Episode 16 of The Design Journeys Podcast hosted by Chris Whyte. New episodes every Wednesday!

In this episode, Chris Whyte speaks with Michael Bambino, founder and creative director of Facility, a design consultancy that brings a strategic, brand-driven approach to product design. Michael shares his unique career journey from engineering and freelance design to launching his own consultancy, emphasizing the challenges and rewards of balancing technical expertise with creative expression. Listeners will gain insights into Michael’s philosophy on consulting, navigating career shifts, and maintaining design quality as Facility grows.

Key Takeaways:

1. Career Path Experimentation: Michael’s background spans engineering, design, and consulting, creating a unique blend of skills that define Facility’s approach.
2. Brand-Centered Product Development: Facility emphasizes strategic, brand-driven product design, offering clients a vision for long-term success.
3. Importance of Versatile Experience: Working in small firms allowed Michael to develop a wide skill set and agility essential for consulting.
4. Challenges of Scaling a Consultancy: Facility aims to grow while retaining high standards and a hands-on approach to client projects.
5. Client-Centric Strategies: Facility partners with clients to deliver not only products but future-focused roadmaps that support sustainable growth.

Connect with Michael Bambino on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelbambino/

Learn more about Facility here: https://www.facility.nyc/

Connect with Chris Whyte on LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrchriswhyte/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Learn more about Kodu Recruitment: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://teamkodu.com/⁠

Michael, welcome to the podcast.

Hello, happy to be here.

It's good to have you. to have you. we're going to do a little kind of bit of a very short summary of your profile and then we'll crack into it, shall we? So, so you're the founder and creative director of a design agency called Facility. Got over 15 years in the industry now. I'm not sure how to date. I'll say I am gleaming this from all your LinkedIn, Michael. So do step in and correct me if I'm wrong.

So far so good, yeah.

And started, we go back to your education. So interesting kind of choice of topics that you studied medicine by the looks of it, and then by mechanical engineering before then going into furniture design, and then mechanical engineering, and then just result, we're going to get into that in a little bit. In your early years, you followed kind of I'd say standard internships, but it looks like you did some environmental engineering before then.

moving into industrial design, but for a few agencies you worked your way through a few freelance projects before then? Yeah, just work around. So again, we'll get into that. You've worked for prime, you've worked for very cabinet health. You've done some teaching as well. We spoke before the show as well, 15 years of teaching. So, and then it's been best part of five years now with facility or coming up to five years in January. So,

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, hopefully that was a very kind of whistle stop tour of your career. And thank you. Yeah, thank you for listening to the Design Journeys podcast. So why don't we start at beginning then? So medicine, how did that work out for you?

of a mixed bag, right?

You

So the funny thing is coming out of grad school, I had to experiment a lot with my resume because I think it can be confusing if you just list things and LinkedIn. I'm guilty of not curating that as tight as I might like speak about my career or my resume, for instance. I mean, stop me if I'm going too far back. But if we drag back to like leaving high school, going to college, now you have to put a marker for like, this is your career. This is what you're going to do.

I grew up with a lot of creative stuff and a lot of subculture stuff, like a lot of music. My friends were artists, like all these kinds of things, but I had the burden of being like relatively good in school. And I had the burden of having parents who were definitely like cracking the whip and applying pressure. So I think when it came time to school, I was like music school, right? And they were like, hell no. And really it's just like I excelled in math and science and they just slid a book across the table that

had like an encyclopedia definition of engineering. And on paper, it sounds like for somebody who likes to build stuff, someone who sees themselves as being like somewhat technical or whatever it might be. I was like, this sounds great. and what they were doing is they were luring me to go to Cooper union cause it was free, in New York city. So that's where I went for undergrad. did mechanical engineering. the short story there is.

Incredible school, incredible culture. It's not like a college, the campus is New York. The school is like really selective, incredibly hardcore, filled with all these eccentric kind of funny students. So it's just three schools, engineering, architecture, and art. So These like seemingly unrelated disciplines are all smashed into one place, but I knew I didn't like engineering like six weeks in. I was like, no, not this.

but to be honest, I think I listened to a bit of a previous podcast and I forgive me but I can't remember the guests, but they also said like, " I was most of the way through the degree. So just put my head down and finished. And that's very like indicative of a school, a schooly person, like, you know, someone who's just like, I don't want to get off the rails. I've already invested. there's like an efficiency at play that is kind of very engineering. And that's what I did like one semester in, I was like, not this. And I basically just finished.

Yeah.

Yeah.

the degree begrudgingly. But leaving school, I knew there had to be something else. And I gave it a couple of shots, to be honest. The first time was biomedical engineering. Cause in my head, it was like, I've got to kind of soften these technical engineering skills. It seemed like a toolkit, but where to apply it. Cause to be honest, like heavy physics calculus, you feel like you have the tools to kind of decode anything, but you needed a human element.

kind of needed something softer. And in my head, really loved biology, or so I thought. Started a PhD program that lasted about a year. Moved to New Orleans immediately after Hurricane Katrina. So that was a factor. Yeah, a lot going on. I'm sure you didn't plan for this, but to shorten up the story a little bit, because I know that's not the whole podcast, you know, left New Orleans, like that didn't work out. Came back to New York, which is where I'm from.

Okay.

Right, okay.

