How Service Design Enabled an Agency to Scale without Hiring

Miles Kailburn on Scaling, Service Design, and Embracing the Founder's Strengths

Growth brings inevitable challenges for professional service firms, including resource constraints and team misalignment. Addressing these requires prioritizing resources, aligning teams, and streamlining processes. Miles Kailburn, co-founder of OTM, a marketing and sales consultancy, embodies a methodical approach to navigating these complexities. His journey offers valuable insights for founders transitioning from growth to scale, particularly in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

Key Insights from the Conversation

1. Reframing Challenges: ADHD as a Superpower Kailburn shares his late-in-life ADHD diagnosis, reframing it not as a limitation but as a source of strength. He identifies pattern recognition and second-order thinking as key gifts associated with his neurotype, allowing him to anticipate future trends and connect disparate dots—a high-value skill in leadership. This perspective challenges founders to embrace their unique wiring and leverage perceived weaknesses as potential strengths, turning past "scars" into "armor."

2. The Transition from Growth to Scale: A Shifting Landscape OTM's journey from an "accidental" startup 18 years ago through a long growth phase involved stabilizing product-market fit, service design, and productization. Entering the scale stage coincided with significant industry volatility, particularly the rise of AI and automation in marketing.

This shift necessitated a focus on reskilling and upskilling the team, moving creatives towards leveraging technology to augment their work. Kailburn notes that his background as a web developer became increasingly relevant, highlighting the growing importance of technical acumen in marketing leadership.

3. The Power of Internal Service Design A key turning point for OTM was applying customer journey mapping and service design principles internally. Kailburn realized the methods used to improve client outcomes could also enhance OTM's own service delivery.

He appointed a team member, Jordan, with a product design background to lead this internal service design initiative. Despite initial uncertainty ("I have no idea [what it looks like], but we'll figure it out"), this role proved transformative.

• Initial Challenges: Cultural shifts were needed to help the team embrace internal process refinement led by someone without deep subject matter expertise in every area. Psychological safety was crucial.

• Tangible Results: After a 9-12 month cycle of design, implementation, and feedback, OTM saw significant ROI:

  • Efficiency: Project timelines were cut down, leading to faster delivery.

  • Team Experience: Processes were redesigned to reduce "death by a thousand tasks," creating a better day-to-day experience for the team.

  • Profitability: Net profit stabilized and increased by 60-85%.

  • Scalability: The firm could grow past previous capacity without adding headcount.

  • Compensation: Increased revenue per headcount allowed for greater upward mobility in salaries.

4. Leveraging Technology: Efficiency and Evolution Kailburn views technology, particularly AI and automation, as fundamental to the future of marketing. He draws parallels to software development, where frameworks and tools eliminate redundant work (like coding calendars), freeing developers for higher-level creation. Marketing is undergoing a similar, albeit faster, evolution. Technology allows firms to move beyond bespoke, manual processes towards data-driven, scalable systems, fundamentally shifting the required skillsets within the industry.

5. Overcoming the Founder Bottleneck: Systematization and Delegation Addressing the founder bottleneck requires self-awareness and intentional action:

• Know Thyself: Founders must identify their unique strengths and weaknesses, doubling down on strengths while delegating weaknesses.

• Systematize for Replication: Instead of trying to replicate yourself (which often fails), change how things are done so the process is replicable. This involves systematizing and productizing services so that 80% is consistent, allowing for reliable delegation and training. This creates best practices that can be adopted and evolved by the team.

• Delegate Consistently: True growth comes from the ability to delegate work reliably, which requires established systems and processes.

6. Maintaining Alignment and Focus During Scale Staying aligned while scaling requires structure and a dedicated "bulldog":

• Team Buy-In: The operations team must be aligned on priorities and understand resource constraints.

• The "Bulldog of Scope": Appointing someone (like Jordan in OTM's case) to rigorously defend priorities and manage scope against new ideas or perceived urgencies is crucial. This role helps the team stay focused on quarterly objectives.

