EW 079 – How To Build Sustainable Growth And Profitability In A Creative Business – Winning with Kass Laboucane and Michelle Scully, Co-Founders of Spark and Pony

Gordon Sheppard (00:00.716)
Kass and Michelle, welcome to the show.

Michelle Scully (00:04.629)
Hello?

Kass Laboucane (00:04.637)
Hi. Great to be here.

Gordon Sheppard (00:06.594)
Well, it's so good to have you here as people who have been in your game for the duration that you've been in your game, able to hire and grow your business in the way that you have been, and able to provide the solutions for your customers that they need and evolve with a market that's if you know, as people get their information out the door, promote their businesses in the right way and get the right people to work with, the fit that you've been able to have with so many clients over this time and demonstrated in the growth of your company.

has been remarkable. But there's a lot of people that haven't met you just yet. So I'll just start with Kass and say, if you had to introduce yourself, what would you say?

Kass Laboucane (00:40.167)
Yeah, I'm Kass Lavacane and I am the co-founder and I guess creative director here at Spark and Pony Creative. and then in my personal life I'm a new mom. So I just had a baby and she's nine months in a week. and we live out

Gordon Sheppard (00:53.406)
I'm so sorry. I just need to s we're less than a minute in. I just have to restart. Give me a sec. I'll be back in a sec. Sorry, I just need to add a little technical thing. G stay right there.

Kass Laboucane (01:01.703)
No worries.

Gordon Sheppard (01:04.376)
check that. Sorry, I just need to check a a setting. Sorry about that.

Michelle Scully (01:09.943)
Now then.

Gordon Sheppard (01:10.008)
Yes.

Gordon Sheppard (01:13.55)
Settings cording.

Gordon Sheppard (01:20.28)
Okay, sorry about that. That's my fault.

Kass Laboucane (01:22.611)
That's totally fine. Am I still where you want me to be?

Gordon Sheppard (01:26.538)
yeah, no, it's all good. It was just me on my end. You guys can hear me fine? Okay. I'm gonna start again. Sorry, I'll start that whole process again. So here we go. Gonna start and here we go. Okay.

Michelle Scully (01:36.085)
How are

Gordon Sheppard (01:43.534)
Kass and Michelle, welcome to the show.

Michelle Scully (01:47.083)
Hi.

Kass Laboucane (01:47.163)
Yeah. Great to be here.

Gordon Sheppard (01:49.315)
Well, we are just so lucky to have you here as the Spark and and Pony gang who goes out for their clients and really puts them on the map when it comes to great brand recognition, great outreach, great having the ability to reach their customers. You're the folks or the go to to get those things done. You've been doing it for years. You've grown your business. You've been able to pivot your business at the right time, given the trends and things that have been necessary along the way. And it's just so good to have two strong owners here.

on the show that we get to hear from today. But a lot of people haven't met you just yet. So let me just start with Kass and say, you know, if you had to introduce yourself, what would you say?

Kass Laboucane (02:26.16)
Yeah, well I'm Kass Lavacane and I am the co-founder and creative director here at Spark and and Pony Creative. and then I'm also a new mom. So I just had a baby. she'll be turning nine months at the end of this month. yeah, that's that's who I am.

Gordon Sheppard (02:42.328)
Super and Michelle?

Michelle Scully (02:44.438)
Yeah, I am Michelle Scully. I've been in this industry for 17 years now. Yeah, the other co-founder of Spark and and Pony Creative. And I'm the main brand strategist, just kind of leading all of the consulting and strategy with all of our branding clients.

Gordon Sheppard (03:05.528)
Kass, if I was at a networking event and someone said, Tell me about Spark and and Pony and why you're important for clients to hire, what would you say?

Kass Laboucane (03:14.076)
Well, first of all, it's

Michelle and I started this. We're in our seventh year of business now and it really started as a friendship. we were both working together within a marketing department and we had a lot of you know mutual interests and we kind of came together because she is so brilliant on the design side of things. Her eye for visual branding, her eye for just design in general and strategy is so great. And so she was doing a little bit of freelancing.

