August 26, 2024 • 62 mins
The podcast is back after a much needed (albeit unintended) hiatus. For more details, listen to this episode (in Spanish) or wait until an AI translates it for you.
Until then, listen to a few of the episodes that we had recorded prior to the break, which are still of high relevance, the first of which features our friend Brian Farrell, co-founder of Farco Studio.
What if the secret to thriving in the design market lies in balancing American ambition with Spanish work-life harmony? Join us as we sit down with Brian Farrell from Farco Design Studio. Brian's remarkable journey—from spearheading digital transformation at BBVA to founding his own studio in Spain—provides a unique lens into the shifting landscape of design. We explore the shared challenges our boutique companies face in a market where retainer contracts are dwindling and project predictability is more elusive than ever.
Navigating the complexities of working with large corporations, Brian and Àlex delve into procurement processes and the cultural nuances that set American and Spanish business practices apart. We share our personal battles with imposter syndrome and discuss how past credentials can influence our professional paths. Highlighting the benefits of blending American drive with Spanish balance, we illustrate how this fusion fosters a passionate and sustainable approach to business. We also address the often overlooked yet crucial aspect of meticulous attention to detail in design—how print experiences can sharpen a digital designer’s eye for precision.
Lastly, we reflect on the challenges of transitioning from a hands-on designer to a business owner. From redefining productivity and managing new responsibilities to learning the art of outsourcing and automation, this episode is packed with insights. Brian shares his vision of promoting Spain’s incredible design talent on a global stage, encouraging listeners to recognize the diverse and vibrant creative community Spain has to offer. If you’re navigating the turbulent waters of the design market or simply passionate about creativity, this episode is a treasure trove of wisdom and inspiration.
🎬 You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (00:14):
Hello everybody, welcome to Life on
Mars again.
Alex, thrilled to have you hereand, as we announced, we're
bringing back the podcast.
And, as we announced too, thisis one of the episodes that we
had recorded a few months backbut that didn't see the light of
day.
I think the content isevergreen anyways, and because
in this episode we're talking toBrian Farrell from the Varco
(00:38):
Design Studio, one design studiothat we got very close to in
the last months, if not years.
We respect them very much.
We think they're a company tolook up to.
They have very, very similarvalues as the ones we have here
at MarsBased.
They're super boutique, theywork mostly American clients,
(00:59):
but they run from Spain and wecompare models.
But more than anything, thisconversation is about the shift
in the market that I have beenpreaching about in the last
months, where we have to sellmore and more often because we
are not able to sell retainersanymore or companies aren't able
(01:22):
to sign retainer contractsanymore.
Projects are being canceled,downsized, postponed.
So at the receiving end of allthese projects the providers,
the companies like MarsBased,like Farco we are not having the
best time of our lives, to behonest Most competitors to
(01:47):
similar companies that we havehere in, either in Barcelona or
internationally, have shut down,downsized.
They have had to let go a lotof people.
That's not our case, but it'strue.
It's becoming a real struggleto sell projects and to have a
prediction of what's going tohappen in the next three months,
and that's not ideal.
So we discussed this with Brian.
We discussed sales, wediscussed leadership,
(02:09):
communication, company cultureand how to run a boutique
company.
So, without further ado, let meintroduce you to our friend,
brian Farrell.
Brian, welcome to the show.
How are you?
Brian Farrell (02:19):
doing.
Thank you for having me.
I'm doing good.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (02:23):
We're live, live on Mars, the podcast
of MarsBased .
We almost worked together on aproject.
We got to know you guys becauseof a joint proposal we launched
for a potential client.
Unfortunately that didn't gothrough, but we like your
company so much.
I feel like there's manyparallelisms between Parco and
(02:46):
MarsBased and we want to givevoice to this kind of companies,
because we don't get the press,we don't get media coverage, we
don't get, you know, all ofthis attention that all
VC-backed companies get.
So maybe start introducingFarco and how did you start and
what you guys do.
Brian Farrell (03:07):
Sure, yeah.
I mean, we were really excitedabout potentially partnering
with you guys as well, andhopefully we'll get to find an
opportunity in the future to doso.
Um, but at least we gotconnected to share knowledge and
um beers at least um, since weboth like craft beer.
So we are in our fourth year atFarco.
(03:29):
I'm an American, I'm fromAtlanta, georgia, and I was up
and down the East Coastdifferent agencies, my whole
career, and about nine years agothe bank BBVA, who has a
headquarters here in Madrid, wasstarting their digital
transformation.
So they did a global talentsearch and they were bringing
(03:55):
over a lot of differentAmericans at senior positions,
and I just happened to be one ofthem.
So at the time I was living inWashington DC working for a
digital agency and thenultimately moved over to Madrid
to start and lead the designteam internally at the bank, and
I was there for four years.
It was this magical time at thestart of their digital
transformation, where they wereputting a lot of investment and
(04:20):
visibility into design andinnovation.
We were able to really changeeverything at the bank, from the
methodologies down to all thedifferent digital products, to
the identity, but it was reallythe main goal there was shifting
(04:41):
the internal culture fromdesign as this entity of
production to really design asat the center of the culture of
the company, and I think thatwas really the beautiful shift
that we saw, and I think,ultimately towards the end when
I at least of my time there in2020, bbva was really looked at
(05:05):
as sort of this referencetowards digital transformation.
They were one of the first onesthat actually put high
investment into it, and so Iultimately, at the end of the
four years, just felt like wehad changed most of the stuff
and my time was, you know, my mywork there had was done.
(05:25):
I was looking for a newchallenge.
I was thinking aboutpotentially um asking and
finding a U S agency that wouldwant to open a office in Spain,
because I think part ofsomething I realized before
moving to Spain was that itwasn't really on the radar of
(05:49):
creative circles in the UnitedStates.
We often thought about reallybig creative hubs in the US, but
outside of the US we wouldthink of London and Berlin,
sometimes we would talk aboutTokyo, but no one was talking
about Spain.
So when I took the role at thebank and I knew I had to grow
like a really large creativeteam, I was unsure because I
(06:12):
didn't know any of the creativecommunity of product designers
or developers, and so that wasone of the, I think, most
beautiful surprises that I hadin terms of moving here was
getting connected to all ofthese really talented
communities, and so for me, itwas about that was sort of like
what sparked the ideas how do Ibring together all of the most
(06:33):
talented designers anddevelopers that are within these
different communities and putit on the global radar,
particularly in the UnitedStates, because that's sort of
you know where my network is,particularly in the United
States, because that's sort ofyou know where my network is.
And so at first, I was thinkingabout just going to one of the
agencies that I had worked forand presenting this idea of okay
, well, why don't you come overto Spain and open up an office?
(06:54):
And then, ultimately, what Idecided was well, why not just
go at it myself and see if I cando it myself?
So that is ultimately what Idecided to do, and that's what
has led us to here four yearslater.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (07:10):
But yeah, you didn't do it alone,
right?
So take me back to the firstdays of Farco.
Who did you create it with andhow did you convince him?
Brian Farrell (07:18):
Well, so the very first day of the studio was the
first day of our confinementhere in Spain for COVID.
So I think it was like yeah, itwas crazy.
Well, I mean, I think you lookat that and you're like, oh,
that was like horrible timing.
But when you really look backat it, like I had no overhead, I
had no office, no employees, Ihad no clients, but it wasn't as
(07:43):
stressful.
I think for me as a businessowner it was a lot less
stressful than actually having abusiness at that point because
I didn't like I was saying I hadzero expenses.
And then it gave me a goodthree, four months where the
whole world was basicallyparalyzed, just to talk to
people and network, and I thinkit actually ended up being great
(08:05):
because everyone was locked intheir homes.
I was able to get in touch withinvestors and venture
capitalists and equity peopleand CEOs of other agencies,
because we had so much free time.
We were all stuck at home, andso I got to talk and get
connected with a lot of peopleduring those first three, four
(08:26):
months and I really just tookthe pressure off.
It wasn't about making moneyand getting clients, it was just
about like talking to a lot ofpeople and learning, and then
ultimately, what happened wassort of towards the end of 2020,
I was, I mean, obviously thecase study of BBVA helped me a
(08:49):
lot in terms of finding ourfirst clients, which ultimately
was Repsol, which is, you know,a really large energy client
here in Spain who was trying toundergo and start their own
digital transformation.
And ultimately, how it startedwas I had gotten connected with
(09:11):
the head of design there.
She had asked me to participatein a pitch for their commercial
web, their main commercialwebsite, and I remember I was
like a one man team at thatpoint, and so I was.
I was, I had my slot in thecalendar to pitch our proposal,
our mine proposal.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (09:32):
Yeah, it was our right, Me and my
company.
Brian Farrell (09:36):
No, she literally wrote me and she goes because,
like in the invite, which waslike all the heads of the
different departments of Repsol,and it was just me, and she was
like, can you invite otherpeople from your company to this
meeting?
It looks like because they weretalking with all of these, like
the big digital agencies ofMadrid, you know, and they're
(09:58):
all pretty well known, but they,you know, were bringing their
head of technology and head ofdesign and head of strategy, and
it was just like Brian Farrellin the invite.
And I was like I can't, I'mlike a one-man team right now.
So I pitched Well, you toldthem no, I told her.
I was like listen, I'm justlike a one-man person at this
time.
I'm putting together a reallygood team.
(10:19):
I think we'll do a really goodjob for you, but at this point I
don't have, it's just me.
And so, anyways, I went intothe pitch, I pitched our
proposal.
I didn't win it.
Obviously, they wanted to gowith a more credible agency, or
at least one that was around fora little bit longer, but they
really liked my proposal and sowhat happened was, it's like
(10:41):
maybe a month later, a month anda half later, she called me
back up and she was like theagency we went with is not doing
a good job.
You have two weeks to show uswhat you can do.
And the thing that sort of waslike just I don't know just
worked out time-wise becauselike right before that I had
asked my partner to come on.
He was a guy that I had hiredat BBVA.
(11:04):
He was like one of the bestdesigners and just best people
in terms of thought andcreativity that I had worked
with, and I had asked him tocome join me.
We didn't have any clients atthe time but I just said, listen
, let's take a risk.
I'll hire you for two months,let's just see if we can drum up
(11:24):
business together.
And literally the day he startedwas the day I got the email
from Repsol saying you have twoweeks, show us what you can do.
And so it was just like that.
Ultimately, that timing wasjust perfect for us because the
two of us worked for those twoweeks, put together an
incredible proposal of how wewould shift their commercial
(11:47):
website and we won the project.
And that sort of like reallysparked the whole company
because after that was our firstproject in the studio was like
the main commercial website ofthis energy giant of Spain.
And then that just turned intolike we redesigned really all of
their different digital touchpoints and then you know that
sort of like steamrolled intohiring employees and getting new
(12:10):
clients, and so but you know,the real reason why they hired
you is because you could invitetwo people to the conversation.
Yeah, I know, I do find myself Ido think it was funny, because
it was like I was like I don'tknow, going on that sometimes I
feel like I'm not one to not dosomething out of fear, and a lot
(12:34):
of times fear provokes me toactually do something even more
because I don't know, I'm just,I don't like making decisions or
not doing something based outof fear.
And so, like I do remembermyself in that meeting with them
and it was in Spanish,obviously I was trying to um,
present our ideas and proposalin Spanish, and obviously that's
(12:58):
not even my, my native language, and it's secondary to me, and
but you know it all works itselfout, but it's well, it's
secondary to me and but you knowit all works itself out, but
it's well.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (13:07):
It's funny, what a coincidence that
your first line was repsol.
It's our last client.
We just signed with repsolright now.
So, uh, this kind of like a uhthe the news I can bring to to
to this episode, um, but it's.
It's weird though that such abig client would sign a company
that was emerging, right,because usually these big
(13:28):
corporations, they have theirprocurement processes and you
have to undergo this likethree-month cycle of.
You know, talk to this person,these others send certificates.
You have to comply with thiswith that minimum revenue,
minimum years of existence.