• Founder Awareness: Founders need self-awareness regarding their tendency to underestimate time and overestimate immediate capacity. Embracing a long-term perspective ("I want this done right... for the long haul") helps temper the urge to constantly add new initiatives.

7. Final Advice: Embrace Your Identity Kailburn's concluding advice to his younger self encapsulates a core theme: Embrace your own identity. Know who you are, don't try to be someone else, and build the business you want. Trust your gut instincts—they're often correct. This foundation of self-acceptance is key to navigating the pressures of scaling with authenticity and resilience.

Transcript for Search & Skimming

Below is the complete, searchable text of the interview. You can use the speaker tags to quickly search or skim the conversation for key insights on leveraging service design for internal operations, the ROI of systematization, and overcoming the founder bottleneck.

Randell Mauricio: Instead of me butchering my way through this, I'm just gonna read this sentence because I think it, it, it sounds really good. It sets the table and it goes like this: "Growth brings challenges like resource constraints and misalignment. And both of these things can be addressed by prioritizing resources, aligning your teams, and of course streamlining your processes." And so the reason I reached out to you is when I think of this sentence, this is, you come to mind.

Miles Kailburn: Well, thank you.

Randell Mauricio: This is something that I believe A, you've either solved or B are in the process of solving. And in the five years that I've known you, I've always respected and admired your methodical approach to business because you're always constantly learning. So Miles Kailburn, thanks so much. And, um, if we could just, I'll toss over to you quick intro of who Miles is, what is OTM, what problem you solve, and if you, if you're up for it, throw in, uh, fun fact about Miles.

Miles Kailburn: So Randell, thanks for having me. Uh, my name is Miles. I'm a co-founder here at OTM. Uh, we are a marketing and sales consultancy, uh, focused in high lifetime value segments and B2B professional services. So, um, you know, I think a fun fact about me is, um, I don't know, some interesting facts I guess are, I never went to college. I found out late in, uh, late in life in my forties that I have ADHD and, um, I am a very curious individual. So in terms of things I like to do, it's just about anything. That's, that's me in a nutshell. So should we talk about growth constraints?

Randell Mauricio: Interesting. I'm gonna, um, squirrel. Actually, I, I found that interesting. The ADHD. Um. I'm curious your, your take on this, do you see that now as a superpower, realizing this later in life?

Miles Kailburn: A lot of scars, uh, that have turned into, I think, armor for what I do in running a company. So, I see it very much as a strength and I think it's always been an intrinsic strength, but, um, not understanding. and how I operated, um, really kind of made it tough to, um, find a fit. Um, traditionally for myself, um, even, even in the agency world, um, I remember it was probably 6, 7 years ago. You know, being a co-founder of a marketing firm, but with a. You know, technology background, um, as a director of IT for a school district is pretty uncommon. Um, or was, you know, very uncommon. All of our peers were these eccentric, highly visionary people. And here's, you know, me being very creative and very visionary, but in a very different, logical, pragmatic, uh, growth focused ways. And. You know, I think there was just a lot of imposter syndrome to that, only to find out later in life that a lot of those creative, creative agencies, um, no longer exist. And most of them are led by people with technical experience because they all led development shops and those development shops turned into digital firms. Um, and so then it started to actually kind of more of a common picture for myself. So, um. I, you know, it's just how I'm wired and it just makes me very, very curious.

Randell Mauricio: I, I find this very intriguing. One quick question, and then I promise you we'll, we'll, we'll transition over to the topic at hand. Why do you, why do you label this as a strength? I agree with you, by the way. I'm not challenging it, but in your words, why do you see it as a strength?

