Podcast

Marcelo Russo (00:00.014)
think they are, I don't know if there's another person that has my respect in the way that he has it. And not that I am like, I don't know, fucking Albert Einstein, right? But it's like, this guy, like the first time I met him, we was at Webflow HQ, and he was doing the tour, and in a moment, right, it's like everybody was dispersing in the HQ, so I sat down with him and I started chatting about.

I told him, he's like, no, I come from technology. I come from doing IT in the past. And the dude went, and I'm an IT grad. So I did all of my backend and infrastructure and all that. He went deeper than my understanding of IT. And I've been in the fucking space. And the guy was explaining the web flow structure of how they build the components, how's the backend system built and how that impacted the way that they release product and how they choose to educate. it's like.

Kevin Mooney (00:44.074)
That's right.

Marcelo Russo (00:55.916)
I had to tell him, like, dude, slow down, I'm not following. And then he tells me, like, he diverts the story and then we end up talking about his major of him being a music major. And he's like, wait, you know all of this and you studied music? Like orchestra direction and that kind of thing? And he's like, yes.

Kevin Mooney (00:58.685)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (01:17.258)
Just brilliant stuff, man.

Marcelo Russo (01:18.848)
He's just pure brilliance. His mind works in a different level, in a different way that for me it's admirable. Because of all of that you added him being an extrovert, him being a great conversation, he's clearly a great partner and a great leader and he motivates people.

Kevin Mooney (01:27.935)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:31.272)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (01:43.69)
The meeting that we had at his house was clearly, you know, a networking information gathering to understand how's the people looking and perceiving AI. But I don't think anybody, not even nobody felt that they were in you know, Q &A session kind of thing. He facilitated a dinner with a bunch of strangers that maybe some of them know him a little bit more, but still it's like they made him feel at home.

Kevin Mooney (01:55.678)
Felt that.

Marcelo Russo (02:13.026)
like play music, eat, laugh. And it was like, I admire that capacity to do that.

Kevin Mooney (02:20.178)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're just so good at what you're doing. You're so confident with it that you can just have a regular dinner party. But in the back of your mind, you know that there's this, you know, alternate, alternate, alternate, all what's the word, alternative motive, right? For this thing. It's wild. And I mean, he, he, I'm sure he probably said part of it in the invitation, like, Hey, I am gathering information.

Marcelo Russo (02:34.498)
Yep.

Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:41.921)
And I love it.

Kevin Mooney (02:50.164)
Or did he not? wow. That's even more genius.

Marcelo Russo (02:50.542)
No, he just says like, he was just like, let's come with like, I want to chat a bit about AI, see how everyone is doing. How are you using it? But it's like, even when he directed the conversation, he was light in a way that you transition from one state to the next without really realizing that you are transitioning. That was like, wait, what?

Kevin Mooney (03:08.51)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (03:16.776)
Yeah, that's incredible. I fucking love that so much. I love hearing that story too.

Marcelo Russo (03:26.33)
And I imagine that that was like, it started, think it was like seven and we ended up at two in the morning. So it was like all through all of that time, we didn't even realize.

Kevin Mooney (03:35.092)
Jeez.

Kevin Mooney (03:40.542)
Yeah, you're just doing it. You're just hanging out, doing dinner stuff.

Marcelo Russo (03:44.8)
Incredible.

Kevin Mooney (03:46.112)
man, so I want to share with you how I do this thing. When you join in the studio, we're not recording. We'd normally have a little conversation like this to kind of get warmed up and feel it out. And then somewhere in the middle, I just start recording. I started the recording already, so we are recording any part of this we can.

Marcelo Russo (04:07.927)
I like it.

Kevin Mooney (04:14.74)
cut out and remove. But I wanted to just share, I'm sure you see the little record button happening.

Marcelo Russo (04:20.202)
I don't know what it is. I've seen it in the past. at the same time, my wife is going to come up the door and the dog is going to go ballistic. So I'm going to let you know if I can, so we can cut that piece if you don't want people screaming at us.

Kevin Mooney (04:28.66)
That's okay.

Kevin Mooney (04:36.744)
Yeah, we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. I'm not too worried about it. And then have you ever used Riverside before? Great. So you know when you stay a few minutes after let this thing upload and all that fun stuff. Yeah, great. Cool. Then you know how to do it. And we can just get back into our conversation. And then I've been toying around with a couple of different.

Marcelo Russo (04:45.09)
Yeah, yeah, I love it.

Marcelo Russo (04:52.086)
Mm-hmm. Gotcha.

Kevin Mooney (05:03.132)
ways of doing this podcast and it's nowhere like Mcquire and it's nowhere like anybody else I think because typically in the business world, typically in the creative world, everybody wants to put this tight box around the conversation and it's a little bit too limiting for me the way that I...

like to communicate the way I like to understand people. So basically, we just kind of talk and wherever it goes is where it goes. I do wanna talk maybe more about the business side of things today. I wanna understand a little bit about you more, where you came from, how you got into things.

want to talk about inflection points. If you've got a couple, those things to me look like whether you're starting a new business, you're figuring out a new direction, whether you're in the middle of a merger or an acquisition, if any other key player has come in, leadership has changed, and it just kind of makes waves in the organization and how you handle those things.

But I also don't want it to just be about that because that stuff about McGuire and your experience there was absolute gold. I wish I had recorded more of that, so maybe we dip back into it. I don't know.

You are muted, by the way.

Marcelo Russo (06:57.539)
There we go.

Kevin Mooney (06:58.26)
There you are. Yeah. then, so if you want to share any of those things, if you want to share any background, all that, that stuff, I'm, I'm really interested in switching my theme from just interviewing creatives cause it's always, and I'm so guilty of this. I'm not blaming anybody, but it's so all about the design and the process and the

payments and the money and the client woes and I get that but I don't think I Don't think that's where I want to take the show in general. I want to start bringing leaders on

Marcelo Russo (07:36.591)
It is making it easier. It's the general problems that we all have just by being in the creative industry. But as I was telling you, I come from tech, so I'm the opposite. I'm a CS grad. I couldn't draw to save my life. It's like I'm not...

Kevin Mooney (07:44.649)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (08:01.615)
I stopped saying I'm not creative recently because clearly there's creativity in everything that we need to do. But it's not that I can open Photoshop and make some magic. It's like I was very interesting like with Adobe Max this week seeing all of the super cool AI things because it's like, now it's getting closer. Yeah, exactly. It's like it and.

Kevin Mooney (08:23.294)
Maybe I can't do it.

Marcelo Russo (08:29.455)
stuff that used to take maybe like a senior designer or someone with a lot of experience in Adobe, it used to take them like a week, now we can have an AI that can support it. So it's interesting, I've been thinking about it as the democratization of knowledge.

Kevin Mooney (08:48.852)
Makes sense. Yeah.

What,

Where did you come from before this space? Were you always into, I don't know, just the tech and the creative side of things? Like, what brought you to be a creative agency owner?

Marcelo Russo (09:10.005)
Interesting. I have to that that's going to take us back a while. Back as a kid. My I think in my earliest memory of creativity, let's call it, was twofolded.

Kevin Mooney (09:13.77)
Cool. I love going back. Hell yeah.

Marcelo Russo (09:28.495)
with my dad playing with a building system called Meccano or Meccano, I don't know in English. It was in Latin America and Argentina back when I was living there. And they were all kind of like little slits of metal with holes. So you could you could kind of like put little screws and and build stuff. And it included motors and a bunch of other little things. So I always find it so cool to get creative with that.

And as I learned a lot more about life, because that was like, I don't know, five years old or six years old, I realized that not everybody can start building inventive, innovative things in the physical world. And when I was, I think it's also six or seven, I got my first console, video game console, the family game with Super Mario and a bunch of other of those kind of games.

Kevin Mooney (10:22.57)
Hell yeah.

Marcelo Russo (10:24.951)
And I loved it. discovered game building, game mechanics, and I spent enough time to give me headaches playing video games when I was a kid.

Those kind of two things always ran in parallel in my life where I always wanted to create something tangible, physical that has an impact on people. And at the same time, I love video games and world building and the game mechanics of allowing a person to discover how to jump, how to surpass an obstacle, and how to put enough obstacle that it's entertaining but not enough that is frustrating.

And in my case, when I was a kid, it was awesome to play with my dad. So we played together and every time I had a difficult boss, he was like, yeah, take over. And my dad teaching me patience and a couple other key things for gaming. But that, when I finished elementary school,

Kevin Mooney (11:11.434)
Sure.

Kevin Mooney (11:22.868)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (11:28.599)
In Argentina, you get the option to choose between continuing traditional high school or you have what are called technical high schools where you can already be kind of like preparing your knowledge for a college that requires higher levels of math and higher levels of physics. So in between all of the options, I thought it was like, I love something technical so I can begin to understand more computers, more design systems,

and things like that. So I ended up enrolling in a technical high school for electronics. So during all of that period of time, I learned more about chips, microchips, components, to build circuitry, to create my own amplifiers for my guitar, example, and oscillators and testers and all those kind of awesome things.

And again, I saw another wall that I didn't quite like at that point in time, which was like, so the people that study this kind of things, unless you are top of the game living in another country where things are more accessible, you don't end up being the one that creates a new something. You just grab another circuit, you put it together, you grab another piece, and maybe you create something that is remixed. But all the knowledge about circuitry that I learned in high school at that time was not something that I was going to be using as a professional.

Kevin Mooney (12:42.954)
Sure.

Marcelo Russo (12:56.145)
So that kept on leaning me towards technology. So in Argentina, the last year of technical schools, you do internships, literally the same internships that you would do in college.

So I was 17 turning 18 and I went to work for a company that was installing security cameras and cabling everything to be, I can't remember right now the namings, but it's similar to when you do a server room. So it's not so cabling. So a lot of security and all of that. And one of the customers ended up being a software company that was just landing in Argentina. And I was...

Kevin Mooney (13:27.646)
Yeah, yeah.

Marcelo Russo (13:39.469)
chatting with the HR girl that was the one that hired the company to go install some stuff. And she was like, we are opening our new HQ in this place called Martinez. And it's like, I live there. It's like, really? We're looking for interns there too. It's like, sign me up. It's like five blocks away from my house. And that's where it all started with me and.

Kevin Mooney (14:01.453)
Perfect, yeah.

Marcelo Russo (14:07.097)
coding and technology. So that's where I was between choosing where to go to college and what major I wanted to do. And that was like done. I'm going to do computer sciences. And from there it was like, I would call it the traditional journey. I went from junior. I learned from people that knew a little bit more.

Kevin Mooney (14:20.553)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (14:30.531)
they were doing something very weird, similar to what today we call no code. At that time it was just like, I don't know, something code different. I was hoping Java and those kind of things and that was not the case. But it was fantastic as an early approach to the data structures. I was not in college yet, so I had zero knowledge.

Kevin Mooney (14:39.591)
Right.

Marcelo Russo (14:54.825)
And by the time I finished my training camp with these guys, I was already learning things that it took me three years of college to see the same stuff. So it was super fun. And that's where...

Kevin Mooney (15:04.489)
Sure.

Marcelo Russo (15:10.763)
my creativity ended up flourishing because I could create things that were being used in the real world and at the same time, there were technology related, all of my knowledge about circuitry and they call it digital technologies at the time where the gates is like and, or, XOR and those kind of things all flourished back into programming languages so I really enjoy

all of that phase of my career. So I stayed programming for about eight years in multiple companies in Argentina, going from junior to senior architect. Architecting was fantastic. I think one of the technical things that I enjoyed the most.

Kevin Mooney (16:03.71)
I think any type of architecting, if you already have the baseline fundamental skills, the architecting becomes the challenge and the fun part of things, right? Taking all these little pieces out here in the world and just kind of like getting them in the right order to do the right things. And then once you have that knowledge, the creativity can just kind of boom, right? You go right back to that early childhood state where you're like, I have all the tools now.

I can just go play and be fun.

Marcelo Russo (16:36.887)
And I think one of the biggest...

elements or situations that have an impact is when I had a passionate mentor. Someone that is not just good, but truly loves what they are doing. And I got lucky in three different stages in my life. When I began working in this first company in Martinez, they were the line manager that was kind of like an akin to a project manager.

He was so passionate about protecting his team. I always remember, we were working, it was a banking project. We were retooling entire banking systems in Spain. So we were a young team. All of us were kids. And I remember.

the guys from the client were just like being weird and sometimes a little bit disrespectful in in the middle of the call. This was an open floor plan. This project manager comes and is like, who is talking on the other side? He's like drops the phone from us and is like, who is talking here? We're like, I need I need a name right now.

Kevin Mooney (17:52.18)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (17:53.685)
So and so is like, who is he talking? He's like, this is Gaston Blanco. He's like, I'm the line manager of Argentina. He's like, and you do not talk to my team that way. So you get ready for some shitstorm, baby. Boom, up. And he picked up the phone, called the CEO of the other side, and is like, dude, this person is fucking up my team, fucking up my process. He's like, I know. And we were all 19, 20 year old seeing.

Kevin Mooney (18:20.52)
Whoa.

Marcelo Russo (18:21.487)
a good manager protect us, protect the work that we're doing, the effort that we were putting, that we were doing like 18 hour shifts because we needed to hit the milestone. So seeing someone protect us that way really left a mark with me and later on became one of my philosophies as manager. Then in architect, when I was...

Kevin Mooney (18:33.716)
Sure.

Marcelo Russo (18:48.815)
beginning stages in there. I was working for the government in Argentina for the Ministry of Defense.

And the lead architect of the Ministry of Defense had such a passion to explain how all of the multiple systems in Argentina connected through technology and the super high level architectural concepts that they were using to connect it that I was like, my God, this is where I can leverage my influence and creativity. And.

Kevin Mooney (19:19.732)
Yeah, hell yeah.

Marcelo Russo (19:22.319)
I'm happy that I have right now my third person leading the charge, which is Jose Caballero, that he's like the one that is showing me how to, how can I lead a company with passion, with integrity, and being a different kind of boss, where I can also be myself.

allow my creativity to show, but at the same time, recognize that my team is the best. It's like, that's why they are there.

Kevin Mooney (19:51.294)
Yeah.

So with all of that experience, you get to a point in your life where you're like, hey, I want to run my own business. And then you're thinking to yourself, what business do I start? And why do you choose what you choose? And maybe this is a good time to introduce yourself, introduce your company, and talk about that a little bit.

Marcelo Russo (20:17.005)
Absolutely, and I think I should say my name and everything, right? So, my name is Marcelo Alejandro Russo. I'm originally from Argentina, and I'm the CEO and co-founder of Friends Agency, a creative technology agency that focuses on startups and SMBs, and we help them.

Kevin Mooney (20:20.234)
Sure.

Marcelo Russo (20:38.377)
navigate when their brand is not matching their reality. We put technology at the center and leverage an entire operational structure to help them go from where they are right now to where they want to be without losing their soul in between, which typically happens when you try to scale really fast.

Kevin Mooney (20:56.33)
of that. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (21:01.642)
So you really, as opposed to most creative agencies where they lead with creative and they lead with brand or brand strategy, you're leading with technology, but I'm assuming you bring a lot of that brand and brand strategy into the mix. Is that correct?

