[Fully Managed] Anthony Collard from Odd Matter Ep. 112

Shannon: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Fully Managed by Penji Podcast, the podcast where we discuss marketing and business tips to help assist you on your business journey. I’m your host, Shannon, Penji’s partnership coordinator, and I’m joined here today with a very special guest, Anthony Collard, founder of Odd Matter.

Thank you so much for coming on with me today.

Anthony: Of course, Shannon, it’s great to be on the Penji Podcast with you on Fully Managed. Really excited to be here, and thank yo,u everyone who’s listening and watching this.

Shannon: Thank you. Usuall,y people don’t thank the guests. That’s very kind of you. I appreciate that.

Anthony: They’re just as much a part of this as we are. Of course.

The Beginning of Odd Matter

Shannon: Could you please start by telling us, one, the inspiration behind Odd Matter and why you decided to start your own agency, and then kind of the history about how you got involved in this work in general.

Anthony: Yes. That’s great. I mean, I can start with how I got started in this work, which was a little bit by accident.

I started my work in communications in a big B2B company, agrochemical company in Philadelphia, actually. So we’re neighbors with Penji, and I did communications for a few years, and eventually, my colleague left the company, and I was given the task of managing this company again. Multinational company, its social media and website management.

Alongside with the internal communications that I was doing. They were not that advanced in terms of marketing, so I actually had the chance to head up a lot of the work in terms of setting up its digital marketing strategy. And I really fell in love with it. I ended up going to Drexel for my MBA with a concentration in marketing.

So I really tried to get as much marketing knowledge as I could. It was really like a crash course for me because I needed to be up to speed on everything related to marketing. I had no prior knowledge. It’s not something that I studied at school. So that was my introduction to marketing and to this type of work.

And since then, I’ve worked in another company, it’s Siemens Health Years, another B2B large company doing marketing as well there. So it’s been about 10 years now and my wife has also been in the marketing business for over 10 years. So when we met, we were chatting about, oh, how cool would it be to launch our proper agencies.

There was a common interest and a common love and a shared passion around marketing, around branding. And what’s really cool is that my wife has a very different aspect of marketing that she’s good at. She is the creative brains behind Odd Matter. And I’m more of the analytical mind. So she is doing all of the content, all of the design. She’s the one kind of who crafted the brand identity for us.

So we thought, with our two different skills, I think it would be great if we could have our own agency. And we thought that what we could do is bring value to our potential customer, to our audiences by really focusing on one aspect of marketing and branding, which is differentiation.

We think that’s the key to business growth and brand growth is how do you separate yourself from the sea of sameness that we see online. I mean, there’s just so much content out there. It’s really difficult to set yourself apart. And so we thought about that question long and hard, and that’s kind of the inspiration behind Odd Matter and how we started.

Implementing Differentiation

Shannon: That’s really interesting. So how do you think that you can implement differentiation into the space? Like what is, I don’t want to reveal all your secrets before, but how do you kind of, because that’s something that I haven’t heard of before as a focus, so I was just wondering how that’s something that you can implement.

Anthony: That’s a great question, and don’t worry about revealing all our secrets. I think that one of the things that we like to do is actually share all of our secrets. Having ideas is the first step. Then implementation is also is really the hardest part. So we’re absolutely transparent in everything that we do.

But how do you craft distinct identities? So there is a matrix that the B2B Institute on LinkedIn did called the contrarian matrix that I really love, and that kind of explains how we think about this thing. So, you know, you can be right and you can do the same thing that everyone does. So that’s one point of the matrix.

And if you’re there, okay, you’re doing things that everyone is doing and it’s working, but it’s not going to get you differentiated. It’s not going to create the separation that you need. But if you’re right and you’re contrarian, you’re doing things slightly differently. If you’re thinking about things differently, that’s when really you’re going to see people kind of latch onto what you’re doing.

And a really good example of that, not a brand that we’ve worked with, but a brand that I admire is Liquid Death.

Shannon: Love. What is Liquid Death?

Anthony: Just a water company. It’s just water. But they are branding themselves as a, just, they’re using what beer companies and what other beverage companies have done, what liquor companies have done.