Miles Kailburn: Pattern recognition. Um, you know, and it, I would say pattern recognition, second order thinking, um, are two huge gifts that I have. Um, and, uh, you know, a lot of people do and probably comes with a bit of ADHD as well. But, um. Just having the ability to see things much further out, um, and connecting those dots. It's definitely the, the highest value skill I bring to our leadership team. Um, they have an unbelievable amount of skills that I do not have, but that is one skill that, um, I, I bring to the table. Um, I'll see things and, you know, a year or two, three years down the road and, and that. They just don't see it. And, um, I can help get them there and, um, it's got a pretty good track record of being accurate. So, we'll, we'll, we'll,

Randell Mauricio: Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good segue to topic at hand, the transition from growth to scale. Uh, I can tell you that in the five years that I've known you, you and I have had many conversations about this transition. Why don't you give us a, an update of, you know, what OTM is contending with now in, in your journey as you transition from, from growth to scalability.

Miles Kailburn: Um, so our journey is, um, well I guess to take a quick step back, we accidentally started our company, you know, 18 years ago and, and then kept going. So, our timeline's a little unique. Um, the. The, the growth phase for us, uh, was incredibly long, uh, because we had to grow, you know, into our twenties and out of our twenties and figure out what to do and how to do things and that. So, uh. You know, I would say over the last five, six years, you know, the, the time I, I've known you, uh, a lot of that time has been shoring up our growth stage, um, looking at product market fit, you know, looking at service design and delivery, uh, productization of things. So all of those things were kind of validating our growth phase and stabilizing and, uh, systematizing a lot of that. Um, and so as we've gone into our scale stage, you know, the. The interesting thing around that is it's also at probably the highest volatile time in our world, uh, in, in marketing and certainly in sales, um, with technology and all that. So I think while. It's, the industry has actually shifted more towards what I would consider my core competency, um, on the technology side. Um, I think it's, it's amazing and obviously we're talking about AI and, and technology and automations and things like that. It's just having a, a much, much, um. Stronger place as it should in in marketing. So when, when we're going through the scale stage, not only are we trying to transition the company through, um, that scale stage, but also we're having to look at, you know, that shifts the entire makeup of skills that our team needs. So going through reskilling, um, upskilling, um, training and development for our teams, shifting people that were typically highly, highly. Um, you know, know how to phrase it, but like, bespoke creative, right? We, we hovered over every little nuance, um, as we should to now. How do we start to run more systems and, and larger scale aspects of what we do? It's lot more technology focused. So how do we take those, you know, designers, copywriters, and shift them more into technology roles and leverage and. That they can leverage and, um, augment what they do with technology. It's been a very, um, focused journey for us for probably three and a half years now. Um, but something that I think, uh, at least from a leadership perspective and having a background in, um, you know, we're primarily a web development shop first. Um, it's, it's all of a sudden become very relevant and very, uh, correlative.

Randell Mauricio: I think I actually recall when you made a very purposeful, very intentional switch or pivot, and I don't know exactly what it was about that interaction you and I had. There was just something different about miles, so I'm just gonna use my air quotes. There was something different about you. Can you take us back to. That point in time and give us a real day-to-day story that kind of manifested the friction slash challenge that culminated to, to, well, what the problem you're trying to solve today.

