Ep 163 – James Kwon, Figmints – Boats, Not Moats - How AI Is Forcing Agencies to Build Products
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Featuring: James Kwon, Figmints
In episode 163, I sit down with James Kwon, founder and CEO of Figmints, a digital creative and marketing agency celebrating its fifteenth year in business.
James and I get into the shift he's making from a pure services agency to a product-driven business, and why he believes agency owners need to build boats, not moats, as AI reshapes the industry. We talk through the acquisition that first pulled him into the M&A world, what he looks for in a deal today, and the story behind Slices, his own pay-for-performance compensation model that ties every dollar of revenue to the work that earned it.
For agency owners, this one's a look at what it actually takes to build a business that doesn't depend entirely on you, through smarter pay structures, disciplined product bets, and acquisitions built on shared values rather than just the numbers.
Key Bytes
• As agency owners, we have to build boats, not moats. The AI tsunami is already here, so playing defense with old tactics isn't a strategy.
• James turned a fifty-thousand-dollar hire into someone earning over one hundred forty thousand a year, just by tying pay directly to the revenue someone brings in and delivers.
• Every dollar Figmints receives gets carved into slices: sales, account management, strategy, fulfillment, operations, and profit. That objectivity ends the "why does she make more than me" conversations.
• Hourly pay incentivizes people to take longer. A model built on outcomes incentivizes people to get faster and better.
• James's first acquisition wasn't a strategic masterplan. It was a friend in decline who trusted him enough to merge, and they're still friends today.
• Love is inefficient. It was designed that way, and you can't use AI to love people efficiently.
• One of Figmints' internal products recently sold for almost nine figures, and that exit is now fueling more acquisitions and more product bets.
• The best dashboards don't just report what happened. They tell you the thing you didn't know to ask about yet.
Chapters
00:00 Welcome and introducing James Kwon of Figmints
01:35 James's path from culinary arts and UX design to CVS.com
03:07 Building Figmints and celebrating fifteen years in business
03:33 Why James is shifting from services to products
04:29 Building boats, not moats, in the age of AI
05:45 The first acquisition and what actually made it work
08:50 Using AI to find the right acquisition targets today
14:03 Breaking down Slices, Figmints' pay-for-performance model
21:40 The downsides of Slices and how James manages them
33:48 The best business advice James wishes he'd gotten sooner
James is on a mission to help people thrive through the catalyst of business. As Founder & CEO of Figmints Digital Creative Marketing, James leverages brand storytelling and digital strategies to transform companies from ideas to industry leaders.
His eclectic background in Culinary Arts, Graphic Design, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, and Theology, brings unique insights to every interaction. He's a respected industry voice, having spoken and mentored at platforms like The HubSpot INBOUND Conference, MassChallenge, CIC, MIT, RISD, Venture Cafe, and VMS.
Offstage, James relishes family time with his wife and three kids, church community, and golf buddies. His life is a testament to the magic at the intersection of creativity and technology, nurturing human innovation in the digital landscape.
Learn more on figmints.com
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Steve Guberman (00:01.73)
Welcome to Agency Bytes. I'm your host, Steve Guberman from Agency Outsite, where I help agency owners turn their agency into an asset they can grow, sell, or actually enjoy. this week on Agency Bytes, my guest is James Ken wait, it says James Kennedy. Why the hell did it say that? Yeah. See that? Start over. All right, take two.
Welcome to Agency Bytes. I'm your host, Steve Guberman from Agency Outsite, where I help agency owners turn their agency into an asset they can grow, sell, or actually enjoy. This week on Agency Bite it shit. Take three Take three.
James Kwon @Figmints (00:35.994)
Ha ha.
James Kwon @Figmints (00:39.759)
You got this.
Steve Guberman (00:42.306)
Not my first time, right? Welcome to Agency Bytes. I'm your host, Steve Guberman from Agency Outsite, where I help agency owners turn their agency into an asset they can grow, sell, or actually enjoy. This week on Agency Bytes, my guest is James Kwan, founder and CEO of Figments, a digital creative and marketing agency, where he uses brand storytelling and digital strategy to help companies grow from ideas into industry leaders.
His eclectic background spans culinary arts, graphic design, entrepreneurship, marketing, and theology. And he's spoken and mentored at platforms like HubSpot's Inbound Conference, Mass Challenge, MIT Riddy offstage. James is all about family time with his w wife and three kids, his church, community, and his golf buddies. James, pumped to have you. Great to see you, my friend.
