Building an Agency from Zero to 100 w/ Greg Bellinger of White Rabbit Group | builders podcast

0:00It really dumbs down to just kind of one thing, which is quality of work. So our team continuing to output quality of work and everything else will fall into place.

0:13I love talking to founders about how they built their businesses and especially around the stories around their first hundred employees and growing to that size. Today, I speak with Greg Bellinger of White Rabbit Group. It's a web and app development agency. And prior to building and founding the company, Greg, I guess you could say, was a solopreneur. And he tells the story of his first client that was a sushi restaurant and paid him an unlimited sushi. You're going to hear the story about how Greg went through the thought process of understanding what his sales channels might be for a future agency, how he found his co-founder and then decided to start a business that has scaled over the last five, six, seven years to about 100 folks.

0:56It's really clear talking to Greg that he and White Rabbit focus on hiring people that like what they do and put pride on quality work. That's like their scale plan, or at least what I take away from that. Every company says those things, but it's obvious that White Rabbit does that. And if you listen to the way that Greg talks, I think you'll get a glimpse of what has made his company successful and how he's grown to the size company that he has over the last few years.

1:26Hi, Greg. How are you? Good to see you. Hey, John. Doing good. I'm good. Good to see you as well. I'm excited to have you on the podcast today to talk about the birth, the origin story, and the growth of your agency, White Rabbit Group. Maybe let's start there. of you've been an entrepreneur throughout your career, a founder. Why did you decide to get into the agency business? Maybe you can tell that story. And then what's the story behind the name, White Rabbit? It conjures for me sort of Alice in Wonderland. I don't know if that's it or something else. Yeah, first of all, thanks for having me, John.

1:59I'm really, really excited to be here. And starting with the origin, it's kind of a long story. How do I put it briefly? But you kind of have to look back when I started getting into web development. In 2008, I started coding, self-taught developer myself. And ever since I could basically start coding a website, I started selling websites. First website was a sushi restaurant,$200 in unlimited sushi. and since then, like I said, I just told everybody that I knew that I could build websites, sell websites and kind of hit the ground running. And I started an agency that was full service and it was called Golden Leaf, ran that for a little bit.

2:48And we did everything under the sun and my specialty was web development because that's what I actually did. I was actually coding at that time and doing that myself. It started with an individual designer. And this is like the birth of White Rabbit. It'll kind of all connect here as I tell this story. I started working with a designer. And she had, you know, she'd been a designer for probably 20 plus years. She had a, you know, her own clients. It was just her. She did branding and UI design, website design. But she didn't do coding. And so I connected with her. And she, again, had her clients.

3:31And she would actually design the websites, handle the copy, design the websites, and pass them back over to me. And I would code them out. And that was the relationship that we built. So we had this partnership. And there was something different about working with her. I I didn't have to teach her what a domain was. I didn't have to kind of teach her the basic things like, which when you have direct clients, you have to educate. It's really important. But with this relationship, I didn't have to. She knew what she was doing. And so it made the relationship very easy. It was kind of one thing.

4:07We spoke the same language. And the second thing was, at that time, I was running my own thing. And there was this one month that I remember I was, sales weren't the best, just in general. But she kept me floating because there was like this reoccurring relationship. We didn't have a contract in place. But because I did good work, you know, she continued to bring projects to me. Yeah, the relationship of reoccurring, she kind of kept me floating that month, right? And it was kind of like an aha moment. Like, it's easy conversation. It's recurring. You know, I'm pretty passionate about creatives and designers.

4:41And so I was supporting, you know, an individual that I really like. She's out there doing good things in the world, good work. And so that was kind of like the start of like, this could be bigger, more scalable, and we could apply this to multiple agencies, multiple creative studios. And so that was kind of the idea and the birth of White Rabbit. And this was like 2013. I also met my co-founder, Abolash, around that time. And him and I started working on a project together. We were working on multiple projects, but one was big enough. I actually founded the company called Slow ID. I flew out to India.

