Running an Agency Solo Was My Biggest Mistake

Diogo Dantas (00:28.29)
So Matt, thank you so much for joining us today. Let's kick off things and talk about who you are and introducing yourself and what you do.

Matt Varughese (00:30.659)
No, no, no, no, I get it. Yeah, yeah.

Matt Varughese (00:49.125)
Yeah, yeah. My name is Matt Varghese. I am one of the partners and the CEO over at 8020. The way I describe 8020 is we are a Webflow exclusive Webflow partner. And so we are a Webflow enterprise partner focused on working on and building some of the websites for some of the largest companies and creators in the world. So we have like two segments of our business, two core segments, the startups and enterprise side, and then there's the creator side.

And those could be people like artists or musicians or celebrities or podcasters or whoever it might be. And we're really lucky to serve some, some really big names and, and, and grow the company alongside some really wonderful team members and clients. And outside of work, the things I enjoy doing most are riding motorcycles, as we talked about off air, riding bikes, don't see anything on two wheels.

I just got into dirt biking and I am also a pilot. And so I have a lot of interests that my life insurance company does not like me for, but I have a lot of fun with it. And so yeah, it's a little bit about me.

Diogo Dantas (01:58.286)
You

Diogo Dantas (02:04.16)
Nice. And on the personal side, I saw that you recently moved to New York. What prompted the move and how has that influenced the work and lifestyle?

Matt Varughese (02:16.121)
Yeah, this is actually a good question because I actually moved back, back to Oklahoma City after I posted that. I mean, I stayed in New York for a while, but that was in last March. And I stayed in New York for a while. But I, know, something that I have not talked about publicly at all, actually, not even on Twitter or anything like that, is that I actually did not like New York. Like it was not a fit for me. I think it is a great fit for a lot of people. And I think a lot of people.

know themselves well and know that they should live there. I kind of moved there for a lot of different reasons, but I think I had, I have a comedian client of mine, name's Hassan Minaj, and he has been telling me for three years that I have to move to New York and that I'm ruining my life by not living in New York. And then I made the decision to move and I actually, I just really didn't enjoy it at all. And I don't think it's anything about the city itself that is like,

a bad thing. think it's just like, I'm not a good fit for that city and the type of people that it like, I really love outdoor space. I love being on my motorcycle. I love driving. I love open space. I love quiet time. Like these are these are the things that New York just does not offer. And so yeah, so I ended up moving back. But like, to be honest, like

Diogo Dantas (03:33.902)
Yeah.

Matt Varughese (03:40.965)
There were parts of my time there that I really enjoyed. made some really great friends while I was there. I went to a lot of great events. That is a big upside of living in a big city versus, you know, my smaller town, Oklahoma City, is so many people come to town to visit and then you're immediately top of mind whenever they're like, I'm in the city, let's hang out. Or there's dinners or events and things like that.

Diogo Dantas (03:47.438)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (04:03.867)
And that's all cool and grand. But to be honest, like I'd rather just fly in for the day and then fly back the next like I I don't really I love my life in Oklahoma City. I think that was a hard realization for me is like I built a great life here. I have so many great friends here. My family's here. My dog's here. My dog stayed at my parents house while I was in New York. And it's just like I like really enjoy the flow and the rhythm that I had. And there was nothing wrong with it. There was nothing that I was seeking.

like outside of just like being like, I should probably try it out. And I did try it and I didn't like it. But this year I'll actually be spending, I think a little bit more time in San Francisco. So I have some time slotted out West because I think that actually will be the city that jives a bit better. I've actually not talked about that either, but starting in March, I'll be in San Francisco quite a bit more. And so I'm bringing my trucks and motorcycle and things like that. so.

Diogo Dantas (05:02.414)
you

Matt Varughese (05:03.963)
But yeah, that's the gist on New York.

Diogo Dantas (05:08.642)
Yeah, no, it's nice that at least it got you like a perspective on what do you value and made you make the right decision back.

Matt Varughese (05:16.069)
Yeah.

Matt Varughese (05:20.131)
Yeah, yeah. mean, that's the thing. Like I really learned that I value community and I knew I valued community, but I value it a lot more than I thought I did. And I value being outside. Like me and my girlfriend went to Yellowstone and to Grand Tetons in the fall. And it just completely changed. And I've never been to a national park and it completely changed my perspective. And I was just like, I just want to be as close to a national park as I possibly can be.

Diogo Dantas (05:28.642)
Mm-hmm.

Diogo Dantas (05:47.49)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (05:47.707)
And outside all the time and obviously Oklahoma does not I mean we have I think we have one national park here but I just yeah, I like being outdoors and I think that's what my current lifestyle offers me quite well

Diogo Dantas (06:01.55)
That's great. And what is the story behind 8020 and kind of why anchor the brand to the Pareto principle?

Matt Varughese (06:10.969)
Yeah, so I can't take the credit for it actually. So a bit of backstory about me is that before 8020, I ran a company called Webster Peace and I started that in my senior year of high school. I was working on it in the computer lab during lunch in high school and it was so funny because I'm sure if you look at that website, in fact, I should probably do that after this. If you look at the website on archive.org or whatever.

There were so many references to we and like our team and all this stuff in 2015 that is such bullshit. Like it was me a minor that was trying to sell websites to large companies. And but I started that company and long story short, I ran that through college and I ended up selling it to tiny capital.

Diogo Dantas (06:43.854)
You

Matt Varughese (07:06.317)
which if you don't know Tiny, they used to be known for owning just a small set of large internet companies and large agencies specifically and SaaS companies like Creative Market and Dribbble and Metalab and things like that. But they've actually expanded their focus and they have a lot more products. If you drink coffee, Aeropress is one of their companies. Serato, if you're in the DJ industry and use that software. And so long story short, I sold to them and I ended up

taking over as part of the offer, taking over 80 20. And this was pretty much six months after the company was started. So I'm not the founder, but like I was there very, very early on in the journey. But it's interesting. So the original idea was like what 80 20 was actually not just Webflow exclusive at the time that I had joined. It was no code exclusive. So any no code platform in general, Webflow, Glide, Make, Zapier.

and then whatever it might be, 80 20 kind of dabbled in it to build websites and web apps. And, the idea of the name was that you can get 80 % of the results for 20 % of the cost of a traditional build. which even in the website world, like with the, the size of websites we're doing today, that's honestly still true. If we compare it to like an AEM contract or a site core, you're one of these clunky CMS is,

you're saving a lot of money by moving to Webflow. And so that's where kind of the name comes from. We've kind of evolved how we talk about 80-20 over the years because I don't like framing and positioning from a cost perspective exclusively. I try to focus on time because I think time is also a pretty relevant attribute in that Pareto principle theory because we can deliver a lot faster than a traditional dev shop could.

But that's where the name came from.

Diogo Dantas (09:07.694)
That makes sense. And looking back when Tiny acquired your agency, what do you think made it work? What made that agency interesting to Tiny?

Matt Varughese (09:25.231)
Yeah, so that's a great question. think in a lot of ways, so they had a previous CEO at the time who actually went on to work at Webflow and is probably well known in the Webflow community. His name's Max Lind. If you got the Webflow newsletter, he was Max at Webflow, like he was that guy. He actually started at 8020 and he was the first CEO of the company. And he ended up having a kid and deciding that, I mean, agency hours, as I'm sure you know.

Diogo Dantas (09:38.51)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (09:54.661)
can be very brutal and demanding and it is hard to have, I mean, you have two kids raise a family on, and then also start a brand new agency. And so he decided it wasn't really a fit for him. And so he stepped down and a few months prior, I had been following Andrew for a long time. I thought Andrew was a really interesting guy and I actually had tweet notifications on for him. I posted, or he posted this thing and said he needed a Webflow.

