Ep. #1022 - When the Minority Becomes the Majority

00:00.00
Lauren Conaway
And we are back. Thank you for joining us for yet another episode of the Startup Hustle podcast. I’m your host Lauren Conaway, founder and CEO of InnovateHER KC. And I got to tell you about today’s episode sponsor folks. Today’s episode of Startup Hustle is powered by fullscale.io. Hiring software developers is difficult, we all know that, but Full Scale can help you build a software team quickly and affordably, And they have the platform to help you manage that team. Visit fullscale.io to learn more. Now friends, today we’re going to have a really great conversation. I don’t think it’s any surprise that I love talking about issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, all of those beautiful, beautiful things. And today we have with us a fabulous thought leader Antonella Pisani, CEO and founder of Eyeful Media. Now Antonella, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here and I can’t wait to crack into this with you. This is going to be great. Awesome! Well, I’ll just get into it. I’m going to go ahead and ask. Here comes the question, tell us about your journey.

00:59.33
Antonella Pisani
Thank you so much. I’m really happy to be here.

01:13.12
Antonella Pisani
Yeah, absolutely. So stepping back, I was raised in San Diego. Neither of my parents are from the US so I grew up with a Nicaraguan mom and a Brazilian dad. My dad was an entrepreneur and a jewelry store owner. Sometime around high school I kind of started falling in love with marketing. The best internship I could possibly have was working at a snowboarding magazine as a high school senior. And that kind of solidified my interest in marketing and found myself building websites back in 96. It was actually my work-study job and so I was really fortunate to kind of get into the web really early on and work through a lot of corporate roles. So everything from web analytics to digital marketing ecommerce general management. Spent a lot of time at companies like Fossil J C Penny guitar center. And then about seven years ago, I just decided I was ready for something different. I took a year off to travel and was working on my own website. And then a friend introduced me to a company here in Dallas that he was on the advisory board for. That actually became my first consulting client. I had never set out to build an agency or anything. I just thought I was going to consult by myself and live kind of a peaceful life and travel a ton and.

02:33.85
Antonella Pisani
Here we are about six years later with a nice size team supporting a lot of the mid-market businesses.

02:39.94
Lauren Conaway
That is incredible. Well so all right. I have a real dumb easy question Before we dig into stuff but you were an intern at a snowboarding magazine or a snowboarder.

02:44.72
Antonella Pisani
Intern. Yeah.

02:50.19
Antonella Pisani
You know what, I live in Dallas now. So not so much but I did a lot of of snowboarding and surfing skateboarding growing up in San Diego.

02:59.42
Lauren Conaway
Okay, very cool. I was just curious. That is super cool but all right here’s the real question all right? So I want to ask you if you mentioned that you’re the child of immigrants and I’d be really interested to hear how that kind of informed your lens.

03:05.39
Antonella Pisani
Fifth.

03:17.30
Lauren Conaway
Ah, through which you view the world. You know I imagine that’s a pretty important part of your experience and I’d love to hear more about that.

03:22.67
Antonella Pisani
Yeah, I mean it. It was interesting. Both of them came to the US. I think my mom was around sixteen seventeen and had come to live with someone that we always called our grandmother but was technically I think a great aunt and then my dad moved to the states when. He was in his late 20 s and so a lot of you know even though we lived in the states a lot of the culture and just customs and things like that really came from latin America and so it was very interesting being a kid growing up and you know there were things that. My parents like didn’t really know about like a joke about you know, never having easter baskets because it just wasn’t something that was done there and Christmas was all about you know Christmas eve but you know some of those countries I would say nicaragua in particular, it’s it’s a country that is um, full of just really.

04:02.53
Lauren Conaway
Yeah.

04:15.36
Antonella Pisani
Happy positive people despite them not having a lot and so you know I think I always saw a lot of generosity exhibited and things like that that really formed who I am as a person. Um, you know my dad. My Dad’s father was also a Jeweler and so I think they had always had their own business. I grew up in the jewelry store. Um, you know I learned a really strong work ethic from them and you know definitely shaped me um, grew up speaking Spanish to my mom Portuguese to my dad and gave me a love of languages as well like my brother and I didn’t learn English until we went to school and then just continued. Learning different languages through high school and college and that really inspired a love of travel in just different countries for me and so I don’t know that that would have been my same experience growing up if I had grown up and run a family that was always in the states.

05:01.22
Lauren Conaway
Um, yeah.

05:06.93
Lauren Conaway
Yeah, how many languages do you speak?

05:10.47
Antonella Pisani
So three fluently and then I dabble in another 2. So some French Italian.

