Yeah, yeah. And as the type of designers that we have in our company, and strategist, like, everybody is so passionate and excited and, like, about inspired to create the next new thing. So they’re quite happy to, like, leave it on. It’s not the best business strategy, though.
Jeremy Weisz 15:21
So then did that lead to partnerships and acquisition? Because, I mean, whoever it is, forgive me, because I definitely have had an agency on here, and we were talking about Mike’s Lemonade, but they weren’t working on what you were working on. They were working on more of the getting it out there, and the advertising piece, which was fascinating to hear, so how did that lead to maybe partnerships for you or acquisition?
Ronna Chisholm 15:48
Yeah, we never really partnered. We’d have some of our potential people that we would refer but over time, we found Covid actually, kind of, we lost some of the networks and like, Who do you refer? And then the needs of our clients, we just recognized, yeah, we weren’t really meeting those. And then there was an agency that we had, no one about that did a venture with us. Our venture, we had a client that we all kind of took some equity in so we knew about them. But actually, it wasn’t like, it was not an intentional kind of like, you know, we’re going to go to market at all. We had a joint client. So we had a client called the little potato company there in the US. So we head out to them grow from think it was about 30 or 60 million to 300 million, very, very quickly after a rebrand.
Jeremy Weisz 16:49
We’re looking at it here, by the way, if you’re listening, yeah, here’s the…
Ronna Chisholm 16:53
A lot of people that buy potatoes would recognize this brand. So this was in 2013 or so when we started working with them, and they didn’t realize that they didn’t have any equity, their packaging was very sort of farm small. And what we did is we went to research, but we also with a marketing partner, hired a firm in Seattle that made me know of San Fran, that are food innovators, and so did a lot of food product innovation and came up with the new bags of form factors, but also oven trays and microwave trays. And again, this making it easy for people. Yeah, the sales just skyrocketed, and it was just like 10 years of working with them, and they were a big client and then, like, what happens in our industry, if you’ve been in around long enough is, you know that marketing teams change within a company. And in this particular case, the whole marketing team changed.
Someone new came in. Didn’t know us, Jack, and had their preferred people that they wanted to work with. And so that happened. And so then the GM, who’s the company that acquired us last summer, started working with Little Potato, and they had more all the experience with the marketing side of things, campaigns, digital, and they did not have packaging food, and so the time they also were teaming up with and partnering with Frank Palmer. So that might be a name for any Canadian that’s kind of the Mad Men of advertising. He’s about 85, 87 or something, and he’s written all sorts of books. He’s very famous in Canada, and he’s actually had sold, firms were bought by DDB, and then now he’s back doing his own thing.
And the two firms, went joint ventures into something called Ethical Food Group, which I didn’t mention to you, Jeremy, but it was to actually help startup foods and that are ethically kind of positioned. And so two agencies, which is really unique, which we were like that entrepreneurial and venture spirit really kind of intrigued us. But it also meant that the GM was, they didn’t have the food and beverage experience, and they were partnering with Frank Palmer, and they were knowing that they didn’t have the food, it’s a real specialty in the design industry. And so we
Jeremy Weisz 19:56
Is it ethicalfoodgroup.com is this the right one?
Ronna Chisholm 19:59
Yeah. That is it. Yeah. So back to Little Potato veggie, because all of our marketing keeps you know we’re gone. And they hired said GM, and they rebranded to this, that new look, but the company still recognize that we had the expertise in all the packaging forms and the production of artwork. So we were asked to still stay on, but work with the GM team. So we got to know them. And they found out that, we said, well, let’s hear about your what you do digital and what you do marketing, because we’ve got lots of clients that we just fill off work and we’re referring partners, and it was at the right time they kind of went like, hey, we’ll fly five partners down to meet with you next week.
Who ever thought about like selling? And we were like, no, we never thought that we would align with anybody on values and that kind of entrepreneurial spirit that we wanted to keep alive. But they were great people. So you’d have to go to the GM kind of site to see the partners there. And yeah, lots of shared values and so long process, but we’re now part of the GM family, and Dossier staying. What appealed to us was, Dossier is in Vancouver, and we are keeping Dossier, keeping our culture, and keeping our managers, and their attitude was like, don’t muck with Dossier.
Jeremy Weisz 21:44
I’m curious, and I’m just looking over here to find it. Because as you would say, ZGM, is stands for zero gravity marketing.
Ronna Chisholm 22:03
That’s correct. Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 22:04
Okay, and so is the site zerogravitymarketing.com, is that the right site?