They even, their packaging does that. Their communication style does that. So it’s about, I think finding a position that is different and unique and it is really difficult because there’s no like single answer to it, but there at some point, there are just so many things that are similar floating around that if you find a point of differentiation, and you just go with that, you look at what everyone else is doing when everyone else zigs, you zag, and that’s what you focus on.

You are going to be able to get people to respond to you, whether it’s in a positive or negative way. That’s always a risk, right? But at least to focus on that. So that’s kind of the approach that we think, and then how you go about that, you know, whether it’s creating a unique character, you know, Salesforce has this little Einstein character that they use, so that’s fantastic.

If it’s a jingle, if it’s your logo, if it’s really bright and different colors, there are tons of way to do that and to just really focus on that one key aspect. But that’s ultimately, I think the framework that we use, it’s also that contrarian matrix about being right and different.

Shannon: No, I really like that. And I resonate with the Liquid Death idea. I love Liquid Death. They just put out the other day, a coffin cooler. I don’t know if you saw that. I thought that was incredible. I was like, I want this for no reason. It was a hearse. I have no reason to want this, but I do.

Anthony: They’re called Liquid Death after all. They need to ship their product in hearses.

Shannon: Their marketing is incredible and I do, yeah. And I think it comes back to positioning of, you know, when is the last time that we saw any other water company where you’re like, oh, that’s interesting.

Anthony: None of them.

Shannon: Exactly. And I think it really does get people sometimes, to just have something that looks different, even if it’s not there. Because I don’t know, Liquid Death, I’m not a very grungy person. I don’t know, but I love their marketing and I just, it grabs you and I think that that does grab you and can do wonders for a company.

So that definitely makes a lot of sense.

Agency Goals: Short Term and Long Term

Shannon: Since this is a very unique perspective to be able to get from you because I don’t talk to a lot of agencies that are kind of like just starting out. So I was wanting to ask you was, okay, so what are your short term and then long term goals for this agency and how do you kind of think you will be able to achieve?

Anthony: Yes. So Odd Matter just started out about four months ago. And we started out kind of, you know, we had this idea, like I said earlier in the podcast, but someone that I had worked with reached out to us, from Samsung Healthcare and was asking me, okay, do you know anyone who can help us with social media marketing and can help us in content creation?

And I told them at that point, there’s no Odd Matter. I told them, listen, here are some fantastic companies, but if you’re interested, we are also launching our company. We do not have an LLC yet. We do not have an invoicing system yet, but it will come. And so we started like that with basically no plan, just that idea, which was challenging and it was scary for sure. Definitely very scary at first.

But since then, what we’ve had the chance to do is think a little bit about exactly what it is that you’re asking Shannon, what is our goal? And at the beginning there, I do have a partner who’s my wife, so that does add some interesting complexities in the dynamic. But we did have different goals and we had to be sure about what our vision was for the company. And I think today, what we want is we’ve reached kind of a consensus and what we want to do is we’re not going to be just a giant company. We’re not going to be for everyone, as I’ve talked about.

You know, we have a very unique and also kind of niche idea and I guess unique selling proposition, which is really focusing on this differentiation aspect within the marketing and branding world. So what we want to do is have clients that align with our brand value, so authenticity, innovation, collaboration, curiosity.

We want to have a few clients that align with those, and we want to work with people that we think are going to be good partners. We right now again, are only two, but our team is growing, because of that collaboration that I mentioned. I think it’s always great to have different perspective and we don’t want to be kind of just in our own silo here, which is a risk that we don’t want to take.

So we’re growing our team and we want to keep this agency small. We want to be able to fully be immersed in what we do, and we want to retain control over the vision, at least for now, because who knows what happens in five to 10 years? Right? But for now, we want to be able to retain control over our decisions and over the future of Odd Matter and make sure that it just is able to help and add value to the customers that we work with. And at this time, I think we, as a founder and co-founder, need to be heavily involved in crafting that because again, the company is only a few months old. So we need to be involved in the day-to-day decisions and in creating the content. It’s just us right now with the help of a few others.

But I think the idea is ultimately we just remain small and we decide where we want to focus on, and we’re able to choose the brands that we partner with because they do align with our values. So that’s the goal. It’s never to grow to a giant company and lose control over the baby that we have.

