john scheer is the co-founder and chief creative officer of herman-scheer, a strategic branding agency focused on healthcare, self-care, and wellbeing since 2010. he joins sean to trace the 15-year arc from knocking on doors with a duct-taped wordpress site to a 21-person agency that doubled in a year. john gets into the breakthroughs that turned a scrappy shop into a real business: splitting roles with co-founder chapin herman, niching down into health and wellness, and bringing in a strategist, allison, to back the creative work with real data. it's an honest look at getting your process dialed, doing the work before you know how, and giving yourself room to breathe while the business keeps growing.
In this episode of Read Receipt, Sean sits down with John Scheer, co-founder and chief creative officer of Herman-Scheer, a strategic branding agency focused on healthcare, self-care, and wellbeing since 2010.
John traces the 15-year arc from knocking on doors with a duct-taped WordPress site to a 21-person agency that doubled in a year. He gets into the breakthroughs that turned a scrappy shop into a real business: splitting roles with co-founder Chapin Herman, niching down into health and wellness, and bringing in a strategist, Allison, to back the creative work with real data.
It's an honest look at getting your process dialed, doing the work before you know how, why you launch a brand to grow into rather than a single product, and giving yourself room to breathe while the business keeps growing.
Tune in for a candid conversation on building a branding agency the slow, deliberate way.
Chapters:
00:00 - Cold open
00:39 - Brand self-ID: what Herman-Scheer is
01:00 - Moving to Northeast Ohio, going fully remote
04:00 - Starting right out of college
07:00 - The first video and knocking on doors in LA
11:00 - The breakthrough: splitting roles with Chapin
14:00 - Niching into health, self-care, and wellbeing
17:00 - Adding data and insight, bringing in Allison
22:00 - The shape of the team today
28:00 - Account directors as the real differentiators
33:00 - Clients that come back, and the case-study lag
39:00 - The branding process, step by step
45:00 - How AI fits into the work
48:00 - The longer-term vision for the agency
51:00 - Room to breathe while the business grows
53:00 - Close
John Scheer: You don't wanna figure out doing the work while you're figuring out how to do the work. When you know what each step of the process is, stick to that. Don't try to reinvent it every time.
Sean: I am super excited to have you back for another episode of Read Receipt. It's a deep dive into the how and why of the brands we love and the creatives behind them.
Sean: From blueprints to launch day, customers as community, and the detours in between. Big lessons and easy listening. Read Receipt is hosted by Antidote, the email and SMS marketing agency by people who hate boring email.
John Scheer: Herman-Scheer. We are a strategic branding agency focused on healthcare, self-care, and wellbeing since 2010, right out of college.
John Scheer: I think for a lot of startups, you know, one thing I keep finding myself repeating is that you don't wanna launch a product, you wanna launch a brand to grow into.
Sean: You are in Northeast Ohio now?
John Scheer: That's right. Outside of Cleveland, Ohio is where I grew up.
Sean: Cool. Did you move back to be closer to family?
John Scheer: That's exactly right. I got two little girls. My oldest was starting kindergarten, and I wanted her to be around family and in good public schools and all that good stuff.
Sean: That's cool. Is your-
John Scheer: Yeah, man.
Sean: You have a lot of family there still?
John Scheer: Yep, my mother and my sister's here, and I don't wanna bum your podcast listeners out, but it, it, it kinda all got started 'cause my dad got sick, so-
Sean: Gosh
John Scheer: yeah, my wife and I got, got on a plane, brought our kids here, and we were close to him while he was battling his disease.
Sean: Ah, sorry to hear that.
John Scheer: But you know what? It was the best of the worst situation.
Sean: Are you, are you guys staying there for the long haul?
John Scheer: This is home base, at least through high school graduation.
Sean: Crazy.
John Scheer: Raising kids. You got any?
Sean: I got two boys, three and six, and I have... My wife is pregnant, and her due date was on Saturday, and we're in the waiting game right now.
John Scheer: Can you imagine if mid, mid- No ... recording she ha- calls you and she's like, "He's here." Is it another boy or another- or a girl?
Sean: No, no, a girl this time.
John Scheer: God bless you. Dude- ... I can't imagine-
Sean: God, the way you said that was like, "God bless you," like, "Good luck."
John Scheer: No, it was... I shoulda said in past tense, 'cause I can't imagine... I have two girls, three and six, and that's a handful, so two boys, three and six, I'm sure is an- is a nightmare, and then adding a third boy would just be insane.
Sean: I mean, yeah. Boys are crazy. But they're quite predictable, so I feel like that might be a different game, you know?
John Scheer: That's true. My girls are u- are unpredictable.
Sean: Yeah. Boys, boys I, I think it's pretty simple. Like, as long as you have stuff to get their energy out, you know?
John Scheer: Yeah. Yeah. Don't feed 'em after midnight, don't get 'em wet, and you're all right.
Sean: Yeah, exactly. Put 'em in some, uh, activities, and they're good.
John Scheer: All right. Nice.
Sean: What, um- Well- What, what's the, what's the company set up? Like, how was it moving across the country with, with work?
John Scheer: So we pretty much went fully remote in- Like right after COVID, then we got an office for a little while. We were hybrid and nobody came in, so we got rid of the office, and then we've been fully remote.
