Narrator: Welcome to mind your own marketing business podcast, where we explore marketing trends andtechnology, gaining insider knowledge from the industry's best. fjorge is proudto present mind your own marketing business with host Joe Barsness.

Joe Barsness: Thanks for joining us on the mind, your own marketing business podcast.

I'm Joe Barsness from web and software development firm fjorge.And today on our show, we'll be talking with Tim Hilligans from ThriveCreative. Welcome to the show, Tim.

Tim Hillegonds: Hey,thanks, Joe. It's good to be here.

Joe Barsness: Yeah,absolutely. It took us a while to get this all set up, but super excited tohave you on the show.

We've connected a number of times outside of this and I knowI've talked to you and always been enlightened by your perspective and excited to learn more and talk more about you and what you do and how you do it. Asalways on this show, Tim. I want to hear, just so we can set the tone, I want to hear a little bit about your background, how you ended up in this creative space and what your team at Thrive Creative does and your specialty.

Tim Hillegonds: Yeah, thanks. Yeah, it's good to be here and good to see you again. I think the lasttime we connected, we were in a coffee shop here in Chicago which was nice tojust get together in person. But yeah, to answer your question. So ThriveCreative is a brand and marketing agency built for construction.

So we've really spent the last 12 years hyper focused on heavyequipment, specialized transportation, heavy industry, construction, thosesorts of businesses. I used to say blue collar businesses, but I think it's,slightly different than that certainly overlaps to some degree, but I guess interms of how I made it here like so many agency owners accidentally I had a acorporate career, believe it or not, in the insurance industry here in Chicagofor about 10 years, and it was a specialized insurer that insured crane andrigging companies. And so I just got to know lots of these crane and riggingcompany owners and specialized transportation companies. So consider like atrucking company that would move a space shuttle to Florida or, an enormouswind turbine blade or a crane that would put up a high rise in downtown Chicagoor New York City. Something like that. And so I got to know this sort of likegroup of construction folks. And then after I realized that I was a creativethat was stuck in this insurance world and always had been a writer. I decidedto break out on my own and then ultimately just combine these two things that Iloved, which were business and entrepreneurship and writing. And so initiallywhen I launched Thrive, it was a copywriting agency. And then it emerged out ofthat and then became more of a strategic consultancy.

And I think now I really like to think about us as like anagency or a consultancy that like sits at the intersection between a McKinseyor a traditional management consultancy and like a big design agency, likemaybe huge or like VSA here in Chicago.

Joe Barsness: Sure.

Got it. Yeah. That's when you're adding some of that strategyand value into the execution is where a lot of the value comes out.

And I don't know why, but I don't think we've we have spokenabout your past career in the insurance industry. I didn't realize theconnection there between kind of your focus in that area and now what you do.And from a marketing. Perspective and I can vouch for Tim being a qualitywriter.

I do get his weekly, maybe weekly emails. Yeah. Weekly. Now.Yeah. Weekly now. And they're ones I actually read. So well done Tim.

Tim Hillegonds: Yeah.I appreciate that. And I didn't pay you to say that, right?

Joe Barsness: No. Iactually do. That's why I actually reached and followed up with you and said,Hey, we still need to do this.

Cause I get that constant reminder.

Tim Hillegonds: Yeah.The writing piece has been pretty interesting because I think it's like theglue that's tied everything together because I think, I think about writingobviously as storytelling, but as literary craft being so like closely relatedto the work we do in agencies.

And, I guess maybe just to back up real quick, like the weirdsort of like origin story of getting that job in the insurance industry was. Soafter high school, I was a mess and I had moved out to Colorado to snowboardand try to go pro and one thing led to another and got in a lot of trouble, butended up back here in Chicago working at a restaurant, basically a bakersquare, which is like maybe a step up from Denny's.

And I met a guy there, it was like a regular who would come inand he would be with his wife and I would serve them every time they came in.And then finally one day he was like, what are you doing working here? And Iwas like what do you mean? And he's like, why don't you do something else? Ithink I might have something for you.

