"The Freelance Leader"
Justin Gignac, co-founder of Working Not Working - an online marketplace for creative freelancers. Our conversation was recorded on-stage at the 4as Talent2030 Conference. Justin Gignac has been a cheerleader, a professional mascot and an entrepreneur. We talked about what it was like to grow up as the son of a clown, about the extraordinarily simple idea that was the genesis of WNW, about the army he’s building, and about what we should be teaching our children.
Three Takeaways
- A willingness to solve the problem that is in front of you.
- The self-awareness and willingness to accept things that don’t work in your favor and do something about it.
- The ability to maintain humility; to know it’s not all about you.
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 46: "The Freelance Leader" Justin Gignac
This is Fearless, and I’m Charles Day.
Every week, I talk to leaders who are unlocking creativity - leaders who are turning the impossible … into the profitable!!! And in the process, are discovering what they’re capable of themselves.
This week, my conversation with Justin Gignac, co-founder of Working Not Working - an online marketplace for creative freelancers.
Our conversation was recorded on-stage at the 4as Talent2030 Conference. At some points, you’ll hear us discussing the below chart:
This episode is called…
“The Freelance Leader”
“When we started Working Not Working, about 90% of our clients were ad agencies. We've been doing this six years now and it's less than half.”
40% of the American workforce is going to be freelance by 2020. That presents incredible challenges for leaders.
In an environment in which so many people are willing to work for themselves, offering them money, a title, an office and some benefits is not enough. Not nearly enough.
From a buyer’s market, we’ve moved to a seller’s market.
But not for everyone.
Working Not Working is marketplace of some of the best freelance creative talent in the world. It’s highly curated, taking only ten percent of the people that would like to be represented by the site.
Each year they run a survey that asks their members, whether they would be interested in taking a full-time job, and if so, which companies they would most like to work for.
Then they publish the results.
The advertising industry used to be the destination of choice for the world’s best creative talent. Not any more. In the most recent WNW survey, of the top 50 companies that their member said they wanted to work for, fewer than 20 were advertising agencies.
Creativity is the life-blood of so many businesses these days. The most critical business fuel source in the world.
If you lead a company that is depending on creativity, this list is worth studying.
The talent is out there. And they want to work for companies where they can use their talent to make a difference.
Are you building a company where they can?
Justin Gignac has been a cheerleader, a professional mascot and an entrepreneur.
We talked about what it was like to grow up as the son of a clown, about the extraordinarily simple idea that was the genesis of WNW, about the army he’s building, and about what we should be teaching our children.
I hope you enjoy it.
Charles:
Justin, welcome to Fearless. Thank you for being on the show and thank you for being here at Talent 2030.
Justin Gignac:
Yeah, my pleasure.
Charles:
I ask every guest the same question to start with. When did creativity first show up in your life? What's your first memory of something being creative?
Justin Gignac:
Oh, wow. I did a lot of weird things as a kid. I think it's because my parents were weird. My mom was class clown and my dad was a actual clown. So, some people are horrified right now, other people. So, I grew up with that around me. So, I was always around weirdos. I think I would sometimes be in my dad's magic shows. When I was five years old, he produced me out of a dollhouse onstage. There's very, things that I've been working through in therapy. Yeah. I used to sell paper airplanes. I found a book for paper airplanes and I used to make those and sell them to the kids in the neighborhood. I was always drawing and doing art and all that.
Charles:
Your father actually got dressed up, made up, the whole thing.
Justin Gignac:
Oh, yeah. For sure. Yeah. It was a lot. He had a red wig that used to, he could make it fly up. He was Bixbo the Clown.
Charles:
Bixbo.
Justin Gignac:
Yeah. It was terrifying.
Charles:
Where did you grow up?
Justin Gignac:
This was in Connecticut, in Southeastern Connecticut.
Charles:
Are there a lot of clowns in Connecticut?
Justin Gignac:
Apparently, there were. It was furious competition. But he was the most popular clown in Southeastern Connecticut, maybe Eastern Connecticut, for quite a few years.
Charles:
So, no surprise you ended up in advertising, I guess.
Justin Gignac:
Yeah. It totally makes sense. Yeah. No.
Charles:
How did you get into advertising? What did you focus on when you were in school?
Justin Gignac:
So, I knew I wanted to be in advertising since I was 11 years old.
Charles:
Not the family business.
Justin Gignac:
Not the family business at all. But I used to watch commercials all the time. My stepfather, one day, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to be. We were sitting in the parking of a grocery store and he worked construction, poured concrete, was a garbage man, did all these very tough jobs. He was like, "You're really into those commercials." I used to record the Clio Awards because they used to be aired on TV. So, I'd throw the VHS in to record those and watch the commercials.
