#13 - Zach Weismann of MAG Collective
#13 - Zach Weismann on creating social impact through collaboration, and taking advantage of your ecosystem.
On this episode of The First 10 Podcast, I talk to Zach Weismann, founder of MAG Collective. MAG is a collection of brand experts, designers, strategists and marketers that work with organizations of all sizes to create lasting social change and generate true social impact.
Key Points
"Take advantage of your ecosystem"
"You can get a customer with a decent-looking website and a bank account. and maybe not even both."
"Be patient, try to communicate value clearly and succinctly, and don't underestimate the value of backwards-looking networks and who you have worked with in the past."
Show Notes
So Good They Cant Ignore You by Cal Newport
Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath
Contact Details
https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachweismann/
https://www.magcollective.com/team
Transcription
SPEAKERS Conor McCarthy, Zach Weismann
Zach Weismann 00:01
I think you can get a customer with a decent looking website and a bank account, right? Maybe not even both people get lost in all the things they need to get a customer and it's like going to get a customer first and then you can figure out how to invoice them.
Conor McCarthy 00:18
Hello, Hello, everyone. And welcome back to the first 10 podcast where I interview Business Builders on their first 10 customers who they were, how they found them had they talked to them, and what effect they had on their business so that you can learn what worked what didn't. I guess today is Zach Weissman, who is the founder of mag collective mag is collection of brand experts, designers, strategists and marketers that work with organisations of all sizes. And their goal is to create lasting social change and generate true social impact. It's a really, really interesting model of collaboration and network leveraging that and we dig into it in this episode. Zach himself has a fascinating background even before setting up my collective, he moved from working with the Big Four accounting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers, to Peru to work with local communities on health and water sanitation issues. It was a massive jump. And he talks a lot about the learnings that it had that he found in Peru and afterwards, he found himself working after Peru on conservation, sustainability and innovation initiatives with some world renowned people and companies. His career path then led them to create a lead a team of skilled entrepreneurs and freelancers who bring enormous value to the clients they work with. We talk a lot about building that team about using each other's networks to cross pollinate their work and their contacts. So from PwC to Peru, and to your ears. Here is Zach Weissman. Hey there first 10 podcast listeners. I'm here today with Zach Weissman. Zach, first of all, thank you very, very much for taking the time to be with us here today. Do you want to tell us a little bit about your business story so far? And what you're working on right now? Yeah, sure. Hi, Connor. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, I'm the founder of mag impact collective have been running the collective for going on three years now?
Zach Weismann 02:06
Well, I'm sure we'll dive into kind of what and who the collective is. But my background has taken work journeys, taking lots of different shapes, twists and turns. But essentially, it's always been at the intersection of brands and purpose. So over over the years in corporate social responsibility, I've done wildlife conservation that worked with a lot of large brands, now sort of serve those brands in a consulting manner, helping them on marketing, branding, and design all with a social impact. Bend and focus.
Conor McCarthy 02:38
Very cool. Yeah. I mean, it's, obviously I'll include it in the show notes, but it's pretty impressive. On my collective as done and your, your history, in general, how you got to this point, is, is pretty incredible. I mean, do you want to talk a little bit about your background before my collective?
Zach Weismann 02:52
Sure. Yeah, yeah. So I was sort of on a traditional path of like accounting and finance. I went to school, undergrad, graduate degree in accounting in finance. I went to work for PricewaterhouseCoopers, a big global accounting firm, and I lasted a year. And the the joke I'd tell was, if we if, if you didn't last a year, you had to pay back part of your signing bonus. So the day I hit one year to the day, I put in my two weeks notice. And one of my, one of my sort of classmates, you know, started at the same time, he said, you know, today's our one year anniversary, I was like, Oh, yeah.