And so I, this was like the suburbs of Chicago. So he ownedthis like insurance MGA in the city. And for some reason, just offered me thisopportunity and then, went down, interviewed, ultimately got a job with him. Heturned out to be this very enigmatic, crazy guy. He was like a big guy, formerNFL football player.

But one of those guys that you just couldn't take your eyesoff, right? It's bullied his way into business and kind of figured it out. Andso I learned a lot from him and I learned a lot. Things that I shouldn't dofrom him. But really like he gave me this fundamental lesson about certainlybusiness, but just the power of a story, because he was like this former NFLguy.

That really didn't have a college education that really didn'thave an insurance background. And yet he built this successful business becausehe was just really interesting. And that just always stuck with me you knowultimately like I left there I did a couple of things with some startups thenwent back to grad school and then got a degree in creative writing because Iwas just so enamored with learning how to tell stories on that level

Joe Barsness: sure

Tim Hillegonds: and Ithink even as we've grown and become more than just like a like a copywritingagency and grown into more of a strategic consultancy that uses design thinkingto solve like complicated business problems.

And still always just comes down to whether or not you can tella good story. Can you get anyone to believe in what you're talking about?

Joe Barsness: A coolstory, like the background and how you got to where you are. I am still sittinghere for those of you listening that can't see Tim.

He is, looks like he could come from a fashion magazine at themoment. And I'm trying to picture him with really long hair and saying, dude,or something like that from his snowboarding career. Yeah. But that also makesme want to ask. Super excited to ask my favorite question to the majority of myguests, which is you've been through the insurance industry.

You're in the marketing industry. What's the coolest thing thatyou've had the opportunity to do over the years? This could be anything fromlike some client you got to work with or an event you got to go to for aclient, or maybe a crazy story about a crane, falling into the ocean. I don'tknow what kind of stories you might have, but anything cool or interestingthat's happened to you over the years.

Tim Hillegonds: Yeah,I mean for sure like the thing that was really interesting about the time thatI spent in that insurance job was, as you could imagine if a crane falls overin New York City, it's a, it's an absolute catastrophe, right? Lives cansometimes be lost, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage.

And so part of what is really important when an incident likethat happens is like getting to the job site really quickly and just preservingit and beginning your kind of forensic investigation into what happened. Iworked my way up and at one point I was part of the risk management team andthe claims investigation team and so things like that would happen.

And I remember at one point I was living in Baltimore at thetime, and there was a crane that turned over in New York City, and I had tojump on a, on the, I think it was like the train and go up there. And they hadall these city blocks cordoned off. And so I was there with a couple of othercolleagues and.

It was a disaster, like half a building had fallen down, and Iremember looking up at one of the buildings and imagine, a New York City midrise that people lived in with part of the side of it sheared off, but the waythat part of the building had fallen off what it was like half of someone'sbedroom and just enough of the closet was intact that the closet Rod was stillout and there was a shirt hanging on it.

And I just remember thinking like, what would it be like tojust be in your house and have something like that happen?

That was pretty interesting. And one other thing that, that Iremember pretty vividly from those insurance days is there was another timewhere something had happened in Florida and I had to jump on a plane and godown there and meet with the claims investigator.

And it was like in a part of Florida that was a little bitfurther away from where I was. And it was like maybe a couple hour drive fromMiami or wherever we happen to be. And the claims investigator is I'm a pilot.So each we just like jump on my plane and go and I was like sure, not reallyunderstanding.

Is this going to be like a G5 jet or what's it going to be? Andso we go to this small little airport and he goes and grabs his plane. He comesback and it looks like. What to me look like a stunt plane, like what you wouldsee in the air and water show. So it's like a two seater and he's like, allright, you ready?

So we like, grabs the bag. There's like room for one bag,stuffs it in there. He jumps in the front, I jump in the back and he takes off.We just go flying up into the air. And so I'm like, got the little headset on.And I'm like, Hey does this thing do loop to loops? And he's yeah.

And like thinking he wasn't going to do anything. And sureenough, like next thing, I'm upside down. And then he goes into a barrel rolland he does all this stuff. So we finally land where we got to go. And I'm justlike, what on earth is happening? I can't believe this is a job and B happeningright now.

