This conversation is with Rob Clark, Founder and Principal at RC Design. RC Design is an independent team of creative thinkers that define and build brands by leveraging both traditional print and digital technology. They create meaningful experiences by marrying design and technology to generate results for businesses, brands and those inspired by it.
Born and raised in Newmarket, Rob Clark is a fierce supporter and enthusiast of the community. The owner of RC Design, an award-winning design and marketing agency located on Main Street Newmarket, Rob has an open, friendly and boisterous approach to life, which has given him the ability to quickly foster trust and create long term partnerships with his clients and vendors.
Tell us a bit more about RC Design.
RC Design is a full-service design marketing agency. We work in multiple platforms and disciplines, from traditional print to direct mail to digital. Depending on what our clients are looking for and who their audiences are, we craft solutions that reflect their needs. I started out as a solopreneur in my parents’ basement around 20 years ago and it’s been a slow progressive growth ever since. We are now an organization of about 18 people.
What kind of clients do you work with?
We started off working with anyone and everyone but as you grow, you start to understand who your ideal client is so you can start to become a bit more picky. It’s not just about revenue, it’s about multiple factors like cultural fit and the type of work you’re really strong with. We spend a lot of time working with nonprofits, local hospitals, and other organizations in the Not-For-Profit space. We work with a real eclectic cross-section of industries from finance through to manufacturing. We really run the whole gamut. For us, it’s less about the industry and more about the fit—is it the right type of project and does the client really understand the value that we provide? Do they understand the purpose of an agency and what their role is? Are they looking at working with us as an investment rather than an expense line item? Sometimes you can educate people on the value of our work but other companies that just want to get another item checked off their to-do list typically are not the right fit for us. We want to create meaningful and valuable relationships with the objective of creating long-term partnerships—always with goals and ROI top of mind.
Our four core values are care, creativity, collaboration, and positivity; and that runs through everybody and everything that we do. At the end of the day, it’s about creating a really solid product for our customers and sometimes that means we don’t make a whole lot of money on some projects. We never take that “kill it and bill it” kind of attitude and, as much as we’ve grown, we’ve really held on to that personalized, bespoke approach to our projects and that makes a big difference. I may be biased but, within the competitive landscape we have in the North York/GTA Region, I think that we offer significantly more value than our competitors do. We do a great job.
Why do your clients choose you?
I think relationships are a big part of it. Do people like you? Do you understand their pains and challenges? Are you a good listener? Ultimately, our team really wants to understand our clients’ histories and there’s a lot of hunger in the organization to work on diverse types of accounts. They want the opportunity to learn more about different industries. Some other organizations might pitch only in a specific niche so they can create the optics of truly understanding a certain market or industry. We like to take a more objective position. Of course, we do our due diligence, but we’re also able to come in with a completely new perspective and offer a whole other set of values that our clients may not have thought of before. We think of that as a competitive advantage. We have a really strong portfolio which keeps on getting stronger and we also have a great team of people that are able to build trust and rapport with their clients. If you take a look at our Google business page, you’ll see a whole bunch of unsolicited and authentic reviews. That really speaks to the kind of relationship we have with our clients and we’re incredibly proud of that.
Are there any partners in the business?
In the beginning there wasn’t, but after incorporation I brought in a friend of mine who had just sold a business in the trucking industry. It didn’t work out for a variety of reasons—creative work is very subjective and a whole different kind of market. We parted ways after around a year but we’re still good friends. Since then, it’s just been me.
How do you define different roles in the business?
Most of our roles are really clearly defined but I think my role is the only one that’s not clearly defined. It involves vision and strategy work but I’m also sometimes the guy who takes out the garbage. I’m responsible for HR and recruitment but I also need to jump in on some project management every now and again. And even though we have a dedicated business development, I would say 90% of the opportunities come through my personal relationships and professional networks.
What’s the most powerful lesson you’ve learned as an entrepreneur?
To say no. As an entrepreneur, you tend to look at any opportunity as a positive, especially when you start to grow and you want to keep that pipeline full. Sometimes, things might look shiny but in reality, they’re counterproductive to your growth. For example, bringing on the wrong client who doesn’t value the services you provide can be really disruptive and it can be quite costly. Simply put, a $50,000 project that has $200,000 of value is not a good opportunity. I’ve made that mistake before. I think it’s important not to just look at the number of dollars but really think about the value that’s being provided. Much like when you interview internally for recruitment purposes, if you interview a client and there really isn’t a good connection, it’s not going to be a good fit. We’ve been in situations where it’s been incredibly disruptive and demoralizing for our internal team to work with a client that doesn’t respect or value the team. It not only impacts the project, but their ability to be productive and happy in the work environment and role. Knowing when to step in and act as an intermediary until we can get the project through to completion, or when to have a challenging conversation with the client is an important lesson I’ve had to learn.