So typically, if you haven'tbeen around for five years, big
corporations are going to hireyou.
(13:48):
Probably in design they makemore exceptions, but at least in
development I know we startedgetting a lot of corporates to
contact us in year five.
Before year five we worked fortwo or three of them, but we
were kind of like the exceptionright, because where there is a
process, there's also aworkaround, right, where there
is a procurement process,there's always a fast tracking
(14:11):
oh, we really need you.
Then you know, we did that forOrange, we did that for a
banking institution, we did thatfor another corporate here and
there.
But usually it's like oh no,you need to be like five years
old as a company.
You need to do at least onemillion in annual revenue to
make sure that you're a legitcompany.
They didn't have theserequirements for maybe it was
(14:31):
because COVID there were loserrequirements, or just because in
design usually they don't havethat.
Brian Farrell (14:37):
I don't know if it was a matter of like pre or
post COVID, because I didn'thave a business pre COVID,
post-covid, because I didn'thave a business pre-COVID.
But there's definitely aprocurement process and we had
to go through and present legalpaperwork in terms of employee
requirements or securityrequirements, all of that kind
of stuff, but it was neveraround the solvency of the
(15:03):
company.
Now we have lost pitches herein Spain, particularly related
to the government, because ofsolvency in our early years,
because we just didn't haveenough revenue to participate.
But the corporations that we'veworked with and we've really
only worked with corporationshere in Spain since the
beginning, corporations here inSpain since the beginning We've
(15:31):
never lost or not been able towork with one of them because of
revenue or our age.
I think maybe it is because of Imean, we are always.
Our entrance was always designand particularly related to
design system.
Many of our contracts here inSpain are are like designers
(15:52):
over a year where they will goin and be part of the team to
help evolve a design system or aspecific digital product.
So I don't know if it's becauseof that type of contract a
specific digital product.
So I don't know if it's becauseof that type of contract or if
it's the department within thecompany.
But our size or age has neverreally limited us here in Spain
(16:15):
in terms of working with reallylarge corporations.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (16:19):
As an American, you probably face this
cultural shock of you had anupper hand on negotiation,
perhaps, or adoption of risk,whereas Spaniards are typically
more risk averse.
Right and probably when yousaid I am not one to calculate
my decisions based on the fearfactor.
(16:40):
Right, and so a Spaniard wouldbe like more conservative
perhaps, and so maybe these I'mnot saying this is a fake, it
till you make it right, becauseyou are super transparent about
I'm a one man show, I'm justputting up together this
business.
But another person couldprobably say like, yeah, we
right, because we are a team, weare a company and we got these
(17:02):
credentials and you also had oneace up your sleeve, which was
the great work that you did atBBVA.
So probably those credentialsplayed in your favor, but I
don't know.
In comparison, when we started,I felt I took a different
approach, and maybe because Ihad more imposter syndrome and
(17:23):
that's something I still sufferfrom 10 years in, don't get me
wrong but I didn't play mycredentials from past companies
because I didn't want to beassociated to Deloitte and other
companies that worked for it inthe past.
I really don't want to haveanything to do, but probably
they would have won us projectsin certain cases because it's
large projects and whatnot, andwe're starting with a blank
slate at Mars Base.
(17:43):
That was probably theexperiment of the first year.
So how did you play thesecultural differences and do you
think that you had also anadvantage?
Because there's the typicalfascination for DX, for America
here.
Right, you hire an American,you'll pay twice as much for
exactly the same work, which isbecause it's in America.
(18:04):
It's kind of like hiring IBMnobody gets fired for doing so.
Right, what's the worst thatcould happen?
Brian Farrell (18:11):
Yeah, I'm sure all of those factors played in
Definitely as an Americanworking in the Spanish system
and having succeeded here andlasted, because a lot of times,
like I was saying back in 2016,working in the Spanish system
and having succeeded here andlasted because, you know, a lot
of times, like I was saying backin 2016, when BBVA was starting
their transformation, theybrought over a lot of Americans
(18:33):
at the same time, all at likereally high levels CMO, coo,
head of product, all of thoseand after two years, like there
was maybe, I think, 12 to 15 ofus, after two years, I was the
(19:17):
only American left.
I was the only one.
That really fact that I'velasted and been successful in
the Spanish system.
But I think it's also one ofthose things where I've realized
that the merger of American andSpanish culture is such a
beautiful fusion and it's likethe absolute best cultural
fusion that I've seen, because Ifeel like you know, the
(19:40):
standard image you have inAmerican is this like super
ambitious, goal oriented, careerdriven person.
And I think also the image youhave of a Spaniard is like this
person who really places valueon work-life balance, and they
really understand the value ofdisconnecting, which I also
think is, like, so important.
And so when you like, mergethose two cultures, you get
(20:04):
these.
And so when you like, mergethose two cultures, you get
these people who are superpassionate both about work and
life, and you get people who arecareer oriented but also
diverse in their interests,because they're not so
singularly focused.
And so I've always reallyvalued this fusion because I've
also seen how it has evolved meas a person and how I approach
(20:27):
life.
But also now at Farco, we placea heavy emphasis on merging
these cultures.
So we work significantly withthe United States, we work
significantly with bringingteams of Americans together with
our team here and creatingthese distributed teams, diverse
(20:49):
teams working together, becausethat, ultimately, I think, is
that fusion is so beautiful andit's so apparent with these
teams that are working together.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (21:01):
It's funny because in here we have
certain similarities, I wouldsay, because, I mean, I spent a
month a year in San Francisco,in the Valley.
That's where we kind of likeabsorb some of the ideas that
then we implemented in thecompany.
We created the company in 2014,but conceptualized it a couple
(21:22):
years before in 2014, butconceptualized it a couple years
before and so we were kind oflike one of the first companies
to bring in such like a supercohesive idea of company culture
.
Back in 2014, nobody wastalking about company culture in
Spain, nobody knew what thatmeant.
There were no remote companies,or very few of them, certainly
no office-less companies, right.
(21:44):
So I understand this and, assomebody who sells, also to
americans, that they appreciatethat we are not the typical
spanish, not only americans.
I mean, I've heard that fromseveral other countries, like
you know, uk, sweden, finland,all these other countries also.
I've got this image of spainlike good for partying and
holidays, but not for business.
We all know, know that.
(22:04):
We know the stereotype.
Our role here is to help todilute this stereotype and just
make it so that you know, goodbusiness quality can also come
from this country, right?
But anyways, going beyond that,there are certainly a few
aspects that will help.
You know you being native toAmerica and selling to American
(22:25):
clients who speak the samelanguage.
But also you know the initialcultural shock is different the
pacing in communications, thewording of the emails, what is
expected, regulations and othernon-so-tangible stuff that you
can in a negotiation.
You know that probablyAmericans want to cut to the
chase, right, they want to getmore.
(22:46):
They're pretty efficient aboutthat, as Brits take longer paths
around the negotiation here.
Talk about the weather, whatnot?
Spaniards, we like to have 17conversations before the actual
contract discussion, right?
So a lot of these culturaldifferences matter a lot, but
most of your I that's?
(23:06):
That's a question.
I assume most of your businesscomes from from the US, so I
assume that this culturalaffinity or understanding it's
good for your business, becauseyou're like, yeah, no, do you
need to tell me all about this?
I know how to, how UScorporations breathe.
I know how US companies work.
I'm American, know how uscompanies work, I'm american,
right?
So I guess that that helps inthe negotiation I think
(23:30):
definitely.
Brian Farrell (23:31):
I mean, I think most of our us clients also are
people that I've worked with inthe past, so there's like
there's alreadya trust built upjust through working together.
But those, those that arecompletely new, I think
definitely the fact that youwould be working with a company
(23:53):
that's owned by an American andthat probably has certain
cultural behaviors that aresimilar to those of an American,
probably reduces any type ofuncertainty of working with a
company outside of the UnitedStates, for sure.
But to your point aroundbringing back this idea of
(24:14):
culture here to Spain from yourtime in San Francisco, I think
is really important andobviously I think the industry
in general is changing here inSpain and I think employers are
starting to value employees alittle bit more.
I absolutely love living inSpain.
(24:36):
Obviously, I have chosen tolive here, I prefer to live here
.
But I think one of my biggestcriticisms from the beginning,
and something that I alwaysnotice, is it's a little bit of
a abusive labor market and Ithink, where employers were
taking advantage and not reallyvaluing or showing value towards
their employees.
(24:56):
And you know, I think it stemsback to your earlier point in
terms of, like Spaniards, reallythriving and placing a high
importance on stability andsecurity.
And you know, I think, if youreally wanted to get back into,
like, where this stems from it's, you know, 50 years ago you
were in a dictatorship, you know.
(25:17):
And so I think that's that longago.
And so, like, the oldergenerations have always had this
mindset of stability and like,if you have a job at a bank or
you have a job at a bigcorporation, like you would
never think about leaving it.
And I think that's also why,like here in Spain, like the
most, one of the most covetedjobs is a government employer,
(25:39):
the Funcionario, and it'sbecause you will never lose that
job which, like in the UnitedStates, you would never tell
someone you would want to gowork for the government.
No one wants to work for thegovernment, but it's because
there's this mindset here ofstability.
And I think that has alsoprovoked this abusive, or more
(26:01):
abusive labor market, becauseemployers know that they will
never lose that employee and sothey can treat them however they
want.
And so for me also, what I'mtrying to do and we're super
small and it's not like I'mgoing to make a big impact on
this sort of cultural shift, butI do want to do my part in it
and even though I can make alittle ripple in terms of really
(26:23):
creating a culture at a Spanishcompany that places huge
importance on valuing theemployee and compensating the
employee for doing good work, tome is super important and
actually it reminds me I was.
Do you know the company Tierra?
(26:46):
It's a like a burrito place.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (26:51):
Well, so anyways, in the US, no, no,
it's here.
Brian Farrell (26:54):
It's all through Madrid.
There's some.
It's basically it's more orless a fast food chain, but for
those Americans it's basicallylike Chipotle, but it's super,
super successful.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (27:10):
They call it Tierra Burrito, right,
something like that.
Yeah, exactly, but it's a fastfood chain.
Brian Farrell (27:16):
It's like blowing up here in Spain, and so he's a
friend of mine.
He's an American, but he's alsobringing over this cultural
mindset of career growth withinthe company and really valuing
the employees.
And so he told me that he satdown with the head of McDonald's
here in Spain and the guy fromMcDonald's went to him and he
was like you know, I'm likeyou're making me treat my
(27:40):
employees better because they'reall leaving to go work for you.
And I was like that would bethe most beautiful compliment
that any couldn't could evergive me If, like another agency
at some point comes to me andsays, listen, brian, like you're
making me treat my employeesbetter because, or pay them
better because of the way thatyou're treating your employees.
(28:01):
I think it's like that would be, hands down, the goal.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (28:08):
We are small raindrops in a big ocean
of corporate bullshit, right,and so the rippling effect we
can create is relatively small,not to say minuscule, but I
think we can have some impact,right, because it begins in the
individual.
Then we can expand, you know,to your point.
This is a brilliant example andI don't know if that will ever
(28:30):
happen to us, but certainly Iknow that we are changing the
industry very modestly, but weare, because you guys probably
are introducing new designsystems to the market.
You have introduced more like aboutique approach to design
(28:50):
compared to the I mean designagencies, to my understanding,
which is pretty limited, butI've always conceptualized as
something like very boutique.
Right, probably there are superbig generalizations, but because
you work and you optimize forcreativity, I don't think you
can create a kind of like a moldand a kind of cookie cutter
(29:13):
framework and just replicate itand grow heavily and whatnot,
the way big consultancies do ordevelopment consultancies do.
They're like you know, I justbuy developers and then just do
giant roll-ups of differentagencies and consultancies and
put them all together and we'llfigure out, because we optimize
for productivity, not forcreativity.
(29:34):
Therefore, we can scale thisvery, very high, and so I think
there was more space to grow asa boutique development agency,
like we did, and to bring thisdifferent approach and have no
office, optimize for employeehappiness and all of that than
for design agencies.