Haven't been able to get terribly far away and just started working. And to be honest, it's something I recommend for a lot of our students. just in general, like earn your own money, understand your worth, understand how you like to invest your time. understand what it's like to work with other people. Like, there's just so much to it, once you get out of school and then helps you kind of align your priorities. So I was doing that and then experimenting in the background and I got.

To be honest, really lucky, I just started taking design classes at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. And it just like hit immediately. And I got lucky in a sense that I took kind of a not so hot class at Cooper Union that was like a Product Design intro kind of situation. And that's how I knew what it was. And on a whim, I went to Pratt, took some classes, absolutely loved it. I was like, "this unlocks it. This is it!"

Okay, cool.

And it was just heads down from there, I got into Pratt. Thank goodness. That was where I wanted to be, what I wanted to do and leaving Pratt with an industrial design degree. That's when I kind of hit that, you know, post -grad trying a little bit of everything, whoever would hire me and call me a designer kind of part of my career.

And how did you land that first role then as a designer?

I mean, kind of related to what I was saying earlier with like experiment, the resume. And I do have, I mostly teach undergrad, but I have some grad students and I have some people from like Cooper union, for instance, where I taught who want to move into design or people with technical backgrounds. And, and they're kind of like, you know, what job titles should I look for? How should I present myself? And to be honest, and maybe it's kind of a failure of the industry to some degree, but coming out and saying like, I've got.

people call like the two sides of the brain or like the technical and the creative. And most people didn't really know what to do with that. they had roles of design and they had roles of engineering and they didn't really see the, I'm sure they saw the benefit of it, but they couldn't really like effectively slot me in as this like creative technical person or like, you know, like designer with an engineering prowess. And it got to the point where I kind of just, I truly wanted to be titled as a designer.

I kind of like my skin kind of like crawled a little bit when people brought up the engineering and I, some degree, kind of left it behind and let, let the work kind of speak for itself. Like there was a lot of grad projects that had like a very technical execution, although it wasn't like in the forefront, it wasn't like I was building robots. It was just stuff that was like created a magic that, you know, you needed.

Yeah.

You needed some kind of technical expertise to have pulled off. And to be honest, in a lot of cases, I tapped engineers that I knew to help me do it. Like I couldn't do it. but anyway, sorry. Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, well, I think this, as I say, there's something to be said for great industrial designer or product designer who has also got the engineering underpinnings. And even if you're not going to either want to or you're no longer able to do all the calculations and the DFM, but at least you're using the fact that you know that exists and you know that you've probably got someone who can deliver that so that

you probably get to a realistic design that could still be beautiful quicker than someone who hasn't got any exposure to that side of things and is just creating lots of nice concepts for someone else to pull apart and destroy their dreams.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of interesting how it works. Like there's a very simple way in which the two pieces come together. Exactly. Like you said, like you could kind of, I mean, I found when I went to design school, like I took to CAD particularly well, cause I think it's a not user friendly program. Like it can be like to open up solid works and if say you're, know, you've got a degree in like fine arts and you open up this like dimension driven program that seems kind of technical.

Like, okay, I that stuff in more of a stride because I'm like, I've done numbers. And then, you know, when we're getting into, you know, at Pratt, was very, it was very like an art driven program. very like, you know, we're going to study form, we're going to study color. and the technical stuff I could kind of slot in a little more intuitively because of the undergrad stuff. So yeah. And that in very simple ways, like that's true, but I find that it's. Yeah. It's like hard to put into words.

It's not necessarily like a toggling of mindsets or expertise, but it's, you know, I I think I get lucky in that I'm, and I managed to kind of swirl them together in some kind of way where I can seamlessly apply them. And it doesn't feel like I'm doing one or the other. just feels like we're looking ahead. We're thinking about like the real objectives, but we're also thinking about the artistry and like the ambition of the field of design. And, you know, I continue to experiment how to talk about it.

Yeah.

I'm not sure I cracked it. I'm not sure any of that made sense, it's a, I for me, it's just been like a journey, you know, to figure it all out.

Yeah.

It's interesting because it's something that I come across daily when I'm speaking to candidates and clients. And I think it's more prevalent in the UK and in the design scene where you will have a lot of people, especially in smaller businesses or smaller design teams who can cover both the industrial design and some of the design engineering. So you get a bit of a scope there. But my experience in the States is it is a lot more kind of

diametric, you're either an industrial designer, or you're a mechanical engineer. Kind of there's very few people that kind of operating that that center space. I always ask, I always ask my clients when I'm if I'm hiring for that type of role is, if you imagine a scale of one to 10, I can't remember who it was that gave me this advice years ago, but I've been doing it for years. Imagine a scale of one to 10, one being a pure front end industrial designer, and 10 being your pure

quintessential mechanical engineer, where on this scale does this role sit? And it can be like, it can be a range. So sometimes they're dipping into a two or three, and sometimes they're a six, you know, or it could be actually want someone who's more between a four and an eight, so that they might do some sketching, but really, we want them to focus on the engineering side. I don't know whether that's something that is that common in the States.

Yeah.

Mm

Yeah.

No, I mean, it's a, it's a great way to frame it. It's kind of, I have like many feelings about that. I mean, first it's like, it is a very simple and very kind of like executable way to frame it because truthfully that's mostly what people are looking for. They're kind of like, well, we need a designer, but to be honest, be frank, this is going to be like a CAD and execution level job. We don't want someone who's just gonna be a couple layers up from that in a concept space or someone who doesn't know how to things get made. So.

