What we talked about
Travis Pomposello shares the biggest lesson from his career across MTV, Nickelodeon, The Late Show with David Letterman, Discovery, and as a co-founder of Epix: a great career now depends on noticing change early and being willing to pivot with it, not resist it. He explains why the old “company person” path is no longer the default, and why managing your career today means staying flexible, taking smart risks, and keeping a growth mindset.
Show notes
Travis Pomposello spent years buying creative agency work as a senior executive in major media before he tried running an agency himself, and discovered he had no idea how to do sales. That experience became the foundation of a mentoring practice helping agency founders reconnect with why they started, and why he argues that intrinsic motivation, not revenue targets, is what makes an agency defensible in a pitch.
What we covered
- Pomposello’s framework for AI and careers is not about fear, it is about asymmetry. He argues that a talented person using AI will pull so far ahead of an equally talented person who does not that the gap will dwarf any difference in raw ability between the two individuals.
- When he left corporate media and launched Bella Vista Creative, the first six to twelve months succeeded largely because of his C-suite relationships and reputation as “the new kid.” When that momentum faded, he realized he had duplicated corporate structures in an agency context, and none of those structures translated to actually selling work.
- Skills and taste develop at different rates, and most people in their twenties mistake skill development for readiness to lead. Pomposello describes demanding a managerial title in his early career based entirely on skill, without yet having the judgment to use those skills well. The two need time to converge.
- The “ghosting” dynamic between agencies and corporate buyers is not malice, it is guilt compounding over time. Pomposello describes what it feels like to genuinely want to respond to someone, miss the window, feel embarrassed, miss it again, and eventually delete the message rather than face the awkwardness. His advice to agency owners: follow up in a way that signals understanding, not accusation. “Just checking in” makes executives feel guilty; framing a follow-up with warmth removes the guilt and opens the conversation.
- Intrinsic motivation is the factor that separates agency founders who can hold a deep, extended conversation with a prospective buyer from those who run out of energy mid-pitch. When founders drift toward pure monetization thinking, focused on closing rather than the craft, they lose the conviction that makes buyers trust them with career-risking decisions.
- His father’s reaction to synthesizers and drum machines in the music industry, and the older writers at The Late Show who mocked spellcheck, both followed the same arc: initial fear, reluctant adoption, and then full integration, without abandoning the craft. That is his model for how creative professionals should approach AI.
About Travis
Travis Pomposello is a media and creative leader whose career spans MTV, Nickelodeon, The Late Show with David Letterman, Discovery, and Epix (now MGM+), and who built Bella Vista Creative into a $5 million agency before exiting. He now mentors creative and digital agency founders through Creative Agency Accelerator and writes about creative leadership in the CCOs Journal.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travispomposello
- Website: https://creativeagencyaccelerator.com
Episode 120 of the PreVetted Podcast.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:00) Welcome back to the pre-Vered podcast where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Today we’re joined by Travis Pomposello. He’s a media and creative leader with a career that spans MTV, Nickelodeon, the late show with David Letterman, Discovery and more. He co-founded Epix, now MGM Plus and later built
Bella Vista Creative into a $5 million agency, working with major brands like Netflix and Amazon. Today, Travis mentors agencies through Creative Agency Accelerator, helping them scale from 500K to 5 million a year. And he writes about creative leaderships and sustainable excellence in the CCOs Journal. Travis, welcome to the show.
Travis Pomposello (00:53) Hey Federico, great to be here. Thank you.
Federico Ramallo (00:56) I’m honored to have you here today. So let’s start by, what is the biggest lesson you’ve learned about building a great career?
Travis Pomposello (01:03) That’s a big question, with a big answer and it, it, it’s changed, right? This has changed historically and it is changing more and more every, every day. I can speak about myself. What was different for me was different than say our parents generation in those days. If you wanted to build an excellent career, you went to school, you got in on the ground floor in a corporation and you grew with the company.
as your skills progressed and you went up the ladder and hopefully by the time you were retiring, you were an executive, you had a nice pension and you moved to someplace warm and this was it. And that was considered an excellent career. For me, like all of us today, we came into a time where corporations were not rewarding people staying in the same company for these long, know, this full career span anymore.
technology started growing at a geometric pace, if you will, which started to provide more more opportunities and more, much more change inside of the organizations. We had many companies that started out as one thing, but because of technology grew into being something different. And they could think about that with all the computing companies, all the digital companies that maybe started as analog companies and then became.
