Gabby Lord & Lauren Wong on Being Delusional Enough to Start a Company

19:39Gabby Lord:Well, so there's a dev shop in Brooklyn called Gardner, and that was where we got the idea from. Ian, the founder of Gardner, he shared his annual report. He'd been doing them for a few years at that point. and I just remember being like so blown away by the transparency and I just immediately was like we should do this like this feels so in line with like the studio that we want to build even just like the stuff that we had learned I think like we kind of like shaped it to be you know again like more we shaped it to be more aligned with us but we very much were inspired by Ian and what what he had kind of been sharing but I think as well like I don't know even with my newsletter like I've kind of always learned in not learned in public but like I kind of share things I feel like I've built a career out of telling people I don't know what I'm doing and as a result people are like that girl really knows what she's doing and I'm like I'm literally trying to tell you I don't but like some reason it's kind of had the opposite effect and I think the same has happened for Superkeen where people think that we know what we're doing when it comes like financials and insurance and 401ks because we talk about it um another studio that I think they closed down before we started was Horaf which was run by a couple of people but Carly Ayers was one of the co-founders of that studio and she was also just someone who I think shared a lot and was very transparent about like the things that they did what they charged and it is so like it can be so secretive and lauren and i just immediately were like we have to be very we have to get comfortable talking about money like being on conversations with clients and then like asking us ballpark price ranges of things and we wouldn't we didn't want to say we're like i don't know like even i remember one of the first um conversations lauren and i had about like how much we wanted to pay ourselves and she was like oh do you mind if i ask like how much you're making right now kind of thing i'm like we're about to get into bed together like we have to be able to talk about this and we have to be able to talk about money and things that we need in order to like live our lives in New York if we are going to start this business so I think ever since that first conversation that we had about money we everything is yeah we know everything about each other and we let everyone else know as well much to Lauren's much to Lauren's mom your mom I feel like we give her a hot attack every time.

22:10Lauren Wong:And we love talking about money, like really love talking about one. Oh, yeah. My mom was low key horrified when that first annual report came out. She was like, I don't think you should be doing this. You shouldn't be sharing all this information. And I think every time it comes out, she has the same idea, but she knows that it's going to happen regardless. I think that talking about money was one of the best things that people gave to us in the very beginning so many people gave us advice some of that advice was try to be bigger than you are try to charge more money than you think you need you know all of that stuff but a lot of people told us this is how much I charge this is too low for the project I think that you guys deserve to you know think about a different structure and billing I think you know etc like people were so incredibly generous and we just wanted to return the favor to other people who don't have folks in their network to tell them straight those things that were told to us.

23:10Gabby Lord:I think it's so amazing because I'm such a big believer in like rising tides raise all ships. The more we can share and talk to each other about what's going on and what trends we're seeing and what's working for us and what's not working for us, the stronger and better we can all become. So I think it's so amazing. So amazing. And again, they're like a joy to read. They're so fun to read. Lauren, I know I'm actually meeting you for the first time right now, but I feel like I know you. We have a parasocial relationship that you didn't know about.

23:35Lauren Wong:Yeah. Same. The annual reports are so funny because we'll, I don't know. I feel like this happens to Gabby too, but I'll be out at a dinner or a party and it's someone's girlfriend will be like, oh my God, wait, I read that thing that my partner sent this to me and I really liked your report. Or I sent it to my cousin and she started a studio. It's shocking to us constantly how much reach it has because it's not something that you can actually see in the engagement numbers.

24:02Gabby Lord:Has there ever been a moment where you regretted that transparency? No. Nope. Ah, that makes me happy. Except maybe when Lauren's mom is like, maybe don't do that.

24:10Lauren Wong:She'll come around. She's going to be horrified that we're talking about this right now.

24:14Gabby Lord:Shout out Mama Wong. Sorry, Lauren's mom. Okay. Just to sort of like wrap up some of that like early thinking that like one year one stuff, like if you could hand your year one selves any piece of advice, like if you could throw something back to them now in hindsight, what would it be? I have one, but I don't know if I can talk about it. I think to have to say this without like blowing anything up, I would say that it's okay to fire clients. We should have, we should have fired a client and we knew we, we, we knew it wasn't good and we didn't listen to our guts and we got burned by that. And I think that, yeah, I think that I would go back and I would be like, it's okay, just fire them.

