"The Millennial Leader"
This is the one year anniversary episode of Fearless. With each conversation, I find out more about how leaders overcome the obstacles that are part of being human. More about their ambition to make a difference. This week, my conversation with Chris Sojka, the co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Madwell. Chris has already owned his own business for eight years and he’s still only 32. I wondered what he’d learned about himself along the way and how leadership has changed him.
Three Takeaways
- Maintain a commitment to others.
- A willingness to take a risk.
- A flexible approach to problem solving.
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 53: "The Millennial Leader" Chris Sojka
I’m Charles Day and this is Fearless!!
This is the one year anniversary episode of ‘Fearless’.
I’m inspired by so many of the people I’ve spoken to. Some I knew before ‘Fearless’. Some I’ve met as a result.
With each conversation, I find out more about what makes the best leaders the best. More about how they overcome the obstacles that are part of being human. More about their ambition to make a difference. More about the desire that exists in so may of the best leaders to help others on their journey.
Modern leadership is generous. It is often humble. It is always brave. And it is intentioned.
And with each conversation, I understand a little bit better how I can help.
Because what’s important to me is to help. To get past the insecurities and misplaced beliefs, and the perceived injustices and the risk of being not good enough, so that I can help others make a difference.
To get past my fear. And to help others get past theirs.
Because on the other side of the fear is gratitude for being given the opportunity to be here in the first place.
We should not exist. It is impossible that we do.
and the chances that we do exist are infinitesimally small.
Smaller than a single step in a walk to the far side of the universe. Smaller than a single grain of sand in a world full of sand
It would take the change of but one mundane act since the beginning of time for either you or I to have never been born.
A chance introduction. A door left open. A letter lost in the mail. A train that left on time. Or didn’t. A moment’s hesitation. A glance, a nod, a wink. A kiss. Any one of these.
each of us represent billions, tens of billions, hundreds of billions of other beings that would be here instead of us if any of those moments since the beginning of time had turned out differently
But we are here. And by any definition, mathematical or mystical or magical…
we are miracles.
somehow we made it and billions and billions of other almost-lives didn’t
we are here - we exist
and we have the opportunity and the capacity to make a difference.
That’s what leadership is.
The chance to make a difference.
and that’s what Fearless is to me.
The chance to make a difference.
And now on with the show.
This week, my conversation with Chris Sojka. the co-founder of Madwell. I was interested in talking to Chris because he’s already owned his own business for eight years and he’s still only 32. And I wondered what he’d learned about himself along the way and how leadership has changed him.
The episode is called -
The Millennial Leader
“I think the entire concept of millennials is remarkably frustrating. Because, you're talking about, effectively, a 17 year period of time. Where, the beginning and the end of that generation grew up in vastly different cultures, environments, worldviews....”
Chris Sojka is a member of and a leader of the Millennial generation - which is perhaps the most over-analyzed and mis-represented group in modern marketing.
I was at dinner with two organizational psychologists a little while ago who had two entirely different views of how Millennials should be treated in the workplace.
My belief is that as leaders, we need to stop depending on demographics to figure out how we engage the people that work for us, and instead become much much clearer about what the kind of people we want to attract. It shouldn’t matter if they’re boomers, xers, millennials, y or zers. or even Gen Aers.
If the difference they want to make in the world is the same one that we want to make in the world, who cares when they were born?
Chris Sojka co-founded Madwell in Brooklyn eight years ago. They describe themselves as a tiny little, giant agency.
I was struck by Chris’s candor and his vulnerability during our conversation.
Let me know what you think.
Charles:
Chris, thanks so much for being here on Fearless this week.
Chris Sojka:
Thank you for having me.
Charles:
When did creativity first show up in your life? What's your first memory of something striking you as being creative?
Chris Sojka:
I think there are two moments that were pivotal for me. The first was when my mother gave me control over my bedroom and actually said, "You can decorate your bedroom the way that you'd like to." For me, that meant painting the walls, not myself, but requesting the walls be painted in a powder blue, to represent the sky, and getting my race car bed and having a stripe of race car wallpaper on the center of the room. And, really creating this kind of imaginary environment that probably was reasonably traditional in a suburban furniture sense, but for me felt like a moment of creative control, and dare I say, directorial decision making.
But the really important moment was when I decided one Christmas the gift I wanted was a matching towel set. Told my mother that I wanted black towels in all sizes so that I could use a matching towel set as I had seen in her towels, because that felt disciplined and aesthetically comforting somehow to me. And she was like "Really? A seven-year-old and you want towels for Christmas." And I was deadly serious.
Charles:
So aesthetic has always been pretty important to you.