Zach Weismann 03:35
And I, I left the country, I moved to Peru, rural Peru to do volunteer work with an NGO did health and water sanitation projects. And that was like, that was like my gap year, my transition out of accounting, out of, you know, the finance world into what then has become my journey and social impact. And then coming back from that experience, which was amazing. started to look and sort of understand my own path in the social impact space, and what that could look like. And so I just happened to join a wildlife NGO that did a lot of documentaries, commercials, and films. And it they took a economical approach to the wildlife trade, if you will. So, for example, protecting elephants are getting killed in Africa. Why? Because there was a demand for the ivory in China. And so they said, Well, how do we curb the demand? And so they did a lot of awareness campaigns in China to help curb the demand for these products. So it had this sort of interesting economic bend to the work, which I was able to kind of finagle in and tailor my background is like, Oh, yeah, that's why you need a former accountant. And then that Just sort of opened my eyes to this world of, you know, what I think at the time was like, just kind of philanthropy almost then became corporate social responsibility. And now, it's social impact. I'm happy to tell more about other roles or save for later.
Conor McCarthy 05:17
Sure. Yeah, it's, it's fascinating to go from PricewaterhouseCoopers to, to water sanitation projects in Peru is a hell of a leap. And, yeah, so I suppose given that, given the title of the podcast, you know, I'm always interested in sharing stories about the early stages of, of anything you've been involved in, I guess, you know, whether that's going out to find the first 10 customers or in a consultant in the consultancy capacity, you know, how did you go and and find those people to join you? And even with my collective, how did you how did you gather those early bodies that were going to be a part of the collective? Yeah, and
Zach Weismann 05:53
that's what I love about just listening to some past episodes, and hearing people share those stories, because I think like, as you know, it just we live in this culture where it feels like everybody's doing it faster, quicker, stronger, better than you. And and I think that's, I'm tired of it, I feel tired. Like, I feel the effects. I'm only 34. But I feel tired. But, you know, this sort of keeping up with the Joneses. And that's what I love about sort of the message you're talking about, as the kids share some of these early stories, and how'd you get those first movers. Um, and on that note, for me, it was always I was always doing something on the side when I had traditional jobs. So when I was at PricewaterhouseCoopers, I was tearing for local environmental organisation, where I was the vice chairman. When I went to Peru, we were just doing that. But when even when I was working in quote, unquote, impactful jobs, I was still tinkering on the side with either starting something or trying something anywhere from selling t shirts to trying to start an organisation. So I kind of, I think, had that yearning in me, both my grandfather, my parents started their own businesses started multiple. So I knew I sort of would always want to be doing my own thing. But fast forward to about 2017. When I left, I was working at a creative agency when I left I did have this thought of, Okay, I think this is a good time to go out on my own, but who the hell is gonna buy anything from Zach Wiseman? Like, what? What am I gonna sell like what you know, and I had big brand contacts with I had done some work with IKEA and Google and the NBA. Like, okay, I have a good Rolodex, if that's still a thing, and for the younger listeners, Google Rolodex Not that I have one, but I know what it is, I guess, right?
Zach Weismann 07:47
And, and then, that this idea of wanting to do my own thing, but feeling like I needed and wanted a team to tap into and other people was actually what sparked the idea for the collective. And so mag is a membership group of 25, designers, marketers, consultants, if you will, who run their own small businesses, their own consultancy, and we team up on projects, when and where it makes sense. And so the idea was, how do I get folks to collaborate with but I'm not going to have the money to pay them a salary for a long time, and not wanting to, to kind of wait for that. And I had just come from the traditional creative agency space and sort of saw the limitations that high overhead can have. So it's kind of this blend of like, how do I fix this maybe, hi, agency fee world with also wanting people to collaborate with and then once I felt I had some folks to collaborate with, then I feel like the customer side was like, great, it gave me confidence boost as well, to where I could go out and talk to organisations and know that I had a lot to offer, you know, kind of really make it hard for them to say no, to me and to us. Hmm,
Conor McCarthy 09:06
I love that. But you you build a team, like all the best movies, you build a team around you and then but it's true. I mean, assemble.