James Kwon @Figmints (01:29.188)
Thanks so much for having me, Steve.
Steve Guberman (01:31.426)
Yeah. Figments, give the backstory. You've been running it for a while. Kinda what's what's been the journey to get you where you are today joining me on a podcast?
James Kwon @Figmints (01:35.236)
Sure.
I think
Yeah, the short version is started my creative journey in culinary. found out fairly quickly that restaurants were the weren't the the best place for me to be creative. I have a deep respect for that industry and the people in the industry, but and I love eating and so shifted into design. I was I c I like to call myself one of the first UIUX designers because the term didn't exist when I when I started in the in the world. and I got a job at cvs dot com as
Employee number five for the dot com team. back when dot com was still a pipe stream. Like, should this be a channel we care about? I think the answer was yes. And I think there's a thousand people now who live in a who in a separate building working for dot com. but back then it was just me and a few others that that kind of managed this huge website. Million at the time it was a million people a day visiting the site. I think now it's four million people a day, something like that. and yeah, went on from there to work on websites and
Steve Guberman (02:21.261)
Wow.
James Kwon @Figmints (02:39.032)
Applications and portals like Mini Cooper, Virgin Mobile, Doja Bank, United Healthcare, lots of really fun brands. stepped away to start Figments. fifteen years ago, we're celebrating our Quintanera this year. We're very excited about that. Thanks, man. yes, yeah, you're invited, Steve. Yeah. so so we're celebrating fifteen years. We're twenty people. we've been pretty acquisitive. We've done two acquisitions. Steve and I actually have met each other through
Steve Guberman (02:51.768)
Congrats. Will there be a Kinsara party? All right, good. Awesome. I'll be there.
James Kwon @Figmints (03:07.748)
different kind of acquisition strategy sessions and and networking groups. And yeah, super excited to to launch this iteration of Figments, which is all about products. It's all about scale, systems, operating systems. Yeah. So very, very excited for for where we're where we're at. Very blessed to be here.
Steve Guberman (03:28.278)
What's driving the shift from service and delivery to products and systems?
James Kwon @Figmints (03:33.432)
We've so because my background in UAUX, I've always been a product thinker. I've always been interested in not just, you know, pretty websites, not just pretty things, but functionality, actually helping users achieve goals, you know, and that's both on the system side as well the application side. so we've always been a an agency by day and a product development firm by night. So we've we've built probably half a dozen or so products.
Steve Guberman (03:58.264)
Mm-hmm.
James Kwon @Figmints (04:00.994)
One of them recently did really well. just just got acquired in the almost nine figures. So super excited about that. That's fueled a little bit of our thanks, man. a little bit of giving us a little bit of s fuel in the tank to to work on acquisitions a little bit more and and work on more products. And so the fire in my belly to to launch these new products. I would say the second part of why the catalyst for for doubling down on products has been AI, of course.
Steve Guberman (04:10.062)
Congrats.
James Kwon @Figmints (04:29.934)
You know, but the the phrase I I've been saying recently is as agency owners, we have to build boats, not moats. You know, I've I've been a part of a lot of agency round table groups and a lot of agency friends and a lot of people are talking about, yeah, we're we're doing this in SEO and yeah, of course we're writing these things and we're trying to build some some project management tools and I'm like, guys, we we need to build an arc. This is a tsunami. We need to build some ways that we can push
what we do strategically, creatively for our clients, helping people not just as defensive, but as an offense. And so that's some of the products that that we're building.
Steve Guberman (05:09.368)
So the analogy boats not moats, and you kinda just wrapped it up with a bow there, is more of proactive versus reactive, where yeah.
James Kwon @Figmints (05:17.23)
Yeah, it's yeah, it's like the tsun tsunami's coming and you know this this little defense that you've put together is not enough. It's not enough. Yeah.
Steve Guberman (05:21.922)
Yeah. it's here, man. Yeah.
Steve Guberman (05:27.436)
Yeah. Yeah. So you gotta learn to ride the waves, right? And the the arc is bring the people and and ride the waves. Back up and talk about the acquisitions that you've done as a founder. What drove them, what stage of your fifteen years did they make sense?
