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Saul Marquez:
Hey, everybody! How you doing? Saul Marquez here with the Outcomes Rocket. I am with an incredible guest today. His name is Dave Zaboski. He is the co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Laetro. Laetro is a tech-enabled community of the world’s finest creatives, serving enterprise customers with best-in-class design services. I had a chance to meet Dave at the NextMed conference. We connected, it was just like, an, we gotta get you on the podcast, we got to do some work together. He’s a classically trained painter. You probably see, if you’re watching this, he’s got his paintings in the background, and he was also an animator at Disney, Sony, and Warner Brothers during the second golden age of Animation. He worked on movies like Beauty and The Beast, The Lion King, Pocahontas, Aladdin, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, the list is long, his last one was Fantasia 2000. But I’m so glad that he’s here with us today. Dave, welcome.
Dave Zaboski:
Hey, Saul. It’s a delight to be here, my pleasure.
Saul Marquez:
We were together at NextMed, which is the future of health. It was legacy exponential medicine. How’d you enjoy the meeting?
Dave Zaboski:
Oh, I think it was amazing. I really love that kind of crossroads sort of conference. It was a medical conference, but there’s just sort of everything there from Paul Stamets and human mycology to John Madison and devices and the latest research in psychology, and I mean, I love that kind of crossroads thing. And that they would have an artist like me there, I just think testifies to how cool they are.
Saul Marquez:
I love it, man. Yeah, it was a good meeting, forward-thinking. If you guys haven’t had a chance to check out NextMed, it’s a fantastic conference. We’ll link it up here in the podcast show notes. Doctor Daniel Kraft led that and, just phenomenal. So Dave, let’s shift to you. Like, talk to us about what you’re up to today. I was fascinated by it, and so I’d love the listeners of the podcast to really get to know you and what it is you do, and why you do it.
Dave Zaboski:
Yeah, well, I mean, I think you said it best. We’re a tech-enabled community of curated creatives, and we’re here to service enterprise clients with best-in-class design services. So what does that mean? That means that in the ecosystem of creativity, like when companies need creative, you have, on the one hand, you have kind of the do-it-yourself. That is, that a company needs a blog post or a hero image or a web design, or a rebrand, they’ll go find a freelancer at one of the many platforms that you can get a freelancer, and you hope for the best that you get a needle in a haystack and somebody who’s amazing, that’s a do-it-yourself. Then, on the other hand, end of the spectrum, there’s the do it for you. That’s like an agency where they cost a ton of money. They’ll say, we’ll be back in two months and tell you who you are, and here’s the bill. And so there’s a, the funny thing is that companies often lose a lot of agency when they go to agencies. So what we’ve created is something that’s a little bit in the middle of that. It’s not do it yourself and not do it for me or for you, it’s do it with you. Because what we noticed that in the ecosystem of creatives out there, there’s this sort of fracture. There’s no such thing as a freelance community. You’re either freelance, and you’re solo, or you’re part of a studio and your community. What we want to create at Laetro is this kind of freelance community, like a place where freelancers can come. We can build their team, add them to another company, almost like a creative API that you attach like a machine onto a company that they can use for as much as they need. It’s like fractional high-end, curated creative talent for a short period of time. And I think that the last piece of that is that the culture in the creative world is pretty fractured. Like when I started at Disney, I got three-year contracts and five-year contracts, and I thought I was going to work there forever, man. Like nobody ever left Disney. Now I talk to an artist a couple of months ago who got a week-long contract for some work he did at Disney and a net like 120 or something like that. So the, there’s no longer this space where people are working long-term at companies, there’s a lot of fracturing in the industry. So we created something like Laetro to be able to help creatives flourish and help companies get better creative. And it’s working really well, and it’s really an exciting project.
Saul Marquez:
That’s awesome, Dave. I love that. It’s such great timing with all of the agencies charging so much. There’s a sweet spot where there’s a ton of creative talent out there that needs great projects. So folks, if you’re looking for creative talent, Dave’s your guy, and Laetro is your company. Now, what are some examples of the type of work you guys are doing?