Ronna Chisholm 22:09
No, it should be zgm.ca.
Jeremy Weisz 22:11
Oh, got it. I’ll pull it up. But you at one point said, yeah, here it is. You at one point said to your team, accountants and other people, we’re never selling. So what was it, because you could have you said, listen, you agree to the meeting rate in your head. You’re probably thinking, we’re never selling. I’m going to be, we’ll just hear them out, but I’m probably never selling and what in throughout the conversation changed your mind or started to create that wedge of, okay, I’m slowly considering it?
Ronna Chisholm 22:49
Yeah. There was a few factors. One, my co-founder, Dawn and my partner had always said he could never work for anyone. So that was very, very clear. And anytime I would ever bring it up, hey, we could, partner, no, like, just very independent, very visionary, very, yeah, a real master in what he does, and he just needs independence and freedom, like hugely. So he didn’t think he could ever work for anyone. It had been a couple years of Covid, yeah, exactly.
Jeremy Weisz 23:01
You’re already working for someone.
Ronna Chisholm 23:14
I have a story about that, if we can go there. Totally, because on the business side too. So, but it was a couple years into Covid, and we’re working remotely. And so I think we started talking to them in 2022 we were kind of back in hybrid and we have folks on our team that have been with us for 25 years, 20 years, 30 years. And we were thinking about just how Dossier’s got such a portfolio and legacy, kind of in Canada for creating brands like, it would just be a shame to just close it down one day kind of thing. And you folks have been with us for like, 30 years.
And so if we were open to, like, if there was ever the unicorn, we thought that kind of aligned with our values, and we wouldn’t mind working with for a transition period, then we would consider it. So said GM five partners were just really nice, really smart, very seasoned. They’ve been in the business a long time, and so it was just kind of one step after another, going, oh well, there’s been no red flags that they know to not go forward with it.
Jeremy Weisz 25:17
But it was something they said, or is there anything throughout the process that you realize it’s one thing is there’s no red flag. There’s another of this is very interesting, like there could be a lot of no red flags, but maybe not as attractive. So was it something about autonomy? Because you mentioned, obviously, what were they and again, like a company could say, oh, you’re going to be a separate entity. And then once it happens, okay, I mean, I’ve heard it like, things can change at that point.
Ronna Chisholm 25:53
Absolutely, yeah. And that’s what we were. The one thing that the GM partners did that was brilliant. And I don’t know if they knew how brilliant it was, probably, but when they flew out to meet with us, right away, they brought the founder of Paper Leaf. So Paper Leaf was the digital app company that they’d bought a couple years before, and the founder was on his like, second year of a three year term with them and Jeff was in a similar situation where Paper Leaf has this specialty. We’re not going to change the brand, the name, it’ll just be a company of the GMs, and they brought him as his visit dinner.
Didn’t have any closed conversations, Jeff, we could call Jeff anytime during kind of the year of negotiations. So I got to really hear like they’d done this before, and it wasn’t there. They had actually a couple other acquisitions before, but this was a real recent one that was very similar to us, and so hearing Jeff said, nope, they left me alone. They follow through on everything that they said they were going to do, but really, really helped.
Jeremy Weisz 27:12
Then they slipped after 20. Thanks. It’s like some actor. No, I’m just kidding.
Ronna Chisholm 27:22
Any advisor that we had spoken to during the process too, when they heard that, they were like, oh, okay. He says, I’ve done it before, and that’s a really good sign.
Jeremy Weisz 27:32
Yeah, they brought the proof with them. I guess you could say of your biggest objection and obstacle to getting passed before you even entertained it.
Ronna Chisholm 27:44
Yeah, it wasn’t their first rodeo. So they were able to say, we were able to say, how does this work? What does this all look like? The whole process of going through this. And so that was helpful, too.
Jeremy Weisz 27:58
You mentioned, there’s a story behind you and your co-founder. When I said, well, he actually does work for someone you.
Ronna Chisholm 28:10
Oh, yeah, yeah, okay, so when we started in 1987 he was a young designer that had worked on Expo 86 that came to Vancouver. So he was kind of like, young creative shot out of a cannon, working with these amazing people, went to work for a couple of firms, and that were really great, great people, but they were just going bankrupt, like, every time. So he was left with being in a firm where they fired everybody. He was the last person, his boss came up in the elevator and said, hey, kid, like, I’m leaving town because we’ve gone bankrupt. If you want to handle the client, go ahead, and he left his car in the basement. And so we had keys to this studio for about a month before the Bankruptcy trustees came in, and the phone rang, and clients were like, wanting work.