John Scheer: So all of our processes are dialed in for remote, fully remote work. So when we first came here, it, it was, it was fine. And in fact, it was kinda nice because the majority of the team is on the West Coast, and this is EST, so I got a whole morning to myself before I got any meetings and yeah. So that was really nice.
John Scheer: And then nobody really bugs me after 5:00 anyways, so yeah, I, I got a nice lifestyle going on over here.
Sean: What's your background before Herman-Scheer?
John Scheer: Student.
Sean: Am I, am I saying that correct?
John Scheer: You're saying that correctly. Herman-Scheer, we are a strategic branding agency focused on healthcare, self-care, and wellbeing since 2010, right out of college.
John Scheer: That's when the Herman to my Scheer and I started this thing. He wrote me a Facebook message after we graduated and was like, "Look, man, you don't wanna, you don't wanna work for the man, you don't wanna live in Cleveland. Come stay on my couch here in Santa Monica. Let's figure this out." And we did, and that's...
John Scheer: And then the rest is history.
Sean: So you guys started-- You didn't jump into any job after college? How'd you guys start getting work originally? "
John Scheer: Hey, my name is John. Can I do this? Will you pay me?" You know, for, for every 20 nos, you get one yes, and then you just leverage that for something else, and then that for something else.
John Scheer: And then we got to a place where we had enough work to where we could hire people that were better at us at the execution, and we just kind of figured out how to grow it. And I, I like to say that the first, like, eight years were him and I just getting our MBAs and learning what not to do. And it wasn't really until...
John Scheer: Really wasn't until 2022 where we, like, realized what we needed to do in order to, like, create a real business out of this.
Sean: What, I guess in the beginning, like when you were knocking on doors, were you like literally knocking on doors? What were-
John Scheer: Yeah, I literally was. So one of the first projects we got, I went to the University of Arizona, and one of my friends became the assistant general manager at this boutique hotel in Sedona.
John Scheer: And after I graduated, I studied abroad and finished my upper division art credits there, and my grandmother got me a, a nice DSLR. And when I got home, I ended up contracting mono 'cause I was, you know, making out with people in Barcelona or whatever. Hopefully. And while I was sick, I just walked around my parents' house and filmed it, um, and like made this like property showcase video because my dad's an architect and my mom does a lot of in- interior design, and I've always admired their, their home.
John Scheer: And then I liked it even more and appreciated it after I went abroad and I could see all the influence that they had from Europe, and, you know, my, my tastes evolved and it became more sophisticated, and I also had nothing to do. So I walked around in my boxers and my camera, and I walk- and I filmed the house.
John Scheer: And when I saw that my buddy became the assistant manager at this hotel in Sedona, I sent him the finished video. And I had like edited it to music, and it was, it was, it was objectively cool at the time, and this was 2010. So this was like early... There was no Instagram yet. There was YouTube, there was Vimeo, but like Facebook didn't have video on it.
John Scheer: Websites weren't really like embedding videos. And I sent it to him and I was like, "Hey, can I do this at your hotel?" And he was like, "Let me show my, the general manager." And he did, and he was like, "Yeah, come on. We'll give you 800 bucks and you can stay out here." So I thought I won the lottery. We drove out there and filmed this place, sweating, you know, in the middle of the night, shooting, doing all this stuff.
John Scheer: And long story short, once we had that video, and then I walked up and down Sunset Boulevard with my MacBook Pro and walked in, asked to speak to the managers of all the hotels I could, and most people were like, "Not interested. No, thanks." And I lived across from this hotel called The Chamberlain in West Hollywood, and I, I went in there and they were like, "Hey, yeah, this is cool, but I don't, mm, not gonna, I don't know.
John Scheer: No." And then six months later They reached back out and they were like, "Hey, we're ready to do that. Are you still interested?" And we did that. And in between those six months, we, we scraped money together by, like, doing headshots for his mom's acting students' headshots, and just did all sorts of weird- Iconic.
John Scheer: What's that?
Sean: I said iconic, the headshots.
John Scheer: Iconic. Yeah, we just did all sorts of shit. And then once we had that Chamberlain video, you know, and we made a website, and then... I don't even think we had a website at that time. I started just hitting up more people, and then one guy was like, "Can you guys build a website for his restaurant?"
John Scheer: And I was like, "Of course we can build a website." And we didn't know how to build a website. So we duct-taped a WordPress site together, and took photos and videos, and then another, and then, and then it just kinda... We just omnivorously took on anything that anybody would trust us enough to do. And I think what we were really good at was networking and just putting ourselves out there best we could.
John Scheer: And it, you know, slowly but surely paid off, and That's, that's the early history.
Sean: What, what changed in 2022 when you, you said you, you guys realized what you needed to do to, like, run it as a business?
John Scheer: So, so 2017, 2018, that was actually the first breakthrough where an advisor of ours was like, "Hey, Herman, Shir, you guys are running this business like a two-headed monster.
John Scheer: You're both doing a little bit of everything. There's no clarity between your roles. Clients don't know who to go to for what. Your team doesn't know who to go to for what." And so we had this 360 review, and he was like, on the other side of it, then-
Sean: Did the review.