James Kwon @Figmints (05:45.87)
Yeah. Yeah. So the first one that we did was more of a kind of a merger acquisition. it was a a friend of mine who I knew through a faith-based CEO round table group. her business was in the decline and she was looking to offload this business. She felt called to actually
connect with me and and merge this business into ours and we did some math and figured it out and said, yeah, we we I think we could do this and brought them along side. that lasted maybe three to five years in in some capacity and that kind of fueled this kind of desire to learn more about acquisitions and Steve as you know acquisitions are an amazing way for agencies to grow, right? you can
double your top line revenue instantly, right, through acquisitions through. Yeah.
Steve Guberman (06:40.216)
Yeah. And bottom line. What was what was the I guess natural dovetail of what they brought, what you had that made it seem like a good match? Was it talent? Was it client base? Was it delivery?
James Kwon @Figmints (06:48.756)
A lot of it, yeah, there we're both full service agencies. we had a l really similar makeup. I I think the core is that we had a very similar culture. We had a similar care for people. we wanted to see our people grow. I think I was a little bit more passionate about the products side of the business than than she was, but
and we were both we're both visionaries and both leaders and so you know, probably didn't make sense for us to continue together for forever. And she's doing great. We're still, you know, good friends. But yeah, I I think it was more of hey, could we make this work? It wasn't very strategic on like, yeah, this is the right fit, the right you know, everything was yeah, can we can we make this happen since you're in the decline? Can we can we absorb you? Can we merge together and and still make this work and will it be better?
most of those answers are yes and so we kind of just went on that journey and yeah it it I actually look at that you know not everything went right of course but I look at that as one of the really critical catalysts for me diving more into the acquisition world. And so it was after that, syncing up with Peter Lang and, you know, taking courses, meeting amazing folks like yourself to to
think through how acquisitions could be even more strategically beneficial for agencies.
Steve Guberman (08:11.874)
And the fact that so y you all mor merged, mergers are one thing, partner breakups or however that, you know, dissolved or whatever it looks like, the fact that you're still friends on the other side of that, that's pretty great 'cause not all those splits work work out in everybody's favor. So yeah.
James Kwon @Figmints (08:20.73)
Sure. Yeah.
James Kwon @Figmints (08:27.172)
Sure, yeah. It's and it's not perfect. It's not, you know, it's all it's all weird and an amalgamation. yeah, I'd say our the faith component for it for us, like really rooting for each other, wanting each other to succeed is is definitely a part of that for sure.
Steve Guberman (08:43.138)
That's such a core element. Now are you actively in an acquisition phase or like on the on the hunt for next growth targets, things like that?
James Kwon @Figmints (08:50.35)
Yeah, we're on the search right now. some cool things that we're doing with AI is in the really niching down into the type of agency, not just the the size or the revenue or you know, location, things like that, but really like the culture of the business, what their background is, what they care about, what you know, types of work that they've been doing, and who they add as value to us.
So we've been we've been creating some AI research tools to go out and find those individuals, you know, do do a little bit of outreach there and of course, you know, a little bit of the the digital agency business, you know, process that we're applying to that. So yeah, so far so good.
Steve Guberman (09:35.244)
Love that. And are you using that same kind of research for B biz dev for the agency itself, or are you just focusing it on and A? Yeah. Okay.
James Kwon @Figmints (09:42.744)
You you know it. Any anywhere anywhere I could use those AI tools to enhance the things that we're doing. I'm I'm a fan of it. yeah, when it you know, we're we're so it's still so new, but I I feel like it was a year ago. I was kind of playing around with some AI tools. I have a I bought a Mac. I have OpenClaw running on, you know, on the Mac running agents. I'm like, I feel like I have
Steve Guberman (10:06.051)
Mm-hmm.
James Kwon @Figmints (10:09.722)
a genie in a bottle with unlimited wishes. And it's like you know, I definitely fell into the category of like losing sleep. I'm up till two AM like I I'm I'm wasting time if I'm not like building a thing right now or if it's not going I've I think I've gotten over that a little bit. But yeah I mean there's there's not a challenge out there on the agency side or the business acquisition side that I'm not filtering through some sort of AI lens right now.
Steve Guberman (10:19.96)
hacking away.
Steve Guberman (10:37.902)
Course, yeah. They talk about like the shift in the agency from being service delivery to product and AI layer layering onto it and the team that was versus is. I mean, have you had to make major shifts in the team?
James Kwon @Figmints (10:51.768)
totally. I mean, we're the philosophy of the business is definitely product oriented. We're we're developing products internally, but that's probably twenty percent of the team that does that.