Miles Kailburn: Um, you know, I think when you, when you look in hindsight, there's a, there's a lot of turning points. So there's probably a few things that that went into that shift. But, um, you know, I think on a lot of things, you know, we, we've been a bigger company before. Um, you know, I think we're around 15 people now, we've been in, in the upper twenties. Um, and really. From a, a team size perspective, we knew we wanted to maintain kind of a, a bespoke, uh, boutique size, um, prioritizing a high quality talent, um, over larger team size and things like that. Um, so I think that was a one part of that was just. Looking at who did we wanna be and, and being very comfortable with that. That then does create a lot of constraints. So how do you grow and scale while also getting smaller at the same time? Um, and, and that led us down a path of, um. How do we start to, um, build the systems and processes to actually support that? Um, what does it look like? And, you know, I think that's where, um, I had this vision of I, well, I guess, how would I say it? We had, I had a vision of customer journey work. Um, so we had always used that in our high life gun value segments. It's critical to a lot of the work we do. A lot of that work is around how do you design a service and what does it feel like to the team delivering it? How do we cr how do we create better outcomes, better experience for them, but also how do we create better outcomes and experience for our, our customers? And so, um, we had done a lot of this, this customer journey work, um, just native to marketing. Um, and, and a little bit repurposed it for, for marketing. And then one day we kind of, I just kinda sat there and I was like, I. Why aren't we doing this for our own services? Aren't we going back through and redesigning and, and, you know, developing these very specifically, um, for, you know, different metrics of success, client experience, outcomes, all this stuff. And so I didn't have a lot of traction. Um, 'cause that idea was probably about 18 months ahead of where the, the company, um, mindset was. Um, but I had a team member, um, I. Who loved, uh, that work. And she had a background in product design. And, so I remember going to her and saying, "Hey, what if, what if this was your role? What if you became a service designer and helped us, uh, focus on our, our product in, uh, air quotes or how we deliver our services and things like that." And, she said, "Sounds great. What does it look like?" And I said, "I have no idea, but we'll figure it out over the next, you know, six months." Um. She goes, "All right, well, I'm currently managing accounts, so I get a lot of direct feedback real quick. What will my feedback be? Like, how will I know if I'm winning?" I'm like, "Well, you won't, um, in nine months you'll know that you're, you're doing good." And so she took on the role and, um, she's been in our, uh. Organization for years, but she, she led service design for a couple years and, uh, still does now, but she's now our director of operations, um, and still leads service design. So I would say, unfortunately I wish there was a, a quick go-to resource for that. You know, um, it's kind of just something that we've had to build organically. She's built her little peer network, um, in that stuff. But, um, and it's, it's been such an impactful, um. Role in our organization.

Randell Mauricio: This is really interesting. So, so if I play this back accurately, you were doing things for your clients without doing it internally. In other words, it's hard to be a profit in your own land until you realize, "Oh, I can." Um, so you did that. What was the turnaround like after the nine month, 12 month runway? What ROI did you see?

Miles Kailburn: Um, you know, I think we can measure. Uh, we can, we can quantify ROI in a few ways, traditionally and non-traditionally. So I think on the non-traditional side, well, I guess to take, take a step back, um, it, it's a big shift, um, culturally to bring somebody in who is there to help slash direct how we deliver services, um, to an internal team. Um, so there is a, a lot of, um. Um, curiosity. There was, uh, hints of hesitation 'cause, you know, it was something new. Um, how could this person help but not have the subject matter expertise? And so we really had to work through it. And, and Jordan. I did an amazing job, uh, working on change management, um, you know, all of that. So, you know, I think going through that process that took a while, uh, we had to build the muscle and the culture internally. So I would say, you know, while our first successes came nine months down the road, um, you know, it takes a couple months to get through service, design work, and, and then you have to. Implement the new processes in the next project cycle timelines, and then they have to finish so you kind of know where you are. So that nine month time period was, uh, pretty accurate when we started to see that feedback. Um, you know, in, in the non tangibles, um, or, you know, non metric or, uh, ROI aspects. You know, I think, and these are equally as critical, um, were able to cut down timelines. We were a, uh, and deliver work quicker. Which does eventually correlate, but that allowed our team to actually have more consistency and predictability and insight into their work. Um, which then actually allowed us, and this is the other big one, was we actually started to, this is a little bit of a phase two, but start to use service design to actually create a better experience for our team. We started to see that, um, the processes that they had built initially long before service design came in, um. They, it, it just created a terrible environment for themselves. You know, they, it was death by a thousand tasks and, um, you know, all of this. And, and we started to look at this and I was like, well, we could actually make your, your day-to-day life better and easier and simpler and, you know, um, and, and so we prioritize that kind of in a phase two, really helped our team. the workload structure, um, that best, uh, work for them in their service lines. And so I think there's, there's a huge, um, success and win in, in creating that at atmosphere, um, through kind of a odd way through service design. But then certainly on the, the direct side of, uh, ROI, um. You know, our net profit stabilized, um, and probably went up, you know, from a, a growth perspective. Somewhere between 60 and 85%. Wow. We were able to grow past, um, capacity without needing to add additional people. So we're able to do things more efficiently, more effectively. Our revenue by headcount, uh, grew, which, um, you could point to as an internal metric, but as we know in professional services, revenue by headcount directly correlates to salaries. Um, so the ability to create upward mo more upward mobility, in salary growth, uh, has been a big part of that. So, um, there's, there's a lot of, um, aspects there. Um, you know, we, we work with certain financial groups and, know we're always trying to perform better financially, but, um, turns out we're actually doing quite well compared to our peers. So, uh, we just keep our heads down and keep. Hmm. work for our clients.

