Bryan Jones, CTO of the Office of Experience - Reimagining Your Brand Experience

(Intro/Outro Narrator at 00:00:02) This is the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Brad Becker at 00:00:14) I'm going to totally age myself here, but I spent the nineties touring the world, putting out records, playing drums in a punk rock band called Hüsker Dü. I've always played music my whole life. I've always been the guy that's been in the band or set up the shows and done those type of things. And I went to school for English. So my major in university was English, but my passion was always music. And so I started doing that full time after college.

(Brad Becker at 00:00:47) And it just kind of over the years, you know, we decided we didn't have any money in order to pay people to do things because we were always touring out on the road. And so when this thing called the internet really started getting some traction, I basically, no one else knew how to do it. So I did my AOL dial-up, downloaded a WYSIWYG called Hotdog.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:13) Nice.

(Brad Becker at 00:01:14) Got my, you know, bought a domain and got my FTP client, and I built a website for our band. And then when I started a record label around '95, so I started putting out records for other bands, I started doing the website for my record label, and it just kind of grew from there. And then in '97, '98, we decided to take a break because we'd been on the road for six years straight, and our singer went to university to go get his PhD. And I needed to get a job, so I was like, well, you know, maybe I'll build websites for a living.

(Brad Becker at 00:01:50) And that's how this started. So what was a hobby turned into a full-time profession, and I've been doing it ever since.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:59) That's really cool. That sounds like a lot of right place, right time.

(Brad Becker at 00:02:03) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:03) In terms of like having the right skills, building a website, right, as that's all booming.

(Brad Becker at 00:02:09) Yeah. And it was just, you know, and there were, I mean, there were books. I definitely bought all my HTML and JavaScript and ASP books. And, you know, it's not so much anymore, but I remember in the early 2000s, I thought it was just kind of funny that people actually went to school to do this stuff. I'm like, really? You went to college to learn how to build websites? Because we all just kind of figured it out ourselves back in the day.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:35) Yeah. So did you, you said you also started a record company too. Is that like your first foray in the business as well?

(Brad Becker at 00:02:43) I would say officially, yes. So, you know, I mean, we were putting out records on a bunch of different labels and making other people money, and it just kind of got to the point after all these tours, and we met all these bands from all over the world that were really good, but not a lot of people had heard of them. And so I just made it my plan, you know. And part of anything in life is networking. So, you know, once you get the skills, so if you think about music, once I learned the skills of how to play an instrument, then that translated into, okay, well, let's dive deeper into the music industry. Let's look at, you know, how are we dealing with record label contracts, distribution, PR, marketing, you know, things like that. And so I just kind of went into that and it seemed like a natural progression in order to start my own record label and start putting out records for other bands and doing distribution for them as well. So it was interesting, but the music industry is pretty brutal. So I think I kind of enjoy technology a little bit better. It also pays a little bit better as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:53) For sure.

(Brad Becker at 00:03:54) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:54) I mean, so were you putting out records in the time like where people actually made money putting out records before the internet like destroyed that?

(Brad Becker at 00:04:04) Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you know, the bands that we were touring with back in the day was Green Day and Offspring.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:12) Oh, wow.

(Brad Becker at 00:04:13) And I mean, I remember, you know, Jimmy Eat World, we used to pay them to open up for us because the band started in Tempe. And so Jimmy Eat World was just this, you know, they were just this group...

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:24) Yeah.

(Brad Becker at 00:04:25) Yeah, just a group of kids. And so whenever we came through Tempe, we'd have them open up for us and pay them like $50. And...

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:32) Oh my God.

(Brad Becker at 00:04:34) You know, but that's back when you could put out a record and actually sell a bunch and...

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:39) For sure. Yeah.

(Brad Becker at 00:04:40) If you were lucky enough to get paid off that. But I would say, yeah, I remember when Napster came in, and that definitely changed everything. And nowadays, I mean, we still do the band. In fact, we're sitting on about five songs right now. We were going to do a full-length record before the pandemic hit and that kind of put things on hold.

(Brad Becker at 00:05:01) But, you know, I just kind of look at the landscape now, and I'm just like, I don't understand how bands do it anymore. The internet, you know, music streaming, it doesn't pay any money. And I don't know how they can survive or how you really break out of, I mean, on one hand, I think it's really good because it opens up a lot of new channels and opportunities for people...

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:24) Right.