05:15.18
Lauren Conaway
Okay, ah so we all had a real talk. What’s it like living in the states where we are not known for our ah language prowess is that tough.

05:27.94
Antonella Pisani
No, not at all I mean it’s um I think for me what it’s been more about is just the ability to travel and immerse myself with other cultures and get away from a lot of the touristy areas and so it’s just it’s been awesome. Knowing a lot of languages I’m very grateful that my parents did that with us and.

05:44.66
Lauren Conaway
Yeah, well that is super cool. So talk to us about your journey to Eyeful Media. I’m I’m I’m very very curious about this and I know that there are a lot of things that you do. Well you’re growing very quickly that I’d love to hear.

05:46.30
Antonella Pisani
You know, taught us something that they knew.

06:01.58
Lauren Conaway
How you came, how you came to be.

06:02.75
Antonella Pisani
Yeah, for sure. So I think as I mentioned, I had taken a year off and a lot of it was to travel so you know when you’re working full time for somebody else. You may be able to sneak away for two weeks or a week and a half but I’ve always loved different cultures and travel and so. I was in a fortunate position that I could sneak away for a year and I took a series of two week trips like I felt like I would be gone for two weeks, come home for two weeks change clothing, change camera gear and then head back out and during that time I was building a website of my own and. You know it actually I think came from a conversation with my brother who was like hey why don’t you consult a little bit while you’re building your website and that will you know, just allow you to be have a little bit more flexibility and so there were some interesting life things that happened that made me decide not to go back to a traditional full-time job and during that period. A friend of mine who’s Ceo of an agency here. He sits on the advisory board of a local company and he said that company had lost their e-commerce manager and he had sent me the job spec and I kind of laughed when I read the job spec because. It really sounded more like a vice president role even though they were looking for a manager and so that guy just said hey you know will you help him out. Can you help him with some advice and so I remember still sitting in a coffee house and working on an insane proposal.

07:28.13
Antonella Pisani
Probably a bigger proposal than I’ve ever drafted for anyone else because I really didn’t know what I was doing. I’d always been client-side and that just led to 1 relationship and through the course of that relationship early on you know they would say well you know you’re telling us. We’re not doing very well in this marketing channel. Can you take it on for us? Can you just take over? And so what happened was it went from me to me and a network of different consultants I would just reach out to either former colleagues or ask them if they knew anyone and it was a lot of folks that were maybe moonlighting to start. And so that’s really how it started and you know after a few years there was just enough consistent business that I started hiring full-time employees to join the team and that’s how we’ve gotten to where we are but it’s all been exclusively word of mouth growth. We’ve never even really talked about ourselves I would say up until like a couple of months ago.

08:21.48
Lauren Conaway
Yeah, well so so what? What is different about Eyeful Media and I have an answer in my head like I think I know what you’re going to say but wow me surprises me.

08:21.50
Antonella Pisani
We’ve been really flying under the radar. Yeah.

08:32.64
Antonella Pisani
Yeah I mean I think from a company standpoint I would say it’s an insanely values led purpose driven business. We support a lot of charities throughout the work that we do and it really kind of unifies the team and gives them a greater purpose of something to go work hard for, right.

08:47.69
Lauren Conaway
And

08:50.26
Antonella Pisani
So we even start our all hands meeting starting with hey here’s who’s new Birthdays Bam right into some of the charities that we supported and that’s a big difference in terms of just the.

09:02.96
Lauren Conaway
Then.

09:06.63
Antonella Pisani
Quality of people that we’ve been able to attract from a more tactical Perspective. You know I’ve been on the client side and I had had exposure to a lot of agencies that that just frankly weren’t all that awesome and so I wanted to surround myself with people of a certain caliber and so we kind of decided. Only to hire Senior level Talent. So The average years of digital experience on our team is 13. We decided not to go hire Junior Marketers. We wanted people who could hit the ground running and could work really closely with the clients and be a lot more strategic because of the experience that they had brought to the table.

09:28.58
Lauren Conaway
Oh wow.

09:44.91
Antonella Pisani
And then we also decided to get rid of that account Manager function. So it’s a really common function in most ad agencies and those people tend to be kind of the middleman and yes they can add value. But I think it can also kind of detract from the client experience and detract for employee experience as well. Right.

09:50.44
Lauren Conaway
Right.

09:59.43
Lauren Conaway
Yeah, and.

10:04.38
Antonella Pisani
Clients Want direct contact with the people working on their business. The employees want to make sure that their strategies are communicated clearly and so part of hiring senior folks is they’re just gonna be faster at what they do, They’re gonna be a little bit more polished and have a little bit more.

10:11.68
Lauren Conaway
Yeah.