Joe Barsness: Andwere you insured?

When you were there, yeah, who knows, oh man, wow. You havesome good stories. Those are some of the better ones I've heard. I can't,obviously different different industries. So interesting things to hear aboutthat industry and the things that can happen and the crazy things you have todo in those, presence oriented pieces.

Tim, one of the reasons that I really wanted you to be on theshow is in that coffee shop in Chicago, you brought up, asked me if I'd everheard of this concept called the T shape organization. I said, no, you told meabout it. I said, that really resonates with me. And so I wanted to jump intothat topic and talk a little bit about it.

But, for the audience, can you set up kind of the backgroundabout where you learned about it, just high level what it is, and then we canmaybe apply it to something that's happening this day and age.

Tim Hillegonds: Yeah,for sure. Yeah, so the T shaped organization, individual concept has beenaround for quite some time.

Like I think since the nineties actually but I came across itjust a few years ago actually at another agency, big design agency here inChicago that sort of described themselves that way, and it just really piquedmy interest because it felt like it really represented what I was trying to dowith Thrive and just how I think about myself.

And the idea is really two ideas. There's T shaped individualsand I shaped individuals. And so T shaped individuals would be individuals thathave a depth of experience in one particular discipline, and then a breadth ofexperience, like the crossfire of the T, in a couple of other disciplines.

So like when I think about myself, as a writer my, my depth orlike the vertical line of my T would be writing and then the horizontal line ofmy T would be strategy and marketing. Or maybe strategy and technology as Istart to, think about some of those things. So I shaped individuals reallywould be like siloed individuals that have a depth of expertise in one thing.

Imagine you're a, like a, an AI ML person, perhaps that's allyou focus on. That's all you really do. That also has its benefits, but Ithink. In the agency space. And I'd love to hear your opinion on this too, butthe idea of a T shaped individual is just is the way that it has to be at anagency.

It's so much more helpful, and you probably know this at a devshop if you've got a dev that's also really good at presenting work, or reallygood at understanding how copy works that's a little bit more helpful in manycases than someone who's, super dialed in on one particular topic.

Language or framework,

Joe Barsness:correct? Particularly at a group where you're not necessarily completelycontrolling either the tech stack or the outcome of the creative to go andbuild. If you're an internal organization, you can say I need eight people towork on the JavaScript of this huge platform, and then you can focus on theJavaScript.

But if you're servicing people that have different needs andyou're bringing your expertise of consulting, what that can look like, etcetera, it's very applicable. And I think about even Tim, my role within thisorganization. I sit. In a sales seat, business development seat. I've been aformer business owner.

And so when we're working with. Small and medium sizedbusinesses. A lot of times the owner or the president and CEO, who's thinkingabout return on investment and all of those things is involved in theconversation and decision making and myself being able to relate to thosethings and say, "Hey, I understand why you're trying to make this."

It's not just about. Picking a solution it's, am I going tospend this money at all? Am I going to do this? What is it going to do for myorganization and coming at it from that perspective? So that's why it resonatedso well with myself, but even thinking about our organization, absolutely.

We have this this dev vertical line where we have developersthat we're working with, right? And then the cross is consultitative businessanalysis a little bit of UX and UI and working with a number of marketers andthat kind of thing is that, that horizontal line, I almost said virtual againand so my question to you is, as you apply that to, a development shop likeourselves, Tim what do you see and your own team as well at Thrive?

What do you see as what we could learn from that? Or that ishow we operate. Is it necessary? Do we just fall into that? Or is it somethingwe need to focus more on and create as a strategy?

Tim Hillegonds: Yeah,I think that you're really hitting the fundamental question there, which is Ithink there's a lot of value in, in surfacing the concept and talking about it.

I shaped individuals, if you have lots of I shaped individuals,they are fundamentally siloed, right? It's harder to collaborate when you haveI shaped individuals, because everybody's really good at their thing. Andthey're just not looking left and right to see what other folks are doing withT shaped individuals.