Chris Sojka:
I think so. To be honest, by the time that I was eight, I was designing brands in my head. I got to the point where I was convinced I wanted to make a shoe brand, and I was drawing shoes just every day, all the time. My Mom was always really supportive. My Dad brought me to meet with somebody who was an entrepreneur to talk about what business is like, and my stepfather arranged a meeting with a podiatrist, so I could learn about the nature of the way the foot works with a shoe. Obviously, this is just a kid's pipe dream. But from the beginning, I was imagining creating brands and ecosystems and really living in that fantasy.
Charles:
What did your parents do?
Chris Sojka:
My Dad's a doctor and my Mom is a pharmacologist. But they got divorced when I was about eight. My Mom became very sick with a variety of ailments that threw her out of work. And I would say it was a pretty bumpy, odd time, so I had to grow up very quickly. My father moved out and my Mom really was better for two years. But then, she got me a puppy and she took that puppy to get trained and the dog trainer asked her out on a date. And she married him. So I spent the rest of my lessons growing up in a family that raised dogs. I'm wearing a sweatshirt that says "Raised by wolves". In part, because we grew up with 40, 50 dogs on the property, and now they own a 56 acre pet resort. So I grew up on what you might call a dog farm. My chores were walking dogs, cleaning crates, learning work ethic by walking 25 dogs in succession before going to bed.
Charles:
A kindred spirit. Where's the dog resort?
Chris Sojka:
It's in the middle of New Jersey. Like right in farm country- for anyone who knows where this is- by Six Flags in New Jersey. Really not much else around there. They bought an old blueberry farm and built a resort with an aquatic center and all the suites are glass. I can say, between my mother and my father there was a certain sense of creative hubris. My Dad building a practice as a doctor. My Mom building this whole business with my stepfather. Just imagining, "Oh, we're going to build a pet resort in the woods at the end of a mile long driveway." So I sort of grew up in that... I feel like I grew up on a dog farm. There's no other way to put it, if that's a real thing.
Charles:
I'm sure it is a real thing. As the- I was going to say owner, but I feel more like caretaker- of multiple dogs, having multiple dogs around I've always found to be a massively positive experience. Big part of life actually.
Chris Sojka:
It's an unconditional positive love. I'm not really a cat person. I'm sure I'll alienate anyone who hears this. But I view cats as something like very, very well-evolved assassins, and we invite them into our home. But dogs... camaraderie is what they evolved to be a part of.
Charles:
Yeah, it's pretty extraordinary. We actually, and this will probably turn off half the listeners to this. But, we've actually met a woman who is an animal communicator, who shows up, we have her come over two or three times a year. And she really does have an ability, I think, to connect with our animals and tell us what they're going through. And the evidence of what she tells us they're dealing with and seeing and how they experience us and the world around them is pretty extraordinary. I'm not sure how she's doing that, other than by connecting to them.
Chris Sojka:
My stepfather's been training dogs from Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Been training dogs for about 45 years. It's incredible, he meets a dog and the dog is immediately obedient to him. Doesn't know the commands, doesn't know... but just his body language and energy is so attuned to them that he can command respect. Positive respect, not fearful respect. Like, they look at him and they want to please him, and it's the most incredible thing, because it's non-verbal. All of it. It's just poise, energy-centered sort of behavior. I do believe that if you can speak to them on their level, there's a rich fountain of emotions that dogs have. It will sound a little crazy right now, but...
Charles:
It's fine. I'm totally happy to be known as a crazy dog person. It's probably the greatest compliment somebody could give me, so...
Chris Sojka:
Yes.
Charles:
I'm good with that.
Chris Sojka:
How you treat dogs shows a lot about how you treat everyone else in your life.
Charles:
A lot, right. A lot.
So the entrepreneurial spirit was with you from an early age. Did that manifest in other ways as you grew up?
Chris Sojka:
It did, mostly in failures. But, I kept inventing imaginary businesses, and then by the time I was 18, I started something called Pete Clothing Inc with a friend of mine. The idea was to have a friend named Pete who's reasonably eccentric, very interesting person, and I was going to make us a graphic novel about him and an imagined version of his life, and play it out over apparel and things like that. But at that point in my life, 18, 19, I didn't have the rigidity for the entrepreneurial aspect to be followed through. I'm still caught up in the creation and ideas and ideas and ideas and really didn't understand that ideas are only as good as your ability to take them from conceptualization to legitimate manifestation. So that didn't really work out, we made a bunch of cool shirts, and it was a fun concept, but it took me another few years to figure out how exactly to channel that reckless sort of progenitive/ creative energy into something productive and that could contain it and grow from it, if that makes sense.
Charles:
It does. So what was the first manifestation of that?
Chris Sojka:
Honestly, Madwell. I grew up wanting to be an actor, I was sure of this. I had imagined all these businesses but I was certain I wanted to be an actor, because being an actor would mean that I could pretend all the time and be anything I wanted to be. I could be a CEO or... to me, that was living the imagination that I was addicted to, professionally.