He said that and ever since that moment, I was like, "Oh, I want to be in advertising." So, my mind was made up from 11 years old. I went to School of Visual Arts here in New York. It was the only place I knew of that had creative side of advertising. I did that and I got a job right after school at Ogilvie. It's gone on from there.
Charles:
You were what at Ogilvy?
Justin Gignac:
I was an art director. Yeah.
Charles:
How did you get into the agency? Was it tough to get in?
Justin Gignac:
I knew somebody, which always helps. One of my classmates, her dad was a career director there and she knew the recruiter there. So, she just threw my book on their desk and I ended up getting interviewed. It was right after September 11th, too. So, there wasn't a lot of jobs and I felt really fortunate to have gotten a job at that time.
Charles:
Did you target Ogilvy specifically? Was there something about that agency other than the fact that you had a connection?
Justin Gignac:
They had a program called the Young Guns. So, basically, it was a lot of brightly colored furniture in the middle of the office where they would hire three creative teams and they'd put us on really good projects. It made everyone else in the agency hate us. So, it was really great. But no. We got some really great opportunities and got to work on stuff that maybe Ogilvie didn't have the sexiest reputation at the time. So, it was their way of trying to bring in good talent, which was a smart move.
Charles:
So, when you joined Ogilvy, you'd spent about half your life, or something more than half your life, wanting to get into advertising.
Justin Gignac:
Yeah.
Charles:
What did you think it was going to be like and how was it when you got into it by comparison?
Justin Gignac:
I thought it was going to be, it actually wasn't that far off. Got to goof around and come up with silly ideas and smart ideas and then very quickly got to start making commercials. So, I was, for the first six months, I didn't really have a lot of briefs. So, I just went around talking to everybody, but to an annoying extent. I found out from friends of mine now that they really hated me back then because I would just go around like, "Hey, guys. What's up?" 22 year old me was very enthusiastic. But then I met a lot of people that way. I was able to make some stuff and then stayed friends with a lot of those people.
Charles:
How long were you at Ogilvy?
Justin Gignac:
How long was I there?
Charles:
Yeah.
Justin Gignac:
A year and a half.
Charles:
Where then?
Justin Gignac:
Then I went to Fallon New York, which at the time was around and I think it's back now. But I went there and it was only a creative department of six people, eight people at the time. Ari Merkin was creative director, or ACD. We were a really small team. The agency was only 30 people when I started. It was a really close knit group. They closed it after a year and a half because Ari and Ann went and started their own agency. But at the time, we were the third most awarded agency in the country and we only had 30 people and eight creatives. So, it was a really special moment to be there and I was super sad when it closed. But I'm still friends with a lot of those people.
Charles:
What drew you there? What made you leave the size of Ogilvy [crosstalk 00:04:52]?
Justin Gignac:
I want to do more creative work. So, they were doing some of the best work in the industry at the time. So, I was just really excited. They were working on Time Magazine doing amazing there, with Virgin Mobile, they were doing a bunch of really cool stuff. So, it was more in line also with my sense of humor. I didn't really get to do funny stuff at IBM. So, being able to do that on Virgin Mobile seemed a little bit more in line with my sense of humor.
Charles:
So, you're suddenly unemployed.
Justin Gignac:
When?
Charles:
When Fallon shut.
Justin Gignac:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was definitely unemployed. Yeah. They closed the agency.
Charles:
Apparently, it had a massive traumatic effect.
Justin Gignac:
They announced the agency over ... Pat Fallon came into the office when we were in the kitchen and they told us it was closing and this made no sense to us. I was just sobbing the entire time because I'm a crier a little bit, I guess. It's now been called Gignacing. My last name is Gignac. So, my friends called it Gignacing whenever someone gets emotional. So, I have a reputation. So, yeah. It was a bit traumatic. But then I was one of the first hires that Ari and Ann made at their new agency, Toy. I freelanced there for a few months and then went on full-time.
Charles:
Oh, I didn't know you were at Toy.
Justin Gignac:
Yeah.
Charles:
Oh, interesting.
Justin Gignac:
We did Elf Yourself and all that stuff for OfficeMax. Then I quit Toy after a year and a half because I don't stick to anything for more than 18 months, apparently. Then I went freelance. I had so many little art projects and stuff I wanted to do. So, I went on to do that.
Charles:
When did Working Not Working start to form as an idea in your head?