(Brad Becker at 00:05:25) To get discovered. But on the other hand, it creates so much noise and there's just such a huge volume of content. How do you break out of that? I just find it really challenging nowadays.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:39) Yeah. I think it's certainly more challenging, but I think that's also an inevitable result of democratizing access to it where there's just a lot more mouths to feed. And I think that's overall a good thing though because, I mean, it used to be you either had to have a ton of money to pay someone to pay like a studio to record you. Just the tape was like a ton of money. But now that anyone with a laptop can put some stuff out there, that's really cool. Although, absolutely unfortunate that you get paid like zero cents per stream. But I don't know. I think there's a lot of evolution to occur there.

(Brad Becker at 00:06:20) Yeah. No. There's good and bad. I'm just...

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:23) Right.

(Brad Becker at 00:06:24) I'm just glad I don't do it for a living anymore. So...

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:28) Absolutely. Well, talking about what you're doing for a living, how did you get further along in technology after your first website building job? Where did your career go from there?

(Brad Becker at 00:06:38) I think my first real job was with a company called GMV Networks here in Chicago, and this is back when, man, I'm really dating myself. So this is back when, you know, in order to do video or audio on the internet, you had the RealPlayer, you had Windows Media Player, and you had the Apple Player. So those were, you know, and they were proprietary applications. So you had to download and you had to create your content that was formatted specifically for those proprietary systems. And so we started out doing the startup company called GMV Networks, where we were building an open source Java-based applet for audio and video streaming.

(Brad Becker at 00:07:23) And so we started doing a lot of that. There's a big club here in Chicago called the Metro. So we started doing a lot of stuff with the Smashing Pumpkins and streaming their shows and building their website. And so we were trying to build that out. And unfortunately, it didn't really go anywhere. And then from then, I just kind of moved on into the agency landscape. And so I've been working at agencies for the past, you know, twenty years, and I've had the opportunity to work at some of the largest agencies, some of the best agencies in the world and working on global accounts. And I lived in Australia for a couple of years...

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:03) Oh, cool.

(Brad Becker at 00:08:04) Running technology out there for Sapient, and then I opened up the R/GA office in Sydney. So that was a great experience. And then I ended up working in Europe for a while on clients like Volvo and Dyson, building out their commerce and content platforms. And so that's kind of where my career has just progressed. I've just had the privilege of working at some really great agencies with some really smart people and getting more opportunity to work more globally.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:35) Very cool. So how did you get involved with Office of Experience?

(Brad Becker at 00:08:40) I've known these guys for about ten years. So a couple of the guys I worked with at Sapient back in the day. And I'd say, you know, just like any industry, whether it be music or technology or whatever it is, it's very incestuous. You have people that move around that, you know, the ones that are in this are really in this, and you really excel at networking. And so you just keep in touch with people.

(Brad Becker at 00:09:07) And a couple of the guys here at Office of Experience, I worked with at Sapient, and so we kept in touch over the years. And throughout the years, we've discussed about, you know, how can we start to work together again. And we've had some on and off discussions. And about a year and a half ago, it just made sense for me to come on board. So Office of Experience has been around for seven years.

(Brad Becker at 00:09:30) They're based out of Chicago. It's a full-service end-to-end agency. And they're design driven. It's digital first. It's vertically integrated, very collaborative. So it's a really great culture. They have some really great clients that really just form partnerships. And I just thought that was a good opportunity to come in and really help them excel their technology growth and build out more capabilities.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:00) Very cool.

(Brad Becker at 00:10:01) I'd say some of the work we're doing around content and commerce platforms, working with our partners like Sitecore and Epi, which is called Optimizely now, Salesforce, and just building out capabilities around that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:19) Awesome. Can you walk me through what some of your client engagements look like?

(Brad Becker at 00:10:25) It really depends. It kind of runs the spectrum. But I would say, you know, what we focus on is what the founders, Carlos and Shretten, call the bow tie. So you have the expectation versus the reality. And in the middle of that, in that intersection, that's where, you know, you really get the brand experience. So that's where you understand what's real and what isn't. And so what we do is we work with our clients to help them navigate that intersection between expectation and reality. So we can really define the problem statement and then help them come up with solutions in order to meet their goals. And so I would say whether it be working with Mack Trucks, since I've been on board, we've done a lot of data work with Mack.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:14) Like the long-haul trucking company, Mack?

(Brad Becker at 00:11:17) Mack. Yes. Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:19) Okay.

(Brad Becker at 00:11:19) Yeah. They're part of Volvo. And so they've had a partnership with them for a while now. The work that I've been doing specifically with them, it's been around data visualization and how do we aggregate these multiple data sources, get that normalized, be able to query that and pull up that data so they can make better, more informed business decisions around their marketing activities and their touch points with their customers. Another big client that we've been working with on a business transformation project, a digital transformation project has been ASCM. So they're a supply chain management company.