Conor McCarthy 09:14
Yeah. That's a really interesting moment in time where you said, you know, I've got a great Rolodex, I've got plenty of people I could go to, but my offer would be better if there was if I had more, and I suppose more skill and talent to share as as as a collective. And so So did you have a number of people in mind where you said, here's the idea, do you want to be in? Yeah, yeah,
Zach Weismann 09:38
I felt like I had this number of 10 I just felt like if you were gonna launch a collective you needed people wasn't gonna launch a collective of one. And yeah, just sort of had this number of 10 felt like I had some good context. People I had met also felt like so many people in my life. world were like running their own small businesses. And I liked that. And it was really I think, though also driven, it was part confidence, but also, I think a little circumstantial, which is maybe a good important lesson for listeners is like, take advantage of your current ecosystem and your current. And the ecosystem takes shapes in lots of different ways. It could be clients, relationships, colleagues, past colleagues. And how that pertains to me was I had just done a lot of work with big companies. And I thought, well, these are great contexts and relationships, it's really easy for them to say no to just me, it's really hard for them to say no to me plus 10 other people, where we now have 35 services we can offer. And so that actually sort of circumstantially led me to say, Okay, if I go reach out to my contact at IKEA, how do I work with them? How do I make it so that I have more to offer so I can support them and want to continue to work with them, it's too easy for them to sort of say no, to me as a one off person. So the idea of 10, to your point to about this kind of this first 10 It's funny, we I wanted to launch with 10. Collective members. I mean, yeah, I have to sell these folks on joining a thing that didn't really exist, that I was creating in real time. But by focusing and asking a lot of questions and meeting folks, and understanding their pain points as being a freelancer or a small business owner, they were like in, they could see the value. And so it was kind of like part research, and then built with those needs in mind in terms of the value proposition to someone joining the collective in order for us to go service these clients more to find more client work.
Conor McCarthy 11:54
Yeah, I mean, there's a lovely frame on that of you being able to find the clients that they will benefit from. So that's a huge plus, because like any small business, especially in the fields you're talking about, for them to go out and find clients. That's the mean, that's half half the job, as well as doing the actual job itself. And you're saying, Look, I'll go find them if we can service them.
Zach Weismann 12:16
Yeah, exactly. And I feel like there's no, you wanted to find the right people who sort of share that mentality. And not everybody necessarily, does not not necessarily in a bad way. I think also, it sort of depends on what service industry you're in. Like, for example, designers tend to be highly sought after. So maybe sort of that collaboration piece sometimes comes unintentionally. Second, because they get reached out to you for their work, or people understand what they do. But if you're wanting to do bigger projects, or the work you do is strategic, odds are you usually need somebody to either support you kind of bottom up or top down. And so, yeah, I think wanting to find folks who were also interested in collaborating and easing some of that pressure, and to go, you know, brainstorm and try and pitch a project to a bigger client was key, too, like there had to be in that first 10 people who sort of shared that same sentiment, yes, at least in terms of the 10 of recruiting the collective you kind of were looking for a certain type of person who said, Oh, yeah, I can see the benefits of networking, and joining a group and trying to get more leads and more projects and taking some of this small business owner pressure off myself. Yeah, it just sort of feels like, you know, again, a lot of the messaging out there is often, you know, go at it on your own, not team up.
Conor McCarthy 13:54
Yeah, I think it's it, there's definitely a bias towards the deload entrepreneur. That is not always the best way to go, I think for people, especially if you're used to working in a team environment, and you know, the benefits of that.
Zach Weismann 14:10
Right. Right. Exactly.
Conor McCarthy 14:12
And so when it came to, to pitching the collective to potential leads, how did you how did you think about going into those conversations?