Marcelo Russo (21:20.65)
100%. Our way of providing value is we are excellent operators. With all of my background in technology and my management experience, I ended up becoming always a de facto COO. This is my first time being a CEO where I need to be in front of people, but I'm always comfortable creating processes.

enforcing those processes and finding optimizations where we are right now one of the top 10 agencies in the US that can do what we do, profitable and without breaking the piggy bank. But at the same time, I love finding these creative types of people that...

have these great ideas that are not constrained by how am I going to get this done. It's like they have the blind trust that this thing is gonna happen. And when I find one of those guys, that's where we shine, where I can shine, because it's like, you just give me a crazy vision that I really enjoy making it. It's like, let's put the pieces all on the table and let's create that picture.

Kevin Mooney (22:33.812)
How much of the agency is the technology side versus the, let's say the creative side? I know there's always a creative implementation of the technology, right? But how much of it is more technology and operations versus, let's say, creative and brand?

Marcelo Russo (22:53.219)
Tech operations, think it's about 80 % of my company right now, and 20 % is maybe less even, but 20 % is the branding and strategy, because normally...

Me and my co-founder are the ones that we are leading the more strategic portion of the engagements with our customers. And then I'm a very good partnership creation, so I build different partnerships like the one that I have with Jose. And then through someone else, is where I bring the talent to execute a great branding and a great design that then matches the technology that we can put in.

Kevin Mooney (23:32.34)
I love that. That's so awesome.

Through most of my career, I've been, I wouldn't say in the technology side, because I know enough to be dangerous, right? I can clean things up and do much better than most other people, but I'm not proficient in it. that goes for the same in the creative agency, right? Where I wasn't the lead designer.

on things, I wasn't the lead creative. I kind of played sales guy, account guy, creative director guy, because I didn't have the execution skills that these better people have. But I always wanted to lead with the business side of things, right? How can I fix the problems that you're facing from a business perspective? I'm going to apply creative solutions to that. No questions about it.

It just so happened in my space because we were called a creative agency that everybody wanted the creative part first. So we had to sell that and we would use strategy to be able to do the creative and then we would bring in the business side to solve those problems. so I really admire that you guys lead from that perspective and have the ability to pull the other stuff in as needed. think that's amazing. How big

is the agency now? How many folks do you have there?

Marcelo Russo (25:09.015)
So we used to be 17 until last year, beginning, end of last year. We took two, two break, one break even year and we're.

running towards another break-even year. So this year we decided to downsize, are four people right now. It's my two co-founders, myself, my co-founder. Our technical lead basically is the one that is also acting as project manager for all of the projects. A senior developer that is our go-to for all of the projects that we are implementing. And we have our first employee that is our staff developer.

that he's the one that tackles the critical problems and thinks that nobody else will be able to feel comfortable. And then we have two part-times, our marketing strategist and our social media manager that kind of like keep our marketing alive and help us with the upsell of a couple of the services and to tie a little bit more numeric values and results throughout the execution. And that's it.

That's it for right now. We are a very core team that then brings the experts that we need, whether it's a 3D artist, a brand strategist, an illustrator, backend developers if there's an application need, or content creators if we need to do an organic social media outreach kind thing.

Kevin Mooney (26:19.434)
Very cool.

Kevin Mooney (26:38.836)
Sure. And when you had the team of 17, I want to kind of compare that large team to the smaller core team that you have now. I want to know about how you built the leadership portion of that company and how did those leaders lead the rest of the team? Because 17 is a big, that's a big number for an agency.

Marcelo Russo (27:02.445)
Yeah.

So my company always started with one philosophy in mind that comes from Tony Hsieh's Holacracy, that it's everybody needs to be able to...

cover the guy next to him and to each side basically. I think that a better analogy for people that have watched 300 it was the Spartan stance when they were holding one holds the shield and protects himself on the one next to you because

Kevin Mooney (27:31.006)
Yeah, yeah.

Marcelo Russo (27:39.183)
We are all freelancers in the sense that I don't personally believe in time schedules and it's like it's 901, where are you? You need to be on. It's like we have life, we have family. We started the company during the pandemic, so we were all remote by default. And when...

When we were starting, it was just me and one developer, we started covering each other. It's like, I cannot tackle this. Why don't you grab this and I go manage this other portion. And sometimes we switch roles and it's like, now he's gonna go talk to the client or solve this thing while I build this other portion. And that mentality kinda started growing.

When we crossed the 10 people is where we began to need pipeline management and account and project management to make sure that basically the capacity was not spread thin because as a CEO, I was dealing with multiple clients and everyone always has something that is like priority for today. And.

knowing my capacity and the capacity of my team members, I was having the problem of over-exerting them. We know that we can hit the deadline and we know that if we put 30 more minutes a day, we can knock all of this without affecting the timeline and our payment schedules. that served a purpose for a while to maintain the mentality of covering the guy next to you.

Kevin Mooney (29:01.108)
Mm-hmm.

Marcelo Russo (29:09.333)
But I always knew that that was not sustainable. So my co-founder started taking the role of creating a capacity pipeline for us. And we entered what I would call the second phase of the company where my goal was to create friction between people. It's like...

Kevin Mooney (29:28.362)
Mmm.

Marcelo Russo (29:29.901)
Not only because I like to be the free election and the guy that falls into a meeting with a parachute that is like, here's a million new requirements because I was not paying attention a week ago. But at the same time, since all of these team members, my company is called Friends, so they are also not only teammates, but friends from high school. So they know how my mind works, how silly I am sometimes.

Kevin Mooney (29:52.617)
that's great. Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (29:56.923)
due to the closeness of our relationship, they can't tell me to fuck off. It's like, dude, dude, I understand we are all on the same boat. Shut the fuck up. Let me go. Like I'm not leaving you. They never like. Shit is like this. This is how my mind works, and this is why sometimes they hate me. It's like.

Kevin Mooney (30:02.484)
Sure.

Kevin Mooney (30:08.116)
Hahaha!

Marcelo Russo (30:19.425)
We had more cases with my teammates, with the people that I work with, that we had to shut off their access to the tools so they take a break. Then occasions where I had to tell them you need to do after hours.

Kevin Mooney (30:29.793)
wow.

Kevin Mooney (30:35.646)
That's crazy.

Marcelo Russo (30:37.559)
So that's literally how the mantra of covering the guy next to you. It's like, dude, stop working. It's done. When I say we can miss this deadline, we can move this, I can negotiate our way out of it, trust me, go be with your family, go be with your kid. I don't give a rat's ass. Go sit out and look at the sky for an hour. Run.

Kevin Mooney (30:48.458)
Take a break, it's okay.

Kevin Mooney (31:04.858)
Right, go sit on the beach somewhere, I don't care.

Marcelo Russo (31:08.397)
So all of that got ingrained and when we started putting the capacity management through that, all of the team ended up like 2Xing again their capacity.

because without me being the crazy guy on the parachute and all of them knowing exactly what they need to do through the week, then they ended up having more time to perfect their craft, to sit together and share war stories between the projects. And it started for me that second phase, a moment where I don't know my place in the company, which was...

disorienting for a moment, but at the same time it was amazing to see how everything was keep on growing without my intervention. So when reaching the 17 ended up being more about finding.

Kevin Mooney (31:56.319)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (32:04.495)
all of these additional projects that is like, can chain three, four, five projects at the same time, one next to the other, and have enough capacity to wiggle all of the spikes that produce the moments where two or three projects kick off or end at the same time without extra hours because they were already, everyone was so organized. My tech lead was so on point. The planning was on point that the spike ended up being an extra hour.

half an hour from one guy and half an hour from another guy ended up producing everything that we needed for a week. So it was so easy to increase our capacity. That was a mistake today, I know, but it was so easy to increase the capacity that that ended up becoming just how can I keep this pipeline super filled so I can keep having enough small projects to retain everyone at the same time.

Kevin Mooney (32:40.586)
Cheers.

Kevin Mooney (32:56.52)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (33:02.558)
Yeah, that's a hard thing to balance in the height of my agency. I think we were a team of seven. And I was telling this story, I think in the core circle recently, how we had landed this mid six figure client. And I think everyone had asked me in that, this was the drop in. They said, you landed a six figure client, now how do you feel?

first thing that I can remember that I can think of was like, well, I'm gonna go have a drink, yay. Congratulations, we won. But now how do I find the next one? Because I gotta keep these coming in because now this big one is gonna take up X % of the time. I still have these small projects, so I have to keep the small projects coming in. I'm looking for a bigger project. How do you do that? And that capacity idea, it's a hard one to

to solve in, I would say, pretty much any business, but certainly in the creative space. Because you have to build up the resources to be able to retain these folks, the good ones, project over project. And if they're freelancing, they can say no. And now what do you do? You're like, well, shit, I needed that one person. I needed that one person. They were perfect for this job, and now they're too busy. And so we toyed around with

Marcelo Russo (34:01.859)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (34:22.543)
Yes.

Kevin Mooney (34:29.738)
hiring people as employees, bringing them on like, hey, we'll front the bill for a while. And it's our job to bring the next client in, basically keeping more people coming in the top than leaving the bottom, right? And that became a grind. And that's ultimately the reason why we shut down. I shared this in the live event as well, but that big client ended up going away after a couple of months.

in the big engagement. And sure, we had made some hiring decisions based on that. But when they went away, we could have kept going. We had the funds to keep going. But it was just that. It was that inflection point. It was that defining moment where we looked at each other and said, is this the game that we want to play anymore? And we ultimately both decided no.

We don't want to play this game anymore. It's too much of a struggle. And as the owners of the agency, we're not making a ton of money. Sure, we have our little salary, but guess who's making all the money? Our team. And I'm not saying that they are millionaires to this day or something because of, you know, our great creative agency. I'm just saying that it wore on us so much that

we ultimately decided to close the thing down because it was too hard to manage. So kudos to you for figuring that out and even downsizing when you had to. And I'm sure that had to have been a struggle.

Marcelo Russo (36:11.545)
That was a horrible moment, but it happened twice. One, when we were very small. We had one developer, our current staff engineer, but we got, I think it was like seven projects in like one month and a half. And I was like...

shit is happening finally, like this is what I've been waiting for. I had like three people lined up, I brought them in and then it's like, I need two more months of this and then I have the next growth port and I get this other thing. And I really remember because I was part of the Future Pro Group at the time as a member, was still yet not working with Chris Doe and I jumped into the hot seat.

Because I was stressed out of my mind. I couldn't find enough clients and I had like three resources on me that they needed, you know, the additional projects so I can, so they can eat. And I remember Chris asking me, like, well, are they employees or are they freelancers? Freelancers. Okay, then tell me the problem. I have three friends, I have three people and then I need to find the projects.

And where's the problem? And he was like that series all the time. And it's like, no, well, but it costs like, I need to find projects. I don't know where to find them. And it's like, are they employees? No, they're freelancers. So what's the problem? And it's like until I process it's like, right. It's like they are freelancers. can terminate the contracts and rehire them when I have projects. And I did that in two months, right? It's like I let them go.

Kevin Mooney (37:26.569)
What's the problem?

Kevin Mooney (37:39.476)
Right.

Marcelo Russo (37:54.991)
With that, all of my stress and anxiety disappeared, I managed to find a couple more clients and I rehired two of them a few months later. With this time with the 17, it was similar when we downsized through all of that because exactly the same story that you were just sharing. We had a big client that was...

Kevin Mooney (38:03.508)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (38:15.565)
the six figure project that lasted about two years. So we were always counting with that and through a downturn of my client, then the entire project cycled. Like it was not even a piece, it was not even a, let's ramp it down. It was like, gone. And I was like, okay, I'm scrambling, I'm gathering projects, but there was not enough cashflow for me to keep everyone at the same time. And I remember it's like, well.

Kevin Mooney (38:32.746)
See ya.

Marcelo Russo (38:44.801)
I did it once, I'm have to it again. the thing that changed the way that I see the company is that I was, and it's gonna sound super silly, but it's like.

Kevin Mooney (38:46.783)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (39:00.783)
I was expecting the people that worked for me to cover the requirements of a project. So if the project needed, they were making $2,000, they would need to make $2,000 profit. And that, in my mind, that was okay.

And I didn't realize, I don't know why, and that's why it sounds really silly, that they are supposed to make money to the company. That is not the profit of the company. What they need to get better at their performance and what they do. Not that they were lacking, but we were just not pushing them into those spaces. So if we looked away or we were doing something else or going into a conference or something.

everything would go status quo in a good way. No unhappy clients, but no additional happy clients. going above and beyond in the places that bring the value to the company. So that change in mindset.

Not only made my team happier because now they are themselves exploring what do they want to do? Inside the scope of friends, but also it's like what am I what is bringing me pleasure period? and

Kevin Mooney (40:13.234)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (40:15.213)
And I think that's my new mentality for them is like, not that I want them to work additional hours, exactly the opposite. I want them to find ways to produce what they are doing, leverage the tools that they have, raise their concerns, raise their voices internally, and make sure that our clients are getting everything that they need as if they were servicing them as freelancers. But instead of having to do everything themselves, they can turn around and ask for their money.

Kevin Mooney (40:39.028)
Great.

Marcelo Russo (40:45.137)
marketing person or the designer or the brand strategist, they can involve them and say, like, hey, I think this is something that we can do or there's a problem here, there's an opportunity there. And that is what brings value for my clients and in turn, of course, for my company.

Kevin Mooney (41:03.774)
Yeah. So you've touched on a lot of things that I was hoping that you would touch on already. Before I dive into the specific thing, I want to know if you have any systems in place or if there's any guiding principles that you guys have written down, maybe as a company that guides hiring, firing, strategic decision making, you know.

Do you have anything in place there that you're like, hey, this is, we have to stick by these principles.

Marcelo Russo (41:40.143)
actually now that you say so because the other day I was saying we don't because I have bad memory but we do we have it even in our website so I'm actually scrolling down to be able to tell you exactly because the name friends is not an accident

It stems from my will to work with people that I really like because in all of my previous experiences, you know, it always happens that you have this client, you're an employee and you're working with this client that it's annoying or, I'm not gonna say disrespectful, know, picky in a non-professional way. So.

my, we ended up putting it on the website because it was really important. We spend one third of our lives working. We need to spend that time with people that we like. I don't care if they are contractors, clients, employees, or you know, people that we meet like you or Jose or in a conference. They need to be people that you like. You don't like them, just move to the next one.

They told me I couldn't say the part of the beer or alcohol, but I wrote it down. It's like, I want to be able to enjoy sitting down, having a drink with someone. I drink my beer, I beer, I drink wine. That's why I always go through that as an after hours for, because it's like, if I cannot sit down and talk about something that is not work related and still have a good time, then you're also probably not a fit. You're there. There's going to be something off eventually. And

Kevin Mooney (43:01.023)
Yes.

Kevin Mooney (43:17.278)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (43:21.202)
We used to run our agency like that. We used to do our sales meetings at the bar or down at the local pub or something like that. And our philosophy behind it was if you're not willing to come down and have a drink with us and like chill out, level out and say something real to us, we probably don't want to work with you. And while I don't exactly embrace that,

Marcelo Russo (43:46.927)
Perfect.

Kevin Mooney (43:50.634)
to this day where every sales meeting has to be down at the bar. But I share that same belief with you. If we can't just level as humans and not make this thing super businessy and a high pressure sales environment, like let's just have a beer, let's just chat. We'll see if this thing even makes sense for us to work together or not. And more often than not, whenever we would do those, they almost always were.

They're like, we like you guys. And we're like, we like you too, let's do this.