The Ideal Client

Shannon: I like that. So what is your ideal client? If you were to imagine like the perfect person to work with that you’d be really excited about, and do you think it would be a really good experience?

Anthony: What is our ideal client, or who is our ideal client? Very difficult to say until you are working with that client because, you know, maybe the ideal client, in theory, in practice is going to be very difficult to work with.

But again, for sure, it’s a client who embodies our values and is willing to be open to new ideas. If it’s a client who is going to be looking at what is the competition doing, and then let’s copy that, that is not ideal for us. But we also feel like, you know, we are trying to say that we’ve had over 20 years of combined experience. We should bring some of those insights to those clients.

So sometimes, that’s why I was saying in theory in practice it might be different because in theory, you might have a client who is kind of old school, wants to do things their way, wants to look at what the competition is doing in copying, but then that’s maybe where we can have the most value.

Because we can then educate that client and help them and be an extension of their team on, listen, this is the way that you’ve been thinking about it. Let’s shift that mindset a little bit. Let’s think about how do you not do the same thing as your customer? In fact, let’s do the exact opposite that we’re doing so that we don’t become just another brand in this niche. You create your own category.

So perhaps that’s, it’s a bit of a hard, difficult answer, but I think as long as they are open to being creative and being different and standing out in the marketplace, as long as they’re open to that idea, that’s the type of client that Odd Matter would love to work with.

Shannon: That makes a lot of sense. I think that also keeps you from getting bored. It’s really fun to be in the marketing and design space when you get to work with a client that makes you excited. But I know that sometimes depending on if you have a niche or you have this or that, a lot of agencies can find themselves kind of like in a hole of, I feel like my creativity is stunted. And you want to avoid that, especially when you’re creating something that’s yours.

Anthony: Exactly. Because at the end of the day, we want to be proud of the product that we put out. Of course, we’ll do what the client’s vision is because that’s the goal. But we also want to be proud of the piece of content that’s going out. The social media post, the video on YouTube that we’re posting. We want to be proud and say, that’s our work. We want to be able to highlight that and feature our customers and those pieces of work. Absolutely.

And the other thing I’ll say is the other, I mean, we’re both very passionate about marketing and branding and I hope that comes through as well in this interview. But we’re also passionate about certain niches and industries. And for me it’s wellness. Everything related to health and wellness. And then for my wife, Flora, it’s fashion and she’s been doing marketing in the fashion industry.

So as long as we’re working with companies in those industries, like we’re going to be happy. We’re going to be happy people because those brands are going to be part of our personal values, they’re going to reflect those. So we’re going to be trying to do the best work that we can for them and empower those brands to grow and be better.

Lead Generation Strategy

Shannon: What do you think your plan would be to gain leads in these spaces? Is it something that you kind of have a network for already or like a relation to these people?

Anthony: Yes, that’s a great question on how to get leads and Odd Matter is pretty new. So what we’ve been focused on is just doing excellent work for the, right now we have two clients that we’re working with in very different niches and for very different projects.

So the first thing that we are doing is focusing on doing excellent work for those clients and then getting referrals and references from them. The second thing that we’re doing outside of the clients that we work with, we’re located Odd Matter is located in Miami, and there’s just a lot of activity here, whether it’s trade shows, whether it’s pop-up stores. We are just at a flea market on the weekends where just different brands, where they’re, so there’s always something happening around here.

And what you’ll find, and I think, you know, just in talking to people is that everyone needs something related to marketing, whether it’s even for personal branding or for a company that they are working with or that they’re the founder of. There’s always something to be done in terms of content creation, brand identity, promotions, PR, so there’s no shortage of people that need our help.

And so right now what we’re doing is getting ourselves to those events and then providing people that we meet with a very strong call to action, which is, Hey, give us a chance and we’ll do a social media audit, a brand audit for free. We’ll give you a proposal and then we go from there.

But right now, I think we’re not a famous brand. People just don’t come to Odd Matter because it’s super famous. No, I mean, maybe it will reach that level one day, but we have to demonstrate our value to the customer. So that’s what we want to do. And so we identify and find brands that we think are doing something cool and that we would love to work with, and then we actually give them a sample of the work that we would be doing for free.