Zach Weismann 14:23
That's a great, that's a great question. Especially when it kind of pertains again, to sort of getting that first 10 first base of customers, you know, it totally ranged from we have this question like, Is any client going to care that Am I allowed to cuss By the way, go for it. Oh, I don't have any little flavour
Zach Weismann 14:48
was says any client give a shit that we have all different email addresses, right. Like that was an early question that I had, like, does everybody it goes that level right to that level of details? Like does anyone care that We don't all have at mag collected email addresses, and the answer has been resoundingly No, nobody cares. But we did have these questions of, will they will a potential client understand the model? Will they get it? And will they seek it? Right? Like, if we're talking about these differentiators? Do they not only get it enough, but do they get it enough to want it and to understand the real value or some of those differentiating points? So it was a little bit of like, Okay. And I think this challenge is real for a lot of folks to is, you know, we can do a lot of things for a lot of people. So how do we focus, and I think one of the areas that really helped focus was the networking effect. And that helped lead to find the collective but say, Okay, we have 10 really talented people in here. I just really started to talk and connect with all of them and understand who they're working with, who are past clients they worked with, you know, what's sort of their whole sales funnel? And where are their opportunities to get an introduction revisit a past client, like kind of, kind of start smaller in that sense, which, again, sometimes can be not as sexy before just blasting out to the world, and trying to find these big new sexy clients. Okay. Do you have a client that now needs some design work? And you're not a designer? Well, great. We have a designer, how do we do some of that mix and matching of services. And that actually proved to be really fruitful, because members were making introductions and referrals as like trusted advisors to their existing clients and existing network. And so it helped give some credibility. So I guess it's sort of echoes a similar thing of when you're looking for those first clients who can help make introductions and serve up some credibility to you. without, without, like, too much of a lift, right? If I introduce you, Connor to a contact of mine, say, hey, Connors, great, you should work with them. That carries a lot of weight. There's social proof built into that.
Conor McCarthy 17:11
I love this. In my head, it's almost it's like backchannels. That's probably not the right analogy. But I think when people start off with a consultant state, they look out to the world, or to the Rolodex again, is there right? Who? Who can they get in touch with? Who do I know? And maybe they're on LinkedIn, and they're trying all these methodologies. But you kind of turned around to the people that you would gather together and said, Now let's put all our individual contacts together. And that's a huge pile of warm leads. If you like, that. We all need something different. I'm guessing, is it fair to say that a lot of those people maybe couldn't be served by this small consultancy, they needed a team of people with the different expertise?
Zach Weismann 17:54
Yeah, 100%. You're right. And there was also a lot of natural synergies where where the light really started to go off that I that I think we all realise we're onto something was when members and this also I think clients, what will two instances here I'll separate them out, members started to see how other member services could benefit own work. So for example, consultants in the collective who did more strategic work, saw that, oh, wait a minute, if I actually bring a designer in, that makes my work better, that makes the client happier, you know, that I can add more value to this work. And so sometimes it made sense to bring in a team member other times there was natural, sort of the client, the the member was in a real good sense to know what the client needed. And when they heard them, say, you know, I'm just making this up, like, Oh, we need a new website, the member themselves say, Oh, well, you know, by the way, I'm part of this collective, and we have some designers who I have worked with, and are great. And then that becomes a, again, sort of this trusted referral and recommendation. So there's this really neat sort of complement to each other's work. that folks can, you know, again, it's sort of rooted in this sense of like, be a trusted adviser for your client, right? Where they trust you, and they come back to you, and more touch points are better. And so a lot of the members I think, have found value in saying, Okay, can I can indirectly offer a lot more to my clients, maybe it's related to my project, maybe not. But when your team have won, again, more touch points with a client, usually the better in terms of responding to their needs, helping make introductions, etc.
Conor McCarthy 19:44
It's fantastic because the more you talk about it, I love the sense of trust that that's underlying the, the webs that you're creating, because it is a it's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of connections between the different nodes in this network. But underlying them all is the sense of like, if you try Maybe you can trust this person that I'm in the collective with. And that's what every business or every service buyer wants to hear, like, I love your work. Who else do you know, whose work I'll probably also love.