10:22.83
Antonella Pisani
Executive presence about them and so that’s really how we just built the business from day one. Um, and so I think that’s been a big differentiator for us just in terms of the type of relationship that we’re able to build with clients.

10:22.91
Lauren Conaway
Yeah.

10:36.30
Lauren Conaway
Yeah.

10:38.26
Antonella Pisani
So a lot of you know account managers and more junior staff tend to work on sometimes 2030 accounts and have created responsibility and they’re not really able to get to know the client’s business and we’re really trying to keep people anywhere between like 2 and 5 clients so that they can.

10:43.49
Lauren Conaway
Yeah.

10:55.92
Antonella Pisani
Really build a true relationship.

10:58.93
Lauren Conaway
That’s that’s really really incredible and and I you know when you were talking about that account Manager position like I’ve so way back in the day I actually had my very own marketing agency so you and I share that and and and yeah like I always. I Do feel that sometimes an account manager can bring me up value but I always think of that game telephone. Do you remember playing that when you were a kid you know like you you pass along a message to someone and then along the way it gets muddled right.

11:19.57
Antonella Pisani
Um, yes.

11:31.00
Lauren Conaway
And so I love having that immediate access point to the creative that is actually or the creatives that are actually working with these companies because that you’ve created a direct dialogue that is super cool now one. Things I’m going to back up just a little bit because you’ve mentioned this a few times and we’re talking about building your team but you’ve mentioned immersing yourself in culture. That’s something that you’ve done your entire life. So I Want to talk a little bit more about the culture at Eyeful Media. About how you have intentionally built that culture like you mentioned that you know you donate to a lot of charities and that that makes your employees feel good and it brings them closer together. What are some other things that you have done to build this really strong value-based culture?

12:19.72
Antonella Pisani
Yeah, for sure I mean it’s definitely the thing that I’m most proud of, like I’m certainly proud of our growth but you know nothing eclipses the culture that we’ve built. It’s a culture of kindness and generosity. A lot of transparency I think it you know. Pretty interesting I had someone come speak to our team maybe almost like a year ago she was the head of hr for pro flowers where I spent almost seven years of my career and she defined culture just as how we treat each other and so you know it’s not about the ping-pong table going out for beers and things like that. We’re fully remote. Have people in 16 different states and so the culture really is how people interact right? and the respect that they have for their colleagues. The respect they have for clients just shows how comfortable everyone is being vulnerable in terms of like what they know what they don’t know. Um, you know a lot of praise is flowing kind of among colleagues and it’s very organic like it’s not forced and so it has been really deliberate. It’s something that we interview for in addition to kind of technical questions. We use a tool called so. Strengths are finer to figure out like what makes people tick. Are you familiar with that? Oh god you’re putting me on this white hair. Ah command I don’t want the plug for.

13:35.33
Lauren Conaway
Hey, I know, strengths finder. What are your top 3? So mine are a strategic input. And um, positivity actually.

13:56.90
Antonella Pisani
Right? So here are my 5 strategic activator responsibility arranger and command and I mean influencing. So let’s go. Let’s go now here’s what we’re here’s what’s going on. So ah.

14:01.66
Lauren Conaway
Wow.

14:10.63
Lauren Conaway
To you, you move pretty quickly. Yeah, you move pretty quickly.

14:12.85
Antonella Pisani
Like gave me a second to pull it up. What’s that I do um I do but I’m thoughtful and work through others now right? A lot of what I do is worked through the team. But yeah I mean I think back to the culture Some of the things that we’ve we do is.

14:21.50
Lauren Conaway
Oh certainly? so.

14:30.76
Antonella Pisani
You know, obviously the screen for it. But then you know the first thing that new hires see is here’s our mission, here’s our vision, here’s our values, here’s what we expect from people and you know I think the fact that everyone’s really living them. Um, that just sets expectations like people who don’t. The values just don’t stick around very long their choice or our choice and so you know we’ve done some things like invest in certain technology slack’s been a big game changer just in terms of communication and just bringing in some fun I mean we have.

14:49.73
Lauren Conaway
Yeah.

15:05.73
Antonella Pisani
A channel called fun stuff. We have a channel called Petful. That’s when created and you know allowing the team to have a place where they can have a little bit of fun but also collaborate. Um, one of the tools that’s been I would say a cultural game changer for us. It’s a performance management tool called Fifteen Five.

15:13.87
Lauren Conaway
Yeah.

15:22.67
Lauren Conaway
Okay.