Shannon: I really like that. I think that’s a great way to build transparency and trust with a potential client. I think that a lot of people aren’t willing to give anything for free at the forefront because, you know, they’re worried that they’re gonna take it and run kind of thing.

Anthony: Yeah, it’s something that, you know, you have to be willing to say that a percentage of the people are going to take it and run and go to a different agency, but at the same time, if you do a really good job, why would they?

They already know you. You’ve established a relationship. You’ve demonstrated that you are able to do the work. You’re at least in the conversation and you know, as a marketer, that’s always where you want to be. You want to position yourself so that at decision time you are in the conversation. And if you’ve done that, you’ve done your job.

Shannon: Yeah, no, I definitely agree. There’s always a way to just be on people’s minds, even if they don’t need you at that point, or they don’t need you at all. They might recommend you to someone else because then you know, you’re in their mind. And that’s always just getting the word out. It sometimes is just enough, even if it’s not an immediate response or you don’t see an initial reaction or sale or anything like that. Sometimes it’s just a waiting game too.

Anthony: Exactly.

Challenges of Starting an Agency

Shannon: So what do you think some of the biggest struggles are for starting your own agency? I’m sure there’s a bunch, but…

Anthony: Yes. So there’s a lot of challenges and for me, I mean I’ll make this, you know, a bit personal. I am very organized and I plan everything meticulously. So when I wanted to create a business with my wife, I was the same way. Here’s what we’re going to do. Here’s our six month plan, or one year plan, or five year plan. Here’s our full business plan.

And then when we started working with Samsung Healthcare, things were just different. There had needs that we did not plan for. The workflow was different than we had anticipated, and the lesson in that is not that our plan was terrible. I think the lesson in that is it’s really difficult to plan for everything unless you are actually in it.

So one of the lessons that we’ve taken from that is that, you know, create the overall idea and structure. And even if it’s a feeling of, Hey, I feel like I can add value to these types of brands and have that idea and then start developing it little by little, but you’re only going to learn by working, by being in the process.

I think there are a lot of people that for years they’re thinking, ah, it would be so cool if I could do this, but I just don’t have a plan. I don’t have the right idea yet. I think just do it, whether it’s with for friends, whether it’s for family. There are a lot of people that can use people who know about marketing just to have even conversations to help them with their own brand or their personal branding and the best laid plans means nothing when it actually comes to the reality.

So facing that was a really difficult challenge for me because like I said, I am just kind of really organized and I like to know what is going to happen, but in business it’s just not possible. So I would say, have an overall idea of what you want to achieve. Have a clear vision of what your destination is going to be, and then be flexible with the rest, which is gonna enable you to be agile.

When you get customers, customer requests that you were not anticipating. When you have a different audience that is responding to your content that you are not initially anticipating, be open to that. Be flexible, and then you’ll be able to see in the long term what makes the most sense going forward.

Shannon: I think that’s incredible advice. I think that that’s something that a lot of people struggle with. I think that’s definitely a type of personality of planning everything to a T. And I don’t think that that, I think that’s very common in the business world. I think that there are not that many people that are just winging it.

I feel like to be in the business world, that’s almost like the most common personality that you run into, and for sure, I think that that is definitely okay. But I think what you said about being flexible is really important because you can’t let the little things bother you or kind of take you out of the end goal.

And I think that that’s a big struggle for a lot of people and definitely starting an agency is so heavily involved in planning, but then there’s also so many elements that you won’t be able to predict. I think that’s kind of life, but at the same time, yes, it’s, but being flexible is really important, especially when you’re dealing with a client, because if you’re not willing to budge, that may be detrimental to your relationship with them.

Anthony: Oh, totally. Yeah.

Shannon: It’s like, oh, I didn’t plan for this, so we can’t do it. Sorry.

Anthony: Yeah, and whether it’s, and it comes in all sorts of ways. If it’s invoicing, you might have an idea of how you are going to invoice this client and they just would prefer another way, are you going to just outright reject that client because you’re not flexible on the invoicing or the pricing.