Justin Gignac:
Working Not Working started just as an answer to my own problem. So, I've been freelancing for about four years and I don't know if anybody here is freelancer or hired freelancers. It's a super inefficient process. Every time I'd want a gig, I would just go and call and email everybody I knew in the industry and was like, "Hey, do you got a job for me? You got a job for me?" Inevitably, nobody would because that's not how timing works.
But then two weeks later, I would get a call, I'd get booked. Awesome. Then without fail, I'd get four or five calls that week when I was already booked. I was like, "This is stupid." So, on my portfolio site, I put a giant blinking neon sign that was about this big on screen that I called the Justin Gignac freelance status apparatus. It was the thing, a little neon GIF I made in Photoshop and it said "Justin's working" or "Justin's available" or "Justin's available soon". It would blink on and off.
Then I had a Facebook group, a Twitter feed, a text alert, an iPhone app, and a mailing list to follow my availability. It was super obnoxious, kind of overkill. But what happened is I ended up with 40 agencies following me. Every time I'd flip my status to available, I'd get two or three job offers within a day. Any jobs I couldn't take, I would email to my art director friends, be like, "Hey, can you guys take this?" Initially, people were like, "Oh, that's cool." I'm like, "What's cool?" They're like, "Oh, that you would give your jobs to other people." I'm like, "Yeah, of course."
I think a lot of people would be afraid to share their connections. But for me, I was like, "There's plenty of work to go around for everyone. I want to help my friends." What ended up happening, though, was every time my friends that were recruiters, they would go, "All right, Justin. I see you're working by your little sign. Are any of your friends available?" I'm like, "Oh." So, now I'm the first person they're going to as a resource and I'm like, "Oh. I'm a rep now. How'd that happen?"
So, my co-founder, Adam Thompkins, and I, he was working on a startup of his own. He was trying to find freelance developers. He and I were talking and we're like, "If this blinking sign, basically a vacancy sign, could work for me, it probably could work for everybody. So, we're both art directors, so we quickly wireframed it up and we found a development studio to make it and we launched it six months later.
Charles:
What year was this?
Justin Gignac:
That was 2012. We launched in January 2012.
Charles:
What happened?
Justin Gignac:
What happened? A lot happened. We started trying to be really curated. So, we knew you could just go on the internet and find people. But we wanted to make sure that you're going here knowing you could find really good talent. So, we invited 300 of the best freelancers we knew and it was just people that we knew from our own network and we had worked with. It was New York, San Francisco, and a little bit of LA. We got those people on and we gave them all a couple invites and we said, "Hey. Don't screw this up. We want to make sure everyone's really good talent on here."
Very quickly, people didn't necessarily have the same loyalty to our creative standards as to their friends. So, a couple people got on and were like, "All right. This has to be more curated and it all has to go through us." So, we launched the site in beta, we got some agencies on using it, and then it took off. It didn't take off, to be honest, as quickly as we thought it would, because we're like, "Hey. We're solving everyone's problem and we're not charging commission."
So, for us, and being creatives ourselves, it was important not to charge commission. So, they could be times when I've used recruiters, they would charge anywhere from a 20% to 100% markup on my day rate and that felt predatory to me. So, we were making this site for our friends, for our friends who are creatives and our friends who hire creatives. So, we're like, "How do we just be fair?" So, we just decided to charge a monthly membership fee, couple hundred bucks a month, and you could hire anybody off the platform you wanted.
Charles:
So, the two of you were the sole arbiters in terms of who got on and who didn't?
Justin Gignac:
Initially, yeah.
Charles:
How does it work now?
Justin Gignac:
Now we have a membership board of over 200 members around the world who are all really talented and they're helping vet all the talent that's coming in.
Charles:
So, you have to get past all 200?
Justin Gignac:
No. It's a small percentage that you have to get through. But yeah. For us, the initial bar would be, "Is this somebody we would hire?" Our clients were the best agencies in the country, so we knew what their expectation was. Now we're using the community to help us vet that too. We also have different levels and memberships and where people can get on be a part of the community still. We want all of the all stars, but we want all of the future all stars as well. So, we're trying to get people at all levels.
Charles:
In the early days when it was just the two of you, did you get a lot of pushback when you denied people access?
Justin Gignac:
Oh, yeah. It's like it's not a great way to make friends by only letting in 10% of the people who apply. So, for someone who likes people and wants to be friends with people ... But it's what we had to do. It's what we had to do because our clients had an expectation. They knew they can go other places, but they were coming to us for our curation. So, it's what helped us grow. It's what helped build our reputation and it's helped what made it a desirable community to be a part of.
