Jason Steed – musician, designer, marketing agency founder

Recorded in the Skybox Conference Room at Kiln SLC (Gateway Mall)

Jason’s company: Targa Media

Jason’s 80simprov Tuesday Night Livestream on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch

Book recommendations: Start with the Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek and Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin

This episode features Jason Steed, the founder of Steed Studios, an advertising agency. Jason shares his journey, insights, and the lessons he’s learned from running his business.

Jason’s entrepreneurial journey began with the desire to answer personal emails during the day, go to a matinee occasionally, and get really rich. He started Steed Studios after working at Oxygen Studios. He wanted to set billable rates and manage upward growth.

One of the unique aspects of Steed Studios is its approach to design. Jason believes in design by subtraction, eliminating distractions to communicate more effectively. This approach applies to various aspects of their work, including layout, typography, video production, and even email campaigns.

Jason emphasizes the importance of team building and morale. He believes in the value of combined thinking and face-to-face moments. He encourages his team to be involved and contribute to the creative brainstorming process. He also values honesty and straightforwardness in his business dealings.

Despite being the owner, Jason still gets a chance to be creative every day. He enjoys the opportunity to share initial reactions, help craft and steer projects, and educate and challenge his team members. He also appreciates the opportunity to mentor and share his ideas and methods.

Jason is looking forward to the future of Steed Studios. He is working on having a junior partner be part of the adventure, someone who has worked with them for many years. He is excited to share the responsibilities, stresses, and opportunities with someone else.

Jason’s story offers valuable insights for current and aspiring entrepreneurs, particularly those interested in the advertising industry. His design and team-building approach provides a unique perspective on running a successful business.

Kyle Knowles:
Hello there. Welcome to episode number seven of the Maker Manager Money podcast. A podcast about entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, founders, business owners, and business partnerships, from startups to stay ups, to inspire entrepreneurs to keep going, and future entrepreneurs to just start. My name is Kyle Knowles, and I’m just trying to make some cool content at Kiln, that’s K-I-L-N, as in nevermind looking at other co-working spaces, Kiln provides working communities that are handcrafted and programmed to elevate lifestyle and performance. Kiln is the Michael Jordan of co-working communities. Now, you might disagree with me on that. It might be the Steph Curry of co-working spaces or the LeBron James, but I don’t want to start any fights tonight.

Tonight’s guest is Jason Steed. Jason worked as a designer before venturing into entrepreneurship. He eventually founded Targa Media, which is a relationship marketing and branding agency, or as they say, the un-ad agency, meaning they match each campaign with true client motivations instead of an ad agency’s creative styles. Targa Media will celebrate their 21st anniversary in October. Clients include Logitech, Micron, Dell, VariDesk, Aerohive. Is it Aerohive? Okay. Jason, you can help me help on this. Aerohive and MarketStar. Jason has extensive experience in marketing, strategy, branding, content creation, design, and campaign execution. Jason looks forward to Mondays. He loves sunrises, speed golf, trail running, and chess. He also plays Ultimate Frisbee, which he says is the only team sport where he’s not picked last. He’s an ear trained musician who, with his wife Heather, performs requested ’80s songs, which they livestream on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook Tuesday nights. Jason, welcome to the show.

Jason Steed – musician; designer & entrepreneur – mmmpod

Jason Steed:
Thank You so much kyle for connecting with me.

Kyle Knowles:
Thank you for being here. I think the last time I saw you face to face was in the year 2000 or so.

Kyle Knowles:
Before you started Targa Media. It’s so good to see you again. So while you spent your thirties and forties building your own business, I spent those years working for the man and the woman. So what’s the difference between us?

Jason Steed:
That is a very, very good question. I don’t know that it has to do with business smarts. I don’t know that it has to do with courage. I think it has to do with opportunities and timing. I was raised very much to be encouraged to find a very solid, stable place to grow and develop and have that job security and that mutual employer-employee respect and understanding. And in the process, I don’t know that they drove me away from that model. I just had such an interest in getting to know all of the steps along the way in a marketing or a product creating type of venture. And the way to do that for sure is as an entrepreneur.

Kyle Knowles:
Right, right. So when you say they drove you to this or that, is that your parents?

