Jeremy Weisz 21:02
I’m in EO Chicago — love, love the organization.
Ted Lau 21:04
Oh man, fantastic. So I actually ended up becoming the accelerator chair. But in any case when I was in accelerator, one of the speakers said, core values, talk about core values, and how important core values are for your organization. And I remember thinking, like, I have four people in my company, what do I care about core values? Why is that important? And you’re pulling up here, our core values. And he said, Ted, you have four people, if one of them is not a fit, because of your core values, and they leave, or they’re dragging along, that’s 25% of your workforce. And that opened my eyes, and I immediately started digging into the core values, how to build core values.
And we use the Jim Collins good, great, he had a PDF, I think you can search for it still called Mission to Mars. And it was just an exercise. And I remember sitting down in my boardroom table in my little office, and just started building my core values. And that’s how we kind of went and it’s kind of evolved and changed over time. But these core values that you’re showing continuous improvement, radical candor, cause and effect and determination. These are like — we live and breathe these. And that’s really helped create a filter for us to hire folks that will then maybe they have varying interests and whatnot. There you go. Varying interests. For those that are listening, Jeremy just pulled up the Mars group PDF on Jim collins.com.
Jeremy Weisz 22:33
Jim collins.com, you can see the Mars group and there’s a nice framework here, you want to check it out?
Ted Lau 22:38
Yeah, it’s a great framework I use that built it out. And essentially, what I love about core values was, I remember, again, we’ll go back to my wife, when we were dating, I was into like punk rock and industrial music and partying and my wife was kind of a more quiet, Mariah Carey listening kind of individual, we had nothing in common whatsoever. Other than like Chinese food, we had nothing in common, yet, we really got along. And one of my clients, actually I was telling her about this, she like your core values, you guys have similar core values. And when I realized that you can have varying interest. But if you have similar core values as humans, you’re going to make a great team. And that’s really how we hire and fire this is for both clients and staff.
And over time, we’ve gotten better at it. We’re still not great at it. In fact, I launched a YouTube video recently called You Know Ted. And if you go to YouTube, it’s at, You Know Ted Lau, and one of the videos I talk about is some of the mistakes I’ve made in hiring and even recently, because just because you know this is how you’re supposed to do it, sometimes desperate situations. Come on, you’re like, I’m just going to hire the person then realize, oh, man, I made a mistake. When it comes to leaders, though, that has been a bit of a journey. And we found that hiring within has really helped. We’re a small company. We’re still under 30 folks, and having people that maybe started at the production level, then became a project manager, and then bring them up in becoming a department head has really gone a long way to build the loyalty to build the culture because others then see, hey, there’s a path for my own success.
And because this is one of us, not leadership, that is coming in and running a particular department has I think, created leadership inherently in varying roles that doesn’t depend on leadership, the leadership team itself too. It’s not coming top-down. It’s coming bottom up. So that’s been a real, real journey.
Jeremy Weisz 22:42
What was a key position that you put in place because it’s you? There’s three of you. Then there’s two of you, then it’s your girlfriend and then you have some Coming from the college, but what was in the kind of I don’t know what you call it, you got out of the awkward teenage stage into way more than mature stage, what was a key position there that kind of help take you to the next level?
Ted Lau 25:19
The management level, it was a big one. And it took us many years of growing pains. Firstly was just project management, we had a lot of technicians that were hands on keyboard. But ultimately we didn’t have managers to run projects properly. And that learning curve, it was a lot of peaks and valleys of figuring that out. But then after I bought out my partner and really understanding and we were talking about EOS earlier in the pre-call entrepreneurs operating system, there’s a book out there by Gino Wickman called Traction I’m sure you’ve talked about it in other episodes, that book really helped us understand, we got to have the right butts in the right seats, and making sure that we’re bringing on and visualizing what the org chart is going to look like in the future and then start slotting people in.
