From Vision to Execution: Inside Bald

Justin Levinson (00:10)‍

Hey everybody, welcome back to the agency side podcast. I'm your host Justin Levinson. And today I'm joined by Halel Hurwitz, founder and CEO of Bald, an independent brand building creative agency that lives on the story side of marketing. Named one of Adweek's fastest growing agencies, Bald helps brands turn big hairy audacious goals into reality through strategy, branding and razor sharp campaigns. Hello, welcome to the show.

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Hillel Hurwitz (00:34)

Hey Justin, thanks for having me. Good to be here with you.

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Justin Levinson (00:36)

Yeah, excited to have this conversation today. I always like to guess origin stories on how you got into this particular space. Maybe you can give us some insights there.

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Hillel Hurwitz (00:48)

Yeah, with pleasure. As you can tell from my accent, originally from South Africa, that's where I was born and grew up. I studied advertising communications there, but started a bit of an earlier career in education and then got my first gig at an agency, doing social and PR. That's where I got a bit of a taste for agency life. And then moved brand side, became a marketing director, worked my way up to being a CMO. I was a global CMO for a while.

And then most CMOs had my existential crisis and did what most people do and you have your existential crisis. I moved to New York City where I did my masters in brand strategy and really fell in love with brand building. Became obsessed with brand building and then did Harvard's brand strategy program. And that's essentially when Ball the Agency was born and the rest is history.

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Justin Levinson (01:35)

That's really cool. How did you like New York City compared to South Africa? How was that difference?

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Hillel Hurwitz (01:42)

man, I applied into New York City like directly. was like a, you know, a drip that went into my veins. I applied directly into the creativity, the energy, the people, just the advertising culture. Just, it was everything that I, that I dreamed of. literally like every second we had a tiny little apartment, you know, across the road from Central Parks. You know, it really was a dream come true. And I was working full time as a CMO while studying, ⁓ doing my masters in branding at

SVA in the evenings. So I was just immersed in brand building and marketing like day in and day out. So, kuna was for more.

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Justin Levinson (02:20)

really cool. maybe you can, we can walk it back a little bit to starting the agency. So I'm guessing it started out, were you just going by yourself at that point or how did that kind of launch?

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Hillel Hurwitz (02:31)

Yes. Like most people, you know, I'd never imagined myself going into ⁓ agency life, but I always knew that I had a little bit of a superpower of assembling, you know, strong teams. In every one of my roles, I always had built the marketing team from the ground up. So I knew I had an eye for talent. I knew I had a great way of rallying people to do things that they didn't think were possible.

It was always a dream, but I never knew when I was going to do it, but I gave myself a goal. said, by the time I turned 40, by the time I finished this master's program, I'm going to start my agency. I'd been an employee for 20 years. I'd never been an entrepreneur or a founder, but I just, I set that goal for myself. It was a bit of a COVID baby. Like while most people were figuring out how to make sourdough and know, vegetable gardens on their roofs, I was like figuring out how to build an agency. Was in a flat panic for a long while. I literally.

sat at my desk, like my leg was a jackhammer. It was like shaking so violently under my desk because the nerves and anxiety was so real, but it was actually fuel because it fueled my preparation. And so I read books and researched, I interviewed 15 agency owners to learn like the ins and outs and like the mistakes not to make. And that really helped me set things up. And so by the time I launched, like everything could just, ⁓

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Justin Levinson (03:45)

Wow, that's cool. Well, you and I both launched agencies, launched a recruiting agency during COVID as well. So I can resonate with how things were so tense during that time and also starting something new. There was a lot of questions and how things could potentially go, but it seems like things worked out really well for you, is great. How did you seek out these other agency owners to learn? Did you kind of find them through LinkedIn or how did you connect?