Ecommerce expert when we're fully commerce is brand new and so I ended up just DMing him I tweet I respond to his tweet I DMed him and I was like I want to be this guy and internally I was like I don't I have no ego in working for free even today like honestly if it's like my dream client I would pretty much like I want to work with the people that I want to work with and I am not as Concerned about cost. I know that that is not the same experience for everyone I know that people don't often have that privilege to do so but like

Like that that's what I was able to do and so I I just I sold him the website at a very very low rate and he really enjoyed working with me and Funny enough, I think I've talked about this a couple times before but like the 80 20 actually asked me to work at 80 20 as like a developer before they asked me to run the company and I said no to working there as a developer because I was like I have a business I'm not going to Abandon it's not it wasn't a huge business. I don't want to like big up myself or have people have this

Diogo Dantas (11:09.646)
Hmm.

Matt Varughese (11:23.041)
you know, assumption that it was some massive company. No, it was still me and contractors. and it was a great business for me at that time in my life, but, for tiny, was a win because they had a CEO that was stepping down and a very rapidly growing company and they needed someone to run it. They needed someone that they could trust. I had really good references. Me and Andrew had a lot of mutual friends. and so there are a lot of people that just vouched for me as being like a normal dude. It's not going to.

screw you over. And so for Tiny, the benefit for them was that they got to have someone, you know, young, hungry and scrappy. So I was 21 or 22 at the time that I took over 80-20. And so I was very early in my career still. So for them, it was a win. For me, it was a win because to me, it felt like a cheat code to jump the line and get this

Diogo Dantas (11:53.603)
Mm-hmm.

Diogo Dantas (12:20.152)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (12:21.339)
Because you immediately get this cosine from this big group and it's like from tiny capital from Andrew Wilkinson. And that was my thesis. That's why I did it. was like, I think if I do this, it will make a difference. And it did make a difference. And I'm very glad that I did it because it actually played out exactly the way I thought it would in my head, which was probably a risky bet to some degree. But it ended up working out.

Diogo Dantas (12:47.693)
Nice.

If that wasn't the case, if the opportunity to become the CEO of 8020 didn't come or didn't work out, what do think you would be making or working on today?

Matt Varughese (13:02.071)
that's a great question. No one has ever asked me that. wow. I think, so my actually like dream agency that I don't actually think can work very well. I know one person that makes it work really, really well and I'm like very happy for them is an agency that's focused specifically on creators and celebrities and podcasters and things like that.

Diogo Dantas (13:29.719)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (13:29.849)
I've always really enjoyed that work. has a large audience, a large reach. I think you can find people that you really admire as a person and build websites for them. And my first taste of that was I used to be Chancellor Rapper's web person for a while. so for a lot of, there were so many complex things that needed to be done for him behind the scenes in terms of web and technology. And it was so much fun.

to do that. And it was crazy because like, I remember I flew to Chicago for his album release and we were working in the office and like, genuinely like, were up until it was, it was the week of his album release and it was like two days before. And like, we were in the office until 2 a.m. just grinding on the website. Like a couple of us, like my friend Manny on the e-comm side of things and then myself on kind of front end web and like some order logistics stuff. And then we would wake up at like 630.

and go back to the office and work and grind. And like to any person that hears that they're like, that's insane. And it is insane, but it's also so fun. I think so highly of that time in my life. And I like, I want more of that, to be honest with you. I love just like working together towards a mission and just trying to like make something and put it into existence in the world. So I would like a creator focused agency. My friend, Toner.

from his agency before, I actually can't remember the old name. The new name is Rare Days. And he actually does this really well. He has a lot of very notable, known creator clients and he has some courses, web apps, And they do really great work and they've made it work. They have a healthy, strong business and a great team. A lot of X metal abbers are over there too. so, know, shout out to him.

He's actually maybe the only person I've seen be able to make that work. Because I think there's an inherent problem with celebrity clients sometimes in which their willingness to pay is extremely low. Because to them, it's like you're doing this for exposure and for visibility and access and things like that. And so they're not always willing to pay. Or pay a lot, I should say. I've been really lucky to have.

Diogo Dantas (15:31.31)
Hmm.

Matt Varughese (15:57.983)
you know, creator clients that are very great partners for us. And in turn, we are very great partners for them. And we go above and beyond and we make sure that they are well taken care of. but, so I think it's a challenging business model, but that is what I would be trying to do. I probably would not be able to have a big team. you know, I think it like, I thought about this a lot before too, about, you know, if I, if I ever did,

something like that, it would essentially be almost freelancing. But I think there's a lot of merit in freelancing. One of my big gripes with it is that it's fun for like a year or two, and then you can't actually take time off because you eat what you kill and you can never really step away. And that is a benefit I have now. could honestly leave 80-20 for like a month. In fact, my COO is pushing me for a five week sabbatical that I'm refusing right now. And...

Diogo Dantas (16:28.664)
Mm-hmm.

Diogo Dantas (16:38.797)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (16:53.657)
But she's like, we can do it. Like you can leave it. It's okay. And like, and she's right. There are the systems and processes and peoples and redundancies in place that I could step away. And if I want to go to Vietnam for a motorcycle trip, I could. and so long window way to answer your question, but, I would do a creator agency.

Diogo Dantas (17:12.206)
Nice. I think you will be successful at that. Mainly, think that confidence comes from what I've seen from you in terms of people skills. I think you have those. I think you'll be successful. Also, we are going to talk about some code alter-reach strategy that you have that have worked out, which has been a new thing for me when I saw that. I'm like,

Matt Varughese (17:24.315)
Thanks, man.

Matt Varughese (17:34.536)
yeah, yeah, yeah.

Diogo Dantas (17:42.188)
Really? Does this work? And it seems to be working for you. But we'll get to that in a bit. So now switching gears a bit more on a bit on the positioning and strategy of 80-20. You position 80-20 more than just a design shop. You defend that you act as a strategic partner.

Matt Varughese (17:48.313)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Diogo Dantas (18:07.458)
When you say strategy, what does that actually mean in context of a web flow and kind of web design agency for you?

Matt Varughese (18:07.867)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (18:15.065)
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I, so we are a strategic partner and we do think very, very much so in a strategic sense. I think strategy is one of those words that everyone has a very different definition of. there's two sides of it in, in, our regards. think there's strategic partner to me in many ways is, so we have a value at 80 20 that basically says that

as close as humanly possible, we need to act as a fiduciary to our clients. I was introduced, I did not know what that term meant before I had started investing in that. I don't really invest that much now. I don't want to lead the audience on to believe it. I probably should. But there's a concept of like when you talk to a financial advisor,

Diogo Dantas (18:56.643)
Yeah.

Matt Varughese (19:04.027)
whether or not they are a fiduciary. And a fiduciary is someone that acts in your best interest, is legally mandated to act in your best interest. They cannot act in their own and it is punishable by law if they do. And so if you ever hire a financial advisor, you want them to be a fiduciary because you don't want them to be peddling to you that you don't want or need or is in their interest. And what I tell the team all the time is I was like, do not ever make a decision that lines 80 20s pockets.

do it because it is the right decision for the client. It is the right decision for what they want to do. And that it is a good use of their funds. And the thing I tell clients on a call is like, I wouldn't advise you to do something that I wouldn't do myself. Because I I carry a heavy burden with that. And I'm like, I really need it. I need to be able to sleep at night. And I don't mean that figuratively. I will stay up if something went wrong. And I don't want that to happen. And so,

On one side of things to me, that is what a strategic partner looks like. They are looking out for your best interest in, the long term. on the other side of things, when I pitch 8020 I say we are a strategy design and development shop and so we, tackle everything from, you know, the very beginning iterations of a project, on the episode you did with Mason, I actually really liked what he said, in the beginning where he was like, well, like,

You kind of get dropped into a project wherever the client is and then you have to figure it out from there and I totally agree. Like some clients there, they don't even have a brand yet. Some have a brand kit. Some are actually maybe midway through a web project and are firing their current agency and need someone to take over. But we try to think it, look at things holistically. We try to look at things from like a goals and KPIs method first, what story you're trying to tell, and then iterate on how we can actually tell that together through content

Diogo Dantas (20:36.718)
in

Matt Varughese (20:57.915)
through technical SEO, through programmatic SEO, through AEO strategies? How are we designing your flow on your site? What are you trying to optimize for? Are you a sales led organization? You wanna book calls? Or are you a product? You wanna drive demos or people just actually creating an account? Are we trying to drive purchases? I think knowing kind of, we do very, very deep discovery at the beginning of a...

of a project, even if we're at any stage of a project or at any stage of a client. Like we do very deep discovery and research because we don't want to be shooting and flying blind. Like we want to be able to serve our clients well and their long-term interests. well. And that starts with understanding what they want and then working backwards to figure out what does that actually look like to get there. And so that's kind of how we think about strategic partnership and strategy in general.