We want you to be more on the technical side or vice versa. But what I found, yeah, some of my disappointment like getting spat out into industry is the kind of like seemingly like binary nature. It's kind of like, surely if you're technical, you're lacking in the creative stuff or vice versa. yeah, it's the other thing you brought up, sorry, I'm like trying to remember what I had to point. But the other thing you brought up that was a...

Yeah.

really interesting and we could like, and for a moment I could skip all the way ahead to like, a bit of advice. Like if you're a young designer, I got lucky in that I found a place in small firms, specifically small consulting firms. And those are exactly what you said. Like you're to get these blended roles. You know, you might clean the shop when things are quiet, but you might also like be executing drawings that are going direct to the factory and having those conversations. But you also have to be doing like.

Yeah.

crude models, concept sketching, you're going to pitch to the clients. Like you're doing all manner of stuff that at a bigger firm, you're not supposed to be doing, or they've delineated roles so fine that, you know, there's a designer, but they don't touch CAD. They're like upstream of CAD, which I always, I just, I feel like I got lucky in that. Yeah. I got like a really holistic thing, but they also appreciated that I was coming to it with like a variety of perspectives and skillsets. And I could kind of move up and down the stream because

Yeah.

Mmm.

It just demanded that it be so, and that just made me very kind of confident in what I could do, but also not me know that like, that's probably where I'm going to be at least before you get to like the senior and the manager and the director role. You know, if you're kind of still in like the. Like the totem pole of like execution design execution, you know, having this having being at a smaller firm where you can do more, be exposed to more is.

Yeah.

Absolutely,

I liked it a lot.

yeah, it's, if you're looking at ways to stand out as well as a, as an applicant, mean, imagine you've had kind of the same amount of experience as someone competing for the same role, but they've spent maybe all of that time working within a structured environment, pigeonholed into, into one role versus if you've spent time, same amount of time in a small agile consultancy where you've had to wear many hats.

Yes, you're going to have to learn how to adjust and follow their regime. But you're going to bring so much more to the party that that other person wouldn't have had any exposure to. Yeah, there's a lot to be said for that kind of small. I think everyone should experience it at some point, ideally in their career. Because I think it's harder to go from a very structured kind of

Yeah, absolutely.

existence to then the chaos of a small firm if you've not experienced it before. Whereas the other way around actually might be quite a relief to walk away from the chaos sometimes. yeah, that's interesting. So tell me about some of the moves along the way then. So some of the highlights of your career kind of, because you worked at some some really interesting consultancies, haven't you?

Yeah.

yeah.

Yeah, was kind of in a way somewhat typical and what I tell to give all like the Lower East Side New York City sirens and all that. we're hard at work here. Yeah, I mean, was kind of typical in a way and something I speak to students all the time. I'm like, you're gonna start your career and likely ought to start your career just pinballing around.

It's authentic. It's... Yeah.

Like you're going to think, I left school thinking like exhibition design is so academic, intellectual. did, I did a lot of kind of like installation stuff, like exhibit design stuff in grad school. And then I was interning at a firm doing exhibition design and they were doing more like museum level architectural, long projects, like five year projects and these kinds of things. And thought that was it. And granted that had one.

You know, went to one place, got one version of it and thought, it's not really resonating. had all the feelings you feel where you're just like, I'm not sure I'm good at this. The conversations are not all making sense to me. I just don't feel I'm running in the same direction. I'll try something else. then I did a bit of furniture design. So everyone, I always struggle with this as a teacher, having gone to design school and then having been outside of design for many years beforehand.

these kind of like almost like indoctrinations of designers about like furniture. Everybody's like infatuated with furniture. And I got like, just like everyone else kind of got the bug and I made some stuff and really loved it. Thought I'm going to do this. And then worked for a furniture designer, tried to like get some of my own stuff off the ground. kind of as I understood it more, as I tried it more, I'm like, this doesn't seem like I'm giving it.

All of, all of what I could be doing again, like the conversations don't see on natural. seems like a slight mismatch. Like I didn't do terrible at any of these jobs. was just like, not quite getting the buzz that I got working on that project or in this class or whatever it might be. And, you know, I think the last big, big one before, and I did all kinds of stuff. did like architectural hardware, like high end door pulls and doorknobs for like.

Okay, yeah.

rich people's mansions and these kinds of things. And then the big one before I fell into consulting and to be clear, like there was a clear point where I was like, it's got to be consulting, but those jobs are so few and far in between hard to get just like furniture. Everyone's like, I want to be in so many of my students. feel so bad. They're like, I want to move into consulting. And I'm just like, it's, going to be hard. but just keep at it. You'll get there eventually. keep going.

Yeah.

And I was kind of working on that in the background, like chatting with people, visiting studios, but, I kind of grew a little exhausted with freelancing, the insecurity of it, all that stuff. and landed a job at Toomey. And the interesting thing to me was they were trying to their credit, they were trying to take my like mixed background and create a new role, which was essentially they had this guy who had

He was like the luggage guru and he had been there forever. Knew the products inside and out, knew the factory inside and out. Was just like the go -to guy, you know, had patents just like falling out of conversations as he was going. And the idea was that I would kind of work under this gentleman and then he would essentially like retire and I would take on this role. So it was like, it was definitely design, but whereas the technical designers in the

in the company were literally, you know, making tech packs for bags. was like doing some of that, but also going to the factory, also experimenting with like form for luggage, trying to like improve their process. looking at like wheel construction and seeing if we can't like remove some weight, like all these kinds of things. so it's one of those things like I learned a lot. It's like when they're creating a role for you, that sounds really good, but that also means there's like no roadmap.