I think of like you and Packard starting with typewriters and things like this. What builds an excellent career now more than ever, but also in my career, was being able to identify those changes in your industry and being willing to take a risk to pivot with them as opposed to resist them and staying in the mindset of…
This is how this is the comfortable place, how we always did it. This is the comfortable place about, you know, the way that things get done versus moving with the change and being willing to adapt to that change. And we see it now more than ever with careers that are being changed, whether we like it or not. And I know half the world is against and half the world is for AI, but it’s definitely changing how we’re looking at everything and the people who are willing to adapt.
and change along with these changes because it’s not going away. I wish maybe it was for some folks, but it’s not. And being able to incorporate that, being able to take that risk is what’s going to make a great career 2026 and beyond.
Federico Ramallo (03:35) Right, right. Yeah, the the company men, the career path you described ⁓ was something that in the 50s, 60s, 80s, maybe 90s was a big thing, right? But now the pace changed and that dynamic, the reward, you know, benefit balance doesn’t doesn’t add up anymore, right? So
Travis Pomposello (03:41) Right?
Yeah, if it was.
Federico Ramallo (04:01) people change jobs more often, right? And companies need to adapt, which means that they need to hire and fire faster than before,
Travis Pomposello (04:12) And
now it’s on to the person, the individual.
Not being risk adverse, maybe like those generations were in the past, they stayed in those careers, became that company person, that company man or woman. Now it’s managing your own career, being in a sense, being your own company and looking for those opportunities, having the willingness to explore them, perhaps even leaving companies and exploring those new things. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to build your skills. It doesn’t mean you don’t have to work hard. It doesn’t mean any of those things.
What it means is, what I’m saying is a rigid mindset or a fixed mindset is not going to grow a great career. It has to be a very open and very fluid mindset.
Federico Ramallo (04:56) Right, and the AI change is here to stay. So either we adapt or we perish, right? ⁓
Travis Pomposello (05:01) Here to stay.
That’s right. But
it can very much be used to your advantage. There’s many applications where it can be used to your advantage. I think I’ve said it to you in our conversations, and I’ve said it in the press. My biggest fear about AI is not AI itself. It’s somebody who’s great, somebody who’s super talented, somebody who’s a real powerful thinker who uses AI.
versus the person who has all those things and doesn’t use AI. I think we know what’s going to happen there. The person who is using it to amplify all their great skills is going to go by leaps ahead of the person who could be extremely or equally or even more talented without AI than the other person, but they’re going to fall behind. I think that’s the part that I fear are for those individuals who don’t.
you know, bring that into their ecosystem.
Federico Ramallo (05:58) But then I talk about this on lot of episodes where there is this synthetic everything, fake AI generated videos, AI generated content that it’s not fake, it’s synthetic, right? It’s not real. And then people look to have…
real conversations. And that’s where I think that in that, in that situation, having this type of, you know, human to human conversations becomes much more relevant, right?
Travis Pomposello (06:33) Absolutely. I couldn’t agree with you more. is incredibly important. When I think of, when we think about a big part of my world coming from the creative side of whether that be software development, whether that be advertising or marketing or branding, if we put AI on the side, we still have a commitment to excellence, whether that be creative excellence, coding excellence.
You you, you name it. If using AI is the tool to get there. Bravo. If AI is there to make it fast and to commoditize excellence, as you said, that becomes, that becomes the thing that is just what I guess, what everyone is calling AI slop, right? There is no, there is no human in there. There is no judgment. There is no conviction behind it. It’s just, it’s just pushing buttons and getting an output as opposed to being a participant in that output.
again, having these conversations like you and I are having, or for somebody who’s looking to go back to growing their career, who would go on a podcast and speak, right? No AI here, right? Maybe in time that’ll get replaced. You and I will be, you know, AI avatars, you know, doing this podcast for us. But until that happens, speaking engagements, podcasts, you know, YouTube, you know, phone calls, video meets.
those, that three-dimensional interaction between humans is very, is very important to, to be able to further a relationship. Otherwise it’s sort of two AI agents speaking with one another. And that does not, that does not move anything further. It just is, you know, exactly what it is. And it becomes very commoditized conversation, if you will, as opposed to, know, you and I came to this podcast together with a commitment to creating something excellent.
for your viewers. If we didn’t have that commitment, we would just let two AIs create a commodity piece of programming to put out there on the internet.
Federico Ramallo (08:27) Right, right. And I think that that is the game changer for me and the audience because for me, I mean, for us, right, we have to be 100 % engaged on this conversation. And we are over stimulated by notifications, emails, the phone rings, you know, we get messages all the time.