Marcelo Russo (44:19.471)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (44:24.097)
And then I think that that connects to the New York story very, very recently.

And but the third one, we have three directives, It's like be able to have a drink, have to not be a person that you're okay spending the entirety of a day, for example. And the example that I do when we do an onboarding is like when I'm negotiating or talking to a potential employee or contractor, I tell them, it's like, look.

We'll deal with the price in a way that I don't care how much your hourly rate is. I'm not gonna calculate that because I'm not gonna charge you by the hour. But I want you to have a rate that makes you happy enough that if I have to call you at three in the morning, you're not gonna tell me to fuck off. I'm not gonna call you.

Kevin Mooney (45:15.242)
Right.

Marcelo Russo (45:17.397)
every day, I'm not gonna do this, of course, but it's like in the eventuality that there's a problem, you're gonna pick up the phone and say, hey, y'all, sure, let me see how I can help rather than why the fuck are you waking me up? So that was number one. Number two is having a drink and number three is like, we gotta try to be friends. And then over the years now, I've shifted that a little bit because maybe my definition of friendship is rather strong and not...

necessarily business oriented because I see it as there has to be an understanding between two people that

they're gonna be fuck ups in a relationship. And even if this is a business relationship, we need to see past that. People do not, I choose to see the good, right? People do not pay you because they are asshole. They're not paying you maybe because their own pay cycle got broken down, because their customer has not paid or they needed, they had an emergency and they needed the money on that week and they get it later. I wanna, when I define the friend,

relationship with a client. I want it to be that level of transparency because if you're having a problem and I can help you solve that problem, especially if that problem is just money and you know that you're solving it, right? It's like it's a cash flow, not a deep issue. Then we can work it out. It's like you don't need to lose your own client because you don't pay me and then I pull my team away and then you have a half-baked product. But at the same time,

Kevin Mooney (46:48.81)
Right.

Marcelo Russo (46:58.769)
I will trust you that you got this shit, that you are trusting that my team will deliver and you are going to make sure that you get what you need so you can pay me and make everything good. That part of the relationship is a little bit harder sometimes to establish. I had a few clients already that are...

good like that, you met my friends from RadCat, I have a client in Orlando that is really like a personal friend now at this time, that is the same thing. It's like I don't mind, it's not even spec work because it's real work, but it's like don't worry dude, you're gonna, something is gonna happen in a month, in two months, and you're gonna give it back, something is gonna give. So like I want to have those kind of relationships where...

Kevin Mooney (47:41.438)
Right.

Marcelo Russo (47:48.367)
people realize that the value of what we provide, it's even beyond the value of the company. It's the human value of being there when you need it. Because business problems tend to be personal problems. It's management with your account manager, with the client on the other side, and it's like if everybody's stressed up because I cannot tell this guy this thing because then I'm to do this other thing and then I'm it's like no, no, no, no, not with us.

Kevin Mooney (48:16.297)
It becomes a game of chess, right? And everyone's moving their pieces strategically and it's like, no, no, let's knock all these pieces down and just start over. I've been in this transition in my life and in my business and I found this book called The Advantage by Patrick Lincione. Are you familiar with it?

Marcelo Russo (48:43.785)
The name of the book rings a bell, but not the author, so tell me more.

Kevin Mooney (48:47.71)
Well, the book is why organizational health trumps everything in business. And it lives on four main disciplines. And it's building a cohesive leadership team. It's creating clarity. It's communicating clarity. Then it's reinforcing that clarity.

Marcelo Russo (49:10.979)
Hold on, you made a post about it a few days ago. That's why I know. Scratch what I said, I have no idea what you're talking about. Now I'm learning.

Kevin Mooney (49:14.342)
I did. I did.

I

Well, I just think that this book wasn't written for creatives, but I have, and at some level co-opted this in my mind, of this organizational health is brand, right? And it just so happens to be that brand is the place that I live in my brain. building discipline, number one, building a cohesive leadership team, you've already talked a lot about this.

And it sounds like you have cohesive leadership and you've already talked about trust. You've talked about conflict. You've talked about commitment and accountability and results is sort of a byproduct of all of those things. But that's the, that's like the pyramid, the core principles of building a leadership team. And I'm so curious if you stumbled upon that or if you somehow

manufactured that, like how did you pull all of that together?

Marcelo Russo (50:25.539)
think if I look at it from the point of view of the framework that you were just describing, it's a thousand percent stumble upon it because since it stems from the friendship that we have amongst the core people that formed my company, when...

Marcelo Russo (50:51.447)
And the concept that I was talking at the beginning about Tony Hsieh's Holacracy, I believe in transparency as much as possible. And the more transparent we are, the more we are, like we can bring our full self into the company. And...

when you were talking about brand, since I'm not from the creative side of business, branding for me was always one of those woo-woo words like lala. It's one of those terms that people describe to charge you for the workshops that they are doing. And what is the workshop? It's talk about who you are and it's like...

Kevin Mooney (51:22.164)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (51:26.121)
Hahaha

Marcelo Russo (51:33.923)
putting some music on the background and telling me is like, what does the color blue smell like? It's like trying to find those very open-ended questions that for me being so not disciplined, but so precise and so like IT guy, more more coded, is like black or white, binary, exactly. But I realized that...

Kevin Mooney (51:52.596)
Tangible.

Marcelo Russo (52:01.421)
for me branding is just you, it's just like being you. How can you be you in your company and how can you have people around you that like you in that way? And I say you many times because each you, it's me, it's my co-founder, it's my tech lead, it's my senior dev, it's my staff dev, it's my marketing girl. It's like everyone is themselves in the company and it's so easy to spot when someone is not themself.

that there is something bothering that you can just go out and address it. It's like, run. Like, how can we fix? Whatever is going on, I don't give a rat's ass. Just tell me and we'll fix it. Because if you're uncomfortable, there's something that is not friction, it's uncomfortability, then that's where we fix it. You get to have conflict and friction so you can expand the way that you do things, but without that,

Kevin Mooney (52:36.511)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (52:42.164)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (52:50.228)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (53:00.239)
If that becomes I cannot sleep, I'm stressed, I don't want to talk to this guy or this client, then all of that is detrimental. That doesn't work. And for me, it's friends.

Kevin Mooney (53:10.068)
Do you think that, like what came first? Was it the friendship and like the trust aspect of it or did that trust develop from conflict and the way that maybe you handled it?

Marcelo Russo (53:29.215)
It was a point in between those two because honestly if I think about it as a CEO today, I would say that we chose to hire our friends because we were bad at hiring. Not because they were bad hires, but we are not HR experts. We probably are not the best at reading qualifications or writing job descriptions.

But on the other hand, we know that our friends are gonna do their best all the time because it's the mutual trust of I don't wanna let you down and I don't wanna let them down as their leader in the company, to use a word, but on the other hand, I know that they don't wanna let me down by saying, like this guy is providing for me and I wanna do a good job for him. So that trust was inherent in the friendship relationship. But then...

Kevin Mooney (54:18.249)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (54:24.601)
through working together and living those two values is where the trust gets built. And then it becomes a virtuous cycle because the more they trust that, I always had this particular feeling about.

my team seeing me go to conferences and or even taking time off for myself and posting about it and sharing it with them because it's like, this guy, here's the CEO, just taking another break. But with my friends, that doesn't happen. They know that they are that I'm working. They know that it's not like it is pleasure, but it's

Kevin Mooney (54:55.572)
Sure, sure.

Kevin Mooney (55:03.678)
Right.

Marcelo Russo (55:07.673)
It's pleasurable, but it's not pleasure to go to a conference. It's like, enjoy it, but it's a work. It's like I need, I have objectives, I have results. I have to push through things when I want to go to sleep and I know that I need to keep on engaging with a certain group of people to make a better, deeper connection. It doesn't matter that I'm having fun doing it, but I still need to do it. They get to do something else. So.

Kevin Mooney (55:11.05)
Sure.

Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (55:32.692)
Yeah, sure.

Marcelo Russo (55:37.923)
that trust enters that virtuous cycle of they trust me when they see doing that that I'm not slacking off and

I know that when I jump on a call through all of those things and I'm not worried about, my gosh, I didn't check their deliverable, I didn't review if they were remembering X and Y, it's like I know they got it. And nine out of 10, I'm always way beyond happy with what I see. It's like way.

Kevin Mooney (56:02.036)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (56:07.636)
That's so awesome. I think that what you've built is amazing. It just sounds like a really great place to work. I didn't have that experience at my agency and I blame that on me. And for all the same reasons that you were saying, I don't know, I wasn't an HR person. I didn't know how to hire. At the time, I would use the Myers-Briggs assessment.

to help narrow down who should be in that role and then I would take it to the next step and say, okay, do I like this person? Could I see myself hanging out with this person? Is this person going to get along with me? Because I'm known to be pretty hard and I don't mean I yell. I have this thing that's, what's that?

Marcelo Russo (57:02.883)
High standard. High standards.

Kevin Mooney (57:06.45)
I have high standards and I have this thing inside of me that I don't care about the design. I don't care what software we use. I don't give a shit about so many things. It just has to be right. It has to be right by the client and it has to be right by the client's clients or customers, right? That's what I care about. And if that part is off, I will stomp my feet and throw a tantrum and make a big fucking scene out of.

whatever we're doing. And I just care about it being right. And I've let go of the design side of things, right? Maybe I don't like the colors, maybe I don't like the logo, maybe I don't like the type, whatever, who cares? Does it work for the customers? That's what I care about the most. And I don't know, maybe my team members would have said I was an asshole, maybe they would have said, no, Kevin's lovely.

I don't know. I should probably talk with them, but I admire what you have done. think that's really cool. And if you stumbled upon it, kudos to you, man, because almost every single client that I have ever had over the 10 years at the agency, seven, seven years at the agency, 10 years or three years of freelancing and five years before that in business, everybody that I worked with had highly dysfunctional.

teams and leadership. And it's something that I'm trying to lean into now on like, how do we solve this? How do we solve this problem right here? Because that's going to result in a wonderful system. It's going to result in wonderful branding. It's going to result in more money for you. It's going to result in more time or efficiencies, whatever it is down the road. But you have to have trust. You have to be able to handle conflict. You have to be fully committed.

have accountability and then deliver those results. And I'm just stuck on this book right now, but it's so fascinating to me how far people have gotten away from that core thing in business that seems so simple and you make look simple.

Marcelo Russo (59:21.743)
And that's the crazy part. It's like, we recently, since I came back from New York, we started to take stock of everything that made friends what it is today. I'm definitely, the thing that I'm most proud of is the fact that I still have great relationship with people that I fired. But it's like...

fired, fired as in performance review in the middle. You're not hitting your, you're not, and I'm, I'm, apologize because probably some of them are going to hear it. And I don't want to disclose too much of their own story without their permission. But it's like, I'm like you, Kev, like what are you, are you describing? I can be an asshole. It's like, it's like, this is not good, dude. It's like, what the fuck? It's like.

make it good. If I need to make it good for you, then you don't have a purpose. But I trust you. I honestly do. Go and do it good. And they didn't meet that expectation at that time. And they're still good friends of mine. I'm gonna spend time at their house with their family years after I fired them. So.

Kevin Mooney (01:00:19.433)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (01:00:25.695)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:00:39.22)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (01:00:41.901)
I don't know what it is. Hopefully I will someday like be able to put that part into something that I can put words on, but it makes me very happy because I also follow what they are doing today and how they are doing today. And I'm very happy that they are not only keep on prospering and what I've learned, what they've learned with us have been things that either they told me is like, dude, I miss this part of the way that things were going. It's like, sure. I got all of these things that are

but this really ended up being so core that now I miss that piece. Luckily, there are so many other good things in where they are today that is not that they need to change it, but it's something enough for them to remember. And that really makes me proud because I hope I behaved as a good employee when I was an employee for someone else, but I'm...

Kevin Mooney (01:01:20.98)
Sure.

Marcelo Russo (01:01:40.451)
but they never reciprocated in the way that I am doing with them of keeping the relationship alive. The fact that we are not a good fit together in the company in the moment that we were engaged together doesn't mean that you are not a good fit maybe later, that you are not a good professional today and that very same day that we fired you, I would still recommend you to someone else. And all of those things already happened too. So I think that...

Kevin Mooney (01:02:05.29)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (01:02:09.839)
That's definitely a part of the ethos inside friends that I get happy when they push themselves and they fail because if they fail, they feel safe failing inside friends. And I know that I can protect like a progressive failure, like failing forward with a customer.

Kevin Mooney (01:02:38.356)
Mm-hmm.

Marcelo Russo (01:02:38.643)
while it's very hard to do the opposite when they are like failing because they don't want to do their job or they are having some other kind of problem there. And now I forgot what we were talking about because I wanted to highlight that part.

Kevin Mooney (01:02:53.834)
That's okay, it's great. I used to tell my team members all the time, like, I want, you're here because you're great at what you do. And I want you to be great on this project. You're not doing this to impress me or to impress the client. It needs to be right.

It needs to follow strategy. needs to tie everything together. And don't worry about what the client has to say, because I will go to bat for you on this thing. I will go to bat for us. I'll go to bat for this agency. And I'll make sure I'll put all the systems in place that make sure that whatever it is that we present is correct. And whether you like it or not, that's not my problem. You hired us to do what we do.

Right? That's we're doing what we do. And this is what we believe is right for you. So I just, I loved, I loved going to bat for our team members. And it's like, it's like this challenge for me to, to, make sure that I'm on point, to know that I know everything about their business and our process and

Marcelo Russo (01:04:00.303)
It's so fun.

Kevin Mooney (01:04:15.262)
what we created and how we're delivering it to you. And I'll go to bat all day and just stick up for everybody. It was one of my favorite things to do. I loved it so much. It is a bit exhausting, but it's a fun thing to do.

Marcelo Russo (01:04:28.879)
I mean, these gray hairs don't come for free. This is not a treatment with my hairstyle. This is natural.

Kevin Mooney (01:04:31.56)
Yes.

Kevin Mooney (01:04:40.156)
Yeah, I like, hey, me too. So, Friends was started during the pandemic. we're a couple of few years in. What's been a couple of major critical moments in the business and how have you handled those?

Marcelo Russo (01:05:05.071)
I'm so critical of me that while I think about it, I'm going to say all of them poorly. But I don't think it was that poorly. I think that's just more about how demanding I am of myself. But we were just talking about the growth of hiring people when we are not ready. And the pandemic was really good for us in the sense that...

since all of the businesses were online and I'm more trained as a COO, behind the scenes kind of guy, it was really easy for me to just slid into conversations like this one online and have, share what we're doing and what we want to do with customers and instead of going to their office and getting stuck in traffic and in my case in Florida, go sweat all over the place and have three t-shirts in the car. So.

Those kind of things ended up giving us a lot of pipeline and instead of, for example, learning more about what Crystal told me about the freelancers, I kept on pushing my own agenda of growing the team because more people, better clout kind of thing. And that was not the best strategy and I had to learn it the hard way twice apparently. But.

right now I'm more mature and understand better my role with it than another, I think another...

failure was trying to, I didn't know, I still don't know, I'm still discovering this part, but it's like how to create a new vertical inside the company. Originally, we are still great at doing anything technical, but when I wanted to bring the creative in-house and have a creative director in-house and produce...