15:25.72
Antonella Pisani
We run our check-ins through there are one on ones but they have a feature called high fives which integrates with slack and it’s basically just a very easy way to give each other props because what we noticed was in all hands meetings before like we would always ask. The team like hey who did something great. Let us call it out in the all hands meeting and it was like pulling teeth trying to get kudos. Even though we knew everyone was very proud of what the others were doing and then after we put this technology in it’s It’s Amazing. How many compliments flow among colleagues and. You know it can be someone up to their boss. It can be someone up to a peer direct report and I think that’s actually been really important to the culture, just that gratitude that exists among everyone. Um, so we’ve done some cool things like that.

16:05.97
Lauren Conaway
Um, yeah.

16:11.60
Lauren Conaway
Oh my gosh I Love that so much and I’m going to give you a little insight into my organization but we have what we call our our foundational pillars and to.

16:19.79
Antonella Pisani
Trend.

16:25.75
Lauren Conaway
Those I think are kind of relevant to what you’re talking about. They’re mentorship and championship and those are 2 different things as far as we’re concerned and as you know most people who have an understanding of those terms you know mentorship is the thing that happens behind closed doors. It’s when you know someone takes your hand and helps you along. Is that thing that happens out in public? It’s when you share someone else’s story or when you commend them for a good job. Well done publicly and those are both really really vital to building up trust between teams right? So I love that. Um, that you’ve been again so intentional about creating that culture now is one of the things that I have learned as a founder and one of the things that I think many of our founders listening at home will know is that often when you’re trying to build culture. You have to model the behavior that you want to see, you have to be a culture leader and a steward provide the roadmap to what that success looks like for your team and then it trickles down right? That’s one of the biggest most impactful ways you can build culture so I’m going to ask. You as a founder know how you display the values that you hold and that you’re that Eyeful Media holds.

17:41.94
Antonella Pisani
Yeah I mean I think it’s just back to that How we interact with each other. I think that people see how I interact with our other leaders if they’re on calls where we’ve been with clients. The things that we talk about you know we do a lot with learning those all hands meetings.

17:46.40
Lauren Conaway
Yeah.

18:01.69
Antonella Pisani
We do something called Slack. It has an app called Donut, which randomly pairs people together and so for like random 15 minute meetings and I participate in those but then we added something called bonus donuts which you know I’m meeting with everybody in the company. It’s something we started.

18:06.48
Lauren Conaway
Great.

18:20.38
Antonella Pisani
Few months ago, I met with every single person to get to know them and they got to know what I’m actually like. You know I can be playful with the team as well. But you do have to lead by example and set what’s important. I mean I do think those all hands meetings are really critical to that. Just.

18:29.84
Lauren Conaway
Um, first.

18:38.38
Antonella Pisani
We’re super transparent. That’s a big value for us. Um, you know we’re very forthcoming with finances and things like that and we incorporate some sort of element of leadership training into all of those meetings as well and so just helping people develop. But yeah, it’s just. Everyday interactions right? It can’t be something that’s done once a month, it has to be every single interaction not that we don’t make mistakes right? We’re all humans.

19:01.33
Lauren Conaway
Yeah, well sure. Yeah, and I mean that’s something else that we talk about a lot around innovators like the fact that that consistency is really what you have to like you you can say ah all the nice pretty things. This is what we value. This is what we hold. But. You know you? you also have to equate those words with action and it sounds like you’re You’re absolutely doing that. Um, you know we have another company that we talk about a lot and they do the exact same thing right now they’re actually doing some ah some charitable giving as a company but I want to talk to you a little bit about full scale.

19:17.71
Antonella Pisani
Um, one.

19:36.28
Lauren Conaway
Ah, finding expert software developers doesn’t have to be difficult and I know that it is the bane of some founders’ existence. But when you visit fullscale.io, you can build a software team quickly and affordably use the full scale platform to define your technical needs and then see what available developers testers and leaders are ready to join your team. Visit fullscale io to learn more so Antonella I have a question for you because we’ve kind of talked around this topic a little bit but but you mentioned psychological safety. Within a team and and I I love that that has become kind of a a zeitgeist conversation of the moment how to create psychological safety among your teams. Um, you know you you talked about transparency. That’s one way to do it. That’s one component. You know you, you’ve kind of talked about around vulnerability like being open with your team and making sure that they see you as a human being as well as a leader and I love that. So so what are some? What are some tips and tricks. For our listeners at home if they want to create a strong culture built on psychological safety.

20:47.52
Antonella Pisani
Yeah, it’s a very interesting topic. Um, you know I think that it comes with vulnerability from the top right I often use a phrase that we reserve the right to get smarter right? we.

20:53.39
Lauren Conaway
Yeah.

21:01.40
Antonella Pisani
We work with each other we learn more about each other every day we learn more about our clients every day you know I think choosing what to say no to things like that. But you know I think Humility is a huge part of creating that psychological safety right? You know I think that if that’s woven.