(Brad Becker at 00:11:56) And so really going in, what started out as design, as basically a redesign and replatforming of their commerce site has now turned into an organizational transformation and helping...

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:06) Oh, wow.

(Brad Becker at 00:12:07) And helping them become more agile, build, you know, more product-focused. How do they build teams that are product-focused, product-driven, and being an extension of their team, providing subject matter expertise to help enable them to make that transition.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:27) For some context, how many people are working at Office of Experience?

(Brad Becker at 00:12:31) There's about right now, there's about 60 folks. About, you know, 60, 65 people. Most of them are here in Chicago. We do have some folks spread out around the country, and then we have various partners that we work with globally, kind of just depending on our needs at the time and how we need to scale.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:49) Cool. Yeah. Because when you're talking about that engagement you have with that company where you started out by just revamping their website and now it's this highly involved digital transformation process. That just had me thinking, like, how are you able to stay that nimble to be able to react to the client need like that and totally change direction of your level of involvement with them?

(Brad Becker at 00:13:14) Yeah. That's a good question. It's easier said than done.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:19) Yeah.

(Brad Becker at 00:13:20) You know, it never ceases to amaze me when, you know, it doesn't matter what company you're working with, how long they've been around, how cutting edge they may be around their product service offering. When you start to look under the hood, and I've seen this with companies that have been around for a long time. I've seen this with tech startup companies. And when you go in and you start looking under the hood and just seeing the, and I think your founder calls it the spaghetti code. I think a lot of companies are trying to get so much done in such a short period of time that there's not a lot of long-term thought in their selection of platforms to enable their customer journeys, their user interfaces touch points.

(Brad Becker at 00:14:12) And so I think once you start looking under the hood of these companies, you really see a lot of just legacy, a lot of organizational optimization that needs to happen, a lot of modernization that needs to happen within their tech stacks in order to allow them to be more nimble and more flexible. And it just opens up a lot of opportunity. And so I think until you really start to engage, you don't really know the depth of where these projects are going to take you. And then once you realize that, then it's a scramble of figuring out, okay, so we have this piece, this piece over here. And you start to define what that user journey is.

(Brad Becker at 00:14:54) And then what are the technology touch points that are going to enable that user journey? And then once you start to uncover where they are from a tech stack perspective, you have to go in and really figure out, okay. So is this the right solution in order to enable this touch point or this experience for the brand? And then once you define what that solution is going to be, then it's a scramble to figure out, okay, so do we have the right people? Do we have the right partnerships in order to make that happen?

(Brad Becker at 00:15:22) And that's really where we as an agency start to bring all that stuff together. And it really comes down to, you know, I've been doing this for a long time, and it comes down to really playing that Sherpa role and leveraging your experience across multiple client verticals, across multiple tech stacks, and really start, you know, unraveling that spaghetti and starting to put those pieces together. So it's always a challenge. And I know I'm just kind of rambling. But it's, the exciting thing about it is that there's always something new.

(Brad Becker at 00:15:58) And I think that's what's kept me engaged in this industry for so long is that I'm constantly learning something new. Whenever I think I know something, it turns out I don't. And there's always challenges. So I always tell people that if you're not getting your lunch handed to you every day, then, you know, something's not working right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:21) Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think everyone can agree that it's really important to be challenged at your job and not just go in and just push a button every day, all day, and not really learn anything. But on the topic of digital transformation, we had this company on recently called Insight that I hadn't heard of prior to the podcast, but they're actually huge and they just do all sorts of IT stuff, including digital transformation. But I remember they were talking about consolidating your IT vendors down to one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:51) And they were also talking about what you're saying, like being the expert for picking your tool chain. And that was the first time that really started to click for me, that there's a lot of value added there in having someone that is an expert on what tools to pick to solve your problems.

(Brad Becker at 00:17:13) Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:13) And you're continuing to connect the dots for me in how important it is to not only pick the right tool to solve the problem right now, but also to pick the right tool that you can live with for a long time and not end up with those legacy systems.