And ads in all that process, we get lots and lots of ads. And that’s without counting our, you know, intrusive thoughts that we, you know, our mind kind of, you know, uh, it’s overflowing with ideas, right? So in that busy environment, right. Um, having the, uh, to kind of stop the world and be able to focus on one thing, uh, for us, it’s, uh, it becomes an important.
Endeavor, right?
Travis Pomposello (09:20) Agreed, agreed. And if you allow me to go on a little bit of a tangent and put a little bit of a challenge out there, know, what you’re speaking about, especially with all the notifications and all the things and, you know, quick Instagramification with AI answers and these type of things versus something like you and I are participating in right now, something I think about a lot is, and I try to manage for myself is my inputs, my cognitive load, if you will. And in that.
The challenge here is spend one hour talking to another human, like you and I are doing right now, versus spending one hour scrolling on TikTok or pick your favorite social media platforms and see what your level of fatigue is at the end of that one hour mentally. And I’d be willing to take the bet that you’re not feeling as fatigued from a conversation as you are after doom scrolling for an hour across social media apps.
Federico Ramallo (10:06) You
Travis Pomposello (10:17) And that’s because of your cognitive load. It’s so much input, so much input, so much input. When you’re a conversation with another human, you’re very focused on that other person. You you’re taking input, you’re having output. There’s no instant gratification. You’re waiting for the answer. You’re thinking of your reply. And that’s not as exhausting by any stretch, even though it feels like more work. It’s far more exhausting.
Federico Ramallo (10:42) Yeah, for me, having the focus requires a lot of effort compared to scrolling, but the gratification that I have at the end is much higher because I felt like I accomplished something, right? Whereas on the doom scrolling, you get into this numbness, right? ⁓ It’s a…
Travis Pomposello (11:03) Right. Right.
Federico Ramallo (11:06) Similar when you watch TV, right? You watch TV for a lot of hours, then you turn it off and you feel numb, right? And you feel empty inside, right? Yeah. And I think the same thing happens. There is a diminishing returns for everything, right? You know the story about the strawberries, right? ⁓ So if you have an infinite amount of strawberries, right?
Travis Pomposello (11:14) Correct. Agreed.
No, tell me.
Federico Ramallo (11:32) you can enjoy the first one you’re going to enjoy it very much, right? The second one, a little bit less and so on and so forth until eventually it becomes a chore, right? So, you know, change strawberries with ice cream or whatever thing we like, right? Eventually, you know, we don’t enjoy it anymore, right? So I am trying to drink less and when I…
stopped drinking for four or five days. The first beer I enjoyed very much. But then after that, I can drink more more and more. And it’s, you know, I get drunk, but I don’t enjoy it anymore. And then I’m thinking, why? know, it doesn’t make sense. So I realized I can make the choice of the first one. But then the second one, the third one, you kind of go with the flow.
Travis Pomposello (12:14) Right. Right.
Federico Ramallo (12:28) and you drink more than you should, well I drink more than I should, right? So, you know, I, but the first one, it’s so good, it’s so nice that, you know, eventually I go back and, you know, keep drinking more, right?
Travis Pomposello (12:41) Well said.
Federico Ramallo (12:43) Right. So what do wish someone told you in your 20s?
Travis Pomposello (12:48) Well, there’s lot of things, but we’ll go back to thinking about it career-wise. And something that I wish somebody told me was…
When I think about the two paths that I was on in my twenties, and I think most young people are in their career, are developing skills, but you’re also developing your taste and your judgment for whatever your job is, right? For whatever the field that you’re in that you want to move forward. But those two things develop at different rates. For me, I developed my skills very quickly, but I was…
I was slower with my, with my taste and my judgment. And, but I wanted, you know, I wanted the promotion. I wanted the thing. And I couldn’t understand, you know, I’d go, I’d ask for it and say, but, know, I’d be skilled at all these things and I know how to do all these things better than everybody else. And the boss would say, no, you need a little more. what I, what, what I wished it would have been said to me is, you know, you’re still developing, you know, your ability to, you know, to have some judgment, to have, you know, to, to, you know, to, to,
really be better at this craft and take full advantage of your skills. need to, this, this part still needs to have, to have maturity. I’ve seen it happen the other direction too. This was just my, is my particular story. I’ve seen people have incredible taste, incredible judgment, but very sloppy skills. And it also is slopsided. So, you know, to answer your question clearly as I wish it just told me to slow down and understand that some things grow slow and some things grow in leaps.
And there will come a time where they will even out. And that’s when you’ll be headed more towards, you know, having some, true domain expertise over your craft.
Federico Ramallo (14:32) I remember when I was 15, demanding the promotion for a managerial job, And a managerial position, right? And when I was hearing you, I recall that story and I had the same issue, right? I mean, I was really good on the skill side. On the maturity side, I was still a teenager, right? And then…
I didn’t know what I didn’t.