5:20So him and I met in person, right? We worked on web projects, like I said. And then in 2016, I was like, hey, I want to start a new company, rebrand and go all in on this agency model. And him and I both put money in. We both funded the initial startup of the company. And we hit the ground running, supporting agencies, creative studios, and not being full service, just supporting web development and supporting them. And that was kind of the birth. White Rabbit, the name behind it is really special to us. It's been a really cool brand. And it definitely stems from Alice in Wonderland, which then comes into The Matrix.

6:07And The Matrix is huge. obviously in the development world, kind of down the rabbit hole and code. And so, yeah, the, you know, the brand for us is, there's kind of a longer story behind that, but definitely stems from the matrix. And, you know, we also do a lot of white label development. So white rabbit, you know, we're fast like rabbits and - It means a lot of different things. I love that. So there, so you had really sort of humble beginnings, I guess, in terms of a couple of clients, your initial client where they paid you with avocado rolls and then a couple of clients here and there. And then you decide to focus, kind of go all in on web development, app development, which we'll talk about.

6:52But maybe for the listeners, give them a sense for how big you are now. It's not just you and a co-founder and someone who gives you a bunch of work. Give us a sense of size and scale of your company now? We started the company with the tenets of bringing everybody full-time in-house. To this day, we don't hire any contractors to fulfill any work. So everybody's in-house. We're under the same entity. We, again, like I said, put in our own money. We've been kind of profitable since almost the first month. We've never taken on funding and we've scaled it. We're now almost 100 full-time employees in Colombia, India, and the United States.

7:34So we're in three countries at this point. And we service some of the, you know, some of the best creative studios and agencies around working with, you know, some pretty big brands, big companies, and we build a lot of cool things these days. So almost seven, eight years, you know, later. Yeah, we're almost 100 full time employees. And congratulations on all that growth. I want to dive into some of that stuff. So let's talk about the no contractors of that philosophy. All business owners, business builders have a philosophy that works for them. A previous episode, maybe five, 10 episodes ago, was I interviewed someone who does everything through virtual assistants.

8:14So literally 100 % contractors. Why did you choose to go the other way, particularly as an agency? A lot of folks think about freelance, freelance, freelance. Yeah. Before starting White Rabbit, I I guess I've been coding for maybe eight years and building sites. I worked with people all over the world and I use contractors pretty much full time. The tenants we went into, why bringing everybody in full time? We obviously, there's a cost standpoint from the business perspective. It's not the biggest, but cost perspective, everybody, it's a direct employee, right? But the biggest reasons why we have it is one is culture.

8:57We can retain culture. You know, culture is really, really important to us as a company. Another thing is quality. You know, we control the people that we bring in, that we hire. You know, we have a pretty strict hiring process. Development is kind of a black box and you want to make sure that you have the right people on the team. And then another thing is reliability. When you have people that are in-house, they're reliable. They're not just going to go see you. And, you know, I've, again, worked with a lot of contractors and have been, you know, people literally just disappear like mid-project.

9:32So accountability, reliability, bringing that cost standpoint to our clients and retaining our culture. So like I said today, we literally, everybody is 100 % full-time employee. There's not a single contractor on the team. When I think about the complaints that brands might have with agencies, there's a level of unevenness when I work with different people at the agencies or there's a high level of turnover or whatever. If you're able to establish that culture of continuity and whoever I'm talking to at White Rabbit is going to feel the same, that's probably a very important part to your brand and your success.

10:11I want to ask you about your sales or go-to-market strategy in a way, because it sounds like, although you might have business direct with brands, a lot of times you're selling into agencies that already have a relationship with a brand and you're doing work for them. Is that right or did I misunderstand that? And then what was your thinking and strategy behind that? We partner with agencies that already are existing. and the end client is typically a mid to large you know size company and so they're pretty strong relationships that they have there is a natural reoccurring you know business model to it that I kind of mentioned once you do good work and you get in with an agency it's it's kind of recurring and our go-to-market plan is you know and has we have a sales team business development team that's doing outreach in 2017 we started in 2016 we We hired our first developer in January of 2017.