John Scheer: Our-- We had an advisor. This-
Sean: Okay ...
John Scheer: older gentleman who had started and sold a number of management consulting firms here in Cleveland, Ohio, and he loved California, and we got connected through a family friend, and he was like, "I'll consult you guys if you put me up in California once a quarter."
John Scheer: And we were like, "All right. Okay, cool." Um, it was great, and so we learned a lot from him, and like real business stuff, and he was always available for us to ask questions. And one of the things that he did is what I'm talking about now, was like clarifying the roles between Chapin and I, and that was Chapin got voted in as our chief executive, and I got voted in as our chief creative, and it was like we both got promoted at our own company because that was kind of what we both wanted to do.
John Scheer: Like, I loved being in the work and coming up with creative ideas and, you know, working with designers and writers, and he liked systems and processes and h- like thinking about working on the business, and I was interested in working in the business. And that was like rocket fuel for us. And then the other thing that we decided to do was like I said before, we were omnivorously working on anything and everything, doing a lot of website work, and we were kinda good at a lot of stuff, not great at anything.
John Scheer: And when we looked around The stuff that we really liked doing was this, like, strategic creative work that ultimately we realized was branding. And at the time, there were two agencies, Red Antler, of course, in New York, and then Gin Lane out in New York, and they had really capitalized on this direct-to-consumer boom, all the venture capital dollars going into consumer product goods that were selling direct to consumer.
John Scheer: But there was nobody really in LA that had, like, put their flag in the ground as the go-to branding agency, and that's what we set out to do back then in, like, 2017, 2018. And we had naturally ingrained ourselves in the venture capital community, the entrepreneurial community, and so people started coming to us for doing that type of work, and it was great.
John Scheer: And so we had clarity in who did what. We had clarity of what type of work we wanna do, and that was, like, the first... That's what broke us out of the, like, scrappy under a million a year into, like, a real business. And then, um,
Sean: and then- Did you guys change, like, um, the positioning outwardly of what-
John Scheer: Yeah ...
Sean: how you were presenting and then, like, did you already- Yeah, I think our-
Sean: have connections or
John Scheer: Yeah, we started putting out these portfolios and, I mean, our portfolio of case studies of branding work, where it was, like, helping these people that were figuring out how to launch a business, and that was the work that we started showcasing, and people started coming to us. And then in 2022, that's when we realized that, okay, like, there's a lot of great agencies out there, and we were really generalized, and we started going up against the, a lot of the same agencies and realized that the only projects we were winning, it was just coming down to like, hey, do they like us?
John Scheer: Do they happen to think our work is obj- you know, subjectively better than another client's? And they were just comparing, and we, weren't making a real decision to work with us. And so we took a step back and realized that we... A lot of our portfolio was in the health and wellness space, and we were in West Los Angeles, which is, you know, arguably like the epicenter of health and wellness.
John Scheer: And Chapin and I had both had our first kids, and we were becoming what we called members of the sandwich generation, where we were responsible for our own health as we were creeping into middle age. We were responsible for our partner's health, our baby's health, our aging parents' health. We were surrounded by all these innovative health and wellness brands, and we were like, "Let's go all in on this."
John Scheer: And that was the second breakthrough towards the next rung in the ladder of growth for us, where we decided to not just be strategic brand builders, but also who exactly we were for. And then the next breakthrough came when we decided to not just work with zero-to-one startups, but help businesses at any inflection point, which is, you know, not just launching a business, but let's say a Series A company who's found product market fit, they're growing, but n- now they're trying to go from direct to consumer.
John Scheer: They've hit their kind of growth targets there, and now they're trying to go retail. So what does that mean? How do they reposition themselves through that lens? How do they adjust their packaging? So that's a lot of work that we're doing. And then on the larger business side, like the legacy enterprise scale businesses, a lot of those businesses are looking for that startup freshness because they're losing relevancy because their teams are so big and they're slow to make decisions and their brand has gotten fatigued and it's, you know, losing cultural relevance.
John Scheer: So we work with a lot of businesses in that stage too. So the specialty, the moving up market, and then the third thing was incorporating much more like real human insights and data into our strategy work to then inform our creative work. Because I think we were doing a good job of having our intuition and the shared intellectual capital with the clients on how to make smart creative decisions together, but it wasn't backed by real insights.
John Scheer: And that was-- we were losing business because of that, because these bigger agents or these bigger businesses were like, "How do you, how do you know that this is gonna work?" And we were like, "'Cause it's cool, man," you know? And then... And, and so that was like, okay, we need to like back, back our shit up. And so then what we did after we kind of plateaued with, with that idea, we were like, all right, now I think we've hit our We've hit our own ceiling in terms of we wanted more out of this business, and we don't know what we don't know.
John Scheer: So we were talking to our new advisor who had started and sold his own consulting agency called Colton- Kelton Global, and they asked him to then be the CEO of this new super agency now called Material, and he bought up six other agencies and, and we worked with him. So when we rebranded Earth Bar, he was consulting the CEO, and he was on the other side, and he was super intimidating, really smart, and scared the shit out of me, and I was like, "Okay, we gotta do great work for this."