Well, after doing some commercials and auditioning I realized the power dynamic of acting, not suitable for me. A lot of rejection, a lot of walking into a room and being judged instantly, not on the intrinsic capabilities you have, but on an immediate test. Excuse me. So, I ended up going to college for photography, to NYU. That made a lot more sense to me. I started to understand, oh wow, you can control the nature of what you're making. You are a director in a sense, and you're producing an experience in the format of an image.
But, I ended up dropping out of NYU. Or I should say, going out on an indefinite hiatus. I think I still might be on hiatus. After a few years, because I was even more aimless, in New York City, wandering, using too many drugs, drinking too much. And I bounced around for a while and eventually a series of collisions led to me getting a job at an agency and meeting a person that is my business partner today. We started out just making work, and I realized, oh my God, if I put my energy into work, one step at a time, I can actually build a company and I won't be overwhelmed by my imagined dreams and successes and all that. I'll be focused each day on a task. Took me a while to learn that. I mean, I don't know if 23, 24 is a while. But, before that I was living imagination all the time, not practical building with my imagination.
Charles:
So your decision to create Madwell came in part, clearly, from that kind of insight and self-awareness. Was it also driven by a sense that there was something missing in terms of how creativity got unlocked in the business world?
Chris Sojka:
Yeah. The journey went a little bit like this. So, I dropped out of school. I got myself together, I started seeing a therapist. She sat me down and was like, "Look, you're a smart person, but you suffer from delusions of grandeur." And that, "You imagine a great idea and its completion, and you have no tolerance or patience for the middle of that journey. And until you accept that and figure out how to build the middle of the journey, you'll forever be one of those flighty, creative people who keeps imagining things but never really builds something sustainable." And that was a pivotal moment for me. At that point I was selling vintage industrial furniture to make ends meet in Brooklyn, to... Well, creative types that were moving into Brownstones around Brooklyn. And I wanted to get out of that.
So in a... you might call it kismet, a really good friend of mine, Will, was in the restaurant industry. And so I said, "Hey, can you get some interviews at some restaurants? I just need to something else and need to figure it out." So, he got me an interview with this restaurant, Double Crown, which is now a place called Saxon & Parole. And I went in there, and the general manager had set a table, and he said "Bus it." So I went to touch one plate and, he said, "No thanks. I think you should go look for a job in Williamsburg." Which, ten years ago, was kind of a way of saying, "I think you should go work in a sort of undisciplined pizzeria."
So I walked right out, and I called another friend of mine, Ron, who was working at an agency called Acronym Media. And I said, "All right..." I had interned there, early on, because my group of friends knew the CEO. They were all from Texas. Will was from Texas. Ron was from Texas and he got me a job as a business development coordinator in a company that focused strictly on enterprise level search engine marketing right when we were still debating whether or not digital should be a significant portion of our budgets.
And so, I went to work there and I quickly realized three things that I think ultimately led to us wanting to start Madwell. Which was, first, there was this incredible segmentation between data, analytics, and new mediums and creativity. And the way that was being solved was through aggregation. Big agencies were buying these little agencies, and then saying, " Hey, though [inaudible] model, you can have all these, you need them all together. No one could possibly understand all these mediums, you need to buy into our ecosystem, and we'll bring you all the specialists."
But pitching against those folks in the agency with one specialty, it became clear that was kind of not an honest representation of the way the business really worked. It was a bunch of separate business with different PNLs and egos and goals. So while working there, I was like, wow, what if the same rigidity or understanding of SEO and paid search and analytics deployment for large-scale customers could be connected to the creativity and not separated? And what if the creative people could start to understand that stuff and not feel like they live above it? Or, their job is to make a communications platform, but they needn't worry about how that manifests in a banner ad or how that banner ad is trafficked.
Because, it felt like so much waste. There was such a great distance between the theoretical placement that this agency was focused on, which was the end of the funnel strategic marketing digitally for like an SAP. And the person who created the aesthetic, the tagline, and the whole creative platform.
And so, after working there for a couple of years, and I met my partner there, David. And Ron, the guy that got me the job also started Madwell with us. We just started working at night on anyone that would let us come and do everything together. Can we make your website and identity and voice and tone and communications and run your paid search and run your SEO? And there was all these little businesses that were 10, 15 million dollar revenue businesses that were like "Yeah, we're dying for somebody to do that."