11:09And the next month, one of the first hires that we also made was a salesperson. So sales and outreach and go-to-market has always been really strong for us and a really important part of our growth and where we've been. If you have an agency that relies on you for something, it ends up being like a partner-led sales channel. I think that's really awesome. Your focus, as I understand it, is yes, it's web development, but also mobile and web apps. And I think every business knows they need to have a website. And some businesses say, I need some type of web app or mobile apps. For some, it's obvious.

11:46You know, if you're a Disney, you need to have one for the Disneyland park. You need to have one for certain other things. But for businesses thinking about this type of investment now, in your mind, what's the minimum criteria or what are the reasons why an app is justified? And then also right now, everybody knows if you're going to have a mobile app, you need to have an iPhone app, I guess. But what platforms are most relevant for apps right now in 2024? How do you justify the cost of an app is the question, right? And whether it's worth it. Number one, you have to have a profitable business, a company that's successful, that's working.

12:23What that exact line is, it's different for each company. And it really depends on where they're at as a company. One example is an e-commerce site. We see this all the time where companies, I don't know how familiar you are with headless e-commerce, but it's a bigger overhead and cost to make it headless. But the pros are, you know, speed, you have customization. So you can say you have a complex checkout that a platform is not going to work on. You might want to bring a headless, might have some really custom branding involved that you want to do because you can control the front end. You know, when you look at that investment, it can be significantly higher to do that.

13:07And a company who might be doing a couple million in revenue, it's not worth it for them to invest in a headless integration. But a company that might be doing 10, 20 million plus in top line revenue, it might make sense for them to go headless. Right. So whether or not, you know, you do a web app, mobile app, it's really dependent on the business and it's different case by case. But I would say it's best to always start out small and not chase the shiny object when we see it. We have companies that are maybe not at that next level of top-line revenue, and they're talking about headless. And it's like, you guys just need to focus on growth because that quarter of a second speed or half a second speed isn't going to make a difference for your company compared to a company that might be doing significantly higher sales.

13:56So when you make the checkout easier, let's say on an e-commerce platform for an e-commerce company, I mean, and they ask you, what could this mean for us from a conversion standpoint, a loyalty standpoint? What do you tell them? Like as far as customizing the checkout? You know, the way that I see an app, the benefits, and correct me if I'm looking at it the wrong way, is one, it makes it easier to buy the product. and then and then second there's some kind of like loyalty component to it yeah each business is a little bit different right so you have to analyze you got to a b test uh so there's not like a one like oh this is kind of the best you know platform or checkout 90 of the time you know when you ask that question it's kind of possible in my mind like 90 of the time a company that might just be starting out or you know it's kind of five million in revenue or less uh Shopify is going to be their platform.

14:52And they, you know, pretty much, you can manipulate it a little bit. When you get on Shopify Plus, you can manipulate it a lot more, but the checkout on Shopify is pretty standard. But a lot of people are familiar with it. So checkout is really easy for them. You know, and then when it comes to like testing and doing A-B testing. Maybe I'll kind of dive deeper into that on the app side. And I want to talk about innovation. I think one of the struggles I've seen with agencies and working with agencies is remaining innovative. And the reason being is for the agency business model to work, each person has to be working on a client account.

15:31And so maybe there isn't the investment in how do we stay cutting edge? Yeah. And how do you react to that? Yeah. So innovation is really important, obviously, to a lot of companies. For us as a service company, we are listening to our customers. That's really important. Staying innovative, listening to them, making changes as we get feedback live. And then the next is because we're a technology company, just staying cutting edge, making sure our architects are keeping their nose to the ground on new platforms and methods of coding and making sure that when standards could change, that we adhere to those standards.