Travis Pomposello (15:00) Exactly, yeah, exactly.
Federico Ramallo (15:03) Yeah. So.
Can you tell us a little bit more about your business? What are you doing now on mentoring and helping leaders?
Travis Pomposello (15:11) Sure, about a little over a year, more than a year ago, I started mentoring creative agency owners, digital agency owners, having had the experience of being a buyer in corporate. Thank you for that introduction where you laid out a lot of that. And then I want to start on my own agency.
which was very successful at first because I had the gravitas of coming out of the C-suite and big media and everybody wanted to work with me because I was the new kid and I built this new agency and I had all these relationships. But quickly, six months to a year, that no longer was working. I wasn’t a new kid anymore. I’d kind of gone the cycle. Everyone worked with me and it hit me one day like a ton of bricks.
I didn’t know how to do sales. I didn’t know how to operate an agency. know how to operate a television network, but I didn’t know how to operate, you know, an agency and, all those other pieces that go along with that hiring people, infrastructure, payroll, you name it, right? All these things. I, I just. Duplicated what happened in corporate, but it no longer was working because now I was running my own company.
And I had to really dig deep inside of myself and ask myself, why did you buy Travis? Why did you buy from Federico when you were the buyer? Right? Why did you buy from so-and-so when you were the buyer? What were those relationships like? What were those things like? What were the things about those companies that you as an executive gave you the trust to essentially take a risk with your career, with your job? Right? If you’re, if you hire an agency for a lot of money.
and that agency is poorly run, even if they’re talented and they fail, it could cost you your job. So what gave me that comfort? What gave those things? And I systematized that for my agency. And when I exited my agency, I had a lot of peers and friends who had their own agencies that asked me, could you teach me those things? Because those are areas that I still struggle with. And you were really great at that.
So that started, a sense, me working in a fractional capacity. From a pure business point of view, I wasn’t able to scale this because it can only work like a part-time employee for so many people. And what I discovered also inside of that fractional time was that what founders were really looking for was a mentor. And what they were looking for in a mentor was somebody who had
that experience on both sides, somebody who had been there before, somebody who got it and somebody that they could see themselves in and wanting that partnership or that mentorship or that advisement, if you will. So I started working in that capacity. Being a strong believer in education, I built a curriculum around it where I filmed course material. I know in today’s marketplace is…
We talk about commodity courses have become a little commoditized. So that’s why I add a mentoring layer to it. And I add a community layer to it in order to round out the curriculum offering and make it more bespoke. And that’s how I do it. And I have a great community, small community, which I’m very happy to have that around because it gives me the ability to be more hands-on with maybe with less people, but again, more hands-on. And that’s more gratifying for me.
And that really ties into my motivation of doing it is I want to be that hands on. want to work with a small amount of people. And that really translates into the founders that I work with who are these agency founders that I work with who are want to stay very close and tapped into their intrinsic motivation for doing what they do aside from making money. Or it’s easy for us to say, I want to make money, but that’s not really the reason anyone starts their agency. That’s a by-product. And
Federico Ramallo (19:01) the
Travis Pomposello (19:02) Yeah. So,
so that’s something that I’m very, you know, I’m very bullish on with the, with the founders I work with, but, it’s a two way street with the, you know, I’m staying intrinsically motivated to wanting to raise founders up as, as their mentor and they’re getting more back in touch with their intrinsic motivation. so that’s the capacity that I work and it’s, it’s been, like I said, creative agencies of all different kinds, digital agencies of all different kinds from all around, all around the globe.
And, you bringing all that together is, um, I think sometimes I’m the one being mentored because I’m getting to hear the stories of all these different founders and all these different people. And I’m able to connect all those stories into, into methodology and into systems that then I can share, um, as a whole, get to sort of test, validate and iterate. You know, every day by talking to, you know, four or five different or more agency owners a day.
Federico Ramallo (19:50) you
Travis Pomposello (19:56) So I can constantly test and validate my own hypothesis of my learnings, putting them into action, getting that feedback, and then tailoring them for every scenario. So that’s what I’m up to now.
Federico Ramallo (20:09) That’s amazing. mean, everybody needs a mentor, right? Or everybody needs support, right? And that guidance, right? And running an agency requires, has so many parts that it’s challenging, it’s not easy. And now you can participate in many agencies without getting involved.
Travis Pomposello (20:13) course.