(Brad Becker at 00:17:30) Yeah, absolutely. I mean, part of the value that agencies like us bring to the table is that outside-in view. I think that when you're working on something, you get your blinders on, you really don't see the big picture, and it really takes somebody else to come in and say, "Okay, hey, from a 30,000-foot view level, I've seen some of this before. This is what I think you guys are doing. This would be some of my suggestions around how to better optimize." I mean, it honestly comes down to people, process, and systems. And system-wise, a lot of these older companies—and really, I mean, I shouldn't say older companies because I see this across the board—but they're so busy, like I said, trying to get something to market that they create these monolithic architectures that are not scalable because they're trying to solve the need for the day, not the need for the future. And just like technology, you know, technology evolves and it's constantly evolving. Well, businesses constantly evolve. And so as a business, you have to be just as nimble as the technology that you're leveraging. And so I think going in and getting an understanding of what the foundation systems are, what the goal is from a marketing or a brand perspective, and then how do you enable that through technology?

(Brad Becker at 00:18:57) And you really start looking at—I look at things about, you think about emerging technologies like AI and machine learning. I know those are buzzwords. But part of our job is to look at those new technologies that are coming out, evaluate those technologies against our customers' business goals and see if they're the right fit to help them better modernize their systems, better reach their customers, create new interfaces or new touchpoints for their marketing. And so I look at things that I'm excited about right now would be like Jamstack. The whole Jamstack ecosystem is exploding right now.

(Brad Becker at 00:19:43) And you think about the evolution of the content management system going from this monolithic architecture to decoupled to now a headless, which is microservices. And this is something that I've been talking about for six years now. And now to see it finally starting to really come to fruition is pretty exciting. And one of the things that we've done here at OX is we just rebuilt our corporate website. And we're using a headless WordPress implementation for that.

(Brad Becker at 00:20:14) So we're fully embracing Jamstack. We're fully doing static content generation. How can we leverage that, not only for ourselves, but for our clients to create more flexible architectures that will enable them to deliver messages or experiences through more touchpoints, more channels for their clients? And so I think that's what's really exciting about the evolution of that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:39) Yeah. You gotta practice what you preach. And I gotta say, I had a chance to check out the Office of Experience website prior to this, and it is beautiful. Like, that is probably your best advertising that you can have. Like, for a company that's gonna come in and build your website for you, you better have a stunning website. And yeah, you do. It looks great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:01) It looks great.

(Brad Becker at 00:21:02) Oh, thank you. Yeah. And that's always the worst project you can get on as well, doing your own company website. That's always the worst project.

(Brad Becker at 00:21:12) But I think it turned out well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:15) Absolutely. So one thing that I'm curious to get your perspective on is, so when you're working with clients, you have a 360-degree view of their entire brand, and you're helping build their brand up completely, right?

(Brad Becker at 00:21:31) Yeah. I mean, it kind of depends. It depends on what the engagement is gonna be. I mean, we do everything from doing brand strategy, research, insights, you know, even into rebranding logos and content for the way companies advertise themselves, to just doing front-end development to full replatforming or doing integration. So it really kind of runs the gamut.

(Brad Becker at 00:22:05) So ideally, I mean, that's kind of the ideal client is to go in and be like, "Hey, let's talk about reimagining your brand and how you speak to your client." And that's where, you know, things get really exciting and meaty.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:19) Gotcha. Yeah. A little while ago, we had this—have you heard of a company called OPSEC Security?

(Brad Becker at 00:22:24) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:25) Oh, okay. Cool. Yeah. So they were on the podcast recently, and that was my first exposure to OPSEC. And so they do 360-degree brand protection, anywhere from piracy prevention to those little hologram stickers that you see on physical goods to make sure that those are not counterfeit.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:48) And I kept seeing this phrase on your website over and over again, that the experience is the brand. And I was just curious, how do you think about brand protection when experience is the brand?

(Brad Becker at 00:23:01) I think when we talk about the experience is, what is the interaction the customer is having with that brand? Is that experience representing what the brand is, what the vision of the brand is, or what the brand is trying to communicate with that customer? And so I think we're looking at it more from that lens and not necessarily from an IP lens. I mean, I think OPSEC does more from an IP perspective, right? So I wouldn't really see—that's not really in our wheelhouse or what we would be focused on.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:39) That makes sense. But when the communication strategy becomes a differentiating factor for a company, at what point does that cross into the realm of IP? You know? Because a lot of times, companies, that's what makes them stand out, is how well they're able to interface with their customers.