Randell Mauricio: Miles. That's phenomenal, man. What a, what a story. I did not anticipate that coming into this conversation. And so, you know, when, when a lot of folks talk about scaling, you know, one of the common pointers is look for tactical abilities and turn them into strengths or unique capabilities and, and, and advantages. I mean, it's right there and it came in the form of Jordan. So kudos to you. Kudos to Jordan. But, uh, you know, you talk about right per right person. That's right. Clear. Right person, right. Seat skills and interest.

Miles Kailburn: And I think, just having gone through that exper, you know, go ahead. Miles us. to allow for that, right? Um, the, the environment for her to feel safe. Um, and, you know, she, she always had, uh, she always wanted to make sure that she was creating value. She's very, uh, team focused, all of that. But, um, I think. Uh, sure that when you have the right people, it's also the right environment. And, you know, they have the psychological safety to, to know that never done this before. And if, if I knew of another firm that had this role, I'd connect you with 'em. And, um, unfortunately I don't. And, um, but this is the path we're going down. Um, and you know that a lot of that was on the front end of the technology wave. I don't think we'd. Been able to adapt and, um, leverage technology as fast as we did without her. Um, obviously the team has to, you know, um. Lead a lot of that, but the ability to have somebody as an internal resource that can help you look at restructuring services, how could we tie these in? How could we shift the delivery structure, the cadence, all of that, that really is not firsthand thought. When you're a subject matter expert, expert, um, you know, you're, you're great at landing messages in an inbox without being, you know, um. Without getting caught in spam and having high click through and high, engagement rates and all that, it's a, it's a further, skill to then have them think about how to package it up, how to deliver it, how to structure the internal delivery of it, the sequencing. Um, so having that resource, uh, has been key a, as we shift really to a tech focused marketing firm.

Randell Mauricio: I'm glad you used psychological safety. I was hoping that you would bring that up and you did. So thank you for reading my mind. Uh, but it sounds like for, for Jordan's case, you have the right person in the right seat and you have the right environment and visionary leading the way. So ku that's why I said kudos to you. Let's talk about technology. Uh, I know you brushed on it and you touched on it, but what types of ways has, uh, technology helped to, uh, enable all of this?

