IAM2052 – Founder and Creative Director Helps Business by Untangling Complexity with Video

In this episode, we have William Gadea, the founder and creative director of IdeaRocket, a company specializing in creating diverse videos for businesses including Fortune 500 companies and startups.

William shares his journey from a child growing up in various countries to pursuing film at NYU, and eventually finding his passion in animation and storytelling.

He discusses IdeaRocket's approach to simplifying complex messages through storytelling, their differentiation factor, and the importance of narrative in business communication.

Additionally, William shares his personal insights on meditation as a productivity hack, offers strategic advice for business growth, and reflects on the essence of being a CEO as serving customers, employees, and investors.

The conversation also touches upon the significance of servant leadership and the balance of interests between the company's main stakeholders.

Website: idearocketanimation.com

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William Gadea Teaser 00:00

The important part of that process is the writing. It's boiling it down into a story that can really.

Resonate with people. They discover a solution for the problem and their life is changed. 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.

Intro 00:27

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 Harkness 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 00:53

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast. And I have a very special guest on the show today. I have William Gadea of IdeaRocket. William, it is awesome to have you on the show.

William Gadea 01:05

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

Gresham Harkless 01:07

No problem. No problem. And 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.

So William is the founder and creative director of IdeaRocket, a maker of videos for businesses. Since 2012, Idea Rocket 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 01:41

I sure am, and I'm excited about it.

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Gresham Harkless 01:43

Yes, we're excited to have you on, too. And what I wanted to do was just ask you a little bit more about your CEO story and what led you to start Idea Rocket.

William Gadea 01:51

It's been a roundabout journey. I grew up overseas. I was born in Peru, lived in Australia. Then my family moved to the Dominican Republic, and I came up here to study film at NYU when I was 17. So I had that moving around when I was a kid. And after getting out of college, it was moving around a bit there too.

As a young man, I had artistic yearnings and I wrote plays for the Off Broadway theater for a long time.

And 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 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, 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, as it often happens with entrepreneurs, that you get a yearning to build a project, to build something that might last.

And around 2006, I was YouTube had just started. And I was getting a sense that there was something in the air that companies would need these, this tool to communicate with their customers and their employees. So I started offering my services to businesses and it didn't really start taking off until I found a marketing channel, which was AdWords.

And I made my first hire in 2012. Change the name to Idea Rocket and we've been doing pretty well ever since Like you mentioned in the introduction. We've had a lot of Fortune 500 companies and Smaller companies too that work with us. So it's been a fun ride

Gresham Harkless 03:50

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

So 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 04:10

I think what we do best is communicate complicated messages. The new technology that's advancing so quickly, it needs changes in people's mentality, in culture, in the way we think about things, in the way we understand business models.

And I see this 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 boiling 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 05:04

Yeah, I would definitely say that. And I think it's, not pun intended. I guess there's definitely an art form to be able to quote-unquote translate that, especially for those highly technical clients. I imagine that you have to articulate that so that even a layperson might be able to understand and understand exactly how they help support clients.

William Gadea 05:23

Yeah, absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 05:24

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this could be something that you feel like differentiate you from other kind of similar companies.

William Gadea 05:33

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. Of course, we try to provide the best production quality and best sound and audio recording, et cetera. 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, a character with a yearning a problem And there they discover a solution for the problem and their life is 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 06:37

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And especially, when people are going through those difficulties to be able to have that connection with, 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 was 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 07:07

Yeah, sure. Every morning before I start work, I sit down on a cushion and meditate for 30 minutes. And I think what that does for me we spend a lot of our time in our head and we're 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 that don't really have anything to do with what. is happening right this second. And I think what happens when you have a mindfulness practice, when you have a meditation practice is that you 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, to your employees and to your customers and to yourself and just understand what we're really about, which is, flesh and muscle and bone and this very moment. So I would definitely. I 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 08:29

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. And you're so right. You have so many thoughts going in and out of your head. And sometimes you forget to be present in the actual moment that you're in and to appreciate, like you said, the bone, the flesh, the essence of who we are as individuals.

So to take 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 08:50

Yeah, I hope so. I hope so.

Gresham Harkless 08:52

Yeah. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And 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 09:00

Sure, 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's four ways of growing. You can sell more things to more people for more money more often. And really when you think about it, there's only four ways of growing.

Sell more things means to diversify 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 up market more often, just get the requirements going, 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, say be getting as much repeat business as you can, or, 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, We diversified into live action, and sometimes it's not really a very good idea for small businesses to diversify because it scatters them. But for us, it's been great because, our sales and marketing arm can sell it as easily as they can any other products.

And there's so much overlap in terms of production process in terms of writing in terms of sound design, et cetera, that it really made sense for us to diversify into live action. So I would say, that is just a really useful way.

A really useful prism to apply to your businessas you're thinking about growing.

Gresham Harkless 11:30

Yeah. And that makes perfect sense. I think often when, we're thinking about our businesses or organizations and how to grow them, we're automatically think we need to have more clients. And that's 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 expand the mind, so to speak.

William Gadea 11:49

Yeah, absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 11:50

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. What I wanted to do was ask, which is my favorite question, which is the definition of being a CEO. We're hoping to redefine exactly like what that means. So I wanted to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you?

William Gadea 12:02

For me, it means servant leadership. Any company rests on three different legs of the stool. It's customers, employees and investors. And I think as CEOs, we're often asked to juggle those different interests and portion resources to those different interests. And it's not 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.

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

Gresham Harkless 12:50

Yeah, I think that puts everything in perspective and every action and everything that you're doing as far as from a business standpoint to understand that you're trying to serve the clients that you're working with.

And I think that is an incredible definition for what it means to be a CEO. So what I wanted to do, William, was just pass you the mic. And 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 get ahold of you.

William Gadea 13:13

Sure. You can reach me at will at idearocketanimation.com. If you have any questions about our services or any ideas or feedback on what I've spoken about and just a really thankful Gresh for the opportunity to speak with your audience and to speak with you. I think what you're doing here is really exciting.

And best of luck to you.

Gresham Harkless 13:37

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

William Gadea 13:41

Thank you.

Outro 13:42

Thank you for listening to the I Am CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I Am CEO is not just a phrase. It's a community.

Want to level up your business even more read blogs, listen to podcasts and watch videos at cbnation.co. Also check out our I Am CEO Facebook group. This has been the I Am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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