I don't know if I'm in theright or I'm in the wrong.
(29:55):
What's your perception of these?
Your market was like?
What was your differentiation?
Yeah, with regards to otherboutique agencies.
Brian Farrell (30:05):
Yeah, what was your differentiation with
regards to other boutiqueagencies?
Yeah, well, I mean, thisinsight sort of came to me when
I was at BBVA, because, eventhough we were growing a really
large internal design team,there was just too much work and
we had to work with a lot ofdifferent vendors, both really
big ones and then also reallyboutique ones.
And something I always saw iswhen we would go with the big
ones that could cover allaspects of the project
(30:27):
end-to-end, we would be giventhe deliverable and even though
we would be able to implement itimmediately into our systems,
we were always left like thequality is average and so we
would go in and have to likeelevate the quality and design
of it.
Um, and then when we would workwith the smaller boutiques
(30:48):
which I love supporting andloved working with them because
the creativity was so beautifulwe would be given the final
deliverable and even though thequality was amazing, it was
clear they had no idea of aroundlarge systems and so we would
have to go in and likereconfigure it in order to
implement into our systems, andso that was sort of like.
The insight to me is likethere's there's this space in
(31:09):
the market for a small boutiquewho is still um.
Main focus is quality, and it'sit's not about you know profit
and building large teams or youdon't really know if you're
getting the A team or the D teambut that also knows how to
implement creativity and scaledesign at a macro level.
(31:35):
And so that's really wherewe're trying to play in the
space in terms of we're a smallteam, we're 10 people, but we're
able to do really big workbecause we know from working at
really large corporations how tosystemize our design so that it
(31:58):
can be implemented in thosesystems no-transcript, and my
(32:27):
partners used to work also inbig consultancies and I think
that the main thing that we'vegot in common here as an agency
we're boutique and we're smallbecause we want to be small, we
want to keep it small.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (32:39):
We could have Mars Base.
You know, we're 10 years old,we're a team of 20.
We could have grown to 50,perhaps, right, if we so had
wanted, but maybe we would alsohave suffered setbacks and had
to scale down, maybe because ofthe market downturns, because of
crisis, because of large clientjust switching providers and
(32:59):
whatnot.
We never wanted this.
We wanted to always be smallerthan we should be very
consciously about this, becausethis way you keep agency
ownership and quality and, atthe same time, you've got the
best gray matter that you caninvest in producing systems at
scale right.
(33:20):
Right, because I, you know, inthe last 24 months and we
discussed this over beers theother time most of the boutique
development agencies, they havedisappeared.
They either shut down because,when they went out of business,
because they got tired, orbecause they were like, oh,
there were tailwinds for so manyyears.
(33:40):
Now there are set winds and wekind of like, oh, we married to
somebody else, we, we got tiredof this Right.
Many years now there'sheadwinds and we kind of like oh
, we merged with somebody else,we, we got tired of this, right.
I'm talking about companieslike karumi, like code gram,
like um, like some other, someother companies that were super
boutique and they specialize inthis and they're like, after 10
years, we're not just not goingto compete anymore and, um, my
point being, most of thesecompanies, they were extremely
(34:01):
good in the technical side, butthey were not that great in
business.
I'm not saying these two weren't.
They had really really largeclients.
But from the employer's pointof view, you at BBBA, you have
to choose sometimes between thelarge, generic eccentric that
can give you the end-to-end andthey have the budget, they have
(34:21):
their team to start tomorrow.
They can produce things atscale, but the quality sucks and
then go for the really niche.
I'm not putting these words inyour mouth, I'm saying this
myself.
But then the boutique agency arelike, yeah, brilliant, looks
fantastic, but this doesn'tscale.
I need three more peopletomorrow.
You guys can't deliver thisright.
(34:42):
And so maybe we have, becausewe have this past in the
corporates, you and I or mypartners now you and your
partner too.
Then you can conceptualizethings differently at the
intersection of technology ordesign and the business right.
You take both things intoaccount.
And I don't know maybe that'smy observation here, so I don't
(35:05):
know if you share it or not butI think that other boutique
companies, they just createboutique because they don't know
any better.
They're super technicallyskilled, but the moment where
business comes into play they'relike I can do that, I'm not
interested.
I hear that I'm not interestedin business.
Chances are you are not goingto do very big clients or you're
(35:25):
not going to last for longer,because people appreciate that
business saffiness right.
Brian Farrell (35:33):
Yeah, I mean we spend a lot of time, for
instance, on measurement plans.
So how to measure the designthat we're doing for clients?
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (35:45):
What does that mean?
I'm not familiar with theconcept.
Brian Farrell (35:48):
So how, yeah, so how to measure the value of
design, Um, and, for instance, adesign system of what uh that
we're building for a client,like how to extract metrics even
in the first month after launchand then continually as it
grows?
Because the business side andtypically a lot of times we'll
(36:11):
start our pitch decks with justexplaining the value and the ROI
of investing in design throughvery specific examples and case
studies that we now have overthe last four years with other
corporations, Because I stillthink that there is a learning
curve and sort of a hesitationaround truly investing in design
(36:33):
without understanding how it'sgoing to impact your business.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (36:39):
What would be a good example of these
KPIs?
So like what kind of KPI like,for instance, that really
resonates?
I think one of our bestportfolios, or two of our best
portfolios, are one that acompany will help to rebuild
their MVP and we help them togrow their revenue by a factor
of 300, something like that.
(37:00):
Right, really crazy Five years.
But you know, they went fromsomething that didn't scale to
something that scale and nowthey're a multimillion company,
right.
Or another one that they soldthe company.
They managed to sell thecompany because of the
technology we developed for them, right.
So we helped the company togrow in valuation and have an
asset that was worth anacquisition, right.
(37:21):
So what would be in design?
What would be the KPIs thatyou're using to measure this
against?
Brian Farrell (37:28):
Yeah, so, like in specific projects, like a
commercial website, it would belike um increase in lead
generation, um or sales increasethrough the platform.
Uh, when we're talking aboutdesign systems, it's time to
(37:49):
market for introduction into anew market, taking up one
product from one country toanother country and what's the
increase in time that you'reable to launch?
It would be even down to thetechnical side in terms of how
fast can you detect an error orbug and fix it.
How fast are you launching newfeatures using?
(38:26):
If you have created asuccessful design system, that
multiplier becomes a very, verybig number quickly to the
distinction between lifestylebusinesses and businesses that
are, you know, pushed for growth.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (38:46):
You probably have got also the upper
hand on negotiation and you cancherry pick your customers.
It's not always so, orhopefully in your case it is.
It hasn't been so for 10 yearson Mars days, but for the for
the most part, we could pick theclients that we wanted to work
for, right, and so that gives usa longer, not a runway, but it
(39:11):
gives you better clients thatthen you don't have to replace
so often, that you build adeeper bond with them and stuff
like that.
And while technically,lifestyle businesses come across
as something not ambitious,mostly in the eyes of Americans,
I'm getting these more when Igo to America oh, yours is a
(39:32):
lifestyle business.
Oh man, that's easier.
Right, I wouldn't say like theycall us lazy, but it's like
yeah, it's easy, everybody canbuild a lifestyle business.
That's not ambitious.
You will not create impact.
You cannot make a dent in theuniverse.
That's not ambitious.
You will not create impact.
You cannot create a dent andmake a dent in the universe.
But at the same time it's like,yeah, but we're 10 years in,
you know, making a healthyprofit every year.
Maybe the company is not verylarge, but we work for big
(39:55):
companies as well.
We're healthy, we're notstressed, not balding at 40
years old and not a lot of grayhair, no divorces, no depression
.
No, I don't know all of thesehealth problems that a lot of
people in the industry sufferfrom right and I don't know.
For me, it is ambitious tocreate a culture where employees
(40:18):
you know, I'm not, I don't likethere was another word better
for talent retention.
I think there was, I don'tremember right now, but it's
kind of like you know employeeshave a tenure of seven to nine
years in our company, which isunheard of.
Three people have left in 10years, right Out of the 30 that
we have hired.
So what is your policy forclient choosing and how do you
(40:45):
establish these long-termrelationships, granted that
you're four years old now, butI'm pretty sure that you still
retain the same clients from2020.
Brian Farrell (40:54):
uh, yeah, I mean I think that's the goal is
particularly in terms ofcreating financial stability.
Um with a small company ishaving retainer clients and
long-term relationships, anddefinitely we try and do that.
Um, I think for me also it's amatter of um keeping diversity
(41:18):
in the studio so that employeesconsistently can grow in new
areas and more complex systemsand bigger teams.
That required differentceremonies and workflows with
(41:42):
startup clients, that you'reworking with a really small team
.
Everyone on the call is thedecision maker.
You're typically launching infaster timelines, because I
think the pairing of those twoare really interesting, not only
for the energy and spirit of astudio, but also in terms of
(42:04):
just portfolio cases and a lotof times we're working with
cause-related startups, sofounders who are trying to start
businesses in circular economyor climate or sustainable travel
(42:25):
, and so that's a nice pairingwith Fortune 500, who's trying
to scale their product market.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (42:35):
And how did you get to work with the
retainer?
Because one of the things youmight have observed as an
American is Spain doesn't have abig tradition of working with
retainers, and even less so indesign, Like development,
because there's the bodyshopping.
Maybe in design, you also usethe body shopping system, but in
(42:56):
2014, it was like I remember wewere having the conversation
with using retainer systemsdiamond materials nobody was
having it and, luckily enough,we got hired from companies from
Sweden, Finland, the UK,Germany, and then we were able
to introduce it in Spain.
But, like you know, kind oflike going abroad first and then
having clients here who weconverted to retainer contracts
(43:19):
right, Maybe coming in at 2020was easier, or do you have only
retainers with American clientsand then the fixed bid ones in
Spain?
Brian Farrell (43:29):
No, we have retainer.
I mean typically the retainerhere on the design side is
called the implant so and thecorporation wants to hire
however many designers to comeultimately be a part of their
internal team.
It's something that I startedto see when I was working at
BBVA.
We had a lot of differentimplants.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (43:48):
The problem that I see there is
what's the difference betweenimplants and body shopping?
Because it sounds like bodyshopping, isn't it?
Brian Farrell (43:55):
I don't know what body shopping is Body shopping.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (43:58):
yeah, it's kind of like you're loaning
them a few people.
Then they become internalemployees.
Right, they have their ownemail.
Brian Farrell (44:06):
They get into their dynamics.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (44:08):
It would be the same thing, body
shopping.
Brian Farrell (44:10):
So we call it, on the design side, a design
implant, and we had a lot ofthem at BBVA.
The problem is is that they'renever treated as employees, so
they don't have a career path,they don't have a career manager
, but they're literally thereevery single day, 40 hours a
(44:30):
week, as if they were aninternal employee.
So they're sort of like left ontheir own little island because
(44:51):
they're not really connected tothe agency that they were
contracted.
Well, where they have a careerpath, they have a manager within
Farco, even though they are100% assigned to that Spanish
corporation as another internaldesigner within their team,
(45:12):
which I think is reallyimportant, because it not only
is great for that particulardesigner, because then they also
they have a career path,they're growing but then it's
good for the client as well,because they're continually
bringing new ideas to the table.
I think that's one of thebenefits of hiring external help
is because you want fresh ideas, you don't want someone so
(45:32):
bogged down in the internalpolitics, and so if you can
create that dynamic where thatimplant or, in our case, hybrid
has the connection to theexterior world, has the
references coming from thestudio of other clients, I think
that only benefits the endclient of the corporation as
well.
But yeah, I mean to your point,like we have retainers here in
(45:58):
Spain, I would say they're alittle bit different in terms of
time.
I mean, the ones in the US aretypically like year long ones.
Those are the contracts andhere we see it's like six months
.
We can get a corporation to likeevery six months we renew it.
Sometimes it's like every 13weeks.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (46:17):
So I guess that's the difference okay
, yeah, the reason I brought upbody shopping, it's because one
of the things that we reallydidn't want to do with our
company, because, from the fromthe point of view of the
provider, we have seen that theyalienate the developer.