16:09But for me, innovation starts with the team that's part of the company. And so that's culture. And for us, we really try to harbor a culture that's open-minded. We're open and want to hear feedback. When you have a culture that's like that, innovation just kind of stems, right? And it's natural. It starts with the team. And I think culture is the biggest thing that we look at in staying innovative. Well, one of the things that I always try to get a sense of a company's culture by looking at their website and sort of reading, reading about them. And a lot of companies these days, I don't know what I mean by these days, but but lean into like lean into work life balance.

16:52You don't have to come into the office like like, you know, it's about what you do outside of work, I guess. And your website goes the other direction. you know you you have some stats on your site about like number of of late nights your team has spent and you have like an infinity symbol and so you're you're going the other way i find it super refreshing to lean into hard work is that a conscious choice for you have you received pushback with your team like how do you how what why did you decide maybe maybe you don't know why you put that data point on the website but what's your thinking about that well that data point alone One is, you know, endless late nights.

17:28We're not about working 12-hour days. And that comment is, we have our team in India. We have our team in the United States and Colombia. So it's kind of a pun to just, you know, round the clock work. But we, you know, we work on the internet. And the internet never, it's literally always on 24-7. It's a responsibility. That's basically what I'm saying. That like the internet's always on. And if something goes down, our clients are relying on us. We need to be available for that. So the internet never sleeps. So we have a saying that neither do we. But yeah, our culture, I don't believe that there's any one culture that fits all.

18:10So you have to define what your culture is and hire against it. And our culture, we do believe in hard work, but our definition and my definition of hard work is not necessarily time, putting in 12-hour days. It's all about putting in 100 % of your effort, just being all in. So for us, we're trying to build a culture of passion-driven people that come in and are excited about what they do. We just got certified, great place to work. Um, so, uh, yeah, I mean, it's, it's obviously a testament. It's a third party. Sure. You've, you've heard of a great place to work, but, um, they come in and analyze your company and we got certified.

18:53And so a lot of people love, love working here. Um, as far as pushback, uh, you know, there hasn't, hasn't been a lot. I think our culture is pretty authentic. Um, when you look at other cultures, you mentioned kind of work-life balance. We, we believe in that as well, but, we believe in that being in your control and you kind of managing that and not us dictating what that is. And I think our cultures, you know, it's unique in that it feels real. It's authentic. We have a lot of people that come in every day that enjoy what they do genuinely. And, you know, a lot of people can be themselves in our culture as well.

19:32So. Congratulations on that. I mean, first of all, I just want to acknowledge and say it's true. one hour of 100 % focused work is worth a full day of kind of like half, you know, half focused work. And I think that it sounds like you imagine a flywheel, someone comes into work, they're happy with what they do, they're going to have more, more focus, more focus, better results. The other people around them are happy. And that's, that's really great. We spend a lot of time in our jobs. Some people spend more time than with their own family. And And for me, the vision for our culture, it could be kind of summed into this is we want to wake up every day and just enjoy the people that we're surrounded by with, you know, authentic relationships.

20:17And that when you come in that you're, you know, somewhat excited. Not every day is perfect. Not every day is like a 10 out of 10. We realize that, but that, you know, you genuinely come in and just enjoy working with the people that you're surrounded by. And that's kind of our, you know, our vision for our culture. I also encourage every company to be involved in some sort of third-party survey or third-party audit to make sure they have a good culture. I know that at my company, we participate in a survey. So employees sort of say how good you are compared to all the other companies that are in Los Angeles or where we're based.

20:55And then the awards based on what employees think and audited by a third party. It's a really important pulse check on how you're doing. How do you think about scale? Because at one time, back in, let's say, 2017 or whatever, you probably knew the name of every single person who works, or you probably still do, but talk to everybody. Talk to everybody every day. You had this vision. At some point, it kind of becomes difficult to do that. How do you sort of scale the organization but maintain being client-centric and nimble? Our plan is to not get too big. I would say we're, you know, some people would say we're big, almost 100 people.