Federico Ramallo (20:31) you know, on the day to day operations, we are getting bogged down by the details, right? Although you get involved in the details, but what I’m trying to say is that the operations,
Travis Pomposello (20:39) I do. I wish I
could agree with you, but I do get myself very involved. That’s one of the things that I have to work on. I work with a mentor still. Like I said, it’s very important and I think it’s very important to have that. One of my things that I’m developing still is getting too deep into it, too attached, maybe over delivering. I write about that all the time in my journal.
but it’s very fun and it’s very, it’s very gratifying and, you know, couldn’t be happier, happier doing that. It’s also been really incredible in this work to having been in the corporate side for so long and being able to say to agency owners, if this is not an us versus them situation, right? In the same way that we want.
you know, buyers at corporations to have empathy for us and our struggles. We have to have it for them. Like I, as I mentioned, their jobs are on the line, right? They have families, they have careers, they have bosses. They have a lot of things that go into hiring the agency that, you know, as agency founders, we often forget we want to.
Why don’t they trust me? Why don’t, you why don’t they hire me? Why don’t they get back to me? Why don’t it? And it could be so many different things that have nothing to do with you. Right. It could be there. there, there, there, there, there, there, their child could be in a football tournament or a soccer tournaments, you know, that, or, you know, they’re there, they’re on, you know, something like their mom is ill and they had to travel and it has nothing to do with the founder, but we’re sitting there like, you know, I’m being ghosted and they’re not getting, so being able to bring those stories.
through my mentorship about what life is like on the other side for an executive has also been very gratifying because I would love to break down this mentality of this us versus them situation. And there is a part of that on the corporate side where corporate leaders are often felt like, I’m always being sold to, I’m always being sold to, I’m always being sold to. So I’m always pushing creating these genuine relationships.
between the two sides so that we can break that down. And again, my work gets to do that.
Federico Ramallo (22:58) You can bring a level of empathy that neither the founders or the corporate employees know about, and you can provide the insights because you’ve been on both sides.
Travis Pomposello (23:13) Right, right. It’s nice to be able to do. It’s really nice to be able to do that.
Federico Ramallo (23:18) Right, right, yeah. And now you have the opportunity to be on multiple companies, multiple agencies at the same time, right? Yeah. I interviewed a guest, her name is Elisa Camajor-Page, and she talks about optionality, which is this concept of fractional roles, right? And being able to…
rather than working on one company, working on multiple companies, right? On a fractional level, right? But I think you’re taking that to the next level, which is being part of the organization as a coach, as a mentor, as an assistant to the founders so they can build greater companies.
Travis Pomposello (24:00) And it gets wonderful that you referenced that because as founders, I’m guilty of this as well, we start to be in an echo chamber with ourselves or with our teams. And it just starts to become this circular conversation. being able to get outside of that, I always see founders grow from that. to have somebody who’s just not going to automatically agree.
because they write them a paycheck every week and not getting perhaps negative feedback from the market when they’re not getting replies to outreach messaging, or they’re not getting closing deals, or they’re in tough negotiations all the time around pricing. And they just start to have this feedback loop that’s going round and round and round. great to really be able to be like, no, come on.
Federico Ramallo (24:37) you
Travis Pomposello (24:43) Like, let’s get out of that cycle. Let’s talk, let’s, you let’s talk about that. It’s not, it’s not you, right? It’s something, it’s something totally different.
Federico Ramallo (24:51) Right, right. I’ve seen recently responses where, you know, I follow up with people after many months of no communication and then they say, sorry, life went through and I kind of forget to reply to you, right? So as you said, it’s not about, it’s not, it’s nothing personal. It’s that they’re just busy with other things, right?
Travis Pomposello (25:13) No, it’s not. It’s not. And, you know, I’ll add one more thing to that. That’s was personal for me. And I know it’s true for other people on the side of corporate is when there’s the delay in responding, right? I’ll give you this as an example. I meet you on this podcast. We have a nice time. You know, there’s a potential for us to work together. You send me a, you send me a message. I’m busy that day. Maybe, maybe, maybe I’d
Didn’t have the best day at work and someone’s not happy with me and I’m distracted or something’s going on at home. And I don’t respond to your email the next morning. I come to work and my email box is full and Federico’s down here, but I want to get back to Federico. I really had a nice time. Like this was great. I like him. I want to get back to him. I’m too busy. I don’t get back to him. Day three further down. And I, and I’m unable to get back day four. Federico sends me a follow-up.
Hey Travis, we had such a nice time. haven’t heard back from you. I just wanted to see, you know, now I feel guilt. Oh, I really like Federico and I haven’t gotten back to him. He’s probably upset with me. You know, he had me on his podcast. I should really get back to him. I don’t know what to say. Someone’s at my door. I have another meeting. This thing goes on. Now we go to day seven. Hey Travis, I’m, you know, I’ll leave you alone. I just want to check in one last time.