Diogo Dantas (21:54.062)
It makes sense. And I heard that you were one of the first five Webflow enterprise partners globally. What do you think that position 80-20 to get there so early?

Matt Varughese (22:03.417)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (22:12.027)
That's a great question. be honest, I credit, this is one of the things where I'm like, I think the exposure to tiny is a very beneficial thing. like, so I think honestly, like one of the best, not, honestly, I gotta give, I always give Mason Poe his flowers. Cause like, man, Edgar Allen is such a powerhouse of an agency and they've been in this ecosystem pretty much longer. I mean, they're in the top 1 % in terms of length of time that they have been in this ecosystem.

Diogo Dantas (22:17.922)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (22:41.773)
And so like, I think there are a few factors that influenced it. Cause I know Mason was one of them. think refocus, which was formerly called bonds was one of them. FinSuite, us, and then one other that I can't recall, maybe whiteboard. But I think length of time in the ecosystem. But honestly, I just was working really closely with Webflow in the early days of the company. I went to Webflow conferences.

I knew the sales leadership really well. I knew leadership really well. I was very active in the community. I had a podcast at the time called called visual dev FM with, with Ben Parker who works at Webflow. And so I think time in the time in Webflow in general, I was very active in the community. I was a forum moderator and I was in the forums all the time. Like my goal was that I wanted to just be the most visible person in the web ecosystem.

Diogo Dantas (23:18.03)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (23:36.761)
possible at the time because I had nothing to lose. so early in my career and so early in my web flow journey that I was like, I'm just going to spend all my time here and see what happens. But honestly, I think a lot of it came down to the relationships that I had. There was the trust that we could do the work, but I also just knew a lot of leadership at the time when Webflow was 70 employees. Now they're more than a thousand. And I still know the leadership really well. I went gambling and I say it at

Linda's house last month and Like I still I think that Relationships really matter. I thought like to the point of that community. I value relationships more than anything and like I even still Talk to my partner manager at Webflow. Like I've had five partner managers at Webflow six, I think actually and My partner managers a Webflow that are no longer

my partner managers have actually left Webflow and I still hang out with them. I stayed at one of their houses last month in San Francisco and I saw the other for dinner and they had said this thing to me or one of them, Jackie had said this thing to me and she was like, you know, you're like the only person that actually still talks to me even though I can't like, can't provide, Jackie was like, can't provide any business value to you because people are like, if you have a partner manager, agencies are oftentimes trying to just get new business out of you. But like, I really care about the person.

Diogo Dantas (25:02.263)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (25:04.163)
Like, genuinely, like I care about people and I think that honestly showed early on in kind of the interactions that I had. so I think all that culminated together that when they relaunched, because they shut down the partner program for a while and then they relaunched it with an enterprise program with a focus for on enterprise clients. And I think when they tapped us to do that, they really wanted.

Diogo Dantas (25:22.754)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (25:31.139)
you folks that cared a lot and and they they chose i think they chose a a great group of of of agencies because those are all really really talented agencies

Diogo Dantas (25:41.07)
Cool. Yeah, I do believe that in this more and more in this agency type of business, community and relationships with others are kind of where things happen and where you see kind of the biggest or the best projects happening. because there is trust and when there is trust, there is a lot of things that can happen.

Matt Varughese (25:55.109)
Yeah.

Matt Varughese (26:07.707)
Totally.

Diogo Dantas (26:09.166)
Cool. So, and as 8020 scaled, what operational challenges have been the hardest to solve and how have you kept culture intact while growing? And with all those pains, that probably happened.

Matt Varughese (26:19.481)
Mm-hmm

Matt Varughese (26:26.831)
That is a great question. think operations was the hardest problem to solve in the last six years and

Um, because I am not a numbers guy. I'm not, I'm, I'm a people guy. love relationships. I hate getting down to the nitty gritty of how, how a project is structured. hate thinking about resourcing and timelines and who works on a project and all this stuff. And, and we really struggled with that in the early few years, would say the early first three, three to four years, to the extent that like. 80 20 had very, uh,

volatile months, like some months we would make, you know, a hundred K and profit and some months we would lose 50. And like it was, mean, these were just huge swings up and down. And just because I did not know resourcing at all, I didn't know forecasting. I didn't know any of that. didn't have a great accounting team behind me. and honestly,

Diogo Dantas (27:15.022)
Thank

Matt Varughese (27:25.627)
A big thing, a big challenge that I'm sure every agency owner can relate to with employees is we had to very...

much so mandate time tracking, which look, I hate it. Employees hate it Like it, but it is probably one of the most important things you can do. If not the most important thing we look at time spent on projects now more than almost like any other metric to determine profitability and whether a project was a good fit or not and so we did not have that for the first three years. I think we got that in year four yeah, I think year four and,

Diogo Dantas (27:53.198)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (28:05.563)
We, so that was a big kind of pain point to solve for. Um, I think, I mean, I made a lot of mistakes along the way. implemented a four day work week at one point. That was a terrible idea Um, because clients work a five day week and they do not like that their agency is gone for a full day of their week Um, and that also led to us spending more money. It was just like, uh, I mean, I've made a lot of mistakes along the way. Um, and, um, I, I honestly,

Diogo Dantas (28:18.86)
Yep.

Matt Varughese (28:35.099)
You know, I spent, Every December, I write a lot and like one of the questions, in fact, I'm gonna read these questions out loud just so folks have it, because I think this is a very good exercise to do. Where was this at?

Matt Varughese (28:57.275)
Let me pull this up real quick.

Here it is. So the questions were, What were the highlights? What were the lowlights? Everything else that's floating in my head. What was I most proud of this year? What did I learn the most from? Who or what had the biggest impact on me? What do need to let go of? What do I want to make more room for? What's the story I want to tell myself at the end of next year? But the question that I thought of for this conversation is, who or what had the biggest impact on me?

And the person is, is Joanie my COO Um, this was a huge hire for me and maybe my most important and pivotal one. And it's funny for years. So I have like a monthly call with Mason. I've had a monthly call with Mason for every month for the last like six years. Um, and I would complain to him all the time about how hard agency businesses are. Cause I think they're really, really hard and, um, they're, they're great businesses to start. Cause they're extremely, uh,

Not capital intensive like you don't need physical equipment other than a laptop huge need an interconnection You don't have to have a full-time payroll if like you can hire people when you have a project all this stuff but like We were signing so many deals that like I just couldn't keep up and Mason kept telling me this thing He was like he was like I don't know how you do it solo because even though I had tiny tiny is not an operational partner they have no no people in the business other than me and so

I, I, he kept saying like, I can't believe you do it solo. And I was like, yeah, whatever. That's not the problem. And I literally kept just brushing it off. Cause he was like, I have like five people that helped me in leadership at Edgar Allan and I just didn't have that. And I didn't think that was a problem. And he was actually spot on to that was exactly what the problem was. I was running the business solo and, I ended up talking to Andrew from tiny, at a breakfast one day about it.