Charles:
Did you get into arguments between the two of you in terms of who you were letting in and who you weren't? Was there any of that tension?
Justin Gignac:
No, not really. We have pretty similar tastes. So, that made it easy. Then we were able to start hiring people to help us do that. But for the first three years, it was just Adam and I doing everything besides design development while also freelancing. So, talking about the panel's side hustles, I totally get that.
I think it was getting to the point where, all right, this is so much work. For two people doing sales and vetting talent and throwing parties and writing emails and all of that, then all right, now we're finally able to give up the freelance to be able to work full-time on it and we're finally able to pay ourselves. So, after three years, we retired from freelance and hired a couple people. Now we've been able to build the teams onsite.
Charles:
Was that the pivot point at which you thought this is now a business? This is a thing we have to-
Justin Gignac:
I think I always felt the pressure that this is a business because we had people paying us from after we got out of beta after a few months. So, I also felt an obligation that there's people paying us money, there's people who have problems that need to be solved, and we should be working really hard to solve them. So, I always felt guilty when I was freelancing because I wasn't able to put ... I was still working crazy hours because I'd just stay up really late working after my gigs. But I always felt an obligation that this is a business and these creatives are relying on us to find work and these companies are relying on us to find the talent. So, I always felt that pressure to be dedicated to it.
Charles:
Did you like leading?
Justin Gignac:
I didn't have to lead anyone because there was only two of us.
Charles:
But as you started to hire people.
Justin Gignac:
I thought I would. I don't know. It's hard having employees. I was an art director. We were two art directors who started a website. We had no business experience at all and I had never been a creative director full-time at an agency, so I didn't have any opportunity to lead people. My last full-time job, I left when I was 27. So, getting employees is hard because it's really difficult to micromanage 10 people, which I got pretty good at it.
Megan works [inaudible 00:13:18]. She thinks it's extra funny. But yeah. I'm starting to go with things, which is good. It takes a lot of self-awareness to be a leader and it's not something I think I completely had at the beginning. So, it's nice now to be able to have this ability to be able to listen to a team and really try to think about who they are and what they need.
Charles:
When did you start putting together the top companies list? When I think I first heard about you two or three years, three years ago, I think, at a talent conference, one of the things that I was drawn to is the fact that you had started to curate this list of the top companies that the best creatives want to work at. When did you start putting that together?
Justin Gignac:
I think this past year was our fourth year. So, I think 2013 or 2014, we've been doing the list since then. It all started because we had assumptions being freelancers ourselves that everyone wanted to freelance like, "Hey, this is great. Let's do this." So, we did a survey of our membership who, at the time, was 90% freelancers and 10% full-time. We said, "For the right opportunity, would you take a full-time job?" My expectation was that it would be less than half the people. Over 80% said they would take a full-time job. I was like, "That shocked me."
So, then we were like, "Let's just find out where they want to work." So, we went and threw a survey out. There's a lot of other lists out there of top companies and top places to work and I think a lot of those, you have to apply for. Maybe you pay to enter. Our was just one empty form field. We're like, "All right. What's the one place you'd kill to work full-time? We got a few hundred. I think the first year, we got 400 responses and they named 300 different companies. We put together the top list.
It was really interesting to start to see that because one, it helped us with sales because we were like, "All right. Where do these people want to work?" Now Adam and I are going door to door saying, "Hey. We got all these people who say they want to work at your company. Why don't you sign up here?" So, that was really helpful for us. Then now, it's grown and it's been growing in credibility. It's getting us a lot of press every year when we do, which is nice when you're a small company trying to grow. But it's really helped us to find our focus. I think you have the list. I don't know.
Charles:
Have we got the slide of the list that we can put up? Next one. There you go.
Justin Gignac:
There you go.
Charles:
So, this is this year's.
Justin Gignac:
This is this year's and this is the fourth year we've done it.
Charles:
This is the fourth year. Okay. There are 50 companies on this list.
Justin Gignac:
50 companies. Yep. As you see, how many people here have worked at an ad agency? Okay, so the majority. Okay. When we started Working Not Working, about 90% of our clients were ad agencies. We've been doing this six years now and it's less than half. But from the start of this survey, we saw that only, on average, 15 to 18 of the 50 companies are what you call ad agencies. I'm sure all of you guys are feeling it.
I know when I got out of school, advertising had cornered the market on the place where kids who went to art school could go and make money and be creative. It's just not the case anymore. I think what I've seen happen, even since the six years we started this, in the few years I was freelancing before that, I think you just see that there's a diversity opportunity out there. It used to be a stigma, especially when I got out of school. You don't want to work in-house at a brand because you'd be doing coupons and direct mail flyers. Now, going in-house somewhere, they're doing amazing work too.