Right, of course, you're likethe company is borrowing a
couple of developers from you.
(46:38):
It sounds good, it's a stablecontract, it's year long, then
they pay for full-time employees.
It's two, three, four, fivepeople, if you want.
Sounds good in principle, butthen in practice, these people
don't feel part of the client,but also they don't feel part of
your company right and Iremember clients.
(46:58):
They want to have body shoppingbecause they're like no, because
I want them to be part of ourcompany.
They will be invited to ourcompany days, they'll have our
email, they'll be on our Slackand all of that.
It's like, yeah, but then theydon't have the benefits that
your employees have.
They don't have to go.
I mean, sometimes they wantthem to go to the office, which
is something as a remote companywe don't do.
(47:18):
But don't get me wrong.
I think they want the best partof it, but they don't want the
worst part of it, which is likeyeah, I mean, you will not have
this person really.
You just want to kind of likelease them if you want, right,
and for us as a provider, thatperson would feel super
disconnected from our team too.
That's why we, in this case, wedon't do it and what we do is
(47:43):
like the same approach that youguys have.
Like the management happenshere internally in Marspace.
They are on our tools, they'reon the client tools as well, but
they participate in our teamdynamics.
Like we do a company, you gettogether, they come to our event
.
The client does a company gettogether, they don't go to that
event, right, and and so theystill feel very connected.
That's the way that we canoptimize for employee longevity
(48:06):
Right.
Brian Farrell (48:07):
So that that's yeah, I mean, I think, but I
think it's like about, I mean,our case.
It's like a true hybrid.
I mean, they participate in inboth companies, events and, and,
but the mentorship happens onour end.
But I think it's what's reallyimportant is to communicate this
at the beginning when you'regoing into these types of
relationships with corporationswhere they want this type of
(48:29):
implant.
Um, to be very clear is likethis is how it works on our end.
These are the benefits of why wedo it this way, and also the
concept of rotation, because Ithink people who want to work on
the agency side, they do thatbecause they want visibility and
contact with different clients,and so they have purposely
(48:52):
chosen not to work in-house at acorporation, and so.
But when a corporation hiresthis type of profile, they think
it is forever.
They want it to be like anemployee because of the
integration into their internalteams, and so I think the
(49:13):
challenges that I've seen iswhen you go back to a
corporation and say listen, it'stime for a rotation, this
profile needs to move on toanother project and another
client and um, if that idea hasnot been pre communicated, I
think that's where you arise atsome problems, um, but I do
(49:34):
believe that, like the, the, theidea of rotation is so
important.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (49:39):
Yeah, yeah, because I think from the
buyer's perspective, from theclient perspective, it's like I
hire an agency so that they giveme continued support, like 40
hours per week, no downtime.
The employee will never leaveOnce they acquire the knowledge
of the platform.
Once they acquire the knowledgeof the platform, it will never
go down right.
And I mean, if you did thatinternally and the employee
(50:02):
leaves, then you would lose itanyways.
It's only natural that anagency, the developer, can also
quit the company and there willbe some downtime.
For instance, the way weminimize this is we have a
minimum of two people in theproject, so it would be a very
big coincidence that the two ofthem, or three of them, five of
(50:23):
them, they left at the same time.
There's always like a managerand a tech lead and then the
developer by minimum standards,so that if the developer quits,
there's the tech lead who hascentralized, also stored in the
knowledge of the platform, andthen we minimize the.
You can always present someKPIs like we minimize the ramp
(50:43):
up, adaptation period or thecreativity and productivity.
You know it decreases after ayear.
We have calculated a year and ahalf.
That's when we typically wehave a rotation policy of 18
months.
But yeah, if the client and thedeveloper are happy and in some
cases we have people five yearsin the same project because
(51:04):
both of them they wanted eachother in the project.
They wanted the developerwanted to stay.
But I kind of like to wrap up.
I've got a couple questionsalso.
You know, I always ask toeverybody because we were fully
transparent with these and welike to have other examples on
the show.
Which is where's the at theoffice Like?
(51:26):
Because you know it sounds veryrosy, it sounds dreamlike, but
it's not always like this andeven though bootstrap businesses
, typically we have less orfewer lows than highs, we do
have them sometimes.
What has been your worst day atthe office with Fargo?
Brian Farrell (51:46):
Well, the thing is that I'm a designer by
training and before this role asa business owner, I was always
even though in very highpositions later on in my career,
but very specific to projectseven though in very high
positions later on in my career,but very specific to projects
and so my 40 hours a week werevery specific and dedicated to
project work and very specifictasks.
And then when I stepped intothis role, I'm not on projects,
(52:10):
my responsibilities and roledefinition is completely
different in terms of businessdevelopment and networking, and
it's not so natural and it wasnot so natural for me.
And so my worst days were thosewhere I didn't feel productive,
and it was because I didn'tnecessarily have to work an
(52:33):
eight-hour day.
I mean, there's only so muchnew business development you can
do, but mentally I wasn't usedto not being completely busy for
a full eight hours, and so itwas.
It was like that it wasrecalibrating my mindset to
feeling productive in a new wayand, honestly, I mean one of the
(52:55):
conversations that I've hadrecently with another agency
owner that really brought me somuch peace was him saying like
Brian, I only do three or fourhours of work a day.
That's all that's needed of meand you know I spend the rest of
my time doing other stuff andhe has a super successful agency
agency and it was like it wasthis eye-opening moment where it
(53:20):
was like, okay, like you don'thave to work an eight hour
Monday to Friday type of this isnot your job anymore, it's it's
much different, and so I thinkhaving that in mind and and and
knowing that you know how I domy work and when I do my work is
not on the same time scheduleas before was has really helped
(53:46):
me out.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (53:49):
Yeah, it's a really good point.
Actually makes me think thatI'm on purpose.
I'm trying to work fewer hoursper day because, even though it
sounds counterproductive,because you know working less
means probably less revenue,right, but then you increase
another KPI, which is you'remore creative, and then you
focus more on the things thatmatter, right.
I know I could fill my housewith tasks, right.
(54:12):
I've got tasks that have beenpending for 6, 12, 18 months.
Sometimes I see some things onlinear or on my task management
systems, like this task wascreated in 2018.
Like, for fuck's sake, it'sstill there.
But because we got so manythings chief, everything,
officer right, that doesn't meanit has to be done.
So my new framework is likecompletion by ignoring, right,
(54:37):
which is, some tasks are bestleft ignored.
If they disappear, they werenot really important.
If they are really important,they will come back twice.
Right, I'm not saying you shouldbe doing this with everything,
but most of the things we do, wedo it just because we think we
have to do it, and we couldoutsource them, we could
automate them, we couldeliminate them altogether, and I
(54:59):
think that's one of the risksthat we, as first-time founders,
that we incur in because we'rejust not used and we're like, oh
no, I'm not going to hiresomebody to do this stuff.
He's going to charge me 300euros.
Like what's 300 euros?
Probably your hourly fee as afounder of Barco is way higher
than that.
Of course you should be hiringthat person, but in your mind it
(55:21):
goes against your profit, right?
And you still have got thementality of a really small
business owner, and it's one ofthe things that we have to
battle against.
How about?
Were you any close to shuttingdown your business?
Brian Farrell (55:34):
Were there any periods in time that you were
like, ah well, short of money,or no, I mean, like you said,
we're I mean, we've always beenbootstrapped and we've always
grown organically based on theclients that have come in.
And, like I was saying, we sortof had it easy from the
beginning because we startedwith really big clients.
But I will say that, like lastyear, first quarter, when
(56:00):
everyone was concerned about theeconomy and our clients were
not opening up their budgets andreducing headcount, and I mean,
we didn't make any profit inthe first quarter of 2023.
And so that was like probablythe most challenging period, and
I think for me, though, lookingback on it, because we had
(56:23):
started off on such good footingfrom the very beginning, I'm
almost glad that that happened,because it sort of gave me
perspective on what a challengelooks like, how to prepare for
it and, most importantly, thatwe can survive it.
So it also has sort of likecalmed me down a little bit as a
(56:47):
business owner, because I thinkparticularly because I'm new to
this like I always think we'regoing to fail, like I just have
this, have this mindset of wecould fail any day, which really
really stressed me out, and so,having gone through that period
where we really didn't make anyprofit at all, we weren't at a
(57:10):
loss, but it wasn't a successfulquarter at all sort of like
peace of mind and alsoconfidence in terms of if it
happens again, it's not going tobe the end of our company.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (57:25):
Since you shared, I'm going to be
sharing as well.
We had a similar situation inQ2 last year, right and so, and
that contract we didn't land andwe were supposed to.
We had doubled down on sales onthat project.
It would have been a very bigproject for us.
Then we completely took theattention away from other sales
processes, which in hindsight weshouldn't have.
(57:47):
Then we, because we didn't landthe project, all of a sudden we
had to not help the team but asignificant part of the team
without the project.
Then we had to go back to theseclients that we have left
unattended for a while, orpotential clients, so like, look
, this happened, we're supertransparent.
They had a couple of them andended up hiring us.
(58:08):
So we managed to turn thesituation around.
But that quarter I mean we don'tmeasure quarterly profit.
I don't know if that'ssomething that you guys do and I
think that's pretty clever.
It could have been prettydisastrous if we hadn't reverted
the situation.
It's also that situation ofbeing at peril for a while.
It's like, wow, you guys shouldget this fixed.
(58:31):
I think it was also a wake-upcall for the company.
I think it was positive.
Last question before we wrap itup because we're running out of
time.
What was your most expensivefuck-up and can you quantify the
money?
Brian Farrell (58:45):
Yeah, I mean you had mentioned this yesterday.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (58:49):
I was trying to think about what is
the the first time we prepare?
I have to say First time weprepare with this question.
Brian Farrell (58:55):
Yeah, I was like what is a fuck-up?
That I could talk and and, andthankfully, at least at fargo,
there hasn't been a a fuck up umthat I can quantify um, but I
will say um, that in my career,um, a big fuck up was
particularly related to you know, I started in in design studios
(59:16):
in new york city back in 2003,where most of it was
print-related, and so going onpress check and sending a client
through with an error andhaving to reprint definitely
happened many different timesand cost tens of thousands of
dollars, tens of thousands ofdollars.
(59:41):
And, quite honestly, one of thebiggest pieces of advice I give
to any designer going intoparticularly the digital space
now is find a client, afreelance project that will
require you to go on press check, because it creates a sense of
detail and preciseness that isso important that I think
designers that go directly intothe digital space don't have,
(01:00:04):
because it's so easy to correctbugs.
You just go over to yourdeveloper and say code this.
Differently Did I see a lack ofrefinement and attention to
detail on designers that haven'tnecessarily gone through the
more physical print-relatedindustry?
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (01:00:22):
I'm not laughing because of your
fuck-up.
I'm laughing because,coincidentally and I haven't
heard this story I'm drinkingtea from a cup that happens to
have a typo.
You know that's our slogan.
Can you read Instead of alien,alien.
Brian Farrell (01:00:35):
That's our slogan .
Can you read Instead?
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (01:00:37):
of alien Alien.
I think six different peoplesaw the design, but we didn't
see this typo and we printed,like I don't know, 50.
We made 50 of these coffee mugsand when they arrived, when
they were shipping it, beforereceiving them, I was like, oh,
(01:01:01):
by the way, I think there's atypo here, like they're arriving
today.
So we have to reprint them, wehave to remake them and we sent
them anyways.
We sent the wrong one and thefixed one to the team as a
reminder that everybody fucks up, because it was the designer
fucked up.
But then the head of peoplereviewed it.
She didn't say it.
(01:01:21):
The three founders reviewed thedesigns for other nerds and this
one in particular.
We didn't see it and somebodyelse was involved Didn't see it
either.
Six different people didn't seethese typos, you know.
So I think it's a great examplethat these printing you know
these printing check.
It's very good.