24:57Gabby Lord:I think in year one, that's so hard, right? Because in that first year, you have such a scarcity mentality. You're like, I need this to work. I need to prove to myself that this works. So firing clients, I think, is a huge sticking point for folks in the early days.

25:10Lauren Wong:To that scarcity mindset, because we were only two people, we weren't as concerned about projects coming in, I think, generally over the five years. But I think what we misunderstood was how many projects we would want to take on. It feels like we say no a lot. We like respectfully decline a lot of projects just because of bandwidth. But there are so many projects that we take on when we really shouldn't have. Like we don't have the space. We don't have the capacity. We love the client or we love the person. We think the idea is really cool, but like it doesn't. There's only so many hours in the day, even with two highly obsessive, productive people.

25:50Lauren Wong:and I was shocked. I'm going through a lot of our documentation right now because we're moving our accounting software, which sounds so like boring and wonky, but it's crazy to me to see now how many projects we took on in those first couple of years, how many clients we had, how many invoices we sent, how much money we made. Like it was like shocking.

26:12Gabby Lord:Yeah, well, how many, let me pull up our, because I was looking at our projects. We have 112 projects on our server right now. And that doesn't include like clients that have come back for more work. Like that's kind of like... Like client tabs almost or like have been like client folders versus project folders. Client folders. Yeah. These are client folders since we started. We're now at 112, which over five years is kind of a lot considering. for two people because you've also intentionally kept the studio just the two of you. Yeah. Every year we kind of check in and we're like, do we want to grow?

26:53Gabby Lord:And it's always no. But I think there's some magic about that. Like talk to me a little bit about like choosing to keep it just the two of you, because I think there is so much external pressure to grow, right? To like make it bigger, to make it bigger, to make more money, to bring on more clients, to bring on more people. And I think that's hard too. Yeah. It's tricky because like, I think we both go through phases. We love like working with lots of different people. It's not just, obviously we love working together, but I think that like, it's not that we want to be exclusive and we don't want anyone else.

27:23Gabby Lord:We don't invite anyone else into our process or anything like that. It's actually nothing to do with that. It's just that I have, I personally, and I don't want to speak on Lauren's behalf, but I truly have no interest in scaling a design studio. I just don't think that's where I am going to thrive as a creative person like I think the bigger you get the less hands-on you are and I want to do the work at the end of the day like I enjoy the process of designing I do not want to spend my entire day in meetings even if it's with like other really talented designers that are doing the work um I just I'm not I'm not built for that and if I am going to do that it's going to be for someone else like I'd rather go and like do something else completely if I was going to go down that route or start another company that has nothing to do with graphic design and scale that like I think that Lauren and I would are very well I know Lauren and I are very interested in scaling other businesses and we have some things kind of cooking right now but in terms of super keen as a business model it is the two of us and some collaborators and the collaborators that we bring

28:33Lauren Wong:on some of them we've worked with on and off for almost a year maybe more there's a people that we constantly keep on going back to and they feel like they're a part of our team. But I think we love the flexibility of having that kind of collaboration, super close, focus on a project, multiple projects even. But when it comes to the actual business, there's also a bunch of really unique things about Gabby and myself running this together because for example, we have a bunch of things written down, like we just published our parental leave, how we structured that policy. But there's other things that are kind of, that we both know to be true.

29:09Lauren Wong:And if we had another person brought on, it would change the way in which we split things equal. So like, to give you an example, everything that comes into SuperKey, whether it's me making it or Gabby makes it, goes straight down the middle. That would change if we brought someone in, even if it wasn't at like the partner founder level. And it just having it exactly down the middle allows us to really control how this studio runs and and like why people love working with us they love people who want to get in and do the thing and they also love the fact that if it's not Gabby this week it's me and we're we're part of the same organism we we both know what's going on we also just always have each other's back like I think

29:58Gabby Lord:that a lot of and i'm sure a lot of other studios have this as well but in terms of like how the financials work i don't i don't know anyone else who does it like us um who aren't maybe like married couples that have studios together you know but like lauren said all of the money is split equally no matter who does what work we don't track each other's hours like i went to a movie in the middle of the day yesterday and it's on my account lauren knows where i am like oh she also has my location but like she knows where i am like we're not she's never we're never worried about oh what's Lauren working on today what's Gabby doing today is this feeling like fair and even it just like it's even because we know it's never going to be even like and we kind of have to be okay with that like sometimes Lauren is going to be doing more than me and sometimes I'm going to be doing more than Lauren and I think that like what's unique about our partnership is that we're both always trying to be the person that is doing more even if that's not actually the case well I remember in one of the early reports it might have been year one or year two where you just realized that Lauren could get through more strategy projects faster than Gabby could get through design projects.