And I'm a writer by trade. It's what I'm passionate about. It's what I'm great at. I'm really good at distilling a lot of information into the important points and doing that for our clients. And I was kind of doing that on the side in freelancing. And so we were originally a friendship and then we brought those two skills together. And over the years we've definitely pivoted and we've changed lanes. But what we do right now is essentially close the gap for businesses of

their expertise in-house and how they present themselves online. So there's a lot of businesses out there that are incredibly skilled. They're very talented at what they do. They have great systems. They've got great service offerings, but they don't do a good job of translating that online. You see their website, you see their socials and they kind of look amateur, they look outdated. And so our job from a messaging and visual standpoint, we kind of bring our skills and our team together to close that gap. And so that people can see their expertise and their skill level are

articulated well online. And so that's that's what we do.

Gordon Sheppard (04:49.92)
I've interviewed more than 70 leaders on this podcast, and I couldn't agree more. Brilliant people who don't get the opportunity to really even about themselves when they when you say, What do you what's your win? What are you great at? often they're good Canadians about things in terms of not expressing themselves, right? And they they sort of have these super skills and that chance to sort of help them articulate it in this small way in one interview is maybe my piece of the puzzle, but your piece of the puzzle is getting them out there in the world and getting that gap.

closed, I hear, between the clients and meeting them to get a chance to use their expertise. Michelle, if there's an a g example of one of your maybe current clients or client success story that we can help to illuminate what Kass has just described, what's an example that you would maybe just you don't need to name names, but what's an example of a client that you've helped along the way and how you close that gap?

Michelle Scully (05:37.867)
Yeah, when we do the brand consults, we actually look at everything holistically, which I don't think a lot of people realize, because we're trying to make really strategic choices. And we're trying to really focus on maybe not what you want, but like, what does your client want? And what do they need? And how can you best serve them? How should you represent yourself to them? What channels should you be on? Do you even need to be on social media? So we go like really deep and extract a lot of wisdom

a lot of those consults and I get over and over and over again how much clarity comes out of the consults and having everybody maybe on a, if it's a bigger team, everybody looking in the same direction because it actually makes businesses work more effectively and efficiently as well. But I, there was one really cute small win. I think it's a big win actually during one of our consults. Someone I, I suggested, was like, well, why aren't you

using your email marketing. And they were like, I, you know, I just kind of forgot about it. And so then after our consult, they like powered that back up and they sold out of all of their product. Like, so.

Gordon Sheppard (06:55.766)
And so what a remarkable thing to have you two in the room to see where those gaps are and give either immediate solutions that they can get right away to get, you know, immediate results, or I'm guessing the long haul results that you would do to implement over time, getting to know who they are, and then getting out there to close that gap down through I'm gonna say the experimentation and iteration that you would put into play. Well, good. This is we've got a really good sense of this strong team that came together in friendship.

Michelle Scully (07:03.723)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (07:22.014)
And then has been seven years together. And honestly, I think in your business that's a long time to be together in a tough business, right? These clients are fickle. I know on the advisory side, often they don't have budgets for what you're doing and they fuss and whatever, but you've been here, which means you're serving at the highest level. They do have budgets for you. You are making it work and you're demonstrating your value.

to the marketplace in what you described. So it gets to me to my question in this interview to say, you know, if you had described one of your biggest wins, and I'm not sure maybe I'll just say Michelle and Kass jump in. I'm not sure who's gonna articulate it, but what would that win be and how would you describe it?

Kass Laboucane (07:53.982)
So

We've had a lot of wins over the years. we were kind of thinking about what we wanted to chat about today, and we've had a lot of lessons too, but I think we want to talk about something that's currently happening in the business right now. So a win that we're working through currently at this time, and I think it's been about a redefinition or a redefining of what success looks like for our business, particularly in this year. I think a lot of conventional business advice is always telling you to grow, grow, push your team harder, push yourself harder. And I think in the last 12 months.

Months, even particularly in the last six months, we've been doing a really good job of redefining success as stability. And instead of growth, we're focusing on creating a business that can bear the weight of more growth and really looking at our foundational structures and making sure that those are strong before we grow. So that's kind of where we're at and what we're working through right now, and what we kind of wanted to talk about today, some of the things that we're doing to make that happen.