Brian, you've been extremelygenerous with your transparency
(01:01:45):
and sharing your wisdom nuggetsand your experience and your
time.
I want to give you 30 secondsto kind of like I'm rolling the
carpet for you.
Say how we can help you.
So I'm rolling the carpet foryou.
Say how we can help you and,farco, if you've got something
coming up in your lifebusiness-wise that you want to
announce, just do it here.
Brian Farrell (01:02:05):
Ask for a favor from the community.
Great.
So, I mean, I think our visionis to continually put Spain on
the global radar, so that reallyis the essence of what we're
trying to do.
So, if you're in a marketoutside of Spain, think of the
(01:02:26):
talent that's here, because itis really incredible.
And these fusions of culture, Itell you, are creating not only
diverse, interesting teams butsuper fun to work with.
So that's basically all I haveto say.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (01:02:44):
Thank you, Brian.
Brian Farrell (01:02:47):
You're welcome.
Hello everybody, welcome to Life on
Mars again.
Alex, thrilled to have you hereand, as we announced, we're
bringing back the podcast.
And, as we announced too, thisis one of the episodes that we
had recorded a few months backbut that didn't see the light of
day.
I think the content isevergreen anyways, and because
in this episode we're talking toBrian Farrell from the Varco
(00:38):
Design Studio, one design studiothat we got very close to in
the last months, if not years.
We respect them very much.
We think they're a company tolook up to.
They have very, very similarvalues as the ones we have here
at MarsBased.
They're super boutique, theywork mostly American clients,
(00:59):
but they run from Spain and wecompare models.
But more than anything, thisconversation is about the shift
in the market that I have beenpreaching about in the last
months, where we have to sellmore and more often because we
are not able to sell retainersanymore or companies aren't able
(01:22):
to sign retainer contractsanymore.
Projects are being canceled,downsized, postponed.
So at the receiving end of allthese projects the providers,
the companies like MarsBased,like Farco we are not having the
best time of our lives, to behonest Most competitors to
(01:47):
similar companies that we havehere in, either in Barcelona or
internationally, have shut down,downsized.
They have had to let go a lotof people.
That's not our case, but it'strue.
It's becoming a real struggleto sell projects and to have a
prediction of what's going tohappen in the next three months,
and that's not ideal.
So we discussed this with Brian.
We discussed sales, wediscussed leadership,
(02:09):
communication, company cultureand how to run a boutique
company.
So, without further ado, let meintroduce you to our friend,
brian Farrell.
Brian, welcome to the show.
How are you?
Brian Farrell (02:19):
doing.
Thank you for having me.
I'm doing good.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (02:23):
We're live, live on Mars, the podcast
of MarsBased .
We almost worked together on aproject.
We got to know you guys becauseof a joint proposal we launched
for a potential client.
Unfortunately that didn't gothrough, but we like your
company so much.
I feel like there's manyparallelisms between Parco and
(02:46):
MarsBased and we want to givevoice to this kind of companies,
because we don't get the press,we don't get media coverage, we
don't get, you know, all ofthis attention that all
VC-backed companies get.
So maybe start introducingFarco and how did you start and
what you guys do.
Brian Farrell (03:07):
Sure, yeah.
I mean, we were really excitedabout potentially partnering
with you guys as well, andhopefully we'll get to find an
opportunity in the future to doso.
Um, but at least we gotconnected to share knowledge and
um beers at least um, since weboth like craft beer.
So we are in our fourth year atFarco.
(03:29):
I'm an American, I'm fromAtlanta, georgia, and I was up
and down the East Coastdifferent agencies, my whole
career, and about nine years agothe bank BBVA, who has a
headquarters here in Madrid, wasstarting their digital
transformation.
So they did a global talentsearch and they were bringing
(03:55):
over a lot of differentAmericans at senior positions,
and I just happened to be one ofthem.
So at the time I was living inWashington DC working for a
digital agency and thenultimately moved over to Madrid
to start and lead the designteam internally at the bank, and
I was there for four years.
It was this magical time at thestart of their digital
transformation, where they wereputting a lot of investment and
(04:20):
visibility into design andinnovation.
We were able to really changeeverything at the bank, from the
methodologies down to all thedifferent digital products, to
the identity, but it was reallythe main goal there was shifting
(04:41):
the internal culture fromdesign as this entity of
production to really design asat the center of the culture of
the company, and I think thatwas really the beautiful shift
that we saw, and I think,ultimately towards the end when
I at least of my time there in2020, bbva was really looked at
(05:05):
as sort of this referencetowards digital transformation.
They were one of the first onesthat actually put high
investment into it, and so Iultimately, at the end of the
four years, just felt like wehad changed most of the stuff
and my time was, you know, my mywork there had was done.
(05:25):
I was looking for a newchallenge.
I was thinking aboutpotentially um asking and
finding a U S agency that wouldwant to open a office in Spain,
because I think part ofsomething I realized before
moving to Spain was that itwasn't really on the radar of
(05:49):
creative circles in the UnitedStates.
We often thought about reallybig creative hubs in the US, but
outside of the US we wouldthink of London and Berlin,
sometimes we would talk aboutTokyo, but no one was talking
about Spain.
So when I took the role at thebank and I knew I had to grow
like a really large creativeteam, I was unsure because I
(06:12):
didn't know any of the creativecommunity of product designers
or developers, and so that wasone of the, I think, most
beautiful surprises that I hadin terms of moving here was
getting connected to all ofthese really talented
communities, and so for me, itwas about that was sort of like
what sparked the ideas how do Ibring together all of the most
(06:33):
talented designers anddevelopers that are within these
different communities and putit on the global radar,
particularly in the UnitedStates, because that's sort of
you know where my network is,particularly in the United
States, because that's sort ofyou know where my network is.
And so at first, I was thinkingabout just going to one of the
agencies that I had worked forand presenting this idea of okay
, well, why don't you come overto Spain and open up an office?
(06:54):
And then, ultimately, what Idecided was well, why not just
go at it myself and see if I cando it myself?
So that is ultimately what Idecided to do, and that's what
has led us to here four yearslater.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (07:10):
But yeah, you didn't do it alone,
right?
So take me back to the firstdays of Farco.
Who did you create it with andhow did you convince him?
Brian Farrell (07:18):
Well, so the very first day of the studio was the
first day of our confinementhere in Spain for COVID.
So I think it was like yeah, itwas crazy.
Well, I mean, I think you lookat that and you're like, oh,
that was like horrible timing.
But when you really look backat it, like I had no overhead, I
had no office, no employees, Ihad no clients, but it wasn't as
(07:43):
stressful.
I think for me as a businessowner it was a lot less
stressful than actually having abusiness at that point because
I didn't like I was saying I hadzero expenses.
And then it gave me a goodthree, four months where the
whole world was basicallyparalyzed, just to talk to
people and network, and I thinkit actually ended up being great
(08:05):
because everyone was locked intheir homes.
I was able to get in touch withinvestors and venture
capitalists and equity peopleand CEOs of other agencies,
because we had so much free time.
We were all stuck at home, andso I got to talk and get
connected with a lot of peopleduring those first three, four
(08:26):
months and I really just tookthe pressure off.
It wasn't about making moneyand getting clients, it was just
about like talking to a lot ofpeople and learning, and then
ultimately, what happened wassort of towards the end of 2020,
I was, I mean, obviously thecase study of BBVA helped me a
(08:49):
lot in terms of finding ourfirst clients, which ultimately
was Repsol, which is, you know,a really large energy client
here in Spain who was trying toundergo and start their own
digital transformation.
And ultimately, how it startedwas I had gotten connected with
(09:11):
the head of design there.
She had asked me to participatein a pitch for their commercial
web, their main commercialwebsite, and I remember I was
like a one man team at thatpoint, and so I was.
I was, I had my slot in thecalendar to pitch our proposal,
our mine proposal.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (09:32):
Yeah, it was our right, Me and my
company.
Brian Farrell (09:36):
No, she literally wrote me and she goes because,
like in the invite, which waslike all the heads of the
different departments of Repsol,and it was just me, and she was
like, can you invite otherpeople from your company to this
meeting?
It looks like because they weretalking with all of these, like
the big digital agencies ofMadrid, you know, and they're
(09:58):
all pretty well known, but they,you know, were bringing their
head of technology and head ofdesign and head of strategy, and
it was just like Brian Farrellin the invite.
And I was like I can't, I'mlike a one-man team right now.
So I pitched Well, you toldthem no, I told her.
I was like listen, I'm justlike a one-man person at this
time.
I'm putting together a reallygood team.
(10:19):
I think we'll do a really goodjob for you, but at this point I
don't have, it's just me.
And so, anyways, I went intothe pitch, I pitched our
proposal.
I didn't win it.
Obviously, they wanted to gowith a more credible agency, or
at least one that was around fora little bit longer, but they
really liked my proposal and sowhat happened was, it's like
(10:41):
maybe a month later, a month anda half later, she called me
back up and she was like theagency we went with is not doing
a good job.
You have two weeks to show uswhat you can do.
And the thing that sort of waslike just I don't know just
worked out time-wise becauselike right before that I had
asked my partner to come on.
He was a guy that I had hiredat BBVA.
(11:04):
He was like one of the bestdesigners and just best people
in terms of thought andcreativity that I had worked
with, and I had asked him tocome join me.
We didn't have any clients atthe time but I just said, listen
, let's take a risk.
I'll hire you for two months,let's just see if we can drum up
(11:24):
business together.
And literally the day he startedwas the day I got the email
from Repsol saying you have twoweeks, show us what you can do.
And so it was just like that.
Ultimately, that timing wasjust perfect for us because the
two of us worked for those twoweeks, put together an
incredible proposal of how wewould shift their commercial
(11:47):
website and we won the project.
And that sort of like reallysparked the whole company
because after that was our firstproject in the studio was like
the main commercial website ofthis energy giant of Spain.
And then that just turned intolike we redesigned really all of
their different digital touchpoints and then you know that
sort of like steamrolled intohiring employees and getting new
(12:10):
clients, and so but you know,the real reason why they hired
you is because you could invitetwo people to the conversation.
Yeah, I know, I do find myself Ido think it was funny, because
it was like I was like I don'tknow, going on that sometimes I
feel like I'm not one to not dosomething out of fear, and a lot
(12:34):
of times fear provokes me toactually do something even more
because I don't know, I'm just,I don't like making decisions or
not doing something based outof fear.
And so, like I do remembermyself in that meeting with them
and it was in Spanish,obviously I was trying to um,
present our ideas and proposalin Spanish, and obviously that's
(12:58):
not even my, my native language, and it's secondary to me, and
but you know it all works itselfout, but it's well, it's
secondary to me and but you knowit all works itself out, but
it's well.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (13:07):
It's funny, what a coincidence that
your first line was repsol.
It's our last client.
We just signed with repsolright now.
So, uh, this kind of like a uhthe the news I can bring to to
to this episode, um, but it's.
It's weird though that such abig client would sign a company
that was emerging, right,because usually these big
(13:28):
corporations, they have theirprocurement processes and you
have to undergo this likethree-month cycle of.
You know, talk to this person,these others send certificates.
You have to comply with thiswith that minimum revenue,
minimum years of existence.
So typically, if you haven'tbeen around for five years, big
corporations are going to hireyou.
(13:48):
Probably in design they makemore exceptions, but at least in
development I know we startedgetting a lot of corporates to
contact us in year five.
Before year five we worked fortwo or three of them, but we
were kind of like the exceptionright, because where there is a
process, there's also aworkaround, right, where there
is a procurement process,there's always a fast tracking
(14:11):
oh, we really need you.
Then you know, we did that forOrange, we did that for a
banking institution, we did thatfor another corporate here and
there.
But usually it's like oh no,you need to be like five years
old as a company.
You need to do at least onemillion in annual revenue to
make sure that you're a legitcompany.
They didn't have theserequirements for maybe it was
(14:31):
because COVID there were loserrequirements, or just because in
design usually they don't havethat.
Brian Farrell (14:37):
I don't know if it was a matter of like pre or
post COVID, because I didn'thave a business pre COVID,
post-covid, because I didn'thave a business pre-COVID.