Zach Weismann 20:10
Right? Exactly. And, and what we discovered. And this was really the first half of 2018 was a lot of this was happening in any, you know, if you talk to a really talented designer, right, or strategic consultant, they have a network and they they are referring people and passing work and bring in people, right, like they have to, in order to do that type of work, we just put like a fence around it, and said, Look, we're going to kind of close it off in a good way. vet, these people build a community of I say, like minded not in a bad way, but in a sense of like, you know, people who want to do good work for good people, and maybe have a bend towards social impact. That's kind of our our differentiator, but we put a community build a community around it, and started to give people, other folks to talk to and to connect with and learn from, there's also this, at least the collective wise of, you know, just because you're out on your own doesn't mean you shouldn't have all the benefits that one does at a big company, in terms of like kind of learning and networking with other people and having people to kind of push and challenge you in a good way. Like somebody joked to me early on. Like, are you trying to start a collective with people who work on their own? Because they don't work well with others? I was like, I hope not done. I don't think that's the case. And it's very much not, but that did lead I think, to this question of external clients, to some confidence, some ability to, you know, my sort of rule of thumb with clients a little bit is and this doesn't fit for everything, and everybody is like, make it hard for them to say no. Right? And, and having a bunch of different services across the collective makes it a little harder for them to say no, right? odds are, we can do something that they need. So the networking effect amongst us really helped like I like how you said sort of turning around and looking backwards and saying, Okay, look, I've built up a good network over the last 10 years. So have these other folks, let's dig into that before we just go to sort of a new shiny thing. And that proved to be really, really fruitful for us in terms of getting off the ground.
Conor McCarthy 22:28
Just to switch gears a little bit. I'm always curious as to what books, Business Builders, like yourself, read any books that stand out that helped you, I suppose better understand humans and how people think,
Zach Weismann 22:43
Oh, good one, um, I had an Uber driver once I said, Where are you from? He said, Earth? That was great. He just made me think about other humans. books that your species your kind will like, there was one I read earlier that's stood out was called switch by the heath brothers. Have you heard of it? I have. Yeah, it was it was good. they've they've written many cents. I mean, I think switch was maybe going back 1012 years. But um, they really articulated like this concept of shaping the path for people. And they gave this awesome example of shaping the path is like, sort of the the visual that gave is you you are riding an elephant. And the elephant is emotions, and the human is intelligence or like rational thought, and you will get tired steering the elephant, right? Like emotions are real. And they drive things and, and so sometimes you have to shape the path so that the elephant goes in the right direction, you know, and the emotional piece and I just remember from the book, a silly example they gave was ATM machines. And they said, banks tried forever to get in so many different ways for people to remember to take out their debit card from the machine and humans. I don't know how it is in Ireland, but you know, in the States, yeah. It's like, somebody was always leaving their debit card in the machine and cause backlog. It was expensive for the banks time consuming. So they finally said, You know what, you have to take your debit card out before you get the cash. And that's a great example. They gave up shaking the path right? It's like yeah, just help the elephant out. And, and then it works right now. The machine beeps at you 10,000 times to take your card out before you think.
Conor McCarthy 24:46
Yes, I like that.
Zach Weismann 24:49
So yeah, so switch was a good one that really stuck out with me about human behaviour. Also be so good. They can't ignore you by Cal Newport. Cal's written a lot of good stuff. He's an MIT professor. But what I really liked about be so good, they can't ignore you was, it's really about building career capital, and sort of understanding what you have to offer the world as opposed to like, you know what the world has to offer you. And so one of the things he says that I've really gravitated towards is like, he has this line, like following your passion is bad advice. And the first time I read it, I sort of had a visceral reaction to that I was like, What do you mean, following, you're talking to the guy that quit PwC to go live in rural Peru, like, I've been following my passion for a long time here. And what he said, though, is that puts the emphasis in the wrong place, that finding your passion, or identifying what you're interested in, that's the easy part. The hard part is doing that day in and day out, doing it in the grind, building the skills in order to do it to make a living to grow money. That's the hard part. And so he talks about building things like career capital, building things that are marketable. So yeah, those are two that really kind of jumped out at me in terms of humans.