Miles Kailburn: Oh man. Um, you know, I think coming from a technology background in software development, you know. Developers have a stereotype that they're inherently lazy. Um, and I'll kind of leverage that for a minute. 'Cause I think there's, um. A little bit of truth to it, but I think they're just largely efficient people. Um, you know, I remember having to code calendars, um, in PHP and you know, for something that's a few thousand years old, they're still relatively complex to code. And, you know, you look at the JavaScript frameworks that come out, so you're like, "All right, hey, we'll take one of those and I'll never write a calendar again," but. You know, what did developers do? They went to the next thing and they built the next thing. You know, they just kept going up the ladder to, to create things. So I think when we start to look at the shift in marketing and, and certainly in sales as well, but, um, hugely in marketing, that that speed of evolution really hasn't been there. I mean, if you look at the. 75 years, you know, you went from hand drawing art to, drawing pixels on a screen over a 60 year period. There's not a huge, and I mean, literally hand drawing pixels, like there's not a huge shift, um, there. And so that, it was interesting watching the um, adoption speed, just. Go 10x. Um, I had no, you know, it, it was normal to, you know, um, people in technology that, you know, okay, hey, it's, its way here. Great. Um, the industry did not receive it that way. Um, and I think, there's a lot of. Philosophical hurdles there, and I don't mean in the use of AI, but in, in what we're actually set out to do. Um, you know, we're actually set out to grow a firm, uh, not our firm, but our clients and, and help support their growth. And, and so at the end of the day, you know, it's just data. Um, you know, we have lots of creatives on our team, but at the end of the day, the creative is there to move a data point. Uh, it's there to move a click. It's there to, you know, do anything like that. And, I. So taking that approach, you know, it is all data. So if we, if we go off the data side and, and kind of back it into technology, the technology speed is just going through the roof. So that has shifted us from, you know, our creatives are now heavily involved in the technology side. Most are leveraging, um, you know, a variety of different tools, um, even video, photo, all that stuff. So. The, technology piece, I, I, it is just, you know, it, it'll fundamentally shift marketing, um, for the better. And it will also fundamentally shift, I think, who goes into marketing and, and why they, what, what makes them love it. That's a, uh, probably dodged all of your questions, but, um, it, it's where it is. It is where our industry is right now.

Randell Mauricio: No, precisely. And, um, I'm watching the clock. I wanna make sure that I get the next questions in, because you've already touched on quite a few important themes. You've touched on people, processes, and tools slash the technology that, that, uh, and the impacts that you are referring to. But I wanna go back to the dynamic that you described with. Uh, between you and Jordan, and I know Jordan's not the only a player that you have in your team, you have a couple other, uh, on under your belt, but I, I thought that was really interesting because what I have appreciated about. Uh, you Miles in, in my time knowing you is you're acutely aware of your strengths and weaknesses and, you know, full wear. Uh, you're very aware that I exist to solve the founder bottleneck and it strikes you. Strike me as somebody who's very aware of that issue. As you look around to other agency owners, other founders and business owners, what advice would you offer them so that the founder doesn't hinder him or herself via the founder bottleneck.

Miles Kailburn: Man. Um, that is a lot of entry points to that. So a, a few that immediately come to mind. One, your strengths and weaknesses and double down on the strengths, you know, hire and delegate out the weaknesses. You'll, you'll never be great in them. Um, and other people certainly are, uh, that took us a little while to figure out. And the others would be, you know, having the ability to replicate yourself. You know, I, You look at this, when we hire into like or, um, you know, different things, the, there's always this, "Oh, you gotta replicate yourself." That did work for us. Um, what we had to do is we had to change how we did things so that it was replicatable. Um, and that was a learning. For us. Um, you know, we, we tried all the things. We went the EE route and had a great one, but it just didn't work. 'Cause nothing we did was consistent and replicatable. So, uh, one of the biggest things we see, um, and you see it a lot in professional services, especially when it's more consulting, uh, focus, but it, it'll cross into other segments. Um. How, how can you systematize and productize a lot of what you're doing so that you know, 80% of it is consistent the same. Um, and 20% of it is maybe just the feel, the ambiance, the emotion, um, and, and the nuances to the delivery. But that 80, getting that 80% consistency, um, and, and that's been a, a long journey. Even just culturally, um, historically in our company to get to that point. Um, the, can be looked at as, you know, product overly productizing, removing value. Thing that it does, uh, which I don't agree with any of that, um, but the other piece that it does is it allows you to actually have a best practice. You can consistently train and develop and deliver the work at, um. A, a consistent level when you start to bring on additional people. Um, we found this when early on, you know, you have a SEO strategist and, and they're great. There's not an SOP to be found, but man, they can, they can deliver. Um, and then you hire the next one and okay, it's a junior. Quality of the work largely is just the average of the two. Like it, the junior doesn't magically deliver at the quality of the senior. And yes, we can go through reviews and some of this stuff, but like it, you, you actually start to. It, it just becomes the law of averages. And so what we found was if we can look at how do we solve common problems consistently with common solutions you know, there's custom work outside of that, those start to become best practices. We can train and onboard team members to those practices. They can adopt those best practices as their own, and then they can continue evolving and managing those. So I would say the ability to consistently scale and, and. Grow comes from the ability to actually be able to consistently delegate.