And seeing that sort of separation of the church and state of creativity and sort of analytics and it furthered the ability of large institutional companies to adopt to medium evolution, was the impetus to be like, well maybe we could build the company's DNA as to just accept that medium's will forever evolve, and forever expand. The quantity will continue to expand. And eventually it will converge through data, but there'll be infinite ways to speak to consumers. That started out with us just trying to do it all, with the website as a center. But, we did it enough times, saved up enough money that we quit and went and tried to open up an agency that we said, "We'll be full service from the beginning". We're not going to be digital or social or millennial shop, specifically. We're going to understand mediums and try to live by that.
Charles:
What was that moment like when you decided to quit and actually turn it into an entity, a company, an actual business? Were you afraid of that?
Chris Sojka:
I think I was drunk. It was really scary, but the comedic part of is that... I was very junior in the role. My business partner, David, was the director of technology at this company. And we had worked at night on different gigs, and just put all the money in an account. So we had enough money to pay our three salaries for three months and rent in a little warehouse in Bushwick.
I got a raise. David had to cut his salary by 50 percent. That's how little I made, and that's what the distance was. But, we all said, "We want to try this." And we gave ourselves this little runway, and we started winning business because that, the proposition to people of saying, "Hey, we don't want to just make your logo, we want to make your ecosystem.", nobody was really offering them that meaningfully. You either are getting that at a very high price tag from a big place, or you bounce between your social agency and your PR agency- excuse me, I'm hitting the microphone- and your digital agency, and all of that.
So, I was scared to death.
Charles:
Did you set an ambition? I mean, other than, can we survive more than three months until the money runs out. Was there a broader ambition than that?
Chris Sojka:
Yeah. The ambition was to build an agency that accepted, from the beginning, two truisms, I think. The first, something that comes from Paracletus, which is like, "No man stands in the same river twice." So, degendering it for a minute, and taking it from ancient Greece to the present day, the only constant is constant change, is kind of the way that that's been modernized.
And the second, you know, obviously Marshall McLuhan, " The medium is the message." It's bandied about as a cliché, but if you take those two things together... It's sort of like, accept that you could pretend to be an expert in Twitter or Instagram or Snap or open web display or websites or billboards or experiential. Or, you could say that those are all just mediums, and it's about how good are you at creating an essential thesis, translating it to those mediums, and constantly adapting to learning new mediums that you don't know, versus trying to get entrenched in one or two.
Because the addiction to a particular medium, say big agencies being addicted to TV money, keeps them, like a freight ship, structure for one type of journey. And we want it to be structured for a journey that was always going to be different from the beginning. And if you look at our client list, there's no like hey, we did a cool experiential thing for Microsoft, or a Tumblr page for Starbucks, because we turned all that stuff down. We wanted to just continue going after people who would give us the chance to try to connect the dots within the ecosystem, even if the name wasn't flashy. If the client was open to that mentality, that's the kind of money we wanted to build the kind of infrastructure. That was an agency that wasn't, "Hey, we were a digital agency for six years and now we're full service." It was like, let's just keep trying to keep building infrastructure that's nimble from the beginning, and reject anything that might take us off that path.
Charles:
Madwell is how old now?
Chris Sojka:
It will be eight years in July.
Charles:
So if you look at the company now through that lens, how well do you think you built the business to satisfy that particular, or that set of ambitions?
Chris Sojka:
I think we're about halfway to where we need to be. I think we're now operating at what I call sort of balance structure, which is that, at the table always there's got to be three advantage points to create balanced work, in my opinion. One vantage point is who. For us, that's like an insights and experience team which is a hybrid of traditional account planning and strategy and journey-mapping. And their job is to really get into the empathy of the audience. Then there's the how, which is the tech team, the creative apparatus, writers, designers. And there's the where, which is the media team. And when we're really doing it the way that we want to, there is no... Instead of taking that into a flat, linear journey of, "Here's the strategic brief. Let's make the creative. Now let's try to look at the media.", everyone's at the table, because a great idea with the wrong mediums to go into is fruitless. Not being driven by audience motivations is not going to let you figure out what mediums to be in to speak to them, when and where and how.
So, I think we're now beginning to operate in that model in a way that is increasingly seamless. But it's bumpy along the way. People are skeptical that you can actually do all those things, and you have to invest in entire disciplines and say, "Look, this is part of how we work." Often, even if a client doesn't want to pay for it, you're sort of like, I'm following that path. So, I'd say we're really getting now to the moment where we've hit a stride where that sort of triangle... I know the triangle's the most corporate shape in the world, but that triangle operates somewhat seamlessly.
Charles:
Triangles show up for a reason, right, because they're actually valid structures, and strong structures.
Chris Sojka:
Strongest structure in nature.
Charles:
Absolutely. What have you learned about yourself along that journey? What has surprised you, to discover about yourself?