Dave Zaboski:
Well, it’s pretty neat, it’s really broad. Initially, we started with just illustrators. That’s kind of my cohort from the animation industry. One of the things that we found was that the level of talent in the entertainment industry is pretty spectacular. So we would do good work for companies and they would say, well, geez, can you guys do animation? Can you do a little ad for us? Can you do a rebrand? Coming out of the pandemic, the thing about a rebrand is, what is the story that you’re telling? And our whole cohort is nothing but the world’s best storytellers. So that’s some of the work that we do. We’ve done Rebrands, we’re doing explainer videos, some of our clients are places like Google and YouTube, possibly Disney. We’re doing some stuff with JPL. We did, I brought in the lead production artist at DreamWorks for 20 years, he was the head artist at DreamWorks. We brought him in to do a project for Jet Propulsion Laboratory on one of their flagship projects so they can help use the artwork that he does to sell the project that they want to do to the people who can fund it, the US government and NASA, and things like that. So really, anywhere that somebody needs a really good story told, it’s one of the reasons that I thought, I was really interesting being at NextMed is that, what about the patient journey? Like, what about the customer journey? How do we tell that story so that it really lands? So many of these amazing companies have brilliant, committed, connected people who are doing such good work in the world, but maybe they need some help telling their story, and so that’s kind of where we come in.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic. Thanks, Dave. You know, what’s, what would you say is one of the things that most companies you work with don’t know and that they should know?
Dave Zaboski:
Well, one of the really key things, there’s a couple, because the bigger the company gets, the harder it is to have innovative aspects to it. But I think that the key thing that really is important is, when do you deploy creative assets based on your resources? So like you might be a startup, and you’ve just got some seed money, what do you do then? You don’t do a Super Bowl commercial, right? When do you deploy creative assets? At what level of your company? And I think that’s a really interesting and really powerful conversation for companies because you’ve got limited resources. There’s a joke that’s, it only works in Silicon Valley, and I’ll try it here. It’s something like, Hey, did you use Stack? Oh, they’re amazing. Oh no, I used Stack.com. Oh yeah, that’s right, they had their series A, right? Like the tech industry, boy that kills. That one kills, everybody’s falling down. The point is that you want to use your resources at the right time. If you’re a startup, what kind of creative assets do you use? Is it content marketing? Is it building mindshare before market share? Who are your storytellers who go and do that? And then, as your company builds credibility and resources, then you can deploy different assets at different times. And so we can really help a company strategize when is the best time to bring in a small team for a short term or a bigger team for a longer term or a specialist that you need for just this particular thing. And so I think that’s where I’m really excited about this, getting the, these creatives an opportunity from an industry that’s never worked with these other industries before to use some crossover talent. It’s pretty neat to see that kind of thing.
Saul Marquez:
That’s a great insight there, Dave. And what percent of your portfolio is healthcare?
Dave Zaboski:
Probably, yeah, 25% right now, maybe something like that. We do a lot of that patient journey thing, or maybe it’s just a library of assets that they can use in their marketing materials, maybe it’s a special event we do some work with this company, Virta, they do special events, and we, we help kind of create the mojo around it. So, hey, healthcare is a great place for these storytellers because you’ve got patient journey and you got storyboard artists.
Saul Marquez:
Can’t agree with you more.
Dave Zaboski:
It’s just a perfect fit.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, and that’s who’s listening here. Great to know that you guys are working in healthcare, and I just assumed, right, that it was a good chunk of what you guys are doing. 25%, it’s nice, given where we met and the things that you do, and man, super, super interesting. And as you guys think about how you are deploying creative in your organization, the power of story, best ways to move ahead with the stage of company that you’re in, definitely a good opportunity to tune in to, Dave, by the way, Dave also has a podcast. Dave, tell us about your podcast. What’s the name of it? What do you guys talk about on there?