21:14.50
Lauren Conaway
Yeah.

21:20.23
Antonella Pisani
Throughout you know all of the interactions that allows people to open up. You know it’s interesting. We’ve been talking a little bit about the 5 dysfunctions of the team lately and trust is that foundation right? And so I think taking time to get to know everyone on the team and letting them see that you’re.

21:30.37
Lauren Conaway
Yeah.

21:38.26
Antonella Pisani
Actually a human being. Um I think that’s a big part of it like we’ve really enjoyed those those donut meetings as like little 15 minute touch bases I think watching interactions in in slack and and trying to learn to be a little bit less reactive like I’m still guilty of this on occasion and um.

21:45.82
Lauren Conaway
Yeah.

21:58.17
Antonella Pisani
You know, stepping back and and really trying to interpret what people are saying and um, you know it’s it’s a tricky 1 right? It comes with consistency like you said right? This isn’t kind of built in on day one.

22:09.73
Lauren Conaway
yeah yeah yeah I mean that’s that’s the thing like if you believe in your values and if you attach those actions to the things that you say like I do feel like that consistency like if you bake it in at all levels of your organization. That’s that’s the way to really effectively build. Whatever kind of culture you’re looking for. You know so so around innovator like we we have this culture of championship and I mean I as a leader I go into our virtual community on a pretty regular basis and I just share wins. Not mine. Not you know, not even necessarily someone that I know. But you know somebody that I know is one of our members and like say hey look look at what they accomplished isn’t that I mean it’s kind of like the high fives thing that you were talking about. So so yeah I love that. Um you know I do want to ask you and I’m going to I’m going to ask you to indulge me.

22:54.40
Antonella Pisani
Yeah.

23:03.74
Lauren Conaway
Just a little bit because I think I promised you when we were doing our preshow prep that I was going to let you lead the conversation but I do want to introduce a topic because I think it’s really important. Um, but 1 of the things that I have heard about Eyeful Media is that you have a pretty diverse team. And I want to talk to you a little bit about that. What does what does that look like for you and and how did that come to be.

23:26.59
Antonella Pisani
Yeah I mean it’s um, it’s interesting. It hasn’t necessarily been a deliberate thing but we when we have asked the team to to volunteer to volunteer like ethnicity things like that we’re about 40 folks that would consider themselves minorities.

23:41.31
Lauren Conaway
Yeah.

23:43.85
Antonella Pisani
It’s really just come from finding the best talent that we can possibly find and I think the fact that we are remote has enabled that a lot people in 16 states 23 cities right now and so it’s kind of come about naturally it hasn’t been.

23:49.98
Lauren Conaway
Um, sure.

24:03.26
Antonella Pisani
You know something that we’re trying to turn around from ah from like a specific starting point. But it is something that we’re proud of and you know we do have some of that the ethnic diversity but I think a lot of it too is just diversity of thought and a lot of different backgrounds on the team and.

24:07.78
Lauren Conaway
Yeah.

24:20.70
Lauren Conaway
Um, yeah.

24:22.79
Antonella Pisani
Both in terms of like maybe where they’ve where they’ve lived whether they came from big companies, small companies agencies and all of those things really help contribute to to running marketing The best way that we can.

24:33.86
Lauren Conaway
Yeah, you know I I want to delve a little bit deeper into this because one of the things that I love there’s There’s a there’s a secret Hidden Best practice in what we have talked about thus far and I’m sure that you already know it. But I’m going to point it out to our our listeners at home. Um, you know.

24:52.18
Lauren Conaway
You’re not promoting diversity on your team just to check a box. You’re not saying hey we need to hire more people of color we need to hire more people of Lgbt Qi persuasion or what have you what you’re doing is you’re building a culture that is welcoming.

25:07.77
Antonella Pisani
Death.

25:09.73
Lauren Conaway
To but to people and then setting them up for success Once they arrive to your team so that you know that’s the retention piece and but really, you’re you’re creating ah an environment where your team can be valued no matter who you are or what background you come from and so so I love that you’re approaching it. That way because I know a lot of you know board of directors and leadership teams at companies that are like you know we look around and our whole team is white like we got to fix that we got to go out and hire some some black people and it’s like that that is absolutely not how you Build. An inclusive team not just a diverse team but an inclusive team where you’re setting people up for Success. You have to make sure that your your environment and your culture is ready to accept those new perspectives and create that psychological safety. So that people feel comfortable. Discussing the issues. The intersectional issues that they might encounter on a day-to-day Basis. So So I love that and I’m wondering if you can talk to us a little bit more about that and.