Conor McCarthy 26:16
Humans in general, they're really good. Yeah, the switch by the chip, and Dan Heath is great. I read their book Made to Stick, which is also fantastic, good. It is excellent. It's really, really great. They, they're just full of good stories. Like I remember one of the stories in major stick was about this thing called the commander's intent. And it comes as a lot of stories or analogies in the US, too, that comes from the US military, where they were trying to figure out ways to give soldiers plans in the field. But plans that weren't so rigid, that is something went wrong. The plan was at the at the window, you know, they were trying to kind of say, you know, we need to, here's the objective, but there's many ways you could go about getting to that objective. So So and they came up with this idea called commander's intent. And of course, it translated over into business. One of the most one of the the examples I gave in the book was from Southwest Airlines. And the guy Herb Kelleher, who started Southwest Airlines. Yeah. And his commander's intent, I don't remember exactly, but it was, it was something along the lines of, you know, we're the, we're the lowest fares airline, or we do everything in our power to ensure that we are the lowest fares airline out there. Right. So it's kind of you know, and we've, we've heard that a lot since, but that was one of the first people to pioneers. But it meant that whenever there was a question about it kind of strategic or tactical shift in the company, it always went back to that question, does this decision make us the lowest fares airline? in the in the industry? And if the answer was no, decision made, and fence was Yes, right. decision taken everything down to and, again, they give us example of like, you know, a lot of a lot of first class passengers say we should include olives in our salad. And it's like, does that make us low fare? It's like, No, well, that we're not gonna do that. It's like, Oh, yeah, that's genius. Imagine all the headache that says all the way up and down the the managerial chain, and that the staff chain and everything. It's like, Oh, yeah, this is, whenever you're making a decision. Just go go to that, huh. That was really should we should we heard our passengers onto the plane like cattle? Yes.
Conor McCarthy 28:33
That's the extreme of it. Exactly. We're all used to that. And that's just the world we live in. I didn't COVID I think I'd be happy to be herded onto an aeroplane to be honest feel. So maybe just one last question. Just to wrap us up. What would you say to someone just starting out to find their first 10 customers?
Zach Weismann 28:50
Yeah, it's a great question. I would say, Be patient. But also, you know, I made this note, there's this pressure to feel like you have to be everyone to every you have to be everything to everyone right now. And I think that's, it's a, it's a palpable pressure. And that goes everything from, you know, I think you can get a customer with a decent looking website and a bank account, right? Maybe not even both, you know, it's like, people get lost in all the things they need to get a customer and it's like, No, no, get a customer first. And then you can figure out how to invoice them, you know, and there there's a, there's a, there's a range within that. But be patient, try to communicate value clearly and succinctly. Don't underestimate the importance of sort of backwards looking networks and who you've worked with in the past, who can help and then keep it simple, you know, in that sense, and there is everybody's sort of faking it till they make it right. Like Like, I think if we We all saw the the inner workings of every quote unquote, company we'd all be shocked, right? at some sense, yes. Like, send me an invoice and then the person Google's like accounting invoice. You know, a fun tip I did when I did that for the collective. I was like, Oh my gosh, I can't send. I think we did a project with Google pretty early on. And this may not be totally 100% accurate. But I remember, the invoice number was like six. And I was like, No, no, I can't. I can't send my six invoice to Google. So I changed the number to like, 67
Conor McCarthy 30:36
Yeah, very, very professional looking. Yeah.
Zach Weismann 30:41
Right. Oh, my god, they're gonna they're gonna cancel this contract if they realise like, we're the sixth client they've ever had. So there's a little bit of like, of that, you know? And how do you how do you button things up and keep things professional, but, but everybody is, you know, keeping up with systems and tools and trying and find people who are interested in deliver value, and then replicate it. You know, I do like what our guy jack says a lot about, like listening for signal, you know, and then doubling down on that signal.
Conor McCarthy 31:11
Yeah, that's fantastic. That's a brilliant, a whole bunch of advice to round out the episode. And thank you, thank you very much for that. And for for everything else, I will obviously include shownotes to all the magic stuff you're doing, including make dense, which we didn't even get to. And really, really, really fun, fun website to look at. So yes, thank you very much, Zack, and I will talk to you very soon.
Zach Weismann 31:39
Thank you kind of really appreciate it.
Conor McCarthy 31:44
And that's a wrap. I really hope you enjoyed this episode, and that there was something in there that was actionable and insightful for your business. Do check out the show notes for more information on what we discussed, as well as ways to contact my guest today. Helping you identify and create those first 10 customers is what I do. So if you like what you hear on this podcast, please do get in touch at www.first10podcast.com, or on Twitter @TheFirst10Pod.