No precedent. Everyone's kind of flying by the seat of their pants. So if you're comfortable shaping that role, like maybe it works out great. I felt like I struggled a little bit again, like internally I was being pushed around a little bit. never, never quite felt like a hundred percent. it also was a very corporate design environment. I feel like some people, and that's why I tell people like, just try a little bit of everything. Cause for me, I was just like, this isn't

At least this version of it doesn't quite resonate with me. it wasn't, there wasn't anything kind of, it wasn't particularly like process driven. It wasn't scrappy. wasn't, I don't want to like bash to me. they took really good care of me, but it just wasn't right for me. I think I wanted it to be a little more like school, a little more scrappy, a little more like traditional ID. but like I said, like very secure.

flew us around business class to do all these kinds of things. And honestly, that was incredible. Learned a lot about like the execution of the design because they're a brand that produces things on a seasonal calendar. So there was a lot of benefits to it. And obviously there's like literal benefits like pay and all these things. But in the throes of that, I got a consultancy called Ion Design that I had been in talks with, I had freelance with in the past, came back around.

Okay.

and said, we have an opening, like, would you like it? It was like that simple. I thought about it for like 24 hours. It was a pay cut. I inherited like a 90 minute commute. And I was like, yes. And it was just for, yeah, for, it was a great place to work. There was like a wonderful place. had a full shop. Like I said, the conversations where you were just like, this feels right. everything makes sense. I feel like I'm doing a hundred percent of what I can do here.

Of course, yeah.

And it was, you know, it's always a tricky decision, but I kind of pulled the plug on, on the Toomey thing and jumped into consulting and kind of have been heads down and consulting to some degree ever since.

Awesome. Yeah, it's, it's often the way and it's, it's often a barrier for a lot of more experienced people making that plunge or taking that turn into consulting because typically they don't have unless it's one of the big kind of worldwide consultancies that they don't pay as well as the equivalent in house position. But if that's if you want the lifestyle, if you want the variety and like the scrappiness and all that kind of stuff, then

Yeah, absolutely.

That's a decision that you have to make a lot of times, but it's easier to do that.

And also, you have to be honest about like, I was kind of lucky in that I was younger. I wasn't married, I didn't have kids. It's New York and the job was a big commute, but it was like public transit got me all the way there. You could make it work for plenty of people taking like a big pay cut when you're just starting to like build a career. If you got stuff going on, I could see how that wouldn't work out, but I was just, I had invested.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

As part of the reason why I stayed in New York, I was just kind of like, going to, need to like shift into this career. I need to get a role that says designer with a capital D. And I was like, okay, I'm going to take on this commute. I just need to like continue to scrape forward and get there. And that was like my priority. but yeah, I mean, for a lot of people might not work out. It might not resonate with you that kind of environment. You might not want to clean the shop, which a lot of people are kind like, I have to do what?

Yeah.

I had to shoo a bird out of our conference room once a couple years ago at Prime Studio and I was like, I was like, I signed up for this.

Yeah, it's, you have to do all sorts of small companies. Yeah, you're the consultant designer, tea or coffee maker, the cleaner, the plumber. I was the goat in my last company, was the, because I was the least afraid of computers. So I was the IT nerd and I'd always be the

Yeah.

no, yeah, you're just least afraid.

Yeah, always the first protocol and I was was a director there as well. So it's nothing's been anything really in this small company. You just got to roll your sleeves up and crack on.

Yeah. But it's like, not that, not that this is what's coming next in the conversation, but it's a great, I mean, it depends on what your goals are, but you know, at some point watching the owners and being so close to the owners of these small firms, seeing what they're doing, seeing what the lifestyle is like, the projects. was like, I want to do this one day. And not only do you get the inspiration to do it, but you learn all the tools. So early on, it was kind of like, I'm going to watch and learn. I'm seeing all the pieces of the puzzle in action and it will help me.

Hmm.

Yeah.

do this in the future. And then later at Prime Studio, I was just very open, like, I want to be doing this one day. And Stuart, the owner, very generously was kind of like, I could let you in on like how I do proposals for projects and how I budget the designers at their pay rates and like these kinds of things. so, so yeah, you get led in on that process and it just helps you. Whereas if you're a bigger firm, I mean, there's all the hierarchy and there's all the removal of different roles.

brilliant.

Yeah.

You get less of that, so it's another benefit as a small place.

Absolutely. Well, let's fast forward to today then. So you've been running Facility since January 2020. Is that right? How long before that was Facility existing in your head? How long was the lead time up to that?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's kind of funny. mean, I always say that it happened organically. So was, I mean, probably, probably since I was in grad school, I knew, you know, we, we had visited smart design when I was at Cooper union. So as an undergrad and, know, I got a little glimpse of it. There was also some like Cooper graduates who are doing interesting things. Like this is group called cry precision that was doing, I mean, a lot of like military stuff, which is kind of like another conversation, but

Okay.

They were just like left school, started a lab in the Navy yard when the Navy yard wasn't quite a thing. the Navy yard just being like this big industrial area of Brooklyn that was a Naval port. And they turned into it's basically this huge design center now. So they were like almost like first in there doing all kinds of interesting wild stuff. And they came back and gave these talks. And I was like, yeah, I want to do my own thing.

Okay.