Randell Mauricio: Miles. This is easy to prescribe to other founders, to other agency owners. A lot harder to do. Uh, I wouldn't mind just asking you how you prefer to do it in your own shop. How are you able to keep alignment while still keeping the focus? On the core focus while getting out of the way and staying out of the way. Like what's, what's your secret?

Miles Kailburn: Oh, there's no secret. It's, uh, it's a village. Um. One, I think making sure that your, your team is bought into it. Um, so we have an operations team that kind of helps, um, lead all of this and, and Jordan is a part of that. And Jordan's I. Role. Um, I don't know if it's formal or informal, but, but she has recently, uh, in the last couple of quarters of planning been the bulldog of scope um, in prioritization. And so, uh, we set out our quarterly rocks, our, our quarterly projects, uh, for, for that stuff. She bulldogs it because, you know, um, I've got, you know, uh. New ideas all the time. You know, things come up that seem urgent. Um, and having somebody that can help prioritize in ultimately the team resources is, is, has been really, really key. And chances are it's probably not you as the founder. Um, the ability to self-regulate, self-governed, self-manage, um, chances are, is probably not a. Uh, a core focus. Um, should it, uh, you should be out there looking at opportunities and a lot of times the, the group, um, decides, "Yes, let's swap out this priority," uh, for this new one. Um, and other times it just gets backlogged into, uh, the next quarter as it should. So I think one, having a team that, that is, um. Onboard with that and recognizes the constraints. Time tracking and resource management also help, uh, to give some boundaries. But I also think, um, there's gotta be some awareness, um, as a founder to what does it take to do this successfully? Um, you know, "Can, can we add another three things and do it, do it successfully?" Um, I. most founders, I know it, they underestimate the time. But, you know, we can get through this real quick. Um, but then we have the highest, uh, expectations and requirements for what this should be. Um, and I've come to more so embrace the fact that I want this done right. I want it done for the long haul. Um, and I'm also the one that usually drags it on because I want it to be done. The way I want it to be done. So, um, having some recognition of scope and priorities is key.

Randell Mauricio: That is so cool. I, in my mind, just listening to you, I was trying to take notes. So that I could summarize what are the four key tips, if you will, that Miles has shared with me. In this one conversation, I got down to resources, alignment, processes, addressing the founder bottleneck, and you threw a fifth one in there. You used the word awareness, I'm gonna use the word, the word leadership, and, uh, Miles, it sounds to me that you are a leader through and through. Hence, you wouldn't have psychological safety in your shop. So again, kudos to you. I'm gonna give you the final word. If you were sitting across from yourself, a Miles Kailburn who was, you know, five years, 10 years younger, what would you tell that Miles, that version of Miles as that version of Miles is preparing a scale I.

Miles Kailburn: I, I think first and foremost, em, embrace your own identity. Um, I. Just know who you are, um, and embrace it and, and don't, don't question it. Um, don't try and be something else and build, build what you want. Um, I know, um, I think we, we get into our own minds too much. And in hindsight, the, the gut's correct and, and just go with it. Um, you, you'll change it later if, if you need.

Randell Mauricio: There you have it. Miles Kailburn, Old Town Media, Miles. You're a rockstar and a role model to me. Thanks so much for the time, man.