Strategies for success: Team Dynamics, Client Relationships, and AI-Driven Innovation. Keri Laien interview Jim Londeree, CEO Dream Factory.

Jim Londeree has quite the experience in helping some of our most known logos make a branding impact as co-founder and COO of Dream Factory, an innovative leader in marketing who has been a creative driver behind Universal Studios Florida Production Group, AAA, Wells Fargo, Motorola Solutions, Siemens, FedEx Office and more.

In this episode of InRoads hosted by Keri Laine, Jim and I talk about the impact of AI, general internal processes, company operations, and business development plus delve into his incredible knack for understanding how integrated marketing, vision, promotional channels, and business drivers all leads to internal as well as client success.

Jim’s leadership story and his perspective on the future of work optimization is profound. You have to hear what he thinks…. It’s paradigm-shifting.

He truly is brilliant in the technical, consumer, company, team, future of work, and leadership aspects. I love hearing about his leadership journey, as well as where he believes AI will make an impact in the M&A space which is (hint hint) a direction Keri Laine Executive Solutions is headed to add to our due diligence platform. I couldn’t agree more with his sentiments.

Okay, Jim, welcome to the INroads podcast. We are here today with Jim Londeree. Jim is the chief operating officer for Dream Factory. He has been there for 20 years since the beginning.

23 years.

23 years.

My gosh.

23 years.

Time flies, we do not count COVID years, do we? So it'd be 20 years.

It'd be 20 years if we minus the COVID, yeah I like that, too. So, talk to us about your leadership journey. I'm sure you've seen the company go through a lot, but you personally must have gone through and grown through 23 years of leadership and with the team, the executive team there, too. So tell us about that.

Yeah, I think the biggest thing from an agency standpoint, at least for leadership is that you have to figure out with each client how best to make your team meld with their team. That's like the hardest part, the internal dynamics, things are fairly straightforward. You know, you make sure you enable people given the proper insights, training, feedback, all that kind of stuff. Usually, it's more about internal meetings being to the point and not so tangential and long-winded. But I would say that, especially when it comes to like working with clients and making sure you have the proper limits of authority when it comes to posting things for them, for example, or when you're developing strategies, making sure you're including everybody that needs to be at the table. Those are critical things. And obviously, making sure that you assert where you need to the proper, you know, you need to stop here, this is good enough, let's get going and start ABX testing.

Yeah.

A lot of times people try to get things perfect from the very, very beginning. But most of the times, especially what we do, getting close to the exact right beginning is good enough to get things going and getting results. And then you kind of you know, get it even more honed in from there.

So, and your business is a value creator, a value generator, value add business. So tell us a little bit specifically what Dream Factory does, and about some of your customers and clients.

Yeah, so we focus on business-to-business companies, typically in the industrial sectors, manufacturing, power, plastics, different places like that. And what our main goal is, is to create areas in which we create like, high-value leads.

Okay.

So, it's not shotgun approach, typically, it's very sniper approach. So, what we do is we'll create automations will create integrations with, with native systems. So, we're solution agnostic. So we do not go in there and say, "You need to change to what we know", you know, we're not like a fill-in-the-blank market, ambition agency or whatever. We, we really do focus on making things work with what people have what they're used to.

Okay.

Because from an HR standpoint is, you know, the really hard part is to train people and get them proficient. And if a team that you walk into with 20-30 people is really good at a certain ERP solution or a certain automation solution, or a certain CRM.

Yeah.

The worst thing you can do is to tell them that you need to change everything before you can get any kind of results for them.

Right.

So, especially when you're talking about highly technical companies that typically take a little bit of customization to their integrations, you do not need to sit there and tell them to change everything right up front, you just need to get them to the point where they're making better decisions and targeting better quality of prospect.

Did you when you were growing up, always know that this is where you're going to head? Where you going to be?

No, no, no idea.

What if you were driving in a car, and you had your five-year-old self in the backseat? What would be your five-year-old self be most surprised by?

Probably the fact that it's not really work? Like when you're young, you always think that when you see your parents going off to work.

Yeah.

They have to really like, a lot of times, like my parents didn't come back home upset. Both my parents started out as teachers, and they love their jobs.