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Hillel Hurwitz (04:09)

Through my career as a marketing director at SEMA, I'd worked with a ton of different agencies. So I really learned from the client's perspective and client side, like what works well, like what I enjoyed about working with different agencies, what I was looking for in the agencies that I worked with and built and developed some really cool work and campaigns and develop relationships there. So was a lot of people that I'd worked through over the years, a few others that I reached out to and a few coaches and mentors, people that had done this before who are now, you know, just sharing.

how to do it with the next generation. just, literally tapped, I just became obsessed with it. Like I tapped every resource I could to figure it out. listened to every podcast, bought every book, found every coach and mentor I could find. Like watched every YouTube series. You know, it was just, just became obsessed and I was, I think I was just absorbing and learning as much as I could in that time. I woke up every morning at 5 a.m. when it was still quiet in the house. So at like those two hours in my morning where it was just complete.

getting things ready time and learning mode. and then, yeah, by the time I'd finished like that prep stage before I launched, I had a determination letter for employees before I even had an employee. Like literally everything was ready. Yeah. Everything, everything was ready to go. I just needed to launch and it was just taking the courage to take that leap and yeah, the rest is history.

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Justin Levinson (05:26)

That's really cool. Maybe just curious, what was like the first hire? Like what position did you hire first?

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Hillel Hurwitz (05:33)

Yeah. So my first high was the director of operations. knew what I had to fire myself from really, really early on. I think a lot of my skill set was vision and dreaming and building the team and, ⁓ and strategy and creative. ⁓ I knew that the operations side wasn't my strong suit, even though I think there's a lot of creativity in finding building systems and processes. So I knew that I needed a strong, strong director of operations had brought in someone amazing.

You know, and this is like such a geeky thing to geek out about, but you know, in our first six months we had an intranet, like we had a, you know, an internal, you know, uh, site where like all our systems and processes and, uh, you everything was built out there. And I was like so proud of that. Cause I'd worked at companies before for like 10 years, there was still like, you know, fiddling with trying to get an intranet up. And like in our first six months, like we, had like everything set up. Um, and I think, you know, hiring people that are just way better.

then you add things that you can just rely on and tap is what has been the biggest gift.

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Justin Levinson (06:38)

That's we're programmed very similar. Hello. I also was into the books and the studying and trying to get mentors and information and trying to, I was, yeah, I was pretty obsessed with it. Well, now that you started to build a team, you the operations, you know, I guess maybe you had some connections already, but then it was sort of like, how are you landing all these, how are you landing new clients?

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Hillel Hurwitz (06:58)

Yeah, so everything was ready to go. And then in 2022, announced that I'm launching this. had everything set up, like my website was done, our branding was done, like everything was good to go. And the first announcement, a lot of my connections, uh, you know, sort of reached out wanting to, wanting to do work with me. And so that I think was the initial, you know, fuel in the beginning for the agency. And then it's kind of like compounding interest. was like kind of.

You know, working with them, doing great work with them, them coming back wanting more work and finding new opportunities, building a strong business development machine. And then like now, now it just runs. Like, you know, we're so blessed that we have a really, really talented new business team. I work very closely with them and we're able just to really feed our pipeline well and keep opportunities coming.

And really, think, seek out the chemistry with clients and find the work that the team will get excited about so we can really just keep on building that feedback mechanism by delivering great work that makes great case studies that gets other people interested and it just carries on.

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Justin Levinson (08:08)

Yeah, it's that snowball effect. once you start, once you get something rolling and you get some good work out there, then you have that work to show and then more clients come and sort of builds builds on that, which is super cool. Yeah. I'm interested to learn more about bald. Maybe you can tell me, you know, a little more detail about what kind of, if you're allowed to talk to about what, what clients you kind of work with and the work that you're kind of doing.

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Hillel Hurwitz (08:27)

Yeah, absolutely. would love to. So we're, we call ourselves a brand building creative agency. It's kind of a mix between a brand and creative shop. I always found that like, for me, a lot of agencies were like living on two sides of the spectrum. Like you had the agencies that were doing like the identity design and the brand work, but they were often like a little snooty, a little artsy, like very cold and clean. And then like you had people on the creative side, like really, you know, I would say like a little, you know, everyone wanted to do a Super Bowl commercial.