26:12.42
Antonella Pisani
Yeah I mean I think that our values do promote what you hit with with the inclusion and creating a safe space and people who are kind to each other I mean I think it’s you know. Going back a minute in terms of some of the questions you were asking me of like how do you really live this I think one of the big things is being prepared to say no to clients right? Whether it’s when they come in or you find that there’s just a real mismatch there in terms of you know we’re really really fortunate that we’ve grown through referral and. Joke around that like kind people tend to refer you to other kind people. But you know sometimes there’s a mismatch there and I think that showing the team that you have their back in that type of situation that you’re willing to walk away from business. Potentially that’s big for them in terms of creating that safety and letting them feel like they can kind of raise issues to you. If they feel like there’s concerns. Um, you know I think that’s a little bit different approach but you know I like how you approached it which is hey it’s about those core values that make anyone feel like they’re able to be themselves without fear.

27:16.94
Lauren Conaway
Yeah I Well I can’t adore what you’re saying anymore and so I’m going to hop hop over to another topic really quick and I want to talk to you. You know about your journey as the founder a little bit more you know you yourself. Are I’m assuming that you identify as a minority being the child of immigrants. You know, non-white immigrants. Um What? what challenges have you yourself experienced and how did that inform the way that you you approach your work now.

27:52.40
Antonella Pisani
Yeah I mean it’s interesting I think most of the challenges that I’ve found have actually been less to do with my background and more to do with my values and strength binders that we were talking about right? Command is Command is not a super popular one and.

28:01.76
Lauren Conaway
Um, yeah, yeah.

28:11.69
Antonella Pisani
You know you you can be a little bit. Ah you can’t like sit back right? And and I think in a lot of big corporations where there’s turnarounds and turnarounds often bring out the worst in people and you know it can be a tough environment to be in when you’re when you have some of these traits right? and.

28:14.86
Lauren Conaway
Um, yeah.

28:26.77
Lauren Conaway
Um, yeah.

28:30.42
Antonella Pisani
Think a lot of the challenges were just feeling like I struggled to fit in in some of those environments again not because of my background or or gender or anything like that. But more just who I am as a person right? And so.

28:42.81
Lauren Conaway
Um, yeah.

28:46.35
Antonella Pisani
Ultimately for me, it was okay I’m just gonna create a company that that has my values and I used to joke around a little bit that my teams in these bigger companies like I was creating my own little subculture and it was the island of the misfit toys right? and we were misfits not because we were weird but we were weird because we had you know. Just different values and wanted to conduct business in different ways and so I think for me a lot of the challenges were you know being in environments that people didn’t have each other’s backs and didn’t want to lift each other’s up lift each other up because they’re worried about their jobs right? You know I often say when I’m.

29:19.73
Lauren Conaway
Um, yeah.

29:26.55
Antonella Pisani
Interviewing candidates and and I talk to every single person that’s going to be part of our team is you know a lot of other companies that people are around. You are kind of rooting for you to fail because they want to take your job and here everyone’s rooting for you to succeed and so yeah I mean I think a lot of the the growth challenges came from those different types of environments. Um, certainly growing a business.. There’s a lot to learn right? like I came from in-house I had never worked for an agency had never started a business and so especially when you grow as quickly as weed did there’s a lot that you’re learning in a very condensed period of time and so you just have to surround yourself with awesome people that. That we’ll have your back and help kind of round out your skills.

30:07.88
Lauren Conaway
Yeah, well well, that’s really cool like I find your you kind of honed in on Command a little bit and I find that interesting because you know as a woman like so so I’ve. You know I’ve talked on the show a lot about the fact that you know I came up through male-dominated Industries I worked in it aerospace and automotive for years and and you know I had a lot of really great experiences but I had some some experiences that were pretty pretty rough and very gendered.

30:26.57
Antonella Pisani
What.

30:38.22
Lauren Conaway
And so that that command piece I honed in on that a little bit just because as a woman I think um, you know we’re kind of socially conditioned to be meek and to be kind and to be you know that sweet. Um, you know what is it. S nips and snails and puppy dog s tales but girls are sugar and spice and everything nice. Um you know? and so so it’s interesting because I know so many professional women who have to walk that line between Authority and being a bitch. You know for lack of a better way to say it. You know so I just.

30:54.73
Antonella Pisani
This man.