Diogo Dantas (30:51.138)
Thank

Matt Varughese (30:59.163)
We had gone back and forth on what role I needed You know one of them he had said a CFO. I thought that wasn't really the right role I think I needed a CEO and so I up hiring a CEO and We hired an executive headhunter Big shout out to my friend Matt Hollingsworth at Align because he did a phenomenal job if you ever need an executive recruiter but He found Jody

And he placed her in the role. We interviewed, we got along really well. And man, to have someone with that much operational experience, was VP of operations at a much larger agency, or about five times our size. And she knew that basically all the pain points of the business, was so much low hanging fruit for her to solve that I just didn't know how to solve. And the business is so...

So, so much healthier today. It's extremely stable. It's extremely steady. I'm not stressed out about the business. I'm not worried about the business. We keep an immense amount of cash in the business for runway, which is something that most agencies actually don't have. Like we're very conservative. And so that if we ever had a rainy day, like we'll be fine. It'll all be okay. And so operationally, I think like that was my, the best thing I did.

Diogo Dantas (32:09.591)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (32:22.234)
because she is a great culture fit. She was a great hire all around. was great for the team. Everyone loves her. She knows how to like hold people accountable, but also be really kind about it. And so to me, that was the biggest unlock. It's why I can go on a sabbatical today. If she wasn't here, I could not do that. And now we actually have five leaders of the company. so like we've promoted folks and in fact, the rest of the leader.

Diogo Dantas (32:34.243)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (32:49.883)
The rest of the leaders are all internal folks that have been with us for a long time and have been promoted. And it's really great, man. I think if anyone's listening, they feel pain, I would encourage you to, if it's an operational issue, get creative on how you structure it. And what's great is when Joni came in, actually wasn't a partner in the business. It was just still me and Andrew and Shane Parrish, if you know him.

After we ended up buying out Tiny's position in the company and Shane's position in the company, Joanie actually became one of the co-owners and it's really great, man. It's like we have a really great, strong, healthy business and we've been able to maintain culture along the way and morale and all that stuff and I'm really proud of that.

Diogo Dantas (33:36.654)
Wow, that's great. It has been a journey. And I can relate in part to that. didn't hire a COO. Hopefully that time will come. I can just kind of, from my own experience, I can relate to hiring someone like you're running most of the projects from day to day and then hiring the first senior project manager. it's like all of a sudden you see all that time back and you're like...

Matt Varughese (33:59.769)
Yeah, totally.

Diogo Dantas (34:03.726)
Wow, this could have been done so many years ago or months ago. But yeah, I guess it happens when it has to happen.

Matt Varughese (34:04.857)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Varughese (34:09.371)
Yeah.

Matt Varughese (34:15.471)
Yeah, totally. mean, look, I'm a big proponent of hire when it hurts. And it hurt. So I really needed the help and she was a real saving grace. So yeah, shout out to her. She's a big part of this company and I couldn't do it without her.

Diogo Dantas (34:21.236)
Mm-hmm

Diogo Dantas (34:35.342)
effect. on the hiring, I didn't have this one planned, but on the hiring, do you still hire when it hurts or are you trying to be a bit more proactive in kind of hiring before it hurts?

Matt Varughese (34:50.703)
We're trying to be slightly more proactive today. We still are very conservative. So like my number one fear is I don't ever want to hire someone and then have to let them go six months later. I think it was very, I think that's poor management in my opinion, if we had to do that or if we did do that. And I think that's disrespectful to employees and I don't like that.

The way we've been doing it now is extremely hard to find, but we try to find a freelancer that is open to doing a long-term contract with us. So everyone, even if we offer them full-time job, you are on a three-month probation period as a contractor. And so you get the job. Almost everyone, there's only one person in the history of the company that hasn't had their contract renewed. So we've generally picked very well like FITs and...

roles and alignment for what we hire for and everyone's gotten their extension offer. But we try to hire on like a three month contract if we can. This is actually what we're doing now, hiring on a three to six month contract. And if that ends up working out and if the demand for services that that person is needed for continues, then we keep them and we continue their contract and we actually send them a full time offer.

That's our plan right now. That was not how we previously operated. It was more higher when it hurts. But now, like the thing is, we're hitting like this, like, I feel like in the last six to 12 months, we finally hit this flywheel effect where things are pretty steady and even and inbound is really high and we're closing a lot of the deals that we're selling and the deals are the right fit and we're getting referrals and clients are moving to new companies and bringing us along.

Diogo Dantas (36:20.718)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (36:44.727)
And so it's a point where I feel a little bit more comfortable just extending offers and hiring a little earlier, but we're still very conservative about it. Like we don't wanna, I just think it's like, it's not kind to an employee to offer them a job and then they don't get to continue on. Cause they might've left something good to join us. And so I wanna be really mindful of that. But yeah, right now it's just slightly earlier, but we still ideally hire when it hurts.

Diogo Dantas (37:04.718)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (37:13.497)
The hardest role to hire for when it hurts is a project manager. The other roles, you can almost always backfill it with contractor support, designers or developers or maybe more senior folks to do actual coding and things like that. But project managers, there's no such thing in my opinion as a contract project manager.

If you are a project manager listening to this, I think that is a good business opportunity. If you can figure it out, I think that is a hard thing to figure out. I don't think it's just like saying you're available, being able to manage and code switch and task switch and learn different companies workflows is really hard. So it's not an easy thing, but I think it is a valuable thing that you could pitch.

Diogo Dantas (37:42.51)
you

Diogo Dantas (37:56.034)
Yeah. Cool. And now talking a little bit about delivering high quality work, that's kind of...

A thing that I, when I think about 80 20 is high quality standards. And one of those things is delivering a web flow when you are delivering a web flow build, how does a QA process looks like internally? Do you have someone allocated to that full time or he's like a hybrid job where PM does a bit design reviews. The developer also has a role on that. How all that works at 80 20.

Matt Varughese (38:19.323)
Hmm.

Matt Varughese (38:32.763)
It's a great question. think it's something that a lot of agencies struggle with. I will be honest. think sometimes we don't struggle to get it done, but we don't have a dedicated QA person for it. It's something we've debated doing. We've tried contract QA shops. Honestly, no good. At least the ones we found are not good at those roles. It's an interesting challenge because if you ask the developer who worked on a project to QA it, they've been staring at it for so long.

that it's hard to really see all the bugs and the issues. And I really empathize with that. So right now it's a hybrid. We try to basically take, so developers that aren't on a project will go and QA a different project because it's not theirs. It's not something that they've worked on. But then the PM who's been staring at the site less, but still to a degree will also PM leadership PMs. Like we all kind of jump in and so.

There will be a call out to folks to help QA and people will sign up and jump in. And we have a multi-point checklist to check across browsers, breakpoints, devices, things like that. And we simulate it through browser stack and then also there's a local version that we use called Sysy. And we just go very comprehensively through the work. And to this day, we're pretty good at QA.

Because we do, our process is we do internal QA first and then we let the client do their own QA if they want to. It is an optional phase for the client, but most clients will be like, yeah, I'll take it on and I'll look through it myself. And then we give them access to a commenting dashboard that they can just kind of drop comments onto. I think we're starting to switch to Webflow commenting, but previously we used Pastel, but there's a lot of commenting tools out there. But.

it is, so it's a, it's a very, the checklist is very rigorous, but the folks assigned to it, it's not as, like it's not like a dedicated QA person. I've always felt that that's kind of like, unless you're every week shipping a project, then it's, it's weird. Cause it's like, that person's not really working on something for like, they have a lot of idle time and we're trying to buildable efficiency is a metric we really focus on.