So, that was really, especially with the first list that came out, we were really surprised at the variety of companies. You have Tesla and SpaceX. NASA's been on the list ever year. So, you get this range of companies and you can start to see a little bit of what starts to trend. So, 2016, Snapchat was on the list. Instagram was not. 2017, Snapchat's not on the list, Instagram's on it. So, you start to see what's happening culturally and we started mentioning the companies that almost made it previously.
So, we had a honorable mention list. So, we started to see some of those companies make it into the list, like Collins. There's another one. There's three or four that were on the, Oddfellows, were on the up and coming before and now they're making it to the list. So, we're starting to see the trends of where our talent wants to go. Our talent is also beyond advertising. It's not just art directors and copywriters. We have photographers and animators and directors. So, that also attributes to the breadth of this list. But it's been really interesting to see what types of companies they want to work at, and ones that I didn't even realize were doing creative work.
Charles:
Are they conclusions you started to draw about the kinds of characteristics or the things that bond these companies together?
Justin Gignac:
I think a lot of them, especially some of these brands, they do a really great job of articulating their mission. I think these companies, like AirBNB, I know what AirBNB stands for and I know that they're talking about making someone feel like they can belong anywhere. Or you talk about Google or Facebook. It's really clear what they're doing and how they see themselves in the world. I think that's one of the things that maybe a lot of agencies lack is the ability to articulate what they bring to the world because now if you have this diversity opportunity, I'm going to be drawn to the brands and the companies that are aligned with my values.
Sometimes it's really hard to understand what an agency's values are or what makes them unique compared to each other. So, I think advertising has an advertising problem. We're really good at articulating other people's brands, but sometimes do a pretty shit job at articulating our own.
Charles:
Yeah. It's striking, isn't it? How many advertising agencies are on this list?
Justin Gignac:
I think 14, maybe.
Charles:
14 out of 50.
Justin Gignac:
Depends on how you define advertising.
Charles:
I think that's a good point, isn't it, because there's actually a real diversity in terms of ... As I was looking at this list a couple of days ago, to your point, it's hard to decide what is an ad agency and what isn't in some of the newer companies, the more traditional ones. I think it's obviously easier to see. So, if you were running an agency or if you had responsibility for developing and unlocking creative talent in an agency and you saw this list, what would you start to do about that? What would you start to think about doing to get your agency onto this list?
Justin Gignac:
I would make my agency creative again. I think a lot of ad agencies ... I signed as an art director with a promise that this is a place where I can be creative and I can do my best work. What I found a lot of times is we would come up with ideas, we'd present ideas, we'd focus group ideas, and we'd kill ideas. I'd be working all year for this one moment of validation where something got produced or I won an award and that's really sad. It's hard to get onboard with and go through the slog of working 18, 20 hour days, seven days a week to go in for once a year, we one a regional Addy. Yay.
It's like, "Why am I doing this?" I think a lot of people are taking a step back of, "What am I doing with my life and what's important to me?" I think companies that are aligned with that and allow you the opportunity to do great work are going to succeed. So, I see companies, even like Jennifer talking about Berlin supporting people's side hustles or RGA does that too. They have an incubator. I think that's really smart because almost every creative I know has an idea for a side project or an app or a business.
If you can start to encourage those and support those, you're going to be able to retain that talent because it is really scary going freelance. I know 70% of the creatives on our platform are freelance and that's where the industry is going. 40% of the American workforce is going to be freelance by 2020. Especially as the agency of record model goes away, you're going to have to have more flexibility, bring more freelancers in on a project basis. But I think you really need to be thinking about what people actually need and what they want and what they need in their careers.
I think a lot of times, we just try to hold onto people. I forgot. I think it was Jennifer who might have said that also. Yeah. If someone leaves, you're just renting people's time. This isn't a marriage. We're dating and you're here for a while and hopefully, you get a lot out of being here and you learn a lot out of being here. Then yeah, you're going to have other passions and interests and all that. You don't want to hold onto people and trap them.
So, I think a lot of it is just really being encouraging and being thoughtful about what people actually want and need in their lives and in their careers. I listened to an audiobook and I wrote notes because I really wanted to make sure I got it right. There's a book called Tribes by Sebastian Junger. He said there's these basic human needs to be content. One is people need to feel competent at what they do. Two, they need to feel authentic in their lives. Three, they need to feel connected to others.
