Liz Hunt Transcript

Clint Betts

Liz, thank you so much for coming on the show. It is a pleasure to have you. You've got an incredibly pink microphone.

Liz Hunt

I got it, especially for you, Clint.

Clint Betts

Which is very cool.

Liz Hunt

Yeah.

Clint Betts

You're the CEO and Chief Creative at DayCloud Studios.

Liz Hunt

Yes.

Clint Betts

You also have a podcast, which I want to talk about, but tell us about DayCloud Studios.

Liz Hunt

Yes, I would love to talk about DayCloud. I started DayCloud, I believe it's been actually 13 years now. It started out as just me in my little craftsman-style house, actually. Actually, I might've been in my apartment at the time. I can't remember, but yes, I was just a little solopreneur for a little while, and it actually happened because I was fired from my dream job. I was working for this really cool up-and-coming design agency that had just started out, and I didn't get along with some new management. There were things on both ends. I will own my part in that.

I was very young, so they fired me, and I was like, "Oh, no. What do I do?" Then, I started freelancing while I was looking for jobs. Then, I ended up landing a couple of huge accounts while I was freelancing, literally in the span of three days. One was the largest local accounting firm here in town, and then the other one was a university here in town. They were both going through re=brands, and they both were like, "We need somebody," and it was just kind of like, I happened to be the right place, right time. So, I've talked about this before with other people, but honestly, it's just a good, old-fashioned hustle and good luck. Yeah.

Clint Betts

No, that's incredible. That's super.

Liz Hunt

Yeah, yeah. So, I started it, and then things ended up picking up pretty quickly. About four months into it, I hired my first two employees. So it kind of snowballed from there, and without even really realizing it, I had kind of this pivotal moment where I had them start invoicing me, and I invoiced the client for the hours that they were spending on the project. I had a friend who was like, "Okay, so nobody told Liz, but she's running an agency now," and that was when I realized I was running a real business, so it was kind of this whole accidental thing. Then, here we are, 13 years later.

Clint Betts

That is incredible. And you're in Omaha, right?

Liz Hunt

Yes. Omaha, Nebraska. Mm-hmm.

Clint Betts

Yeah. Incredible. That's a great, great place.

Liz Hunt

Yeah.

Clint Betts

Tell us, how did you get those first two clients? That seems like that would be very difficult.

Liz Hunt

Yeah. Again, a lot of good fortune. The first one was I happened to meet somebody, and I'm not kidding. It was like a 30-second, hand him my business card. He handed me his at a random community event where we just happened to see each other. I think somehow he remembered that I was freelancing, and they needed a young buck who was ready to hustle. I was 26 at the time, so it was just like they just happened to think of me and I was available. Then the other one was the university. I had been working with them, actually, already with some of my past agencies, and they decided to hire me.

Clint Betts

Okay. Very cool.

Liz Hunt

Yeah, yeah.

Clint Betts

That's awesome. So, tell us exactly what DayCloud Studios does. I know it's an agency, but there's a lot of different definitions for an agency, so tell us what you guys focus on.

Liz Hunt

Correct. Yeah, so that's kind of an interesting question, actually. For a long time, we focused on just graphic design, and then we really moved into the advertising space. I added a lot more marketing services to our repertoire, and I brought in marketing people, knowing full well that it's not really my background. My background is in fine art and design, but I really wanted to expand and learn about how I can create recurring revenue for the business and all kinds of stuff like that. Truthfully, it was a six-year experiment, and I realized that I actually did not like it at all, but I learned a lot. So, about two years ago, I decided that we're going to shut down that part of the business, so now, officially, we are an interdisciplinary branding agency, so we build creative campaigns, we focus on branding for clients, and we build websites for clients. So, any sort of thing that is part of what the brand and its expression could potentially be, that is what we build.

Clint Betts

So, that's super interesting, and I'm sure it's a lot of fun, right? Because you're working with-

Liz Hunt

Oh, yeah.

Clint Betts

... Clients who are launching something, like a new company or a campaign of some sort.

Liz Hunt

Oh, I love it. Yeah.

Clint Betts

How does AI affect your industry?

Liz Hunt

Yes. I decided early on, and this is just who I am, I decided early on that AI was going to be a tool, not something to fear, right? It's just kind of an old Jedi mind trick. You don't let things threaten you. You just see them as another challenge, right? So, in the same way that photography has not decided that no one ever paints ever again, it's that same concept, right? But then there's also the joke of my favorite meme: if clients really wanted to use AI, they would have to be able to tell you exactly what they wanted, so we're safe. But my biggest thing is, actually, that I think it's great, and we, as an agency, we use it. We use it for writing social media captions quite a bit because that's stuff that you just need to do, and that sounds terrible: turn and burn. You know what I mean?