Jason Steed:
Yes. And speaking of my parents, like I said, my dad was just so dedicated in his space working as a dentist in dental practices in Utah. And his dedication and devotion led him one day to a place where there was an acquisition and the management decided they wanted to shake things up a lot, and he ended up, of course, finding opportunities that were things that were not in his sights. So in fact, he came back to me at that point as I had been in this space as an entrepreneur for some time and said, “Well, kudos to you, Jason, because you just don’t know. It’s not up to you how hard you work and how dedicated and loyal you are. There are so many variables that you don’t have control over.” And someone would look at that and say, “Well, there are also variables in the space as an entrepreneur.” And agreed. So it just depends on what kind of a mix and where your ambitions are and your energy is.
So anyway, I have such deep respect for the way I was raised and appreciation for the dedication that my dad gave to the man and the woman in his process. But grateful for the courage, of course, to venture out and try something new and experiment and guess at it and make it up as I go. And so I’m sure there were many footsteps that I followed in the entrepreneurial space. You’ve brought up some names already, Kim with Verite, I remember she was always 10 years ahead. Having jumped in and with her agency, and so I would see her, “I’m so excited. This is our 15-year reunion for our company.” And I thought that means my company is five years old, 20 years, my company’s 10 years old. So those little opportunities just were just inspiring to me just to take a step one step at a time.

Kyle Knowles:
And it’s interesting you mentioned Kim Jones, and last week I had a guest on, Ben Moffat who worked for Kim Jones and then ventured out on his own with Ian and Corey to launch Gantry. And it’s just a really small world, really, when you think about here in Utah, design and all these different kinds of businesses that have started and different agencies in town. So yeah, it really is a small world. And you were in the Crane Building where Gantry is right now.

Jason Steed:
I was in the Crane Building with Gantry, yes. Again, it’s one of those just happenstance kinds of events. I was just sort of cohabitating with another small two-person agency in town. Their lease ran out. I had just walked in and was enjoying that opportunity to have office space. Six months later, they broke the news, “Hey, we can’t stay here any longer. Do you have any place to go?” Like, “I have no place to go.” So I followed their commercial realtor around and their very first stop was a 700 square foot space in the Crane Building, tall ceilings, exposed brick. It just felt just the right size, and it was the right size for about 17 years, and then it was no longer the right size. So we can get into that as well.

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah, that’s awesome. So you outgrew it then?

Jason Steed:
Yeah, outgrew it. Yeah. But it was home for so very long.

Kyle Knowles:
And I love this talk about anniversaries because really this podcast is a celebration of entrepreneurship, and you had your 20th last year and it’ll be your 21st anniversary in October, so congratulations.

Jason Steed:
Yes, thank you. And I remember for the longest time, my wife Heather would just come to me and say, “So how’s it going? Do you feel like you need a job?” And I often would also say to myself, “Maybe it’s time for me to get a real job so I can learn what I’m doing or learn what to do.” And by virtue of the time that passed, eventually you come to realize, “Oh, well maybe I’ve been forced to figure it out on my own.” And that’s a big deal I know for deciding when to go out on your own. What are the circumstances? When is the timing right? And you even asked me, Kyle, you said “How did you know that it was time to be an entrepreneur?” And that was such a fluid, random process for me. I can cover a little bit of that if you’d like me to get into a little bit of that?

Kyle Knowles:
Let’s do, let’s go there. Yeah, want to talk about your career and then that aha moment where you’re like, “I’m going to do this thing.”

Jason Steed:
Yeah, where you just end up and you look around and you say, “Well, I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I guess there’s no going in-house to figure it out from here.” So yeah, right out of school, out college with a graphic design degree from BYU, I was hired onto DSW, the largest agency in Utah. They had Minolta, they had Intel. And I was flattered by the opportunity to be an associate art director right out of school. So I dug right in and just enjoyed understanding the process and getting to know and feeling the energy of the agency. I was always curious what was going on outside my cubicle. They were building webpages and they were making animations happen. There was a multimedia studio, the dark room, where they’d slide the pizza under the door in the morning and they’d pull it back and it would be empty at night. And that duo, that team, those two brothers that would just do amazing things in the video and multimedia space.
So I was always curious and just looking and listening. And I remember at one point I decided to transition to a smaller design boutique, Huddleston-Malone Design, incredible, fun, energetic firm about a 10 person space at that time. And that gave me a chance to get to know the production manager, to get to know the account manager, the graphic designers that I worked with, the production, just some of the crafting of the ideas. And I really loved that. I was still always just a little more curious why our clients were requesting the project and what happens to it when it leaves, did it work? And so I think those were those stepping stones for me, a somewhat gradual process in that realization that I was so curious, I had to find out. And of course, there’s nothing like jumping in with both feet as a entrepreneur to get to know that.
So I had the opportunity then to be hired on to a small… There were two partners that hired me as their junior partner, interactive specialist. And I was pretty excited about that because I really took a liking to the idea of web and interactive and the motion arts, I think as a musician, I crave and understand that fun energy of motion arts. So I spent three weeks there before I was informed that they were being purchased or they were being hired onto a firm just a few zip codes away. And so-

Kyle Knowles:
I’m familiar with that firm.