Yeah.

My dad moved up into administration, and he loved that too. And the fact is, like when you when you see positive examples, I think growing up, you want to make sure that you at the very least match that level of enthusiasm in your career. And I think even at a young age, even at age five, I knew my parents were doing good things and that they love what they did.

Yeah.

And so growing up, I wanted to make sure I kind of match that in the sense that I was going to a place that I liked to go to, that I enjoyed what I did, and that I did something that was fulfilling and also helped other people. So, this checks all the boxes, for sure.

And so, I imagine being at the very, very forefront of developing your team culture, you wanted to infuse that across the team and the dynamics. So how the team works together and the type of environment that you created.

I think too, on the front end, it's initial interview and impression is so important to us. You have to find people who want to learn, first and foremost, but more importantly, have a good core, you know that they really, when they get into a room with a client, you can trust them to have the right instincts to see through. You know, just maybe what someone's saying what they want you to think but you can see what the maybe what the behind the scenes is right away. It just it makes such a huge difference when you have people who are just highly intelligent and really know, just in kind of intuitively, what's happening.

They have that emotional intelligence agility in that way.

Exactly.

And they're able to make those judgment calls and those decisions in a way that like you said, it's an extension of trust that you have in them. It's not just an extension of the brand.

Right.

It's an extension of who you are.

It is part, it's a huge part of this the trust. So, when you have team members that walk into a client meeting, and they meet a client for the first time, you know, typically a president of a company is dealing with hundreds of people on a daily basis. It's production, it's HR, it's, you know, the people in the accounting department. And they all have kind of their own little universes, their own little, you know, things to manage. But at the end of the day, what the people at the top of companies really care about is that they can trust that their vision is being carried forward through everything that's happening.

Yeah.

And so if your people are able to connect with that level, and create trust relationships, it

solidifies a lot of things for clients' trust.

Yeah. So that's really interesting, because what I'm seeing, and what I know, that you've implemented, which I want to hear more about, but there's this trust factor, but there's this new wave of artificial intelligence, that's coming to be, right? And so I think about where do trust factors is, does it make it stronger? Does it make it more risky? So you're talking about the trust factor in a team, watching the way AI is impacting what people's work looks like, and the trust within the company or with the information. So tell us a little bit about what Dream Factory is doing with AI?

Okay, so this is obviously a relatively new thing. And a ton of companies are pushing forward at breakneck speed and just, you know, implementing everything they possibly can, I think the the critical part for us is to not lose the humanity of what we do from a brand. And from a marketing standpoint, I would say it's a small example of kind of illustrates the larger point. So, we have a team of writers and our current lead writer, he does a really good job of taking an idea, and going in and leveraging AI to get a lot of the core components and structure done. And then putting finishing touches on things. So, it's not replacing our lead writer, what it's doing, it's allowing him to basically supercharge his time. So, what you have to worry about circling back to the client trust issue, is that when a client gets something that's been properly QA'd, because you know, it's so easy to break trust, right?

Yeah.

So, if you were to submit something that was just purely AI, to a client that you have a relationship with.

Makes me nervous, just even hearing about it.

Right? It because what's the big thing right now? Oh, AI lies, sometimes it just makes stuff up. And so if you do not properly QA things, you do not properly look through it and check everything and double check, you can end up submitting something that maybe isn't quite accurate. And then you're like, "Well, wait a minute, what's the client gonna think of us now?" Like we're mailing?

Right.

Right?

Yeah.

So at the end of the day, you have to make sure that your people have the proper training on the tools before you put them into full production.

Okay.

Because they really aren't ready for primetime and a lot of applications. But again, in terms of like taking big data and parsing it out into usable statistics that you can actually throw into it. That's good news. But at the end of the day, what our people are, we're training our people on and also our clients on is where it's really applicable and can save them time and money. And more importantly, where we can scale things faster. So, campaign analysis, AB testing, things like that. AI is wonderful for that stuff. In fact, Google has a lot of kind of native programs that they've been for machine learning, which is also my name is kind of synonymous for people in the most markets, they really can't see the difference between the two.

Yeah.