That has really helped us understand this, if we’re going to grow here, in the next three or four years, we’re gonna need disposition. And this is what it’s going to need to be. And ultimately understanding that we need to have not just managers that can run departments, but have instilled leadership qualities in them. So on top of our core values, we have three things that we call our company mindset, I guess, in a way, they’re kind of like core values, but it’s how we do business, not just the how we live life. And they come from a leadership program that me and one of my advisors had taken, and one is 100% responsibility. So it doesn’t really matter if you come into a situation and you didn’t cause the issue. The 100% responsibility is what can I do in this particular situation to make this better?
That’s one. Another one is workability. So rather than blaming, because it’s very easy when poop hits the fan, fingers point, not to me point to other folks. Because blame is easier than taking responsibility. So first, we have 100% responsibility. And then we have workability, where it’s like what’s workable culture of no blame, there’s no right or wrong. Again, this is the situation, where do we go from here to make this situation work for everybody. And not just for the client, for the team for the individual, everybody. And then the last company mindset is what we call integrity, but in a way where it’s like doing what you say you’re going to do, doing it on time doing what you say you’re going to do even when others don’t expect you, didn’t say it, but expect you to do it and do it and on time and the way that’s supposed to be, those are three critical things that we talk about all the time, almost on a weekly basis, actually on a weekly basis.
And it’s really helped elevate the team and we’re in a situation, we’re blessed to be in a situation where I can spend a lot of time talking to you about this stuff, and leaving my team doing their thing. It’s a very self-managed company at this point.
Jeremy Weisz 28:20
What was the, and I love, I love that, thanks for sharing that. What was the leadership program called it also reminds me of one of my favorite books The Four Agreements. Very similar, which is like they talk about be impeccable with your word. Do not take anything personally don’t make assumption always do your best. But the Be impeccable with your word reminds me of the integrity piece, which is like you just do your best to do what you said you’re gonna do you know what I mean? What was the leadership program called?
Ted Lau 28:51
The leadership program was actually a self-improvement program that one of my coaches slash mentors told me to take, I was starting to go through the divorcing period with my former business partner at the time, it didn’t know we were just having static. And the business model wasn’t working. I just wasn’t happy. And so he got me to go to this. Because he was like, it’s not again, not that person’s fault. Like, sure you and your partner don’t like each other. But it’s not all him like what are you responsible for? And he took me to this program. It’s called landmark.
Yeah. It’s a professional. It’s like a personal development program, where I, I took it and I actually did a lot of their leadership training. They had a program called the self-expression and leadership program that I took and became a coach on, which was a lot of, it was actually a lot of fun. However, I wouldn’t be saying that I’m a proponent necessarily, of the culture that Landmark had started to instill over the time I was there. However, as my mother would say, always take, you know, the good out of any situation. So there was a lot of good out of that program that I benefited from. I benefited from that it instilled into my company. And there was a lot of things that I definitely didn’t agree with the organization. So I’ve since it’s been like eight years.
Jeremy Weisz 30:17
You took the good and throughout the stuff he didn’t, exactly with. How did you, from the business partner perspective? How did you navigate buying out your partner?
Ted Lau 30:30
Oh, I don’t know if navigate is the word that I would use, fumble stumble. And I’ll fall on my face is kind of how I would say it. So I said earlier, I was part of EO — Entrepreneurs’ Organization. And I joined through the accelerator program to kind of grow the business and get qualified into EO but I had this weird conception in my head misconception that when I get into EO, I’ve arrived, and they’re going to help me figure out how I’m going to fix my business problems and fix my business marriage, as it were. And that is, in fact, not what EO is about. But I had this misconception and when the problems that kept arising with my partner happened, and they couldn’t solve it, I ended up leaving and trying to go on it on my own, trying to figure out, did not work.
And we got into progressively louder and more disgruntled disagreements, that we had a fairly cost effective office space where the walls were thin, and our voices were loud. And so when the kids start hearing, the parents are yelling and screaming, it’s not a good culture. If you go on Glassdoor, you’ll see all the one star Glass Door reviews, I have from that time, five, ish, six years ago. And so it was not fun. And in fact, I wasn’t the one that initiated the breakup, it was my partner that wrote me a kind of a Dear John letter. And it was at first a kind of relieving, was a bit of a sense of, I guess, it’s like that someone took the lid off the pressure of that pressure cooker. And it was him and I thought, oh, perfect. That’s not gonna be a problem. I did all the sales anyway, he did the operations. And if we systematize the operations, get them out, it’ll be fine.