Jason Steed:
Yes, you are, Kyle. That’s so interesting.

Kyle Knowles:
Do you know the background? I actually requested their portfolio.

Jason Steed:
Oh, is that right?

Kyle Knowles:
So Caldera was working on logos.

Jason Steed:
Yes.

Kyle Knowles:
And I had worked with Oxygen Studios because I was doing some side work for the Jordan School District, and they were helping us build a website basically. So I saw the logos that whatever agency Caldera was using, and I was like, “These are not cool. These look like clip art.” And I said, “You guys need to talk to someone.”

Jason Steed:
No way. That is so cool. I really have no idea.

Kyle Knowles:
And so I connected Chris and Kip.

Jason Steed:
Yes.

Kyle Knowles:
And they FedExed a portfolio down and the rest is history. So I’m sorry for you losing your job. You can blame me.

Jason Steed:
Well, now here we are, right?

Kyle Knowles:
Full circle.

Jason Steed:
On the spot, making the connections. Well Kyle, I’ll tell you, they came to me and they said, “The agency, we’ve had it evaluated. It’s worth such and such, so many dollars, and it’s really a great opportunity. We’ve got great clients.” And I thought, “It’s a fun firm. It’s a cool space. I thought if I’m going to go into lots of debt, I’m going to do that on my own accord.” And so that was coincidentally exactly what I did. And it only took about a year and a half to get into lots of debt with a partnership that I had started right out out of that transition. I actually was a sole proprietor for about a year, as Steed Studios, and enjoyed the opportunity, I had to work with a few clients, and overhead was so low, and it was just me, myself and I. But it was good experience on the billing and the finance and the clerical side.

Kyle Knowles:
And did you have clients from Oxygen Studios?

Jason Steed:
No, I did not have any clients from Oxygen Studios.

Kyle Knowles:
You had to go hustle.

Jason Steed:
I had to find, and there were some I had worked with for quite a while, and there was some finding that I did and some word of mouth. And word of mouth, there’s some power there.

Kyle Knowles:
For sure.

Jason Steed:
Yeah. I hang my hat on that and we’ll talk more about that as well. So a college friend got together with me, Frank, and said, “Hey, let’s create a partnership. It’ll be fun.” He’s a mathematician and an actuary, so he was good with numbers. He said, “I’ll be the left brain, you be the creative right brain, Jason, and that’ll be kind of our thing, our stick.” And so we rolled into that. The company name was Next Quo, founded in 2000. And that we racked up some debt in a very fast, furious way, and it was crazy nuts. It felt surreal. It was so fast and so crazy and out of control.
We had one client who was very good to provide a lot of work for us for about three and a half months. And then as a kind of startup, they said, “Thank you. I think we have what we need.” And we had a staff of, I don’t know, 9, 10, 11. And I remember sitting in a show with my wife in 2002 at the Pioneer Memorial Theater, a musical, and about halfway through the first act, it suddenly struck me. And I just felt so heavy and thick and sick knowing that it would only take the equivalent of six payrolls was more than the overall value of our home. In other words, it would only take me six payrolls to surpass the cost of our home. And that just hit me so hard.
I thought, “What in the world am I doing? This is reality.” And everything sort of culminated and we got ourselves in deeper and heavier. And the challenge there, I think this is really valuable that I certainly understood, my business partner, Frank and I, we had two different, very passionate goals. Both are very amicable and can be very effective in building a business, but not if they’re so polarized and opposite from each other.

Kyle Knowles:
What were those goals then?