Gordon Sheppard (08:50.935)
If I can pick on a dozen leaders I could name from this podcast alone, you're on the right path. Congratulations. I mean, it's funny to be in business for that length of time, but to get to this level now where you're like, we're gonna dig on this foundation because we're ready, we wanna grow, but we're gonna be patient in a sense to get through this phase. Michelle, what's what does stability mean and and why is this the win?

Michelle Scully (09:11.222)
stability means like basically it's been a lot of restructuring and

kind of where it came from is our values. Like we've always tried to find balance and flexibilities for both ourselves and our team. That's just something that we've always wanted to offer and one of the reasons why we started this business. just making sure that while the growth is important and train the systems that support the growth aren't going to push us beyond our own personal physical energetic means is really, really important.

to us and so yeah sometimes that means we have to say no to revenue if the wrong fit comes in at the wrong time and that feels really really uncomfortable but yeah we really realize like if we do want to scale we actually have to step Cas and I need to let go of control step back from the company's like day-to-day operations and we need to basically like focus on what makes

what moves the business forward, essentially. So it's creating lots of structures of support for us and for our staff members so that everyone feels really empowered, comfortable, and knows when to maybe bring Casani into a conversation.

Kass Laboucane (10:35.208)
Yeah, if I can

Gordon Sheppard (10:35.449)
Wonderful.

Kass Laboucane (10:36.476)
If I can jump in on that too and add to that, I think in the beginning of a business, and I know a lot of founders that have been on this podcast and who probably listened to it can relate to the scrappy first couple of years where everything that comes your way you say yes to, right? You're not necessarily choosing stuff that's a perfect fit for you. You're saying yes because you want to grow and you're just trying to take on business and get your name out there and get some word of mouth going. And I think that we were in that mindset for so long, just accepting, saying yes, taking and pushing. And there was a lot of stuff.

That ended up not being properly aligned for us. And that pushes you to your max, right? You become burnt out on things that aren't fulfilling the business, fulfilling your passions within the business. And I think we were seeing a lot of that bear out in ourselves and in our team over the last year. And so I think it was time for us to reflect and look back and say, okay, we are saying yes to a lot, and we need to start saying no to things. And like Michelle said, it's an uncomfortable place to be in. And

That's what we've been working through the last like year.

Gordon Sheppard (11:36.602)
Well, good on you for hitting this moment. It really is a wall that many entrepreneurs hit, right? When you're saying that right fit. But lucky for the clients that would be coming in the door now, because everything would is gaining clarity. So the fit that does come in the door, they're going to get the best of you and what you can offer, along with being a values driven type win that you're getting here along the way. This is great. Well, I whenever I'm in this type of conversation, I always like to jump into what I call the anatomy of the wind to examine the strategy, work plan, people, operations, and results behind the win. Strategically, I've heard vision.

there's a mission aspect to this. There's values that are involved in this and you know, there's some goals that you have along the way. Michelle, what strategically would be a highlight that you'd like to point out beyond what you've already pointed out, which is we've got a values-driven approach for stability in a sense, that's gonna serve our company better and be prepared to grow. But any other comments about strategic highlights for this?

Michelle Scully (12:27.334)
I would just say like...

redefining success overall has been a really big strategic win that has given us a lot of confidence actually because we're seeing the results. I know we'll talk about that kind of later. But yeah, having the confidence to say no to things, really, really uncomfortable, especially for me, especially I know Kass has had problems with saying no about things in the past as well. So that was a really big like

personal growth for both of us. And it feels so empowering, like so, so empowering to really feel like you have such a solid vision and that you know where you want to grow. So yeah, I would say like confidence is like a really big key in this whole conversation.

Kass Laboucane (13:18.396)
Yeah, and you come you come back to that definition a lot, right? If you're meeting with someone or an email or a lead comes in and you're having those meetings and you're kind of filtering through whether the candidate's a good fit, you come back to that definition. Well, what does success look look like for us this year? And is that going to further that mission and further that purpose? And a lot of times, you know, if it's not, then we have those conversations whereas I don't think we were doing that before and it's made a big difference.

Gordon Sheppard (13:18.765)
Love it.

