss an image. If you’re listening to me, don’t worry. I’m not saying something bad. I’m just saying how different you are. But I would spend five minutes discussing an image and get on to the next one. So we had different ways of doing things. So that’s a cultural thing. And he was very funny in terms of he’d like to, I don’t know.
always put a joke in something that was serious. But I don’t know the big differences between the agents. I know from a communication perspective that in America, the communication teams had to go through a lot of teams, even when it was an internal communication, for some reason, legal would get involved. That was a surprise to me. And I don’t know if that’s for everyone or is it particular industry it was for. That’s all I know for now.
HDco (51:17.213)
I mean, I know in my experience with the big clients I’ve worked with, we would do internal videos and legal had to check everything. So it’s very layered in that respect. Carl, is the Bureau primary US or do you have, you said you had some international, Canada?
Carl Smith (51:35.566)
Yeah. Yeah, we’re about 70 % North America between the US and Canada. We have a decent number in the UK. We have have scatterings throughout the UAE and some other areas, just like not one ops, but like, five or six Australia, really weird, but we’re popular in Australia. It’s a total it’s tomorrow there.
Naila (52:00.942)
Okay.
Naila (52:04.593)
You
Carl Smith (52:05.134)
And they’re always like, we didn’t get the invite. I’m like, don’t do that. You always do that. But I think one of the big differences, it is cultural. mean, absolutely, Naila, what you said, we’ve had, we have a lot of shops from India, right? And that culture is very much, in my experience, I am going to tell you what I do and then I’m going to ask you what you do. And this is how we say hello.
Naila (52:19.619)
Carl Smith (52:34.306)
But in America, that is called spam. Right? So we would have people come in and first of you’re not allowed to cold DM. They would cold DM like 50 people who they were. And I’d later have a call and they were like, I was just trying to say hello. And you could tell that was it. They were not trying to be devious. This is just the way that they operate. Right? We have some people from Romania. We’re very quiet.
Naila (52:57.253)
Mm-hmm.
Carl Smith (53:03.81)
right, in the way they talk. But interestingly, Naila, I was at an event called Hybrid. I think it was in Wales that year. And they had a conversation between, so a UK and an American shop merged. And they had a presentation between a project manager and a designer. The project manager was from America. The designer was from the UK, both women and
The project manager would always start the conversation by asking how her day was. What did you do yesterday? Are you having fun? Do you have a cat? Like she was always like starting off with something that was more personal. Whereas the designer was like, I’m at work. I did the thing. I’m showing you the thing. And the project manager thought the designer hated her. She thought there’s something going on. She doesn’t like me. And so she tried even harder to be nice.
Naila (53:55.82)
Carl Smith (54:03.414)
And then eventually a manager stepped in and said, y’all are ridiculous. She is just trying to be nice because that’s where she comes from. You’re trying to get the work done correctly because that is the task at hand and what you were told to do. Now they’re fast friends. Once somebody was able to show them this little disconnect is not that I don’t, I don’t trust you. It’s not that I don’t like you. It’s not that I’m a space cadet.
Naila (54:22.118)
Yeah.
Carl Smith (54:33.237)
Right? It’s that I’m just trying to connect with you on a human level and we speak different love languages.
Naila (54:38.641)
So it doesn’t matter if you’re an agency or working in a corporate or in a community or in a family, it’s the same differences, same cultural, all of that. I had two interns who were Finnish. They were from Finland and I was working in Pakistan at that time. And then people would come to me and complain, my God, your interns, they’re so rude. I’m like, actually it’s just the way they speak. They’re very direct. They don’t mean to hurt anyone. So I had to go to them and say, look, you’re working in Pakistan.
So the majority of the people, have to kind of adapt to their environment, not the other way around for now. So yeah, then we bridge the difference.
HDco (55:18.406)
That’s so fascinating. know that, and this may not be for across the board, but in the US, unless we talk five times a day, we will not deal with the pleasantries. But if you’re at a networking event or if you haven’t talked to a client in a while and you don’t
say, find out how things are going, what have you been up to, all that kind of stuff. I mean, that’s just rude. You know, and definitely in the social setting, at least for me, if within the first five minutes we’re talking about work, I’m just like, yeah, we’ve run out of things to talk about because that’s like the lowest level of conversation. So I don’t know if that’s like that in the UK or not.
Carl Smith (56:04.206)
Hahaha.
Naila (56:12.797)
It’s getting, it’s becoming different because there’s, especially with the time, difficult times, we’re starting to build in the fact that you should ask people how they are. The person next to you, you don’t know what they’re going through and it’s most important. So it’s starting to be a lot more personal before anything else.