The vast majority of the team is still very services oriented. We're still in that shift. we've we've had some successes with products that have fueled some revenue in the door, but not so much that every person can retire, of course. So you know, we're still very much a services agency trying to do the best for our clients as much as possible. So we're we're kind of in the in the thick of it and making some of that that transition. But yeah, of course we're trying to build tools that help the service.
Steve Guberman (11:34.446)
Is there a cut over goal of all right, when we get to this point we're gonna s either stop bringing on service or fire all of our service or sell our service off or anything like that?
James Kwon @Figmints (11:44.344)
Yeah, that's a good question. now I know that selling off a piece of the the business is kind of an option. but my dream is to potentially always have Figments and we start to the products that we're working on are revenue generating. And so let's say we have, you know
Steve Guberman (11:49.624)
Mm-hmm.
James Kwon @Figmints (12:03.268)
Half a dozen to a dozen different products in the queue at different stages. You know, we're always ideating on some, we're always testing some, we're always go you know, running a GTM go to market play, we're always scaling some and growing and then selling them and they, you know, as they kind of increase and grow, we're adding new ideas and and the ho you know, it's mostly agency owners watching this, right? So I'll say plainly that I'd love to not have clients, I'd love to kind of work us work on our own products. I like working on
clients, you know, I like doing the services side, but if we can have only our products you know to manage and and grow, we'll kind of transition into more that kind of PE growth firm in that level in that way. But
Steve Guberman (12:46.798)
Do the products typically start as like kind of how thirty seven signals did thirty years ago or whenever it was? Like we need a better wrench for our own engines. Yeah, okay.
James Kwon @Figmints (12:54.95)
sure.
Yeah, yeah, many of them are. I'd say fifty fifty, you know, some of them are we have this deep need. that's how we developed slices you and I've talked about. So, you know, we developed that out of a need of, gosh, it's really hard to pay people. I hate having raise discussions all the time. how do I pay people more with with money I potentially don't have? how do we make this objective and clear? And so we developed developed this model and it started to work right away.
And and then that became, wow, gosh, we need let's let's kinda add some layers to this. Hey, let's other people are asking a lot about it. Let's create kind of an ecosystem around it. And you might s you you can't see from my books here. I have I have a pile of traction books. I'm a EOS junkie, and so I wanted to frame it like EOS, like EOS is the model. There's a book around it, there's a framework around it, there's coaches around it, there's a platform. I think they were pretty slow on the software side of things, but we're building software around it. So
So if that can become, you know, one of the products that we grow in the incubator in that system, then it's awesome.
Steve Guberman (14:03.722)
So great segue. I'm excited to talk about slices. So I when when I met you in Orlando and you did a I don't know 15-minute presentation on it, my mind was blown because I've seen any number of different ways to do you know tiered pricing or you know pay bands or salary bands, whatever you want to call them, different ways to do incentives, different ways to do commissions, whatever. And you introduced me to something I had never even heard of or thought of, and it was literally mind-blowing. And I brought it up to
James Kwon @Figmints (14:05.038)
Yeah. Sure.
James Kwon @Figmints (14:11.588)
Yeah.
Steve Guberman (14:33.366)
easily a dozen clients, either one on one or in any of my group masterminds. And I'm like, listen, I'm gonna screw this up. But this dude talked about this thing where I went this, this, and this. So break it down and and talk about like how it works and and the benefit to like your whole team is in on it and drinking the Kool-Aid and loving it. So yeah, talk about it.
James Kwon @Figmints (14:37.178)
Sweet.
James Kwon @Figmints (14:48.42)
Mm-hmm. For yeah, for the most part, it's we're still
We're still crafting a way to get international employees on very different pay scales onto it fully. but yes, for our our US based employees, for our classic employees, for partners, for myself, it's been really revolutionary. All right, so Slicus at its core is an objective pay for pro pay for performance tool. And so I've I've learned this kind of early on in business, which when I start to fall in love with business and you know, start to love the game of it.
this this idea of pay for performance kind of came up over and over again. Like this is this is the way. We should, you know, Jack Stack's great game of business is very pay for performance oriented. Michael McCowitz Profit First is kind of is the genesis of this or like it's one form of this. And Profit First would say, hey, carve when you get the dollars in, carve out a percentage that goes to profit. Save that in an account. And what I don't I don't think he does a good job at saying what the rest of the pool should go to. And it doesn't it's not very clear.
Steve Guberman (15:52.738)
He he does it too granular. He's like opened nineteen bank accounts and split it up nineteen different ways or something and yeah. Yeah.