Make sure everything’s okay. You know, the podcast is going live. Here’s this, you I’m trying to be, you know, you’re trying to be useful to me. And I’m sitting there going like, I’m so embarrassed. I don’t know what to say. I really enjoyed myself. you know, you know, and, then I make a decision. Then that decision gets made. I write back and I own it. Or I just hit delete to get rid of my guilt. And this happens all the time on the corporate side.
then it has nothing to do with the agency owner or the salesperson, the BDR, the SDR who’s reaching out. This happens more times than any executive wants to admit.
Federico Ramallo (27:13) Right, right. And then on the side of the agency owner, they feel lack of response as ghosted, yes.
Travis Pomposello (27:20) Ghosted. Right.
Yeah. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (27:25) And then they’re wondering why that happened. And then, you know, they start spinning out a lot of thoughts, negative thoughts. I am not good enough. am not, you know, my service is not good enough, right? There’s so many things like that, right?
Travis Pomposello (27:34) Yep. Right.
Right. Exactly. Yeah.
Either make it personal. It’s about you or you start redoing your offer. You start redoing your pricing. You start thinking about your marketing’s maybe wrong and you start doing all these things. And it really was nothing more than another human being going through life. And it was not, was none of those things at all. So Bravo to the people who write back to you, you know, hi, Federico. I’m sorry. You know, life got in the way. Let’s start. Let’s start back. Let’s start.
Let’s start over again, forgive me. Those are executives you should continue to have relationships with because they want to.
Federico Ramallo (28:12) Right. And then on the side of the executives, I can understand that they are overwhelmed with so many service offerings all the time, right?
Travis Pomposello (28:19) options,
service offerings, simple little things in the office that can cause a wrinkle. Somebody, somebody resigns to go work someplace else and now they have to hire a new person, right? HR decides there’s going to be a restructure or a CFO decides to like, hold up. We’re analyzing the books, don’t spend any money, right? We’re in a freeze and all these things, you know, cause, cause, cause can cause these inactions.
So as I say all the time to agency owners, it’s our job as agency owners to gently remind prospects, clients, old and new that we exist. It’s not their job to remember us, but in a way that doesn’t make them feel guilty. And guilty looks like I’ve sent you three messages or I’m trying you again, or I haven’t heard back from you.
Federico Ramallo (29:13) you
Travis Pomposello (29:14) or just checking in, This makes the person feel guilty. But if it’s framed more, and I don’t want anyone to use this as language, but if it’s framed with the sentiment of, know you’re busy, I know things run away, I know things get away, just wanna remind you that I’m here and I’m your friend, and I understand, would love to work together, sentiment, that goes much further.
No one who’s made to feel guilty wants to engage and simple language around that. Like just checking in, for example, was one that always made me feel guilty. Cause I was like, I wanted to be back. I, I meant to, I forgot, I forgot now, you know, and, so that one always made me feel guilty.
Federico Ramallo (29:58) Right, right. And it’s always green on the other side, right, of the fence. ⁓ I mean, I’ve seen a lot of people on corporations that have a lot more red tape to go through compared to small agency owners where they have more, know, less stability, but more freedom, right? So I can see also an executive saying, well,
Travis Pomposello (30:03) course.
⁓ yes.
Federico Ramallo (30:20) I’d rather be an Asian sea owner, right?
Travis Pomposello (30:24) you’re speaking to one who left a corporate
career to start an agency. So 100%. And a decision I don’t regret whatsoever. But yes, the grass is always greener. And there are many times I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that there are many times as an agency owner, was like, I should just get a job. I should just shut this thing down and go back and get a job.
And like you said, there’s plenty of people in corporate like, should open an agency, right? So the grass is always greener. We’re all the same at the end of the day.
Federico Ramallo (30:52) Right.
My parents used to work on corporations as well. And, you know, their joke around that was I should just put a grocery store, you know, just sell vegetables, you know, life is so simpler, right? Which, you know, it’s not necessarily true, but it’s this idea of, know, I don’t want to, I don’t want to have anything to do with corporate anymore, right? Yeah, but
Travis Pomposello (31:05) Right?
It sounds like the dream
sometimes, doesn’t it?
Federico Ramallo (31:21) But they stayed there for a while. But the issue is that they would arrive late at night because the commute was challenging in Buenos Aires. So they decided to leave the corporate world so he could spend more time with me and my brother.