HDco (56:15.055)
Yeah.
HDco (56:30.939)
think that’s good.
Naila (56:32.209)
Hmm.
Carl Smith (56:32.354)
Yeah, I think it’s necessary. I had a call with somebody I know really well yesterday, and we hadn’t talked in probably six months. And they’re amazingly talented, super great person, normally overly optimistic. And we got on the call and they were like, I got the email. Everything looks good. I do have a couple of questions. The first thing I said was, are you okay?
And he was like, no, I’m sorry. I thought I could do this, but, we just had a client throw a stick of dynamite in a project and I got to go tell the team that everything’s fine and blah, blah. So we spent that whole meeting, which was supposed to be about actually giving them more value for what they were doing with the community to talking about how he was going to talk with his team. And it turned into a therapy session. And then I said, don’t worry about the other stuff. He was like, approved, just do it. You know, I don’t care. So it’s like.
Naila (57:00.458)
Carl Smith (57:27.02)
I think there is this thing, to your point, Nyland, I know you feel this way, Quinn, it’s like, if we’re not helping each other right now while the world is trying to blow itself up, then we’re not gonna get through this. We have to be humans with humans no matter where you sit or how you come across.
Naila (57:43.899)
Yeah.
HDco (57:45.027)
Wow, that really resonates with me more than you would know. Maybe we’ll have a whole nother podcast on emotional intelligence and Carl will be our Carl would be our special guest. OK, Carl, we’re moving into the future. So dust off that crystal ball of yours. We’re about to venture beyond the horizon of today’s agency landscape. What glimpses of the future are you catching today?
Naila (57:53.785)
I think so. I would love that actually.
Carl Smith (57:58.743)
I am here for it.
Naila (57:59.057)
Good.
HDco (58:14.861)
So I’m talking like 20 years from now, not like tomorrow.
Carl Smith (58:19.778)
Yeah, I think maker’s gonna make. I think we’re still gonna have an amazing creative force of humans. I think the way we work together is probably gonna be a little bit different. I think we will become more solopreneurs. I think the idea of large companies is probably gonna fade. There will still be a few monolithic ones.
Naila (58:43.953)
Mm.
Carl Smith (58:48.524)
Right. There’ll still be a few that we see. and we go, how, but I think in terms of creativity, I think we’re going to each become more specialized in certain areas. Cause we said this earlier with AI, you don’t want to race to the middle where everybody’s paying attention to what everybody else is doing. Humans are the only ones that are going to know truly how to connect with humans. And we’re each going to have different experiences. So I think as we’re able to connect together and I think in 20 years, it’ll be so much easier to
find the person who does the thing that we will assemble teams based on the specific need. And I think as much as people say that clients aren’t going to want to pay what they pay because of AI, the AI tools are going to be ridiculously expensive. So the clients also are never going to want to learn how to use them because they’re going to change too frequently. So I think we still charge a premium. I just think everything gets a little bit smaller as we move forward.
Naila (59:25.359)
Mm-hmm.
HDco (59:28.377)
you
Naila (59:40.271)
Mmm.
HDco (59:41.251)
Thank
HDco (59:47.353)
Hmm, sounds like we’re well positioned, although we’ll all be retired by then. Yes. Nailah, do you have any thoughts on the distant future?
Naila (59:48.475)
That’s it.
Yes, stepping back, reaping the reaps of the…
Carl Smith (59:52.204)
Godspeed.
That’s seven.
Naila (59:59.197)
on the distant future, no. I mean, I think what Carl’s saying is all about that sustaining the genuine human connection. And I see organizations are moving in what you were saying into the skills. So they’re no longer having, need a person for this role within a function. They’re talking about how can this person support the whole different functions at different times. So it’s skill-based rather than role-based. But, yeah, it’s exciting. It’s also scary.
You know, digital and AI scare me sometimes, but I’m getting there. Carl, if for you, if you could design the ideal community platform or experience for digital leaders, I don’t know if you want to say digital leaders of 2035, what would it look like? So you already have your community space. Where are you seeing this going?
Carl Smith (01:00:52.514)
Yeah, I think, you know, and we’re already making some of these moves. I think we still have an online platform like Slack. I just don’t want it to cost me $75,000 a year, which is the current cost. So you got to figure we have over a thousand people. So, but they pay for it with dues. So it’s not like I’m some great, you know, humanitarian that’s out there saying I shall pay for the Slack. But I think these costs have to come down.
