Charl Laubscher, DLX is the founder and director of Love + Money, a Melbourne-based digital branding agency working with new and established businesses around the world.
CL: About 12 years ago, I was working in branding and advertising, and I always thought there was a bit of a gap between how much time and energy we would spend on strategy and creative direction. We had a team of about five writers, we had 3D animators, and yet there was no digital kind of capacity whatsoever. I thought this was strange, because even back then, the first point of contact you would spend with a brand would be online. So I jumped in and founded Love + Money, because I could tell this window of opportunity was going to close, and I wanted to get our stake in the ground.
DP: Great question. I was thinking about how much the technology we use to create these brands has changed over the last 10 or 12 years. Charl and I were working for a large branding agency for the first couple of years of our careers. Back then, we would be opening InDesign files and logging off a few hours later. When you think about the way we create and build brands now, it is widely collaborative - it’s a completely different set of technology that we’re using. And I think what Love + Money did was intuit that this was the way the process for building brands would develop, with this sort of hyper-collaborative model. We have processes and ways of working which help us collaborate more effectively as a team, but we also have ways to invite the client in so that they can not only contribute, but they can feel a sense of ownership when building the brand. That way, when we get to the bigger brand expression, they feel a sense of ownership and they’re connected to the work, as well.
CL: To build on that, when you talk about building digital-first, I think it takes it away from the hypothetical and into the slightly less glamorous world of the real. The thing that was always a bit depressing about working at these kinds of big agencies is that you would come up with these wonderful ideas and put together a big, beautiful style guide. But then, when you'd hand it over to the client, you’d watch what felt like a slow-motion car crash as this beautiful thing that you’d thought of didn’t survive contact with reality. With digital, a lot of our processes and tools are built with reality in mind as opposed to coming up with a nice fancy idea and then receding into the shadows.
DP: Sure, let’s take a look at our work with the initial Euphemia engagements. We hold a lot of workshops as a way of uncovering the elements and the environment the client is operating in. They’re a lot of fun — they’re lighthearted and easy, maybe even a bit dorky, but they’re a really quick way for us to go in-depth into the challenges the client is facing. After we go through these exercises, we can synthesise what we’ve learned and use them to set goals and objectives for the clients. It’s a really fun way of engaging, but we’re also listening closely to develop creative and business-focused avenues for us to explore. So we’re taking the time to listen and engage with our clients while bringing our creative team in early on, so that way we can attach our creative decisions to the goals we are trying to set.
CL: Going through these exercises with Euphemia, a family office which invests in Australia’s tech entrepreneurs, we understood that they wanted to create a better, more diverse environment for Australia’s tomorrow. So we had to figure out how we could create this environment, which almost felt like we were treating the Australian tech scene as a kind of startup. Based on our findings, we discovered what was important was a launch and publicity, so we set some particular metrics around that.
One of the cool things about working with startups and creating businesses for the last ten years is knowing that your objectives will change at a much slower rate than your plans ever would. Because of this, we get clear about what our objectives are, so whenever something doesn’t quite work out, we can retool whatever jobs we are working on so that they are in service of those bigger goals.
CL: Typically, we target between three to five.
CL: This is another thing we optimise. I like getting our ideas out there really quickly. We’re not the type of people to take a brief, run off into the hills, come back three months later with three options and then feel upset when the client chooses some Frankenstein of options two and three. Instead, we invite our clients into the documents. We give them access to Figma, Slack, the whole process, the idea here behind that the sooner you share a kernel of an idea, the sooner we can develop ideas that feel fertile.
DP: Two thoughts on that: first of all, I think we're also lucky to have a community that we can test those ideas with. Obviously, we're never giving away a client's IP, but we're able to share with a group beyond our own studio who are happy to give us feedback on the work as we do it. The second thing I was thinking about is just how important culture is to collaboration. When I was first starting out in my career, everything felt very much like an individual sport. At Love + Money, of course everyone brings their own individual strengths and talents, but we think of design as a collective act where there’s ownership across the entire team.
CL: They are pretty amenable to this. For instance, let's say you want a website. We'll assume that a website is right, but we can’t be 100% sure. This is actually something informed from the Design Leaders Programme, which is this product design methodology of ‘now, next, later.’ So, we know what we need to do right now. We're pretty sure what is going to happen next. And later, we can have a vision for where this wants to go. By being particular about the levels of fidelity across the three stages of the project, you don’t risk fooling yourself into thinking you’ll know exactly where you’re going to be in six month’s time. No one really knows whether what you are working on today is going to impact what you’re doing tomorrow. By going through the process, we can figure out the elements that will inform what you will do next.
CL: We started looking at tools that made it easier to be right than wrong. So instead of creating a Toolkit™ that felt more like a policeman saying what you can and can’t do, we viewed it instead as a set of tools that can solve any problems that might come up. It’s a platform, not a uniform. So our role becomes much more consultative and ongoing. Instead of just designing for our clients, we are co-designing systems with them. We’re helping them operationalize the work, leveraging emergent digital tech, and the scalability of atomic design systems. These systems are designed to be used day in, day out, creating brands that are not just inspiring to look at, but to use.
CL: Exactly. We think of it like giving a Ferrari to a 14-year-old – there’s no point in making this incredibly exquisite thing if the operator can’t use it properly. Nobody walks away happy with that situation.
DP: It’s meaningless if the work doesn’t show up in the world and have the impact that you want it to. So, in the case of Euphemia, they have a Toolkit™ which is versioned and continuously updated. So if they needed to make a new campaign, they could go there and access their social media templates and create assets themselves. It keeps the brand alive; it’s a living, breathing, visionable active brand document.