21:36But our plan is to not, White Rabbit Group, not necessarily to be a 500 person agency. We want to keep that tight culture. We want to continue to build a company where people are excited to come in every day. um and uh so that's you know you talk about scalability in in any business the first thing is you have to prove profitability for us we've done that we've proven the business model proven you know profitability and now we just need to scale and our current goal is to kind of scale to about 2.5x of what our we're currently doing in revenue and in team size once those things in place like we're running profitable projects you know all those things are there for us in in order to scale, it really dumbs down to just kind of one thing, which is quality of work.

22:20So our team continuing to output quality of work and everything else will fall into place. So that's our biggest thing. And what we focus on is we continue to scale. So we've, again, proven the business model and we don't want to scale too big, you know, 2.5 X of where we're currently at. And number one is quality of work and just outputting quality of work. I think a lot of businesses would be thrilled at growing two and a half X. And it sounds like you have a, you have a, um, a really, maybe you'll think differently once you're that size about what you, what you want to do in the, in the future, outside of like, um, like your, your formula of creating, creating great product and hiring people who are bought in and nurturing them.

23:03What else are you thinking about for the future? As far as like new products you might, uh, you might invest in, um, or future plans for the business? I'm probably spending about three days a week on White Rabbit Group itself, which is a really cool place to get it. I mean, I was our first project manager. I was right there closing deals. I've done everything to scale this company. We've now hired people that are kind of doing all of what I used to do. And then we've reached to almost 100. And the last couple of years, I've kind of pulled away from the day-to-day as much as I can and focusing more on the future.

23:37So like when I say day to day, it's kind of like, you know, three days a week and the other couple of days is spent on where we're going to go as a company into the future. And for us, you know, we plan on building and scaling other service companies. I don't want to talk about, you know, we have some ideas and we want to talk about it too much. But our plan is to scale and build other service companies because we're pretty good at doing that. And second is we're building a product right now, an actual project management software. We spent years trying to find the right PM tool. We even hired a consultant, like brought in this really awesome consultant to like find and source these tools and build our PM processes.

24:19And at the end of the day, it was just like four or five different softwares that we had to couple together to get what we wanted. Right. And so we we looked at the market and realized there wasn't anything that fit us and what we wanted. So we built it ourselves. So we built up a financially driven project management. tool that our entire team is on right now. So it's in-house. And we plan on launching that next year publicly. And this is a tool that's for service companies, which is our customers, right? We service agencies, creative studios. And we're building a tool, yes, for ourselves. And that's a huge win in and of itself.

24:58And we can scale other service companies, but we're building a tool for, again, our current customers, for them to run profitable projects from their end. So we're building that. That's a platform that we're pretty excited about. And again, next year is going to be launching that public. So I'm sure there are going to be many listeners who say, I want that. I'm not going to out any project management software, but you're right. It seems like almost everyone that you use does 80 % of what you need, but that's not enough. Yeah. Yeah. And they tailor to everybody. And that's not what we're doing.

25:30We're building a platform for service companies. And I think the biggest miss and the uniqueness about our platform is we focus on profitable projects. And in order to do that, people have to log hours, their time, whether it's fixed or hourly. So you got to know the cost of the people that are working on it. You got to know the budget. And so when you take those things together and, you know, project manager is able to throw a budget out there and everybody's working against it. Ours is very financial driven is basically what I'm saying. and a lot of them miss that logging time, putting in employee costs and pitting it against the budget.

26:09And then as a business owner, you're able to go through and look at the projects and actually see real profitability of that project and how is it going against that budget, which is important. It's not just about people pushing tasks and getting things done. And the next thing you know, it's like three months later, I see this all the time. I mean, agency owners like, this is not a profitable project for us at this point. And sometimes they're very surprised. And it's like if they had a tool that kind of kept track on profitability along the way, business owners would sleep better at night if they had something like that.