Diogo Dantas (40:46.22)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (40:57.307)
what percentages of a person's time is actually billed to a client versus is not billable or is admin or is time off or things like that. And so different roles have different efficiencies and percentages that we try to hit target wise. And if we had a full-time QA person, they would have so much idle time because you only need them in the final stretch of a project. so maybe we'll hire for that in the future.

To be honest, it's probably not high on our list of hires right now that we'll make in the next six months.

Diogo Dantas (41:33.314)
Yeah, I share that feeling. It's hard to justify someone full time. And I also have that feeling, hiring someone externally. It also might be something challenging to do because, and I feel like a lot of the shops that there are for QA, they are most specifically targeting products and SaaS, which are

Matt Varughese (41:38.127)
Yeah.

Diogo Dantas (41:59.06)
usually much more complex in terms of features, requirements, and all that than a marketing website. And I know that marketing websites can get also tricky and complicated, but I don't think it gets to that point of QA that usually those shops do. And it's hard to justify not only the budget, but also all the effort that comes around with it.

Matt Varughese (41:59.791)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Varughese (42:23.099)
I totally agree. think it's, one of those things that like, it's not, it's kind of like, exactly like the PM issue, like a contract PM doesn't exist, but contract QA firms for web flow doesn't really exist. And it's also, to be honest, they like, could hire an external developer to QA site, but then you're paying developer rates oftentimes to QA site and the math doesn't work. So it is, it's a, it's a tricky problem to solve for sure.

Diogo Dantas (42:46.38)
Yeah.

Diogo Dantas (42:52.545)
Yeah. And based on your process page that it's just me or your website was recently updated.

Matt Varughese (43:00.644)
It was, was. We have actually not talked about it, but we launched it like the last week of December. So yeah, it's very new. It has not even been a month yet.

Diogo Dantas (43:11.01)
nice. And I saw that on your process page, you talk about that content plays a central role on the work that you do. How does the content integrate? How do you integrate content strategy into design and build?

Matt Varughese (43:29.839)
Yeah, that's a phenomenal question. So content. So I think when I explain this to clients, I say there's two ways of thinking about a website. I think there's design informs copy and content and content informs design. So the first way is you design and you put lorem ipsum in place. And then the other way is that you actually create the content and then you create the design around the content that we're in the story that we're trying to tell.

In my opinion, the second way is the best way to do it. I would almost say the right way, but I'm hesitant to say that because I think other people have different takes. But I, to me, we are a content informed design shop. That is how we, how we think about it, how we look at it. And one of the things that we really strive to do early on is, so we, we don't really do a lot of copywriting.

But we have a very detailed, phase two of almost every project we ever do is a content strategy phase. And this is where we go really deep on understanding goals of the client. What are you trying to do? What's the story you're trying to tell? We ask a lot of questions. We send questionnaires. We talk about it on the call. We try to get to the nitty gritty of like, what are we trying to do with this website that we are designing and building together? And then from there, after we go through this very extensive process,

what we do is we actually turn the content findings that we have into a content outline and we say, okay, this is a site map that we have. This is what we think each page on the website will talk about. And we actually plan out to a more granular detail of like this. We need a heading, we need a paragraph. right here, we'll decide the button copy, but you're welcome to opine on that. And we do that for every single section on every single page. We don't write the copy of the client.

I personally believe like, especially in a lot of, we work with a lot of extremely technical clients that are like, it's out of our realm and it's hard for someone to be able to just jump in and be like, yeah, I'm an expert and I can write about it. I just don't think that like a lot of agencies are very good at that. And I think, the best person to write the content is someone at the company. and so they will then write the content and then copy and then we will design around.

Matt Varughese (45:54.381)
And so we will take that, we will design a layout, we'll design a format, we'll design something that works for every single page. But we use that content outline as like the guiding kind of truth of how we are thinking about the website and thinking about the content strategy overall into the design phase.

Diogo Dantas (46:14.498)
Great, great. And during the design phase, when you deliver a design, how do you handle feedback and revisions? Is it synchronous? So you do schedule calls or workshops to review the feedback? Or do you prefer the async, looms, Figma comments?

Matt Varughese (46:36.379)
Our preference is async We prefer to give clients access to I mean we always give access to the figma file and we prefer that they leave comments We have a really really great great client right now called overhaul that we're working really closely with and they're a large Logistics company based out of Austin and they have leadership looking at the site and they have marketing folks looking at the site and product and all the stuff

And they actually like, had to give them their flowers. They are very, very organized. And the way that this project is going is exactly how like, it's like a dream project for us because they have a dedicated project commander assigned to the project. That person basically sits down with the client internally, like the stakeholders and gathers all the feedback and delivers it to us both in the Figma file. And then as a Slack message to us of like everything likes dislikes, thoughts, everything is kind of written in there.

And then they'll talk about it on a call with the PM as well. If the PM has any clarifying questions or needs anything in that regard. That is the most ideal state. The next best state is just honestly leaving comments all over on the Figma file. Like I think that's totally fine as well and preferred. Because it allows us to see exactly what someone's pointing to and referring to and requires less wrangling of schedules and time zones.

Diogo Dantas (47:38.328)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (47:59.917)
And that always comes with like, have a weekly call with clients and so we can talk about it on the call as well. And then the last best option, and it's still a great option, is just doing synchronous calls. But our preference is definitely async. I think it allows for people to have dedicated time to sit and think rather than on the spot thinking about what they want and what they don't want.

Diogo Dantas (48:22.266)
Gotcha. Now going into more like of a vision kind of thing, conversation, where do you see, and especially over the last year, year and a half, like with all the AI boom and all that, and we saw already a few things on the last WebflowConf back in October, where do you see the no code platforms like Webflow, kind of no code?

It's the term that you never know what people will get from that. But what do you see in the next year, two years, Webflow heading towards?

Matt Varughese (48:54.821)
Yeah

Matt Varughese (49:03.707)
That's a great question. I think the product will continue to evolve, even independent.

If we were to say AI doesn't exist, think Webflow has a lot of great features for both the enterprise side of customers and the non-enterprise side of customers that they're continuing to work on and improve. And we've seen that in the stuff that they're shipping. The quality of life in the platform, the ease of use of working in the platform, thinking through how, even something simple like variables made a really big difference in how we build websites. And it's something that other platforms are able to have, or maybe even more traditionally.

developments able to have that we did not previously have that makes a material difference. So I think there's going to be these differences in Webflow that are going to come down the road to actually reduce the differences between the advantages that traditional development have.

to match more closely to what Webflow offers you as an end user while still giving you that simplicity and kind of ease of use that Webflow is known for. If we're fracturing the AI side of things, it's a great question. I honestly wonder what happens to websites in the next five years because to me, and I'm curious for your take on this, because you make a lot of websites as well.

Diogo Dantas (50:21.761)
you

Matt Varughese (50:29.639)
I'm most interested in what happens on the AEO side of things, because if someone is finding out, if they're going through the discovery phase, to find out about businesses, and they're relying on something that extracts design, there's no design, it's just text, then how, like, I think...

Diogo Dantas (50:47.662)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (50:53.455)
There is that problem to solve for. How do you make sure that you are ranking well? I know AEO is a big focus for Webflow right now. It's maybe one of their top AI focuses. It's one of our new focuses as well, because we see a lot of value from that. We've been landing deals actually from AEO. So I think solving that problem is going to be really important for Webflow, for agencies, for everyone in the next few years. But then also, I think...