But there's definitely aprocurement process and we had
to go through and present legalpaperwork in terms of employee
requirements or securityrequirements, all of that kind
of stuff, but it was neveraround the solvency of the
(15:03):
company.
Now we have lost pitches herein Spain, particularly related
to the government, because ofsolvency in our early years,
because we just didn't haveenough revenue to participate.
But the corporations that we'veworked with and we've really
only worked with corporationshere in Spain since the
beginning, corporations here inSpain since the beginning We've
(15:31):
never lost or not been able towork with one of them because of
revenue or our age.
I think maybe it is because of Imean, we are always.
Our entrance was always designand particularly related to
design system.
Many of our contracts here inSpain are are like designers
(15:52):
over a year where they will goin and be part of the team to
help evolve a design system or aspecific digital product.
So I don't know if it's becauseof that type of contract a
specific digital product.
So I don't know if it's becauseof that type of contract or if
it's the department within thecompany.
But our size or age has neverreally limited us here in Spain
(16:15):
in terms of working with reallylarge corporations.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (16:19):
As an American, you probably face this
cultural shock of you had anupper hand on negotiation,
perhaps, or adoption of risk,whereas Spaniards are typically
more risk averse.
Right and probably when yousaid I am not one to calculate
my decisions based on the fearfactor.
(16:40):
Right, and so a Spaniard wouldbe like more conservative
perhaps, and so maybe these I'mnot saying this is a fake, it
till you make it right, becauseyou are super transparent about
I'm a one man show, I'm justputting up together this
business.
But another person couldprobably say like, yeah, we
right, because we are a team, weare a company and we got these
(17:02):
credentials and you also had oneace up your sleeve, which was
the great work that you did atBBVA.
So probably those credentialsplayed in your favor, but I
don't know.
In comparison, when we started,I felt I took a different
approach, and maybe because Ihad more imposter syndrome and
(17:23):
that's something I still sufferfrom 10 years in, don't get me
wrong but I didn't play mycredentials from past companies
because I didn't want to beassociated to Deloitte and other
companies that worked for it inthe past.
I really don't want to haveanything to do, but probably
they would have won us projectsin certain cases because it's
large projects and whatnot, andwe're starting with a blank
slate at Mars Base.
(17:43):
That was probably theexperiment of the first year.
So how did you play thesecultural differences and do you
think that you had also anadvantage?
Because there's the typicalfascination for DX, for America
here.
Right, you hire an American,you'll pay twice as much for
exactly the same work, which isbecause it's in America.
(18:04):
It's kind of like hiring IBMnobody gets fired for doing so.
Right, what's the worst thatcould happen?
Brian Farrell (18:11):
Yeah, I'm sure all of those factors played in
Definitely as an Americanworking in the Spanish system
and having succeeded here andlasted, because a lot of times,
like I was saying back in 2016,working in the Spanish system
and having succeeded here andlasted because, you know, a lot
of times, like I was saying backin 2016, when BBVA was starting
their transformation, theybrought over a lot of Americans
(18:33):
at the same time, all at likereally high levels CMO, coo,
head of product, all of thoseand after two years, like there
was maybe, I think, 12 to 15 ofus, after two years, I was the
(19:17):
only American left.
I was the only one.
That really fact that I'velasted and been successful in
the Spanish system.
But I think it's also one ofthose things where I've realized
that the merger of American andSpanish culture is such a
beautiful fusion and it's likethe absolute best cultural
fusion that I've seen, because Ifeel like you know, the
(19:40):
standard image you have inAmerican is this like super
ambitious, goal oriented, careerdriven person.
And I think also the image youhave of a Spaniard is like this
person who really places valueon work-life balance, and they
really understand the value ofdisconnecting, which I also
think is, like, so important.
And so when you like, mergethose two cultures, you get
(20:04):
these.
And so when you like, mergethose two cultures, you get
these people who are superpassionate both about work and
life, and you get people who arecareer oriented but also
diverse in their interests,because they're not so
singularly focused.
And so I've always reallyvalued this fusion because I've
also seen how it has evolved meas a person and how I approach
(20:27):
life.
But also now at Farco, we placea heavy emphasis on merging
these cultures.
So we work significantly withthe United States, we work
significantly with bringingteams of Americans together with
our team here and creatingthese distributed teams, diverse
(20:49):
teams working together, becausethat, ultimately, I think, is
that fusion is so beautiful andit's so apparent with these
teams that are working together.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (21:01):
It's funny because in here we have
certain similarities, I wouldsay, because, I mean, I spent a
month a year in San Francisco,in the Valley.
That's where we kind of likeabsorb some of the ideas that
then we implemented in thecompany.
We created the company in 2014,but conceptualized it a couple
(21:22):
years before in 2014, butconceptualized it a couple years
before and so we were kind oflike one of the first companies
to bring in such like a supercohesive idea of company culture
.
Back in 2014, nobody wastalking about company culture in
Spain, nobody knew what thatmeant.
There were no remote companies,or very few of them, certainly
no office-less companies, right.
(21:44):
So I understand this and, assomebody who sells, also to
americans, that they appreciatethat we are not the typical
spanish, not only americans.
I mean, I've heard that fromseveral other countries, like
you know, uk, sweden, finland,all these other countries also.
I've got this image of spainlike good for partying and
holidays, but not for business.
We all know, know that.
(22:04):
We know the stereotype.
Our role here is to help todilute this stereotype and just
make it so that you know, goodbusiness quality can also come
from this country, right?
But anyways, going beyond that,there are certainly a few
aspects that will help.
You know you being native toAmerica and selling to American
(22:25):
clients who speak the samelanguage.
But also you know the initialcultural shock is different the
pacing in communications, thewording of the emails, what is
expected, regulations and othernon-so-tangible stuff that you
can in a negotiation.
You know that probablyAmericans want to cut to the
chase, right, they want to getmore.
(22:46):
They're pretty efficient aboutthat, as Brits take longer paths
around the negotiation here.
Talk about the weather, whatnot?
Spaniards, we like to have 17conversations before the actual
contract discussion, right?
So a lot of these culturaldifferences matter a lot, but
most of your I that's?
(23:06):
That's a question.
I assume most of your businesscomes from from the US, so I
assume that this culturalaffinity or understanding it's
good for your business, becauseyou're like, yeah, no, do you
need to tell me all about this?
I know how to, how UScorporations breathe.
I know how US companies work.
I'm American, know how uscompanies work, I'm american,
right?
So I guess that that helps inthe negotiation I think
(23:30):
definitely.
Brian Farrell (23:31):
I mean, I think most of our us clients also are
people that I've worked with inthe past, so there's like
there's alreadya trust built upjust through working together.
But those, those that arecompletely new, I think
definitely the fact that youwould be working with a company
(23:53):
that's owned by an American andthat probably has certain
cultural behaviors that aresimilar to those of an American,
probably reduces any type ofuncertainty of working with a
company outside of the UnitedStates, for sure.
But to your point aroundbringing back this idea of
(24:14):
culture here to Spain from yourtime in San Francisco, I think
is really important andobviously I think the industry
in general is changing here inSpain and I think employers are
starting to value employees alittle bit more.
I absolutely love living inSpain.
(24:36):
Obviously, I have chosen tolive here, I prefer to live here
.
But I think one of my biggestcriticisms from the beginning,
and something that I alwaysnotice, is it's a little bit of
a abusive labor market and Ithink, where employers were
taking advantage and not reallyvaluing or showing value towards
their employees.
(24:56):
And you know, I think it stemsback to your earlier point in
terms of, like Spaniards, reallythriving and placing a high
importance on stability andsecurity.
And you know, I think, if youreally wanted to get back into,
like, where this stems from it's, you know, 50 years ago you
were in a dictatorship, you know.
(25:17):
And so I think that's that longago.
And so, like, the oldergenerations have always had this
mindset of stability and like,if you have a job at a bank or
you have a job at a bigcorporation, like you would
never think about leaving it.
And I think that's also why,like here in Spain, like the
most, one of the most covetedjobs is a government employer,
(25:39):
the Funcionario, and it'sbecause you will never lose that
job which, like in the UnitedStates, you would never tell
someone you would want to gowork for the government.
No one wants to work for thegovernment, but it's because
there's this mindset here ofstability.
And I think that has alsoprovoked this abusive, or more
(26:01):
abusive labor market, becauseemployers know that they will
never lose that employee and sothey can treat them however they
want.
And so for me also, what I'mtrying to do and we're super
small and it's not like I'mgoing to make a big impact on
this sort of cultural shift, butI do want to do my part in it
and even though I can make alittle ripple in terms of really
(26:23):
creating a culture at a Spanishcompany that places huge
importance on valuing theemployee and compensating the
employee for doing good work, tome is super important and
actually it reminds me I was.
Do you know the company Tierra?
(26:46):
It's a like a burrito place.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (26:51):
Well, so anyways, in the US, no, no,
it's here.
Brian Farrell (26:54):
It's all through Madrid.
There's some.
It's basically it's more orless a fast food chain, but for
those Americans it's basicallylike Chipotle, but it's super,
super successful.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (27:10):
They call it Tierra Burrito, right,
something like that.
Yeah, exactly, but it's a fastfood chain.
Brian Farrell (27:16):
It's like blowing up here in Spain, and so he's a
friend of mine.
He's an American, but he's alsobringing over this cultural
mindset of career growth withinthe company and really valuing
the employees.
And so he told me that he satdown with the head of McDonald's
here in Spain and the guy fromMcDonald's went to him and he
was like you know, I'm likeyou're making me treat my
(27:40):
employees better because they'reall leaving to go work for you.
And I was like that would bethe most beautiful compliment
that any couldn't could evergive me If, like another agency
at some point comes to me andsays, listen, brian, like you're
making me treat my employeesbetter because, or pay them
better because of the way thatyou're treating your employees.
(28:01):
I think it's like that would be, hands down, the goal.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (28:08):
We are small raindrops in a big ocean
of corporate bullshit, right,and so the rippling effect we
can create is relatively small,not to say minuscule, but I
think we can have some impact,right, because it begins in the
individual.
Then we can expand, you know,to your point.
This is a brilliant example andI don't know if that will ever
(28:30):
happen to us, but certainly Iknow that we are changing the
industry very modestly, but weare, because you guys probably
are introducing new designsystems to the market.
You have introduced more like aboutique approach to design
(28:50):
compared to the I mean designagencies, to my understanding,
which is pretty limited, butI've always conceptualized as
something like very boutique.
Right, probably there are superbig generalizations, but because
you work and you optimize forcreativity, I don't think you
can create a kind of like a moldand a kind of cookie cutter
(29:13):
framework and just replicate itand grow heavily and whatnot,
the way big consultancies do ordevelopment consultancies do.
They're like you know, I justbuy developers and then just do
giant roll-ups of differentagencies and consultancies and
put them all together and we'llfigure out, because we optimize
for productivity, not forcreativity.
(29:34):
Therefore, we can scale thisvery, very high, and so I think
there was more space to grow asa boutique development agency,
like we did, and to bring thisdifferent approach and have no
office, optimize for employeehappiness and all of that than
for design agencies.
I don't know if I'm in theright or I'm in the wrong.
(29:55):
What's your perception of these?
Your market was like?
What was your differentiation?
Yeah, with regards to otherboutique agencies.
Brian Farrell (30:05):
Yeah, what was your differentiation with
regards to other boutiqueagencies?
Yeah, well, I mean, thisinsight sort of came to me when
I was at BBVA, because, eventhough we were growing a really
large internal design team,there was just too much work and
we had to work with a lot ofdifferent vendors, both really
big ones and then also reallyboutique ones.
And something I always saw iswhen we would go with the big
ones that could cover allaspects of the project
(30:27):
end-to-end, we would be giventhe deliverable and even though
we would be able to implement itimmediately into our systems,
we were always left like thequality is average and so we
would go in and have to likeelevate the quality and design
of it.