31:01Gabby Lord:And I was like, oh, that kind of makes sense. Lauren can do everything foster. Lauren can do everything foster, period. Okay. She's a freak. But then the way that you had to think about like, oh, we're not actually both working on the same project at the same time. One of us can be working away on something longer term while someone's doing a couple of quicker turnarounds. And then you also take freelance on as part of the studio, right? Like anytime somebody comes to you, it funnels through the studio as well.

31:26Lauren Wong:Yeah. Gabby is just so busy, especially because a lot of our clients come back for more projects. A lot of those projects that they need are not foundational brand strategy, brand positioning work, brand architecture work, naming work, you know? So they're always asking for more design, which means that I spend a lot of my time working with other teams, working with big shops, helping out with other friends who have small studios that don't have strategy in-house. And I also really love that. I think Gabby and I are very clear on what we want Superkeen to be, but kind of like what she said, we're not against the idea of running teams, scaling up in other ways.

32:04Lauren Wong:And I think one thing I really love building teams, scaling, like helping manage a mentor. But I get to do that a lot when I work with other folks. And so it never feels like it's there's a barrier to doing those things that I like while still like protecting what Superkeen is.

32:23Gabby Lord:Yeah. And I feel like I get to do those things in other ways, like whether it's through the newsletter or having one on one conversations with like new grads who want some advice on something. like i think that i can still be engaged in that way but but yeah i think that was also a learning of like i can't keep up with the amount of strategy projects that lauren can take on like we we would need more designers um but then again like that would kind of you know come back to that original problem that we were talking about how it would affect kind of like the setup so this felt like a really good solve and like i so many of the other studios that lauren works with like we've I've also worked with as well like sometimes we'll do collaborations as like just studio partnerships and take on projects together that way so it's all very like it feels like like I feel like I need to share Lauren it's kind of like not fair if I only have her you know everyone else should have a Lauren as well and I'm like constantly trying to figure out ways for

33:18Lauren Wong:Gabby to not take on client work because we have so many other things we're doing we have a book that we're publishing we have case studies to do we have a bunch of other fun exciting things we can't talk about that we're starting to build out. There's so much to do with Superkeen alone, not even client projects. And Gabby needs the time to do that.

33:36Gabby Lord:I'm the bottleneck. See, this is what I mean. Learn everything so quickly. And then I'm always the one that's dragging my feet. It's not true. Design is just the end of the process in a lot of ways. And so we always get the bottleneck. I feel you.

33:47Lauren Wong:Yeah. So a couple of years ago, I started writing a book about strategy because I went to design school as the only person who wasn't a trained designer. My mom is a designer. I feel like all of my friends are designers. Second generation. It doesn't happen that often. Yeah. I'm not a designer, but I'm a strategist who like pretty much only wants to do strategy projects that have design and designers on it. And the book is about why strategy is essential to design and actually why so many designers are super strategic and maybe aren't perceived that way or maybe don't have all of the named skills that someone who has strategy in their title might.

34:26Lauren Wong:So the book is something I'm so excited about, but it is so, it takes so long to write a book. It's crazy how long that process is, especially when we work with founders who want to like put a website up in like four days or sometimes not. So the book has been in the process for a while um I wrote it Gabby's designing it and we have a wonderful publisher named Evie from Formus and we're yeah we're psyched to figure out when this is going to launch because after we finish the design of the book we have to think about like printing and that'll be really fun too but um yeah with all of the tariffs and stuff it does change yeah but it's it's really good it's a

35:12Gabby Lord:really good book okay I want to talk about the talk so in pairing for this I went and read your talk description, which I had not seen until this point. And I laughed out loud. So your talk is literally called Stupid People Start Companies All the Time. And yes, I agree. I will underline and co-sign that. But tell me about what our audience can sort of expect from this Design Thinkers talk. This podcast is made possible with the support of the Association of Registered Graphic Designers. The RGD is Canada's largest professional association for graphic designers. The association's membership of more than 4 ,000 people includes firm owners, freelancers, managers, in-house designers, educators, and students.