James Kwon @Figmints (15:56.65)
It I disagree with the bank accounts, yeah. it it's it's a clever method to do it. but in its simplest fashion, we basically take any dollar that we receive and we carve out portions of it, slices of it, to go to how that revenue is received or what we need to do to to get that revenue to be actualized, you know, and do the work basically. So just a quick overview.
we have a percentage that goes to sales and marketing. That's a percentage for how the lead got generated, who did the sale. There's a percentage for account management, percentage for strategy, fulfillment, account management, strategy fulfillment together.
is your gross margin. You know, it's what you need to produce the work. Of course there's a margin for operations costs. We have a special margin for what we call Figman's mothership. It's our back office structure. So if we ha if we do acquisitions, it's kind of made it awesome for for acquisitions too because this model makes it so that it's super objective earnouts, you know, become super easy. And then of course profit at the end. And what's nice about this is you're you're getting your team to think as
like business owners, right? They you know it is a little bit of like eat what you kill and you don't. the nice thing you could do as a business owner for your team is to give them a safety net. You can still give them a salary, you can still pay them I pr I think hourly is one of the better ways to go. one, that's how the US government kind of tracks that there's a legal there's a legal responsibility to you know at least do a certain amount hourly but
The goal is teach and train your staff to know and understand the system and pay them more as they do more. Right. So you know, it used to be I I would have an employee come to me and it's like, I think I deserve a twenty percent raise. It's like really. It's like, yeah, the you know, the market's changing and I'm doing more and I'm really valuable and I and now and I would go like, Maybe I don't talk to my CFO and like we'd we'd have this long discussion and be like, Okay, maybe if you do these things and you do this and try to objectify it. But the
James Kwon @Figmints (18:02.338)
Most objective way to do it is tied to the dollars that come in. And so now it's really easy. If I have a 60K employee who wants to make, you know, 80K, I can say, great, you're making 60K now because you do these jobs. You need to, if you want to make 20K more, here's how you do that. You need to sell this much more. You need to shift from account management to strategy because you spend less time to earn similar slices, do the fulfillment on some of these projects, jump in and actually, actually do it.
H here's how it works. So let me tell you this quick story. I had I had a friend of mine introduce me to a very talented dude who just recently left his job, was flirting with graphic design and you know, he kind of reminded me of me a little bit you know, ten ten years but in the past. And I didn't have a position for him. And in the past I'd be like, Can we afford him? He seems cool. but I said, Hey, we just invented, just created this thing called Slices.
And we have these jobs that are coming in that are too s too small. My team says they're too small. Do you want to take these? We'll carve out some slices. We'll give you the payment to do the the work. He's like, Yeah. And he's a immigrant son. He's he's smart, capable, hardworking. And you know, in the past I would have tried to figure out, yeah, can we get him as cheap as possible and you know, get get all this work done, try to increment his you know, his salary as as objectively as possible, but it was really hard to do.
In his first year, he did around he said, at the first when we met, he said, James, if we c if I could do fifty K, I'd be I'd feel good because he just left his job. He's like, let me just cover my salary. I was like, Can we hire him for 50K? I was like, I'm not sure. And we sold enough. So he did 80 K in his first year, 120K in his second year, 140K. He's he's you know, pretty systematically above 140 now. And
Steve Guberman (19:37.454)
Mm-hmm.
James Kwon @Figmints (19:56.324)
There's no limit. He could do as much as he wants. And he's actually scaled back some 'cause he's like, I'm I'm fine with where I'm at. I'd rather do less work. He had a kid and he's you he's doing that. Anyway, so I would have never been able to confidently say, like, I'm gonna pay you a hundred twenty K one day. but today I can say, Yeah, the pieces are here. If you do this, this and this, you're this is what you're gonna make and you can do as much of that as you want. And now we can carve out other sh other pieces like owners like Phantom Equity or
profit sharing for the whole company, not just, you know, on projects. So yeah, it creates this like really objective way to to pay the people and me. you know, last part I'll say is it was awesome because started to implement slices. I started paying myself in slices and my my salary increase too because now we're like, yeah, James did the sale. So James gets the cut of that of that project. Super easy, super objective.
Steve Guberman (20:52.674)
Where yeah. Whereas typically an owner's like, if there's something left over, I get paid, or I don't get paid a commission 'cause I'm the owner, or yeah. Yeah. So it applies to everybody. Upside is you get designers, strategists, account managers, if you start to think about where the finances of a sale go to, right? Most employees are like, You just you just got a hundred grand from this client. Where does it all go? Their mind says it's all going into your pocket or
James Kwon @Figmints (21:00.858)
Hate it.