Marcelo Russo (01:07:03.193)
the same type of work that we were doing and the schedule and have it be part of our pipeline of operations, our pipeline of capacity management and sales pipeline. I realized that I was able to do a lot of the things regarding priorities and execution in the technical aspect because I was a technical person. But when it went to creative, I didn't have the...

Kevin Mooney (01:07:26.719)
Mm-hmm.

Marcelo Russo (01:07:32.111)
wants the guts to be, I didn't want to be a bad boss that says, you need to deliver this in two days or we're fucked. So then I let a lot of the...

Timeline management fall back into the creative hands and the creative, you know, it's like, I can't remember whose theorem is that. like, if you give them 10 days, it's gonna take 10 days. If you give them two, it's gonna take two. And if you ask them how long it's gonna take, they're gonna say whatever number comes to mind without any logical reason to tie it behind. So.

Kevin Mooney (01:07:56.351)
Mm-hmm.

Marcelo Russo (01:08:06.81)
That created a recipe for disaster in terms of how we manage our creative pipeline as part of our internal operations. So that was always friction between how much we could execute, how much value are you providing through the execution, and how much you're supporting the additional portions of the company, like creating pitch decks or sales decks or updating the internal brand. So all of those elements ended up becoming a failure for us that kept the brand

stale for a good eight to 10 months. That ended up hurting my sales ability and my sales pipeline because I kept on feeling that the brand was not up to par and then it was weird when it was like, I'm a company that can do branding and technology and then you look at our website and our pitch deck and it looks like it was done in Microsoft Paint. Luckily,

Kevin Mooney (01:08:59.835)
Right. Right.

Marcelo Russo (01:09:03.479)
all of the other portions of our branding in terms of how we do the relationship and the friendship and the drinking and all of those things that we were just talking about were still so good and so ingrained that really nobody was asking us to have a better proposal. But early on when I was doing everything and we had actual clients saying, it's like, well, we love your proposal. It's like you just won the project because your proposal looked better.

Kevin Mooney (01:09:19.732)
Sure.

Kevin Mooney (01:09:33.322)
That's wild.

Marcelo Russo (01:09:33.359)
And it's like, okay, thank you. I love it.

Kevin Mooney (01:09:36.98)
That's great. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like your leadership style and the ability to set.

Kevin Mooney (01:09:53.642)
To kind of put your values and your ethos, stamp them down, put them in concrete and say like, this is how we're going to roll. And that has led you to where you're at now. I'm curious what made you want to add that vertical into the business in the first place that caused some of the trouble. Like, why did you do that? If you were just crushing technology, why didn't you stay in that? What made you bring the other part in?

Marcelo Russo (01:10:23.523)
Mixed between ego and opportunity analysis. of our still probably.

Improvement gaps, I'm not gonna call it failures because we are really good at a bunch of things, but it's like opportunity gaps is to do even better account management. Right now it's a lot founders, founders like me and my partner, the ones that handle the different accounts. So when...

we brought the creative director in house. We were expecting the creative director to take a role that after doing the branding and after understanding the customer and understanding how they are building it to help direct the account when we are through the development phase to grow basically, because it's like you already know what they are, who they are, who's their customer, what we are building. You're QA-ing the work of our team. It's like, you're just there. Like you just need one,

one meeting where you go and tell the client, he's like, okay, so how are you planning to do this? How are you using this other thing? And that never really clicked with the person that was assigned to that role at that time. And the deliveries were still perfect. We were still really good at the operations part of it.

but not the growth part, not the upkeep with that. And we consistently had that issue with that portion of the leadership because we had great project management, but when we tried to move or push the project manager into account manager, we still found the same gaps. So that's where we were, the ego portion of it was to try to put everything under one bucket.

Marcelo Russo (01:12:17.367)
So we knew that I still believe this. I don't know if it's possible in reality with only one resource, but I still believe that if you have a strategist that understands the client and understands the business.

doing the upsell continuously doesn't require that much time because it doesn't require me that much time and I don't even know what's going on inside my projects. It's like I need to go in there and have a conversation and it's like how's everything going and then out of that I learn more about the client and we can do an upsell. But since that never happened that became a

Kevin Mooney (01:12:41.46)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (01:12:50.015)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (01:12:56.099)
Like why I think it was my ego of, if I have everything together, that will guarantee me that I can do that flywheel.

Kevin Mooney (01:13:06.65)
Those fucking creative directors man I say that because we we had to assign ourselves selves roles and responsibilities right and and so my partner took creative director and I kind of took Business development sales

Kevin Mooney (01:13:34.09)
business development, sales, account, executive, account manager, whatever you want to call it. I kind of took on all of those roles. And at one point I said to my partner, you just go handle the creatives because oftentimes I can't and you make sure the project gets done and I'm going to look, you know, two miles down the road, 10 miles down the road.

Okay, what are we doing? How is this gonna be applied? How can we help them there? What is the next thing? And it's super easy in a lot of surface level or foundational applications. We do your brand and your messaging. Well, the first thing you're gonna need is probably a website. We probably need to apply it to that. Okay, so then we can upsell and get the website. And then it's like, well, now that you have a website,

You have to bring people to the website. They don't just show up. It's not magic. And even if we SEO'd it, as people like to do around here, even if you do that, you're still just bringing in random people. We need to drive that traffic. So let's do some marketing campaigns. And then we would upsell on that. And it just takes the right person who understands what the creatives are doing.

but understands how the business is operating and what we have to be doing. It takes a very specific individual to be able to do that. I am that person because I live at that intersection of business and brand. Everything to me comes from business objectives. I think I'm just pretty all right in the brand side on how you tell that fun story and how you connect with people and make them feel emotional about you. But if you don't have that,

It is just like teams working in silos and it is a hard bridge to to connect people.

Marcelo Russo (01:15:35.437)
Yeah. A thousand percent that I feel like I.

I have pet peeves that really still stress me out. seem like my, I don't know what to do with my hands because it's like, I hate feeling that we take steps back sometimes. And when I feel that my team is getting siloed, it's like, no, please no, that's a horrible step back.

Kevin Mooney (01:15:47.752)
I mean, it's just...

Kevin Mooney (01:16:11.017)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (01:16:11.054)
It's like, let's raise a hand and find another way. But it's like, we are one team.

Marcelo Russo (01:16:21.421)
We've been talking with Jose Caballero about this concept of why...

white business leaders like you, like me, like him, can see this cohesive silo and sometimes employees can't, which is perfectly fine sometimes when they don't see it because they don't have that type of stake in the company. But at the same time, if...

I realized today or recently this year that we don't need to team members in to do that. We need to find that partnership with someone else that can bring that part of the expertise so everyone can stay on that zone of genius and then work out how the compensation structure works for something like that. I realized that

Kevin Mooney (01:17:09.759)
Mm-hmm.

Marcelo Russo (01:17:19.405)
That's where my concept of vertical sometimes comes in because I don't want to have a marketing vertical, but I know that I need to provide SEO content and right now agentic optimization, but I'm not an expert in that. I'm not an expert in leading a conversation around that, and I'm not an expert on selling that, but I am an expert on making my client trust me.

And I'm an expert, hopefully creating a partnership with someone that then in turn can be the one that service that customer. Any fight? No, no, Go, go, please.

Kevin Mooney (01:17:47.87)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (01:17:56.906)
Do you feel like go ahead? Sorry, please continue.

Do you feel like, you just said something that was interesting to me. I know that we have to do marketing for our clients. I know that we have to look at the SEO and the AGO. I think that's the right acronym. Doesn't really matter. You know what I'm talking about. The Agentech stuff. You say that you have to do that, but do you have to do that?

Marcelo Russo (01:18:20.087)
I think they're worth five, so yes.

Marcelo Russo (01:18:29.711)
I think that the keyword is you. Do I have to do it? No. No. Not at all. But I think that you... No. You, me, Jose, and...

Kevin Mooney (01:18:34.622)
Hahaha

Kevin Mooney (01:18:38.324)
Does friends have to do it?

Marcelo Russo (01:18:44.803)
Felice and a bunch of other people that we know. I think we are all good strategists enough to understand that that is a part of the business that needs to be looked at and needs to be considered as something important in this day and age. Now, I don't believe that everything needs to be housed under one company.

Kevin Mooney (01:19:13.108)
Mm-hmm.

Marcelo Russo (01:19:13.239)
It just needs to be housed under one strategist that can make sure that everything is cohesive, that we don't feel, that the client doesn't feel the silos. And Jose has been amazing at that, of not making me feel like they are silos and bringing the creatives and the developers team together into one cohesive unit.

Kevin Mooney (01:19:16.5)
Sure, fair.

Kevin Mooney (01:19:23.434)
Mm-hmm.

Marcelo Russo (01:19:41.103)
that that has restored my faith on, then maybe we can create the structure where I'm more like a vessel, a container of talent that includes my customer, but at the same time, it's like all of you guys just do the best that you can. I'm kind of like a, even.

executive strategist, I don't know, because I'm even outside. It's like I'm already trusting everyone that they are gonna deliver what my client needs. I just need to know if the objectives are outlined, A, B, C, D. It's like, does that resonate with what we talked about during the sales process? Yes.

Kevin Mooney (01:20:22.228)
Mm-hmm.

Marcelo Russo (01:20:23.853)
done, go continue, do that. I need to be already focusing on not only another customer, but also focusing on once those objective is not even, yeah, it's not even if, or it's once, it's like, what goes after those objectives? It's like those objectives are done, met, and exceeded. It's like, don't even think about the possibility of anyone in my team missing that mark.

Kevin Mooney (01:20:41.204)
Sure.

Kevin Mooney (01:20:49.151)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (01:20:49.903)
I'm more worried about how can I keep on building the relationship and this partnership with everyone involved. I think that that's the future. I think that that's the right shape of business. I just don't know yet how to say it in business language to a customer.

Kevin Mooney (01:20:58.207)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:21:11.338)
Yeah, it's a tough thing to do. It's a tough thing to embody. It's a tough thing to achieve. My outlook on every client engagement that I've ever had was, yes, how do we keep them in? Because at the end of the day, we're a business, so we have to keep making money.

But there's always a point with a client where our services end. And what I always focused on, at least in the relationship part of it, was how do I maintain being your strategist? And when I say I, I mean our business, our company. How do we stay on as your agency of record, for lack of better words, where we can help make

hiring decisions with other companies, other agencies. But we did your foundation work, we did your visual identity, we did your messaging system, we did your first round of your website, and we did your launch campaign. We know more about your business debatably than you do at this point, at least from an outward-facing marketing perspective. So how do I stay in there with those people?

Marcelo Russo (01:22:39.855)
That's the million dollar question, right?

Kevin Mooney (01:22:40.254)
I

I tried so many things and I tried taking them out to dinners and just trying to build that personal relationship with them in order to maintain the business relationship with them. to be fair, we had some clients that we had two, three year clients. That's a long relationship in the agency world. And I was really happy and pleased about that.

But there always comes that time when it just, it's just time. And then you start to see your work slowly be dismantled in the world because the new freelancer that they hired had a new view on it or something. it's like, that breaks the rules of this advantage book, right? Because everything is built on these principles up front. And today we've only talked about

building a leadership team and how you've done it, we didn't even get into, well, so far, we haven't even gotten into how to create the clarity and then communicate that clarity and then reinforce that clarity. And so what I'm getting to is just in those four principles when we work with people, oftentimes we just build the first part. We don't even get the opportunity to pull that through and maintain that for the amount of years that it actually takes for the people in the

in our society to like catch on to the work that we've done because that's the reality. Friends is only, let's say, five years old. Well, in order for that to be your ethos to be truly ingrained, you have to keep preaching that for 10 more years before everybody goes, no, this is what this company is all about. Like you're only a third of the way there probably.

Kevin Mooney (01:24:37.48)
And that's a wild thing to think about.

Marcelo Russo (01:24:37.506)
Yeah.

I think that we got extremely lucky and I use the word luck carefully because I don't particularly believe in luck. It's a lot of preparation and right time, but it's still luck, the fact that we are...

so good at operating, so good at delivering. And my partner is an amazing financial strategist. I think that I have to call him something like that because he's like, right now he's acting as COO, but he's really my finance guy too. So we always walk the fine line of profitability for us without getting too greedy and...

Kevin Mooney (01:25:12.276)
Right, right.

Marcelo Russo (01:25:23.561)
service capability with our customers. So the majority of our customers, we look at the future, we work with them for three years and a half, almost four. When I look at, we did a contract with the Air Force for three years, we did...

We are right now in year two with a startup where we are their development team. So our contracts, they're never long by default, but they are long in duration on renewal capability. But it's always because we are so good at executing that it's really hard for them to find the replacement at the price point. And we...

Kevin Mooney (01:26:03.786)
That's great.

Marcelo Russo (01:26:06.199)
We could be making a lot more money if we raise our rates higher, but we know that that in turn would put us in the risk of, well, where's the additional value that you're delivering? And that's where the account management thing that we were just talking about comes a lot more into place. But I think that...

The longer, we never got into a position where we can influence their hiring and firing, although it's something that I always wanted and as we both know from our books and from our training is like that's the kind of like the good level of partnership. But I think that.

And I was talking about this before with another friend about how the lifestyle business concept has really screwed people and companies up because in the end, we are always seeing, or people are always seeing the relationships of something small, short. And if you choose to see the relationship in a short burst, like two, three, four, five months, then...

You always get the opportunity to reevaluate the needs at those checkpoints. But I know that this is not super good business advice, but at the same time, if you have a two-year relationship and you're not excellent at account management, then it's easy for you to deliver a lot of value at the beginning and then just like slowly.

Kevin Mooney (01:27:45.226)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Marcelo Russo (01:27:46.147)
down because you begin to squeeze profitability and things go and then objectives misaligned and like resensements begin to build and the team keeps on doing it and stop asking and then in the end when you reach the end of the project is like done.

Kevin Mooney (01:28:00.316)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (01:28:01.207)
Since we have shorter cycles, like every time we are closing to the point where we need to renew the contract is we go back and ask them, it's like, how are you doing? What do you need? What's your budget? What's your next initiative? And sometimes, yes, we have clients that are with us six months, but.

Luckily, find ways that it's like, sure, you wanna go somewhere else, you wanna not have a website, sure, go ahead. Eventually, you're gonna need something or you're just showing me that there's a different trend that I need to pay attention. But I feel like there's a...

Kevin Mooney (01:28:35.53)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (01:28:42.083)
there's a lot of expectation regarding the closeness of relationships with customers from the business point of view that that's why I started saying more of the term partnership because instead of thinking my client is not trusting me with those decisions or those conversations is.

closer to an extreme ownership case. It's like, what am I not doing so you can have a conversation with me about it? It's like, hearing, like I recently talked to a friend that told me, like, I think that this client is gonna leave me. And it's like, how do you know? Well, so and so told me that they are looking at other agencies, and it's like, okay, so what are you doing about it?

like no it's just like I'm preparing I'm looking for a replace like no no no dude it's like what are you doing you have the information go to your client and like why are you looking somewhere else what's going on what am I not giving you and if not with your direct person that you're talking about because maybe that's why they are not telling you go with someone else go with an underling go with a peer go with someone else as like try to if you cannot get it directly get it indirectly who are they looking at what are

Kevin Mooney (01:29:38.975)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (01:29:50.834)
Right. Right.