So, if you're able to go and satisfy those needs for people where they can feel competent in what they do and they're not just being thrown in a meeting for the sake of being thrown in a meeting or putting out a fire or working on that big crap client that everyone knows is a nightmare because someone has to work on it, if I'm a creative now and I have opportunity and choice to work at any of these companies and a thousand more, I'm not going to go and pay my dues working on that client that makes everyone miserable, that's an asshole to everybody. There's no point.
I think what's going to end up happening is these agencies are going to have to go and start, kind of tear it down to the ground. I think you see some companies really, like [inaudible 00:22:36] and they have to lodge and they're working on different things, they're like, "All right. What can we do with technology and intellectual property and all that?" This thing is going away. My co-founder, Adam, I don't know where he got this because it's not like he's from the South or Appalachia.
But he talks about the raccoon and he talks about how you catch a raccoon is you put a nut in a jar and the raccoon reaches in and they grab the nut and they can never get their hand out the jar. Then you just come over and whack them over the head and you eat raccoon soup or something. But I think a lot of it, and it's something we talk about internally, I think sometimes your revenue is that nut and you're afraid to give up that nut. But it's preventing you from growing and being able to become what you need to become.
So, I think, we think about as a company too, are we doing the thing the same way it's always been done or the way we've always done it because we're afraid of letting go of the nut? I think with advertising, it's all changing. Everyone in this room is feeling it and I think there needs to be holistic changes about, all right, maybe we have to go and blow this whole thing up in order to be relevant on the other side of this.
Charles:
Yes. I think the notion of how much the world has changed to support the virtual workforce. I was talking about this on an episode a coupe weeks ago with Diane Wilkins. I think there's a lot about creative business that have been built around the physicality of an office space, a desk, a computer. People don't need those things anymore. The resources available on the web are so extraordinary. There's nothing you can't find.
So, I think that starting to change perceptions in terms of what are people drawn to exactly for the reason you're talking about is absolutely fundamental because otherwise, you're not going to succeed. People don't need to work there. You said, what, 60% of your clients are now non-agencies? Is that about right?
Justin Gignac:
Yeah. About that.
Charles:
Are you knocking on the doors of these non-agency companies as well?
Justin Gignac:
Yeah, for sure.
Charles:
What are you hearing and seeing when you go and talk to them that's different?
Justin Gignac:
I'm not personally. I don't have to do that anymore, so that's kind of nice. But I think they are valuing creativity. Things have changed even since we started Working Not Working where the creativity is part of the conversation of business now that maybe wasn't there before. There's an expectation for design. You have design-led companies like AirBNB, like Google, like Face- ... Facebook's less design-led. But even Spotify and a lot of these other ones where design and creativity is intrinsic in what they offer into the world.
That's being valued more and more. There's people trading in their smartphone because they don't like ... Like my friend's mom who's trading in her smartphone because she didn't like the user experience and wanted a different one. So, now, people who maybe aren't even versed in design have an expectation for it. So, now, and then companies are seeing the business value and what that brings to a company. You're starting to see that more and more and they're valuing it and investing in it too.
Charles:
How big is Working Not Working now?
Justin Gignac:
We just had a team summit in LA and there's 13 of us full-time now, which is really exciting, especially after Adam and I were staring at each other from across the table for three years. So, it's really nice to have help. It almost feels like we have a lot of really highly motivated overachievers and they want to do more and more. So, we're just trying to figure out how do we give them the resources to do things they really want to do.
Charles:
How do you go about making sure that you're constantly reassessing the validity of your own approach? To your point, a lot of these companies, a lot of companies have fallen off this list. Just [inaudible 00:26:12] habits, right? They just kept doing the things that they used to do. How are you building your company so that that doesn't happen to you?
Justin Gignac:
When we did our team summit, we had really honest conversations about what our challenges are. We let the team just go for it, and Megan was there, and being like, "Let's have these honest conversations," because I don't want to be oblivious to what our problems are or what we're not doing as well as we can because it's like I have older relatives who just don't go to the doctor. It's like just because you don't go to the doctor doesn't mean you don't have cancer. It's like you have to go and really identify what the problems are and then address them and not be afraid of them.
I think as a creative person, at least I encourage and I'm excited about the challenges and the limitations and the problems because that's where creativity thrives is if we can react to those problems and make changes. So, for us, it's about just being really honest with ourselves and not bullshitting ourselves. I think [inaudible 00:27:07] called us out. We were maybe making assumptions on how people need jobs or want jobs or are hiring talent based on my assumption when I was last freelancing in 2014. That's not relevant at all. People's experience from a year ago is probably not relevant today.