And we do not really want like, there's a long way not to get too nerdy. But at the end of the day, what we care about is making sure that we give people better results. And as long as AI is doing that, then it's fully disclosed. If one knows kind of where we're using it.

Sure.

Then I think it's wonderful.

So, you're seeing from, from what I'm hearing you share, you're seeing an uptick in productivity and the ability to get more work done faster because of the processes and the decisions that you're able to make utilizing the systems

Correct. Without bias. So the biggest issue is like a lot of times humans will come in and I'll give you one of this is the classic thing. So, you'll run a campaign, you'll have a landing page, right? And the landing page will talk about all the things same things the ads did, right. And then you'll make this beautiful landing page, great graphics, the whole thing. And then you'll a be tested against a boxy kind of looks like a, you know, first-year graphic students put it together with a lot of very sharp corners and basic text.

Yeah.

And then you look at performance, and invariably, the one that looks the worst performs the best, and it just drives you crazy. You know, like, why is this? Why do we put all this time into making things look great, sometimes only pages when the one that actually converts the highest level and at the end actually converts more clients is the one that looks, you know, poor. It's the weirdest thing in the world. But again, AI will look at that, and we'll say, this one's better. And then the day what do you try and do what do you really paid to do? You're paid to--

Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Produce. And on the front end, it doesn't mean that you have to make your brand your main websites, your main core stuff look like it's made by a first-year graphic student, but at the end of the day, when you're talking about very focused campaigns and you get, you know, 5, 6, 7 steps down the line. Sometimes, you know, making things just work is a better choice.

So even coming in with a 23-year reputation, you having all of the experience with some pretty heavy-hitting logos, right? You come in, you would normally guide and advise, you would say this is based on our expertise experience, all the things that we've seen in the world that is still subject of the AI helps the decisions happen faster, because it's adding a layer of objectivity to it.

Right.

That either supports and underscores what you are suggesting or provides a new avenue that they may not have thought of yet, right? And so

Exactly right. And a lot of times, this is a really key important point, like as a marketing agency, when you're hired on, especially in the front end, like the first six months of a relationship, you have a tendency, just human nature to try and please, clients, right. But you have to have, in every single case, honesty, when it comes to, if a bad idea comes to the forefront, you're able to test it and say it's a bad idea, no matter how much the native biases within the company, you have to tell them not to go that direction.

Yeah.

And AI gives us more data, more processing capability to prove what is right and what's best.

So, it seems like it can be applied in many aspects. So this is one way to create lift in a role where you have time to generate revenue that's reduced. So obviously, you can either become more profitable or work faster. Maybe the employee count might change based on how you're able to layer in the AI involvement. Where else in the organization from the human capital standpoint, would you see AI being beneficial?

From our business model standpoint, I would say the easiest thing is from a freelancer standpoint, because we have a ton of specialists that we work with that are they'll come in, you know, here and there in little small bits, because they're really good at a very concentrated area of expertise. But at the end of the day, the AI for us---

Yeah.

It comes down to does it allow us to get higher quality product, and does it allow us to shorten the distance between the identification of the need and the delivery of the solution. So if those things are able to be done, and we can do that through in-house, or a lot of times through somebody who we can, you know, let you know, license on for a project or something, then it makes things so much easier. And at the end of the day, too. It's all about, again, not being biased towards one or another solution.

Right?

So, you have this thought like, I will tell you, if if I went back in time, like 15 years, and told Jim, you need to really look at changing your process, you know, I would listen to myself because I have the I'm coming from having gone through it already. Right? Well, if AI is able to do 50, 60, 100, 1000 different models of something, right? before you make a decision.

Yep.

Then you should probably trust that good is always good, it's good data is going in, you're gonna get a good recommendation for what to do.

Do you feel like it gives you a competitive advantage from your customer standpoint, to have this layered in?

For sure. So, especially because a lot of our customers are highly technical companies, they and a lot of them are dealing with native kind of like old school tech. And utilizing AI, from their perspective means something different than it does from like an agency's perspective. So if you're dealing with how to best manufacture a piece of plastic into a part, or you're looking at best way to optimize a turbine, you know, you're if the program that you're using now says it has AI on it.

Yeah.

Right? You're still gonna have something at the end where you hit a button. And that tells you what to do a little bit differently, maybe.