And I felt like everything in between is like where really where the brand building is happening. Like, yeah, you need like, you know, you need a strong brand and strong identity. And you also need, you know, great creative for, for TV spots and Superbowl commercials. But there's just so much that happens in between that really is what brand building is all about. So I wanted to sort of set up that truck. And I always found that the agencies that I worked with when I was brand side, when I was a CMO.

I always found that the agencies that were really able to weave the thread between strategy, creative and marketing are the ones that I loved working with. Like the strategy gave you the foundation, it takes you out of subjective opinion and you know, I think it should be this color or it should be that direction. And the creative is like what's fresh, what's current, what's relevant and now, and the marketing is a distribution. How do you get in front of the eyeballs of the audience you're communicating with? When those three things work together, the work will just land.

better. Often I found that agencies were started by creatives or people that come from a specific area in the industry. And so the agency really had like one focus and then like they were sort of up skill upsell other areas. I went to people when they came to us to really feel the impact and the power of moving from strategy to creative to marketing without, without sort of feeling lopsided. And the power of those three things working together is the work just lands and you get better results.

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Justin Levinson (10:21)

cool. definitely seem like you have a superpower coming from the brand side and kind of seeing what you liked and what you didn't like. I don't know if all agency owners quite have that perspective. Thanks for tuning in folks. This episode is brought to you by Coming Up Creative, a relationship first boutique creative recruitment agency. We disrupt the creative ecosystem by running sophisticated multi-channel campaigns with custom video and voice outreach that actually gets responses. We actively market the agencies and brands we represent

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Hillel Hurwitz (11:05)

Yeah, I mean, I learned a ton, you know, and, and really try to implement some of the things that are, that I've heard from other agency owners, you know, the revolving door of, you know, team members coming in and out and how unsettling that is for the consistency. Like we invest a lot in the culture at our agency just to make people feel that they're a part of something that they belong, that they're valued. give them big opportunities, even when they're young in their careers to present and to take big swings. And I think.

A lot of creatives are just looking for someone to believe in them, to see them, not sort of to treat them as people that are just there to do the legwork. They want those opportunities to show themselves, improve themselves and put their energy into something. And I think we really provide people with that. And that was like a big lesson I learned from some of the people that I spoke to early on. Give that to your team.

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Justin Levinson (11:53)

So you guys are, are you fully remote or do you have some office? I, how does that set up?

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Hillel Hurwitz (11:59)

Yeah, so we're a fully remote agency. was doing remote long before COVID made it cool. So we were using like all the tools like Slack and Asana and Zoom, like as Zoom came out, like, you know, we were on it, you know, so, ⁓ I felt I knew it could work. I'd built teams and knew that remote work could work, but also knew that it came with trade-offs. So what we did to like really, you know, sort of compensate for some of those trade-offs, we, we decided that we

We have to figure out like, how do we create moments where people can interact and create those personal relationships and really find that chemistry that's so, and energy that's so important that informs the work and gets into the work. So we do an annual retreat every year. We take the team somewhere overseas. Our first year we went to South Africa, took people to a safari for a week. Last year we went to Costa Rica. This year we're doing it in a ranch in Texas. And that week is like, it's pivotal. Like it's when we bring.

You know, our first year we were like around 40 people. The second year we were around 50. This year we'll be around 60. Those moments to build the relationships and those connections and find ways to work better together and understand and bring everyone into the vision and in the planning. It's just critical for people to feel connected like they belong to something. I found especially for the Gen Zers in the agency, it's super important because they really miss and need that social element. And then we find moments for travel, like going to visit clients or...

running workshops or meetups when there's a group of people that just happen to be traveling in the same area. Like we really encourage those moments for people to get together. And so the trade-off of being remote like really is, it's remedied with finding these sometimes serendipitous moments of connection, but also by making sure that we have at least one, if not more moments in the year where people can plug into to other members of the team.