Michelle Scully (13:21.782)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (13:42.405)
This is really interesting because it bleeds into the second step of the work plan. And I'm going to say, you know, when I say work plan, you've been to together seven years in your company and gotten it this far and done this moment. But I'm going to pick up the work plan that moment in time. There was a moment in this idea where you weren't defining what success was. And so what month or what year was it when you're like, gosh. And the light bulb went off about we need to define what success is and we're going to act on this. Was that within the last year? Has it been two years in the making cast? What was your comment on that be?

Kass Laboucane (14:13.129)
Well, I think

For a long time it w we were just a partnership, right? We were a partnership and it was just Michelle and I and we operated like that for four years. And then there came a point where we were both burnt out. And I think everyone can relate to that, that feeling of exhaustion and having a laundry list of things that you have to do, but not even being able to start because you're so tired. And so we decided to grow our team. And I think that was a huge pivot point for us. And so we hired someone that supports Michelle on her side of the business.

She's been such a blessing and she's part-time. And we hired someone on my side of the business that kind of works in the content marketing side. and she's full-time, and so we doubled basically our team. and that was kind of the first inflection point of being like, okay, success doesn't necessarily look like burnout, and us doing everything, and that was like the biggest first hurdle. And then as our we had our team and we were working together, I think it's just been in the last year that we're starting to see ourselves pushed to capacity even as a team. So it's not just Michelle and I.

Anymore, even our team members are starting to feel the load of a lot of work. And so for us to look at everything and go, okay, this isn't working anymore, you know, we need our team members to feel energized and excited about coming to work and not flat out every single second of the day. And we don't want our team to feel like that. And so I think kind of in the last six months, that's kind of been the initiative to say, all right, we need to start, we need to go back to the drawing board and seeing how our systems are working and how to improve their work-life balance as well as our own.

Gordon Sheppard (15:42.437)
Congratulations on being open to the clarity. A lot of times the burnout can take you almost out of the game. Shawnee Gwynn was on. She owns her own communications firm. She got clarity in an ambulance. So the burnout got her to the ambulance. She said, I when I was lying in the ambulance, I didn't know if I was gonna live, but I knew what I had to do if I was gonna if I did live. And when she went back to her team, not dissimilar to the arc that you're on right now, started to really empower her team to be able to make more decisions.

Kass Laboucane (16:00.777)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (16:11.138)
And take on those right things and use her time in the right way, including having a young family as well. So doesn't that sort of sharpen the saw for, you know, making these things going forward? Any comments on this, Michelle, as you're listening?

Michelle Scully (16:23.626)
No, mean, you nailed it on the head. Yeah, again, like I feel like everything we do is like values based and.

We really do care about our team members. They're so helpful and we can't do it without him. Kass can't be here without me. I can't be here without her. so understanding that mental health and health and the flexibility really matters to all of us. try to, we have to make systems that support that. We can't just like let everything fly. We have to make structure and we hadn't necessarily

done it to the level that we needed to do it. And so yeah, we saw the problem, we've actively just tried fixing it. Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (17:11.278)
And you're getting and you're getting at it, which is great. So strategy, work plan. There's always people involved in a win. through this journey, Kass, how would you describe your attitude before when you were burning out versus the ride and and what sort of what were the moments along the way? was it easy sailing to get to this moment of clarity, or was it ups and downs, or how would you describe your own attitude that?

Michelle Scully (17:16.852)
Yeah.

Kass Laboucane (17:32.119)
No. It it it never is. Michelle and I always joke that we like to learn things the hard way with everything, always.

So yeah, if anyone is ever just starting out and making mistakes, that's actually the way you do it. You do everything wrong first and then you learn. But no, I think like for Michelle and I, we both started as creatives, not necessarily business people. And so naturally in growing a team, there's a lot that comes with that, right? There's HR and there's people management, and you're not just a creative working, I'm not just a writer anymore working on the stuff that I'm passionate about. I'm actually working with another writer, and she's working on projects, and I'm kind of mentoring her, and I'm also holding her.

accountable to processes and systems and standards within the company and so there's a lot of learning that was involved in that and how to create guardrails around their capacity and how to set up lane ownership so they feel empowered to take on you know things that are going wrong with a client on themselves without always having to come back to you. So I think naturally just having a team there's always going to be an obstacle and you're like okay we need to put a system in place for this. So I think I I think like a great example of that would be some

Going wrong with a client. My team member that's on my side of the business, Ray, she does a lot, she works a lot with our clients, right? For a long time it was just me, and I kind of worked with her and delegated. And when we started restructuring things, we started putting her more client-facing and empowering her to speak to clients, and especially even when something comes up where someone's pushing back on a deadline or they're asking for something rushed or what have you, right? We're trying to give her the agency and the feeling of empowerment.