And so I was in school for a business degree in finance, and so I put some forecasts together and said, we can do this, and incorporated. And that’s how we, kind of, like, started Dossier. It was just landed on us. We needed to survive and eat and then I was in a pretty, pretty fortunate position to be in a really high profile internship program for two years that was grooming me for Wall Street or Bay Street in Canada. I was in an intern program. And so I did go into to the investment in industry institutional investment for a couple of years, but at the bottom side, I was always managing Dossier. And so however, I was seeing the work that we were doing through Dossier and that entrepreneurial I’ve always been an entrepreneur, kind of from a child, that spirit in me, and I felt like the finance at the time was very soul sucking, and it was very honestly Wall Street movie like, that was it.
And I’m a four foot 11 woman, like in that industry, and our business is taking off, and we had came to a point where, like, yeah, they got to hire someone to run the business or all try it out for six months. So I tried it out for six months. I kind of, I love the stimulation, and got an offer back to the field in finance this month. And I said, no, I’m gonna stay. But what I didn’t realize was, like, I thought, okay, I’ve got this analytical corporate trading I’m just gonna come in here and, like, put all these structures in place. And, like, this can’t be rocket science running in a design firm. And it was a lot more challenging than I expected, and that was because of the kind of polar opposite, like thinking style.
So, a lot of people say, like two forces, art and commerce, in a completely opposing each other, and that was like us in a marriage. So pretty quickly, I, like, tried to seek some help for how do I survive in here and understand this totally different thinking style? And I was very linear, very analytical. Found a Professor of Creative Studies back east that was part of the University of Buffalo. It’s creative. I didn’t know there was an academic whole creative study, and we hired him. He was a facilitator with big steel companies and car companies, and he just loved us because we were kind of everything that he was reading about, and so we worked with him for team kind of thing so that we could make sure that our marriage being intact. And we both created something a model called creative, intelligent together. And it was all about like learning to embrace differences in the different thinking styles.
And for me, my core values, like two are, like, embracing differences has been from the time I’ve been a child and love. So it was what we needed to survive at that time and become fans of each other’s, like, different thinking styles and our whole team’s thinking styles, and then design thinking kind of hit the scene. And I’m guessing maybe 2009, 10, eight, somewhere around there. And so that, just like inspired me so much, because here I figure out this messy, circular thinking that collides with my linear thinking. And now Roger Martin, Professor of UFT in Toronto, is like written book, and he’s making the less circuit, talking to all the business school all over the place about, you got to look at designers and how they think, and that’s what the world needs.
And I didn’t agree with everything he said, because he was like, everybody can become a designer. And I was like, no, because I’d be a designer now. But I was such a fan of like, the bringing together the design thinking and business thinking and making magic and what made me feel like it was normal was how messy and how much tension it was in there. So that, if you let me continue that kind of linked to Railyard. So, actually, yeah, it was around that period then that we had the recession, so kicked us in the ass, and the clients just stopped right away. So 2008 2009 we had a hard time surviving through that period, but we did. And after that, I saw before that, firms like ours would do a lot of pro bono work for not for profits, and printers would do pro bono work for not for profits. And so I saw a real need.
There was all these social organizations starting that needed good strategy and good design, but they couldn’t afford it. They were band aiding kind of solutions. I saw design thinking being taught in all the business schools, and I saw the design schools starting to actually really take off from a more technological kind of point of view in Vancouver, but they knew nothing about design thinking or business. So I saw this sort of win-win-win possibility of modeling after the internship that I went, that I had in finance, where we bring a little cohort of design students and business students together, and then we find social impact, not for profit organizations to work with. And so it’s a studio within a studio. And so now it’s been over a decade, and we have over 50 alumni, and they all give back talks, mentoring. They are at like, Amazon and Facebook and Reddit and Microsoft and IBM, like, really big kind of tech companies, and they are huge fans of Railyards, and it gave them that opportunity when they’re just starting their careers, to do, like, really interesting kind of, not for profit kind of work.
We’re also, our office has always been located in the downtown East side of Vancouver, which is known as one of the, probably, I think, in North America, the worst homeless situation, like, even worse than San Fran district. Yeah, really bad. And the particular street that we’re on, I always said was like, I felt like probably had the most differences on the one side, because one side of the street, the street we’re on and the building we’re on is in a design center, and it’s filled with high end architect, high in furniture, really high end furniture, every type of fashion, Herschel and Ariz all in this one and on the other side of the street is all shelters and homeless hardest to house, kind of housing and so we did a lot of work, really, just a lot of work rebranding and re-strategizing a lot of the really good social organizations right in the neighborhood, and they got to immerse into those.