Um, and then when we would workwith the smaller boutiques
(30:48):
which I love supporting andloved working with them because
the creativity was so beautifulwe would be given the final
deliverable and even though thequality was amazing, it was
clear they had no idea of aroundlarge systems and so we would
have to go in and likereconfigure it in order to
implement into our systems, andso that was sort of like.
The insight to me is likethere's there's this space in
(31:09):
the market for a small boutiquewho is still um.
Main focus is quality, and it'sit's not about you know profit
and building large teams or youdon't really know if you're
getting the A team or the D teambut that also knows how to
implement creativity and scaledesign at a macro level.
(31:35):
And so that's really wherewe're trying to play in the
space in terms of we're a smallteam, we're 10 people, but we're
able to do really big workbecause we know from working at
really large corporations how tosystemize our design so that it
(31:58):
can be implemented in thosesystems no-transcript, and my
(32:27):
partners used to work also inbig consultancies and I think
that the main thing that we'vegot in common here as an agency
we're boutique and we're smallbecause we want to be small, we
want to keep it small.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (32:39):
We could have Mars Base.
You know, we're 10 years old,we're a team of 20.
We could have grown to 50,perhaps, right, if we so had
wanted, but maybe we would alsohave suffered setbacks and had
to scale down, maybe because ofthe market downturns, because of
crisis, because of large clientjust switching providers and
(32:59):
whatnot.
We never wanted this.
We wanted to always be smallerthan we should be very
consciously about this, becausethis way you keep agency
ownership and quality and, atthe same time, you've got the
best gray matter that you caninvest in producing systems at
scale right.
(33:20):
Right, because I, you know, inthe last 24 months and we
discussed this over beers theother time most of the boutique
development agencies, they havedisappeared.
They either shut down because,when they went out of business,
because they got tired, orbecause they were like, oh,
there were tailwinds for so manyyears.
(33:40):
Now there are set winds and wekind of like, oh, we married to
somebody else, we, we got tiredof this Right.
Many years now there'sheadwinds and we kind of like oh
, we merged with somebody else,we, we got tired of this, right.
I'm talking about companieslike karumi, like code gram,
like um, like some other, someother companies that were super
boutique and they specialize inthis and they're like, after 10
years, we're not just not goingto compete anymore and, um, my
point being, most of thesecompanies, they were extremely
(34:01):
good in the technical side, butthey were not that great in
business.
I'm not saying these two weren't.
They had really really largeclients.
But from the employer's pointof view, you at BBBA, you have
to choose sometimes between thelarge, generic eccentric that
can give you the end-to-end andthey have the budget, they have
(34:21):
their team to start tomorrow.
They can produce things atscale, but the quality sucks and
then go for the really niche.
I'm not putting these words inyour mouth, I'm saying this
myself.
But then the boutique agency arelike, yeah, brilliant, looks
fantastic, but this doesn'tscale.
I need three more peopletomorrow.
You guys can't deliver thisright.
(34:42):
And so maybe we have, becausewe have this past in the
corporates, you and I or mypartners now you and your
partner too.
Then you can conceptualizethings differently at the
intersection of technology ordesign and the business right.
You take both things intoaccount.
And I don't know maybe that'smy observation here, so I don't
(35:05):
know if you share it or not butI think that other boutique
companies, they just createboutique because they don't know
any better.
They're super technicallyskilled, but the moment where
business comes into play they'relike I can do that, I'm not
interested.
I hear that I'm not interestedin business.
Chances are you are not goingto do very big clients or you're
(35:25):
not going to last for longer,because people appreciate that
business saffiness right.
Brian Farrell (35:33):
Yeah, I mean we spend a lot of time, for
instance, on measurement plans.
So how to measure the designthat we're doing for clients?
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (35:45):
What does that mean?
I'm not familiar with theconcept.
Brian Farrell (35:48):
So how, yeah, so how to measure the value of
design, Um, and, for instance, adesign system of what uh that
we're building for a client,like how to extract metrics even
in the first month after launchand then continually as it
grows?
Because the business side andtypically a lot of times we'll
(36:11):
start our pitch decks with justexplaining the value and the ROI
of investing in design throughvery specific examples and case
studies that we now have overthe last four years with other
corporations, Because I stillthink that there is a learning
curve and sort of a hesitationaround truly investing in design
(36:33):
without understanding how it'sgoing to impact your business.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (36:39):
What would be a good example of these
KPIs?
So like what kind of KPI like,for instance, that really
resonates?
I think one of our bestportfolios, or two of our best
portfolios, are one that acompany will help to rebuild
their MVP and we help them togrow their revenue by a factor
of 300, something like that.
(37:00):
Right, really crazy Five years.
But you know, they went fromsomething that didn't scale to
something that scale and nowthey're a multimillion company,
right.
Or another one that they soldthe company.
They managed to sell thecompany because of the
technology we developed for them, right.
So we helped the company togrow in valuation and have an
asset that was worth anacquisition, right.
(37:21):
So what would be in design?
What would be the KPIs thatyou're using to measure this
against?
Brian Farrell (37:28):
Yeah, so, like in specific projects, like a
commercial website, it would belike um increase in lead
generation, um or sales increasethrough the platform.
Uh, when we're talking aboutdesign systems, it's time to
(37:49):
market for introduction into anew market, taking up one
product from one country toanother country and what's the
increase in time that you'reable to launch?
It would be even down to thetechnical side in terms of how
fast can you detect an error orbug and fix it.
How fast are you launching newfeatures using?
(38:26):
If you have created asuccessful design system, that
multiplier becomes a very, verybig number quickly to the
distinction between lifestylebusinesses and businesses that
are, you know, pushed for growth.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (38:46):
You probably have got also the upper
hand on negotiation and you cancherry pick your customers.
It's not always so, orhopefully in your case it is.
It hasn't been so for 10 yearson Mars days, but for the for
the most part, we could pick theclients that we wanted to work
for, right, and so that gives usa longer, not a runway, but it
(39:11):
gives you better clients thatthen you don't have to replace
so often, that you build adeeper bond with them and stuff
like that.
And while technically,lifestyle businesses come across
as something not ambitious,mostly in the eyes of Americans,
I'm getting these more when Igo to America oh, yours is a
(39:32):
lifestyle business.
Oh man, that's easier.
Right, I wouldn't say like theycall us lazy, but it's like
yeah, it's easy, everybody canbuild a lifestyle business.
That's not ambitious.
You will not create impact.
You cannot make a dent in theuniverse.
That's not ambitious.
You will not create impact.
You cannot create a dent andmake a dent in the universe.
But at the same time it's like,yeah, but we're 10 years in,
you know, making a healthyprofit every year.
Maybe the company is not verylarge, but we work for big
(39:55):
companies as well.
We're healthy, we're notstressed, not balding at 40
years old and not a lot of grayhair, no divorces, no depression
.
No, I don't know all of thesehealth problems that a lot of
people in the industry sufferfrom right and I don't know.
For me, it is ambitious tocreate a culture where employees
(40:18):
you know, I'm not, I don't likethere was another word better
for talent retention.
I think there was, I don'tremember right now, but it's
kind of like you know employeeshave a tenure of seven to nine
years in our company, which isunheard of.
Three people have left in 10years, right Out of the 30 that
we have hired.
So what is your policy forclient choosing and how do you
(40:45):
establish these long-termrelationships, granted that
you're four years old now, butI'm pretty sure that you still
retain the same clients from2020.
Brian Farrell (40:54):
uh, yeah, I mean I think that's the goal is
particularly in terms ofcreating financial stability.
Um with a small company ishaving retainer clients and
long-term relationships, anddefinitely we try and do that.
Um, I think for me also it's amatter of um keeping diversity
(41:18):
in the studio so that employeesconsistently can grow in new
areas and more complex systemsand bigger teams.
That required differentceremonies and workflows with
(41:42):
startup clients, that you'reworking with a really small team
.
Everyone on the call is thedecision maker.
You're typically launching infaster timelines, because I
think the pairing of those twoare really interesting, not only
for the energy and spirit of astudio, but also in terms of
(42:04):
just portfolio cases and a lotof times we're working with
cause-related startups, sofounders who are trying to start
businesses in circular economyor climate or sustainable travel
(42:25):
, and so that's a nice pairingwith Fortune 500, who's trying
to scale their product market.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (42:35):
And how did you get to work with the
retainer?
Because one of the things youmight have observed as an
American is Spain doesn't have abig tradition of working with
retainers, and even less so indesign, Like development,
because there's the bodyshopping.
Maybe in design, you also usethe body shopping system, but in
(42:56):
2014, it was like I remember wewere having the conversation
with using retainer systemsdiamond materials nobody was
having it and, luckily enough,we got hired from companies from
Sweden, Finland, the UK,Germany, and then we were able
to introduce it in Spain.
But, like you know, kind oflike going abroad first and then
having clients here who weconverted to retainer contracts
(43:19):
right, Maybe coming in at 2020was easier, or do you have only
retainers with American clientsand then the fixed bid ones in
Spain?
Brian Farrell (43:29):
No, we have retainer.
I mean typically the retainerhere on the design side is
called the implant so and thecorporation wants to hire
however many designers to comeultimately be a part of their
internal team.
It's something that I startedto see when I was working at
BBVA.
We had a lot of differentimplants.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (43:48):
The problem that I see there is
what's the difference betweenimplants and body shopping?
Because it sounds like bodyshopping, isn't it?
Brian Farrell (43:55):
I don't know what body shopping is Body shopping.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (43:58):
yeah, it's kind of like you're loaning
them a few people.
Then they become internalemployees.
Right, they have their ownemail.
Brian Farrell (44:06):
They get into their dynamics.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (44:08):
It would be the same thing, body
shopping.
Brian Farrell (44:10):
So we call it, on the design side, a design
implant, and we had a lot ofthem at BBVA.
The problem is is that they'renever treated as employees, so
they don't have a career path,they don't have a career manager
, but they're literally thereevery single day, 40 hours a
(44:30):
week, as if they were aninternal employee.
So they're sort of like left ontheir own little island because
(44:51):
they're not really connected tothe agency that they were
contracted.
Well, where they have a careerpath, they have a manager within
Farco, even though they are100% assigned to that Spanish
corporation as another internaldesigner within their team,
(45:12):
which I think is reallyimportant, because it not only
is great for that particulardesigner, because then they also
they have a career path,they're growing but then it's
good for the client as well,because they're continually
bringing new ideas to the table.
I think that's one of thebenefits of hiring external help
is because you want fresh ideas, you don't want someone so
(45:32):
bogged down in the internalpolitics, and so if you can
create that dynamic where thatimplant or, in our case, hybrid
has the connection to theexterior world, has the
references coming from thestudio of other clients, I think
that only benefits the endclient of the corporation as
well.
But yeah, I mean to your point,like we have retainers here in
(45:58):
Spain, I would say they're alittle bit different in terms of
time.
I mean, the ones in the US aretypically like year long ones.
Those are the contracts andhere we see it's like six months
.
We can get a corporation to likeevery six months we renew it.
Sometimes it's like every 13weeks.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (46:17):
So I guess that's the difference okay
, yeah, the reason I brought upbody shopping, it's because one
of the things that we reallydidn't want to do with our
company, because, from the fromthe point of view of the
provider, we have seen that theyalienate the developer.
Right, of course, you're likethe company is borrowing a
couple of developers from you.
(46:38):
It sounds good, it's a stablecontract, it's year long, then
they pay for full-time employees.
It's two, three, four, fivepeople, if you want.
Sounds good in principle, butthen in practice, these people
don't feel part of the client,but also they don't feel part of
your company right and Iremember clients.
(46:58):
They want to have body shoppingbecause they're like no, because
I want them to be part of ourcompany.
They will be invited to ourcompany days, they'll have our
email, they'll be on our Slackand all of that.
It's like, yeah, but then theydon't have the benefits that
your employees have.
They don't have to go.
I mean, sometimes they wantthem to go to the office, which
is something as a remote companywe don't do.
(47:18):
But don't get me wrong.