Clint Betts

Oh, yeah. Of course.

Liz Hunt

But it's like you just need something short and quick. We use it to help us brainstorm ideas, brainstorm ideas for telling stories, or just come up with a podcast outline or different things like that. I will say that it's never the end result, but it helps us get to what we need to get to for the end result. It's more of a jumping-off point at this point. Do I foresee it becoming a potential end result? I think it can be. I mean, I think that's kind of the goal, actually, but again, I don't see it as a threat. I see it as a tool.

Clint Betts

Yeah, yeah. I don't know how it replaces people. I think that fear's a little overblown, but it certainly is an incredible tool, and probably makes you more efficient and maybe need less employees as well, but I don't know that it completely takes over the whole process. Tell us about the agency, Rocket Show. I know you've got your third season coming up, and maybe it'll already be airing when we push this out, so tell us about it.

Liz Hunt

Yeah, okay. So, my business partner, I brought her on, I think it's been about two years now, and I had been running my shop on my own this whole time, and then I ended up finding her. She has a really solid business background. She has her MBA and all this stuff, and as I mentioned earlier, my background is all art, so it's nice to have someone like her who is not. She's very administrative. She's my COO, so it's great to have someone like her on the team. She also works in a creative agency, and she understands that we are just a chaotic group of people. I think as I've run a business, and just throughout the years, I think I've learned that every business is kind of on the verge of a massive breakdown. It's just a massive disaster. I think every business is like that.

Clint Betts

Of course.

Liz Hunt

So, I think it's not just ours and not just creatives. I think we just do it with a little more style and pazazz, but what we realized is that it's fun to talk about and share. As female entrepreneurs, I think it's nice for us to get to share some of our experiences, and so that's what we did in our podcast, and that's what we talk about. We talk about the chaos of running a creative agency and what it's like managing creatives because, let me tell you, it's a whole nother level. It's awesome, harrowing, deeply disturbing, and all the emotions, so it's great. That's what we talk about on our podcast.

Clint Betts

I love it. Tell me what it is to manage creatives. What is that? I mean, they are obviously super creative.

Liz Hunt

Yeah.

Clint Betts

Yeah. What's it like to manage them?

Liz Hunt

Yes. You know what? I have some friends, so I have a daughter, and she's six, but I have some friends who have some teenagers, and I would say that it's like parenting a teenager. They hate you, but they kind of love you, and you never really know what's going to show up on what day, right? It's like every once in a while there's this spark of, "Oh. I think there's the glimmer of joy that I've been searching for this whole time," but then 97% of the other time, it's like they are a little, mini, hedgehog porcupine, actually, who is like, "Get away from me."

And so, you just have to be very open-handed, and you have to be big time. A lot of what I do is, this sounds terrible, but kind of like therapy, but just more of a mentor, coach, encouragement. I'm there to encourage them to just keep trying and taking risks and that being creative and failing is okay. That's part of our job. That's part of what we do, and you just got to keep trying. Also, a part of what I do is protect them, protect them from hate, protect them from rude clients, or whatever it needs to be. So there's quite a few different things. It's a lot like parenting a teenager, I imagine.

Clint Betts

That's awesome. What does a typical day look like for you?

Liz Hunt

A typical day can be anything from my mornings. There will be a lot of recording content, so I'll record videos that we're going to be posting in the next week or two, that kind of thing. I'll meet with my social media team, specifically regarding my content. Then, for the rest of the time, I'll respond to emails or review our creative. I'll be reviewing some of the messaging that my copywriters have written for our websites, or I'll be reviewing the designs that our designers are sending me for brands, websites, or whatever it is. Then, I will also be meeting with clients. I serve as our primary client communicator, so I meet with clients and talk with them about the work that we do. I share the direction on, "This is where we're going, this is what we're doing, this is how these projects work," and leading them through the projects and such, and so I do a lot of that. Mostly, it's just talking and communicating all the time.

Clint Betts

Yeah. I mean, tell us about that. What should a company, leader, or startup be thinking about when it comes to social media? I mean, I found it pretty interesting that you do it every morning, and you probably have some sort of schedule where it all

Liz Hunt

I do.

Clint Betts

What you record that morning probably doesn't go out that day.

Liz Hunt

Oh, yeah.

Clint Betts

What is that like? I mean, I bet a lot of people, including myself, have never done that.