John Scheer: And like a year or so after that engagement, I saw on LinkedIn that he had left this Material that I was talking about, and I reached out to him. He's like, "Hey, I'm so glad you reached out. You know, you guys did such great work with Bob over at Earth Bar. Let's catch up." And so long story short, he ended up being our new advisor after the older Cleveland gentleman, like, officially retired.
John Scheer: And we were talking to him, and we're like, "Look, I think Chapin and I, we've kind of hit our ceiling. Like, we don't know what else, what other levers to pull." And he was like, "I think you should talk to this woman named Allison," who was with him at Kelton, and then he appointed her the head of strategy and insights at this new super agency called Material, where she ran a $150 million strategy and insights firm, you know, bunch of employees, worked for every big corporation you can think of, and she was miserable at this agency.
John Scheer: She wasn't doing any work. She was just putting out fires internally with employees and just, like, managing people, and she wanted to be in the mix. So right around the same time we were telling, his name is Gareth, our advisor, that we were thinking about bringing somebody else in who could help us grow, he had a similar conversation with Allison, who was...
John Scheer: didn't feel like she was growing anymore. So within three months after that first conversation, we made her a partner in the business, and in her, she's going on her second year up in, coming in September. In our first year, she helped us double the business. Yeah. She's an am- she's the best. I love her.
John Scheer: That's insane. And she's totally... Yeah. And so she's, she's brought in a whole book of business herself. She managed bad performers out. She's brought in amazing new people, you know, optimized everything, and she's just a phenomenal person and really believed in our new focus on healthcare, self-care, and wellbeing, and, like, having a woman leader in the business has really helped us Get new business and provide value to companies that are trying to do really important things for women's health.
John Scheer: So knock on wood, man, it's all good. And-
Sean: Wow.
John Scheer: Yeah.
Sean: That's incredible.
John Scheer: So that's my story. I realize I've been talking for 19 minutes and 19, 20 seconds.
Sean: I mean, that's the whole point of this. Okay. Yeah. I- So-
John Scheer: Yeah.
Sean: Do it. Yeah. You're doing great. How did... Did you guys like- Are the advisor situations, like, are those, like, intentional?
Sean: Do they happen by accident? Um, are you, like, formalizing them or-
John Scheer: Yeah.
Sean: Yeah.
John Scheer: Yeah. Yeah. They're formal.
Sean: Is, is that, like, something you've, you just have always done? Did you get advice?
John Scheer: I mean, you know, I never worked anywhere else to the beginning of our conversation, so I, I was running on pure ambition, naivety, and I never...
John Scheer: Like, I think Chapin and I's strong suit, like I said before, is, you know, we can kind of talk to anybody, and I'm, I'm very comfortable asking people for help. I haven't-- Neither of us have had much ego through this whole thing. And so the first advisor situation, we were 23 or 24, and yeah, I asked a friend of my dad's who knew this guy, Jim, who was advising him at his agency here in Cleveland, and I was like, "Do you think he'd be open?"
John Scheer: He's like, "Yeah, talk to him." So that's how that happened. And after a few conversations and a couple visits, we gave him a small portion of equity to make it official and hold him accountable of providing value, and that ran its course. And then when our new advisor Gareth came in, same conversation. You know, we compensated him for his time for a while and then gave him a piece of the pie.
John Scheer: He's our coach, he's our friend, he has just stayed in the loop, and he does a lot of proactive provocations. He's always there for us to, you know, text him, call him, whatever. But most importantly, he's been, you know, the matchmaker of, of Alison and helping us grow through that lens.
Sean: What's the, the shape of the team like now?
Sean: How has your role evolved as you've gone deeper on creative, but also now there's, like, data involved?
John Scheer: Mm-hmm. So I am... Yeah, I'm our chief creative, and what that means is I can-- I'm like... I focus a lot on our branding work. We have another creative director, Adam, who's been with us six years. He's fantastic.
John Scheer: He's in LA, and he does some branding work, but his interest, his passion is in campaign production work. He's been doing an amazing job at a lot of web projects as well. So he handles a lot of the campaign, the production work. I handle bigger strategic accounts that are going through the strategy process and brand repositioning, things like that.
John Scheer: And then we've got a director of strategy, Jessica, who's been with us for five years, or four. I don't know, four or five. She's fantastic. And between her and Allison and some of the other people that we've brought in, we go through our standard s- strategy process, and we just look at these insights that we're getting from qualitative and quantitative data sets and say, "Okay, what is this actually telling us, and how do we make this into an advantage for the business and give it to the client in a way that they'll understand it and get excited about it to inform the work?"
John Scheer: And I don't know. You know, like, it just- It has felt quite intuitive for me, and when I'm surrounded by people who know how to, you know, do the surveys and, and, you know, think about data sets and look at trends and things like that, I can just help them interpret it into creative solutions or, or whatever.
John Scheer: So when- to answer your actual question, the team makeup, we've got around 21 full-time people and then a roster of, I would say, 20 freelance folks at any given time. And honestly, that's one of the things I pride myself most on, is maintaining great relationships with the best creatives out there. Um, you know, we've- I've talked about Adam and Jess, who've been with us for five, six years, and I've got creatives that haven't jumped full-time with us, but have been with us basically full-time for almost 10 years.