(Brad Becker at 00:24:00) Yeah. No, absolutely. And I think, you know, you're always gonna see a knockoff. You're always gonna see—I mean, if one brand is successful—I mean, it's just, I've been watching on Discovery Channel lately, it's the history of food, which is really amazing because it talks about Nabisco and talks about all these, Coca-Cola and all these major brands, and then how they had to battle all the copycats and all the knockoffs. And so I can definitely see that. I think from a technology perspective, though, if you think about the experience, you think about new interfaces, new ways, new channels in order to communicate with people, and how that's enabled through a brand expression and technology. I mean, I could see that being very similar, is that people would see something that works and they'd wanna replicate that and push that out as their own. But, you know, the good thing about technology is that a lot of it's not proprietary.

(Brad Becker at 00:25:00) A lot of it is open source and you can leverage it in the way you wanna leverage it. And if people copy it, they copy it, right? So, I mean, that's what, you know, back in the day when I first started doing this stuff, I mean, that's what we would do. We would go to websites that we thought were really cool, and we would look at the code and copy all that code and then reformat it for our own uses.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:22) That makes sense. Yeah. I mean, it's all about the execution and the creativity, like the human aspect of it, not necessarily the code that's there.

(Brad Becker at 00:25:32) Yeah. Yeah. And that's where, you know, the creativity part of it—you know, as a developer, I consider myself pseudo-creative, but we definitely have people at Office of Experience that are a lot more creative than I am, that I trust to come up with those ideas and to create that interface or that brand expression that we can then translate into a technical solution.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:00) Yeah. So you must have a lot of designers at OX, right?

(Brad Becker at 00:26:03) We do. Yep. Designers, UX, strategy, copywriters. So it's a very integrated team here. And that's, you know, something I really enjoy about agency life as well. Why I've been doing it pretty much my entire career is that just the collaboration of the different disciplines. You know, I think that in my experience coming up through the ranks as a developer and a technology director and now CTO is that my right-hand person was the UX director. So when I was a tech director, it was the yin and the yang. And we sat at the same desk across from each other. We collaborated on all of our solutions.

(Brad Becker at 00:26:45) We collaborated on all of our new business pitches and ideas. And it's really that yin and yang between technology and the user and the IA user experience lead that really creates these great experiences that we can build. So, what is possible?

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:05) Yeah. I mean, it seems like with what you're doing, it would be pretty impossible to be successful if you had any amount of siloing between departments. So are you structured with product teams—or, sorry, project-based teams—where the designer and the developer and UX is all together working on each individual project?

(Brad Becker at 00:27:33) Yes, absolutely. So as we start to work across—so, I mean, we have vertical teams. So we have fully integrated vertical teams that are aligned to specific clients or projects. And then we do horizontal capabilities across that.

(Brad Becker at 00:27:50) So we have subject matter expertise, whether that be in front-end development, back-end development, UX, BA. Those all do horizontal crosses. So that way, we make sure that not only are we collaborating from a project or a client perspective and we're not siloed, but we're also not siloed as disciplines as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:11) Okay. Yeah. I saw on the Office of Experience website that it says you're a T-shaped company for T-shaped individuals. Is that what you're getting at with the vertical and horizontal?

(Brad Becker at 00:28:25) Kind of. I mean, you know, I like the T-shape because we have subject matter expertise and disciplines that go deep. And then what that's also saying is that not only can we go deep, but we can go broad. And so, where I think Office of Experience differentiates itself from other agencies is that we've done a really good job of bringing in senior people that have been in this business for a long time and understand the landscape, understand their discipline, understand how multi-discipline capabilities work, and they're able to broaden out across or able to expand out of just their sole focus and see a bigger picture. And I think that's what we're really trying to put across as a T-shape.

(Brad Becker at 00:29:13) And I do that from a development standpoint as well. I have a saying that I've been saying for a long time now, is that when I'm building a team, I don't want developers. I want solution architects. I want people that have the experience, that have the depth, the knowledge of not only technology, but can understand the business, understand the requirements, and are able to develop solutions based off that broad spectrum of experience and knowledge. And when it comes down to development, I look at—and I'm not knocking developers.

(Brad Becker at 00:29:58) I'm a developer as well. But a lot of this, you know, we can build anywhere, but it's really the solution definition that I find key. And that's what I really push for when I'm looking to build a team, is to get that subject matter expertise.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:14) That's a thread that I think has been coming up a lot recently in terms of being a tool-based developer or a solution-based developer. Like, someone's like, "Yeah, I'm really good at Ruby." Yeah. But it's like, okay, well, we need you to develop in something else for this project.

(Brad Becker at 00:30:33) Yeah, exactly. I, you know, people—you know, I hear this all the time, especially, you know, if you're looking especially around front-end development. And they're like, "Oh, you know, we have to have a React developer. You know, this person needs five years of React." I don't know. Has React even been around for five years? But anyway, it's like they need five years of React. They need all this experience.