I think they want the best partof it, but they don't want the
worst part of it, which is likeyeah, I mean, you will not have
this person really.
You just want to kind of likelease them if you want, right,
and for us as a provider, thatperson would feel super
disconnected from our team too.
That's why we, in this case, wedon't do it and what we do is
(47:43):
like the same approach that youguys have.
Like the management happenshere internally in Marspace.
They are on our tools, they'reon the client tools as well, but
they participate in our teamdynamics.
Like we do a company, you gettogether, they come to our event
.
The client does a company gettogether, they don't go to that
event, right, and and so theystill feel very connected.
That's the way that we canoptimize for employee longevity
(48:06):
Right.
Brian Farrell (48:07):
So that that's yeah, I mean, I think, but I
think it's like about, I mean,our case.
It's like a true hybrid.
I mean, they participate in inboth companies, events and, and,
but the mentorship happens onour end.
But I think it's what's reallyimportant is to communicate this
at the beginning when you'regoing into these types of
relationships with corporationswhere they want this type of
(48:29):
implant.
Um, to be very clear is likethis is how it works on our end.
These are the benefits of why wedo it this way, and also the
concept of rotation, because Ithink people who want to work on
the agency side, they do thatbecause they want visibility and
contact with different clients,and so they have purposely
(48:52):
chosen not to work in-house at acorporation, and so.
But when a corporation hiresthis type of profile, they think
it is forever.
They want it to be like anemployee because of the
integration into their internalteams, and so I think the
(49:13):
challenges that I've seen iswhen you go back to a
corporation and say listen, it'stime for a rotation, this
profile needs to move on toanother project and another
client and um, if that idea hasnot been pre communicated, I
think that's where you arise atsome problems, um, but I do
(49:34):
believe that, like the, the, theidea of rotation is so
important.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (49:39):
Yeah, yeah, because I think from the
buyer's perspective, from theclient perspective, it's like I
hire an agency so that they giveme continued support, like 40
hours per week, no downtime.
The employee will never leaveOnce they acquire the knowledge
of the platform.
Once they acquire the knowledgeof the platform, it will never
go down right.
And I mean, if you did thatinternally and the employee
(50:02):
leaves, then you would lose itanyways.
It's only natural that anagency, the developer, can also
quit the company and there willbe some downtime.
For instance, the way weminimize this is we have a
minimum of two people in theproject, so it would be a very
big coincidence that the two ofthem, or three of them, five of
(50:23):
them, they left at the same time.
There's always like a managerand a tech lead and then the
developer by minimum standards,so that if the developer quits,
there's the tech lead who hascentralized, also stored in the
knowledge of the platform, andthen we minimize the.
You can always present someKPIs like we minimize the ramp
(50:43):
up, adaptation period or thecreativity and productivity.
You know it decreases after ayear.
We have calculated a year and ahalf.
That's when we typically wehave a rotation policy of 18
months.
But yeah, if the client and thedeveloper are happy and in some
cases we have people five yearsin the same project because
(51:04):
both of them they wanted eachother in the project.
They wanted the developerwanted to stay.
But I kind of like to wrap up.
I've got a couple questionsalso.
You know, I always ask toeverybody because we were fully
transparent with these and welike to have other examples on
the show.
Which is where's the at theoffice Like?
(51:26):
Because you know it sounds veryrosy, it sounds dreamlike, but
it's not always like this andeven though bootstrap businesses
, typically we have less orfewer lows than highs, we do
have them sometimes.
What has been your worst day atthe office with Fargo?
Brian Farrell (51:46):
Well, the thing is that I'm a designer by
training and before this role asa business owner, I was always
even though in very highpositions later on in my career,
but very specific to projectseven though in very high
positions later on in my career,but very specific to projects
and so my 40 hours a week werevery specific and dedicated to
project work and very specifictasks.
And then when I stepped intothis role, I'm not on projects,
(52:10):
my responsibilities and roledefinition is completely
different in terms of businessdevelopment and networking, and
it's not so natural and it wasnot so natural for me.
And so my worst days were thosewhere I didn't feel productive,
and it was because I didn'tnecessarily have to work an
(52:33):
eight-hour day.
I mean, there's only so muchnew business development you can
do, but mentally I wasn't usedto not being completely busy for
a full eight hours, and so itwas.
It was like that it wasrecalibrating my mindset to
feeling productive in a new wayand, honestly, I mean one of the
(52:55):
conversations that I've hadrecently with another agency
owner that really brought me somuch peace was him saying like
Brian, I only do three or fourhours of work a day.
That's all that's needed of meand you know I spend the rest of
my time doing other stuff andhe has a super successful agency
agency and it was like it wasthis eye-opening moment where it
(53:20):
was like, okay, like you don'thave to work an eight hour
Monday to Friday type of this isnot your job anymore, it's it's
much different, and so I thinkhaving that in mind and and and
knowing that you know how I domy work and when I do my work is
not on the same time scheduleas before was has really helped
(53:46):
me out.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (53:49):
Yeah, it's a really good point.
Actually makes me think thatI'm on purpose.
I'm trying to work fewer hoursper day because, even though it
sounds counterproductive,because you know working less
means probably less revenue,right, but then you increase
another KPI, which is you'remore creative, and then you
focus more on the things thatmatter, right.
I know I could fill my housewith tasks, right.
(54:12):
I've got tasks that have beenpending for 6, 12, 18 months.
Sometimes I see some things onlinear or on my task management
systems, like this task wascreated in 2018.
Like, for fuck's sake, it'sstill there.
But because we got so manythings chief, everything,
officer right, that doesn't meanit has to be done.
So my new framework is likecompletion by ignoring, right,
(54:37):
which is, some tasks are bestleft ignored.
If they disappear, they werenot really important.
If they are really important,they will come back twice.
Right, I'm not saying you shouldbe doing this with everything,
but most of the things we do, wedo it just because we think we
have to do it, and we couldoutsource them, we could
automate them, we couldeliminate them altogether, and I
(54:59):
think that's one of the risksthat we, as first-time founders,
that we incur in because we'rejust not used and we're like, oh
no, I'm not going to hiresomebody to do this stuff.
He's going to charge me 300euros.
Like what's 300 euros?
Probably your hourly fee as afounder of Barco is way higher
than that.
Of course you should be hiringthat person, but in your mind it
(55:21):
goes against your profit, right?
And you still have got thementality of a really small
business owner, and it's one ofthe things that we have to
battle against.
How about?
Were you any close to shuttingdown your business?
Brian Farrell (55:34):
Were there any periods in time that you were
like, ah well, short of money,or no, I mean, like you said,
we're I mean, we've always beenbootstrapped and we've always
grown organically based on theclients that have come in.
And, like I was saying, we sortof had it easy from the
beginning because we startedwith really big clients.
But I will say that, like lastyear, first quarter, when
(56:00):
everyone was concerned about theeconomy and our clients were
not opening up their budgets andreducing headcount, and I mean,
we didn't make any profit inthe first quarter of 2023.
And so that was like probablythe most challenging period, and
I think for me, though, lookingback on it, because we had
(56:23):
started off on such good footingfrom the very beginning, I'm
almost glad that that happened,because it sort of gave me
perspective on what a challengelooks like, how to prepare for
it and, most importantly, thatwe can survive it.
So it also has sort of likecalmed me down a little bit as a
(56:47):
business owner, because I thinkparticularly because I'm new to
this like I always think we'regoing to fail, like I just have
this, have this mindset of wecould fail any day, which really
really stressed me out, and so,having gone through that period
where we really didn't make anyprofit at all, we weren't at a
(57:10):
loss, but it wasn't a successfulquarter at all sort of like
peace of mind and alsoconfidence in terms of if it
happens again, it's not going tobe the end of our company.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (57:25):
Since you shared, I'm going to be
sharing as well.
We had a similar situation inQ2 last year, right and so, and
that contract we didn't land andwe were supposed to.
We had doubled down on sales onthat project.
It would have been a very bigproject for us.
Then we completely took theattention away from other sales
processes, which in hindsight weshouldn't have.
(57:47):
Then we, because we didn't landthe project, all of a sudden we
had to not help the team but asignificant part of the team
without the project.
Then we had to go back to theseclients that we have left
unattended for a while, orpotential clients, so like, look
, this happened, we're supertransparent.
They had a couple of them andended up hiring us.
(58:08):
So we managed to turn thesituation around.
But that quarter I mean we don'tmeasure quarterly profit.
I don't know if that'ssomething that you guys do and I
think that's pretty clever.
It could have been prettydisastrous if we hadn't reverted
the situation.
It's also that situation ofbeing at peril for a while.
It's like, wow, you guys shouldget this fixed.
(58:31):
I think it was also a wake-upcall for the company.
I think it was positive.
Last question before we wrap itup because we're running out of
time.
What was your most expensivefuck-up and can you quantify the
money?
Brian Farrell (58:45):
Yeah, I mean you had mentioned this yesterday.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (58:49):
I was trying to think about what is
the the first time we prepare?
I have to say First time weprepare with this question.
Brian Farrell (58:55):
Yeah, I was like what is a fuck-up?
That I could talk and and, andthankfully, at least at fargo,
there hasn't been a a fuck up umthat I can quantify um, but I
will say um, that in my career,um, a big fuck up was
particularly related to you know, I started in in design studios
(59:16):
in new york city back in 2003,where most of it was
print-related, and so going onpress check and sending a client
through with an error andhaving to reprint definitely
happened many different timesand cost tens of thousands of
dollars, tens of thousands ofdollars.
(59:41):
And, quite honestly, one of thebiggest pieces of advice I give
to any designer going intoparticularly the digital space
now is find a client, afreelance project that will
require you to go on press check, because it creates a sense of
detail and preciseness that isso important that I think
designers that go directly intothe digital space don't have,
(01:00:04):
because it's so easy to correctbugs.
You just go over to yourdeveloper and say code this.
Differently Did I see a lack ofrefinement and attention to
detail on designers that haven'tnecessarily gone through the
more physical print-relatedindustry?
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (01:00:22):
I'm not laughing because of your
fuck-up.
I'm laughing because,coincidentally and I haven't
heard this story I'm drinkingtea from a cup that happens to
have a typo.
You know that's our slogan.
Can you read Instead of alien,alien.
Brian Farrell (01:00:35):
That's our slogan .
Can you read Instead?
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (01:00:37):
of alien Alien.
I think six different peoplesaw the design, but we didn't
see this typo and we printed,like I don't know, 50.
We made 50 of these coffee mugsand when they arrived, when
they were shipping it, beforereceiving them, I was like, oh,
(01:01:01):
by the way, I think there's atypo here, like they're arriving
today.
So we have to reprint them, wehave to remake them and we sent
them anyways.
We sent the wrong one and thefixed one to the team as a
reminder that everybody fucks up, because it was the designer
fucked up.
But then the head of peoplereviewed it.
She didn't say it.
(01:01:21):
The three founders reviewed thedesigns for other nerds and this
one in particular.
We didn't see it and somebodyelse was involved Didn't see it
either.
Six different people didn't seethese typos, you know.
So I think it's a great examplethat these printing you know
these printing check.
It's very good.
Brian, you've been extremelygenerous with your transparency
(01:01:45):
and sharing your wisdom nuggetsand your experience and your
time.
I want to give you 30 secondsto kind of like I'm rolling the
carpet for you.
Say how we can help you.
So I'm rolling the carpet foryou.
Say how we can help you and,farco, if you've got something
coming up in your lifebusiness-wise that you want to
announce, just do it here.
Brian Farrell (01:02:05):
Ask for a favor from the community.
Great.
So, I mean, I think our visionis to continually put Spain on
the global radar, so that reallyis the essence of what we're
trying to do.
So, if you're in a marketoutside of Spain, think of the
(01:02:26):
talent that's here, because itis really incredible.
And these fusions of culture, Itell you, are creating not only
diverse, interesting teams butsuper fun to work with.
So that's basically all I haveto say.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (01:02:44):
Thank you, Brian.
Brian Farrell (01:02:47):
You're welcome.
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