Marcelo Russo (01:30:01.565)
they considering? Are they having a problem? So it's like there's always a way to take the ownership of that partnership and just like with the relationship with your spouse, with your significant other, with your friends, if you're not asking questions and if you're not transparent then in the end shit is gonna go sour.

Kevin Mooney (01:30:22.548)
Yeah, I mean, it goes, it goes back to that conflict idea or friction as you say it, right? You have to accept that that exists in these relationships and sometimes you have to manufacture it a little bit. And that's a scary, scary thing to do. And I remember when I was acting as the account executive, one of the things that I did was

go stir up shit. It was like, I'm gonna go create some conflict out there because I feel like this is A, going too smoothly. I'm getting a lot of yeses on their side, a lot of that stuff. And as soon as you start getting yeses and it's just like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes to everything you say, you know that they are on their way out. You know that they are looking for other options. They are trying to figure out how they can pivot and they're being.

too kind, because they're scared of the conflict as well. So I would always say, hey, you keep saying yes to everything that I'm saying. I want to know why. Tell me why you're saying yes. What's going on?

Marcelo Russo (01:31:31.273)
Amazing. I think that you just distilled something that I normally do. Because within that partnership concept and that friendship concept comes the enablement for my partners to...

to do things that they are not prepared to do, they were scared to do. It's like, they have their objectives, why are you just meeting them? Why are you just, like if you are the marketing manager for so and so companies, and your objective is like, I don't know, I'm gonna say random number, right? 10 leads or a million dollars, it's like, why not one and a half? Why not two?

Kevin Mooney (01:32:14.996)
Mm-hmm.

Marcelo Russo (01:32:16.769)
It's like, if you now have the execution capacity and the execution power of my awesome team that is going to kick ass no matter what bullshit you push down the pipeline, why are you being conservative? Why are you being a little bitch? Go and break shit. It's like, and...

Kevin Mooney (01:32:35.306)
I don't know.

Marcelo Russo (01:32:39.887)
I realized that that's what I do in the account. It's like I just jump in there and it's like, what are you not doing? It's like, show me, show me what, what was your dream? And Jose, Jose put it is like, if the deity of your choice comes down from the sky, what do you want to do? What do you, what do you ask it to do? What are you afraid? What were you afraid to do in the past? And

That I think is the best way to create some friction.

Kevin Mooney (01:33:09.642)
For sure, 100%. I mean, I love it. The friction part to me, it's tricky. It's tricky business, but it is so necessary. It's necessary for internal teams and external relationships. it just has to be there. I don't know how else to say it. What were we just talking about? We were on...

Marcelo Russo (01:33:32.632)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:33:40.936)
I don't know, we were kind of all over the place there.

Marcelo Russo (01:33:43.125)
Yeah, no, that's welcome to my brain. It's like this is I will blame me. Don't Jose Jose told me it's like you need to start speaking more. So here it is me speaking more. I was like, let's more speaking.

Kevin Mooney (01:33:45.822)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:33:53.566)
I love it. I'm the same exact way. I have been deep in the trenches for years and I have not done any of this stuff. I haven't spoke at an event. I haven't done a presentation in front of an audience since like college. Granted, I do it with clients, but I guess that was never too scary for me for some reason. It was small and intimate and deep.

conversation, so it was fine. I'm now in a place where I'm trying to connect more with people and that requires speaking and it requires condensing my thoughts down to bite-sized pieces but still allowing room to go deeper and it's crazy and it's really challenging and I might...

I'm not even going to say it like this. I went and met the Rad Cat guys and they're fantastic. I had no idea that they were here. I had no idea that they put on events here in town. I had no idea that they do networking things. I knew nothing about them. And that's because I was so head down, heads down in my, my work and trying to progress. So I met with them and they were talking about it.

an event that they put on, think it's uh, on the lawn or something. Yeah. Yeah. And, and they were like, well, Hey, listen, we're going to do an event in, in April and we're looking for speakers. If you're interested, submit a speaker profile and all those things. it scared the shit out of me just hearing them say that. And my brain immediately going.

Marcelo Russo (01:35:24.271)
On the lawn, yeah, the one in the park.

Kevin Mooney (01:35:48.874)
to I'm at the event, I'm on stage and I'm talking, what am I saying? This scares the hell out of me. What is just happening? And I'm not at all saying that they are entertaining the idea of me doing it, but that's where my brain went. And I was like, shit, I better start thinking about this. I better start preparing if I even wanna submit to try to be on that stage. But those are the things that we need to be doing. And...

I'm curious from your perspective, A, how much of that have you been doing? B, what has your experience been like in the connection world? I know that you joined Jose's group. I obviously am in there too, and that was my first step into the connection world. But I'm assuming that this will lead to some story about McGuire.

and how you ended up in his apartment talking about AI.

Marcelo Russo (01:36:48.417)
Absolutely, yeah. And I think Jose ended up being the catalyst of breaking things, which is so funny and so interesting when you think about that. I worked with Chris Doe and the Future for so many years that I will...

forever, I'm meeting Chris Doe, he's coming to Florida on Wednesday for a workshop and I'm gonna be there too, so it's like, it's so crazy that I have such good relationship with both of them and how they are exactly like yin and yang to each other, but they were, they are both still so instrumental in how I run my life and my company.

because at the beginning Chris Doe as a mentor he allowed me to be my structured self.

because I used to think that I was not able, like, it's impossible that I could run a company without, you know, being in networking events and talking to people and doing all of those things. And he was like, I'm an introvert, I don't wanna be in front of people and then shaking hands, I'd much rather be at home. It was like, he allowed me to be that part of me. And then...

years later meeting Jose and doing my core and understanding like I went also through a a weight loss process let's call it transformation at this point where Jose allowed me to to feel more comfortable in my new skin and I already had all of the the foundational like operation from what I was with Chris and now Jose is

Marcelo Russo (01:38:28.759)
guiding me in the other part that I wanted to always have, which is that extrovert portion of like talking and organizing my thoughts and networking with people and just connecting that when Jose started to push me into that space and after my core that gave me clarity on who I am and who are the people that I want to have around me.

I go to New York and I realize how much depression I had probably through burnout and things like that from the past year and a half that reconnecting with all of that group that was part of the Webflow community was so energizing and so transformational that it ended up me wanting to...

present a version of myself that was in line with what was in my head. Someone that was now comfortable standing up and talking to people and asking questions. having that organization that I used to have.

by being what we call the evil dorky, the version of a structure being, but at the same time having all of these other components to myself of being spontaneous and letting things happen because I am comfortable that I will be able to navigate that situation. And.

New York had exactly that balance. We had like a plan because it was a conference and I had to be there and do certain events and do certain things. But at the same time, from the Mcquire dinner to a friend of mine inviting me to a Shopify event.

Marcelo Russo (01:40:24.353)
to having friends vouch for me trying to help me get into places that I was not invited to. like that was and I think the crazy part was having friends not only vouch for me but also like sit down and like.

almost yell at the other person is like, why are you not letting this guy in that has done this and this and this and this? It's like, wait, I don't even know my accomplishments in the same way that you are just spouting them angrily at someone else. So that revealed to me how much power exists in these partnerships, that it really ended up like,

opening up an entire, and I think I said this before, it's like it's not even a new chapter. It's like it's a new book in the saga. It's like everything else is past, everything else is still part of me, but now it's not even a new chapter in the same book. It's a different book. All of the rest needed to exist so book number two exists, but this is no longer a past. is not something. My past is almost like I don't recognize it. It's like it's there. History. Done.

Kevin Mooney (01:41:32.18)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:41:38.462)
Yeah, that is fucking wild. Thank you for sharing that. can see myself in many aspects of what you're talking about.

Some of those aspects are like, I've only been in the community for, I don't know, let's just say six months. And in that six month period, I have had five hours of conversation with Jose. That is not something that I got out of the year that I spent in the future pro group, right? I didn't get direct access to anybody necessarily in there.

And so I've had direct access to him. I have met you. have met Mauro. I have met so many other people, Brian and Federico and Felice when I was in New York, saw him there. And just these few connections from joining that community has already made me feel this almost

endless optimism for whatever's going to be next, whatever is next for me. And I don't know what that is. And I know that it goes against a lot of

what people say you should be doing. Meaning, everybody says you need to define certain things. You need to define the people that you want around you. You need to define this, and I know that that's a form of manifesting, and I get why it exists, right? You write it down, you say it out loud, you talk to another person, you have now manifested that thing. I don't know how to...

Kevin Mooney (01:43:34.932)
get that crazy information that's swirling out of my head down. But I do know that when I engage with somebody that I know is the right one, I'm like, that's it. I'm gonna be friends with that person. I'm going to communicate with that person probably forever. And it's not everybody that I talk to, but it happens often and I know it almost immediately.

And I, so I do have a catalog in my head of who those people are and, and, and what I like about them. So I am looking for that. And I look for that even in client relationships. When I'm, when I, it's not, I'm at the point in my career where it's no longer about the money, even though we need money to keep the lights on, it's no longer about that. And I just withdrew a proposal from a perspective client.

because they didn't meet that criteria. And I got very, very close to working with them. Multiple meetings, I brought in another person, introduced them to that client, and some would say you should have gotten paid for that, but that's beside the point. Point is that I got really far down the pipeline, even to the point where my proposal was approved.

And then I backed out and it's. I need a clear way to to clean all of that stuff up and know where I'm going, but I am very much enjoying this connection. Part of it is what I'm getting at, and I do hope to get to that point where. I'm up on the proverbial stage with some of these people that I have looked up to for a very long time because I've learned from them and I know that I can keep up with him in conversations.

You know, I'm not like, how do you start an agency? What is value based pricing? Like I know it all. I got it. I've studied it. I've implemented it. I've tried it. I saw what failed. I saw what worked. You know, I've got all these variations of all these tools nowadays that I use because that's the thing that works for me, but I've tried it all. My point is to this long rant is that I'm so excited.

Kevin Mooney (01:45:58.74)
to be on this connection journey because I feel like it's already opening more doors than I could have ever imagined just in this very short period. And I'm on that cusp of like the right door opening to something happening. And I don't know what that something is, but it's gonna be something. I don't know if it's something with.

podcasting. I don't know if it's something in a working relationship. I don't know if it turns into a business thing. I don't know if it just turns into a life friendship. I don't know what it is, but I'm stoked on it and it's very fun. So your story right there just it really resonated with me and gets me excited clearly.

Marcelo Russo (01:46:43.407)
You're in the right place, man, because you said something, right? It's like right now you don't need to worry about the project that you can reject the big project or you can reject the project because it's not a personal fit. And I have that in the shape of my co-founder. Like right now I'm feeling exactly the same way as you feel in the part that.

I can focus on the connection with people and that's why partnerships keeps coming up. But I have him that he's like, he's now my COO. So he's like, he's the guy that it's like, me the process, like, okay, what's happening in reality, right? It's like all of the flow of the talk is like, it's really, really nice. And it's like, I love that you're talking with these guys, but it's like, what, do we have the co-co?

Kevin Mooney (01:47:25.299)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (01:47:32.244)
Where's the work?

Marcelo Russo (01:47:34.083)
Yeah, yeah, can we still pay the people? Like, good, let's go that way. So, our yin and yang in there, it's what...

Kevin Mooney (01:47:36.905)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (01:47:46.743)
creates that friction and since he's also my best friend from childhood, he's out of all of my company, he's my oldest friend in there, so it's like we know each other without even talking to each other. We know how we feel, how we think, how we process, what we do, what we don't do well, and everything, we don't need to exchange one message, not even a look in a call. It's like, no, that's not even needed.

Kevin Mooney (01:48:10.889)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (01:48:13.237)
So that allows us to dance throughout the day to day in such a different way that when we look at how we are, how I am currently connecting to different people and how I am allowing

the information that Jose has elicited kind of like slowly percolate because I feel like same way about like you. You mentioned that you have all of these things going around and you need to simmer it down. It's like I feel the same way at the same time I don't care.

Kevin Mooney (01:48:52.436)
Yeah, that's a great place to be in.

Marcelo Russo (01:48:55.565)
because I know that he has my back. It's like I can be all fluffy and crazy and doing other things and thinking of ventures and thinking of starting it because that's where my passion is. And like I enjoy seeing the opportunity and it's like, can I find the right partner so that sometimes it's not him, but it's like, can I find the right partner to push that opportunity forward until I can bring him and it's like, see, here's something that we can execute. And.

Kevin Mooney (01:49:13.204)
Mm-hmm.

Marcelo Russo (01:49:23.681)
He's very critical of that too. It's like when I create some little bullshit out of nothing and I'm like sometimes also excited, it's like, we can do this, this, this, and this. It's like, dude, your math is so off.

Kevin Mooney (01:49:39.668)
Hey, you need someone to pull you back down to reality. Come on. What are you talking about? This is crazy.

Marcelo Russo (01:49:45.967)
Yeah. it's like, I'm honestly, have like, he calls it like Marcelo math because it's like, I, uh, I, it's like, Oh, how much is this? Like, Oh, $10,000 and we can profit like seven. It's like, what the fuck are you talking about? Where are you those numbers? Well, because you got this and this and this and that. it's like, those are not remotely closed correctly. When let's go to the excellent seat. And it's like, Oh, okay. No, no, no, no. I see. I see what I'm missing.

Kevin Mooney (01:49:59.634)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:50:07.964)
Yeah, your math is way off.

Kevin Mooney (01:50:14.046)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (01:50:16.409)
Give me half a second, I'm gonna mute for a second, that my dog is kind of globalistic.

Kevin Mooney (01:50:16.798)
Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:50:24.692)
Yeah, you're good. Do your thing. Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (01:52:20.271)
All all of the crises are averted. Especially when you like, I have drunk all of these thermos of water.

Kevin Mooney (01:52:23.358)
Love it. We're kind of.

Kevin Mooney (01:52:31.07)
Yeah, I'm in the same boat. carry one of these things around. I'm always slurping it down. What kind of dog do you have? Nice.

Marcelo Russo (01:52:38.191)
An embarrassing one. It's a little wiener dog mixed with the miniature pincher. So it's like a little shitty thing that barks a lot, eats a lot, poops a lot. Zero safety. Zero useful as a dog. I come from Argentina. The smallest dog reaches my hip. So in we have real dogs, not free samples.

Kevin Mooney (01:52:56.062)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:52:59.593)
Yeah.

Right. So does that come from your wife? She wants a little one? Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (01:53:06.351)
And we live in a condo so even though I have a big apartment it's not that big. He's complaining a lot.

Kevin Mooney (01:53:10.538)
Fair.

Kevin Mooney (01:53:25.463)
my gosh. Yeah, not happy.

Marcelo Russo (01:53:31.279)
What the hell? A lot of A lot of noise.

Kevin Mooney (01:53:32.478)
That's hilarious.

Yeah, my dog's over in the corner sleeping right now, so yeah.

Marcelo Russo (01:53:39.631)
Oh, I wish. I wish. Like, I got tricked into a dog.

because our previous dog, he was such an awesome little dude, like very similar personality to me, and he was allergic to grass, like me, which is a very weird reaction. So whenever, like he needed to go to the bathroom, so we went down on the elevator, the grass was like three steps away from the door, so he went there, he pee and poo, and he just walked back and just like, look at you, and he's like, I'm not going anywhere, let's go back up.