John Scheer: In fact, two of our new design directors were freelancing for us for seven years, and we were just giving them so much work, and they were sick of the grind of trying to close business for themselves, that they were, they just succumbed to joining the team and, you know, getting benefits and feeling supported and just being able to collaborate with us and not have to worry about selling and contracts and all that craziness.
Sean: Do you do any sales at this point, or are you just focused on-
John Scheer: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I get a lot of inbound from, from going to events and networking and people reaching out, and we've got our, you know, standard order of operations in terms of how do we take people from the top of funnel through the new business cycle.
John Scheer: But, like, I'm on pretty much every pitch that I can be to give a director's cut into case studies and give my point of view on where I think their respective businesses can go based on what I believe their business challenge is to be. So I'm present in a lot of the pitch, pitch work. As far as, like Knocking on doors, that's more so Chapin, where h- his role is really new business, business development.
John Scheer: Allison is our president and handles overseeing operations and account directors and how the work gets done from a operational perspective and strategic accounts that she brings in. And then Chapin has a right-hand woman named Jane, who's head of growth, who handles all of our business partnerships, referral partners, does more of the proposal building and nurturing leads and all that type of work.
John Scheer: And then I, I'd say the reason the business is doing so well right now, obviously we've got great creatives, but our account directors are phenomenal. And I don't think enough... Who, who's listening to this right now, Sean? Or once you post this? Like, who's, who am I talking to? Who are we talking to?
Sean: Mostly people in marketing or, or founders.
Sean: But it could be founders of any type of company. So it could be service-based businesses, agencies.
John Scheer: Got it. Well, let me just say-
Sean: Freelancers, a lot of freelancers ...
John Scheer: I don't think account directors get enough love because they are the true differentiators between a good experience for both internal folks and client folks.
John Scheer: And when they're doing their work, everything's just smooth jazz. There's no fire drills, there's no, like-- Their ability to manage, like, our-- I think a lot of these freelancers that I told you about enjoy working with us because we take care of them. We anticipate their capacity. So like, hey, if somebody's gonna be overworked, we're not gonna push them and say, "Fight through it.
John Scheer: It'll be better next week." Like, we're gonna proactively roll them off a project, re- re-resource it, figure it out so that they can do their best work and just enjoy their fucking lives because life is short. You know what I'm saying?
Sean: How do you find those people? Like, what do you look for in-
John Scheer: Experience in and around, you know, this type of work.
John Scheer: So y- y- there are good junior account directors, but, like, just the nuance and the confidence to really know what you're doing, how to talk to clients with confidence, like, just requires senior people. I, I just-- A junior account director is just not-- It doesn't work for us. One of our, one of our amazing account directors, his name's Michael Robbins, he was our client.
John Scheer: He was the creative director at Na- Nautilus when we worked with Bowflex. We were the agency of record for Bowflex for three years, and he just kept hiring us to do all sorts of stuff for them. And they got bought, did a big reorg, and Michael lost his job. And I hit him up, and I was like, "Look, man, come on, come on over.
John Scheer: You know, we love each other. Come over here." And he was like, "No, I'm gonna do my own thing." And he, like, tried for a year, did some stuff, and finally came over, and he's just fucking kicking ass. He s- just gets it. He understands the work, and now he's in a groove of, like, organic growth and seeing where he can upsell people and, and is just super supportive of the team.
John Scheer: And, like, I like to s- like him and I have a joke where he'll, like, fire me off a project 'cause he can handle it after a certain point. And that's what I'm talking about, just, like, leveraging people so that they don't get stuck in things that aren't best for them or the business.
Sean: Sounds like you guys, you guys are doing great and the business has, like, grown up.
John Scheer: It's grown up. Yeah. It's like, it's- It's
Sean: crazy.
John Scheer: Yeah. It's, it's cool. I mean, it took, you know, 15 years to really figure this shit out.
Sean: How many projects are you guys doing a year? Has that expanded? Do you look at it in terms of projects?
Sean: Are you guys, like, working on going with, with brands over a longer time horizon?
John Scheer: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I'm super proud of is we've had a lot of clients come back to us after initial projects. So like Bobby Baby Formula, we launched their first website and did all their content production for them to launch the business, and they're on a rocket ship.
John Scheer: They actually offered us equity, and we turned it down. Now both... And now we're kicking ourselves in the ass because of it. But, you know. But they came back to us five, you know, four or five years later to help r- do the site again because th- there's been so many new f- baby formula companies who they set-- they paved the way for organic baby formula of Eu- European formula inspired.
John Scheer: Now there's so many competitors and they, they were like, "Hey, we need to, we need to step our shit up and stay ahead of the curve." So they came back.
Sean: What, what is your process for working on, on brands? I know you talked about getting like survey and- Mm ... data information. Like how do you guys work through a brand project?
John Scheer: That's the thing that we worked hardest on from like 10 years ago, was defining our process. Because for any aspiring agency or early agency owners right now, or even freelancers, get your process dialed. Keep trying stuff, keep iterating, but you don't wanna figure out how to... You don't wanna figure out doing the work while you're figuring out how to do the work, because that, that's when it feels like a slog.