When a customer gets to your site, think there's still the, I really like the, I was almost gonna call it Intellimise Webflow optimizes ability to personalize a website based off of characteristics based on that user, where they are, trying to guess who they are, what company they're from, and shifting the content to be more focused and tell the story that you want to tell to the end customer that's visiting your website. Because right now,

Like we have to try to appeal to different segments of audiences on the website. And that's the problem of every website ever that speaks to different audiences. Like you need to be able to get the right person to the right page to tell the right story, to hopefully get them to fill out a form or to take some action. And I think AI personalization is probably going to be something that it's not as talked about, but I actually think that it's one of those things that will become really popular in the next.

few years in terms of AI functionality and feature sets that's really important in a site. Because if you can do that, if you can target your story and tell the right story to a customer, you probably have a much higher likelihood to close or convert, at least get them into your pipeline or your funnel. And so to me, those are kind of like the two big focuses.

I'm sure there will be a lot of other quality of life features that are AI enabled. We're already seeing alt text being able to be made through AI and closing the gap on a lot of stuff that is manual, repetitive work and trying to fix that more programmatically. so, yeah, I also think the MCP server, we found out the other day,

Diogo Dantas (52:55.362)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (53:13.317)
that we are in the top three users of the MCP server, our dev team. can't take the credit of that, but we use the MCP server a lot in terms of iterating on a website and things like that. And so I think the MCP server will see a lot of love and development and we'll see more endpoints be exposed and things like that. So that so much of the stuff that is maybe more repetitive or routine, or not routine, mundane,

Diogo Dantas (53:16.462)
you

Matt Varughese (53:42.277)
can be automated, because it's not a good use of, I mean, if you think about it, agencies sell time. However you package it, they sell time. Labor is your most expensive cost always. So whatever I can do to get a senior employee or any employee to not spend that time in this realm of something really repetitive and low value and spend it instead on something that is higher value, I'm all for it. And I think we'll see more of that in the future as well.

Diogo Dantas (54:10.262)
Yeah, I'm aligned with that. And that's kind of a good discussion to have maybe for another time on kind of what is the future of websites, how they are going to look like in the future. So it would be nice to do something about it, like trying to come up with what that will look like. But I agree that in the nearest term, it probably will go a little bit in a way of

Matt Varughese (54:19.962)
Yeah.

Matt Varughese (54:28.816)
Yeah.

Diogo Dantas (54:37.294)
trying to personalize the website based on the history of the chat that happened on the AI client, Chatjpeg PTO or whatever. So that source of information and the context that the chat has will probably inform what is going to be shown on that page. And that would be kind of a good challenge to solve for. Cool. So.

Matt Varughese (54:41.808)
Yeah.

Diogo Dantas (55:01.326)
Still on the AI topic, I'm curious to hear from you. You talked about the MCP, so I guess that was a huge thing that happened on the web flow development side of things. But in terms of design, automations, or even client workflows, with AI, what you guys, what change in the way you approach those phases?

Matt Varughese (55:25.561)
Yeah, it's interesting. actually don't feel it. I'm really shocked that AI is as bad at front end design as it is. Like, I figured that would be something that AI would be able to do much better than it was able to do today. So we don't use it really at all in terms of.

designing a website. Now there's a part of our phase where we're putting together style tiles or sometimes people refer to them as mood boards, like things that we need to like create, you know, assets for a mood board to show to a client to try to emulate a certain look and feel that we're going for on a website. And we use that in our workflow at the highest level in terms of like mood boarding and style tiles and design.

Diogo Dantas (55:53.443)
you

Matt Varughese (56:16.729)
direction in creating some of those high level assets, but we don't really use it in terms of, excuse me, design itself, of designing like a page. We use it a lot more on the operations side. We have lot more automations and things like that. We actually just built a bot last week that we're trying to get more, we have like a workflow of like when a lead comes in, it was a very manual workflow. We have an employee that will,

go and basically create a pre-call brief for me. And so it's research on a customer, where they are, what they do, how big is the company, what have they raised, like have they raised at all, and basically give insights into like what they want, are we a fit? And it's actually a pretty repetitive process, it could be, in my opinion.

and was, in my opinion, able to be automated. And so we actually automated that with a handful of tools, some data enrichment tools, some AI, just kind of polish and research and things like that. And actually when a lead comes in, when someone fills out the form, it delivers all this information to us in our Biz Dev channel so that whenever we have that information, we're able to...

make a more informed decision. Cause we actually try to disqualify clients pretty aggressively. so as to like, like time is really important to me. Like I want to be able to focus my time on things that really move the needle. And if a client's just too small or not a fit for some reason or another, it might be scope and that might not be budget. then I would like to disqualify them on email so that we don't, neither of us have to be like, get on a call and chat. And then we both are out 30 minutes to an hour.

And so we use it in that part of the process. We're actually evolving it this week. One of my focuses is building a tool to check the proposals that we make that go out against the call transcripts that we have with clients. And then also on the original emails, if there's any briefs or supporting materials, does this proposal match kind of what we've talked about? Is there anything missing? Is there anything that was important that wasn't already put into this proposal? And so

Matt Varughese (58:39.365)
We're working on that this week. And I think that will save us a ton of time. Cause I think there's just so much low hanging fruit. there's this podcast I listened to called, two Bob's, which is an agency services podcast, which I bet you'd really enjoy. it's by Blair ends a win, win without pitching guy and David C Baker, who runs punctuation. I think there's one other guy. and they asked this question of like,

If you had to work in your business for the rest of your life, like you knew that you had no exit, what would you do to make your life easier? Like better, what changes would you make? Cause a lot of us are like, well, maybe we stay in this business and we run it forever. Like, you Mason has a very long-term view of the business. For me, I think that as well. I'm like, what if I ran it forever? But sometimes I still don't really ingest that.

Like I still don't really like put it at the core of my being. I'm just kind of like, I go through the motions and I get kind of stuck in the day to day. And I don't really take that, that 30,000 foot overview to be like, what actually in this business pisses me off that I shouldn't be doing or that should be delegated to someone else that is probably better at it or what should be automated, what should be removed, what should be simplified. And I think there's a lot of workflows and processes that I found in that exercise that could be automated and made a lot easier and saves everyone a bunch of time. And so.

Diogo Dantas (59:42.838)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (01:00:05.573)
That's going to be the focus for us in the next few weeks and months is basically developing automation workflows on the operational side of things, which I think is where a lot of the low hanging fruit is to speed up and smooth out kind of those processes and workflows and make the business a lot. It's already very enjoyable to be in at this point in my life, but like, I think there's still a lot of areas for optimization that are not complex to build. And so,

Yeah, and it's interesting. There's a lot of, like, I think in the era of AI, I think sometimes things actually get over-engineered and we default to AI as like the way to go. But like I built some automations last week in Make that like have no AI involved at all. Like, it's just an automation. And that's really what it is. I'm sure people call them agents or something nowadays, but like it's just a workflow. Like it's just, that's all it is. It takes in information and puts out information.

and there's not that much in the middle that is AI enabled, as hot as that is. I think sometimes we have to get back to first principles in that regard. So yeah, but that's that.

Diogo Dantas (01:01:15.534)
Sounds good. I love the qualification idea. I guess that when you are an agency that starts to get a lot of inflow, it helps a lot, save you a lot of time.

Matt Varughese (01:01:27.877)
Yeah. Yeah. you know, Early on in my career, I took every call. I took every single call, even if I knew it was not a fit, because we needed to. It was like, have to close deals. It doesn't even matter. And I just want to help people and all this stuff. And I still want to help people. And I still will help people, even if we're not a fit. But I need to protect my time. And that's something I just really value. So yeah, I think aggressive disqualification is way to go.

Diogo Dantas (01:01:54.83)
Definitely. And on that, on the sales topic, how do you think about pricing? And I'm sure that changed a few times already since the year started. How do you think about pricing today?

Matt Varughese (01:02:06.559)
yeah.