31:14.32
Lauren Conaway
I find it really interesting and I love that you have found success in your command and in in the way that you present yourself to the world. Um, that’s that’s really impressive and it’s rare and so you know kudos to you for figuring out a way to make that navigable and and. Ah, make that work for your team I kind of love that. So I do I this is my kind of my big question. Ah for you. But I’d really love. You know we’ve talked around you know some tips and tricks and things that the folks who who play at home can implement in their business. What. If you had 1 key takeaway that you would like the audience to know about Eyeful Media and the way that you present to the world. Ah, what would what would that be like if someone was looking to build the kind of inclusive culture values driven team that you have clearly built. What would that advice be.

32:11.75
Antonella Pisani
Yeah I mean be prepared to make tough decisions right? that you truly believe in things and you know truly figure out what your purpose is and what values are going to support that purpose and be prepared that that doesn’t mean and.

32:15.15
Lauren Conaway
Um, yeah.

32:29.69
Lauren Conaway
Now.

32:29.77
Antonella Pisani
It’s gonna be easy right? And you’re gonna have to make some tough choices sometimes in terms of people sometimes in terms of clients that you take on. Um, but it’ll pay off in the long run. But it’s not the easiest path to doing business.

32:45.24
Lauren Conaway
Yeah, when I worked in the Automotive World. Um I worked at a family of dealerships and I was the one of the internet sales managers and I was the only female manager at the table and and. What was really really interesting is we would have these conversations about the sales team and every now and again we would come across a salesperson who was kind of a cancer on the on the organization you know they had a bad attitude. Um, you know they weren’t particularly nice to deal with and what would happen is you know we would have. These conversations were aware of the situation but because these individuals tended to be performers. You know they were. They were very cutthroat. They would do anything to make the sale and so month after month they would put up really high numbers. But I don’t know the leadership within.

33:23.67
Antonella Pisani
And

33:35.73
Lauren Conaway
Ah, these organizations that I worked for like I don’t know that the leadership understood that you know by propping up this individual. You are then hurting. You know the 20 or so sales leaders who are underneath them as far as performance and so if we if we could figure out a way to make people feel. Safe and valued and you know all of that we don’t need that that 1 guy at the top who’s just a total asshole you know and so it’s just one of those things where it’s like when you talk about making hard decisions about ah particularly about people like nobody likes to fire people. But at the same time you also have to understand that if you are truly trying to build a positive culture and one that that rewards not just the the high high performers but the people who contribute collectively to that culture like those are the kinds of hard decisions that you have to make right.

34:29.90
Antonella Pisani
Yeah, yeah, yeah for sure and I mean a lot of we didn’t talk about this earlier but like I encourage founders to read the book The go giver. That’s one of my favorite. But yeah.

34:30.92
Lauren Conaway
Is that has that been your experience.

34:41.53
Lauren Conaway
I love that book I actually all right. It’s the fun, fun fact about me but Bob Berg and I we have met a couple of times he’s one of the co-authors of the go givever. But when the book was first released and this was like what like almost twenty years ago or something like that. Ah, they did a.

34:46.47
Antonella Pisani
How cool.

34:58.48
Lauren Conaway
Glow are ah they did a nationwide tour of of the book and had a whole bunch of like influence social media influences and things like that hop on a bus and do this go giver tour and I got to coordinate the St Louis leg so so I love the go giver. It’s a great book.

35:12.90
Antonella Pisani
Um, yeah I’m great a couple of times and then there’s another one called Um, what you do is who you are and if if you want to humor me for a second I was pulling up quote that I shared out with my team is from that book which is.

35:19.97
Lauren Conaway
Um, yeah.

35:28.44
Antonella Pisani
Culture is not like a mission Statement. You can’t just set it up and have it last Forever. There’s a saying in the military that if you see something before below standard and do nothing then you’ve set a new standard. This is also true of culture if you see something off culture and ignore it you’ve created a new culture and I think. That’s exactly what you’re hitting on with you know the toxic high performers is like you’re allowing that and you’re setting a stage for your team that that behavior is okay, right? and that delivering the result is more important than the how. And.

35:50.69
Lauren Conaway
Um, yeah.

35:55.21
Lauren Conaway
Um, right.

36:03.37
Antonella Pisani
Mean That’s how stuff goes downhill really quickly.

36:04.40
Lauren Conaway
Yeah, yeah for sure. Well you know I love that. The way that we say it around innovators is you know establish your culture early, establish it often or someone else will establish it for you and you’re probably not going to like it right? It’s just.

36:17.22
Antonella Pisani
Left and then.

36:22.84
Lauren Conaway
Um, like if you if you really want to have a strong culture and if you want to create an environment where your team feels valued and ready for success then that’s what you got to? do you have to make those tough calls and those sacrifices in pursuit of the greater common. Good right.