As an entrepreneur, you tend to look at any opportunity as a positive…Sometimes, things might look shiny but in reality, they’re counterproductive to your growth.
You obviously care a lot about culture and values. Can you talk a little bit about what that means to you and why, after being in this business for 20 years, it’s still so important to you?
One definite benefit to being an entrepreneur is having influence over the culture in your organization. I’ve brought in people in the past who weren’t the right fit for us, but I was a lot younger and a lot less experienced and didn’t know how to manage people yet. I also hadn’t really defined the culture yet. When you think of core values, you think it’s just something big organizations put on their wall for people to look at, but as you grow and develop, you start to realize their importance. The tipping point for me was when things started going really well for us. I started to wonder what was it about that group of people we had hired—what was the common thread that made it all work so well? I did an exercise with the team where everyone had to write a list of their core values and it was amazing how close everybody was with their own personal and work-related values. It was a real “aha!” moment for me to realize that one of the reasons things were working so well and there was so much positive collaboration was because there was an alignment of values.
When it comes to culture, happy people are productive people, right? I still struggle sometimes because not everybody in our organization sees the financial picture. I’m pretty transparent with what our financial goals are as far as growth, but overall, I don’t try to put that stress on anyone other than our own management team. But being a small business, cash flow is king and it can get chewed up really quickly. My big trigger for stress is when we start having challenges with finances so when I see those cultural events happening, I have to take a step back and tell myself that it’s just an hour of the day and it’s good for everyone. It’s not going to impact the bottom line. It’s about understanding the value of these cultural events and I have to say, the team really owns it. They’ve organized a potluck, ugly sweater day, a gift exchange for charity—all of this stuff is happening organically without my involvement. Part of me feels a bit guilty because I’ve been so busy I haven’t been participating much, but there’s nothing I like more than seeing people collaborating on a project on our own internal processes without me being involved. That gets me excited. And that doesn’t happen unless you have people in the organization who really love the culture and see a future with it. You spend 65% of your working life with your work families, so you better enjoy the people you work with, and you better enjoy the space that you’re working in.
One of the reasons things were working so well and there was so much positive collaboration was because there was an alignment of values.
Do you think the culture of the organization is still a direct reflection of you and your personality, or do you think it’s taken on its own life?
I want to enjoy the people I work with so I can say without a doubt that, on a human level I connect with everyone I work with, but the culture definitely has taken on a life of its own. My role now is to make sure that we create some systems and processes to formalize and define it a little bit more. For example, we’ve got a core values committee where they create different events, and we’ve got a process in place where people can submit a story about someone in the office who has exemplified a core value. Then we read them out to each other in our daily stand-ups. That was something that came organically through the team. I didn’t create the core values team and I’m intentionally not in it because I don’t want to influence it. Overall, I think there are parts of the culture that are reflective of what I want to see but for the most part, I think it has kind of taken a life of its own.
You’re located in Newmarket. Are there any advantages or disadvantages to being located there rather than downtown Toronto?
There are some downsides to being in Newmarket—recruitment suffers because there are more people and more talent in the Toronto region than there is in the Newmarket region, but we’ve identified strategies for recruitment and know who we’re looking for. Property is cheaper here, so I was able to buy a business property many years ago that could accommodate growth. We’re at 17-18 people now and we can get to 20-25 people in the building easily. That’s a positive because I would never have been able to afford to own bricks and mortar in Toronto.
Historically, we’ve worked with really hyper-local organizations who are smaller and haven’t worked with agencies before. Their budgets are significantly smaller so we’re trying to deliver a really solid product but at a very different budget. That has been a bit paralyzing for us at times. Fortunately, we have a really strong network of clients and a lot of our work comes through referrals and project scope and value is growing year after year.
Is the pricing models different for you guys versus downtown shops?
I think it comes down more to the size of agency and type of agency rather than geography. A large agency with big Fortune 500 clients will have a pricing policy that’s different to ours, but some of those agencies have small projects that they can’t service properly but don’t want to lose to smaller agencies. We have created strategic partnerships with bigger agencies where we take on smaller projects white label so they can deliver the project on budget, and it’s still part of that major brand family. Typically, those budgets are much larger than we would normally get.
From a staffing standpoint, is there a certain type of person you’re targeting?
Sometimes, people who work in the big agencies in Toronto who want to have grass under their feet and a place to raise their families will move to more rural settings like Newmarket, Aurora, or Richmond Hill but continue to maintain their careers downtown. But when you have young families and you’re spending three or four hours a day commuting it gets really difficult. That’s where we come in. They love the agency life and the creative work and there aren’t a lot of organizations like us to be found locally so that definitely creates a competitive advantage for us. We’re really active on social media and we keep a list of job descriptions on our website at all times so we never have a shortage of people looking to work at our organization. It’s a great spot to be in.