And it started to take more more shape. Like, it's a consultancy. Once I get to design school, I'm like, I visited a couple of consultancies. These people make sense to me. I want to do that. It feels kind of like school, variety of projects. You're, you're doing a variety of roles, but it was, it's a bit of my personality, but I was still like learning, harvesting, getting up the courage and all this. And to be, to be totally honest, you know, January, it started to take shape very organically. I, it wasn't like,

Yeah.

I left a role and I'm like, we're starting a company called Facility Today. This is the five -year plan. It was kind of like, just like most things in life, it picked up speed. I felt like I was a certain level of seniority and experience that I wasn't force fitting it. It was just starting to happen. And I had been in New York long enough that, you know, kind of referrals and connections and these things just started to accumulate into like, not only is this full -time work, but this is pushing out of the bounds.

of say like contractor, freelancer, and it's taking the shape of like, you know, a company or consultancy as I know it. And then once I realized that, once I came to peace with like, this is what you're doing. And we know what is it? What does your life look like if this is what it is? started to put all the critical pieces in place, like as soon as possible. I was like, okay, we need a contract lawyer. We need accountants. you know, eventually we need to consider, I worked under my own name for a while.

Yeah.

But for me personally, it was kind of making it clear that it's not just me. I'm not a designer doing kind of like name brand design, my own design stuff. I'm like a designer for hire that can solve problems and, you know, creating stylish products that are removed from my own sensibility. So it's not my name on the door. So was kind of like, okay, let's work on what that entity is, what that, what that stands for, what it means.

Yeah.

Hmm.

and all the messaging surrounding that, like the marketing and stuff. that's more recent, like it being facility, marketing that, defining what that is, it still continues to be something we're building. But that itself is probably like 18 months old facility. Because before that it was Michael Bambino Design, which made for a very long domain name.

Hmm.

Okay.

You've always got that when you've got it as your own name as well. It's like, well, is it a consultancy or is Michael Bambino a freelancer? And whilst there's not a lot of difference in terms of the actual kind of day to day work that you're doing, the perception from the clients and ultimately the amount you can charge for the value that you offer then can be wildly different. And the way that they engage with you as well.

100 %

And they see that's something that I speak to a lot of kind of small agency owners about and it's something that, yeah, most people go through that they start off kind of a consultancy through circumstance that may be laid off and they get offered some freelance work and then that kind of how can I turn this into a proper business as opposed to a freelancer gig? where does the name facility come from then? What's the story behind that?

I mean, there should be a better story, but, we, you know, we just did like a big naming exercise and I have to admit, like there's, you know, you're always, you know, you take your name out of it, but I'm always trying to reconcile like facility with me and my values and my personality, you know, Michael Bambino design versus facility, but there's kind of, this is definitely, it's definitely a strong name.

It definitely has like an edge to it. All our branding is it's just huge on everything. So there's, there's kind of like a firm hand to it. And it's like, it has an edge to it, but it just still feels like solid, competent, neutral. but you know, I have to be honest, like getting deeper in my career and working more on brand driven products. and working very closely now with, you know, as facility alongside brand quite often, if not in every single project.

Yeah.

OK.

Hmm.

my appreciation and kind of understanding of the workings of brand and like more the feeling that comes across rather than the meaning. You know, it's kind of like the meaning is like a rationalization step after the brands hit you, after the feelings hit you, you know, these kinds of things. And that was the one that felt, you know, felt right. And there's all kinds of boring background, like legal stuff about clearing names and

you know, who might sue us and these kinds of things. So, you know, that's like the nitty gritty, but yeah, we went through a pretty exhaustive exercise and I'm sure everyone can appreciate like, especially people in product development. I mean, a big part of it is about curating a marketable portfolio. And if you, you're doing consulting projects and 25 % of those go to market and 25 % of those are projects that you actually want to promote.

talk about and say, this embodies facility. You need several years just to get a portfolio that you could speak to. So we're doing that in the background. In parallel, we're kind of like constantly talking about facility, the brand, shaping the pieces, making sure it feels right. And then, you finally we launched the whole thing and the reception has been really great. I love it. Hopefully people like it and make sense to them. I did get a lot from the existing clients. They're like, it's still you though, right?

Yeah.

Hmm.

I'm like, yeah, yeah, but it's bigger, it's better. Yeah.

Hahaha

Well, that's the best that that's, that's great, though, that they're asking that question. And actually, it's a it's a common complaint of some of the bigger agencies in that, you know, it's not still you, if you're if you're working for, you know, a PA consulting, let's say, or maybe a smart design. It's like, are you sure you're getting kind of the person that pitched? Yeah, because it's not always the case. And common complaint. Not necessarily those two that I mentioned, but

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

And to be honest, mean, like not to, sorry to cut you off, but not to, I mean, I've worked at places where, you know, you just see the shuffling of resources and designers and you think like, well, we're always going to do the best work we can do, but inevitably because of bandwidth, timing, budgeting, whatever somebody's project is the interns project. and that happens and we'll do that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like as, you know, as we grow, like there'll be people who come in and be like, inevitably this will be the interns project. And then we'll have a senior person kind of like looking over their shoulder. But, I mean, the good thing for me right now is I have my hands all over everything. And then it's just a matter of, know, I very purposely made myself the creative director and that's not an arbitrary thing. It's like, just like with teaching, I'm kind of setting things in motion, but I know what I'm good at and I know what I'm not. And I'm not precious about.