35:53Gabby Lord:If you've been wanting to be a part of a design community, the RGD offers many opportunities for learning and connection. You can seek advice and participate in our Slack workspace, meet regularly with others in your niche through our virtual communities, become a mentor for an emerging designer, attend free weekly webinars, make friends at our local events, and so much more. While the RGD is a Canadian association, you don't need to be Canadian to become a member. Find out more at rgd.ca slash membership and join us in our mission to build a graphic design profession that is broadly valued for its contributions to life, commerce and society.

36:30Gabby Lord:So the title is something that we said a lot when we were starting out. Like anytime we got insecure or worried that we couldn't do something, we just kept thinking back to like stupid people that have started companies in the past who have some been successful and others not, but they still managed to do it. And we're like, we have half a brain cell together. Like we could probably figure this out. And I think half of it is like just being dumb enough to do it. Delusional, delusional. I think all founders of any kind are delusional. Yes. no but I think the Lulu is the Solulu like you literally need to have some kind of like some blind faith like we didn't have any clients we didn't have a website for two years we yeah we didn't really have much but we were like we can figure this out and I think that that is a mentality that if you have it you I think I'll believe that you can do it well or that you'll keep figuring it out I think that's the other thing right and it sounds like for you to, it sounds like super keen is like constantly in evolution in some way.

37:34Gabby Lord:Like you're constantly talking about where you're going and what's happening.

37:37Lauren Wong:So in the talk, I think one of the big things that we want to do is just talk about all of the dumb mistakes we've made. Because a lot of people, if they don't know that it's coming, they're probably going to make the same mistake. Like why wouldn't they not? Like if you don't know that something's coming, how can you prepare for it? I think a lot of people who told us all of this amazing advice in the beginning often phrase it by telling us all of the dumb shit they've done that they like don't want us to do. And we want to do that for other people. So that's one. The second one is that there's a lot of really amazing founders we know and clients we know who have been brave and delusional enough to come up with great ideas and then push for them.

38:16Lauren Wong:Because I think if they knew how hard it was going to be, or how much work it was going to be, they probably would have been like, there's a better way to make money, but they didn't want to. And so I think it's also being able to shout out a lot of the people we've worked with and how they were able to put things into the world that are awesome. And it's a scary thing to do once you realize how crazy it is, that kind of journey.

38:41Gabby Lord:It's so funny though, because like I wouldn't change that experience for anything, like as hard and frustrating as it can be. You know what I mean? Like I, sure like knowing what I know now I'm not entirely sure I would jump into it but I also wouldn't give that back ever yeah totally you kind of have to be a bit of a glutton for punishment to do this sort of thing um but it's it's like choosing choosing what uncomfortable you want or choosing the the choosing the pain you want I guess it's like the pain of like working for someone else not having control over your hours or is it the pain of like never being able to turn your brain off or, or, you know, like the pain of having to do your own accounting and that sort of thing.

39:21But I don't know.

39:22Gabby Lord:I think that, yeah, there's going to be, it's going to be painful no matter what you do. So it's like, figure out which one you're going to be the most comfortable with sleeping at night, I guess. Yeah. Or like which one works the best for you. Yeah. Cause we, we talk about this as well. Like obviously we were saying that we, we talk about money a lot, but I think that like our concept of what rich means to us, like, isn't necessarily like a number in the bank it's a lifestyle and like as much as you know I think a lot of people talk about um starting your own company how you can you never turn your brain off like you're always working and I am not like that like I there's things always kind of like percolating in the back of my brain for ideas and that sort of thing but like since starting super keen I truly have never had better work-life balance than having our having our own studio and I think that is because I can manage my own emotions better than I can the thought of disappointing someone else.

40:19Gabby Lord:So I am like a very bad employee because I will, I just am guaranteed to burn out. And I think, you know, Lauren also has really good work-life balance. She's got a young child and, you know, it's great that she has the ability to kind of schedule her day around being able to spend time with her daughter.