(Brad Becker at 00:30:54) And at the end of the day, I'm just like, no. We don't need a React developer. We need a developer with strong expertise and experience in JavaScript. And whatever framework we're gonna use is the framework we're gonna use. Because it may be React right now, but in six months, it's gonna be Razzmatazz.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:14) Yeah.

(Brad Becker at 00:31:14) And, you know, so you gotta get ready for Razzmatazz. And by the way, Razzmatazz was the name of my goat when I was when I was a kid. So I am determined to develop a framework called Razzmatazz. That will be awesome. So, yeah. But that's just—that's more about focusing on the current need and not the future.

(Brad Becker at 00:31:38) And so what I try to do is I try to look at what does that future need, what does that roadmap, how do we enable the scalability that's gonna get us to the future and not just look for what we need today.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:52) So when you're looking for these solution-based people, what kind of questions do you ask in hiring to weed them out and find them?

(Brad Becker at 00:32:02) Ask them how good their juggling is. So how well can you juggle? And, you know, I look for folks that have been in the agency landscape. I think if you've been in the agency landscape, you're used to dealing with multiple tech stacks, multiple frameworks, multiple clients. You're used to jumping around and being able to think on your feet, make quick decisions, and really stay on top of the technology landscape and be able to synthesize that into actionable solutions.

(Brad Becker at 00:32:39) And so that's really what I focus on when I'm talking to people, when I'm building teams, and trying to assess skill sets. It's really the flexibility. I'm not looking for—you know, I mean, well, there's some cases where, yes, I'll need somebody who's a Sitecore MVP to do some audit to help me figure out some sort of solution. But at the end of the day, I'm looking more for people who are flexible and open to learning new things and evolving their skill sets and not just being focused on a single solution. I mean, I remember, you know, Flash.

(Brad Becker at 00:33:15) Just, you know, take a look at Flash. We built everything in Flash back in the day. And then it's like we moved to this one phase where you built everything in Flash, and then all of a sudden, you took all those Flash sites and you rebuilt them in JavaScript. And so there was this five-year period of Flash dev and then this five-year period of JavaScript dev to translate all that Flash into JavaScript. And, you know, I mean, I remember back in the day, a Flash developer could get anything.

(Brad Becker at 00:33:44) I mean, their hourly rates were whatever they wanted. And then all of a sudden, they were all unemployed. And so, you know, I think when it comes to this industry, technology as a whole, you really can't pigeonhole yourself in any specific platform or technology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:03) Absolutely. Anyone who's been around long enough has learned that lesson over and over again as they've watched their peers fall away, as they've died on whatever hill of whatever software they pledged their lives to.

(Brad Becker at 00:34:18) Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:21) Yeah. So do you want to talk about leadership a little bit at your company?

(Brad Becker at 00:34:23) Sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:27) So how would you say, are your direct reports mostly tech people, individual contributors, or are they engineering managers?

(Brad Becker at 00:34:37) You know, we're a pretty small organization, so it's a pretty flat structure at the moment. I mean, I've worked at larger global agencies where I've built global teams across multiple offices. And I've created that hierarchy structure of, you know, VP tech, tech director, experience. It's pretty flat. And what I focused on more is what we discussed around solution developers, not just developers, solution architects.

(Brad Becker at 00:35:18) And so the way that we have our structure set up is that we have SMEs that are really good at certain pieces. And I put those folks in positions where they can be successful and excel, but also in positions where they can learn different skills, different technologies. So it's always about how do you take that person to the next level when it comes to leadership. And I know that's not really your question because you're talking more specifically about some experience. But, you know, I'd say just overall, the team here, it's a small team, and it's a very senior team.

(Brad Becker at 00:36:05) And so, but as we scale, I'm looking for more opportunities to start bringing in developers underneath these senior folks to help kind of build that out and to build up that whole structure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:20) Yeah. I mean, it's got to be really cool and exciting for you working with just such a wealth of experience around you, saying how your team is full of all these senior people. That's awesome.

(Brad Becker at 00:36:33) Well, I mean, one of my solution architects I've known for twenty-five years. So, I have a...

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:44) Are they in your band?

(Brad Becker at 00:36:46) He's not in the band. So, unfortunately, no one in my band does this. But I think you surround yourself with people who are way smarter than you and who are going to help you achieve good things. And so I've always believed that. I definitely don't micromanage.