Dave Zaboski:
Yeah, we, our podcast is called Getting Creative, and thanks, Saul, that’s awesome. It’s called Getting Creative, and what we do in the podcast is we take one of our clients or somebody from the marketing world, and then we have a guest, and then the other side is we have some, one of our creatives, so they might be an art director or a CD or an animator, and we bring them and put them together with the marketer to talk about how did you get where you are, how do you get better creative, how can you guys communicate more clearly with each other, so that we kind of get, it’s how to get the best creative. So the marketer, they’re super creative people on both sides in how do they get their ideas into reality. And so our podcast called Getting Creative is really about marrying that marketer with the creative to figure out how to get the best creative.
Saul Marquez:
That’s great, and oftentimes I think, and correct me if I’m wrong, but it feels like the creative aspect is underrepresented and sometimes undervalued.
Dave Zaboski:
Well, I think that’s a two-way street too. The artists can value themselves. I think one of the things we do at Laetro is create structures so that the value is evident, transparent, and respected. I think that we, I think that’s why getting those people together. One of the things that happens at agencies is that the creative side is so opaque that you don’t really know what’s happening over there, and so there’s a, the conversations become descriptive instead of prescriptive. So like I see a thing, I’m the client, I go, this should be more green, I need it to be more green. And so then it goes through all of these channels, it gets to the creative who’s like been told it needs to be more green. Well, what kind of green? That’s descriptive, when it can be prescriptive, then you have transparency and an interaction between the creatives. The creative can say, well, what do you mean by green? Well, I think it should be more spring-like, it should be more light-hearted. All right, cool. Now you can give that prescription to a creative and have them work on it, and then there’s this sort of value exchange that’s not just money and direction, it’s collaboration in that do-it-with-me space. Where there’s that is where I think that the real value is. The real value isn’t in just getting paid, because you can get paid, the real value is in bringing something from nothing as a collaborative process into the world that makes a difference.
Saul Marquez:
That’s awesome. I love how you just said that. It’s not just about getting paid. The value happens with the exchange, with the collaboration, and there is like magic to it, right? The way that you tell somebody what you want to see, feel, hear, through it, whether it’s a video or a graphic or whatever it is, to be able to do it in a way that evokes what you want it to, and that’s the true exchange.
Dave Zaboski:
And I think that this is a longer conversation, but it dovetails into some of the aspects of why AI is effective and also really not effective. For example, I’m going to do a portrait of you now. I could prompt AI to do a portrait of Saul Marquez, and we could get 16 different versions in the next three minutes, and they would all be competent and a wide variety. It could be a spaceship, spaceman, it could be blue. But the bottom line of doing a portrait of you is that you are seen. Now if we did a prompt of those, you could put them up and everything, but are you really seen? If I sat and painted you for two hours, well, that’s a different kind of being seen. And so I think that’s where branding and these other pieces are important, it’s important to have a human involved in it because that’s the place where you actually get seen, and when you have a brand that has been seen by somebody that really has a feeling like it’s human, well, it makes a difference. I think that we’re going to get some amazing stuff out of AI, we’re going in that direction the better the prompting, the better the results. And I don’t know, I spend a lot of time getting good at what I do so that I can really see people so that they can be seen.
Saul Marquez:
I love that. Well, Dave, you guys are doing phenomenal work. Glad we got a chance to get you here to make that distinction for all of our listeners. What closing thought would you leave everybody with?
Dave Zaboski:
What closing thought? Well, I think that when it comes to AI, for example, I would say that we are the storytellers in that. And so what if it went well? I think, in general, your story matters. What story you tell the world is important, and it’s not just your story, but it’s the story of the storytellers. So like, who are you that’s telling the story? And so when you do that work, where you really get connected to who you are as a storyteller and the story that you’re telling, then it rounds out the whole message.
Saul Marquez:
That’s awesome. Folks, don’t forget that. You are the storyteller and this is your time. And with the exciting advancements in AI, I think it’s important for us to think about what Dave just left us with, is what is the human touch and how are we leaving an impression on our customers, patients and our colleagues, and employees. So Dave, really appreciate you coming on with us today and looking forward to staying in touch.
Dave Zaboski:
Yeah, it’s my pleasure, Saul. It’s been a delight.
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