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Justin Levinson (13:48)

Yeah, that's really, that's really smart. I've been thinking of strategies of doing that myself. We have sort of a feed that everyone kind of shares like, oh, here's a picture of my dog or like here are my kids doing this. And we all kind of like put stuff in there, but I haven't quite considered doing a hang, which sounds pretty cool. mean, Safari in South Africa sounds pretty awesome. We actually have some employees that are in South Africa.

⁓ And we're always struggling that time zone, which is unique, but it's been very helpful for us because we have a lot of clients in Europe. so, know, South Africa is like two hours different. So we kind of get that unfair advantage of if somebody in South Africa needs to speak with somebody in London, it kind of works out pretty well. So yeah, I've never been to South Africa, but I'm really, I'm keen to check it out sometime.

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Hillel Hurwitz (14:36)

You got to go, man. Safari is like the best thing you'll ever do. Cape Town, one of the most beautiful cities in the world and it's worth it.

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Justin Levinson (14:43)

Cool. Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm sold on going. Cool. Well, this, that's a really exciting journey that you've been on. What do you sort of see like on the technology front? I'm always curious to know as things keep changing with all these tools, you kind of mentioned you're using Asana and zoom, you're kind of cutting edge before the pandemic. What's sort of like in your, if you don't mind telling us what's in your tech stack, what seems to be working for your team.

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Hillel Hurwitz (15:06)

Yeah, we, we've, have an incredible team that like a super agile and, are able to like really adopt new tools pretty quickly. around two years ago, we did this thing where we, shut down the agency for two days. This was like early, early days when everyone was like going nuts about AI and it just started. And we said to the team, take two days and we broke everyone up, everyone across, across all departments, across the agency, from operations to strategy, video.

every design across the board. And we gave them the mission. said, you're going to develop a campaign and the campaign is only to be developed using AR tools. So everyone had to do the use AR tools from the strat and research folks to the video folks. And they came up with a pretty phenomenal campaign. And this was early days. Like this is when, you know, chat GPT had just launched. Um, so the tools were pretty new. First of all, it was pretty amazing to see what the team were able to come up with.

I think the biggest lesson for me was just how quickly the team adopted some of the tools that were really like they're ready. There's some that weren't there yet, but the team, the tools that were ready, they're ready. They, they just started implementing like the next day almost in their, in their everyday work. So our teams are pretty quick in, ⁓ they're using, you know, all the things, you know, from obviously chat GPT to, ⁓ 11 labs, everything in between. We've been working with lovable like there's, there's so much that we've,

that we've been experimenting with and playing with. And we've actually started an education series where every month we're bringing in different leaders, coaches, trainers in different AI tools just to keep the team current, whether it's learning how to prompt better or learning how to use new tools that we didn't know about and just keeping everyone fresh. But what's also interesting is like everyone's obsessing about like the AI stack.

We're actually trying to double down on the human experience because I think sometimes that just gets forgotten. This whole conversation, everyone's like talking about like, well, what are your tools are you adopting and how can you do it? And how fast can you, you know, start using all of them? And I'll never forget this one line I learned from one of these mentors that I spoke to early on.

He said, sometimes the experience is more important than the deliverables. And I think that the human experience will become more critical as AI becomes a bigger thing and it starts taking on a little bit more room in the creative space. ⁓ And so we're actually doubling down on that human experience. Like we're looking to launch a thing called Brandcamp where the workshops that we've been running with clients on Zoom, sometimes we run half day workshops or

You know, two to three hour workshops, call them ignition workshops and opportunity workshops and really just that early stage research and discovery and like unpacking a brand and figuring out their why and all of those different exercises. So we've been running those in zoom for, for years. Sometimes we go to the client's office. We said, we thought to ourselves that feeling and that energy of, you know, a marketing team or a C-suite sitting in a boardroom, like really planning and visioning what their brand is and what it stands for and where they want to go.