Kevin Mooney (01:53:59.166)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:54:14.538)
Yep. All right. Yeah, for sure. I have a German short hair pointer, which is like a, it's like a bird dog, right? He, he'll run 30 miles. Like, like not away from me, but he would I what? energy level. Yeah. Now that he's, he's

Marcelo Russo (01:54:15.599)
It's like, whoop, go back up. So that was, I loved that. I loved that.

Marcelo Russo (01:54:25.988)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (01:54:37.485)
No,

Kevin Mooney (01:54:43.53)
12 and his energy, he can't run 30 miles anymore. But in his heyday, I used to just take my truck out in the woods and I'd let him out and I would just drive on dirt roads and he would just run, run alongside me, run back and forth, cross the road, up a berm, down in a foxhole, whatever. He was doing it. So those were really good times. We do it from time to time, but he's pooped out after a couple miles now.

Marcelo Russo (01:54:57.804)
Right.

Marcelo Russo (01:55:14.479)
But that's good, it's like a 30 minute, that's a lot of energy to burn.

Kevin Mooney (01:55:17.91)
man, yeah, they're crazy dogs, but he's getting old. He's an old man now, but he looks just like yours. The same type of coloring, the big patches and the spots. love that. That's super good.

Marcelo Russo (01:55:27.27)
yeah, I love-

then we got people here getting mad at us. It's like, why are you putting your dog? live in Florida. it's like, why your dog has like a little jacket or a coat on him? It's like, what are you talking about? Like, that's him. It's like, my gosh, designer dog. I'm not part of the society that takes the dog, you know.

Kevin Mooney (01:55:42.238)
Yeah.

designer dog.

Marcelo Russo (01:55:53.423)
on a little cart or something. It's like, I come from Argentina where dogs are more dogs than anything else. So it's like, they are outside. don't, like, I think I showered my, I had a Siberian Husky. I think I showered him, shower, showered him in 13 years, probably five times.

Kevin Mooney (01:55:56.051)
Yes.

Kevin Mooney (01:56:01.438)
Right?

Kevin Mooney (01:56:14.718)
Yeah, right.

Marcelo Russo (01:56:16.951)
He was out on the rain, out on the mud. We can probably consider that he showered a couple more times when he fell into the swimming pool because he hated the water and he couldn't break enough because something was wet and he boomed into the water. But he slipped outside. He hated being inside. I see here people sometimes like, I'm not...

Kevin Mooney (01:56:27.571)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (01:56:37.374)
Yeah, mean, dogs being dogs, man, that's what it's all about.

Marcelo Russo (01:56:45.315)
particularly passing a lot of judgment in this, it's like seeing them with the, like a little, like if they were babies, like hanging here with a pouch, in a pouch in their chest or in the little baby cart. And I was like, I don't know if the dog is really happy there. They're like, if the dog cannot be a dog, I don't think they are really, really happy.

Kevin Mooney (01:56:56.809)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (01:57:02.794)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:57:08.616)
No, it's just weird people doing weird things. That's really what it's all about.

Marcelo Russo (01:57:13.997)
Yeah, but circling back to the fun thing that we were talking about, like the community and the networking and New York as a connection point, I think that one of the elements that were so different too was how...

Like I've been to New York a couple of times. Like I think about like six or seven times because my mother-in-law lives there. So we have traveled regularly, but I never really liked it. I'm from Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires is another metropolitan city. Like everybody talks about New York being the city that never sleeps. Argentina is exactly the same. have never like our parties start at 2 a.m. in the morning. So everything before that is pregame. So.

Kevin Mooney (01:57:56.874)
I mean,

Kevin Mooney (01:58:01.226)
You

Marcelo Russo (01:58:05.487)
For me, it was normal finishing at seven, then with the same crew that you were at the club, then you go have some breakfast and maybe, and now apparently kids are going even further and doing an after party from eight to 12, like something like that with more DJs and parties. It was like, I don't know, I'm sleeping. That's okay, fine. You go do you. But.

Kevin Mooney (01:58:23.497)
Whoa.

Kevin Mooney (01:58:27.89)
Yeah, for sure.

Marcelo Russo (01:58:33.067)
then New York was always like nothing. But this time with the spontaneity of things that happened was so transformational that from spending time with a couple of friends that I met also from the Webflow community.

that they graciously let me stay with them inside the city rather than in Queens where my mother-in-law lives. I got to spend time with them and they're like, I would say a solid 10 years younger than me or eight years younger than me. So a different generation per se. And I found that so refreshing because I forget my age. I forget what...

Kevin Mooney (01:58:59.338)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (01:59:08.66)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (01:59:21.455)
I got, so not only I forget, but I also am gonna say it in this way. I got to forget, I got the opportunity to forget how old I am with them and also perceiving how they see me as someone older, someone that it's guiding and mentoring and.

in a way, when I say all of this kind of conversation like we are having, I'm gonna say bullshit because we talk so many things. It's like, they were paying attention. And it's like, with my friends, they pay but they don't pay attention. We know each other and we are sharing same things. And we have a different upbringing. So, on that end was so refreshing to start. And then,

Kevin Mooney (01:59:54.408)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:00:11.585)
in the sequence of the events that happened in New York where not only I got to spend time with these guys, but at the same time, the first day, they were invited to that portion of the event that I wasn't invited, and I got to experience people vouching for me, trying to get me there, then not being able to go there.

Kevin Mooney (02:00:32.532)
Wow.

Marcelo Russo (02:00:36.437)
sitting alone in New York and he's like, okay, I have a lot of time on my hands. What am I gonna do? I open up Instagram and I see that one of my friends from Florida was there. And he was like, do you wanna come? I told him, he's like, hey, do you wanna meet? He was like, no, I'm here at an event for Shopify. And he's like, do you wanna come? I need to do some shoots inside the Shopify HQ and they're having an event. I can bring you as part of my crew.

Of course. So I walked the city, something that previously when I was not fit enough to do so, that was impossible for me. So I got to walk around New York, get to a Shopify HQ, be a nobody there, because nobody knows my agency, don't do particularly Shopify. And I was like, how do I make a mark here? How do I make people remember me? I'm gonna be the dude that asks the weird ass difficult questions.

Kevin Mooney (02:01:06.877)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:01:23.626)
...

Marcelo Russo (02:01:33.899)
So throughout the whole day of conference there, I was like the guy that asked the random crazy questions to the panelists. And they were so engaging with me, so welcoming to.

I got to reconnect with my friend that I haven't spoken in a year and a half. Then when he left, I connected with another friend. saw her, it's like, you're with your cousin. I thought you were in Mexico. Are you in the city? And she invited me there. She ended up working for the NFL jewelry team in Rockefeller Center. And I got to spend the day inside the Rockefeller Center.

Kevin Mooney (02:02:09.834)
Wow.

Marcelo Russo (02:02:15.055)
I one of my clients. told me, I told her I have a cut off time because I need to meet a client. And it's like, why didn't you bring him here? It's like, here to your office in the Rockefeller Center? Are you sure? It's like, yeah, of course. I'll go sit outside. Okay. And I got to receive one of my customers in the Rockefeller Center, like little Omi. And she then real, like when I'm...

Kevin Mooney (02:02:27.87)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (02:02:35.018)
That's amazing.

Marcelo Russo (02:02:44.621)
the human part of that was like she was spending the last day with her cousin with me and her cousin. So it was like, I don't know, I wouldn't do that to my cousin, but she was so happy and the cousin was so happy. So that really warmed my heart to see that that was the relationship that I was neglecting, but having with her. then during the Webflow conference, I...

Kevin Mooney (02:03:03.508)
Mm-hmm.

Marcelo Russo (02:03:11.191)
I brought a client for the first time to a conference. I never done that in the past. That was Jose's idea originally. He's like, why don't we do an after office? And it's like, dude, there's an after office happening here in New York. Why don't I bring the customer in? And he's like, fantastic idea. Do that. And I was like nervous. I never done that in the past, entertaining a customer in an event where I am doing networking and I have to learn.

Kevin Mooney (02:03:26.76)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:03:38.319)
And I realized that my values from friends of having good guys, good people, that I want to have a drink with them and spend time with them were all true. They were all still true. My customer was fantastic. She was super happy to be there and allowed me a social butterfly totally. So I was in my space. I like, have you met her? Have you met her? It's like, that's all I have to do to do a good networking day. And she was...

Kevin Mooney (02:03:48.265)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:04:08.053)
singing our praises and I was introducing her to everyone that was useful. So I didn't feel like it was a customer and I didn't feel like I needed to entertain her for two days straight. Like we were just sharing the time in the workflow conference. Yeah. And then like...

Kevin Mooney (02:04:20.658)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:04:25.076)
flowing.

Marcelo Russo (02:04:29.869)
They organized it really beautifully. So we also had like a great after parties set up like in the World Trade Center, one World Trade Center in the 88th floor. We had an after party inside the CloudFlare offices. And I was like, what?

Again, what is going on is like I'm little Marcelo from Argentina with a small agency and I am here in the top of the rock of the 88th floor overlooking New York at night with peers or people that consider me a peer talking about business and it was like crazy amazing. And then my Guyer's dinner.

Kevin Mooney (02:05:12.372)
That's so awesome.

Marcelo Russo (02:05:16.655)
Also, someone that I truly admire invited me to his house and spending the entire evening chatting about AI and overlooking Manhattan and Brooklyn. was a mix between humbling, amazing, unbelievable to share that time with, again, people that I admire that I feel like I'm like...

lifetimes away from who they are and they are like the same ones that were screaming all of my achievements so I can get into the event. it was like, integration, yeah, not only surreal but also like the integration of all of those two concepts.

Kevin Mooney (02:05:47.665)
Sure.

Kevin Mooney (02:05:58.676)
Very surreal.

Marcelo Russo (02:06:06.441)
is what made me realize how important is networking and when they say that your network is your net worth kind of thing, it's so true. But I feel it more in service off. It's like I got now a bug that I wanna.

Kevin Mooney (02:06:15.178)
Mm-hmm.

Marcelo Russo (02:06:26.799)
I want to really understand your problem so I can find someone else to fix it. It is me, sure, but I even feel weird when it's me. It's like, no, no, no, but he's better, no? It's like, can you do it? It's like, but he's better. I can still be around to worry, but it's like, he's the better, no, but I want to do it with you.

Kevin Mooney (02:06:31.775)
Sure.

Kevin Mooney (02:06:37.161)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:06:43.156)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:06:49.384)
You can't get rid of them at that point.

Marcelo Russo (02:06:52.289)
And it's weird in the best way. Because through that, also recently got to talk with this agency that hosted me in Manhattan and reconnected with a friend in Mexico and had a conversation with another friend in the UK. And they're all struggling with similar things that friends could be of help.

Kevin Mooney (02:06:56.756)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:07:20.951)
And it's like, wait a minute, if you have the problem, then I can help you. And you have the problem, then I can help you. you have this. Is there a business here? Is there something that I can do to not only help them, but also help friends so I can find more people like you and I can help more like you? So I think that that's the ultimate value that Jose provided me, is the integration capacity of.

Kevin Mooney (02:07:34.089)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:07:50.539)
of my personalities in plural, right? It's like, yeah, like the seven of them that I usually have. Like, my gamer, my music, my business, my crazy, and my Argentinian side. It's like, that's another funny thing that one of the people in New York.

Kevin Mooney (02:07:53.576)
Yeah, there's multiple personalities.

Hahaha.

Marcelo Russo (02:08:17.059)
told me when I saw them back in Orlando here, he's like, your friends are so awesome. And ironically, I realized how right they were telling me that when they introduced me to their friends and they were not as awesome as my friends. It's like, they were awesome, but because we already had the relationship, but it's like.

Kevin Mooney (02:08:34.708)
Hahaha

Marcelo Russo (02:08:42.659)
their friends were not, I don't know, as welcoming, as talking and engaging and whatever. it's like, I don't know, everyone, whenever we were talking in New York with different people and I was doing the introductions, all of them, like our goal was to make them like part of the group. Let's integrate, like let's talk, not talk to each other with the people that we already know. So apparently that's.

Kevin Mooney (02:09:07.636)
Sure.

Marcelo Russo (02:09:11.085)
a little bit more uncommon than I was thinking.

Kevin Mooney (02:09:14.75)
I think it is. I think it's very uncommon. I mean, I can speak from my own experiences and for most of my life I was pretty pessimistic and I always knew that wasn't super great, but that was because the people around me were pessimistic. And I think of my group of friends, let's say in my 20s, I was the most outgoing, willing to talk to anybody. And I just noticed that

a certain point in my life where there was people that I connected with and people that I didn't connect with. And then in my 30s, I really dove into that and try to figure out what that was. That led me to the Myers-Briggs personality type stuff where I started to say, okay, there's a trend here. All of the people that I really, really truly connect with and get along with, they all live in this small

Marcelo Russo (02:10:11.919)
I see.

Kevin Mooney (02:10:13.306)
This small little group of people that, that is a mix of a couple of different personality types. And I started to lean into that. And then when I leaned into that and I leaned too hard into that, it, it siloed me down into one group of people. And I, every person that I met, I was like, you're not in my group. And I was a little bit pessimistic again, like not that I didn't want to talk to you. It was more like.

I'm, I know that I'm going to struggle connecting with you just because I am the way that I am. And I don't know that you're going to see the thing that I see in my head. And maybe I have a hard time communicating that thing that I see in my head and that's on me, but I already know this relationship isn't going to work. So I'm going to opt out of it. And since joining the community and starting.

to practice connecting with people more, I have kind of thrown that away a little bit. Like let's rediscover what that looks like and what that means. If I were being honest, I do think though that the people that I connect with the best still live in that little sliver of personality types. I don't think I can get away from it, but it doesn't mean I have to forget the other ones. Right.

Marcelo Russo (02:11:21.465)
Yeah, I think.

Marcelo Russo (02:11:31.991)
No, I don't think you should. I don't think you should. you know, I was talking, there's a couple of guys in the Webflow community that... It's a mix between I admire and I cannot connect because they're either always business on or like not... I want to know... If you're great at business...

I don't give a rat's ass about what you do in your business because I already know you're great. I admire you. why I want to know, tell me the rest of you. It's like, I could be great at, let me rephrase what I was gonna say. I could be better at business if I would be business 23 hours of the day. I don't want to be that person. Some of these people portray themselves as people that are 23 hours of business.

Kevin Mooney (02:12:01.957)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (02:12:12.602)
Hahaha

Marcelo Russo (02:12:28.503)
If they are, great. If you can hold a life like that, I admire you for that. But at the same time, I want to know exactly the opposite. Even if you are not 23 hours of business, what I care is what do you do? What do you do when you are not business? How do you enjoy life and what do you find enjoyable when you have that super aggressive business mindset that can...

Kevin Mooney (02:12:44.746)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Marcelo Russo (02:12:58.339)
topple and achieve so much with the same amount of time that I have. want to know if you, like, am I, maybe you are spending, you know, forcing yourself 20 minutes a day to read a book the same way that right now I force myself to train two hours a day. So, like, let me know what helps you, what makes you tick. And sometimes all these people, don't, either they have a wall, they have a shield, I don't get.

Kevin Mooney (02:13:03.369)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:13:21.492)
Mm-hmm.

Marcelo Russo (02:13:27.439)
to connect with them, but I keep on probing. I take it upon myself to say, if you don't like me because I probe too much, you're not gonna like me either way. And it's like, if you don't like me probing, you don't like me already, so you're talking to me because you're the super networking portion of, I need to network because this is business.