To say, no, that's actually not okay, or we'll do it this way, or this is the way Spark and and Pony works. And instead of her always having to come back to me and ask if that's all right, I want her to feel confident and knowing she can address that herself. So that's one of the first things that I would say is just empowering our team to operate in their lane and feel confident there. yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (19:35.185)
But who but nobody nobody wants to give up control? That's that's a hard moment, right? When you're like, wait a second, it's not perfect. And in your world, it's like the comma's gotta go over there, whatever you're down to in terms of making that but but letting go, allowing those errors to occur, the natural learning errors that go along kind of with that. Michelle, how's your attitude been through this, would you say, if you had to describe it?

Michelle Scully (19:55.959)
open the change. It's something where I...

I see a problem and I just like naturally always want to optimize and fix things, you know? So I think my biggest challenge has been trying to focus on like what to change necessarily because there's so many options when you're looking at everything. But it felt really, really good. Even when we were looking at our service offerings, we were like, we're doing too many things.

how do we make these so these processes are repeatable, like easy to learn internally, easy for someone to like take over. And when we make those processes, I feel really, really confident. And when we cut a bunch of our services and offerings, that felt really good to me too. It felt like a weight was coming off my shoulders. It felt like we could finally let go of some things and focus on the things that absolutely

like fuel us that we absolutely love to do and that we do really really well and so I keep coming back to confident but it always

Gordon Sheppard (21:14.111)
open open open to learn along the way. That's remarkable. I'm so glad to hear it, right? Because it's so tough often when you're the founders, to sort of be open to that next thing or that next person doing it their way in a sense, in terms of how that goes. That's so good. The it's interesting. I I always love asking founders, who do you listen to as I seek out in this people zone? Were there other people that were influential in helping this change to occur? Or was it the two of you in the trenches just figuring it out, or who were some of the other key players?

just briefly that helped to influence this shift in your business.

Michelle Scully (21:49.847)
We have a, we work with Ben Burns, so he is.

a mentor to us. He owns his own agency in the States actually, and he's worked with like Chris Doe. He has like an accelerator program for like the creative industry in general that's global. So they've been such a solid like support system for us. And I think one of the things that maybe we should have done sooner was getting mentors. We kind of did a move.

I think because there's two of us, do have more support, but truly we make every mistake the hardest way for so long. and mentors can, see the value of just having that feedback and having someone that you trust in your industry that's actually done it and done it really well.

Kass Laboucane (22:31.061)
Yeah.

Kass Laboucane (22:51.07)
Yeah.

Michelle Scully (22:52.114)
Yeah, so I think that would be my big one.

Kass Laboucane (22:56.554)
And

And like I said before too, Michelle and our incredibly creative people and we're very skilled at what we do on the creative side. The mistakes are more just like the business running and learning on the fly. Like we excelled at the product that we gave people, at the relationships that we built with people. That was where we thrived. It was like the behind the scenes minutia the business that it was like, How does this work? Or let's do this the wrong way, and then this needs to happen in a f well-functioning business. So that was kind of where we were like learning and I think mentorship would have been really

really helpful. In the beginning, I actually met with a gal from Grant McQueen. She was asking some questions about like starting her career in this space and in marketing and that was the piece of advice that I gave her. I said get yourself a business mentor right away.

Gordon Sheppard (23:43.623)
Yeah, and how lucky for the people listening to get that mentorship thing in sooner. Please live from you know, learn from your experience, get that in as early as possible, you know, and allow yourself that other voices that you can choose from to sort of make things move forward. It just sounds like you're lining up and doing all the right things, the hardest way, like you mentioned, through the lived experience, but you're doing those things that are necessary for leveling up. And we could do it by revenue, for example, when we start to talk about.