Jeremy Weisz 37:29
So you take on kind of a cohort, and each cohort is working on cool projects. Who manages the cohort? Do you actually have? It’s tough, because on one hand, which I want to get into with Dossier, you have people have been there for 30 years, right? Which, there’s continuity, it’s stability. And then on the other hand, you have these rotating cohorts. They have to retrain everyone every whatever number of months?
Ronna Chisholm 38:01
Yeah, we are doing one a year, because it’s a lot of energy. And we had a couple years where we did twice, and that was a lot. It’s a really great question. You know, since 2000 and I believe 14, I’ve had a manager, so I did the first couple myself, and realized pretty fast that that was not going to be viable. So the managers we’ve had, a few over the years, and they have sometimes been Railyard, insurance or alumni, they’ve come back. They’ve always been from the business side of things, and, like, really phenomenal people that I will still be there, mentoring and guiding, and I’m still quite involved, but I’m not doing the day to day. And so right now, we’ve got two former alumni that are interviewing all the candidates right now for the next cohort. And then myself and our team act as Project advisors. And then our former alumni, the Railyard alumni, act as mentors and project advisors as well.
Jeremy Weisz 39:23
From the Railyard Lab part of things, how do you keep it sustainable? Are the projects that are coming in, maybe at a discount because there’s a cohort or people are paying, I imagine, right?
Ronna Chisholm 39:38
They are, they’re paying, and it is at a discount. And then, as much as we can, we’ve been getting government grants. And then our goal has been to just, we’re never going to bring on interns for free, so we do pay them an intern rate. So our goal has been to at least cover the costs of the interns. Like their salaries, but it’s been our way of giving back like that. Like our management fees, we don’t cover.
Jeremy Weisz 40:12
Yeah, I imagine it comes back in the end. I mean, obviously just helping, serving these social organizations is a give back. But also these people are spreading the gospel and word of you and your companies, which helps. They’re going out in the world and coming back and then just paying it forward. So, yeah, it’s a lot of benefits.
Ronna Chisholm 40:35
Yeah, and the other benefits, there’s reverse mentoring. So we’re getting young, 20 somethings, and they’ll come in and our senior teams will learn from them, and vice versa. And so fresh, new ideas, that’s sometimes really important to clients, too. How do you stay, we had this question just recently in a pitch like, how do you stay current and young, and that type of thing. So they teach us as well.
Jeremy Weisz 41:04
Ronna talk about, I want to go back to the Dossier, and you’ve had some people for 20 plus years. Okay, what are some of the things that you’ve done to foster such a great culture and retention that other companies should think about doing, right? What have you done?
Ronna Chisholm 41:24
What have we done? Yeah, you really have to ask them. I think the work, so that’s been like bringing them good work to work on, like good, challenging work, stimulating work, work that we get to see out in the world. I think that’s very motivating. I mentioned that, like love and embracing differences was big values and so of mine, so quite a long time ago, we established our strategy at the time and our value set. And like, for example, we had like, how do we create well? Like, lead well, live well and create well. So under living well was love and humility and in breaking differences. And then we had things under creating well, Pandora and curiosity and that type of thing, but on the Living Well, with a big focus, we live in Vancouver like it’s an amazing place to live with all of the mountains and ocean right here, and everybody wants to be out in the playground on the weekend.
And we have really good talent coming in from UK and Australia, New Zealand, all Commonwealth countries that want to come and that want to stay here once they’re here. So I can’t tell you how many designers we’ve hired from those kind of countries that are here on a two year permanent and then they’ll apply for permanent residency and stay. So we established this living well, creating well, leading well. And how we have embodied, that is, we do have, like, a visual of it like that’s in our performance reviews. And everybody has got kind of visually Matt how much they’re embodying love and living well and humility. And then every week on our studio meeting, on Monday mornings, we bake that into our studio meeting, not just jumping in and talking about work.
But we have a section that starts off with essentially, like, pictures of everybody’s kayaking and skiing and rock climbing, like what they’ve done on the weekends, and, you know, kind of how they’re living well. And so everybody, and that’s never tired of seeing what people are inspired by and are up to on a weekend. And so one person facilitates our studio meetings monthly. They have a theme that they like, talk about that’s creatively inspiring as well, and they weave in, like all the photos that they get from the teams like weekend, and then we have a section for love, and it’s all about giving love to the team for the last week. And I thought at first it would be kind of corny, and well, be received.