Naila (01:01:06.011)
What?
HDco (01:01:06.23)
Wow.
Naila (01:01:18.32)
Okay.
Carl Smith (01:01:21.836)
I think also there’s got to be a better way to connect. So we’re working right now with a group that hasn’t launched yet called Collective OS. And they’re basically, if you’re familiar with Clutch, which is like an agency, yellow pages that passes itself off as a review site, Collective OS allows private clutches, but with much more functionality.
HDco (01:01:37.592)
Mm-hmm.
Carl Smith (01:01:50.412)
So I think that the key is finding for the community these tools that reinforce engagement with folks like yourself, not in terms of a homogeneous way, but in terms of focused on the same problems, having the same challenges, having some of the solutions. So I think really what happens in that sense is that new platform, it automatically finds it is a matchmaker.
It does help us connect with the right people. does. AI does look around at who knows 10,000 people in the bureau and says, this person’s working on that. And they’re just asked a question. They have a challenge. And I know for a fact that this person over here probably has an answer and they’re never going to find them in the sea of people. So I’m going to go ahead and make the connection. I’m going to make that introduction. If you think about it, Quinn, I’m sure you get this. I don’t know if you do now, but I get asked to meet or introduce people to others.
HDco (01:02:37.91)
Right.
Naila (01:02:49.541)
Yes.
Carl Smith (01:02:50.872)
five, 10 times a week, that is the part that is starting to get exhausting. And I think that becomes really a lot of the future is if you want AI to automate something, automate putting these teams together, know who we are, if we’re using, know, Myers-Briggs or Whiskar or whatever, if you believe in that and you don’t believe in that, but figure out the best way to put together a team that psychologically and skills and all that sort of stuff.
is just gonna kick ass.
Naila (01:03:21.157)
That’s interesting. I mean, that’s what I used to get connect people used to come to me. Can you connect me with this person and sustainability? Then I thought, you know, I might as a come up with my own app. wanted to call it Tinder for purpose. I never got down to it, but I designed it. I still have it on my books because I might want to use it myself. But yeah, Tinder for purpose was my app.
Carl Smith (01:03:43.191)
All right.
HDco (01:03:43.511)
So I had a thought that I was going to mention in the near future. One of our previous guests, know Chris Olberding, he’s somewhat of an AI whiz. And he was saying that essentially we’ll be creating our own LLMs or LLMs before long. I just got a new Mac Mini with the M4 Pro chip in it. And I could run an LLM off of this.
Carl Smith (01:03:51.83)
Chris!
Carl Smith (01:04:03.768)
Yeah.
HDco (01:04:13.456)
And maybe in five years, Bureau will have its own LLM. And rather than having to have someone go in and, you know, humanly go in and correct and anonymize your data, you’ll be able to upload it to your own LLM that is private. Do that work, the processing, all that stuff. And it kind of reminds me of when we, back in the late 90s, early 2000s, when we were hand coding everything.
And then WordPress really came along and sort of reached its tipping point where all of a sudden it was like, it does it all. Like, why would I even bother to do this kind of coding for a small business client? It doesn’t work for everyone. But maybe there will be very soon, and a truly open version of OpenAI where you’re installing this, you’re training it on whatever data that you want.
your internal data, you know, you’re able to build, you know, those community apps that Naila’s talking about. And so, sort of reinforces that solo pinure concept that you were sharing, where it’s just like, I can do it all in my Mac Studio, you know, and AI is gonna help bring together entire campaigns, it’s gonna help, you know, do that forecasting for brand spinoffs, it’s gonna help bring in the right people.
It’s going to help manage communication based on a common theme and a common sense of value and ethics and all that. think it’s exciting, you know, the future of these tools that are coming to us fast and furious. you know, when they all start interconnecting and, you know, we start thinking about, like you said, the cost of what all these tools are costing us.
Carl Smith (01:06:01.166)
You
HDco (01:06:10.547)
Some companies are gonna be like, enough’s enough, I need to find a better way to do this, for 75 grand a year over the cost of five years, you could build your own slot.
Naila (01:06:22.481)
Exactly.
Carl Smith (01:06:25.4)
So real quick, want jump on this. We looked at other options for Slack. The problem is it’s location, location, location. Everybody lives in Slack that is in the community. People, if you leave Slack based on other organized, I’ve talked to you lose 30 % of your customers that just never make the leap. But what I wanted to say was we’re already doing custom GPTs, right? So we had an event last year, an owner camp.
HDco (01:06:33.589)
Mm-hmm.