Kevin Mooney (02:13:39.333)
100%.

Kevin Mooney (02:13:51.914)
Yeah, yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:13:53.357)
which is still totally fine. I don't give a rat's ass. I still want to get out of Google to find a way to learn something out of what you're doing.

Luckily, I keep getting my way of wiggling into more personal conversations and finding from people that are comfortable sharing their financial numbers to people that are capable that I respect them enough so that when they give me an advice on my business, it's useful, but I care more about your kids and if you're going to trick or treat.

If you are more quirky and funny than, you know, cosplayer rather than like funny costume. I don't know. It's like I want to know how you see life. So I can, I don't know, sometimes model a little bit. My behavior is like, oh, maybe I'm sometimes I doubt myself on my personality of being too outgoing or too transparent or too...

Kevin Mooney (02:14:45.428)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:14:59.146)
Sure.

Marcelo Russo (02:15:01.167)
loud mouth or potty mouth or whatever and then it's like, fuck it, it's just me. I know I'm gonna try not to say fuck 25 times a minute inside a business call, but I feel more comfortable when my client is like, fuck this shit. It's like, yeah, fantastic, let me fuck around with you too and not be so concerned.

Kevin Mooney (02:15:07.177)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:15:14.474)
I'm gonna say fuck sometime.

Kevin Mooney (02:15:25.438)
Right.

Marcelo Russo (02:15:28.399)
from being politically correct to something. like, I don't take things personally. We can say, we always joke, my nickname is Negro. It's like the N word in Spanish. And in Spanish, we use a lot the emotion behind the word rather than the actual word being said. So I love having conversations that would be politically incorrect because I can.

Kevin Mooney (02:15:32.67)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:15:37.288)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:15:57.921)
feel if you're trying to be an asshole or if you're just trying to share part of you that you're not always being able to share.

Kevin Mooney (02:16:03.882)
Sure. Or if you're peacocking and you're just doing it to present a certain way, right? And that's one of the things that, you know, we haven't really gotten into it today and that's okay. I'm trying to figure out how to do these podcasts better and better every single time. But the thing that you just said is what motivates me to do this podcast.

Marcelo Russo (02:16:08.99)
my god.

Kevin Mooney (02:16:29.608)
And I haven't figured out exactly how to kind of jump right into the real shit with people when they get on. I mean, oftentimes it's the first, second, third time I'm talking to somebody. So I am after some of that historical data, the background. Hey, where do you come from? What drives you? How did you set up your business? How did you develop your leadership team? Those are all things that we talked about, stuff from a book that I read. That is all great. But at the end of the day,

I want to debate a little bit. want to get into the shit. I want to get to a point where we are beating a subject to death and we find this little sliver of nuance that means something to the entire big picture. And that's what that's where I want to take this podcast. Ultimately, I'm getting my reps in right now. I'm doing it. I'm meeting new people. I'm talking. I'm figuring out what works in a conversation. What doesn't work.

And I can tell you in the, what episode is this? This is going to be episode 10. think in the, yeah, in the 10 episodes that I've done, I can tell you that when I have somebody on and they, they have an agenda in their brain that they want to say, they want to get some things out.

Marcelo Russo (02:17:35.895)
Yes, I love wrong numbers.

Kevin Mooney (02:17:56.372)
Those are the conversations. No, let me back up. It's not that they wanna get something out. It's when they wanna get out what they wanna get out that they've already written down on paper, whether it is who they are, what they do, how they operate, whatever those are. When they just regurgitate the thing in their head of who they are and what they do, those are the ones that I don't connect with the most. The ones that are willing to...

dive into a story and be vulnerable and pull their pants down in front of everybody and be like, I don't know, I'm a big dumb idiot, but this is the thing that I did and it worked out or it worked. was terrible. Whatever that situation is, that's the moment that I'm after. And what I try to do to facilitate that is tell my most vulnerable moments, my breakdown moments, you know, my personal moments, for instance,

when I had that accident with my daughter. I tell that story often because I want people to understand that that's the level of connection I'm looking for. And if you just want to read your bio, I'm probably not for you. It doesn't mean you're a bad person or you suck at what you do. It just means I'm probably not for you. And so I've been really enjoying those conversations in the core circle.

And, I want to figure out a way how we can all share more of those. And it just so happens that in this podcast, have unlimited time. You can say whatever you want to say and talk for however long you want to talk. And I'm not going to stop you. I'm going to try to stay engaged and ask more about it. and if I say something stupid, I want you to challenge me. Like Jose's been great at that. He's challenged me multiple times and his, his, his episodes.

Marcelo Russo (02:19:52.259)
I love it.

Kevin Mooney (02:19:54.516)
I'll say something and he'll be like, why do you think that? That's not fair. You don't get to just say that and walk away. Like, what is it? Tell me more. And I love those conversations. I need them in my...

Marcelo Russo (02:20:00.429)
Yes.

Marcelo Russo (02:20:09.655)
interesting. I'm going to tell you something that one dude did with me on a podcast that could be interesting. And it involves alcohol. And that's why. Like he has a little cart behind him with whiskey, wine and something else. he's like, in the prep, he says, it's like, what do want to drink? It's like, if...

Kevin Mooney (02:20:17.322)
All right.

Marcelo Russo (02:20:34.763)
In his case, probably through the way that he does it, it's like you have to drink something. We need to get the social lubricant so we start less feeling it like we are talking us in a podcast, rather than we are just having a drink and a coffee. I think that...

Kevin Mooney (02:20:41.534)
Yes.

Kevin Mooney (02:20:55.433)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:20:57.771)
that really works because by the second cup of wine or the second glass of whiskey, you're already talking bullshit. I think that the rather part of the engagement...

Marcelo Russo (02:21:16.079)
I, let me say it this way. I saw you like looking down, you probably have some notes and you're making things up. It's like, I think that you should not do that. Fuck that shit.

Kevin Mooney (02:21:26.73)
Yeah, it's fair. You had said something, I'll tell you what I wrote down. And I think this is one of the principles of Nike, you know, when that document of their 10 principles was released. But I wrote down, move fast, break shit. And I think you had said something about breaking, I don't remember where it was in the conversation, but it-

Marcelo Russo (02:21:44.529)
yeah, love it.

Kevin Mooney (02:21:55.934)
That quote just popped up in my head and I was like, I have to write that down. What I don't do and what I'm not good at is taking notes in a situation like a client situation. I don't take the notes. I can't, I'm going to remember the themes that stick out from the conversation, the general themes, and I can lean into that. I can never write down specifics. So I have a note taker for me doing that and

client situations. I don't know why I wrote that down and I agree with you that I don't think you should write shit down, but in that moment I felt compelled to write it.

Marcelo Russo (02:22:35.599)
Oh no, that part for sure. What I mean is when I was in Orlando with my client, I visited two people. My client that is literally a really good friend, closer, I would call it one of my best friends here in the US. And then one of the guys that I met again in New York during the trip.

The guy that I met during the trip, he was met, reconnected during the trip. He's a little bit more American, let's call it, because my friend is from a Latino family. And the guy said, literally, they opened the conversation, he's like, hopefully this time we get to finish a conversation. I was like, no!

Kevin Mooney (02:23:25.982)
Probably not, no.

Marcelo Russo (02:23:27.375)
This isn't gonna happen. I'm gonna just start talking bullshit about seven things. We're gonna, you're gonna try to answer to some of them. I'm gonna lose track of what the fuck I'm saying. And then we're gonna, we're gonna dive into something else or there's gonna be a pigeon on the window and I'm gonna say, oh, pigeon. And then we're gonna do it again. It's like, if you're lucky, we're gonna finish one thought, like complete, maybe.

Kevin Mooney (02:23:31.667)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:23:37.469)
Yes.

Kevin Mooney (02:23:43.498)
You

Kevin Mooney (02:23:49.95)
Maybe one. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I think, I think in like spirals and they spiral outwards. So they get further and further and further away from the center point as we go. So we could talk for five hours and it's going to end up nowhere near, but somehow it's probably connected to it. Somehow there's just a little tiny nuance that keeps it connected to the original part of the conversation.

Marcelo Russo (02:23:57.55)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:24:01.294)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:24:16.661)
Yeah, I think for me, it's my ADD probably, or one of those things. Of course, I'm self-diagnosing because I love it. I love to put a label on me. it's like, out of all of that, there are always going to be certain things that I remember from our talk, from how you made me feel or something. So that's why it's like...

I don't put the energy on sticking to a subject. One of the questions we talked before, right, was if I have done public speaking. I like, I'm still very bad at it. I try to prepare a lot, but there's always a curve ball in between, whether it's lack of sleep or over preparation or some other curve ball, where I up needing to do some ad lib again. And I'm...

Kevin Mooney (02:24:49.47)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:25:04.127)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:25:06.327)
I'm more okay with the ad lib, although it makes me feel sad that I cannot convey as good the idea when I do that.

Kevin Mooney (02:25:17.886)
Yeah, it's so funny. I attribute this to my personality type, but I don't necessarily, I'm just going to say this is a hundred percent me. My entire life has been ad lib. It has been just wing it. I mean, when I went through college, I didn't study for a test. I just showed up and was like, if I can't make it through the test,

then so be it. And luckily somehow I either studied close enough or remembered enough to somehow pass college. But I was the same way in high school. so I say most of my life being in a structured environment was a detriment to me because that's not how I operate. So when it comes to a podcast, when it comes to a talk,

when it comes to a presentation for a client, anything I prepare about seven and a half percent for that thing. And I just wing it every time. And every time that I try to prepare and I put talking points down and I have sticky notes or speaker notes or whatever the hell the thing is, it just turns into this.

Marcelo Russo (02:26:27.043)
That's the end of it.

Kevin Mooney (02:26:41.204)
this messy conversation where the point that I was trying to get across didn't come across. And I thought I had outlined it in a way to where I could actually do that. And if I had just started talking, it would have been way more clear and way more efficient and way more authentic and way more me and way more human. So I just don't do it anymore. It's just, it's the story of my life, man. It's crazy. And that's the struggle that I'm in right now.

with where I am in my life and in my career, right? I'm trying to figure out where I want to take things and it's forcing me to put things in a box and in a container. And that just doesn't work for me. And even though I want to follow the instructions, even though I want to go through the process, I know it's not necessarily for me. I have to live it. I have to embody it. I have to figure it out. However my brain figures it out. And that's where I'm

doing these podcasts and I'm trying to figure out where I want to take it and how I want to do it. I've thought about, you know, how do the big guys do it? How does Joe Rogan do it? How does Stephen Bartlett do it? And I know that if I had an in-person studio set up and people were willing to travel to see little old me,

That I would take them out to dinner. We'd have a nice conversation. We'd have some drinks. We would do all that prep work the day before. So when it came time to sit down, we're just friends bullshitting right? Because that's where the gold is. And we've gotten into a nice flow here on this back half of the conversation where it's like less interview. He less. Hey, how did you do this? Even though that's still great. Data points for my brain. It's like, this this is what Marseille does.

Right? This is how he does it. And I appreciate how you've built your leadership team based on values that you just had. You didn't write him on paper. You just did it.

Marcelo Russo (02:28:43.215)
I literally found out that I had them written down on paper last week. I'm not kidding. It's like I thought they were nowhere to be found and someone is like, they're in your website. really? Look at that.

Kevin Mooney (02:28:48.926)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (02:28:53.864)
Yeah. And that's, and that is, that's more in line with how I like to operate is like, yeah, they are there. That's why I have notes all over my desk and I have note notebooks of notes, but they don't ever go anywhere or do anything. So it's part struggle because I have ideas up the wazoo, but they just live either up here or in a book somewhere and they never get realized. but I'm

Marcelo Russo (02:29:22.671)
Well, look, I think that there's, you may have a fundamental issue there that I've been talking about. I talked about it with my co-founder. It stems from the disappearance of hobbies.

Kevin Mooney (02:29:23.624)
I'm incrementally moving in that direction.

Kevin Mooney (02:29:33.962)
Thanks.

Kevin Mooney (02:29:50.058)
That's an interesting thought.

Marcelo Russo (02:29:50.477)
Yeah, I'm not saying that this podcasting is a hobby, but I am saying that a hobby is, at least for me, it's an activity that gives you pleasure. And you just want to get better because pleasure. That's it. I'm not going to be a professional gamer, but I fucking hate when I lose playing Dark Souls in my PlayStation. I have a friend that has broken like

Kevin Mooney (02:30:14.858)
for sure.

Marcelo Russo (02:30:18.585)
five joysticks whenever he dies and he just loses his shit and starts getting shit. But there's no upside really from beating a video game or getting good at a video game. So that's a hobby.

Kevin Mooney (02:30:23.39)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:30:30.537)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:30:39.019)
We used to not monetize or think about how we can make something out of a hobby. But now I found myself talking to friends and talking about what they like to do, and even with my wife sometimes, and realizing that I am trying to turn their hobbies into a business. And this is a twofold, because on one end, I should ask more.

if they want to turn their hobby into a business. But on the other hand, I should support them more on the fact that a hobby can just be a fucking hobby. You just want to get good at it and want to get better because you just enjoy it and period. What's going to happen with it? Nothing. I'm just going to be a great podcaster, for example. Why? Why there has to be a fucking why? Just because I

Kevin Mooney (02:31:20.041)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (02:31:36.691)
Right.

Marcelo Russo (02:31:37.571)
to? It's like it's not enough? Do I need to make money out of it?

Oftentimes, when I've seen the hobby become just a hobby, and that may be the surrendering from from again, Jose's way of helping me see things for my my personality. Then that shit shows up. And you need to be prepared to make the active choice of turning your hobby into something that is not.

Kevin Mooney (02:32:04.511)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:32:15.402)
Right.

Marcelo Russo (02:32:15.695)
Once you do that, there's no coming back. I mean, there is coming back, right? But it doesn't come out free, right? It's like you begin to, if you drop your hobby and you no longer play soccer or you no longer play tennis or whatever, it's like, you didn't fail. You just got bored or you chose something else. But if you have a sponsor or you like you play a tournament and it's like, no, you lost or you quit.

Kevin Mooney (02:32:43.412)
Sure. Yeah, yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:32:45.153)
and you just don't quit your hobbies, you just do something else. I never heard someone saying I quit my hobby of something. No, I just stopped doing it. I'm just gonna keep on doing it. So I feel like the wording and the connotations of the hobbies and turning them into business is what we're missing. And I love the conversation that we had. Does it need to be a business?

Kevin Mooney (02:32:54.462)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:33:13.418)
Right? Well, let me ask you this because I 100 % agree with you.

Kevin Mooney (02:33:26.154)
I'm trying to decide if I want to tell the story first or ask the question first. Yeah, I think I'll just ask the question.

Marcelo Russo (02:33:30.415)
I'm good with both, just letting you know.

Kevin Mooney (02:33:40.202)
Can it be both? Because I truly believe that it can be both a hobby and a business if it's done correctly and you stick to the reasons why you started in the first place.

Marcelo Russo (02:34:09.097)
someone that has no idea what he's talking about about this. That's my biggest disclaimer. I would say no. I don't think you can have both. But I may not know enough people that are able to do so. I have a hypothesis on how to do it. But I don't know if you can have both. Because...

Ironically, I have a friend in Argentina that his name is Marcelo Russo. That's like me, exactly. No letter change, no word change. Even his second name is exactly like mine. Like it starts with the same letter, so I cannot even abbreviate and make a difference. The main thing, the way that you recognize us is that he's bald and white, and I am well. But.