Steve Guberman (21:22.336)
Everybody else is making more than them, where does it all go? But now they have an appreciation of a percent goes to OpEx, a percent goes to the person that closes it and manages it and and does the work. So they see where it actually goes on a percentage basis or whatever. They can do the math. any downsides to it that you've seen so far?
James Kwon @Figmints (21:40.624)
it creates a little bit of competitiveness. I think that's healthy, up to a point. Yeah. As long as you keep the rest of the culture, you know, written in a way that y y there isn't this competition. But you could always say like it's like why did that person get this slice for this thing? And I'm like, Well, they were available, they you know, we we directed some of that. It's like that person
Steve Guberman (21:45.55)
Not a bad thing, yeah.
James Kwon @Figmints (22:05.398)
needed work. We pay we pay them the base and so they need they're not meeting their base yet. We're we're we're gonna create priority around that. So same discussion as you would have without slices, right? Without slices it's
Like, why is this person, you know, g well, you have a lot of work on your plate. And so we need to kind of spread this around. And it it creates much more objective reasons for, you know, how we split that work, how we disseminate it, how we how you're gonna get a raise, how you you get paid more or less. So, or why we need to let you go. Like this is this is kind of an interesting one. if we pay you a base salary, let's say sixty K a year, we pay you five K a month.
And that mean we do it we do quarterly, we reconcile quarterly. So you need to make fifteen K in slices a month. We paid you that already. and actually there's a there's a an amount just above that for an employees like costs that that you need to account for as well, let's say it's
1500, let's say it's 10%. so you need to make sixteen five in slices. Well, you you didn't hit that. You only did ten. that's a problem. Why was it only ten? It's like, these projects took too long, and what why didn't you take more projects? You could have you should have taken more. Like, we know your capacity based on the slices that you have.
And so yeah, it y again without slices, you're having the same discussion. It's like Steve, I think you're underutilized. Steve's like, No, no way, I'm working a lot. It's like, Yeah, I'm so busy. It's like, okay, well, very objectively, the amount that you're managing is is not there's not enough slices to to to meet that. Like we we're we're paying you more than the slices say that we can pay you.
Steve Guberman (23:32.93)
So busy, yeah.
James Kwon @Figmints (23:49.198)
And so it creates this super objective way to say, like, you need to improve your your your utilization or we we need to find a different way. We're gonna pay those slices somebody to do that work and it's taking you too many. So
Steve Guberman (24:02.574)
So it pushes the the force of needing to create better efficiencies, which we're in the world of AI of creating efficiencies, whereas historically res resourcing is not my problem as a as a delivery person. It's it's your problem as the account manager, project manager, or or ops person. Not my problem. I'm busy. Look how busy I am. And and I can fill out my timesheet accordingly. But this says I want to take on more, so it's up to me to create efficient to create more efficiencies.
James Kwon @Figmints (24:21.688)
Mm-hmm.
Steve Guberman (24:30.464)
What is that doing to your pipeline and biz dev efforts? You is it a gaping chasm or are you still kind of tight on you know, bringing in enough work that people who are hungry and have created the efficiencies can pull in enough slices?
James Kwon @Figmints (24:46.232)
Yeah, I mean we're the scenario that I just ran through is really about the individual. I mean, I I think you probably would agree with this. most agency owners are on the camp of I'm gonna sell as much as I can. As much anybody who says yes, they're gonna come in through the door and we're gonna figure out a way to you know, get to get this done. And I think that's still true within slices, but like you said, it it creates some objectivity.
to make sure that we're rewarding incentivizing the people who will roll up their sleeves and and dig in and do it. like the alternative the super old way, which I don't think a lot of agencies are on anymore. If anybody's listening to this and you're on this, you need slices today. But if you're on hourly, strict hourly, that's broken. Both. Yeah. If you s if you sell yeah, if you sell hours or you pay hours internally, you're incentivizing your people to take longer.
Steve Guberman (25:24.598)
Internal or internal or external hourly? Either way, okay.
James Kwon @Figmints (25:34.094)
you by nature, right? You like I get paid more if I take more time on this project. It's like not anymore. In Slices, you you know, we've created a market price that the client is saying yes to and we'll pay. we believe we can get that work done for what the slices, you know, say that we can get the work done for. And you should create efficiencies on your own. And you're thinking business owner, if you if you're doing more you get paid more. And if you're doing less, we're gonna find other ways to get the show done.