Chris Sojka:
Well, I think in the beginning, I mistook passion and obsession and pushing myself to the limit and suffering, to a sort of extent, for purpose. So that led to, at various times... I don't think I'm a mean person, but I could be an overly demanding boss, not fairly considering my staff and everyone's sort of work/life balance. Just, at all costs, grow, grow, pursue, pursue. What I think I've learned along the way is that the hardest thing to do is to maintain creative inspiration and quality work with a balanced and happy life.
There's this sense I think, in any creative person, there's like an existential dread that if you take away the conflict, whatever that may be, to make great work against all odds, against a client that doesn't want you to, or against limited resources or a crazy deadline. If you take away the conflict, you lose the creative edge. The thing I've learned is, the really beautiful thing is... not to fall into the paradigm of white business man who like, when they write about him, it was "He had a temper and he was known to blow up in meetings, and known to push everyone to the brink, because that was how things got done." And actually to try to form a company around passionate, committed work, but also empathy. Because I think vulnerability is actually, when well-executed, is actually a much stronger form of management and creative thinking than the sort of conflict- driven, hyper-intense creative.
So, I learned along the way that to live life balanced but be motivated, and to really care about your employees and get the best out of them, in a peaceful way is far harder than to do it than with reckless abandon.
Charles:
Did you make a conscious change? To live more consciously through that identity, through that personification?
Chris Sojka:
I'm still changing. I think, with each... We're about 100 people now. Each time we grow more, it's about understanding that the most important thing's for the company to have a DNA that's replicatable, and one that supports the people inside of the organism. And for it to not be, depends on founders and leaders, or personalities. But to really create a space for all the very smart people there.
So, the thing I'm trying to learn to separate is, how do I take all that passion I have- and certainly I can get really passionate, you can call that a euphemism for whatever you think a creative director does in an intense review meeting- and sort of turn it into a more productive and measured way of interacting with everyone and making sure that we stay fun. Why do you do advertising if it isn't fun? I didn't get into this, no offense to Sir Martin Sorrell, but I didn't get into this to take wire plastic products and use a shell company to create an aggregated P & L to go public with. I did it because this seemed like the one job in which anything you could imagine could practically be something you had to execute, if the idea made sense for the challenge.
So, I've been working all the time now on trying to find the balance of empowering and listening to and supporting the team and controlling the part of me that wants to be the conflicted artist or something like that. Which I think is actually a weaker way to make great work.
Charles:
When do you find it hardest to be the person you want to be? To be the leader you want to be? What are the triggers that you find take you back to the place you less want to be?
Chris Sojka:
I think expedience is this terrible weight. You see a path ahead and you want to shortcut to get there. And you just want to "Do it this way!" I see what I want, and it's the most disenfranchising thing that a leader could ever do. It's a terrible way to work in terms of empowering and growing your staff, and it's a terrible way to work in terms of empowering growing as an individual. But I still suffer from that, where it's like, "Come on, guys." No, I'm pointing out, "This is what I want, go here." Expedience is like a drug. The efficacy decreases the more you try to shortcut your way to the path. It's really the long focused way that gets you the great work. I think when I see something and impatience, expedience take over and I just want to get it there, is a trigger for me. And just, generally speaking. You know, somebody asked me recently how I define success. And I think my answer to that was, "By being on time." And, I'm always late, and I think, "But being on time is a sign of respect for the people that you're with."
Another trigger for me is feeling overwhelmed and diluted and, so how as a leader do you find a way of being peaceful, respectful, strong-handed with your guidance, and showing everyone that their time is as important as your time. I have not succeeded, but I know that is what success will feel like.
Charles:
How do you bring yourself back to that center? When you find yourself getting off track, how do you bring yourself back to the ground area that you want to live in?
Chris Sojka:
Truthfully, I have to disappear for a little bit. Could just be walking around, could just be staying at home for four or five hours. I need to clear my brain of everything that I'm thinking about related to work. And make space for me to revisit it, having cleared it out. I wish I could give you an answer that I meditate and I'm Rick Rubin, I've reached enlightenment. But I think it's more... it used to be the classic agency staff, right? Drink to calm down, come on and have a whiskey. Now it's like, no, take a minute, live with your feelings. Find a way to separate yourself from them. Disconnect, and then come back to it with a focus. And I think that constant self-work is the one thing a leader owes to his or her staff. The constant willingness to evolve and change, to better serve them. And I think a lot of leaders think it's... or instinctively act as if it's the other way around. As if the staff ecosystem should change to better serve them.
Charles:
Have you find there are certain kinds of people that work better for the kind of company that you're building? Do you look for certain characteristics when you're hiring?
Chris Sojka:
Yeah. I would say that there are three that are very important to me. The first is a fiery desire to solve puzzles. As a singular motivation, enjoying identifying challenges and tackling them. And that's a mindset for somebody who wants that, and wants to chase that solution at all costs. The second is somebody who is able to know what they don't know. Is able to identify what they don't know and learn from and ask questions from the people around them, to become stronger at what they're doing. Changing yourself is hard, but a minimum, not blindly pushing, but rather searching for a way to become stronger with your weak points, and being able to acknowledge them and identify them. That's a second, super important quality.