It's much more. It's much easier to collaborate because youhave these sort of like points, these bridges into these other disciplines. AndI think it may, like with so many things, like if you can bring something tothe surface and then really dissect it, unpack it, talk about it within theorganization, it just starts to be much more relevant and much more useful.

Like I know, sometimes it's what we're looking for are mirrors,right? And really what I saw when I looked at that agency website, that firsttime that I came across that that concept, like they had a little graphic andit explained it. And to me, it was a mirror. Like it was like, Oh yes, this iswhat I've been trying to articulate about myself and what I want ourorganization to be like, but I just didn't have the language or the words to beable to do that.

And so I think like giving people the opportunity. In the frameof a T shape and saying, think about yourself. Like I know Spotify does this. Ithink there's actually content on Spotify's design team website that talksabout their T shapes. And so obviously, like the, it's been, Tim, I think TimBrown at IDEO really popularized this concept app in the nineties and there'sbeen lots written about it, But showing it to people, giving them that frame,asking them to think about what is the discipline that you look, you thinkabout as your primary discipline, and then what are the things that you stretchleft and right into, I think just helps them understand themselves.

And then also as leaders, You know, you can look at individualsand see opportunities that maybe you didn't see for collaboration or thingslike that.

Joe Barsness: Yeah.How so taking this and applying it to thrive and how you see, or how yousupport your clients, what at, what have you like gleaning this and knowing itexists and taking this?

How have you consciously brought more value to your clientsbecause of this and what are those elements? My assumption is your backgroundin machinery and insurance has applied to some of your clients as well, andthat's part of that ts shape, I assume.

Tim Hillegonds: Yeah,for sure. Like you were talking about earlier you sit in a sales seat.

But you've also sat in an owner's seat and that allows you toexplain what it is that you do in a different way, right? Like you can speakthe same language, or you can speak in a language that the folks that you'retalking to will understand. And I think as the owner of an organization andalso, like I shipped in and out of being an individual contributor on projects,just being able to communicate to folks using the language that theyunderstand.

It's just so helpful.

Joe Barsness: Hundredpercent. It's relatable. It's nice to have at the same time, oftentimesconsultants and teams and agencies are hired because they aren't so blinded bytheir own products and services and marketing. They're looking for another eyeon it.

And hiring a consultant is often, or an agency or whatever itmight be is a reason to do that. But you also don't want to go to somebodywho's never worked in the industry, never like relates to the pain points thatmaybe a client couldn't have, or hasn't heard about them, or doesn't even knowthe language that industry speaks.

You have to find that happy medium of my core is with Thrive isthat, Tim and his team have this industry experience, this background, but yetI know that they're really deep in the writing, which is what I need. And thenthat makes that symbiotic relationship between yourself and your, partner orclient in this and adds value both ways to the organization.

Cause you're continually getting more experience as well withinbeing able to talk to those folks. Am I correct with that?

Tim Hillegonds: Yeah.Yeah. And you're making me think about the fact that if you have a T shape foryour organization and T shapes for individuals, like those are going to bedifferent, right?

Like my T shape as an individual is going to be slightlydifferent than Thrive's T shape. Thrive has a, like a depth of experience instrategy and then goes left and right into marketing and branding, whereas Ihave a depth of experience in writing and go left and right into a few otherthings.

But I think it's like back to that idea of bridge building orfinding these connection points with clients. And it's not about trying to beall things to all people. That's definitely not what I'm saying. That'sdefinitely not what T shaped individuals are. We're not trying to say that, butyeah, like our T shape is enormous.

It goes, it's States wide and we can do everything. It's reallyjust about saying we're really good at this one thing, but the fact that we'regood at these other things as well, makes us. Just, deadlier at what we do

Joe Barsness: Ahundred percent. And that's why as many agencies do they create a niche interms of either their specialty.

Like I'm not big on calling us an agency fjorge, but we'restructured that way and it's fine if people do refer to us an agency, but ourspecialty is dev. But we have industry experience that is wider or technologyexperience that is the horizontal line. And that allows us to be that T shapedorganization and bring value.