40:37Lauren Wong:Yeah, we made the the funny mistake. We didn't think it was a mistake at the time. And it ended up being great. But we thought that we could save a little bit of money if Jem, my baby went to daycare Monday through Thursday took Friday off and also ended her days at 430. 430 is a crazy time to end work. Because it effectively means that I have to leave our co working space in Greenpoint at like 315. And then work in the evening when she's done with bed, bedtime and stuff. But that has been amazing. Like, even though it's really hard to get offline and, you know, try to make it there. A lot of times I don't know.

41:14Lauren Wong:My husband picks her up and is able to be with her. But I'd rather work late at night for a couple of hours than miss that time, you know, cooking dinner at the playground. And I wouldn't have been able to do that. I definitely wouldn't have been able to like have the kind of pregnancy that I had or be able to postpartum, you know like flop around with her while also working it's just such a different environment when I know who my boss is and I know that when she's shitty she is also myself you know so yeah

41:45Gabby Lord:we talk about that a lot our ongoing joke is that like each other is the boss like when we'll be like okay boss so Lauren's my boss and I'm begrudgingly Lauren's boss I think that's balance

41:57Lauren Wong:when we're each other's bosses though we're constantly trying to make sure that the other person is taking time off and they never do. So when we're each other's bosses, we're always trying to be good to them. And then when we're when we are our own bosses, we're terrible. Like we're like, oh, you can take on former projects. That'll be fine.

42:13Gabby Lord:I want to ask you each about something individually that came up in my research. Okay, I mean, this one's not my research. But Gabby, the newsletter is turning 10. It turned 10. It's turning 12 this year. It turned 10. it's 12 this year that's wild that's so wild you've been doing that consistently for 12 years that's bonkers I don't think I've been doing it I the last few years let's be real I've been pretty slack but in the beginning pre-pandemic I wrote a newsletter every single week for about eight years without a doubt like I would I would literally like come home from like a weekend in Amsterdam and I would fly back into when I lived in Berlin and it was like midnight on Sunday and I would stay up until three riding it I was like this has to go out I made this commitment to myself like I am going to do it and I don't know who that person was because I sure I know no more post-pandemic me could never but it definitely like set a foundation for like just showing up to do the work, like not waiting and relying on motivation or inspiration.

43:23Gabby Lord:I think that like, there really was, it really taught me like, okay, you can make something and you can build something. You can just show up to do it. And so even though it definitely doesn't happen as consistently now, I can't let really let it go either. Like there's been a few moments when I'm like, do I stop doing this? You know, like, do I kind of pivot energy somewhere else? But I think that ultimately it's still a really good outlet for me when I need it. And even though it has grown and there are people that read it, which honestly still kind of blows my mind, it really is a selfish endeavor.

43:58Gabby Lord:Like it is truly just for me. I never look at metrics. I never see what people are clicking on. I don't give a shit what the open rate is. I just write it as like documentation of my thoughts. But I think that's like sometimes the best reason to do anything is because you want it. to exist or you need it for some reason no totally and I think that like it's nice that I still feel that way about it when yeah like so many other aspects of social media have kind of like pivoted the enjoyment of like the process of things like yeah it's really like skewed skewed things I think in a lot of ways for a lot of people and I sadly I do kind of feel this is going the direction that newsletters are going like because of like the sub stackification of everything and there are some really great sub stacks and some really great writers but just like anything on the internet there's also just like a lot of trash as well so I think that there is definitely like a level of newsletter fatigue that is coming down the pipeline if not already here in the same way that like Instagram kind of took that turn but I think a lot of people still get a lot of social media who are just doing it for themselves.

45:07To your point, Nicola, I think that the second you start doing it for a weird external validation, it just doesn't become fun anymore.

45:17Gabby Lord:Yeah. The second you're feeding the algorithm, we as audience members start to notice that. Totally. Yeah. Lauren, the thing I really need to ask you about, and I'm not sure I realized we were so similar, but you have an obsession with a mascot and I am obsessed with mascots of all kinds. So I read somewhere that you sometimes talk about Big Ellie, like the New York Liberty mascot. Use her as a case study for brand consistency? Please tell me more.

45:43Lauren Wong:That's true. So Big Ellie is the mascot for the New York Liberty, the WNBA team. They play a couple blocks away from my house. And every couple of days, especially in the summer during the season, I will see just the entire street is just full seafoam green. Everyone's wearing the jersey. Everyone's got masks like Big Alley on them. Big Alley is an elephant with a lot of style and a lot of attitude. And, you know, the little cafe down on my block did a birthday party for her and had a huge cake. And like it was huge. I think that Big Ellie is a big part of my street. But I think what I love about Big Ellie is that she's such an iconic mascot.