you know, kind of pulling in the right people to do the best possible job. And I'm kind of the guiding hand. So it's always going to be, I'm always there, at least for now, if we blow up and we just multiply design units over and over again, and I'm out in the Hamptons enjoying myself and just, you know, setting it in motion, that'll be, we could talk about that then, but you know, at the moment, still, still creative direction coming from me.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, that's it, isn't it? You've got the plus side of being a small agile consultancy is that you get what you see and you've still got as the creative director and the founder, you've still got kind of a say in those projects and you're leading those as the pain point as you scale is how do you do that without sacrificing the quality and annoying your clients? Because there's nothing worse than engaging with a

an agency or consultancy, and they do a great job on the first project, but the longer you work with them, the lower the output is, because you know that that principal consultants moved on to something else. And it's the interns or it's the juniors that are actually delivering like further down the line. So how do you, and I don't know if you've got an answer for this, but how do you scale a small business then, retain the value that you're offering? Or do you just accept that

know, we're a big agency now this is what you get kind of you've got the resource versus the individual kind of interest or kind of control I suppose.

Yeah. And it's, it's such a good question. And it's, not only relationship of scaling, but also like business strategy. And this is a terrible analogy, but we were in the office. We were talking about, know, like, should we get somebody to clean this office? and they're like, yeah, but we kept hiring and letting go cleaners because the first time they come around place will be spotless. And then after a while you're like, I'm not sure that they're cleaning anymore. Like they kind of.

Mm.

Yeah.

they get on a bit of a cleaning retainer and you're just like, everything's still dusty when we come back. You're like, my old boss used to leave little tests. Like he would like move things in a certain way, put like a dirty thing into place and he comes back and it's the same. He's like, I gotta let this cleaner go. That's, that all, it's not a great comparison, but yeah. So there's always that too. Like you continue to work with someone and you're like, well, this client's kind of locked up. They know what they're going to get. We don't have to like, wow them on this third project. So.

Yeah.

Ha ha ha.

it yeah

Hmm.

I mean, to be totally transparent, like that is something I'm excited to figure out. I mean, we're still, it's still early days, like five years, you know, growing, but you know, just the nature of the industry and like how everything's going, like, you know, I haven't exploded. We're not like, getting a larger office space and dealing with that problem yet. I mean, I think I've known many designers and even like design, like consultancy owners and these kinds of roles where.

Yeah.

You could tell that they struggled to step back and to take their fingerprints off of stuff. Maybe because I didn't grow up specifically with ID or I didn't do an undergrad in ID. and I think it's, it has a strong relationship to teaching. Like my whole role is teaching is like guidance, setting people on a path. A week later, they come in with something and we reflect on that. and I kind of treat the consultancy that way as well, to a degree. So.

Hmm.

I feel like you can maintain that a lot longer than somebody who needs the pencil sketch. The owner needs the pencil sketch on like each project and have their idea in the mix. you also be honest about your age and your perspective, you know, design. People are starting to talk about it a lot more, but it's not, ID is not an industry where there's like enough perspective. having like, you know, the, the white dudes sketches in the mix, every project is not as critical as having like the diverse.

Yeah.

like design teams perspective. and then I guess, you know, if I were to forecast and kind of like pull it out of my backside because I'm not doing it yet, but you know, in the future you'd imagine hiring design leadership. That's trusted and kind of let them do their thing and just kind of, you continue to, to go up the stream and you're just looking at more gestural things. Like how did that project end up? Okay.

Absolutely, yeah.

Yeah.

There was a couple of steps along the way and the client pulled me aside. Like, we just got to make sure that, you know, you're just kind of, you know, maintaining, and doing more and more of like strategic work and less and less of like. Executional design work, you know, which I'm for whatever reason, I'm kind of cool with.

Yeah.

I think if the last couple of years have taught me anything for sure, it's just to just be very, very wary of letting complacency kind of sink in. in terms of, just because you're getting loads of work out of a particular client and you've worked with them for years, anything could happen externally, whether it be the economy, whether it be kind of a pandemic or whether it just be kind of other factors in there that because you've got comfortable.

Yeah.

if not complacent, that you haven't been so hot on probing or hot on communicating with that business and the stakeholders. So then but then you're caught off guard when the next project goes to a rival or they end up doing it internally because they've decided they're not satisfied with the outcome and you've never asked because you assumed that it was kind of everything was fine.

Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

most people this can probably resonate with that over the last couple of years of how kind of up and down the market's been especially the COVID bounce back and then kind of it's resetting in the last two years but interesting well we're just conscious come on no come on yeah

Yeah. And I have to say like, sorry. I mean, maybe the last little bit is the, and this is a personal thing. So it's, it's always a little awkward, describing the firm within your own perspective or personality, but because of the scale of it and because I am like the business owner and design leadership, you know, I'm very energized with this work for a lot of reasons. First of all, I feel like lucky and privileged to have cracked into it.

Like I remember before school just being like, if I'm just one day have one card that says designer, I'm going to be so happy. And then you get there and you continue to move the bar. So I'm still very excited to be doing this. And it's been a while I didn't just graduate, you know, like still very like pretty lucky. This is fun. and they, you know, it's academic. I have the teaching thing is constantly peppering, like a philosophical academic ideological part into it. But I think there's also.