And but you get into these niches let's just say the lotteries,like we have a client that's lottery and then you learn about the lotteries andeven their, the restrictions and the things you can say and the things that youcan't and how you need to go through legal to get approval for things and thedifferent images you can use and all the things that are specific to thatindustry.

And then when you go into another one you have that backgroundwhere you're already on the same page. If you've already done Illinois, workedwith Illinois, in general, what the rules are going to be in Minnesota as well.And that is really helpful. And that's the value that you bring.

So no, I appreciate it. And I love that conversation aboutyou're right. And I'm trying to say this in a way that isn't overly obvious,but like something about it's an awareness thing. It's a simple concept, butit's awareness and thinking about it and strategizing around it. And even Tim,I imagine it applies to the organization as a whole.

It applies to individuals, but it might be why you hiresomebody that has a different vertical than you do. You have some of the samehorizontal pieces at an agency, but you have different verticals and that's whyyou have you know, a technical director or a writer or a, a lead art strategistor whatever it might be.

And is that part of formulating a quality team that you'veseen?

Tim Hillegonds: Yeah.I think it can definitely be like a clarifying tool or a clarifying framework.I think as you were talking, I was thinking about it's like the businessclimate or the agency climate just no longer suffers fools.

Joe Barsness: Yes,

Tim Hillegonds: Youhave to be sophisticated about the way that you run a business these days And Ithink that these are some of the ways that you can do that. Yes, it's a supersimple tool, but what it's doing is allowing you to, intellectualize businessin a way that you otherwise wouldn't.

Like I read this book not long ago called the Lords ofStrategy, and it was like this history of corporate strategy, like where itcame from, in the 1960s, so it chronicled like Bill Bain a guy from McKinsey aguy from BCG, Bruce Henderson. Like these were the guys that really firstconceptualized really the intellectualization of business.

Like they took it out of academia and then they thought aboutit some more. And then they applied it to corporations. It's crazy to thinkthat this like literally didn't exist before the 1960s. And so Bruce Henderson,like created this thing called perspectives. It was like essentially the firsttime that anyone had really published what we would call now thought leadershipand he printed it out. And it was like his thoughts on an intellectual businessconcept. And then he would mail it out to all the potential or current BCGclients. And it became, they became famous and you can find a bunch of them onBCG's website.

There's an archive of them now. But I just found that sofascinating where it's like you take a concept. You think about it as much asyou possibly can, and then you wrestle with it and you write about it and yourevise it. And in, in writing we call it revision revisioning. So you revisionit or you reimagine it, and then you apply it to your own business and your ownagency and your own people.

So you can figure out where these like disparate connectionsthat didn't seem to make sense now all of a sudden do. 'cause that's like whatultimately. Is going to make us, like AI resilient. Because it's something thatwe're all thinking about, which is like, what parts of our jobs are going to becommodified or just kept in house?

Because now virtually anyone can do it. And so I think, evensimple concepts like a T shaped structure, just allow you to engage in theintellectual rigor of thinking through what makes you good at what you do, whatmakes your organization good at what it does. And then ways where you cancreate new bridges to do other things.

Joe Barsness: Ahundred percent. And I love the way you talk about it and the way you arti- Ican just tell you're a writer by the way you articulate, even the way that youspeak. It's really cool. But Tim, unfortunately. That's all the time we havetoday for discussing the topics and Thrive and all of that. So I just wanted tofirst thank you very much for agreeing to do this and being a part of it.

Really appreciate your perspective.

Tim Hillegonds: Yeah.Thanks for having me on here. It was a blast. I feel like we could talk aboutthis all day.

Joe Barsness: I know.Same with me. I can't wait till our next coffee shop conversation. And for those listening you can find Tim best way to reach him is at his website,thrivecs.com. So Thrive Creative Services, thrivecs.com. And we also want tothank our listeners for joining us. Just as a reminder, you can download episodes of our program by going to fjorge.com/mind-your-own-marketing-business, or subscribe to the show on iTunes,SoundCloud, and Spotify.