That’s right.
HDco (01:06:48.831)
Mm-hmm.
Carl Smith (01:06:53.642)
And we recorded the entire conversation. We uploaded the entire conversation to a custom GPT. And then anyone who was in that meeting can go back and say, what was it that Carl said about how to handle retention? And it’ll come back and bring all of that to you. Right. And then we’re now we have webinars and workshops that are getting ready to come out about creating your own AI agents. Right. So like, yeah, you’re right, Quinn. It’s not, we’re not too far into the future before we’re spending up our own.
and it’s like spinning up a new server. Yeah.
HDco (01:07:25.972)
Mm-hmm.
Naila (01:07:26.542)
Hmm.
HDco (01:07:28.744)
Yeah, it’s something I’ve not really, really dabbled in. I’m still trying to wrap my head around what is the best way to use these tools. Because, you know, just having an aggregator of web content and summarization of the top five pages in a search result, it’s not really what I want. Like, I want someone who’s, like, thinking with me and somewhat like me, but smarter, better.
Carl Smith (01:07:58.562)
You
HDco (01:07:58.772)
you know, broader range of knowledge and all that. So I think it’s exciting. Naila, do you want to take us to the wrap, our final segment?
Naila (01:08:08.845)
Our final segment, the wrap. If you could have one piece of enduring wisdom for the future generations of leaders in your community or otherwise with similar, what would it be? We’ll start with Carl.
Carl Smith (01:08:23.982)
Wow, one piece of advice for the future generations, slow down. You’re gonna be okay. You don’t have to haul butt. You don’t have to get angry. You don’t have to miss the dance recital. You don’t have to worry that you’re not good enough. Everybody feels the same way. Slow down.
Naila (01:08:48.977)
Come in.
HDco (01:08:49.396)
It’s pretty hard to follow up, Carl. Thanks.
HDco (01:08:54.645)
If I had one piece of enduring advice for the future, at least from a creative point of view, would be to continue to study the existing world of art, especially in the analog era. was at the Art Institute of Chicago a couple weeks ago, spent about four hours in there.
Naila (01:08:54.917)
What is yours?
HDco (01:09:22.484)
got through about 15 % of the museum. And just seeing all the old masters and even the up and comers in the 20th and 21st century, I just walked away in just awe of human creation and what humans have been able to do since we started carving stuff on cave walls. So study that, absorb it.
develop your own sense of what is good, what is your taste, what is your aesthetic, and anything that comes your way, that is your point of view. And I think if you’re able to do that, I think you’ll be fine.
Naila (01:10:10.257)
I think I can’t but mine is I don’t know I say today to to the younger generation as well that you know you’re all in this digital automized world don’t forget to connect support you know build communities but also don’t think you have all the answers the generation before you have a lot of wisdom so lean on to them they’ve got
HDco (01:10:11.976)
Top that, Nyla.
Carl Smith (01:10:35.662)
you
Naila (01:10:40.131)
mistakes they’ve made, experiences they have, they’ve got a lot to learn, teach you, so don’t try and try and do everything yourself sometimes, go back and ask as well. So yeah, that’s my advice. Okay, am I taking you to the wrap? Yes. Are we closing? So that’s a wrap and Carl cannot say thank you enough for joining us, this has been amazing, the conversation.
HDco (01:10:54.362)
Excellent. Well done. We’re yeah, we’re closing
Carl Smith (01:11:06.171)
Thank you, Nyla. I had a great time.
Naila (01:11:08.527)
Yes, hopefully we’ll see you again. So that’s a wrap of our episode of Now, Near, In The Future. As always, you can find us on all the streaming platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon. We’ve recently got there. If you love our podcast, please subscribe and leave a review. And if you don’t like it, please direct your comments to Quinn Harrington because she did this to me on LinkedIn. You can watch us on YouTube and find us on the web at nownearfuture.com.
and on Instagram at now and a future.
HDco (01:11:41.008)
And Carl, tell us where we can find you on social.
Carl Smith (01:11:44.184)
So you can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me Carl Smith. I should pop up. And really, that’s the best place. I mean, if you want to come to the Bureau, it’s currently bureauofdigital.com, but it will be the bureau.community in the near future.
Naila (01:12:01.105)
Excellent.
HDco (01:12:03.25)
Well, thank you so much for joining us, Carl. As always, stay curious and keep dreaming.
Naila (01:12:10.309)
We will shall see you in the future everyone.
Carl Smith (01:12:14.028)
And I’ll be there.
April 22, 2025