Matt Varughese (01:02:12.863)
So it's an interesting one. I'm not as involved with pricing, but I still see it and I will opine before a proposal goes out of whether or not I actually think this is the right price to send to a client. pricing itself is determined a few different ways at 80-20. What we tell the clients, which is very accurate, is that the largest levers of pricing are

The size of the site maps is the number of pages that we need to design and develop. And most clients come to the table with a site map in mind. The makeup of those pages. So which of these are static versus CMS? Because CMS pages are easier to build. There's also a middle option where it's a static template. So it's maybe one template that gets duplicated out to a bunch of static pages and content changes. But they just want the design flexibility of a static page. The level of animations. Like are we talking like simple fade in?

payouts or are we having to build Lottie files in in After Effects and import them back in? And then rush, like what's your timeline? Because everyone wants it so fast these days. And you know, there is a rush component to it if they do want it really fast. And we often at this point give discounts to customers if they are willing to wait to start. And most customers aren't, but...

we really, really love the ones that are, and we think that we're happy to give a discount to anyone who's willing to wait and start their project later. And so those are kind of the three main levers, and that does translate pretty directly into the pricing that the client gets. And on top of that, on the backend side of things, this is where time tracking comes into play. We look at parallels of similar size projects or similar customer types, and we make an informed assessment based off of like,

how long was budgeted for this project, how long did it actually take? And now we can make average hours based off of sizes of site maps and estimate the number of hours we take. And then we have a rate that we multiply for internally and we adjust the rate accordingly based off of whether or not, much we want the client and things like that. Like some clients actually, if we really want the project, we'll give them like a discounted rate. If we don't need the project, they get our standard rate.

Matt Varughese (01:04:36.282)
you know, there's a lot of merit and value based pricing. I've never really been able to nail that to be honest. Like I think it's, I also think it's kind of weird to me of a system because it's like, I'm going to charge you more because I think you, you deserve to pay more because you value it more. It feels a little off to me. and a tad manipulative. and it's also based off of a lot of assumptions on my end.

Diogo Dantas (01:04:56.547)
Yeah.

Matt Varughese (01:05:04.859)
So we try to pick pricing is just based off of the complexity of it and go from there and if they say yes great if they say no great like it's all it's all good and The thing we tell the clients is that like if this price doesn't work for you Because a lot of people I'm sure you've Seen this like You ask their budget and they're like, we don't know and then you give them the price and they're like actually, we do have a budget and they had a budget all along but they just don't want to disclose it because they don't want to they fear you'll take advantage of them and the thing I tell clients is like

It's not to determine what price I'm gonna charge you. It's to determine one, if we're a fit at all, and then two, if let's say you have 50K and the project is actually slated to be 80K, like based off of the size of your site map, I can pull a lot of levers to, I could push out the timeline, we could reduce the size of the site map, we could convert these static pages into a CMS page. There's so many things that I can pull to actually get you in your budget range, and that's what I tell them

and to be honest, it disarms people quite a lot and so that's like a tip that I have for anyone that is stuck on the budget side of things just preemptively, when I ask a question, I don't even take a pause. I say like, the reason I ask this is X, and Z, and it's what I just said. It's about figuring out like, what is actually, what does my proposal need to look like for it to actually make sense for you and then if a client still doesn't reveal it, then we send the proposal and we say,

If it doesn't match your budget, then let us know and we can see if there's other levers we can pull But yeah, but we never reduce price is like a pro or not a pro tip. It's just a tip that I did not realize until late in my career. You should never reduce the price unless you are getting like quid pro quo. Something's something else is changing for the client. The client's getting reduced pages or services or something like that.

Otherwise you're just giving a discount for discount sake and I don't really love those. Like there should be some trade off for a client.

Diogo Dantas (01:07:06.574)
Yeah, definitely. It has been also one thing that we have been doing for the last two years, I think, asking for what is their budget and getting to that sentence right away that is not for us to tell us how much we should charge is just for us to see what we can do while creating the quote. Maybe we can, on the quote itself, can provide you two options.

Matt Varughese (01:07:26.213)
Yeah.

Diogo Dantas (01:07:35.476)
One option is exactly what I want, but it will cost A, which you share that is not your budget. But we also have option B to save us some time off back and forth. and there is one that fits your budget, but here is kind of the difference in scope or whatever.

Matt Varughese (01:07:36.112)
Yeah.

Matt Varughese (01:07:51.87)
Yeah, that's exactly what we do. We build almost always three options because I think that it shows the client what, like this is exactly what you asked for. So this is an option for you. This is a reduced services option or a reduced site map or something like that option. and then third option almost always is the projects that they want plus a retainer. and we actually discount the project value. and so they get the actual projects that they want at a cheaper rate.

if they sign a retainer with us. And so that was a big change in our business over the last six years. In the original days when I took over 80 20, the big pitch that I wish I could have stopped, but I was not at the company at the time that was talked about on podcasts was that 80 20 will never do retainers. Don't charge retainers. You can own your website from end to end. And we still make sure this is really important to me. We still make sure that

Diogo Dantas (01:08:23.267)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (01:08:46.619)
Clients can maintain their website and own their website from end to end. That's extremely important to me. If we didn't do that, then we have failed at our job. But at the end of the day, there are clients that just are like, it's great. I love the optionality, but like your guys are much faster than us and like we need to move fast and we want a partner that can design and develop for us. And so we offer that as an option. And actually a lot of times we've been winning a lot of those lately where clients will sign a long-term.

Diogo Dantas (01:09:02.755)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (01:09:12.269)
Agreement with us and they get the discounted rate in exchange. But again, it's it's a quid pro quo thing They're getting this kind of rate for something else Yeah

Diogo Dantas (01:09:22.658)
No, that's a good one. you typically off-cell? No, not off-cell, but do you typically, when a project ends, it's a one-off project, when it ends, you usually show your retainer options, or how do you tend to go about it?

Matt Varughese (01:09:45.371)
Not typically at the end because we know generally at the beginning of a project whether or not a client has an appetite or a need for a long-term partner. And so we don't really push it. Like we're very adamant that we don't really upsell here. We don't charge a lot. I'm sure I'm leaving money on the table by not doing it, but we have so many clients that just cite how easy it is to work with us and how they feel that they're not getting hosed and nickel and dimes like they have been with other agencies.

Diogo Dantas (01:10:10.274)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Varughese (01:10:12.805)
that like if they, beginning of the project, they're like, we don't really want a long-term thing. We have a marketing person in-house to own the website. It's great. Like we'll set them up for success. We'll give them all the keys to the kingdom and the training videos and all this stuff to maintain the site. But we don't really pitch it at the end. We always say like, if you need us, just give us a shout.

We have options available if you ever wanted to work together on a long-term basis, we're never like, here's a proposal that you didn't really ask for and this is what it would cost, because I think clients would be a little off put by that. So we try to minimize any sort of upsells in general in the process.

Diogo Dantas (01:10:56.654)
Great. So as we are wrapping up, and I want to be conscious of time, one question that I'm curious about is what led you to buy 100 % of 80-20 from Tiny Capital?

Matt Varughese (01:11:15.629)
Yeah. So a lot of factors went into that. Like I said, I'm extremely grateful for my time in tiny. was like an amazing opportunity at helping jump the line. I learned a lot of really great lessons directly from Andrew on selling, on running a business, on managing people, on thinking about incentives. And there was so much good learning. One of the problems that came along the way was tiny actually ended up going public.

after I took over, about two years after I took over. And to be honest, that's a very challenging experience to be a part of. in, mean, from, honestly, from an admin side of things, like we actually had to hire a full-time accountant. And this is actually, in my opinion, a pro tip, I tweeted this like probably a year ago, but I'm like, I actually think an accountant is an extremely underrated hire, not like a contract accountant. I'm saying someone like, like our accountant.

is in the day-to-day of the business, does cashflow planning, does modeling, gets me any report that I need, will work directly with the banks. She's awesome at her job and we're really lucky to have her here. But honestly, I would not have even thought about that hire if I wasn't mandated to make that hire. I had to hire someone because when we went public, every agency had to have extremely detailed audited financials.