So, I think right now, we're investing in learning our customers more, learning our creatives more, learning our companies more. How do we actually solve the problems that they need solved because if we're not doing that, then we're going to quickly become irrelevant. I think that's like, you see a lot of these companies, they're solving real problems and putting things out in the world that people need. Once you stop doing that, people don't need you. When you're trying to hire talent, even when I'm trying to hire talent, I don't want people to need us. I want people to be here because they want to be here.
So, we hire. I'm sure Megan gets job offers all the time and I'm sure all my other employees do too. That's the type of relationships you want to be in, whether it's a professional one or a romantic one. You want really great people that other companies and people see the greatness in. It's your job to be present enough to keep them engaged and keep them feeling fulfilled on a daily basis.
Charles:
How do you lead? What have you learnt about your own leadership style?
Justin Gignac:
Oh, man. I've learned I'm a crier. I've changed a lot as a person in the past three years. I've been doing a lot of self work, as they call it. But I've become a lot more, I think, present and a lot more empathetic. That's something that I didn't know how to do three years ago. That's definitely changed how I lead. It's definitely changed how I listen. I actually listen now. So, it's a lot of those things of just not pretending or putting on that I have all the answers or I know what's right. I think it's trusting in other people more than maybe I used to.
Charles:
Did you find you were making too many decisions based on instinct?
Justin Gignac:
Yeah. It's like you have to trust your gut in general. Your gut is what gets you there. But now I have other people who have really good instincts too. So, it's just relying on them more. I think one of the things that Adam and I told ourself, we said to each other and then we said to the team is, "We've taken this as far as we can as a company, the two of us. It's become what it has because of the two of us. But now we need everyone else to make it greater than the two of us alone could do and put their own fingerprints on it and really help it evolve."
So, even since we had that meeting in January, things have changed, I think, pretty dramatically where everyone just feels empowered. Now, stuff's happening. New features are going on the site. I have no idea and they're like, "Hey, look. We just put this up," and I'm like, "Oh, okay. That's cool." But going from a point of knowing every detail of everything that went on and writing every bit of copy as two founders to then being able to trust people to do their thing, it's like that's a really great feeling. It's also really easy to go and put all that pressure on yourself and it's nice when you don't have to do that. Yeah.
Charles:
For years, the advertising industry was built with an understand and a tolerance excessively, I suspect, I think, for the tortured genius. What do you think is the future of the tortured genius in a creative company?
Justin Gignac:
I have a no assholes rule. What I've realized is freelance is like creative purgatory. So, if you were a really nice person in your previous life, you're going to be able to find work, especially if you're talented and a nice person. But if you're talented and an asshole, people don't have to choose to work with you anymore. It's amazing. I've had friends come up to me when we first started Working Not Working. A buddy of mine goes, "Oh, shit," and I'm like, "What?" He's like, "People only hire me because they know I'm the only guy they know is available. But I'm an asshole and nobody actually wants to work with me and now I'm going to have to be nice."
I saw him a year ago and I was like, "So, how's that going?" He's like, "Yeah, I've had to be a lot nicer." He got a full-time job and now he's at an agency and he's doing well. But it's forcing people to really look at themselves. There's not a tolerant, especially in the past year, there's not a tolerance for people being shitty anymore. I think that's a really inspiring thing and really encouraging that we don't need to tolerate the crazy talented genius.
We don't have to tolerate the pervert or the asshole because it's not necessary. It's not necessary to do good work, it's not necessary to be in a company. None of that stuff is excusable anymore. So, that's really exciting to see that we're valuing people doing the right thing and being good to each other again.
Charles:
What are you afraid of?
Justin Gignac:
Personally? Bugs, snakes, mice. Mice, my mom once took a fake mouse and put it ... Oh, I was a teenager. Oh, I can't take it. Oh. She put a mouse on a string and pinned it to my sheet so when I opened my bed, pulled the sheets down, the mouse ran across and I ran out of the room. They thought it was the funniest thing. So, I'm scared of that. We're really just getting deep for this.
I'm also, yeah, I'm scared of not fulfilling our potential. We keep talking about, we're like, "What's our goal? What's our goal? What's our goal?" I always go, "Oh, to fulfill our potential." I just feel like we are onto something and we're helping a lot of people. I think every day that we're not doing as much as we can to help people, we're actually affecting people's careers because if someone's on our site that could be working here and the product isn't working well enough to connect them, then they're missing out on this potentially career changing opportunity and this company's missing out on this talent that probably could change the course of their business as well.