Steve Guberman (26:03.842)
I love it. And you've created some sort of internal app where people are tracking it, seeing you know, where it's all coming from and going?
James Kwon @Figmints (26:10.936)
Our project coordinator tracks it now rigorously. We built an app within Airtable. we had a spreadsheet. It got messed up a lot. Built a Airtable app. It's pretty good. We're building our own app now, especially with AI. It's becoming a lot easier. fun is my original partner is helping us build this. And so it was the story I always love to tell is like two young guys. I I convinced them to quit school and I quit my job and we started figuring this together. we thought
Steve Guberman (26:19.864)
Mm-hmm.
James Kwon @Figmints (26:40.92)
We would do like a quarter million in our first year. I was I did the math. And we hit that number July of our first year, which is great. We like doubled it. And then in March, we had to pay something called taxes. I never heard of. and so we had we just ran payroll, pay taxes. We had like $300 in the bank account. This is part of my faith journey as a business owner, is prayed a lot, cried a lot. And I realized, you know what, God, this is your business. Whatever, whatever you want to do, I'll figure it out, I'll get a job or whatever.
I guess he wanted me to keep going 'cause we we we closed some things. But yeah, it's it is
A beautiful thing, the objectivity, that it creates. The I I think the tool is gonna give the team visibility regularly, which they don't have today, to be honest. but that's a huge missing component in any pay for performance system, in any bonus system, in any sort of incentivized system internally you have for employees. They need to be able to see it on a regular they need it they need a scoreboard. And if they don't have that then, you know, you're you're
And in the wind, what's the what's the phrase? Yeah, you're it's just like you're hoping to get yeah. So we're we're definitely with
Steve Guberman (27:48.696)
Yeah. Yeah, you're you don't want to do that. Yeah. And hearkening back to traction, like give them dashboards. Let them see let you see from your your standpoint what you need to see, let them see what they need to see. Dashboards are a great way. And with technology these days, there's no reason why it shouldn't be at their fingertips in real time of like from a resourcing standpoint, what availability do we have? You know, you said we're coming in the summertime, shoot, we're stacked on work, but we also have vacations, like
How do we make that happen? And so yeah.
James Kwon @Figmints (28:18.892)
It's it's like the number one thing when I get asked, I'm sure Steve, you're in like the top one percent of your network of normal people w utilizing AI. You know, like you of your friend group and people you fish with, right? Like they're they're like, you y you use this stuff? You're like, Yeah, I use it all the time. Like I can't and
Steve Guberman (28:37.281)
every day all day, yeah.
James Kwon @Figmints (28:39.158)
the thing that they asked me, I was like, yeah, I mean, get started. Ask ChatGPT things, but just expand your mind in in trying to understand all the crazy things that you couldn't have done before, like dashboards. And I I use dashboards all the time, like
Like your reporting probably is terrible, but today your reporting could be amazing because it can you can tie in every tool that you have into the same place. You can find data that you didn't even know was really valuable. Like, show me the metric that I need to keep this thing going, or you know, it's like, Well, did you know that yeah, your pipeline value or your
Value exceeds your pipeline value and you're gonna hit a limit, or is we're just gonna get like, no, I didn't know that. Okay, great.
Steve Guberman (29:25.782)
Analyze it for me. Keep keep analyze it and keep analyzing it on a regular so I can keep abreast of it. And but also once I know that it's there, I don't need to necessarily worry like we spend a lot of time worrying about these numbers and things like that because we don't have the data at our fingertips. I think once we have it at our fingertips, we can stop obsessing about that next deal that's gonna close or if it's gonna close or the BS probability rate we gave it in HubSpa, which thirty-five percent, where did you come up with that number? It's not real, right? So
James Kwon @Figmints (29:29.774)
Yes. Yeah. It's kind of crazy.
Steve Guberman (29:54.882)
giving giving actuality to some of these numbers, resourcing, giving project management teams better data, like it's just vital. It it's the success the success rate is just, I think, increasing when people utilize these tools.
James Kwon @Figmints (30:09.422)
When people utilize that's the key at the end. And know how to utilize And you know, if you're listening to this and you need help, contact Steve or J. we'll we'd love to help.
Steve Guberman (30:11.65)
Yeah. Yeah.