Kass Laboucane (23:49.109)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (24:08.764)
what levels of revenue and how do you make that next jump to that next level. Of course you can talk about having your balanced, stabilized scenario as well. And to, but again, these processes and things need to be put in place to get that done. Strategy, work plan, people, operational highlights you've mentioned over and over again. You've put in systems and processes. What what are the one or two, I'm gonna say systems or processes that you're proud of that we you can pass along to say, well, we did this and and this is why it was important.

Michelle Scully (24:36.918)
I think one of the big ones for me was like the capacity guardrails. So we truly at the end of the day, like me and Kass do not feel good if...

either one of us or staff are feeling burnt out or overrun, like that's never the goal. I would say like creative industry is full of agencies that like kind of push everyone to the edge. And we actually have hit those same roadblocks ourselves, like in, you know, different times of our business. And so one of the big ones was we made a deliberate choice to push back on that internally. We were, we

We are and we will continue to actively monitor staff capacity. So we want to make sure that no one's operating at more than 70 to 80 % capacity, even if it would be easier to like squeeze more out of the team, because that allows people if you're sick, you actually get to take a day off. If you need a vacation, it doesn't put extra stress on anyone. And hey, if you have extra time, then maybe you could do some help with the business, right?

We really, really want to avoid having stuff that isn't feeling good mentally and physically and that they know that we appreciate them, that we're not just ringing them through. So yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (26:05.734)
Love it. And Karen Unlim was on the show episode two. she does wellness check-ins with her team at every meeting. And it was an interesting sort of learning to say that was important. And they're in the journalism industry. And so that was it's got its own semi creative creative piece as well. Kass, is any of this resonating for you as well?

Kass Laboucane (26:22.697)
Yeah, I think we're really collaborative too. So when we went back to the drawing board with a lot of this stuff, it it included a lot of meeting with meetings with our team members saying, like, how are you feeling? What about your day to day isn't working for you? What about the process right now is a mental roadblock for you? Like how can we optimize there? So a lot of this stuff Michelle and I are doing, we're doing in tandem with our team. They're helping us from

Michelle Scully (26:45.494)
Okay.

Kass Laboucane (26:46.145)
where they're working at in their position in the company. another thing that we did too, just speaking operationally, is we now have a lot of schedule discipline, which is really nice. I think for a really long time. And I know, I know for sure that like other agencies can relate to this, being sucked into kind of chaos within different organizations, being drawn into their processes and how they do things and pull pushing back deadlines. And we created a really structured schedule within

our agency. So now we have a production schedule that works so we only do one shoot with a client per month instead of doing back to back to back shoots. And then all of a sudden we have a team that's really burnt out. And then we have to go into production and video editing and we have no gas left in the tank, right? And so we've created a very strict production playbook that is programmed into our calendar now and everything feels really repeatable and systemized. We have a 30-day script timeline now which we never had before. Just little things like this that we put in

As guardrails for the client as well as for our team, where we're all coming back to that same timeline, I think have eliminated a lot of stress and a lot of pressure on our team. So that's just been one thing that's been really nice. And then I think as well, when we talk about the communication side of things within the team, everyone used to be CC'd on everything. People didn't feel comfortable sending an email without having everyone on it, and that's really changed too. We have again going back to what I said before, people have ownership of the roles that they're in, they feel confident sending.

An email without necessarily everyone on the team being on it. and there there's also a clear path for escalation. So again, if there is something that needs Michelle or I involved, either one of our team members, Leanne or Ray, they know when to bring us into the conversation and that eliminates burnout in our end too, so we're not involved in the small day-to-day combos. We know when we're needed, and it's really for more for like high-level strategic stuff or bigger escalation or issues that require.

thinking. So those are some other things that we've done that have made it like a huge difference.

Gordon Sheppard (28:48.102)
Wow. The I it doesn't sound like I'm talking to creatives. Sounds like I'm talking to business owners, right? In terms of the lessons learned, like the way you're articulating things. No, but you're you're you're saying it. And but again, it look at the way look at the way you've you've had to earn it, like through the lived experience of wow, that's that that didn't feel good. let's how do we gonna do this? And I love the piece in there of like we went to our team and and asked. That's just so powerful for leaders to make sure you don't come in with process first and then try and dump it on them.