So, I think for us, we need to get better at just making the tool better. I always said that we've basically created, and I think of us as a transportation company, like creatives here at point A, an opportunity at point B. We basically made the intercontinental railroad and we need to get to teleportation. So, how do we keep going every day and try to solve those problems faster, more intuitively, and help people do the work that they love and that they should be doing?
Charles:
What is one thing that people don't know about you that they would be surprised to know?
Megan:
I know. I know.
Justin Gignac:
Oh, Megan knows? What is it, Megan? No, I'm not going to say I was a ... Oh, shit. You're an asshole. She was like, "That you were a cheerleader." Yes, I was a cheerleader in high school. I was also a professional mascot for a few years. Greatest job ever. Yeah. I have a hammock that I really like. So, I realized, I got a outdoor space last year, moved to Brooklyn, I have a hammock, and I realized once I laid in the hammock for the first time, I never relax and I never let myself relax.
That was a life changing moment where I just started pushing off my fence and started swinging and I'm like, "This is amazing." I started seeing so much more value in that and meditating and just taking time to myself. So, I used to work until 2:00 in the morning every night, I used to work every weekend. Since then, I'm done at 7:00-ish. I don't open my laptop on the weekends and it's been so much more fulfilling to be able to go and have that space and have that time. Yeah.
Charles:
I wrap every episode with three takeaways, three themes that I've heard that I think contribute to your success as a leader and unlocking creativity. So, let me throw these at you.
Justin Gignac:
Okay.
Charles:
You tell me what you think. One is you strike me as being straightforward, that you're just willing to solve the problem that's in front of you. I think a lot of leaders overly complicate situations and don't just sit there and say, "We should just do this. It's here to be done. Let's do that." Two is clearly, at least from listening to you, a real level of self awareness and a willingness to confront those things and to accept the things that maybe don't work in your favor as well and want to do something about that.
Then I think the third actually is underlying humility. I don't get a sense from you of some massive ego. You're interested in solving a real problem. You're interested in helping other people. It's not all about you. I think that that, it probably has a lot to do with why, A, initially, you drew people to you and ultimately have drawn a lot of people to it and are providing such a valuable service. Do those resonate with you?
Justin Gignac:
God, that's good. It's like my therapist here. I like it. Yeah, that's really good. Thank you. Yeah. I think one thing that I keep coming back to, and I have my own podcast called Overshare where I talk to creative people who I admire, but the struggles of being a creative person because I think we go and see people talk at conferences about the highlights and we look at people's social media feeds that project this perfection. I think it's all bullshit and I can't go and relate to someone's crazy talent. But I might be able to relate to the struggle that they go through every day to try to get there.
As we think about, looking forward to this, it's called Talent@2030. I just saw Jack Ma. I watched a video on Facebook where he said that 800 million jobs are going to be automated by 2030. So, we have kids in kindergarten right now that are going to be graduating high school in a world where half the jobs are automated. The jobs they predict that will still exist are interpersonal ones like therapists and social workers and creative jobs. So, if we're the jobs of the future, what kind of obligation do we have to make sure that we're pulling people up and letting them know this a career?
Going to art school or being a creative is not really encouraged by most parents, teachers. They tell you to go get a real job and you're almost discouraged from going and pursuing your creativity. But that's what's going to make us human. We always talk about fighting the robots, that we're building an army to fight the robots at Working Not Working. It's like that's the thing that's going to separate us is how do we become more human and how do we encourage kids that are a little bit weird and creative and all that that that's what makes them them? How do we go and make sure they don't lose that and can come into our industry?
So, I think I know where there's a lot of stuff that we're doing as a company, that 4A's are doing, to reach down into colleges and also reach down into high schools. But how do we reach even lower and let kids know that this is okay to be themselves and to be unique and that there's opportunities in the world for them because if we're teaching kids anything now that they can Google, it's a waste of everyone's time. We should be teaching them creative problem solving and creative thinking. So, that's the stuff that gets me really excited. Then also just being able to encourage people to be themselves and then being able to make the decisions and live the life that they want is a really exciting thing.
Charles:
That's really well said. Just out of curiosity, how many people here know who Jack Ma is? Not that many.
Justin Gignac:
Yeah.
Charles:
Jack Ma is the founder of Ali Baba, right?
Justin Gignac:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Charles:
He's regarded as the most creative person in China and he's definitely worth Googling and looking up because he really does have some profound insights into what the future of education and commerce looks like and, to Justin's point, the things we should be teaching our kids and the way we need to think about this stuff because change is coming and teaching knowledge and empowering people for knowledge is not sustainable. Justin, thanks so much for being on the show.
Justin Gignac:
Thank you.
Charles:
Thank you for being here at Talent 2030.