Yeah.

a bit of an outsider's mentality that I try to bring to the work where we kind of pummel every project with a lot of strategy. And it's, you know, maybe we're giving it away for free, but it just seems like you ought not to be doing this work if not constantly pushing on strategy. And I find that we learn a lot. Everyone gets very energized with very big kind of like culture -based conversations, but also clients don't always expect that. Don't always ask for it.

And they're every now and again, that could be like, you know, moments of discomfort, but it stretches everyone and produces outcomes that you couldn't have predicted. You know, outcomes that kind of push the boundaries a little bit or more ambitious and, you know, why do the work if not, if not to kind of do a bit of that. And, know, everyone leaves having learned a little something. It's just like a certain energy because, you know, not doom and gloom, but they talk about like.

I'm like so excited when AI just does the CAD for us. But after a while you're like minimal, minimal Eurocentric design, please. And that just like, you know, it turns it out and you're like, so what am I, you know, what is my value here? so yeah, constantly just like being, you know, bringing humanity into the process as much as possible.

Hehehehehe

Yeah, absolutely. So what is it that with respect to facility then, what would you say you guys really shine at? makes you different to a certain extent to say other kind of consultancies of a similar size?

well, I think in a very simple way and the kind of like a services way, I would say like, we're very focused on the things that we're great at. And we try to separate out functions so that you go to the right place for those. So there'll be plenty of people and it happens all the time. They'll come in and they'll be like, you can do the brand and the graphics, right? And we're like, we could, but we don't, you don't want us to do that. similarly, they'll be like, you'll do the sourcing and the

You know, like head up the production and operations and stuff, right? It's like we can, there'll be a phase of work inevitably where we're like doing hand holding and helping you do that. But no, like our core capability and our strengths go from, you know, early strategy kind of strategic stuff, like where are we headed and why all the way to like, we fully defined not only a physical product and supplementary pieces, like we do a lot of packaging.

but a roadmap for the future. And I think that's maybe the unique part, you know, to lay on top of all the services. There's literally like upfront portion, it's called strategy and hit or miss whether people are like, I don't want to pay for that. But everything along the way is always kind of like, like you talked about with the engineering mind, like toggling to the end and just saying like, can we make this? It's kind of.

When you come up from that and you think strategically, it's like, as we're working, it's like, what is, what does this look like for your company in five, 10, 15 years? Like this is product one, but we can foresee product six, and this is what it might look like. So there's definitely kind of a baked in philosophy and strategic perspective that feels like it just informs everything and makes not only the end product more robust, but we kind of give you the keys.

We like shape the car and then give you the keys. So you kind of, we'd love for you to come back for products, two, three, four and five, but we've given you the roadmap, the strong kind of like guiding hand that you could set off and, you know, where you're headed and, know, to a degree how to get there. And I think in terms of, you know, the actual products we do, I think it's a natural result of my career trajectory, but also I just, you know,

Doing any consumer products that don't have a strong brand perspective in place, you know, is always very tricky. So I always say that we do kind of like brand driven consumer product. And it's not as though the branding and the marketing is something that we're incredibly passionate about. It just seems like what that indicates is a strong perspective, like a point of differentiation.

a business plan, like all the basics of like where you're headed such that we know the kind of product to shape to support that larger like ecosystem of thought. But also like the success for everyone involved is, you know, success rate will be a lot higher because you have a mechanism to get that to the world. so in terms of like the actual products we do, I mean, it's all over the map, but it is like brand driven,

consumer products. think I made a list because I'm so bad at like categories of products. It's on here somewhere, but it's like all over the map, like tech accessories, like healthcare products, kitchen kitchen products. And there's a bunch of things like personally, I would love for us to do. And it's just a question of like, how do you get there? Every time I have a chat like this with somebody, I'm like, I really want to solve.

Hahaha

Yeah, I'm the same.

Whenever you talk about like consumer product, brand driven product, it brings up certain ideas. And I like to think that we're creating innovative products, but in terms of solving tangible problems that people really need solved, like we have a couple of products where we're designing for disability. there's just not enough of those projects, not enough funding for those projects. So when one comes along, we're like very eager to work with your budget, very eager to kind of like come up with something special.

and continue to shine a light so that we continue to get projects like that. And those are very challenging projects, but as much as kind of like a DTC very cool cosmetics line is, as great of a project as it is as a firm, you'd love to pair that with kind of like a social good, feel good. We cracked a problem and helped people.

Yeah, you have a balance, you?

Yeah, that's again, going back to the small agile businesses, you've got the choice to do that. The larger agencies are invariably going to price themselves out of that type of work. And even if they were to take you, know, are they getting the value that they want out of that or that they need to get them to the next line? Whereas you can say,

Thank

I can take on this project. know that I'm not going to make a lot of money on it, but it's more than that. It's value. then, then, you know, that's only going to my experience of adding as much value as you can throughout your career is that it all pays off in the end. all kind of comes around. So that business probably needs someone like you to get them to where they want to be to help however many other people. And that's worth so much more than an extra zero on the invoice, I think. So, yeah.

yeah. And I mean, with this project specifically, and this is where us being like malleable, flexible, and always being strategic is, know, the first conversation is always like, you know, people, sometimes they come in hot and they're just like, this is what I want to do. And maybe they don't understand product development that well. So there's, can be a little bit of a sticker shock. You just kind of lay out like what it's going to take. And you're like, okay, so there's our fee.