And I was ignorant to the fact that we did not have the systems in play that I thought we had. And so when I bought him out, and he left, then people were like, well, what am I supposed to do with this part of my job? I’m like, What? You don’t know, like, I thought there was a system for this. No, it’s in his head. And every part of the company required this linchpin as it were, to function. So the company now is also in this house of cards that are slowly falling down. And I go through 80% turnover, I’m trying to shift the business, we’re not a recurring revenue business at the time. We were a for-per-project business. We weren’t doing lead gen, we were just a service business building websites, videos and branding. And it was a cluster F and S show. I don’t know if I’m allowed to swear in here.
But it was all of that and more, my marriage had issues. I was getting sued like a was just disastrous. And over that time, I reached out to a large network of folks that I know. And everyone, I think just over the number of years of being in the business world, everyone really wanted to help. So I got a lot of advice from varying people. I even called some agency owners that I looked up to that were much larger, but I knew that they had crashed and burned. And I went and talked to them. I talked to people that actually went bankrupt, and people that folded their businesses, people that went through the tough time and trying to figure it out. And ultimately, it was finally we weren’t, we were actually this close to closing down the company was July of 19. I thought I was done. I was like, I can’t do this anymore. We were losing like, for us as a small business. We’re like losing 50 grand a month for months on end. And that was for us a ton of money at the time. And I was like, I can’t do this anymore.
I can’t handle this pressure. And I was convincing my wife to turn it down. And we’ve been talking about this for turn it off. We’ve been talking about this for like two, three, four months at that time and she was sick of hearing it. In fact, she’s like, okay, either we’re going to do or not. And when the final decision of like, okay, we’re going to do this. She very quietly said, I don’t want to lose this. And at the time, she was simply the bookkeeper in the company. John, I don’t want to lose this. And I was like, well, what do you mean, you want to lose? You don’t want to lose the lifestyle because like, I can’t work another five, 10 years, there’s I want to murder myself, it’s not going to be good. It’s like, no, like you built this. I don’t think that it’s a good idea. Just let it go.
And I remember thinking, well, look, if you’re saying that you’re willing to, like, partner up with me and kind of helped me on the leadership side and figure it out, okay, well, what do we got to lose, and we had a really long heart to heart about it. And she said, yeah, and so she took it on the helm of HR, have no experience in HR and just kind of helped me along and Rick at a time and just step at a time, two months prior to that, I had promised, I delayed our quarterly meetings with my team, because I didn’t know what I was going to do, what the direction of the company was going to be. And I just kind of, after having beers with some clients, and they convinced me that they wanted me to get into social media marketing, and I’m like, I hate social media that like, I’m like, why do you want me to do that? They’re like, well, we don’t get all any business from our digital marketing.
And I’m like, you pay people thousands of dollars a month, and you don’t get any business from it. And they’re like, yeah, I’m like, Well, what if I got you leads? Like, drinking a bit? And like, what if I just got your business like then that that’d be a lot easier? And they’re like, if you did that Ted, I’ll never leave you. One client actually said that, who’s a client of ours today. And so I went on this journey of like, am I like half thinking, I’m going to shut down this business. But okay, maybe I got it. I can turn this around if I did this digital marketing lead gen program for my business. And as I was thinking, I can’t do this, the plan is going to end. And she was like, no, let’s do this. I needed, I needed someone to be able to be in my corner. Because I was being attacked. It felt like anyway, on all sides, staff, clients, vendors, whatever you would have you former business partner.
And she was like, Yeah, let’s do this. And one thing led to another and we got one client that was convinced that we could help them get leads, second client, third client. I started that department with half the body was actually my video producer, who actually worked at another digital marketing agency didn’t really understand the lead part of it. But I created a plan. And I’m like, if you follow this plan, can you do it? And he’s like, yeah, I can do this. There’s only one client, he had, like, 8, 10 different video projects. But yeah, we’ll do this on the side of my desk, and I built it from there, built the department. And then now this is like, 60-70% of our, probably 70 some odd percent of our business now. And we still do a lot of creative work. And that actually helps the digital marketing side. And we’re in a lot better place. But man, it was dark times.