Sure.

But at the end of the day, it's kind of it's kind of not something that your engineering, you're changing, it's still the same process the same system, right? From our thing, it's more of a human thing where you're trying to say, okay, writer, okay, campaign designer, you know, leverage us new technology, now you're changing entire processes in between, right? So the point of like a client call, or an email to an actual deliverable just reviewed. So it's way different for us than it is for a lot of places. I think most companies that we deal with its clients, they're gonna have AI built into things where it's almost like, they will have very little input into how the data is being processed behind the scenes, because that's going to be more of like an OEM level integration.

So, what's interesting in your example about the manufacturing versus what you do, I envision a lot of what you do to be creative.

Right.

The manufacturing is very linear. That's linear example which I can see it applying there. It seems like what when you're taking something that's more creative, there's judgement calls to it. There's there's that own personal input to the product outcome. So I'm thinking so for example, Keri Laine executive solutions, we will look at necess a deal and if it's either M&A or a company is looking to raise capital or an investors looking to put capital into an organization. It's a judgment decision. And the AI aspect of that decision can help accelerate that decision, right? It can help ensure that There is not as much subjectivity to the decision so that you're not arguing as much or debating about around the deal table.

Removing biases, right?

But I think if I'm if I'm putting myself in an investor shoes, it is a judgment call. And I have to feel extremely secure with that judgment call. And that the adaptation to believing in AI and validating, trusting reliability of it. It's interesting, because the creative piece of what you're saying is it still works.

It does. And the crazy thing is, a lot of times intuition comes into play.

Yeah.

And it's supercharged by AI instead of being replaced by AI. So that's the big, big difference.

Okay.

And I would say, on the M&A side, especially like, if you're looking at some sort of new acquisition.

Yeah.

With publicly available data, I can see where the high-end level on that would be able to integrate AI and get historical data from all the different SEC filings in the past and say, "What have been the common things we look for in a successful potential acquisition." And that to me, is going to be a really interesting application of big data and AI in the near future. Because that's where like you say, when you're trying to pull the trigger on an acquisition or a merger, you do not you want to take out any possible risk. So, if you can just mitigate by hitting a button, and having the magic M&A A(I come out with the, "Well, here's this is not matching on these three keys. If you can mitigate these three things, then we can rerun the scenario and see if it's more advantageous."

Sure.

In some of those cases, those things are going to be, you know, like you say, it's usually replacement of people, right? So, you get like, two accounting firms. What would you do? You do not have one accounting firm at the end of the day? So you can save money there. But on the people side, you can see very quickly with like, Okay, we had more people in this department versus less people in this department with other similar acquisitions. So I think that a lot of this is going to come down to big data we've had for a long time being utilized in a more effective manner.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's going to be a big thing. I think that's where we get a huge benefit. Because there's so much turnover. In campaign design, we're always doing changes all the time trying to improve things, you know. And it doesn't matter what type of outlet it could be anything mass communication, media, digital media doesn't matter. We're always trying to improve. And so at the end of the day, if, if we miss, it won't be based upon data and AI, it'll be based upon just the fact that sometimes things do not hit. So we still aim small, miss small, to the end of the day, you want to try some things to make sure you get a better result all the time,

How do your employees feel about the utilization of AI? Do they feel like it's a threat or a concern to them?

It's kind of interesting. So, my initial thought, when I first saw a couple of different AI programs that we use was, "Wow, this will allow us to do way more work a lot more effectively have more work come out of the same billable hour."

Okay.

Right? And will be able to produce better results for our clients, when I took that perception to a few of our team members, they would not want in one ear and out the other, because there is kind of an initial like shock and awe to some of these softwares. But once you realize that, as an agency, you're always looking to grow, you're always trying to find a way to gain more billable hours and get more and get many more clients. And so what you're trying to do is you're trying to find a way to create value. And if you can create value through instead of having, let's say, five blogs per month being produced for someone now they can get 50. And you can dominate with that technology. And so I do not see why that would ever be a problem from from an owner of an agency standpoint.

Yeah

But I can see where if you're a writer, you would worry, you know, but at the same time, that increases their value, because they're really, really good at leveraging the AI can become more like the hub on a wheel versus a spoke. And so that's where I think the changing other perception---

Yeah.