Mm

Yeah.

times two for like a development firm to like source factories and you know, and then there's like, and you're like, let's take a step back. Like what, what are you trying to do? Why are you doing it? What are the timelines like? And then all of a sudden we're designing products for a pitch for funding. And, you know, kind of like a somewhat typical move in consulting, especially with all like the VC funding, you know, all over the place, but suddenly you're kind of like partnering with them.

Hmm.

and trying to help them get there. And yeah, ideally they get the funding, they come straight back and we design the products. But, you know, rather than just taking their money and doing what they say they want to do, we're kind of like, Hey, we've done this a lot. Here's the obstacles ahead. Here's how you might navigate it. Let's even just do like a free strategic kind of like workshop where we work through like the pathways. We look at relative pricing and timelines and you can decide what's best for you.

Yeah.

Mm.

Hmm.

And then happy to do that.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's yeah, again, that's speaking to the value, isn't it? And doing the right thing. So we've rapidly running out of time, I can very sorry, it's I've really enjoyed our conversation. But I like to wrap things up with kind of book and podcast recommendations. So what are you kind of what are you recommending at the moment with respect to books?

I'll be too.

so there's, think the reason I was talking about energy and, know, part of the reason why I love what I do and love this world of stuff is it, if you can get to a profession where it feels like that it's woven into your personality and you're kind of working on it all the time and you feel really like, invigorated, energized, it doesn't feel like work. I mean, obviously it's a lot of work and does feel like work, but

constantly just turning over like, what does it mean to be creative? Like, am I getting everything I need from these projects? What could you supplement with? Who are you as a person? Like all these big questions. And I was gifted the book. I think it's called The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. It's amazing. I'm like pawning this book off to everyone that will listen. It's just like the right book for me at the right time. And it's a very

Okay.

He's a very kind of in terms of the way he speaks and the way he relates to, you know, creative acts. can be like a very Zen kind of hippie dippy character. And it is like a very zoomed out. So obviously he's like a famous record producer and he's touched like so many genres, so many like hit records. And he's this like producer guru character. But he writes this book that is kind of like an open ended

Yeah.

kind of a guide, but it's very soft handed, about all creative acts. And it's just, it just super short chapters because I'm real like reading sometimes it's like making time for it, getting the attention and getting a run at it. mean, you know, the chapters are like a couple of pages and it's just kind of like, it's things that everybody needs to hear. especially coming out of engineering about how all human beings are creative.

Yeah.

about how your creative process, your practice, your investigation is for you and for you alone. And you should start there. so it's very like inspiring, gives you great perspective. gives you some like actual tools to like practice. And just like most creative professionals, I'm kind of always trying to float things in the background, like for my own satisfaction. And that's where I've gotten. I'm like, if I

cool.

Hmm.

If I make some stuff in the basement and never show it to anyone, that's okay. Like this is a practice to create like a full expressive creative person. And then I can bring the sentiment back into facility. Maybe not the thing from the basement. So that book, The Creative Act, if I've gotten the title right, is absolutely incredible. Yeah.

some version of it yeah the creative act well i'll i'll look that up yeah i'll look that up my my listening list on audible is growing every time i do one of these these interviews so i'll definitely check that out and there's a there's a fan of music as well i'm sure i'll find that interesting so

Yeah. And do I have time for one other one? Cause then there's one very pragmatic opposite end. I mean, sorry. Yeah. I don't really, I don't usually read so many like design specific books or like, you know, this is going to make me sound like I need to like widen my, my birth a little bit, but I'm reading a book called alchemy. And it's basically about like the role, it's not even the role of branding and advertising and marketing. It's more like a book about human behavior and psychology. And it's just.

Yeah, go for it quickly. I do have to jump onto another call, but yeah, shoot, let's have another one.

Okay.

Yeah, again, it's just like an interesting study of how people interpret the world and what influences them and how, you know, it traces back to like survival instincts and like things coded in your genes. But it does kind of then snap forward to like how we talk about the world products, how we market things. Really interesting, kind of more like nitty gritty, less like purely inspirational, but just like a very pertinent.

Yeah.

design -y kind of book.

Okay, yeah, I'll add that to the list then. So that was alchemy, it?

Yes, yeah.

Awesome. Super. Well, we have unfortunately ran out of time. I'm back to back today, but it's been it's been really good speaking to you, Michael. And for anyone that's interested in finding out more about a facility, I will put some links when I promote it on LinkedIn, but also on the show notes. So do reach out, have a conversation and see whether there could be some beautiful work to be done. But until then.

You

Yes, awesome.

Michael, thank you so much for joining me and we'll speak again soon.

Yeah, thanks so much Chris, it lot of fun.

Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Design Journeys podcast. I hope you found it insightful and inspiring.

If you did, please consider sharing it with a friend or colleague who might enjoy it too. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Before I sign off, just a quick note from me. Besides hosting this podcast, I'm also the founder of Kodu a recruitment business that specializes in physical product development. We help startups, established brands and consultancies find top tier mechanical design and development talent, often in as little as six weeks. At Kodu, we're all about providing an outstanding experience.

with our clients and candidates consistently rating us plus 88 on the Net Promoter Score or NPS, which is world-class in recruitment. And I should probably mention we have a 100 % fill rate too. The inspiring people I've met over the years in consumer electronics, e-bikes, medical devices and beyond have been the reason behind creating this podcast. If you'd like to know more about Kodu and how we can help your business, feel free to visit teamkodu.com or connect with me, Chris Whyte on LinkedIn.

Thanks again for listening, see you next time.