Jeremy Weisz 37:44
Ted thank you for sharing that. And being so vulnerable, but I think anyone who’s been in business has experienced burns at some spectrum of everything he talked about. So I appreciate you sharing that. It’s amazing how you rebuilt it from the ground up from probably a staff and service perspective. And so thanks for sharing that. I have one last question. And just to highlight a little bit about that your methodology and what you do, and even the transition to what you do now as accompany. Let’s talk about Eco Raster, and what you do with them.
Ted Lau 38:25
Yeah, that’s, that’s great. Thank you. So, Eco Raster is a, actually the company is called Curious North America. So they have a license to sell this permeable paving product all over North America. And this permeable paving product is kind of unique product, it looks like for those of you listening, I’ll describe it, it looks like a 10 by 10 grid, where if you go to the farmers market, it goes, yeah, these kind of grid, this you put into the ground, and it helps rainwater go through all the way to the ground so that you don’t have floods, like in California last year, there was a brainstorm. And then there’s all these floods, because they don’t have a way to disperse the rainwater. This client has a full license of the manufacturers out in Germany, and they can market this all through North America. And they actually do a bit of manufacturing now in Ontario as well.
They came to us because they heard we do B2B lead generation marketing. They have a distribution network where they’re distributors, the only way that they’re going to play ball and push this product into their clientele base is that they see that leads are coming through that there’s an incentive for them to push it and makes it easier for them. And they were working with another agency that they had been for a while but a lot of agencies that we talked about, it’s the kind of nice thing the fluff will get you like so get you followers, I’ll build you a new website. Yeah, vanity metrics. They were no there was no line of sight as to how We’re going to do all this marketing and turn it into actual qualified leads that then our distributors in California and Utah and Washington and Texas and in Boston or New York or wherever, is going to be able to take these leads and convert it into business.
And so when we talk to them, they really look for a relationship of a company that they can work with long term that can have proof in the pudding, we measure all of our metrics, and we manage the entire funnel, it’s very turnkey, we go from top of funnel, that’s the content writing or blogs, and SEO, PPC pay per click, we do all the design work, as well as maybe some mini videos. And then the middle of funnel is the landing pages, website, conversion rates, all that kind of stuff, and all the way to bottom of funnel for email marketing and referrals and whatnot.
And it’s gone extremely well that that particular client, like all of our clients will give us a goal, we work with them on how many leads they need. And that goal that how many leads they need, basically, is correlated to how much business that they would get from it. And so that number is what they said. And we’ve been extremely, I’ve been extremely proud of my team, because we’ve been able to hit 1000, sometimes 1600% above their lead target that they set. So they’re happy, we’re happy. It’s a great relationship. And it’s because it’s built on this foundation of trust, and the fact that we are accountable if the results are there, it’s us. But if the results aren’t there, it’s also us our entire team at Ballistic Arts. Sure we pay them a fair wage.
But the bonuses that we provide, it’s fairly generous. And it’s all incentive-based. You hit their clients goals, it’s either on track or off track. There’s no in the middle, is it red or green? If it’s green, you’re good if it’s not, because there’s a problem. And every week, actually, right after this meeting today, I meet with all my account managers, and we go through green, red, green, red, and anyone that’s red, we got to figure out how from a workability standpoint to make a green. And if it’s all green, which actually, for the first time in a long time, it’s been, I think we have one red out of all of our clients. Everyone else is green. That’s a good thing. And everyone’s happy and clients are happy. We’re happy.
Jeremy Weisz 42:19
I love it. Ted, I just want to be the first one to thank you. Thanks for opening up sharing your journey, your stories. Everyone can learn from this myself definitely included and I want to encourage everyone to check out ballisticarts.com to learn more and poke around their site and more episodes of the podcast and Ted, thank you so much.
Ted Lau 42:39
Thank you, Dr. Jeremy. We’ll be talking soon. Thanks everybody.