Kass Laboucane (29:09.302)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (29:16.164)
what a nice, again, organic way. And when we think about retention and growing the foundations that allow you, you know, to be ready to go where you want to go, I'm guessing. this is wonderful to hear at this moment in the process. So great. We've heard strategy, work plan, people, operations. We've heard some highlights along the way. Finally, there's results. There's quantitative and qualitative results. Quantitatively, your team doubled there somewhere a little while ago. Quantitatively, you could talk about any quantitative highlights that you'd like to.

point out and I'm again I'm not looking for your books opened up on the financial side, but what are some of the quantitative things that you'd like to point out? Kass?

Kass Laboucane (29:50.455)
Yeah, no. well I think

I want to touch on retention. I'll let Michelle speak to some of the numbers of the business. But for us to have two team members that have been with us for two years that are going strong, that are happy, I think this turnover rate in our industry is it's quick. People don't stick around for long in agencies, again, because they're pushed to the max all the time. I think it sits under two years. And so for us to have to hit two years with our our team members, I think is a big one. And then Michelle, if you want to speak on the the results for the business side.

Michelle Scully (30:22.09)
Yeah, yeah, I would say like.

A big thing was last year we had, we were working with like over 30 client relationships. And then this year we're sitting at around 18, so half. So we actually deliberately cut that down. That wasn't a loss. Those were choices for us. And our revenue actually stayed on the same pace regardless. Actually landing us roughly where it did last year. So that's a pretty big indicator that I think we're doing.

something right here and then even when we look at the profit margins, so technically our profit margins have increased around 50 % like so far this year anyways up from like 33 % from last year. So yeah I would say those are you know three big you know including CAS's qualitative results that we've noticed.

Gordon Sheppard (31:21.382)
Wonderful. I mean, that's congratulations to be able to do few to serve fewer clients with a better margin at a higher level with the discipline that you're talking about, where the team, you know, now is in and especially in your industry, like you're saying, where turnover is crazy, you're gonna be the agency of choice, is what I'm hearing in terms of when you go to attract and retain new people in the future as you're onboarding, if you choose to onboard, depending on what you want to do with it as you go forward. that's really great. Kass, how does how's this all feel?

After all this process.

Kass Laboucane (31:53.505)
Sometimes hard. If I'm being honest. It pushes against the very nature of I think that how we are and I don't know, like I think I think a lot of women feel like this in the industry. It's hard saying no.

it's hard to have uncomfortable conversations and push back on things. you're raised to be people pleaser plea people pleasers as young women, to make everyone in the room happy. And so naturally to do some of this stuff, you have to say no and maybe make some people uncomfortable. And so I think just naturally to have that professional development within both Michelle and I to sit in that discomfort, that hasn't always felt great, but it's also been great, if that makes sense. It I feel like often

Times when I'm feeling pushed in like against my nature, or I'm doing something, it's growth. Doing something that makes me uncomfortable. I think there's a lot of growth there, and I think one thing too that Michelle and I also wanted to touch on just quickly is that while we're teaching our team to have autonomy, we're also focusing on growing the business, which is something that has been recent. We've been in the work ourselves for a very, very long time doing the client work ourselves with our team, and I think we both came to a realization that now that we

have that stability and we want to maybe start thinking about growing the business again now that we in the direction that we want, now that we have those capacity guardrails, now that we have a team that's working within a comfortable capacity limit, we need to step out of the work and move into more sales, which again, I'm not a salesperson. I'm a creative. So oftentimes I feel uncomfortable doing that stuff. But I really care about what we do and I know we help a lot of people and so I can speak confidently on that and I'm passionate about it. And so I think when I lean into that good feeling a sales

Gordon Sheppard (33:40.092)
It looks like you're building this airplane in the air. Do you know what I mean? Like while you're bolting in the pieces that you need. You started with a strong foundation in a sense from your creative side. And then you're, you know, these this business ownership leveling up is what you're doing. It'd be interesting to talk to you in about five years from now, because this is a wonderful moment where you're gonna this foundation has real legs for the future for what you're describing. So congratulations. Michelle, how's it feel for you?

Kass Laboucane (34:03.853)
Hope so.