Steve Guberman (30:18.734)
Hit up James. He's the he's the rock star here. All right, let's throw a couple random rapid fires at you and and send you on your way. You've got things to build and sell and buy. the first is what's a tool or gadget not AI related that you've recently integrated into your life and you look back and think, how did I live without this thing?
James Kwon @Figmints (30:24.442)
Sure.
James Kwon @Figmints (30:38.362)
so I've had a Tesla since 2018. recently got into an accident, got a new Tesla, and I've always scoffed at full self-driving. I was like, it can't be that good. It's so good. It's so good. Yeah, so I have I had an enhanced autopilot on my on my Model 3 and
Steve Guberman (30:54.411)
It's that good, huh?
James Kwon @Figmints (31:00.538)
I Steve and I were talking about taxes and fun tax, you know, things that you can do. And with Enhanced Autopilot I was I had I was like brought my laptop on car rides and I would work and was like, hey s my CFO,
Since I'm working in the car, this is like my mobile office, right? Can I can I it's like it's like yeah. I think that's right. and you know, with all the the recent like security things, it was much harder to do, but now full self-driving, like yeah, I'm like having discussions, strategy sessions with AI while I'm driving them. it takes me from door to door, like without thinking about it. It is yeah, wildly
Better than I thought it would be.
Steve Guberman (31:48.694)
That's crazy. all right. What is something, a content type that you can't get enough of that you're binging a show, a podcast, a book?
James Kwon @Figmints (31:57.86)
Content type that I'm binging. you know what show I really love is Welcome to Rexum.
Steve Guberman (32:04.76)
Mm-hmm.
James Kwon @Figmints (32:05.262)
So there's kind of a football soccer fever fever going on. I'm going to the World Cup tonight. Really excited about that. And yeah, my sons play, my wife used to play, and we've been watching Wrexham. It is an amazing underdog story. so Ryan Reynolds, yeah, Rob McElinny, they buy this team in Wales in the UK. this b soccer team that's like down and out. They haven't won anything in a long time.
They pour a a fair amount of money into it and a little bit of star, you know, Hollywood star power. But the story the story after story after story of people from Wrexham and the community in the town and like and how they're develop the team developing together and like getting energized, it's pr it's really fun to watch. and yeah, we're hooked. I can't wait to go to Roger.
Steve Guberman (32:57.954)
Yeah. It's a cool I'm I fell behind it a little bit, but it's a cool MA story and I used it recently in like a small pit small presentation I gave as like an MA strategy of like how you can find distressed businesses and when you infuse certain things into those distressed businesses, how you can help elevate them and you know, what what success story looks like.
James Kwon @Figmints (33:02.862)
Yeah.
James Kwon @Figmints (33:18.648)
Obviously part of the success is telling the story, right, around Rexum and the whole process. So I know I need to do this more, but I usually, you know, tell my clients, pick up the phone, record the process, you know, document it. It is interesting. It's kind of wonderful if you know where to look and you know how to piece those together.
Steve Guberman (33:37.186)
Yeah. Yeah, awesome. And finally, what is a an invaluable piece of business advice that you wish you were given fifteen years ago when you launched Figments?
James Kwon @Figmints (33:48.362)
I always think back on this idea that y you're not as smart as you think you are. and I always like to say, if I can go back in time I would go back to a year ago and beat myself up for beat the hell out of myself for being so dumb.
making dumb decisions. Probably the biggest thing that I have learned painfully that I like to champion another one of those like one line, you know, philosophical statements that I live by is that love is inefficient. It was designed that way.
I I as you know maybe you too. I most business owners I know, most technologists, futurists, AI enthusiasts love efficiency. I love like full self-driving. I love like I could do other things while I'm doing this thing. I don't have to I could do it in a way that's different and unique. And you cannot love people that way. You cannot use AI to love people effici effectively in an efficient manner. And
I learned that very painfully over the first I'd say ten years in business. And yeah, just recently in the last half dozen years I've I feel like I've grown as a leader because I'm pausing, wasting time, ex explaining things, spending time, spending the much needed
emotional energy, mental energy, to to come alongside somebody and, you know, like work with them to make sure things are moving in the in the direction they want. Yeah, I feel like we have the best team ever now and I think that's part of it. So huge lesson.
Steve Guberman (35:38.414)
That's some deeply self reflective, insightful shit right there. That's some good leadership stuff, man. James Kwan, Figmans, thank you so much for joining us. folks, thanks for listening to Agency Bytes. Have an awesome day.
James Kwon @Figmints (35:50.874)
Thanks, Steve. Thanks, everybody.