This week, we hired for an exciting role:
Thumbnail designer.
Now, a lot of people don’t know this…
But I’ve personally designed thumbnails that got 15 million views.
I know what gets the click visually…
And thumbnail design is a fascinating art…
But it was time for us to delegate this to someone else.
So on Friday, November 29th, we put out an official hiring post.
We added 16 questions into our application.
Then we got 27 official candidates:
- 13 from LinkedIn
- 8 from X
- 3 from Facebook
- 3 from referrals
We received some great talent.
Two of the candidates designed for Colin & Samir and The Futur.
Three days later, we selected 5 people for a trial project. We offered to pay $80 each for the project, since there was no guarantee of future work after this.
All five agreed.
We had them design a set of thumbnails for Dave Asprey’s video:
How I Got Perfect Vision Naturally In My 50s (5 Easy Habits)
I gave them each six thumbnail concepts to choose from, and I asked them to design three variations.
25 thumbnails were submitted, and only two thumbnails made it to the final round…
Note: The top row is the first draft, and the bottom row is the final draft.
I went hard on the feedback for each person…
I did about one to two rounds of Loom video reviews for each candidate. Each video was 7-10 minutes long. The first and final images don’t look that different, but the impact is immense.
We split tested both thumbnails, and the results were surprising.
Which thumbnail do you think was the winner?
How well did the video do in general?
Did the video flop?
I’ll tell you in just a moment…
We just sent emails to the two finalists for a second trial project. So we haven’t chosen our thumbnail designer yet, but we will in the next two weeks.
This entire experience reminded me just how hard it is to build a business.
I spent 2.5 hours writing the application…
1 hour reviewing the applicants…
1.5 hours personalizing an email for each final candidate…
And probably 3 hours giving feedback on each of their thumbnails…
This was on top of needing to write scripts, review scripts, and give feedback on long-form videos in our current production pipeline. Pair that with talking to leads, hopping on sales calls, and managing client communication…
Plus needing to make progress on my own content and home studio setup…
This week tested my limits. I’m not afraid to say it, but I wouldn’t be able to manage too many weeks like this in a row. It’s not because there was too much work, it’s because I had too many things to focus on.
The more things I need to do, the less effective I am at any one of those things.
Right now, I’m still deeply involved in the client delivery process…
But our goal is to remove me from the process without sacrificing client results.
That’s why I was nervous when we published Dave’s video with these two thumbnails.
It would be the first time we post a client video with thumbnails designed by someone else.
On Saturday morning, the video went live, and then we waited…
As of today, that video is flying.
It crossed 10,000 views in less than 1.5 days. It’s a 1 of 10, which means it outperformed the last 10 videos on the channel. Plus we think it could cross 100,000 views soon. You can watch the video here.
This was one of the most hopeful moments in our agency…
Because it brought us one step closer to removing me from the process.
We’re no longer ‘glorified contractors’ who have to deliver all the work. We’re becoming an actual agency, like a machine that is slowly starting to run without us. We still have a long way to go, but we can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I’ve never had this in any business I’ve been a part of before.
You see, we understand that most agencies suck.
In fact, everybody we talk to tells us they hate working with agencies. The agencies charge big prices then deliver small results. Time after time. For me, it’s obvious that we can never sacrifice the results we get just so we can ‘delegate the work.’
People delegate the work way too soon, before they ever learn how to do it properly themselves or even teach it properly.
So to be able to delegate a thumbnail…
Taking the information in my head and giving it to someone else…
And actually getting a beautiful thumbnail at the end of it…
That’s one of the best feelings I’ve had as a Founder.
We’re determined to produce remarkable videos at scale. Whether we have 5 clients or 50 clients, I want all of our clients to know they’ll get better videos with us than they will with any other agency.
This is why I build in public, so we can be transparent about how we’re actually going to achieve this.
Sometimes, I find myself wishing I could post more content, network more, or do more fun marketing stuff. You know, the ‘high leverage’ stuff that drives topline revenue.
But improving a service, building systems, and nurturing talent within our company…
This might be the most high leverage work you can do.
Because as my favorite quote from a legendary billionaire goes…
The best marketing is the work on your desk.
And I just realized something…
I’ve been building this agency in public for four months now…
In nearly half of them I find myself thinking about and writing about our actual service rather than our marketing.
But maybe they’re actually two of the same, and you’re watching me learn this lesson in real time.
This is Week 16 of building my business in public.