(Brad Becker at 00:37:09) I let people, you know, we're all adults. We're all professionals. I let people exercise their strengths and their skill sets, and I do what's needed to support them in order to enable their growth. And if that growth is, you know, if you think about the Y axis, if that growth wants to be a subject matter expert and go in that direction, then absolutely. Or if that growth means they want to get more into management and leadership, then I totally help them out with that as well.

(Brad Becker at 00:37:41) But, you know, it's really about finding your core team, folks that you trust, folks that you can put on any sort of project and just not have to worry about it because you know that it's going to be taken care of.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:57) Yeah. I mean, you're not actually saving yourself any time if you're hiring someone to take responsibilities and then just continuing to do those responsibilities yourself.

(Brad Becker at 00:38:09) Yeah. Absolutely. And I've done that enough in my career. I've had to roll up my sleeves and jump in and make something happen. So, you know, you kind of got to play both sides.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:23) So what would you say are you learning right now as a leader?

(Brad Becker at 00:38:27) What am I learning right now?

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:29) You talked earlier about how you've got to be getting challenged every day. What's challenging you, man?

(Brad Becker at 00:38:35) What's challenging you? I don't know. There's a lot. I mean, you know, I'm always challenged. I think the higher up you go in your career as a technologist, the less hands-on you can be.

(Brad Becker at 00:38:47) And I've always struggled with the balance of that. I've always struggled with how far do I get in the weeds versus staying up high so I can see the big picture. And I definitely haven't found that balance yet. It's still a work in progress. But, you know, you want to get deep enough to where you can not only advise and help, but you can also articulate where things are at, where the progress is at, and make sure that your clients have complete visibility into the current project or process.

(Brad Becker at 00:39:27) But you don't want to get in too deep to where you're missing the big picture. You're not seeing the long-term vision and the goals that need to happen. I struggle with that. And I still haven't figured out if I'm doing a good job or not. So I'd say that's probably what I'm trying to learn the most.

(Brad Becker at 00:39:51) And then on top of that, as a technologist, as a developer, somebody that I used to put on headphones and sit down and focus and just build stuff for hours every day. And the more you get away from that, the more you feel like you're out of touch and you want to find ways to get back in and to keep your skill set, your skills sharp. And so I think that's a struggle as well. And then there's just so much out there and so many different things that you can focus on and learn that, you know, you have to kind of pick. You've got to pick where you want to focus, where you want to invest that time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:37) Absolutely. And it's got to be really hard to find where to draw the line of how deep your knowledge needs to be on every project.

(Brad Becker at 00:40:49) Absolutely. Yeah. How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go? And, you know, and that goes, or you need to go. And that goes for projects, and that goes for proprietary platforms and technologies.

(Brad Becker at 00:41:03) I mean, I've been doing content and commerce builds for the majority of my career. And I've definitely seen the evolution of these large-scale platforms and the ecosystems they create. We think about platforms like Salesforce and Adobe. I mean, I've done multiple AEM implementations over the years, and that ecosystem just keeps growing and developing. And it's just, you know, how do you have the time or how far can you go in the rabbit hole to make sure that you're completely aware of all the latest and greatest coming out of those platforms?

(Brad Becker at 00:41:42) And then being able to translate that to your clients in order to make sure that they're leveraging these platforms that they're on to the best of its capabilities. So and that's why I hire people that are smarter than me who can focus on this stuff.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:59) That's what I was about to get at is that it sounds like when you're evaluating something like that, you have to ask yourself the question, am I the single person that, do I add more value being the expert here than anyone else could? You know? And if the answer is no, then that's when you hire the expert that can add more value than you.

(Brad Becker at 00:42:25) Yeah. Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:29) So how do you approach failure with your teams and make sure that people are comfortable when something goes wrong being open about it and having that postmortem and everything? How do you build that culture of openness?

(Brad Becker at 00:42:47) Fail fast and learn. I mean, I think that's extremely important. It's important because you want to try new things. You want to experiment. You want to push the boundaries.

(Brad Becker at 00:42:58) I think, you know, part of what we do is, when I'm, you know, and I was just talking to a client about this yesterday, in fact, I was talking to him about his current state versus what the future state should be. And then, you know, the client's coming back to me with, "Well, you know, these are all the limitations we have, and these are the things we have to deal with internally. And so, you know, we can't really just do that." And I was explaining to him, it's like, you know, my role in this is to push you, is to help modernize you. So, of course, I'm going to push you as far as I can in order to really go for a more modern approach, a more modern architecture, more modern tools.