Liz Hunt

It is one, a lot more work than you ever think it is, until you start actually doing it and you're like, "Oh. This is why we pay people to do this," because it's a lot of work. It's like somebody's full-time job. So, I have a social media intern who works for us, and I also have a marketing coordinator who works for us. I meet with them every week, and we make a plan for the next two weeks for what we're going to post.

Based on that, I create videos based on what they need from me, or we'll plan, "We need some quotes for this," or whatever, and I have stored just masses of different quotes that I like or different things that I love, different family events that I've taken pictures at, different things like that. And I've just stored tons of that on my phone. Then, we just pull them out as needed for the next two weeks of what's going on in Liz's life, and then we schedule them out. So, we use a platform called Sprout Social. It's similar to a co-scheduler, Hootsuite, or just all those scheduling-

Clint Betts

Like, a buffer type of thing.

Liz Hunt

Yes, yes. And we plan those out. We do a lot of video editing. We use CapCut for our video editing. It's super simple, and an intern can do it, or I can do it. It's great. So that's a lot of what we do. We plan it out about two weeks in advance. One of the things that I think is very helpful, that a lot of people maybe have not been told about when they're thinking about social media, is I created different categories of what I want to be posting about, and then I assigned percentages to how much of each type of category I want to post. So, for example, I want to post about branding 50% of the time and give tips about branding or just talk about branding, tips or just general info, that kind of thing.

Then, I want to be talking about my family about 10% of the time, and so I assign specific percentages to how each one of those categories that I've decided are like, "This is my content," right? And then, that gives you a really nice framework for how often and what to post because you can say, "Okay. In the span of 12 posts, I know that six of those posts are going to be about branding," something like that, so if you can do that, then that'll really help give you a solid framework for what to post. And so, we do that, actually, with all of our social media clients that we run their social media for. We create those; it's called content type coding, and so you create a code for the type of content, right?

Clint Betts

Yeah, no. That's really interesting. What are the best platforms? Obviously, TikTok. That might be number one. Instagram? Like, those?

Liz Hunt

Well, okay, so here's the thing. I'm going to be a little bit nerdy with you. The thing is, it depends on who your audience is. So, we are in Nebraska, so we work with a lot of people who are in ag and self-farm equipment, that kind of stuff, or one of our clients. They drive, and they are truck drivers, right? They have truck driving companies all over the US, and their best platform is Facebook; go figure, but if we have somebody like me, my best platform is Instagram because that's people my age. And then, it's becoming more and more TikTok because, again, people my age are turning more into TikTok, so you really have to pinpoint where your audience is. And so, that's something else, like don't worry about having to be on TikTok unless you know for sure your audience is there. So yes, TikTok is probably for someone like you because a lot of young entrepreneurs are going to want to hear from someone like you, but I would say-

Clint Betts

No. Man, I can't imagine. I don't even know what a TikTok thing would be. Maybe I'll make one in your honor and see if I like it, but I don't know what that would look like.

Liz Hunt

Do a dance.

Clint Betts

I can't even imagine what I would say. Yeah, I could do a dance. That'd be very cool. It would be humiliating and get-

Liz Hunt

I know.

Clint Betts

... Like, zero likes and downloads, but it would be very cool.

Liz Hunt

Yeah, yeah. Dancing is one of the things that is not me.

Clint Betts

Oh, that's awesome. Hey, tell us, how do you take care of your mental health? That's a big topic in entrepreneurship right now, both in leadership and for CEOs. How do you manage it?

Liz Hunt

Dude, I love talking about this so much, because right after I had my daughter, so I have one child. Early on, I actually never wanted children at all. My husband and I waited for 12 years before we had kids, and I never wanted kids. My husband did, and so we finally compromised on one.

Clint Betts

[inaudible 00:19:06].

Liz Hunt

She's amazing, and I love her, and she is spicy and everything, but right after I had her, I got really bad postpartum depression, and I immediately was put on Zoloft, and I started taking that, and of course, my life changed, I started feeling better, and all this stuff. The other thing that I noticed is that aggressive, pretty snotty clients, things that they would say that used to give me massive anxiety for days on end started rolling off my back. I was like, "That's kind of cool," so then I was like, "Well, maybe I'll just check in with the doctor and see what they think," and so I did.

My primary care doctor was like, "You can take this for the rest of your life, and you will have no issues."

I was like, "Perfect. I'm going to do that."

I take anti-anxiety, and then I also have Xanax for extra bad days, and I am a huge proponent of it. I'm a huge proponent of what I had to do, obviously, but then I've also talked with someone else who was like, "You don't have to just do drugs."