John Scheer: So when you know what each step of the process is, stick to that and don't try to get, don't try to reinvent it every time because that's what makes- That's what makes it really hard. That's what makes it the grind. So our process, it changes here and there based on, like, the business needs, but generally it's the same, where it starts with immersion and insights, where we are downloading as much information from our clients as possible about why they're coming to us, what their aspirations are, who-- you know, what problems they're- they've got, their team makeup, how they make money, all that stuff.
John Scheer: And then we spend real time together through guided work sessions where based on the inputs that they give us, we come back with really pointed questions and provocations, and it's all about immersing ourselves in their business and aligning on what the hell we're actually doing together. And that, that starting off with just true alignment is the most important thing.
John Scheer: And then from there, we take all those learnings and we go into our strategy phase of categorical, cultural, competitive, consumer insights, be those from secondary research, primary research, qualitative, quantitative, just an amalgamation of, of, you know, whatever the scope calls for. We immerse ourselves in what's happening in, you know, in the consumer sphere, the culture sphere, the whatever it is, to figure out how to solve the challenges that we've aligned on with the client.
John Scheer: And then once we nail in the strategy, that's when we start translating strat to creative, and that is starting to come up with whatever creative solutions are to bring that strategy, strategy to life. We get those concepts approved, and then we go into actual execution and expl- explorations of, of building an identity or doing art direction for a shoot or, you know, wireframes for a website or treatments for s- you know, campaigns.
John Scheer: Whatever the manifestation is of the creative work, we are building the foundation based on the strategy, adding on layers of fidelity of finished product w- in revision cycles with the client. And then it's done, and then hopefully they stick around or whatever it is.
Sean: How, um-
John Scheer: And then it takes us, then it takes us two years to put an actual case study together, and the cycle continues.
Sean: How has AI changed anything in your work process? Or I guess in any way, like work process, expectations from outside Anything
John Scheer: I mean, my blanket statement for AI is it's just another tool. I don't think it's really replacing anybody, maybe like a super junior copywriter, a super junior designer. But like it's just I mean, the, on the production side, it's, it's, it's intense.
John Scheer: Like, yeah, you're getting amazing finished photo and video assets that used to cost millions of dollars to produce and shoot. And so, like, I, I shouldn't say it's not replacing jo- jobs on that side, 'cause it sure is. But it, at the end of the day, it's this tool, and, like, you need to put 10% great human taste, insights, strategy work into it.
John Scheer: Let the AI do 80% of the slog of actual working on it, and then you gotta refine the t- 10% on the other side of it. And so it's still a lot of work and to actually get something. So, like, when you're on Instagram and you see all these, like, content creators being like, "Holy shit, I one-shotted this website," it's like, no, you didn't.
John Scheer: No, you didn't.
Sean: Well, it's also like you could one-shot a website if you literally have no base requirements for anything. You never have to replicate it again in any other type of work, and it's also, like, just a theoretical project with no one else involved ever.
John Scheer: Exactly. Right. Right.
Sean: Yeah.
John Scheer: So, so but it, it has, like...
John Scheer: I would say one of the most amazing AI tools we have is Granola, which records our meetings, and you have a transcript, and you can reference it and say, "What did the... I forgot, what did the clients say to avoid?" Like, "Don't use the word red," or, you know, whatever. It's like, that's super helpful. It has, it has-- It's like we used to do, you know, long division by hand, and now we've got a TI-83 Plus, you know?
John Scheer: It's just, it's like when Photoshop came around, like it took, it just takes a lot of the slog out for a lot of the processes. And I do think from a, like, where it's been most valuable is for clients that don't have huge production budgets, we can use it for replacing or at least holding until we can do a practical shoot.
John Scheer: So that's been, that's been nice.
Sean: What, what's your, like, vision longer term for the, the business? I know you said you guys wanted more out of the company. Yeah. And that it sounds like things have changed since then.
John Scheer: We always want more. I don't know, man. Like, I want us to become the preeminent strategic creative agency for healthcare, self-care, and wellbeing, and I think we are On our way.
John Scheer: And when I think about and I picture our website with the case studies of the work that we've been doing in the last 12 months that haven't seen the light of day, I see us hitting a new level that I'm really excited about. And I think what that means is, like, I'm now working with and interacting with designers that I've had my eye on for years who have been at the, you know, what I've always thought are the best agencies, and now I'm collaborating with them.
John Scheer: And like, you know, great designers to me, they're like... 'Cause I was never a designer myself. Like, I always had the taste and the vision, but I never... I was so busy knocking on doors and doing all the other stuff that I never honed my real execution craft. So those guys have, and gals, have always been like rock stars to me.
John Scheer: So now I get to work with the best of the best, and that's really awesome. And I have, like, great relationships with these people, so I'm really proud of that. And also just getting to a place where, like right now it's a I was just on the phone with Allison, and we're talking about, like, it's like we love our...
John Scheer: We're happy. We like our lives, and, like, we feel leveraged, and it's not as much of a grind anymore because people-- We're not putting out fires. Like, people are good at their jobs that we've hired them for. They get it. They're proactive. They understand it. And so we're not having to have our tentacles in every single thing.
John Scheer: Like, we can actually have the time and space to think about big-picture stuff, and that's really new for us. We both feel a little guilty that we're not, like, grinding anymore, and we're not, like, in the weeds f- 60 hours a week. But instead, we're like, you know, six hours a day. We have some calls, and we've got room to breathe, and we can, like, exercise and spend time with our kids, and yet the business is still growing.