Jeremy Weisz 41:27
That’s what I was thinking from, okay, like I’m taking your business minded, linear, focused, and so I’m thinking, as you’re saying this, that sounds probably amazing to the creative people, and you’re thinking, when are we getting I mean, I’m not gonna put words in your mouth, but like, let’s talk numbers here. So this thing stays viable, and we’re sharing pictures of the kayak, right? So but it seems like you’re totally, you saw it transform.
Ronna Chisholm 42:52
Yeah, that was part of my vision, I didn’t know how well they’d receive it though I thought, like, I’m like, okay, who are we gonna get? We’re gonna do this. And it has kept on for more than a decade. Like and people love it. They’re very comfortable with seeing them getting love to this person nailed it on all the new this work last week and this work, and, yeah, the team. So the three people like that, you mentioned that have been around for a long, long time. I mean, their words that I hear back is the culture and the care.
Jeremy Weisz 45:47
That’s especially, even important with remote teams, like, if someone has a remote team and you don’t even get to see people in person. I mean, some companies and sharing even, that’s even, I would think even more important, because you don’t see people, person or know what’s going on, or just maybe on Zoom calls occasionally here, so thanks for sharing that. I think that’s really a golden gem of this.
Ronna Chisholm 46:19
Yeah, I was just gonna say, it did take my, my business, mine, a long time, to land on, like a performance review package that worked for visual people, because the SMART goals and putting it in a document and coming prepared for a meeting like no one ever showed up. And so, we put it into a whole visual kind of and those values were just super core to that’s where we always start. How are you living out these values?
Jeremy Weisz 46:51
Ronna, I have one last question. I know we’re right at the time, so I don’t know if you have time for it, so we can end it here. I just would love to hear you’ve been doing this a long time, obviously, very successfully. I’d love to hear mentors and can be colleagues also, and some lessons learned along the way. I know you mentioned a few people, including Roger Martin, you mentioned Frank Palmer, who are some of the other colleagues, mentors that have helped you on the journey.
Ronna Chisholm 47:27
Yeah, so Frank Palmer was not, I have not met him in person. He was mentors of ZGM partners, for sure. And I would love to meet him. I did have a big mentor early in my finance degree kind of life. And his name was Milton Wong, and he was a money manager, and I worked for him for my first internship, and in that field, he was a real anomaly. His sister was an artist, but his brothers were engineers, and they were at the time, trying to get into any professional engineering careers in Vancouver, and they couldn’t, because they were Chinese, and the stain with being tailored, and created this legacy in Vancouver that had the documentary on them, the modernized tailors story.
But Milton saw that. He saw his brothers and the racism, and he was the first Chinese banker hired like on a national bank in Canada, and so he ended up becoming successful, but also did a lot of philanthropy. He created dragon boat races to bring people of all kind of ethnicities together in Vancouver. He created a dialog center, Science Center, and he was a personal mentor of mine. And early when I was working in the finance industry, we had big meetings with global set kind of analysts, and I was totally at a place that like being 20 but he pulled me aside and said, like there was a woman that had come in that was in a really well known economist.
And he said, Ronna, you never have to apologize for being a woman, ever in your business, in your career, you don’t have to act and look like a man. You can be feminine like this economist that had just come in, and you can do anything you want, kind of thing. So that was big for me. He also though was so big on community values, so he started the internship program that I was involved with because we saw a lot of institutional money coming in from the baby boomer generation, and he was concerned that the new young money managers wouldn’t have good values and ethics. So it was all about building good community values, ethics. And a few years ago, he passed away, and on his deathbed kind of thing. Well, it was a meeting with a lot of my alumni. He just went around in a circle with them and said, what are you doing for the community? What are you doing for the community? What are you doing for the community? So, yeah, he’s got a book up on Spark on my shelf.
The book Spark, book of his legacy and so hugely, and it also helped, because I was so young and was such a fun and the program that he started, he said he refused, and the Dean of the Business School here wanted to do with MBAs. And he said, no, I won’t, because I don’t want them at 27 I want them at 20 when I can actually help form them, and they’re not going to have the egos they have later. And so that also was hugely inspiring for me about like, if you can help influence in a really positive way, a young person early in their career, like we all know it that stays with you, right?
Jeremy Weisz 51:24
100% Ronna, I just want to be the first, thanks for sharing that that’s powerful. And I want to encourage people to check out dossiercreative.com and check out, obviously, railyardlab.com and just thank you for sharing the stories, Ronna and we’ll see everyone next time. Thank you.
Ronna Chisholm 51:46
Thanks for having me.