CL: We want to put that kind of inspiration next to these tools so that when you've been hired onto this new brand, you get the benefit of being able to see the whole picture and think, ‘Hey, this is why I work here. This is what we're all about.’ So you're not just trying to execute something, you're inspired by the thing, as well. It's ownership, isn't it? It facilitates a sense of ownership for the people who need to use these tools and use this brand.
CL: Part of ‘always beta’ is that we know the best work we can do is with ongoing relationships. We don't believe in retainers. I think incentives are everything and there's a real misalignment with incentives when it comes to retainers. The operating costs for the toolkit is really, really low. We scale it depending on the size of the client. But essentially, there’s a service fee and we’re constantly looking for ways we can help – what are your next quarter’s goals? What are you looking at this year and where can we jump in? The general idea is to be useful – if you’re useful, people want your opinions. Rather than locking clients into something they don’t enjoy or want to be a part of, we’ve found this method is far more effective in the long term.
CL: Honestly, this sounds simple, but a big metric is usage. What parts of the Toolkit™ are they getting involved with and using? How often are people checking in on what your values and or principles are? Who is using this, and where and when? That alone makes a huge difference. It doesn't have to be super complicated, it just needs to be honest.
CL: So much of it comes from letting go, to be honest. When you start a creative agency, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of people put their name on the door. But when you start something and you are fighting to scale it, it can’t be all about you. A founder has to definitionally look for something bigger than themselves. Getting out of everybody else’s way, though, is the hardest, and most important, thing to do. I have a deep need to push people away and do the work myself; it’s an exhausting trait and not a scalable one. A big part of this past year while on the Design Leaders Programme was about establishing a leadership team and trusting those people with the control and autonomy to do that job their way. Danny and I go back almost 20 years – stepping away from the Creative Director role should have been the hardest thing for me to do, but Danny made it so easy because I have so much trust in him and everyone on the team.
DP: When I joined Love + Money I said to Charl, ‘I'm so excited to go back into an agency.’ And he said, ‘We are not an agency, we're a learning organization.’ There's this real culture of learning that frames everything that we do. Mistakes will be made, especially when you’re doing innovative and creative things, but there’s always a desire to learn and grow from it.
CL: I had to course-correct everything. One of my favourite talks during the Design Leaders Programme was from Ajit Singh, who said that efficiency is a function of iteration. You can have the best process in the world, but you need to work with specific people in a specific situation in order to mould it into the thing that works specifically for you and your clients. So what did we course correct? We course-corrected everything. And the difference with our OKRs from last year versus all the years before is that we stuck with them and we honestly engaged with them. We did it in the simplest possible way that we could first, and then we built on it.
CL: Last quarter was focused on profitability. One thing that we do with our OKRs that has made it really work for us is rather than setting like a bunch of disparate OKRs, we do a Russian nesting doll version. So we will set one big objective for the agency, which would be my objective. That one objective breaks down into six objectives total, five objectives for each of the directors within the business, which ladder up for me to support my objective. What this also means is that my key results are the objectives for my directors and their key results are the key results for their staff. Last quarter was all about delivering profit, so we looked at what was back then four different elements of the business and how they would all serve to make us a more profitable organisation. Everything was about looking at how net profitably would run throughout the agency. With the partnerships team, for instance, this was about finding bigger clients, justifying a higher price point and rate card for our delivery team and achieving project profitability through efficiency. For Danny’s team, this was all about how we justify this through doing better work. With development, we really needed to figure out how to be more profitable, so we looked at rebuilding the development team and team process so that each part of the business was much more profitable. What was great for me was that I was able to have my cohort on the Design Leaders Programme hold me accountable for setting and seeing these profitability objectives through.
CL: I’m a recovering perfectionist and felt like I had to do everything myself because I didn’t trust others well enough to do it. Ego plays a big role in that. There’s a quote from former US President Harry S. Truman who said, “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” You’re not going to build a business if you do everything yourself; it’s a trust-based exercise.
DP: The thing I’ve really noticed about you in the past year is just an implicit sense of trust that I feel like you work very hard to provide your team with. I think this is one of the most powerful things you can receive from any leader, which is the knowledge that this person knows you have the skill set and the ability and the desire to do the work. And trust underpins a lot, it’s where everything builds from.
CL: It's hard for everyone else. It just doesn't make sense. It's not scalable and it's not sustainable. If you want to create something great, it’s about the people that you do it with. We humans need to keep relearning this. The important thing about leadership is the space you create for everyone. I’ve always been a designer and a strategist. I feel like the thing I’m designing is like a system once again. Rather than focusing on typography, colour and art direction, I’m thinking about finance, management and goal setting. I’m applying the same kind of thought into birthing something else which is just as collaborative and people-focused.
CL: I think a real big standout moment for me was when we all went and got pizza in San Francisco. We just had one of those super wholesome moments going around and saying what was so special about where we were and the people we were with. Later on in life, there are fewer and fewer situations where you meet a group of people and you all join in at the same time. You could join an organisation, which can be a great group of people, but there are already established hierarchies and relationships. Whereas, taking part in the Design Leaders Programme felt like going to university, where you meet everyone at the same time and the relationships and connections feel much more organic. So this was a really special memory for me.
One thing I often hear about people in my position is that it’s quite a lonely thing. Even when you’re around a bunch of people, there’s still a comfortability gap. What was so powerful about the Design Leaders Programme was the time to connect with people at the same level who are going through the same things. It’s so important to have those people who you can reach out to and say, ‘Hey, am I messing this up?’ Because we need to be able to be open about our processes and share our failures just as much as our successes because our successes only come from learning through our mistakes.
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