36:39.46
Antonella Pisani
Yeah, absolutely and find ways to unify your team I mean we mentioned that we’re remote but that there’s a handful of us going to volunteer next like I think two weeks from now and it’s some of our team some of the clients team couple friends and just finding ways to to kind of live those values. Um. You know it is tough with remote teams and we have found that flying people in every once in a while. Just so that they can get to know each other It’s definitely an important part of the process too. Um.

37:07.00
Lauren Conaway
Yeah, well I love that so much and so I’m going to ask? What is the future of Eyeful Media? Like you grow remarkably fast. Um, you’re one of the fastest growing privately held companies in America. We’ve talked a lot about what you’re building now. But what are you building to?

37:26.31
Antonella Pisani
Um, yeah, so a lot of where my time is going now is education and just whether it’s information we share out publicly or whether it’s a lot of leadership for our team that will keep scaling. You know we’ve talked a little bit internally about why we grow and we’ve decided that the reason to grow is to continue to create opportunities for our people. We don’t want our people to have to go elsewhere and I think we want to continue to grow but at the right pace and with the right types of clients. But I think the next year here.

37:48.28
Lauren Conaway
Yeah, yeah.

37:58.60
Antonella Pisani
Yes, there’s some focus on efficiency but really to give people the time to think but a lot of investment and kind of sharing out what we know? um I’m doing a lot of writing which is different than where I’ve spent my last five-six years.

38:13.62
Lauren Conaway
Yeah, I mean, you like writing all right? Well, very cool. Well, I very much look forward to seeing your thought leadership pieces and kind of seeing Eyeful Media.

38:16.94
Antonella Pisani
I do. I was a communication major so it’s coming back to me coming back now. It’s been open.

38:32.64
Lauren Conaway
Ah, go from here for our listeners where they can find you?

38:36.22
Antonella Pisani
Yeah, so the best bet is to hit our website. It’s um, e-y-e-f-u-l-m-e-d-i-a.com, which is eyefulmedia.com or just track us down on Linkedin as well.

38:45.64
Lauren Conaway
Very cool and now we come to the human question and I think when we were doing pre show prep again I told you that the question has nothing to do with anything that we’ve talked about and I lied to you So I’d like to apologize for that. But I’m going to ask if you’ve mentioned books.

38:58.70
Antonella Pisani
But any.

39:04.24
Lauren Conaway
At several points, things that you’ve been reading. You know you talked about the fact that you know you’ve been writing so I really just want to ask you, what are you reading right now?

39:11.70
Antonella Pisani
Oh I just started atomic habits earlier today. I just wrapped up the Surrender Experiment.

39:16.86
Lauren Conaway
Shut the front door. Ah, it’s right here on my bookshelves. That’s awesome.

39:30.22
Antonella Pisani
Right? before that the 5 the 5 dysfunctions of a team. But yeah I’m into atomic habits now.

39:39.36
Lauren Conaway
Very very cool and I recommend going to Atomic Habits and any of the books that Antonella has mentioned, would definitely give a heavy vouch for those as well. Clearly, you’re good at curating books. Ah, friends. Well first of all Antonella, thank you. I just want to say thank you so much for sharing your time and your treasure with us. It’s been really great to talk to you. I love what you’re building with Eyeful Media. I invite our listeners to check them out. But thank you so much for taking the time.

40:08.98
Antonella Pisani
Thank you so much as well and it’s fun. I feel like we could banter about books for a while.

40:15.42
Lauren Conaway
I know I yeah, so we actually have an innovator event next week and we’re doing it at a new bookstore that one of our members is launching. And it’s been like this whole perilous journey. But I’m just like, you mean to tell me that you’re sending me into a bookstore owned by people I love and I will have my wallet with me and you’re going to? oh this is a terrible idea so we could definitely talk about books. The other thing that we want to talk about, friends, is today’s episode sponsor, Full Scale. Do you need to hire software engineers, testers or leaders? Let Full Scale help! They have the people and the platform to help you build and manage a team of experts. When you visit fullscale.io, all you need to do is answer a few questions. And then the platform will match you up with fully vetted, highly experienced software engineers, testers, and leaders. At Full Scale, they specialize in building long-term teams that work only for you. Learn more when you visit fullscale.io. And friends, I do want to remind you that the Startup Hustle podcast is built for you and we really want to hear your take. We want to hear your story. We want to know what you think about and what you struggle with as a founder. So definitely reach out to us. You can find us at startuphustle.xyz. You can find us on Linkedin and Facebook, we’ve got a couple of chat groups around. Find us.

41:39.64
Lauren Conaway
And let us know what you’re thinking. It is something that we endeavor every day to answer your questions and give you the support that you need. So definitely, check us out and keep on listening. We appreciate that you come back to us week after week friends and we will catch you on the flip side.