IAM056 – Founder & Creative Director Helps Business by Untangling Complexity with Video

William Gadea is the Founder and Creative Director of IdeaRocket, a maker of videos for businesses. Since 2012 IdeaRocket has created videos for more than 20 Fortune 500 companies as well as a number of exciting new startups. His team works in a variety of techniques including 2D animation, 3D animation, whiteboard, and live action.

• CEO Hack: Meditation (Mindfulness practice) before work for 30 minutes to be present and kinder
• CEO Nugget: From Kimberly-Clark: 4 Ways to grow and selecting the path of least resistance – (1) Sell more things (diversify), (2) more people (more customers), (3)  more money (premium services / raise prices) or (4) often (more repeat business)
• CEO Defined: Servant leadership including yourself. Any business owner focuses on 3 things: (1) Customers, (2) employees, and (3) investors

Website: http://idearocketanimation.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IdeaRocket
Twitter: https://twitter.com/IdeaRocket321
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idearocket

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:27

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I've William Gadea of IdeaRocket.

William, it is awesome to have you on the show.

William Gadea 0:37

Gresh it's great being here. Thanks for inviting me.

Gresham Harkless 0:40

No problem. What I wanted to do was read a little bit more about William so you can learn a little bit more about all the awesome things he's doing and has been able to accomplish.

William is the founder and creative director of IdeaRocket, a maker of videos for businesses. Since 2012, IdeaRocket has created videos for more than 20 fortune 500 companies, as well as a number of exciting new startups. His team works in a variety of techniques, including 2D animation, 3D animation, whiteboard, and live action.

William, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

William Gadea 1:14

I sure am and I'm excited about it.

Gresham Harkless 1:16

Yes, we're excited to have you on sue in. What I wanted to do was just ask you a little bit more about your CEO story. What led you to start IdeaRocket?

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William Gadea 1:24

Well, it's kind of been a roundabout journey. I grew up overseas, I was born in Peru and lived in Australia, then my family moved to the Dominican Republic. I came up here to study film at NYU when I was 17 so I had that moving around when I was a kid. After getting out of college, it was kind of moving around a bit there too. As a young man, I had artistic yearnings and I wrote plays for the Off-Off-Broadway theater for a long time. That was a lot of fun and rewarding and I never really fell out of love with the theater, but I did fall out of love with having that second job to make ends meet. So I wanted to do something creative with my profession.

So I took some night courses, learn animation, and of course, that kind of bled in with my film school background. So I started a career in children's television, I got a job at MTV animation, and I made a lot of the cartoons that perhaps your kids are still seeing cartoons like Kappa Mikey, Speed Racer the next generation, Word World, etc. But there came a time, you know, like, as it often happens with entrepreneurs, that you kind of get a yearning to build a project, something that might last.

Around 2006, YouTube had just started and I was kind of getting a sense that there was something in the air that companies would need this tool to communicate with their customers and their employees. So I started offering my services to businesses. It didn't really start taking off until I found a marketing channel, which was AdWords. I made my first hire and 2012 changed the name to IdeaRocket. We've been doing pretty well ever since. Like, As you mentioned in the introduction, we've had a lot of fortune 500 companies and smaller companies that work with us. So it's, it's been a fun ride.

Gresham Harkless 3:32

Yeah, it sounds like and especially you being able to kind of have that creative yearning as you were speaking to be able to eventually, you know, go through the progression, but end up creating your business and be able to put that into fruition for yourself, but also for the clients.

I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper and hear a little bit more about how you serve those big huge fortune 500 companies, but also those new startups that you talked about.

William Gadea 3:53

Well, I think what we do best is communicate complicated messages, you know, the new technology that's advancing so quickly, it needs changes in people's mentality and culture and the way we think about things in the way we understand business models. And I see us as a real agent of change that can help explain and evangelize change for our clients and their new projects.

So that I think is the way I see us. And I think the way our clients see us, and the real trick, of course, is getting that complicated message. It's hard to understand and boil it down into a story into metaphors into characters into something that can be readily understood and remembered by people when they see it.

Gresham Harkless 4:50

Yeah, I would definitely say that and I think it's, you know, no pun intended. I guess there's definitely an art form to be able to kind of quote-unquote, translate that, especially for those highly technical clients, I imagine that you have been able to articulate that so that even a layperson might be able to understand and understand exactly how they help support clients.

William Gadea 5:09

Yeah, absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 5:10

Awesome. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. This could be something that you feel kind of differentiates you from other kinds of similar companies.

William Gadea 5:19

Yeah, I think when you go to our site, you see that message, which is untangling complexity. And I think that's really the differentiator, what we can do better, than other people. You know, of course, we try to provide the best product quality and the best sound and audio recording, etc. But I think probably the important part of that process is the writing.

It's boiling it down into a story that can really resonate with people. And what that means is creating a journey, you know, a character with a yearning, a problem. And there, they discover a solution to the problem and their life has changed. It's actually not that different from what I was doing as a playwright, it's that three-act structure. And I think that is what we try to bring to our clients, a true story experience that can help unravel that problem, that thing that is hard to understand.