Like that human energy that can't be replaced through, like it can't be just run through Chachipiti. Like there's something, something will be missing. So we're building our brand camp where we're going to take, you know, C-suites, marketing teams, anyone really who wants to really build a brand. We did a recent rebrand for a beautiful, beautiful luxury cabin resort in Georgia. We're going to take them there. It's right on the lake. Beautiful cabins and just take people away for two, three days and help them figure out some of the problems that.

that are super common, you know, in companies like what's your brand story or what's the message or all these different exercises that we're running and build it out into a thing and also not have brands having to wait to do a rebrand or to have a big campaign to really be able to talk about their brand and where they want it to go. ⁓ So doubling down on the human experience, think is something that's being overlooked a little bit. And I think that's where we're also going to be putting a lot of our energy.

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Justin Levinson (19:03)

Yeah, I love that. You were saying that your team, you have AI sort of experts that sometimes kind of tutor your team to kind of show what's going, what's hot and what's not. Is that, is it like creative agency focused AI tools or is it sort of just like AI tools in general?

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Hillel Hurwitz (19:18)

It's more AI tools in general. We have a director of growth and AI, shout out to Manuel. He is a superpower. He is, he's really like leading us in, in our AI integration at the agency. Really looking at every department and seeing what, what are the latest tools that are coming out for them, how we should be integrating into our process, where it should be a support or leverage or where can actually even replace some of the work and where we don't want it to replace the work at all. Like where do we still need that?

⁓ that human judgment, taste and, and insights and where we don't want to just become part of that, ⁓ sort of AR slop, machine. Yeah. He, he's really guiding us and leading us in, in, figuring out what those tools are.

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Justin Levinson (20:03)

Yeah. I'm interested in learning about how the research and strategy goes. Like what does that kind of look like? How do you sort of develop that whole thing?

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Hillel Hurwitz (20:11)

So it's really like the, some of the best part of, of the process for me, that's just cause my background is, is in strategy. Our research and discovery process is really pretty robust. We always start by asking the client to send us everything you have, every document, every strategy presentation, anything that you can be helpful. Like we pull through all of it. Like we look, we'd audit their socials, look at their website, really sort of deep dive into who they are, how they exist now, you know, materials from the past, like anything we can really get our hands on.

We then run any conditional workshop. It's usually that two hour to sometimes to half day workshop where we do a whole bunch of exercises. And in that stage, we're just asking people like, throw everything out at us. There's no right or wrong answers. Just give us data points. And everyone's, especially for the folks whose voices are important. So usually around for eight to 10 people and they get all their, you know, everything out and we start collecting all these inputs.

We do discovery, ⁓ qualitative interviews, one-on-one interviews, we do surveys, some quant as well. And by the end of this whole process, we land up with thousands of inputs. And then, you know, just like people see in the movies, like we do that whole process where, you know, we take the post-its and we start looking for the patterns. It's a little more digital. use, you know, mirror boards and things like that. It's like a little less, you know, analog.

But we started looking for the patterns because pattern shows there's a cluster there. There's something, there's energy behind this idea. The patterns help us arrive at insights and that insight is that hidden truth. That thing that's lying beneath the surface, that thing that has the richness to it. It's not that two dimensional marketing. It's something that, you know, that feels, yes, that feels right. That feels true. And so we look for the insights and the insights are really what we use to inspire the brand messaging.

And then future, you know, brand work, like the visuals and campaign work as well.

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Justin Levinson (22:04)

and I just kind of want to be walked through the client experience. So once this part is done, what's sort of the next process after the strategy research.