Allows a lot of people who really understand this stuff and have talent for writing is a specific example.

Yeah.

This can be a huge plus to their, to their professional lives.

I almost wonder if it takes the parts that they love about what they do and accelerates and accentuates those pieces, because the rest of it is being handled. So, they actually are tapping into their passion and in a way a little bit more. So, it's really interesting.

I think a lot times you think about like, as I was talking about writers because writers it's an easy one to kind of equate to AI technology changing the world.

Yeah.

But I love the fact that when you get a nice little hook or something clever a play on words, and alliteration or whatever, that stuff is not being kicked out by AI right now. And that's the part that makes writers kind of clever and fun. But the stuff of like, you know, give me a top 10 list of the most important you know, widgets for the fill-in-the-blank industry---

Right, right.

in 2023 like that kind of a blog is easy for AI to write 90% of.

Yeah.

But making it clever in the, in the beginning, adding the right pictures to it, stuff like that, you know, even though there are AI picture creators now, they're usually those do not create pictures that you look at and think that looks natural.

Right?

Usually, it's something that looks like it's made in a computer.

Right.

You know, and so you have to be really good at that, too. So, anyway, I digress. The point is, you I think it's a huge opportunity for most people in the marketing field, especially if you know how to leverage it gives you a huge plus over a competitor.

And there are technical aspects to it. And then there are the subjective or, or the more talent required that is, there's always going to have to be some part human, some part machine that tie into whether it's marketing, whether it's M&A, whether it's human resources, we see it where we're able to work with the due diligence piece and have the complex legal contract, the size and scope of the deal, a lot of the financials, a lot of the work that needs to go and data room all of that can be assessed generated and put through an AI process. But you still have to have the human element to be able to say, "Okay, here's what you need to do with the information." Here's how you take a plan and create a succession plan around leaders of this org structure that this AI is recommending we do because it's canvas, 100 other companies that are your size, scope, and then it's also created models, looking, where's your company, it'd be in two, three years. And it's built almost like a gap. Org Chart, you still have to have the human touch and human element to be able to come in and say, "How do you implement that? How do you find it and go recruit the people? How do you onboard and assimilate them?" So AI takes away the time and the accelerates the speed to those decisions, but you still need extra guidance and support. And that's what I'm hearing you say to with the writers and the talent. It can do a lot of the writing, but they still need to have their flair, their touch to make it their actual product in the end.

Yeah. And understand the brand you're writing for.

Yeah.

There's always a brand voice. At the end of the day, you want to make sure that every single brand is represented correctly.

Yeah.

And doesn't sound like a totally different company. Because AI wrote it.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You do not want to sound like that. All right. So, where do you see your future and Dream Factory? Aside from Ai? Where what's next for you?

I think the biggest thing is markets are changing really fast after COVID.

Yeah.

So a lot of different like, you're talking to M&A before we started on the podcast, when you look at the M&A world, a lot of things coming in consolidation. So when you're in a high inflationary environment, we have a lot of acquisitions going on, where, you know, companies are trying to find a way to get into new markets with partnerships and acquisitions. So what we're trying to do is do a better job of kind of leveraging what we do for our clients as well.

Okay.

We're always trying to, we're kind of like the guinea pigs. So, we'll get like a new program, a new system. And we're really big on Account-Based Marketing. So we have a number of campaigns going, where we're targeting the exact people and the exact companies with the exact messaging that we want to push to them on branded on time, and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

And then we're trying to really focus on when it comes to that is also trying to find out how to get the long term clients, we have a lot of plans we've had for like, 10, 15 years. And it we're like the outsource marketing department.

Yeah.

And so we're super efficient when it comes to implementation of change.

Okay.

We do not have to go through, you know, 50 different people to get something done. Typically, we're pretty fast when it comes to trying things out. And so a lot of our clients lack that, because they're just big. And they've they have a few people in marketing that are really capable. But again, they already have jobs.

Yeah.