So I was like, "Yes, that's very true." But I'm a huge proponent of entrepreneurs who are some of the loneliest, most isolated people that are out there, and many of us do not have anyone to talk to about the pressures and responsibilities that lay on our shoulders. Until I had my business partner, the only person that I had to talk to was my husband, and he is also a business owner, so we would just come home, and it would just spiral into sometimes a dark place, and that's not good. And so, it's been, one, amazing to have a business partner who's younger, and she is a little bit more fresh-faced and has a more positive attitude because she doesn't have all the baggage that I bring to the table, and so that's helpful, but then also having people that I can talk to. Not all my friends own businesses, but I have tons of people that I go to.

I have a female pastor that I talk to every other week about my entire life, whether it's business, friendships, family, or anything. I talk to her about it, and then I have a couple of different, just small groups of friends that I can talk to about anything, sometimes business, sometimes other things. I think it's just you have to make sure that you have some sort of friends that support you and that you can talk to. Then, just figure out a way to deal with the pressures, whether it is seeing a mental health professional or, like what I'm doing, just some good, old-fashioned Xanax, but it's definitely something that all of us go through, and it can feel very lonely and very isolating, but we all deal with it. And so, it's actually not a lonely place because so many of us go through it.

Clint Betts

Yeah.

Liz Hunt

Yeah.

Clint Betts

Yeah. I think that's beautifully put. What are you thinking as you prepare for 2025? I wonder even what your 2024 looked like because you had inflation, and the economy was kind of stagnant in some areas, not even bad in some areas, good in some, and now there's a little bit more certainty, I think, around, "Hey, what's 2025 going to look like?" At least from a government perspective, you can prepare for, but how are you thinking about 2025, and how did you handle that downturn of 2024?

Liz Hunt

Yeah. I've been through a lot of these. So, I think, as a CEO and business owner, sometimes it can feel like your days are like this. They go up and down, sometimes moment by moment, and so at some point, you have to figure out how to ride the ups and downs, and you have to rise above the highs and the lows. And so, I think that the craziness of 2024, even just mentally, I feel like, yes, there was a lot going on, but I feel like because I have seen this before several times, it didn't bother me as much. The other thing is that, with the place that my business is in, like I said, where I really honed in on, "This is business, these are my skills, these are my services. This is really what I'm going after," I toned down my team a little bit. Actually, I didn't do it. They did it themselves.

I refocused on what we were doing, and several people decided to look for other jobs and found other jobs. It was great, but I just never replaced them. I actually have quite a smaller team than I ever have before, too, and so in that regard, it's actually great. I'm using a lot more contractors than I ever have before, so in a lot of ways, as a business, I'm probably doing better than I have before, and so, I think I'm just running it smarter, just practically speaking. In some ways, I think the 2024 craziness didn't affect me, probably, as much as it sounds like it probably did others, and then for 2025, I would say that, as far as the business goes, I think that it's only going to get better, and I'm only hoping for more fun, exciting projects. On our country's front, I have concerns, but as far as my business, I am hopeful.

Clint Betts

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. Yeah, there's the whole political side of it, which we don't even need to get into, but-

Liz Hunt

I know.

Clint Betts

Yeah, but just having some sort of idea of what's going to happen in 2025 feels like it might be good.

Liz Hunt

Yeah.

Clint Betts

Finally, we end every interview with the same question, and that is, at ceo.com, we believe the chances one gives is just as important as the chances one takes. When you hear that, who gave you a chance to get you to where you are today?

Liz Hunt

Oh, man. Honestly, so many people. I would actually say my friend, Ryan Long, was probably one of the people that gave me such a huge chance. Back in the day, he and his dad were running a small business, and I needed a job. I was out of work. I didn't have any sort of job history that was any sort of design or anything, and he was a developer for his dad's company. He brought me on to help be a little designer, and I learned a little bit of code, a little bit of development, and some design. That kind of catapulted me into my entire career and taught me a lot about small businesses. And I think it taught me also about my own voice, to really stand on my own two feet, and that I did have a voice, because my friend Ryan, he and his wife are still best friends today, actually, but my friend Ryan always treated me with so much respect, and so it's pretty cool.

Clint Betts

That's cool. That's great. Liz, thank you so much for coming on. Congratulations on all your success.

Liz Hunt

Thank you.

Clint Betts

Seriously, it means a lot that you came on. I really appreciate it.

Liz Hunt

Yeah, I'm happy to be here.

Edited for readability.