Travis Pomposello (31:36) wonderful. Wonderful. Again, right? Going back to intrinsic motivation, if you will. Right? That was their intrinsic motivation and good for them and good for you.
Federico Ramallo (31:46) Yeah, mean, we were able to spend more time with them, right? So that was amazing. And I think it’s important to talk a little bit more about intrinsic motivation. You mentioned it a few times already. Can you expand on that concept?
Travis Pomposello (31:49) Wonderful.
I sure can. sure can. And, and do ask about how I work with founders. it is, it is, it is tied to that. as mentioned, right. Every, every agency founder I’ve ever met has developed their skills. They’ve developed, they’ve developed, they’ve developed their judgment. They have their craft, let’s call it. And that’s almost always the intrinsic motivation for wanting to start an agency. I have my craft. I want to bring, I have a master of my craft. I want to bring it to market.
And I want to build a company around it. And I want to, I want to be my own person and I’m my own company. And yes, there’s a by-product and the by-product is making money, but also being able to use their craft to make something, whatever that might be. It could be writing code, could be, you know, creating graphics. could be doing video or photography or, you know, AI video or whatever, whatever that craft might be. And that’s why they start, and that’s why they start their agencies.
What I see happen is when the pressure comes on, when the agency has to do sales, has to build systems and operations, we’d start to drift further away from our intrinsic motivation and we start to move into operations and operating and sales and these things. And it tends to dilute the positioning of the company and the positioning becomes more sales focused.
and less about that craft, that intrinsic motivation, the whole reason the founder did it in the first place. I know because I went through this and again, saying the people who I bought from were very tied to their intrinsic motivation with their agency. And when we would go into, let’s say a negotiation situation or they were proposing me work and I had a lot of questions as a buyer.
The agency owners who were tied to that intrinsic motivation.
could talk with me for hours if I wanted to about the process, the price, the people, the judgments, you know, all their conviction, everything. The ones who were, who had lost sight of that and were more interested in the monetization and the economics of selling me the project would fizzle out in that conversation rather quickly because they would run out of answers because it wasn’t coming. It wasn’t coming from
here, it was coming from all in here, and they were not the ones that I hired. And even for my own self with my agency, when I had times where it was becoming more here, like I need to close this project, I have salaries to pay, I have payroll, I have rent, I have all these things, I wasn’t able to necessarily defend the work or my hypothesis or my thesis to the potential buyer in the same way. I would almost run out of…
run out of energy, run out of gas. And when I got tied back into my intrinsic motivation from why I started the agency in the first place, like I said, I could go on and on and on about it. And I see this all the time. In knowing you, see it when we talk about this with, you know, software development and engineering and these types of things. You’re so intrinsically motivated about that craft. We could spend all day.
talking about it. But if we started talking about something that was off that line, it would be a short conversation. So I’m always pulling founders back to that, pulling myself back to that, because it’s the truly, without getting too woo about it, but it is the place of power because you built your domain expertise there and you chose to create an agency to be able to bring it to life and to monetize it to take care of your life.
There’s no shame in monetization of something you’re good at. But when we start just doing it for monetization sake, it becomes something totally different.
Federico Ramallo (35:57) Right, right, mean monetization it’s the means but the end is intrinsic motivation.
Travis Pomposello (36:04) Correct, correct. And you’ll always be better at it. You’ll always be better at it if it’s intrinsically tied to it.
Federico Ramallo (36:06) Right? ⁓
if you do it the other way around then you’re taking shortcuts and you have a short lifespan
Travis Pomposello (36:18) Right, we all hear, we have these conversations, right? Federico, I have a million dollar idea, right? And it starts with monetization versus someone who comes to you and says, I wanna build or I wanna make or I wanna design this thing. And then later on is like, and I think it’s a million dollar idea. That’s fine, but it’s two different things, isn’t it? What’s much more interesting?
Even for you on the other side of that conversation to listen to and what’s easier for that person to speak about. Right. that’s what I’m, that’s when I speak about intrinsic motivation, that’s the, that’s what, that’s where I’m driving to.
Federico Ramallo (36:55) by having a clear understanding of your intrinsic motivation allows you to pursue the dream regardless of the weather outside, right? Whether it’s, you know, things are doing great, things are going bad, it doesn’t matter, the motivation remains. And I think that’s the power of that.
Travis Pomposello (37:06) Yeah, good point.
Agreed. Agreed.
Federico Ramallo (37:18) And the other reason to hire founders like that is that they’re not going to take shortcuts. They’re going to deliver based on the values that they have. And whether that’s a business or not, mean, they put the mission over the profits.