And so, the hardest part, whenever you're an agency walking through the door is saying, "Hey, we're, you know, the change agents," and everyone's like, "Oh, God here it comes again", you know, and what am I going to have to do now? I am already working 12 hours a day only getting paid for eight? Like, there's a lot of that going on right now. And so, we're trying to find companies where we can alleviate the pressure, and give them a ton more capabilities and focus. And that's, that's really the fun of what we do on the side of other tech besides AI. I think it's really interesting when, when companies change, typically, there's always a fight on the tech stack side of like, what are we going to go with who's changing what and so being in the room for that and talking about where the advantages are to going one way or the other is also a place that we add a lot of value. So, that's another place that we're starting to kind of productize a little bit and have some offerings for people for them.

Yeah. So, how would you talk a little bit about the future and how COVID changed the way businesses have operated, right? Talked about consolidation, a lot of change management, there's talk of there might not be a recession coming, right?

Right.

How do you see the economic headwinds impacting not just you, but obviously, your customers? Because your customers are all over the place? Meaning they're all different industries, all different sizes? What are you sensing and feeling as it relates to that?

I do not think there's ever any problem right now with capital, I think there's plenty of capital on the sidelines, plenty of especially private capital still. And so we're seeing a lot are people being a little bit gun shy, but it's not gun shy in the sense of like, they do not want to spend money.

Right.

They want to make sure that if they do that they're still like, for example, in a company that maybe needs metals to sell, can we get enough metal to sell? You know, I've got a client right now that literally had a time when they couldn't find any more, you know, and they would their problem was searching for where are we going to find the raw materials.

Right.

To then offer as a finished product to the client or we work on it.

Right.

Same thing in the plastics industry. We had a whole glut for a year and a half, trying to get stuff out of various places because it's a very internationalized business, where it's made all around the world and you're trying to find a way to get it here to distribute it to companies. And so I think for us, like, it doesn't really matter like a recession is overplayed in the media, because what is a recession? It's just a it's that well, if it's still trending It's still gonna keep going like it doesn't make any sense. Like, why would you make a big deal about a little dip? It's an adjustment period.

Yeah.

You know. And so when you have low unemployment, and you have high inflation, you have all these different things that are a little bit different than what they've been before. People are always going to over overreact.

Yeah.

So for us, as an agency, I had a really good friend of mine, tell me one time he goes, "What percentage of the market do you have?" You know, and I was like, "Well, out of all B2B, like 1%." He goes, "So you have 99% opportunity for growth." And I love thinking of things that way.

Yeah.

Because it's intrinsically hopeful.

Yeah.

It's like I could be I could double my business tomorrow. And it would not matter if it was going into recession. I could triple it tomorrow. It would not matter if it goes into depression, like it doesn't matter, really, to us as an agency.

Yeah.

Our size because being kind of more of a boutique agency, get five or six really nice clients. And you know, it's we've, we've exploded in revenue,

And then you've still you versus your Dream Factory versus Dream Factory, you still have then been able to see incremental growth, even if the economy is moving, shifting, shaping a little bit---

Optimization.

Yeah.

Easy. When you talk about the changes, like it's amazing how, when a client has to change the way they do business, there's nothing better for a marketing agency, because we can take that and we can create campaigns around it very quickly point in new directions. So, we love that kind of stuff. And so a lot of times it comes down to like how fast do they want to change? And how do we tie it up with their behind the scenes programs? Because most of the time it comes down to training, right? It's like, Are your people ready for the change?

Yep.

Because we're always ready. Like, let's you know, let's be honest, like we just you change up the marketing, you change up a little bit, do a couple more research pieces, make sure that you're focusing correctly, and the end of the day, roll it out and an AB test like crazy.

That psychological adaptation, or they have to go through and that change process, right?

Yeah, because no one ever wants to change in general.

Right.

Feel comfortable.

Yeah.

But then when you're able to show them an ROI from it.

Yeah.

Like we were making more money. Okay, now.

Okay. Now, I'm good. I see it.

Any more change for me?

Yeah.

Exactly.

Welcome. Well, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure having you on I appreciate all the information, especially the riveting conversation around AI. I think it's really fascinating where it's headed, and I'm really excited to see what it does for your business and ours as well.

Awesome.

Thank you.

See you next time.

All right.

Thanks, Keri.