John Scheer: I wanna make sure that I vocalize and say outside that, like, that's a huge accomplishment. I'm really proud of it, and I wanna sit in this and keep growing for as long as possible. And, you know, if somebody, a bigger company comes in and says, "Here's a gazillion dollars," and you don't have to have some strenuous earn-out to keep it, then that would be great.
John Scheer: But I don't know. I... Again, I don't know what I don't know. I like where we're at, and I wanna keep scaling that
Sean: For the point where you are now, you said it's like a new feeling with that setup. Do you feel like Allison coming in is what led to the new setup, like within the past year?
John Scheer: Yeah. For sure.
Sean: And was that like a shift in the team?
John Scheer: Yeah, we have a totally... For the people that have been with us since before Allison, they all had the potential and stuck with us through, you know, ups and downs and tumultuous times and changes in the market and all that stuff. And the people who didn't stay, they, you know, they were managed out because they weren't great fits or they weren't providing the value.
John Scheer: And she's also brought in amazing people, and she's managed the people that stayed to be them best-- to, to be their best selves. Like, she, like, manages me in a really friendly, organic way where we have conversations and I'm like, "Hey, I'm struggling with this," or... And she just holds space and time for people that deserve it, and if people are underperforming or bad attitudes, like she has the wherewithal to manage them out in, you know, in a great way, respectful way, what-whatever you wanna call it.
John Scheer: So yeah. I, I forget what the actual question was.
Sean: I forget too.
John Scheer: Um- You said is it, is it, is it credit to Allison? Yes, I'll give her all the credit.
Sean: Yeah, I was just curious, like if the team changes and the way that she's managing the team led you to-
John Scheer: Yeah ... this place. For sure.
Sean: Yeah.
John Scheer: For sure.
Sean: Yeah.
John Scheer: Yeah, and we've got another-- You know, just having a third really bright brain who has a sense of ownership, not a sense, but real ownership and like real passion for growing the business, it takes the m- pressure off of Chapin and I to, to do that, you know?
Sean: Has anything changed like on the pipeline and sales front outside of Allison coming on? Or is it more of a momentum around the- It's like- ... the like positioning that you guys are in? Yeah.
John Scheer: Yeah. I mean, it, you like, you know, I c- I'll give Allison a lot of credit, but it's not just her, right? We've still been doing great work and the businesses...
John Scheer: You know, what's, what's cool and what's-- The, the gift and the curse of branding work is that there isn't always a clear ROI. So like when you're, when you work with a performance marketing agency, it's like, "Hey, we spent $10 million with this agency ad spend and got 100 million backs. We had a 10X ROI." With branding, like this strategy work and this creative work, it's a little less, it's a little more amorphous, and the results are less data-driven, and they take longer to realize.
John Scheer: But when our portfolio, those businesses do well, it comes back to us. So like take NeuroGum. We worked with Neuro. We worked with them years ago, five, six years ago. And It took them a long, like, it took them a long time to hit what they're doing now. They've since redone all the work that we did, which is, it's fine.
John Scheer: It took me five, six years. That's hygienic, right? The work that we did set them up to 10X growth. They're gonna do over $100 million this year. And so now everybody knows who Neuro is. But that sat in our portfolio for three years and nobody knew what it was, but now they do. And so the success of our clients, there's a lag there.
John Scheer: And that, like Bobby, we did that in 2020, and it took four or five years for them to become a household name. You know, so that's why I'm so excited about this next cohort of businesses that we're working with, because the calib- like, they're starting at a much larger place, and the work we're doing is more strategic.
John Scheer: It's more, it's gonna be more impactful. So it's just good work begets good work, and it just, it's a, it's an aggregator, if that's the right way to think about it.
Sean: Yeah, that makes sense. Do you spend more time out there speaking, going to conferences, and- Yeah ... networking now than you did back in the day?
John Scheer: Yeah. Yeah, 'cause now I'm leveraged out a lot of the grind of the work where I can go out and represent Herman Shearer. So, like, I, I now speak on panels and give keynotes and moderate things and, you know. So Chapin is doing more of, like, the going to conferences and rubbing shoulders and kissing babies and all that stuff.
John Scheer: And but I'm more of, like, the podcast guest and, you know, the, the face and voice.
Sean: Interesting. What a, what an interesting arc for you probably. Um- Does
John Scheer: it feel weird ever or no? Weird in what way?
Sean: Like, I guess you said it does in some ways, like going from the grind of being in the work all the time and dealing with fires to now, like, spending more time
John Scheer: Yeah, it feels, it feels great.
John Scheer: But at times, like as an entrepreneur, y- y- you know, everybody listening to this who's running their own business, they know it, like you're never off, you know? And when you do get an opportunity to like calm down and take a s- s- like guilt can come in, or I'm not doing enough, or whatever it is, and that's, that's been hard to deal with.
John Scheer: And like Gareth, our new advisor, I've, I call and I talk to him, and he's like, "Guilt is a, an emotion you should try to avoid as much as possible unless you h- you know, committed a crime." He's like, "You're not committing any crimes." Like his... He always tells me like his biggest regret was not enjoying the times when business was good, and he could take a step back or relax or spend time with his kids and things like that.