And I think the third is, enough confidence. To have the ego to defend ideas and thoughts, but not to engage in politicking and passive aggression and the other types of thing that are sort of insidious undercurrents in a culture. You know, if people have those three touchpoints, obviously wrapped in some relevant experience or skillset and intellect, I feel like they can work within our culture. It's the puzzle part really that's the key. Can you be excited like a kid about what you do every day? Or do you come to work for a paycheck or to grow and create some sort of upwards ambitious mobility. Nothing wrong with that, but the first motivator should be that you like to play, and that this feels like playing.
Charles:
Is it hard to find people like that?
Chris Sojka:
It's very hard to find people like that. And I think the agency world has created a culture of attrition. Our design directors, for example, they all started as interns. We're eight years old, they've all been there for seven years. Why is that? I think we try really hard to find people like that and then grow with them. We can't always, but the industry is such that people have to leave a job to find their value somewhere else. It's like you grow your value for two years, and then you go and flip, cash in the equity you've gained and your personal skillset, and somebody else pays for its new value. Which is a terrible way to maintain a culture. It's kind of sad, because if somebody's special and brilliant, you should do everything you can to protect them and have them build an environment with you that they want to be a part of.
And I think the industry also centers people around clients. The client disappears, entire segments of companies disappear. And we've tried to it differently. We've tried to minimize attrition. Sometimes you have to fire somebody for the right reasons, sometimes people need to leave because you can't give them the path they want. But, I'm trying my best to create a culture of folks that buck that idea that millennials change jobs every two years because we're all just consumed by our ADD. And rather identify that as no, they want to see the value they've created themselves is rewarded, and they want to know that they work in a place that their job isn't about a client. It's about working at a place. And I think a lot of that agencies will lay off a lot of teams, only to rehire the equivalent quantity of people three months later.
I'd rather...We've never laid anyone off. And that's in a large part because it's so hard to find people like that. And it still hurts me when anybody leaves. I feel like I let them down, but I'll do everything I can to protect the ones that embody those qualities, to the best of my ability, imperfect as that is.
Charles:
To your point, you're part of and you're leading a company, predominately I'm assuming staffed by the most analyzed... probably, what I might say is the most over-analyzed generation in history. What else do you think of the misconceptions that people have about what it means to lead, guide, build companies that are fundamentally staffed by millennials?
Chris Sojka:
I think the entire concept of millennials is remarkably frustrating. Because, you're talking about, effectively, a 17 year period of time. Where, the beginning and the end of that generation grew up in vastly different cultures, environments, worldviews... I don't view it as a singular generation. I view it as people who grew up in a very, very aggressive period of technological evolution. And, I think these kind of misconceptions about, well millennials don't read and have a short attention span and are entitled.... Or, don't have the same work ethic of previous generations, and need to move around. These are all sort of fallacies. They're like every other generation searching for, within their environment, the best, happiest way to live to provide the best, happiest life they can for what will become their families. They're now just beginning to, more and more, build out families.
So, I think there's this idea that millennials need it to be like this, this, or this. And I think, what I've found, is that really, the biggest continuum of characteristic between that very, very long span of people is that they grew up in an era where information came in so many pieces and in so many ways, that what they're searching for is... And, I'm taking this quote from one of my associate creative directors, but it's what she says working at Madwell was like. "They want to use their whole brain." And that's because they've been stimulated from so many different directions, in so many different ways. They know how to hyper-focus. How does a generation that doesn't like to consume information watch 13 hours of Netflix? Or, you know, listen to an audiobook while at SoulCycle? Or do that hyper-focus. It's really about stimulating the whole brain and allowing them to move between different activities, that through their job, enriches them.
So, I think the toughest thing has been to provide an agency/infrastructure where people are using their whole brain. Where you come in and you're like oh, you're a designer. you're not going to design just, like, email blasts, or you're not going to work on this one account. You have multiple clients, and you might design a party, and then an experiential stunt, and then figure out how to actually design a website with your colleagues. And I think once you actually start allowing them the opportunity to use their whole brain, then-I'm a millennial so I shouldn't use that, I should say "we"- suddenly, things start clicking together. And it becomes about that sort of multi-stimulation of the various parts of the brain. And I think a lot of companies are slow to realize... That's the crux of it. It's not all these other characteristics we've attributed to an entire group of people. It's just that they've consumer information differently and more rapidly and in more varied forms and mediums than in any generation previously.