(Brad Becker at 00:43:45) And I feel the same way within our team as well. So it's like, you know, we need to, there's so much out there that can be used, but should it be used? And how do you evaluate those pieces? Is this the right solution for this problem? And even if you don't think it is, then it really gets into, well, let's do a POC.

(Brad Becker at 00:44:08) Let's figure out, okay, let's do a proof of concept on this. Let's see if it is right. Let's do it quick. Let's see if it fails. And if it fails, we've learned what's happened from that, and then we move on to the next solution.

(Brad Becker at 00:44:20) And so I think it's really about building that sort of culture and that approach with the team so they do feel comfortable doing things like that. They do feel comfortable bringing up new ideas or new ways of doing things. Because, you know, like I said, it's businesses are evolving, technology is evolving, and this is just part of it. And we have to evolve.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:42) Yeah. That makes sense. I forget who said it, but we had someone on the podcast recently that said the most common downfall he's seen of people's careers is resisting failure. Because in technology, failure is a part of your reality. And so if you're resisting failure, you're resisting reality.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:04) And that was a mind-blowing moment, you know. Hearing him say that just sounded so profound. And usually when people say stuff that sounds super profound, it immediately turns me off because it sounds like they're trying to do that. But that was a really cool moment of the podcast to me.

(Brad Becker at 00:45:27) Well, I mean, I totally agree with that. And I think, you know, especially when you get into data, for example. I mean, data is just filled full of failure points. And when you're trying to normalize data, aggregate data, you're trying to pull data into different systems, into different formats, you're trying to pull data from different platforms that are constantly changing and upgrading and breaking connectors and all this stuff. It's nothing but failure points.

(Brad Becker at 00:46:01) And you have to be prepared. Whenever I go into a data project, I make sure that the team I'm building around that, especially on the project management side, understands failure and understands that when it comes to data, this isn't going to be black and white. This is all gray. And we're all going to go on this journey together and figure out how to do it. Because it's always a challenge.

(Brad Becker at 00:46:27) It's always a challenge.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:29) For sure. All right. I got one more kind of career advice question for you. So going back to when you're building this website for the band, you know, you don't even know that your career is going to go down technology yet. But if you could go back and talk to that version of yourself, what advice do you give them for the career going forward?

(Brad Becker at 00:46:52) Wow. What advice do I give them for the career going forward? I would say, I would say don't take yourself so seriously. I mean, at the end of the day, what we're doing or at least what I'm doing with my career. I know there are some other technologies and areas that this is a little different.

(Brad Becker at 00:47:24) But, you know, when it comes to advertising, marketing, technologies, stuff I'm doing around agency, we're not saving lives. People aren't dying. And so I think back at some of the frustrations I had when I was younger or, you know, when I had team members who were younger, and I was younger at managing teams. And you just get so caught up in the moment, and you start to really stress out, and you spend, you know, days on end sleeping under your desk, trying to get something to work or something out the door. And I just think you just have to take a step back and just be like, it's going to be okay.

(Brad Becker at 00:48:07) We're going to figure this out. And just don't be so hard on yourself. That's some really...

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:13) Some really good advice, especially for...

(Brad Becker at 00:48:15) I'm just saying, I don't know if that's really good advice, but...

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:18) No. I think it is. Especially today when with so many more people working remotely and it's so much harder to draw those healthy boundaries around work. I feel like it's a lot easier when you work in an office, you go home and you leave work at the office. But when your desk is right next to your dinner table or your desk is your dinner table, when do you stop? You know?

(Brad Becker at 00:48:44) No. That is true. And, you know, I know there are deadlines and, you know, there are expectations. Things have to get done. But at the same time, part of, I think, what makes a successful agency, a successful team, a successful company is having visibility, communication, and trust.

(Brad Becker at 00:49:09) And as long as you have those three key things, everything's going to be fine. And, you know, as long as you're communicating with your client, with your team, they have visibility into the progress, to the milestones, and they trust that at the end of the day, it's going to get done. Then I really think that solves 90% of the world's problems. So, you know, it's probably a good three things for everything outside of technology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:39) That makes a lot of sense. Is there anything that we didn't get out there that we need to get out there? How do people get in touch with Office of Experience? Are you hiring? What do you want to get out there?

(Brad Becker at 00:49:49) Absolutely. No. Just come to our website, officeofexperience.com. It's like Adam said, it's a pretty good looking site, and we're pretty proud of it. We're absolutely looking to hire. If clients are looking to step up their game and to help their business transformation and create new brand experiences, please, you know, reach out. We're here.

(Intro/Outro Narrator at 00:50:19) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.