You know, people have different needs and it’s really difficult to anticipate those before you start working with them. Having that flexibility, it will enable your agency to work with just a lot more different types of people, you’re just putting yourself, you’re being open to more possibilities.

Shannon: Yeah. I think that’s really important for starting an agency. And maybe even in general, I guess maybe you can get to a point where you can reject people left and right, just because of little things. But you gotta be accepting at the forefront and there’s definitely a balance with that of, you know, respecting your work and knowing when to give, you’re giving too much or different things like that. But I definitely think that that’s a testament to just being client centered in your approach.

So I have one last question for you before we run out of time. We’re already, sorry, we’re still, we’re still over time, but it doesn’t matter. What kind of skillset do you personally think someone would need or should have to build their own agency and be successful?

Essential Skills for Agency Success

Anthony: Oh, well, that’s a great question and I don’t think there any marketing specific skills like, oh, you need to be really good at PPC, or you need to be really good on meta ads. No, I think those are easily learned.

What you need mostly is to be curious. I think you need to have a passion as well, whether it’s for business or whether it’s for an industry, but some kind of passion that ignites you to get up every day and do this because there are a lot of aspects of running an agencies that is not that fun, to be honest.

I mean, you know, like looking at your books and the accounting aspect of it is not my favorite thing to do, but it needs to be done. You know, the creation of an LLC can be painstaking, but it needs to be done. So I think, I mean it sounds like trite advice, but you do need to have that passion. Otherwise it, you’re just, it’s going to die. The idea is going to die.

And you need to have that curiosity because marketing, it moves really quickly and there are a lot of sources of information out there, some much better than others, but it takes time to kind of figure out what is good advice out there? What is not so good advice? To read through different documentation to read through the latest technology and not just say, have a surface understanding of it, but really start to dive deep.

So if you have that curiosity, you’ll be able to spend your time on these types of things that ultimately is going to be able to get you to the next step to create the agency, to run the agency, to scale the agency, and to do all of those steps. You know, it requires a lot of different skillset.

So there’s this idea of like T level marketing, for example, or there’s these different models of the types of marketers that exist, but just like a T level person, you know, where you have different breadth of capabilities. It’s all undergirded by curiosity and by passion. And by having those, you’ll be able to be really good at design, be really good at branding, be really good at PPC, but without that, it’s going to be really hard to learn all of those skills.

And the last thing I would say is also, you know, you need to be confident, talking to people, because at the end of the day, people are going to buy your services. Relationships are going to be the way that you grow your business, whether it’s investors or whether it’s more customers or whether it’s partners for collaborations.

You need to be able to reach out to people and not be afraid of failure or rejection. You’ll get a lot of that, which is okay. You’ll get a lot of rejection, but ultimately, you’ll be able to get people that want to work with you because you are providing a service that they need and there’s going to be a perfect fit there.

So I would say, be curious. Find something that you’re passionate and don’t be afraid to talk to people and to fail multiple time and be rejected. It’s going to happen a lot.

Shannon: Yeah, I agree with all of what you said. I think that the passion and curiosity is something that’s so important to motivate you throughout the process because of everything that you’ve said. It’s definitely not an easy process, and there’s a lot of difficulties along the way, but being able to be motivated by just seeing the end result or like just being excited about it even though there’s things that maybe you don’t want to do or that are difficult or not something that is easy that comes easy to you, is just nice to be able to always project towards the future and see like something that’s really good coming out of it.

Anthony: Yeah, absolutely.

Conclusion

Shannon: Well, that is a fantastic note to end on, I think. Thank you so much for coming on with me. I really appreciate this. And this was, I learned a lot, which is really great. I love, that’s my favorite part of the podcast is being able to like, get, you know, nice, learn new things and being able to get your unique perspective on an earlier agency is really nice because I don’t get to talk to people that are doing this very often, so thank you.

Anthony: Glad I could be of help and thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it, Shannon.

Shannon: Yes, of course. And thank you everyone at home for watching or listening. I really appreciate you guys and thank you so much. And please don’t forget to like and subscribe, see more professionals like Anthony on the show. Thank you so much.

Anthony: Thank you.

Apple Music

Spotify

Amazon