What are the most pressing challenges your business is facing at the moment?
As you start to grow, you start to see more inefficiencies, so we need to batten down on processes and systems and create some key indicators so that we can have a snapshot on the health of our projects. We also need to be more proactive versus reactive.
A lot of the time we’re working with a fixed budget and we don’t even know what we’re building yet—there’s no other industry that works this way, that I am aware of. We take on an insurmountable amount of risk without knowing clear project requirements. I want to be in a position where the team can proactively identify, “We’re 5% through on a 200-hour task and we know that it’s not going down the right path.” That way I can then go back to the customer with a revised plan before we’ve gone in too deep or gone too far over scope. We’re busy all day, every day and there’s not a lot left over at the end of the month. That is our biggest challenge. We’re creating systems and processes to deal with that and we’re already seeing positive results.
As you start to grow, you start to see more inefficiencies, so we need to batten down on processes and systems and create some key indicators so that we can have a snapshot on the health of our projects.
If you could remove one task or responsibility from your day to day what would it be?
My personal goal within the next five years to have a 15-hour work week. I spend a lot of time at work. I’ve missed a lot of opportunities with my family and my wife and I have a lot of personal self-resentment over that. So, for that to happen we need stronger processes, a couple strategic hires and significantly more profitability—then I can take on more of an advisory role rather than being an active participant in the business operations.
When it comes to your operations, what are some of the more specific pain points?
I think I spoke a little bit about this already but having the right processes and systems in place and getting to a place where we have a playbook with standard operating procedures for every core function of the business across all disciplines. For example, when I’m creating an estimate, these are the steps I need to take, these are specific questions I need to ask etc. It reduces the margin for human error and it also makes people’s jobs easier. Creating a more autonomous business from an operation standpoint, that’s what we want to be.
For me personally, I also want to be less reactive. I think it’s really common in the agency world that you’re always fighting fires. It’s about changing the mindset with our team, clients and partners and creating less chaos.
What’s the best part of being an entrepreneur?
I’m not good with directives so I think being able to manage my own time. That’s a big one for me. I’ve been working for myself for so long that I don’t know whether I’d hire myself. I don’t think I’m even employable somewhere else! Having flexibility is really important to me and knowing that I control my own destiny. There’s a sense of pride that comes with being able to step back and see what you’ve built. Seeing that you’ve got almost two dozen people working with you, who may have homes and families and that you’re able to help them with their own careers and growth and goals. It’s really great, but it can also pull me in sometimes when I need to be able to disconnect.
There’s a sense of pride that comes with being able to step back and see what you’ve built.
What are some of the tools you use to inspire you or to make your life easier?
We use a tool called Function Point that manages all of our agency operations from quoting to workbacks to project schedules to task management to time entries on projects…everything. We’ve been using Function Point since around 2013 and it’s been great. Before that, we used a system we created ourselves which was good, but quite lean. Function Point has its challenges too and we actually tried jump ship to a couple of other software solutions that we thought were stronger—being a creative, you get really caught up in sexy UI/UX—but when it came down to it, the flexibility and robustness of Function Point couldn’t be matched. We use QuickBooks for accounting stuff and there’s a nice integration between that and Function Point. As far as a communication platform, we use G Suite.
There are a bunch of other tools we’ve also tried out over the years like content aggregators, SEMrush for digital marketing, Callrail for call tracking, HubSpot for sales tracking, and Gain for social management.
I’ve got about 40 audiobooks on my phone and I’m about 10% through all 40 of them! A lot of my focus has been on my own self-development though because I really think that your business is a direct reflection of your own personal happiness. I’ve read pretty much all of Brené Brown’s books and she’s helped a lot. I’m reading Dare to Lead right now and I think Braving the Wilderness was the one that I enjoyed the most. There are little anecdotes in each book that have really helped me.
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle is a tough read but totally worth it. I can be pretty hard on myself and I can shame myself quite a bit. Being able to identify that little voice in your head and take a moment to try to be more present has been really helpful to me both internally and with my team. CEO Tools by Jim Canfield and Kraig Kramers is another really good read.
As an entrepreneur, I really feel like sometimes there’s a lot of isolation and loneliness. Your family and your spouse don’t always share the same experiences and they’re unable to empathize with some situations and things you’re going through. I joined a peer-to-peer entrepreneur mentorship group called TEC Canada, which has been really great for my own personal growth and business. It’s a fantastic group of people who have been through their own tough times and know what it’s like running their own companies. Just knowing you’re not alone in your challenges is so incredibly helpful, a restored sense of belonging and great support.