46:29Lauren Wong:She has such a strong personality that when she showed up randomly at the Ciara concert I was at and brought down the house, or when she's, you know, just in her normal environment at the Liberty Game, or when she's just walking around Barclays Center with just her bottoms on because, you know, the person inside her needs to get a Shake Shack, you know, shake. Like she still is the same vibe. And I think brands are often trying to be super regimented, which can be really great, but doesn't allow you to kind of feel the person and feel the world. Like when I see Big Ellie, I know the kind of nails she wants.

47:08Lauren Wong:I know her back. I know the kind of hotel she wants to stay in. You know, like that's what I think a great brand does. It gives you enough of a logical center that you can start to build a world around it. And you can imagine kind of their movie and their limited TV series and their hotel group and the car that they're, you know, driving. I think the brands that we get to work on when we can get to that point, that to me feels so satisfying.

47:35Gabby Lord:Yeah. Big Ellie is up there in my like top, top five favorite mascots ever. Just Big Ellie and Gritty, maybe tied at the top.

47:41Lauren Wong:Oh, Gritty is so good. Gritty in person, even better. Strongly recommend.

47:47Gabby Lord:Let's wrap this up with like, so Superkeen is five years in now. Yeah. Five years. Congratulations. That's incredible. So many people have always told me both studios and businesses, like just getting over the three year mark is like the goal. Like everything gets easier after three years. But what does success look like for Superkeen right now? Like going forward, what is the success metric for you? Success for me is definitely having work-life balance and being able to pursue interests outside of work, which definitely ties into the out-of-office theme. And then I would also say it's like working on just projects that are with good people and fulfill us.

48:28Gabby Lord:Like they feel like things that are going to exist in a way that is going to make, as cliche as it sounds, like someone's world better. and that can be like something really that can be a really really small thing it doesn't have to be huge yeah I think those are kind of like the two main ones for me we talk sometimes about how if

48:47Lauren Wong:we could just have two amazing projects a year which is hilarious since you know we've done between 20 and 35 projects every year typically if we had two amazing projects a year that would be awesome we're really strongly considering other ways to diversify our income streams that are not necessarily in the shape of a creative agency um and so a super keen that allows us to pursue those other things would be really exciting in addition to continuing to being able to do the creative work that we love doing um so maybe fewer projects but more room to do things of our own

49:31Gabby Lord:I also think this might be not controversial, but like, probably against what most people would say, but like, also success to me would be shutting Superkeem down. Like being like, I have done everything I want to do with this, and I feel so happy and I have completed what I needed to with this chapter. like that would also be like a huge success in in just feeling like this level of satisfaction and completion around it and that's you know in its current form I guess like Lauren mentioned we we're definitely not rid of each other anytime anytime soon we've got a lot a lot coming down

50:10Lauren Wong:the pipeline we're not gonna sit here and die at our desk there's like a couple different ways that a studio can die that will not be the way that super keen is we're not gonna end before the studio we're gonna end the studio before we end um but i i totally agree with gabby you know like a thing that knows its arc like like the hacks season finale uh was so good because it knew when it was time to go out and i think we have lots of ideas of when that could be it's definitely not yet. But when we see it, we'll know.

50:43Gabby Lord:Well, I just love this intuitive way of thinking about business and like how you're evolving the studio too and how it's like whatever feels good to you versus what we've seen other people do. I think that's so cool. So keep doing that and telling us about it, please. Thank you both so much for chatting with me. And we're really excited to have you here at Design Thinkers in the fall.

51:03Lauren Wong:Yes. Thank you so much for having us. Yeah. We can't wait to come. Bye.

51:07Gabby Lord:Design Thinkers is Canada's largest annual graphic design conference. Find out more by visiting design thinkers.com. Design Thinkers is produced by the Association of Registered Graphic Designers, also known as the RGD.

51:22Lauren Wong:Through the RGD, Canadian designers exchange ideas, educate and inspire, set professional standards and build a strong, supportive community dedicated to advocating for the value of design. To find out more, visit rgd.ca.