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Hillel Hurwitz (22:13)

Yeah, once we, once we finished the brand strategy piece, we usually move to brand identity and, and the visual language. And like I said earlier, like one of the things that I really pushed the team on, but also pride ourselves on is tying a thread between the strategy and the creative. It's like really, really hard to do. So often the strategy branding guidelines are handed over and there's this, you know, sort of like nose dive into how those are implemented into the creative. Sometimes I've seen or feel like separate processes, but they're really not.

I always imagine that image of the iceberg. There's all the things that you see above the water of the iceberg. It's the, you know, the colors, the topography, the website, the marketing materials. But there's also all the things below the water, the rest of the iceberg that are just as important, that are just as critical, like the tone of voice, the brand promise, the brand story, the mission, the vision, the values, the positioning, all of those things help shape and define the brand.

And that's the full iceberg. we really take that full, full picture approach to really make sure that we're bringing things that have meaning and depth to them when we launch.

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Justin Levinson (23:19)

What you sort

of see is like, what's success to you, you know, after, after you've done this creation.

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Hillel Hurwitz (23:25)

That's such a great question. It's something I wrestle with a lot. ⁓ you know, I think in the beginning, success for me was there were vanity metrics, it was head count or revenue or, you know, it was just like conquering the hill. And I think, like I said, I can, those things are a vanity metrics. So things that maybe make me feel good and maybe like a good for my ego, you know, maybe need more hugs from my mom instead of that. I think the.

I think what I'm pushing myself to see now is, as success is, how do we build something that's meaningful? How do we continue building as the machine sort of firms itself out? How do we maintain the quality of our work as we scale and get bigger? How do we maintain the culture of the team that we've created that's so special? It's just, we like to call ourselves a business with heart. We want to run like a business. We want to be super intentional about things we're doing.

But we also want to have a lot of heart in how we run that business. So how do we maintain those things? I think are really the determinants of success and not just the vanity metrics.

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Justin Levinson (24:29)

Yeah, that's, that makes a lot of sense. And I'm sure you just, you want to just be proud of the work that you did too. It's not always like the, you know, it's always not just the bottom line that makes something special. Do you picture the company growing a lot bigger? Do you feel like this could be become a larger agency? Do think it's more like boutique for the long haul?

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Hillel Hurwitz (24:48)

You know, that's such a great question. I have a business mentor of mine and I went to him and I said, do we ever just like stop? Do we ever just say like, no, this, like, we're good. Like, this is fine. Like we've got enough work, enough people, like we're fine. And he says like, are you nuts? Like you, never stop growing because you know, you've got so many.

things that are like pushing against you, like the economy, competition. There's so many forces like pushing against you. Like you have to push against those and continue to advance and grow. do, you know, to grow meaningfully, I think is, is important. we really care about our team and their, you know, their capacity and their mental health. we like really are making some strategic shifts to make sure that we have the right amount of clients for the amount of, ⁓ and projects for the amount of PT members we have that they can do.

meaningful, thoughtful work at a normal pace and that we're not burning people out. think that's, that's going to be super important. And yes, I think as we scale and grow, we're also looking to do work that is, you know, breaking, you know, the ceiling a little bit. Like I think with AI becoming more and more of a threat to the sort of the, the, the mundane work, like I think it will replace some of that mediocre stuff. I think what AI will struggle to replace is.

⁓ work that has an editorial perspective or you, or a unique point of view, or just a bit of edge to it. Cause it just doesn't have, it doesn't have tastes. It doesn't have judgment. So I think pushing more towards that will, will give us the edge and allow us to scale and grow not just for the sake of it, but for in the right way, doing the right work.

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Justin Levinson (26:23)

Yeah. When you're bringing people on the team, what are you kind of looking for in these individuals when you bring them on?

