We pitched Crayola and in the pitch we went around kind of doing intros and one of the team members my friend Vick

He introduced himself as the senior strategist and he said you know I'm the senior strategist. I used to be an elementary school teacher and the client stopped this and said like,

well hang on a second, you're going to be the

strategist on this project and you used to be an elementary

school teacher and he's like yeah

and you know Krayla does a lot of stuff for schools and teachers and

parents and kids and he said well then you

win and we're like well what do you mean he's like you in the pitch we're going

with you. I'm going to do. Welcome to the future podcast, a show that explores the interesting overlap between design, marketing, and business.

I'm Greg Gunn.

When you think of a design agency, you might imagine a large bustling office with an open floor plan teaming with

creative people and most of the time reality would meet your expectations but not all of the time, reality would meet your expectations, but not all of the time, because that's not

what Philadelphia-based agency Super-Friendly is. In fact, it's not even close. Super-friendly is a distributed design collaborative, which means their team members reside all over the world.

And like specialized creative agents, they're tapped to collaborate on projects that maximize both their skill and their personal experience.

Kind of like what you heard in the opening for this episode.

Our guest today is the founder and sole employee of Super Friendly.

You'll hear how and why he structured his agency the way he did,

and why having the right people in the room is how you win.

You will also hear how he reversed engineered his entire career,

from entry-level designer to agency strategist, and he'll talk about the double-edged sword of youthful arrogance.

But the most interesting part of this conversation,

to be at least, is how he and Chris talk about pricing.

...