Gresham Harkless 6:28

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And especially, you know, when people are going through those difficulties, to be able to have that connection with, you know, the animation, or the whiteboard, or live-action videos that you guys are creating definitely helps not only the people get the solutions that they need, but also helps out the businesses and organizations that you work with, as well. So I think that's pretty awesome. And what I wanted to do with switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack, and the CEO hack could be an app or book or it might be a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.

William Gadea 6:59

Yeah, sure. Every morning before I start, work, sit down on a cushion and meditate for 30 minutes. And well, I think what that does for me, you know, we spend a lot of our time in our head, and we are creating stories, and we're creating drama, and are we going to get that big job? Or should I hire this new person, all these questions don't really have anything to do with what is happening, right, the second?

And I think what happens when you have a mindfulness practice when you have a meditation practice is that you kind of let those things atrophy a little bit, you let the drama and the stories get a little weaker in your head. And I think that lets you have a better context, I think that lets you be more effective in the world to be a little kinder to your employees, and to your customers and to yourself, and just kind of understand what we're really about, which is, you know, flesh and muscle and bone, and this very moment.

So I would definitely recommend that to anyone, no matter what their religious beliefs are. I don't think it's contrary to a Christian Outlook or to a Jewish Outlook or to an Islamic outlook on life.

Gresham Harkless 8:27

Yeah, I mean, I would definitely agree with that. And you're so right, you have so many thoughts going in and out of your head, that sometimes you forget to be present in the actual moment that you're in and to appreciate as you said, the bone, the flesh, the essence of who we are as individuals. So that takes time, and the fact that you take time every day to do that, I think is a pretty awesome CEO hack that people can incorporate into their lives.

William Gadea 8:47

Yeah, I hope so.

Gresham Harkless 8:49

Yeah. Now I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. This CEO nugget might be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice that you might have for entrepreneurs and business owners.

William Gadea 8:58

Sure. I'm, I'm privileged to work with a lot of really smart clients with a lot of new ideas and things. One of my clients is a big company called Kimberly Clark. And it's an amazing company, really, if you read a really great business book, Good to Great. It describes what they did last century when they pulled off this incredible pivot from being this paper company to becoming a diversified consumer products company. And we were making some marketing training videos for them. And they had this little saying that's really an analytical outlook, an analytical framework.

There are four ways of growing, you can sell, and sell more things to more people for more money more often. And really, when you think about it, there are only four ways of growing to sell more things means diversifying your product offerings, to more people just find more customers, more customers to buy your products for more money that doesn't necessarily, although it might mean raising your price tag, it can also mean premiumizing your offerings, going upmarket more often just get the requirements going to have more repeat business.

So I think if you're looking to grow your business, it's a useful way of looking at it. Because at any point, some of these are going to be blocked, you're going to, you know, say be getting as much repeat business as you can, or, you know, the cost of acquisition of a customer is too much. I think, going through the channel of least resistance is the best way to think about it. And for us, personally, you know, we diversified into live action. And sometimes it's not really a very good idea for small businesses to diversify, because it scatters them before us has been great, because, you know, our sales and marketing arm can sell it as easily as they can any other products.

There's so much overlap in terms of the production process in terms of writing in terms of sound design, etc. That really made sense for us to diversify into live action. So I would say, I would say that is just a really useful way, a really useful prism to apply to your business, as you're thinking about growing.

Gresham Harkless 11:34

Yeah. That makes perfect sense. I think often when we're thinking about our businesses or organizations and how to grow them, we're automatically saying, well, we need to have more clients. And that's kind of like the only way to do it. But I'm glad that you've been able to outline those four ways in which people can grow their business, it doesn't have to necessarily be one way. And it helps to kind of expand the mind, so to speak.

William Gadea 11:55

Yeah, absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 11:56

Awesome. Well, what I wanted to do was ask, which is my favorite question, which is the definition of being a CEO. We're hoping to kind of redefine exactly what that means.

So I wanted to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you?

William Gadea 12:08

Well, for me, it means servant leadership, any company rests on three different legs of the stool, its customers, employees, and investors. I think as CEOs, we are often asked to juggle those different interests and portion resources to those different interests and it's not an easy thing to do. But I think what we're here to do is to serve them, to serve the employees to serve the customers to serve the investors.

Since oftentimes, you know, the investor and the employee are you, I think it also means serving yourself and not neglecting that. So for me, it's a matter of serving the people that share the journey of this company.

Gresham Harkless 13:00

Yeah, I think that puts everything in perspective and every action and all everything that you're doing as far as from a business standpoint, to understand that you're serving to serve the clients that you're working with. I think that is an incredible definition of what it means to be a CEO.

What I wanted to do William is just to pass you the mic. I appreciate the time that you took to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know and how best people can kind of get a hold of you.

William Gadea 13:23

Sure, you can reach me at will@idearocketanimation.com If you have any questions about our services, or any ideas or feedback on what has been spoken about and just really thankful to Gresh for the opportunity to speak with your audiences, and to speak with you.

I think what you're doing here is really exciting, and best of luck to you.

Gresham Harkless 13:47

Thank you. I truly appreciate that. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

William Gadea 13:51

Thank you.

Outro 13:53

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co

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Thank you for listening

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