John Scheer: So I'm working on that, and like, you know, like a l- I put a lot of pressure on myself. I see a lot of other great content creators that are on Instagram, and they're showing case studies, or they're talking about their cultural insights, and they're building these big followings, and I'm like, "I could probably do that," but like that's a full-time job, and I don't know.
John Scheer: I don't, I don't wanna do that What was your question, Sean? That was my q- uh- Okay. That was my question, yeah Yeah, that's interesting too. Like, um I mean, obviously I see people
Sean: doing that too. It's like such a different skill.
John Scheer: Yeah. Right.
Sean: Or focus.
John Scheer: Totally.
Sean: And, and- That probably is like the main way that agency-type businesses grow today outside of like the cycle of good work begets more good work.
John Scheer: Right. Yeah. For sure. Which
Sean: seems like a longer time arc to real-
John Scheer: Yeah.
John Scheer: And so, you know, I have intentions of starting a YouTube channel where I feel like that longer form content is probably better suited for my target audience, and also the shelf life of that content is evergreen versus 36 hours. And I just don't like the idea of being on my phone all the time and engaging with comments and things like that.
John Scheer: Like, I delete Instagram off my phone often because it doesn't make me happy to have it on there.
Sean: Yeah. I don't have Instagram, so I was gonna say, uh, that I'll be a very naive... I'll sound so naive right now if you tell me you have like a giant-
John Scheer: No, I
Sean: don't ... following.
John Scheer: I don't.
Sean: Yeah. I mean, I do miss it for some things, but it is interesting after being off of it for so long.
Sean: Like, the whole, like, world of it is
John Scheer: fast. It's, it's anxiety-inducing. Like, everything is urgency and this and look at that, and then, you know, there's so many different topics going from one thing to the next, and it's just over-stimulating. It gives me a lot of anxiety, uh, like this underlying tone of anxiety where it's like all the media outlets...
John Scheer: The thing that pe- humans respond to is panic or extreme, extremism, so you, that, you're just getting fed that all the time, and then the creatives and the strategists that are posting content, you have to be so big and, and make these huge claims on these short form pieces of content to, like, get engagement, and I don't know, that grind just...
John Scheer: Sometimes I'm, I watch that stuff and I see guys doing, like, a great... Like, there's a kid, Oren Meets World, and he's deemed the creative director of the internet, and he's f- he's fantastic. He makes great content and his cultural insights are so good, and I think he's, he's, he just does an amazing job. But, like, he's gotta be working so hard to make all that content all the time, and I can't imagine there's a whole lot more room left for client work or...
John Scheer: You know, he's got young kids, so I'm sure he's found a balance, but, like, I would just be on my phone all the time. Maybe he's got a team posting for... I don't know.
Sean: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, doing the, the podcast stuff is easier because you just get to hang out- Yes ... with, with people.
John Scheer: Yeah. That's been great. It's been fun.
Sean: Yeah. I f- yeah. I feel like that also in your world probably would do better because people have to, like, get a sense for who you are, what your take is- In your space, and it's probably also like quite nuanced, especially because you work with bigger brands too. It's not like as quick of a, a thing. What do you, uh, I guess maybe this isn't that relevant, but I am curious, like if, if you're working on new brands and startups today
Sean: What do you feel like people are, are missing when they launch new brands?
John Scheer: Hmm. What are people missing?
Sean: Or, or what are you-- what's your focus with a new brand? Is it really just like following the process to To bring something to life that's differentiated from other things and culturally relevant?
John Scheer: Yeah, I mean, that's the goal is differentiation and ensuring that, you know, we're setting them up for commercial success and creating something that they're proud of, and, and that resonates internally with their own teams and their own hearts.
John Scheer: So, like, that's, that's a lot of the startup world. I think what I, what I try to I think for a lot of startups, one thing I keep finding myself repeating is that you don't wanna launch a product, you wanna launch a brand to grow into. Because if you just launch a product, it could go gangbusters, but then if you ever try to launch a next, another project, a product, you have to reposition the whole brand and figure out how it fits in and how does this new product relate to the n- And so I think a cheap way of saying that is like think bigger or like The Absorption Company.
John Scheer: I'm really proud of that work because those guys really trusted us through that lens of they came to us and they wanted to launch the most effective mix-in powdered vitamin formulations. They want, wanna launch with four different SKUs that we helped them create. But... And they could have easily positioned themselves as like just like fast acting drink mixes or something like that.
John Scheer: But instead we were like the, what's so great about the name The Absorption Company, I, it's one of my, one of our best names we've ever come up with, is because it is differentiated and it's true to their product. So like now they're, they can grow into this idea of absorption. Where their thesis is that most vitamins and supplements don't get absorbed.
John Scheer: But their technology allows their supplements to be absorbed five times more. And so now anything they create lives underneath that thesis, and it even works with topicals too, which I think is amazing. And what's cool is it also has this very official institutional-like sound and f- m- a- a- and yet the identity that we've created for them is a little more, a little less institution.
John Scheer: There's like a cool tension between something that feels modern and youthful and with that, so. That's awesome.