There was so much back and forth between investment bankers and for, because I mean, is now we're taking 80-20 and it's becoming part of a regulatory entity where people can put their money into and while they can't directly invest in 80-20, they can invest in tiny, which owns 80-20 and they have exposure to it. And at the end of day, it was a lot of

complexity and there were just a lot more people involved in the process than I originally kind of sought out to have. and instead of this kind of direct partnership with Tiny, there were a lot of middlemen and investment bankers and it was just a lot of work that I just didn't feel gave us a lot of upside and actually caused me to lose a lot of time. And so for that reason, I had

Matt Varughese (01:13:40.815)
where we ended up buying 80, 20 back. It took quite a long time to do it. Like probably about a year to get the deal done, almost a year. But, you know, I'm like I said, I'm really grateful for my time and like, but I'm also, man, the business today is so much different and calmer and less stressful than the business that existed before while in a publicly traded company. And I'm really happy about that. We are kind of.

Uh, we entirely own our journey and entirely own, um, you know, we, own all of the rewards and all of the mistakes and you know, it's, it's a, it's a double edged sword, but, um, overall, like it's been a really great experience and I'm really, I love that. Like we get to own this and not have to really, we don't have to write monthly investment updates. We don't have to write reports. We don't have to submit anything. Like someone asked me the other day, was like, what's your timeline to get this done? And I was like, well,

Like, I don't know, whenever. Like, I own this company. Like, I don't report to anyone. So, it's really nice to be able have to do that now, because now I don't have to go deliver a quarterly report that affects the stock price. And it's great to be kind of out of the public eye and not subject to a stock price any further or rules in that regard. So, yeah, that's been really great.

Diogo Dantas (01:15:04.128)
Awesome. definitely has. I see that some benefits is having that exposure to such a different environment is not very common that we see agencies in such like being part of a holding group or trying to get out of that holding group. So I think it was definitely a good experience for you to have at that time.

Matt Varughese (01:15:14.383)
Yeah.

Sure.

Matt Varughese (01:15:26.043)
Totally. I tell people all the time, I'm like, I was 24, 25 when we went public. And that is something that people, it's a very rare experience. I mean, like there, there's large publicly traded holding companies like WPP and like it definitely exists. If someone wanted that opportunity, they could go work for, for an agency in WPP or something like that. Um, but, but I think it is really cool and gratifying. And like, I got to see the inner workings of a company go public and, um,

kind of the financials and the process behind it and be a part of that process. And it's something that I'm really proud of. like, like I said, like I learned so much in this process and I'm really grateful for it. And I think at the end, like it was still a win for Tiny. Tiny put no money into 80-20 to start. it was, and so there was no, any, anything that got paid in that process or along the way was just upside for them because they had no costs associated with the company. And so I'm happy that we were able to pay them out and I'm happy that

We are able to, we have a really great set of partners, just three of us now, me, my COO, and one of my friends slash advisors. And it's really great. We're very lucky to be in this process and get to own our journey entirely.

Diogo Dantas (01:16:45.262)
Amazing, happy for you. So just to finish off, top of your head, any for someone that is on the journey of thinking about starting an agency, running an agency, been running an agency for years, but they feel like they are in the rat race. They are still trapped in the day-to-day things. They don't see any light, which usually is like a dream from.

Matt Varughese (01:17:10.201)
Yeah, yeah.

Diogo Dantas (01:17:13.626)
agency founders is to get out of the day to day and just kind of still be involved, but not on a day to day operations. Any books, podcasts, or YouTube channels that come to mind that you would like to recommend?

Matt Varughese (01:17:24.923)
Two Bob's is honestly probably your best resource in that regard. I think they have such a good library of knowledge in terms of how to actually revamp your business, think about pricing, think about positioning.

They pretty much have the Bible on like running an agency in my opinion. I actually did not start listening to it until like six months ago, but it's someone put me onto it and it's really, really good. The other person I would recommend or the other, I think it's a podcast now. Peter Kang from Barrel, who I think would be an amazing person to have on this podcast. He is awesome. I think he is super interesting, just like really, really smart.

and I think the world of that guy, think he's like extremely humble, extremely kind, like very generous, but, probably one of the best minds in the agency space right now, especially, you know, he has BX studio, but he has other agencies as well. And so, I think he's just really thought about this for a long time and he's really, thought about it over a long-term, kind of.

time horizon, which a lot of people I think struggle with. And he actually came to Oklahoma City last month and we had lunch. He was in town for some business stuff. so it's, I love that guy and he has an amazing newsletter that I've subscribed to. I aggressively unsubscribe from anything in my inbox, but his is one of the ones that stays at the top. And I think he has a business called agency docs, which provides documentation and support for agencies. And then also I think he just launched a podcast.

And he just released a book as well on, on, on hold co-structures, which is a bit more advanced, but that both of those resources I think are, are great. in terms of, that's the stuff that I consume personally. but I also just, I read all sorts of business books in general, because I want to just understand how I can run the best possible company. The one that's adjacent, that's not directly agency related is we have this client.

Matt Varughese (01:19:42.613)
he's, he's relatively new client in the last year. name is David center. He has the founders podcast and he also has his new podcast, David center by David center. and we actually built the website for that and I cannot tell you how good that podcast is. It will be my number one podcast listen to this year because it is so David is extremely, curious about what makes the world's greatest founders great and why they won and.

Both of his podcasts are so, so, good. And, you know, it's not like a direct parallel on pricing and packaging, but it is a really good way to learn things about a business and learn about like what makes these businesses win. And there are a lot of parallels that you can pull into your own business that are a real win. So I've been really enjoying that one as well.

Diogo Dantas (01:20:34.51)
Great. So do you mind spelling the first one for me?

Matt Varughese (01:20:39.427)
Yeah, yeah, it's the number two and then B-O-B-S. I don't know why it's named that, because no one's name is Bob. Yeah, yeah, no, it's got a yellow podcast cover and things like that, but yeah. But it's an amazing podcast.

Diogo Dantas (01:20:45.101)
I got it right on the first time, but I was like, it's... seems catchy.

Diogo Dantas (01:20:56.782)
Great. So final question, Matt, and I'll let you go. What is one thing that you are currently struggling with right now that for the audience, for anyone that is watching, if they have a solution, if they have an insight to share with you, what is that one thing?

Matt Varughese (01:21:16.731)
the thing I'm struggling with right now is...

I would say a couple things. Time management myself. I've been trying to read a bunch of time management books lately because I'm trying to figure out how to better structure my days. I've tried so many different systems and methods and like, it's not really that great. I kind of have a loose format now of how I structure my days and when I take meetings and things like that. But if anyone has any resources in that regard, that would be one. And then the other one that I will put out to anyone listening to this podcast is

We probably have a need to hire a project manager in the next month or so, maybe, maybe, I'd probably say a month at the latest. So if you are a, we're trying to do it a little bit differently and I think people listening to this podcast might be actually a good fit, but technical project managers, if you have experience, if you know technology and you understand, you know, at a high level how to think about and strategize about.

Websites, but you're also extremely organized and can run a project We are looking to hire that role and it can be global you have to work in a American time zone. So either Eastern Central Mountain or Pacific Pacific Mountain in Central or preferred but If you are listening and you fit the bill we will publish a job posting somewhat soon But if you don't if we haven't published it just email me matt at 80 20 dot inc INC

and we would love to hear from you. But those are the two things.

Diogo Dantas (01:22:53.56)
Perfect. Matt, thank you so much for taking the time. It has been a pleasure talking with you.

Matt Varughese (01:22:56.876)
Of course, man.

Dude, likewise, thank you so much for having me on and I really appreciate it. You ask great questions.

Diogo Dantas (01:23:04.329)
Of course, thank you so much. So yeah.

Matt Varughese (01:23:06.512)
Yeah.

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