Charles:
Do you think we should drop the labels? Growing up in various companies, some of which I owned, I was never conscious 15 years ago about thinking about what generation somebody was. And we didn't think about how to attract and retain talent through that lens. And now, the conversations are endlessly framed through, which generation are they part of and how do they act differently. Do you think the labels are helpful anymore, or do you think we're just getting distracted by a bunch of generalizations and categorizations?
Chris Sojka:
I think labels are terrible. And I think they're something invented by marketers to titularly say, "Hey, the group that is the most ascendant with the most purpose and power is the group we should target." Like, going into a room and having someone tell you, "Hey we want to target millennials." You're like, "No kidding?"
But, I think that modern society is much more psychographic than it is demographic. And I think you find that most brands, many, many brands, are applicable to a wide psychographic profile set. And we keep mislabeling that as millennials. Or saying "Millennials are the key part of this." And you know, I don't buy that. We've marketed coconut water and I've seen how relevant that can be to a 57 year old and an 18 year old and a professional athlete, and an accountant. So, I think the labels are just a tidy way to talk about business goals. They actually mess things up that we should really be thinking about. The fact that in this era, you can target people, you can have 20 targets. And millennial is such an expansive thing.
Ten years ago, the iPhone just started. That means there's seven years of millennials who didn't even grow up with the iPhone. And then there are others for whom smartphones and that extension of their nervous system was a part of their entire life. How is that one group of people? So, I think the labels are tidy for business nomenclature and conversations. But they're ineffective for actual strategic development.
Charles:
Yeah, it's an interesting reference point. I went to Beloit College, which has become famous for publishing an annual list of reference points that the incoming freshman class are exposed to, or have experience. And some of he realizations are extraordinary. A freshman entering college this year, [inaudible] is ten years old, but had never known what an 8-track tape was, or had only ever known a world in which there was no Berlin Wall, for instance.
And, I'm going back a ways even to find those. So, I think it's really, it's interesting to see year on year. You read that list, how dramatically even within that context, those lists change. And how different a freshman coming into college this year's life and experience will be compared to last years'. So I think it's an interesting reference point, where you talk about a group of people who cover multiple years, and saying they're all basically the same and we should treat them all as a single reference point and a single group, almost like a single entity. They all behave this way, and they always do this, and they all think this. And I think you're right. It's a falsehood. It's a crazy way to try and build a business model. It's a crazy way to try and develop practices and characteristics of the kind of business you want to build. You have to build for the kind of people that you want to hire, and look for those characteristics, regardless of when they were born.
Chris Sojka:
I agree completely. What I've learned more than anything is that... I'm wearing a hat, you can see it.
Charles:
He is indeed wearing a hat.
Chris Sojka:
Yes, I am. A fedora. An anecdote on that in a moment. But I think, I started being able to go into a room and people interpreted my presence as like, "I am a millennial, therefore I'm connected to that, therefore I fit this kind of hipster Brooklyn creative director/ entrepreneur cliché, visually. And that, to me, just summarizes the idea of how shallow we've come to define a very, very rich generation. I think a more accurate way of looking at it is, well Moore's Law is faltering, and we're having trouble keeping up with that sort of seven year doubling and processing power. What I do think isn't faltering is the exponenting of mediums and channels that each successive generation is immersed in and fluent in. And I think that's the major motivational factor in how they act and how they think. And that really is happening.
At this point now, that's happening in six month increments. There are completely new ways that people behave. And so, it's really about understanding the technological evolution and how we connect as a society and how it's impacting each subset of a generation. If it's tidy to put 17 years of people together, anthropologically, fine. That seems quite antiquated, considering that the world is changing so rapidly and getting so flat that that kind of monolithic structure sounds like anthropology from the 1890s, not from 2018.
And to sort of round that out. Like, I wear a hat right now because as a child, I had very fine hair, and my Mom would give me a haircut and they'd put a bunch of gel in there. And the kids at school said I looked like Baldy, so I started wearing hats. And I still wear hats, and I was a Michael Jackson fan as a kid, so I'd wear fedoras. It goes all the way back to childhood. At the moment, it's cool, and I represent a cliché. It will be uncool again, soon. But it's...
Charles:
But you'll still be wearing hats?
Chris Sojka:
I still will be, because I enjoy them and it makes me feel comfortable. It's my safety blanket, right? I think the biggest theme for me is that the generation now, so millennials and then Gen Z, is in a world of constant change. They search for things that represent some sense of stability and identity. And often, that can be, maybe they've never heard of an 8 track, but why is vinyl outselling CDs now, right? They're searching for things that have in them an intrinsic sense of stability, because nothing is stable. So we find in ourselves things that help... like the hat for me, is part of me. It's not a trend, I'm not trying to look like cool creative director. At the moment, it's working to that advantage, but then I'm probably going to look kind of lame in a couple of years. But for me, it's a sense of identity/stability. Vinyl feels warm and reminds us of our parents and when the world made sense, so we're told. And there was right and wrong and there was the communism and capitalism and democracy.