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Hillel Hurwitz (26:28)

Sense of humor, first, you know, in the first, you know, one, one or two minutes, if they don't have a sense of humor, I don't think they'll, they'll survive. They'll survive a ball. ⁓ I think truthfully, we really look for two things. Like the one is the right culture fit. We want people. One of the things I learned when I, when I spoke to all those agency owners is, ⁓

I noticed that when I looked at different agencies, some team members didn't feel like safe to share their craziest ideas. It was very, you know, buttoned up. You know, there was such a strict hierarchy. And then I felt like so much is lost. Like there's so many people who have like great ideas, great thoughts who can contribute, but they're like scared to speak up. And so I wanted to create an atmosphere and culture where like everyone feels safe. There's psychological safety, but also a freedom to,

You know, just share, share the craziest ideas. So we really, we really have that, that sort of culture. And so we look for that sort of culture for people who want to contribute, who want to add, who want to punch above their weight and, and do really big things. And then talent, man, we're just looking for the best talent. I, obsess over people's portfolios, their balance pages. I think that's also what's given us a little bit of edge is just being sort of uncompromising.

in the people we bring in, I think a lot of agencies, because often it's a revolving door, they panic higher. So like, you know, they just hire the next available body and they can come in and fulfill the work. But that's, that's sort of how you lose your edge and lose your, your point of view. And so we really are working hard to find like the right people. People want to do the same sort of work we want to do and who are the right culture for it, because there's just a vibe, you know, there's a vibe that the agency has. feel it on our retreats. feel it every day in our slack is our office.

And when, when I really, I'm a big energy guy and I really believe energy flows into the work. That's why I can all the reality TV shows like the, you know, and survival or any of these shows, like when the team like works well together and there's good vibes and they're joking around and there's good energy, they win the challenge, you know? So I want us to survive, you know, outlive, outlast, outwish, out... That's what we're after.

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Justin Levinson (28:32)

play. Yeah.

No, I totally agree. You got to have a sense of humor and you got to have that sort of vibe as a team. Otherwise it, you know, the negativity can come out in the work. Yeah. I totally feel that. I guess lastly, I'd like to just get in a little bit on just like you as an individual outside of the agency, what kind of things do you like to do to keep yourself sane out there?

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Hillel Hurwitz (28:55)

Man, that's good question. Besides for my four beautiful kids, have a twin 15 year olds, a five year old and a two year old. they keep us and then we thought that wasn't enough. So we got a dog about a year ago. So we got feeding a lot of people, a lot of souls in our home, very blessed that they keep us super busy. I think, you know, one of the challenges as a founder and a CEO is like really being able to be present for them.

⁓ not feel pulled into the work or pulled into the luck of the latest fire emergency that's happening. so meditation has just been like the biggest gift to me. I've, you know, I've been meditating daily for the past year. and it's really just given me this, this calm in my chest and the presence with the people I love that, ⁓ that I didn't really have before. Like in the first few years of building the agency, like my foot was still like.

you know, jackhammering under the desk. was stressful, like building this thing and it got to the point where it got too much. I mean, it just really took my health and wellness and mental health seriously and it's done wonders for me maintaining this, you know, this pretty big machine while still being able to look after the people I love.

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Justin Levinson (30:06)

Yeah. I do the meditation thing too. It's something that kind of keeps me, I use the little apps like the Calm app and the Insight Timer app. And I just kind of like go into a dark room and just kind of, you know, try to let it go for a minute. And I have two kids as well. I know how it is. Like sometimes like a client messaging you and you're like reading the book to the kid and you're like, damn, I gotta like go and take this call and like deal with this fire, this problem. And sometimes it's just like, you know what? That client will be around tomorrow and maybe we can deal with that.

And sometimes it's hard to separate the two worlds, but I really relate to that. But thanks a lot. really appreciate you being on the podcast today and offering some insights and having a conversation. I love the work that you guys are doing and I'm really excited to share it with our community.

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Hillel Hurwitz (30:48)

Thanks so much, Justin. Appreciate speaking with you today and thank you for what you're doing and great to meet you. Likewise. It's been an awesome conversation. you. Have a good one. Stay safe.

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Justin Levinson (30:55)

All right, man, take care.