Travis Pomposello (37:34) The profits come if you do that.
Federico Ramallo (37:39) Right, right. For me, the intrinsic motivation, it’s about seeing the impact on the people, right? Whether they are in my organization or not, Or whether they continue working with me or not, or whether it’s on the client’s side, or they already left the client, right? But seeing how much…
we affect them and they affect us and that relationship and being able to be, well, I call it being a bad influence, right? But it’s basically this idea of, know, just encourage people to go for it, right? Go to the extra mile, you you can do it, right? You wanna travel, you know, how can I help you make it happen?
Travis Pomposello (38:10) You
Federico Ramallo (38:21) You want to buy a car or a motorcycle or whatever adventure you want to be, right? I usually be I am the, you know, the little devil on the shoulder that says, yes, you can do it, you know.
Travis Pomposello (38:31) ⁓ That’s great.
Yeah, I think that
that’s that’s beautiful. That’s wonderful. And that’s that’s great. You know, purpose, if you will. But that that really can that really translates. And, you know, I know your business, you know, that I see that and, anyone that looks at your at your materials or your website, you see that in the positioning of how you of how you speak about the service, you know, you’re out there providing in the marketplace. It it it it it translates across and.
Federico Ramallo (38:40) Right.
Travis Pomposello (38:58) And then it translates into your team and it translates into the quality of work. So perfect through line of what we’re talking about.
Federico Ramallo (39:06) So Travis, we’re running out of time. I truly appreciate you being here today. Any final remarks before we wrap it up?
Travis Pomposello (39:09) Okay.
Final remarks. Well, I think what I would say as a final remark would be.
Well, let’s go back. I want to go back to what we were speaking about, you know, excellence versus commodity. And in this time where all industries are being impacted or feeling fearful around changes in technology, right? This geometric progress that we’re seeing right now in our time. If I leave a final remark or piece of advice or a piece of wisdom.
is what seems so new and so different. It is history repeating itself. We’ve seen these things before. I joke, we hadn’t adapted with technology over the course of time, we’d all still be living in caves, afraid of fire, or maybe on bread lines to get food, or not having to store groceries for the week, have to get them every…
All these things that seem very scary. I understand this feels very, very scary, but if you stay committed, stay intrinsically motivated to your craft, you know, using sound judgment, you know, be being very intentional with what you’re, what you’re creating, whatever that is. And you’re using this new technology as a tool, not as a replacement, not to create slop as you spoke of.
not being, not letting it commoditize you because you can’t commoditize, you can’t commoditize judgment. can’t commoditize, you know, those things. may be able to commoditize some skills, be able to accelerate some skills, but never going to be able to commoditize tastes and judgment or commitment to excellence or that conviction. So my closing thoughts are on that is don’t. Lean into that. Don’t lean into the fear of, of the change. And there’s a million.
situations that I’m sure everyone can find in their lives around this. I will tell two before we depart in my own life is my father was a musician when synthesizers and drum machines and sampling came. was the sky was falling. He was going to be replaced and he was, you know, distraught. And then I fast forward a couple of years and he’s sitting in a home studio with a sampler and a synthesizer and a guitar on his lap. And he had adopted all the technology.
And I said to him, dad, what are you doing? He’s he’s like, I’m able to do demos now all by myself. can, you know, I can have more, can make more quality. I can figure out my ideas. I’m, and it was a progression. That was very scary for him in the beginning in my own life. When I was a writer and I went to work for David Letterman was the time when, spell check on Microsoft word was becoming very good and everybody, and everybody was using it. And the, and the, and the people who are older than me.
who had been writers for a long time, still had thesauruses and dictionaries, know, stacked on their desks or on the bookcase behind them. And they would criticize me and make fun of me about using spellcheck. And they would make jokes to me like, oh, I put your name in spellcheck, Pomp and Soho, and it corrected it to pimples, you know, and they’d have the ha ha ha and have me on the back and all these things. And, you know, in due course, they all started using spellcheck.
Federico Ramallo (42:13) Yeah
Travis Pomposello (42:20) the thesauruses and the dictionaries got dusty. But in both those cases, my father and those writers, they were still executing a high level of judgment, a high level of taste, a high level of craft. They didn’t just go to commodity like, I’ll just type a bunch of misspelled words and let the spell check fix it. My father wasn’t like, I’ll just let the machine compose the song. They still brought
their talent to it. They use the technology to amplify their talent and their judgment and their taste. So that’s my parting words from this conversation today.
Federico Ramallo (42:59) Thank you very much for joining us today.
Travis Pomposello (43:01) Thank you, Federico. It’s always wonderful to talk with you.