I think that's really... If anything, the generation is just searching for stability and having a lot of trouble finding things that are stabilizing.
Charles:
I think, not coincidentally, but both of those reference points and many others we could come up with, are physical. And I think in a world that's increasingly virtual, people look for physical connections. I think they're drawn to things they can touch and literally look at and hold and experience through their actual senses, rather than just looking at something on a screen or listen to something through your ears. They want the actual physical connection with something.
What are you afraid of?
Chris Sojka:
Death.
Charles:
How often do you think about that?
Chris Sojka:
Every day. When I was growing up, I had a friend, he was my best friend then. I was quite young, eight. And his parents were Korean immigrants, and they had opened a shoe store in Redbank, New Jersey. And he and I were at basketball camp, and my Mom came to pick us up early, with my aunt, and they were both wearing sunglasses. Odd behavior, all around. Turned out that his mother had been stabbed to death by somebody trying to rob the shoe store, and they made away with less than the value of one pair of shoes. And her life was gone.
And I remember how all these plans, all these thoughts, the rice pot and the little kitchen area in the back of the store. All of it was like suddenly without purpose. Everything that had been planned and was going forward, had just been eradicated. And I think, if I were a religious person, it would be easier for me to not be concerned about the experience stopping. But I think I'm really motivated to create and make things at an expedited clip, because I view death with a certain sense of finality.
I want to, at least in my time here, not only build the requisite meaningful relationships that make you happy, but, if I'm lucky enough, build an ecosystem and an organism that's smarter than, more adaptable, and outlasts me. I guess that's a human desire, right? But, that above all is just a fear for me. I want to have as much fun as I can but also leave as much momentum for other people to go with. I don't have... those delusions my therapist mentioned are gone. So I'm not saying I need to be a president in order to do that. But just, that idea of not being able to create and accomplish and live to the degree that I want to is the fear that afflicts me. And again, [inaudible] a lot. Just motivates me when I'm thinking about, goodness, I want to build this company and I want I to be a company about the people here, and I have a chance to let it become and grow, far beyond than what I'm capable of alone.
Charles:
Yeah. That's very powerful.
I finish every episode with three themes that I've heard. Let me throw these at you. One, I think is the battle that you're wiling to have with yourself, between self and others. I think that a lot of leaders fall into their own personal narrative and put themselves first and foremost. As you've talked about, it's not easy to balance that with a real commitment to somebody else and sublimating and reframing ourselves to help other people. But I think, clearly you're willing to do that.
I think second, evidently, is your willingness to take a risk and to try stuff. And I think, attached to that, third, I would say is an enduring and relentless sense of flexibility and fluidity about how you go about solving a problem and what else might be necessary. Almost an open-mindedness to saying, "There isn't just one way. There isn't just this way. There might be a better way, and let's keep looking for that."
Do those resonate with you?
Chris Sojka:
Very eloquently, yes. I think that that last point is perhaps the most important principle that I've come to believe. Which is that... There's the funny saying, 5+3 is 8, 4+4 is 8, 6+2 is 8. There are many ways to be right. And I've come to believe that the better way to live your life is not to dogmatically say, "This is right, and above all, I believe this. There's no other form of right." But rather, to understand that what is right can involve in real time. And not only that, but there are many ways to get to where you want to get. And add flexibility. So, flexibility of trying to flex and change my own character, as the company evolves, and not be stuck in my ways, in my flaws. But, try to improve past them. Lord knows, that's never going to stop.
Flexibility and just being able to go into a client presentation and understand... You know, walking in with a passionate belief that "This is the way to do it, and I'm going to fight for that against..." You know, us versus them in a very Darwinian sense, is exactly the wrong way to approach creativity in today's world, where there's constant opportunity to adapt and change. So, I would hope that that's been the theme of how Madwell has worked. Trying to evolve and change and approach problem-solving from as many places as possible. How we've tried to embrace and tackle both our clients and our employees' needs, wants, and desires. And above all, me as a leader, I hope I am constantly pushing myself to flex and adapt to whatever is the right way to be right in that moment and in that time. Without, of course, losing conviction or being aimless and lost. It's like taking a value structure and then saying this value structure is simply the DNA for many outputs. So, I think you articulated that very well.
Charles:
It is a constant and evolving journey, isn't it? Thank you for sharing part of yours with us today, here. And thanks for being here.
Chris Sojka:
Thank you for having me.
Charles:
You've been listening to Fearless, the art of creative leadership. If you like what you've heard, please take a moment, rate us on iTunes and join us again next week, when we will have more. Thanks again.