Michelle Scully (34:06.73)
Good, it feels good. It feels uncomfortable. Sometimes owning a business can feel like you're doing therapy.

because every single version of yourself, every single insecurity, every single, you know, like quirk is going to rear its head and it is gonna get in the way of your growth and you have to face it. You cannot ignore it. So yeah, it's like therapy on steroids. But I feel.

Kass Laboucane (34:38.253)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (34:40.37)
If you want to

Michelle Scully (34:41.686)
Yeah, but I feel really engaged and I feel like I love all the problem solving aspects to it. I love that I get to look at different things and make different systems. So yeah, I feel really engaged and really proud of where we brought our business to today. yeah, and I'm okay that it took us a long time to figure out some of this stuff.

Yeah, it doesn't really irk me. It kind of makes me laugh at this point. It's like, yeah, that makes sense.

Gordon Sheppard (35:14.141)
Well, and it it's in line with again, I'm gonna tell you from having met so many different leaders on the show alone, I hear ten years and twenty years frequently, for how long it takes to kind of work it all out in a sense, entrepreneurially or for organizations to move forward. So funny enough, I I don't know if it feels this way, but I would say from what I can reflect briefly is you're on track with the the timelines and what you're describing along the way. Kass, I mean to pick up on something that you mentioned about being a woman.

As a leader. And Teresa Spinelli was on the show. She owns the Italian Center. they're on their way to their sixth location, $130 million a year in revenue. She said on the interview, she said, you know, Gord try being a woman in an Italian family running an enterprise like this. Another thing was she said, you know, Gord, I think men won't admit their faults, but women won't admit their strengths.

Kass Laboucane (36:03.425)
Yeah, wow. Yeah. Yeah, it's so true. We

I think that's one thing too that we've been doing a better job of too is even just talking about ourselves in rooms, there's a lot to be proud of here. We've helped a lot of people. We worked on some pretty phenomenal projects with some large scale clients across North America and feeling more confident about sharing those details with people. I I feel like a lot of times, like Michelle said, it's therapy. It's like going against your core instinct of being small in a room and not being braggy and it's like doing the opposite of those things.

It's just it's just hard and it's an exercise that you have to do over and over and over again, like a muscle you just need to strengthen.

Gordon Sheppard (36:46.897)
And showing up for this podcast and talking about your wins, I hope, is part of that journey as you're going along the way. And I th I know that's what it's been as again, I help other leaders surface their wins in an articulated way in this show. well, this has just been such a terrific conversation. I just when I get wonderful leaders on like yourselves, I'm just gonna go to both of you and make sure that if you had a few sentences to say that next founder, that next leader in a sense, Michelle, what

kind of little few sentences of advice would you like to pass along and then Kass I'll finish up with you. Go ahead, Michelle.

Michelle Scully (37:20.566)
jump into the community and don't be afraid to find a mentor, and interview mentors too. if you're looking at someone to mentor you, I would recommend even starting with your industry and what, what you want to cultivate. Maybe talk to someone who has already done the thing that you're trying to build. because you're, they will save you weeks.

in weeks of mistakes. sometimes you're not going to listen to them and you just got to learn it the hard way yourself because that I think also is the entrepreneurial spirit. And that's OK. You're going to make mistakes. just as long as you learn from it, it is truly not a big deal.

Gordon Sheppard (38:07.549)
Awesome. Kass?

Kass Laboucane (38:10.295)
Yeah, burnout is not a sign of success. I am just the kind of person that can work and work and work and I'll never stop. And I think that if I work harder at something, it's naturally gonna get better. And that's not always gonna happen. You can work, work, work, work, work, and you'll just eventually burn out. And that does not mean you were successful. I think build a business that fuels the life you want. Don't build a business that holds you back. And when you can look at the things that you value in your life and you build a business around that, I think you'll have a lot of success.

Gordon Sheppard (38:40.007)
Well said. Thank you so, so much for coming on the show and sharing your lived wisdom that so many people are gonna learn from. Michelle, Kass, thank you so much for being on the show.

Kass Laboucane (38:50.829)
Yeah, thanks for having us. Yeah, this was fun.

Michelle Scully (38:51.542)
This is lovely.