Kevin Mooney (02:34:56.276)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:35:00.751)
He was a gamer, he streamed video games, he was playing with it, he really enjoyed it, he got a following of people that enjoyed watching him play, and then he got a sponsor. He loved getting the sponsor because he was like making some money, but then he started to get, I don't know if the term is angry, but...

concerned that he was not as good as other people. So I told him, he's like, dude, first, he fucking kicks ass. Watching him play Battlefield in the PlayStation is like watching a movie because he's all technical and he's like, oh, 10-4, we're going north, north-northwest and attacking and backing up the position. like.

Kevin Mooney (02:35:48.585)
Right.

Marcelo Russo (02:35:57.921)
Okay, shit. I just put a dude in the crosshair and hit R1 and that's it. And that's fun for me. But he started getting concerned with that. Then flash forward a couple more years, his stream got big, he got a lot more following and the sponsorship turned into...

Kevin Mooney (02:35:59.07)
just play and shoot people.

Kevin Mooney (02:36:07.284)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:36:23.599)
It's still a sponsorship, when they send you some review of the thermos and it's like...

Now he has to produce some videos about it and then he has to, you know, post the videos and track his metrics and track the performance and share it back to the thing. He's still getting some, the term would be ludos, right? Like the happiness of still playing and still doing that of what he loves, but he feels the pressure and the stress of needing to produce the video and a good quality video and the...

happier he gets because he gets more sponsors that give him stuff that he likes to have and review the more pressure he feels to produce a high quality video and a high quality content for them which in turns turns into less happiness about using or having the product and his hobby turned into a job his hobby turned into like

Kevin Mooney (02:37:17.162)
Mm-hmm.

Marcelo Russo (02:37:26.967)
trying to choose which brand to work with and choose how much money he charges them and how he structures the partnership. And he's like, I don't know shit about this. And this is not easy for me. And then like, dude, circle back. Try to go back to just enjoying the content, just enjoying what you do.

But it's really hard because then after that you build the life around it. If you're reviewing the park of Orlando and going to Disney, you probably already are used to the lifestyle that that gives you. And rolling back to the way it was before, it's a little bit more difficult. So to not end it in that down note, what I've been telling him to think about is,

Kevin Mooney (02:37:56.212)
Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:38:06.228)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:38:19.575)
Maybe you need a partner. You need someone that takes the business out of your hobby. It's like you're still a hobby and you're still going to have that friction, but...

Kevin Mooney (02:38:28.638)
Mm-hmm.

and smart.

Marcelo Russo (02:38:35.043)
It's hard to relinquish in his case sometimes is like you got a the money that you're making you see that right now You're stressed up to this point Because you're making five thousand dollars a month and now if you bring someone else you're so that is going to be the same amount of work but for this amount of money because you need a piece of it, but

Kevin Mooney (02:38:52.618)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:38:56.003)
That's where I circle back, which I don't know if there's a positive answer to keeping a hobby a hobby and making money. Because for me, the moment that you realize that you're making money instead of someone is giving you money is where it changes, right? It's like someone is playing to play versus someone is playing me to produce.

Kevin Mooney (02:39:14.6)
It does.

Kevin Mooney (02:39:19.082)
100%. I mean, that thing happened at the agency, right? It's all fun and games until that paperwork is signed and then it's fucking work, right? And that creativity that you have maybe in the sales meetings, I did it, my partner hated it, but I would always be like, ideas guy, we could do this, we could do that. Like, think about all these cool things we can do. Here's the applications, whatever. All that goes away, you're like,

Marcelo Russo (02:39:29.316)
Yes.

Kevin Mooney (02:39:48.552)
No, no, no, how do we efficiently get the brand identity done so that we can move on to the launch campaign? And then we just need it done. It's not about the creative at that point. It needs to be done and needs to be done right. But it doesn't need to be super creative because we don't have any time because the budget was too small, whatever the thing is. So I totally understand what you're talking about. Let me say it like this. I hope that

Marcelo Russo (02:40:06.689)
Yeah, present.

Kevin Mooney (02:40:17.14)
Because this is a hobby for me. I'm not getting paid. And I hope that I can do this for a very long time because I fucking love it. And I want an in-person studio so that I can bring people in and I can do the thing that I like to do, which is go out and have food and some drinks and get to know people and talk with them and then bring them on the show and put it out there.

So what I'm saying is that I hope I can make this a hobby and make money at it. That is the entire goal of me doing this. Because what I've realized in these 10 episodes is that I can do this all day long. I love it so much. And my wife has just said, what's that?

Marcelo Russo (02:41:04.399)
Have you talked to the guys with the RadCut guys about this?

Kevin Mooney (02:41:11.378)
About the podcast. Not. I think I mentioned it and I.

They asked the name of it. You know, here's the, here's a weird thing about me and I'll just, I'll come right back to you in a second. I'm very shy when it comes to asking for things. And Jose just told me to stop being a certain thing. Uh, yeah, I wish he had just called me a bitch. Um, he said, stop being that and just, just ask.

Marcelo Russo (02:41:35.855)
Yip.

Marcelo Russo (02:41:40.587)
Yeah

Kevin Mooney (02:41:47.868)
And I'm just notoriously bad at it because maybe it's my upbringing, maybe it's my ego that has always been like, I can do it. I can do this on my own. I don't need help from anybody. I'll figure it out. That's been my whole life. I grew up in a household that didn't align with the way that I think. They were one way, I was another way. And so I learned at a very young age to just go figure it out, do it myself. And so where I'm...

taking that as like, when I met with the Rad Cat guys, I didn't ask them for anything. And I feel like the right way to do it is to get to know somebody and then maybe ask later for something. And I...

I don't know if that's right or wrong. I don't think it is right or wrong to be fair. It is just my way. So I didn't say, Hey, would you guys be on my show? Or do know anyone that would be on the show or were you promoted or anything like that? It was just, just, yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:42:51.961)
Well, I exactly the opposite. So this is what I was thinking. They have a beautiful space, their office. And I remember like from when we were working together, they remodel and move the office like, I don't know, three times a year. They just get bored. Yeah, you see? And as a setup, think that they, and them being creatives and then...

Kevin Mooney (02:43:05.812)
Yeah, they were doing it again when I was there.

Marcelo Russo (02:43:16.887)
very much into the audio visual too. They may have a corner or something that you can use as a little studio. You just feature their name, know, it's like live from the RadCat studios in Oregon that you guys, if you're close by, that's some marketing for them. They don't need to be in the podcast. They just need to allow you to sit down there with people and then boom, there you have a studio. Then you have a partner in co-marketing. You can bring people there.

Kevin Mooney (02:43:28.202)
Sure. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:43:39.53)
Sure.

Kevin Mooney (02:43:44.126)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:43:46.753)
And I think that overall it could be beneficial for both of you. You try the light setup. Those guys are cool. I've smoked with them. I drink with them. I bullshit with them. All of that. So it could become a very organic thing to just develop and see where it goes without expectation.

Kevin Mooney (02:43:52.33)
For sure.

Kevin Mooney (02:44:01.023)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:44:08.765)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:44:13.103)
it could give you the feel of what you think that you can do when you have a studio instead of investing at the beginning and seeing if, and then realizing whether if it works or it doesn't, then you just try it out there with a partner.

Kevin Mooney (02:44:19.668)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:44:25.994)
To be fair to the original point that we talked about when you have a hobby and you love that hobby and you want to be fucking better at it. You don't really think about it in terms of an investment in a business, right? You're doing it because you love it and you'll spend the money on it. For instance. Well, yeah, I'm also too poor to do that.

Marcelo Russo (02:44:47.767)
I'm maybe too poor to do that. My focus have always been like bootstrap without money.

Kevin Mooney (02:44:54.506)
Yes. I mean, to be fair, I'm still very much in the poor zone and I don't have the money to invest. But an example is when I, I don't know when I learned somewhere in my late 20s, I was like, I want to learn how to fly fish. I live up here in Oregon. We have fly fishing rivers. We got all this stuff around here that I can go play with, but I don't know how to do it. Well, what did I do? I just went out and I bought the $200 set.

And then after I learned that and I caught some fish and I wanted better stuff, I bought the $500 set and then I bought the thousand dollars set. And then I started buying all the materials to tie my flies and I just kept going and going and going and getting deeper and deeper into it. And

Marcelo Russo (02:45:36.995)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:45:42.034)
I never turned that into a business. I didn't want to turn that into a business. But I also knew that that hobby was something that I didn't want to do forever. I wanted to conquer that goal. I wanted to conquer that mountain. I wanted a climate staying on the top, put my flag in and say, I'm done with it. And that's what I did. And the thing about the creative space for me is that there is no top of the mountain.

And so I think about that the same as podcasting. There is no top of the mountain. Some people can say Joe Rogan's the top of the mountain, but whatever. I may never be there, but guess what? I want to climb that mountain and I want to do it. And so I don't look at it like a business. And I think it's something that I want to try to conquer. How do I get better at this every single day and do it for fun? And I just so happen to think that along the way,

Marcelo Russo (02:46:19.822)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:46:39.824)
somehow the money will show up.

Marcelo Russo (02:46:42.435)
And that's where the partnership comes. That's why I was thinking about it. The RadCat guys have the most crazy ideas ever. I don't know if they still have it. They did some toys line. They did some Web3. They partner with gaming companies, with music. They are all over the place, creatively. And that's why...

Kevin Mooney (02:46:45.822)
Yeah, I think that's super smart.

Kevin Mooney (02:47:06.612)
They are great. Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:47:12.451)
I don't know if I've ever done it in exactly the same way I'm gonna say it, but as a hobby, again, since I'm not the guy that invests in the hobby, because I'm Argentine, I never had a lot of money in the US, now when I have some money, everything is a little bit more expensive than I expect. I like fancy things.

Kevin Mooney (02:47:36.714)
Uh-huh.

Marcelo Russo (02:47:41.803)
I always look for someone that can give me the taste of what's ahead so I can get motivated. So if I'm playing a video game right now, I'm like with the guys from Orlando that I was telling you about, I'm playing Fortnite and I'm not good at Fortnite. I'm good at other type of games.

Kevin Mooney (02:47:47.166)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:48:03.759)
one of the guys is like awesome and I love to see how he plays and how he is like positioned himself and does some other things and he's like I want to be carried by you I was like I'm useless I know I'm like I'm a backpack at best and it's like you carry me all over the place but it's like if you enjoy it I don't give a rat's ass and it's like

Kevin Mooney (02:48:18.73)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:48:24.009)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:48:24.911)
Let me tag along. And I see this thing that I was thinking with RadCat in the same way, because it's like, they may not really care to share the space. And the carers in the sense of like, they wouldn't mind sharing the space, maybe. They definitely are not the type of business oriented that would...

Kevin Mooney (02:48:31.37)
Yeah.

Marcelo Russo (02:48:49.231)
turn the hobby into something else, they are such loving air, like Andrea and Brandon, that they put the relationship first, so they will like, sure, if they like this idea, won't, like, whenever I told them it's like about co-marketing and things like that, it's like, yeah, sure, sure, sure, you do whatever you want. Like, we're not doing it for that. But then.

Kevin Mooney (02:48:53.407)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:49:07.764)
Yeah, yeah.

Yes.

Marcelo Russo (02:49:13.485)
You know, it's like you stay there, you have a chat, you have a coffee, you have a wine, you have a joint or whatever, and then suddenly, like, another thing happens and you do it because of your hobby without any business expectation, and they do it because of helping without any business expectations, and then shit happens. Or, if it doesn't, you just had a hobby.

Kevin Mooney (02:49:31.678)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:49:35.081)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (02:49:38.954)
Sure, sure. And I guess that's the argument. I mean, you said that perfectly and I 100 % agree with you. I think that that's the point in my life that I'm at right now is I want everything to be and feel like a hobby because it's just fun. And inevitably something is going to happen and come from it. That's the point. Don't go after the business side of things. Just do it because it's fun.

Marcelo Russo (02:50:02.19)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:50:07.774)
people are gonna like that and they're gonna pick up on it and eventually, yeah, something will come out of it.

Marcelo Russo (02:50:13.729)
Yeah, because it's like I see it. Like one of the things that Chris Doe said, when he used to talk a lot about, you know, giving the value first. And then I always took it in the sense of give enough value that the other person feels uncomfortable. So it's like, want to keep finding opportunities to give value to people so they feel uncomfortable.

Kevin Mooney (02:50:32.22)
Yes, right.

Kevin Mooney (02:50:40.136)
Yeah. I love it.

Marcelo Russo (02:50:41.679)
I was like, why are you giving me so much? I need to do something. And it's like, I don't know, send me a wine. I don't give a rat's ass. But it's like, if I believe that if I do that enough, something is gonna happen eventually, like an intro, a memory, a story, or at least maybe you're gonna, maybe, hopefully, you're gonna be a better client.

Kevin Mooney (02:50:49.349)
Hahaha

Kevin Mooney (02:50:59.358)
Yeah, for sure.

Marcelo Russo (02:51:10.157)
when the time comes, you're just gonna be so happy that we did so much value before that when someone fucks up or when there's a delay, you're not gonna be screaming at me or calling me at two in the morning telling me that I'm an asshole. It's like brownie points. So I don't do it for that, but that's kinda like the expectation in the back of my head.

Kevin Mooney (02:51:28.49)
For sure.

Kevin Mooney (02:51:34.238)
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I love it. Well, hey, man, we're at almost three hours. I know you've got something else, so I think I should let you get going here soon.

Marcelo Russo (02:51:43.663)
Yeah. But I think we need to do another one. We need to do another one. I like round numbers, so why don't we do it when you are at the 20 or at the 15, whichever one you choose. That will make my OCD happy.

Kevin Mooney (02:51:49.512)
I would love to do another one. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:51:58.9)
That sounds great, man. I think, yes. And I think that's part of my plan. Like nobody just comes on once, right? I want to bring people back on and say, hey, all right, we got the jitters out, right? The cobwebs are all flushed out. We talked about whatever. Now it's time to do another one. So.

Marcelo Russo (02:52:17.228)
I think we should do one about the psychedelics. Like we need to bring more than one person and do a psychedelics one.

Kevin Mooney (02:52:24.7)
I am very open to that. That sounds great to me. Do you want to tell people where they can find you if they're looking?

Marcelo Russo (02:52:27.471)
I love it. I love that.

Marcelo Russo (02:52:35.821)
Yes, absolutely. website is typically the best one. So it's friends, but with a three. So F R I three N D S. I think that's the way I spelled it. Good. I'm not good at spelling. and then,

People don't call me Marcelo a lot because I feel like that's when like how my parents called it me. So that gives me, you know, exactly. Give me a reaction. So that's why everybody calls me Marse. So it's like the T H E the Marse Russo. And that's pretty much in all of the socials. It's like LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, X, Twitter, whatever the name is currently. So those are, those are the socials.

Kevin Mooney (02:52:59.316)
Marcello!

Kevin Mooney (02:53:20.234)
Sweet. Thank you so much for doing this, man. I really appreciate it. Awesome. Stick around for a couple of minutes.

Marcelo Russo (02:53:25.313)
It was so fun.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Kevin Mooney (02:53:31.016)
All right, bye everyone.

Marcelo Russo (02:53:33.145)
Bye bye.

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