Jason Steed:
His goal was, “If there’s a brick wall, you’ve got to speed up, you’ve got to bust through it. Otherwise, opportunities are lost and momentum is lost.” And my philosophy was, “If there’s a brick wall, slam on the brakes, deer in headlights, look both ways, see if there’s any way to scurry around that wall.” And you can see how both could potentially be very hazardous and both have some curiosity and some courageousness and business sense. But where he and I were so polar and so opposite, that was ultimately the demise of the company. So it became just a real tough reality check when I was left the only guy in town holding the bags, and it was my name on 100% of the secured loans and the debts. And that was a very scary place to be figuring out how I’m going to make good on leased equipment and office costs and everything.
At that point, he had acquired the payroll and the assets of the company just a few weeks ahead of this. So it was not so much that space with the employees and the team that I needed to be concerned about. It was the bigger picture. It was the get the call at 9:30 at night from one of my employees a previous employee saying, “Hey, I noticed that all of Frank’s stuff is gone from the office. Is that a problem?” And so there were midnight transfers and there was skepticism and there was, “Who’s where and who owes what and where’s the contracts?” And it was a very, very heavy, scary place to be. And so ultimately, I had the choice to go in-house or try to build something myself.
So I created a new company called Targa Media. And I know you had asked how did that name come up? And I’ll just jump really quickly to that. That name came up because it was available as a dotcom, and I wanted so bad to not have a number in my domain name because that felt like it was trying too hard. Targa, it’s translated as shield. And I thought, “Well, that’s interesting. And that’s kind of a fun motif, a fun visual.” The Targa car is something speedy and fast and admirable and kind of slick. And so it was just a combination of things that just rolled out that way and that’s how I landed on that. It was a 72-hour thinking process and buying the name.

Kyle Knowles:
Nice.

Jason Steed:
But anyway, so there I am, day one, Targa Media. I have not only to take care of the needs of a one income family with two children, young children, but also to make good on debts and how to stay afloat on that. And certainly I had the option to file bankruptcy chapter or something to that effect, and I had varying sources of advice, and sometimes that is just incredibly godsend way to manage and move forward. But I did not do that. And I fought and I knew that I can’t burn bridges in Utah. It’s too small of a place. Everyone knows everyone. I just knew I had to have the grit and the courage to talk and negotiate and work through and just make something happen.
Some things that I think I attribute to my ability to get that ball rolling in such awkward circumstances where I hadn’t built up a nice nest egg, I hadn’t talked to smart people, I didn’t have four other partners to go in with on a new venture. The value of the customer database and what value I had for customers and the vendors who trusted me and were willing to work with me and my commitments to refer business to them and plead for patience as I tried to build and mature this new business. And bless Heather’s heart, she was dealing at home with the random collections calls from creditors, and she was a fighter and a trooper for many, many years. And just like I say, she was my rock in all of this. I wanted to provide for her what she deserved, and she wanted me to continue to thrive and have that energy that I felt as an entrepreneur, as a business owner that I think it’s part of my identity.
So that was just the process of that momentum of figuring things out and valuing the customer database and the vendor database and the partner database, and really realizing that I’m working with people and not company names and not corporations and not printers and service providers, but they’re people. And that has been, to this day, just a driving factor. The thing that makes me look forward to Monday mornings is I get to work with people, a staff and new interesting challenges and Googling answers every day, just trying to keep up with technology and offer value and bring that reward into my life and the life of the people I work with.

Kyle Knowles:
So there were two different times, basically when Oxygen Studios got sold, there was that time. And then when Net Quo-

Jason Steed:
Next Quo.

Kyle Knowles:
Next Quo, sorry, Next Quo went belly up, if we can say it that way?

Jason Steed:
Yes.

Kyle Knowles:
So those two different times you could have gone and gotten a proper job. So tell me about the first time with Oxygen Studios. What made you go, “I’m going to go for it.”?

Jason Steed:
Yeah, that’s a great question. The very first time, there was one time before then, just really quickly, as I left DSW Agency and said, “Good experience. I want to work with clients, not just project managers, not just account managers, not just fellow art directors and designers. I want to work with clients.” So I gave that a two and a half months ago and I realized there was this very, very important thing called cash flow that I hadn’t done the math on. And within two months, we were out at money and that’s when I went out and was applying for work and found the opportunity with Huddleston-Malone Design, still keep tabs on Barry Huddleston and Dave Malone. They were great mentors. I don’t know that they knew the great impact that they had on me. Being in a firm where I got to know the owners, it was just so rewarding. So that was my first foray into it.

Kyle Knowles:
A couple of months.

Jason Steed:
Yes, of course, not long, and grateful for that net where you can jump in and get a full-time salary in place and benefits and all those other things that come along with. I have spent so much money-

Kyle Knowles:
Vacation time.

Jason Steed:
That’s right. When you’re vacationing for two days, there’s still some pay there. That’s a concept that I have not had the luxury of for 22 years. So obviously, with the advent of a larger staff with Targa Media, it’s rewarding as well to be able to step away from the office.

Kyle Knowles:
Things keep moving.

Jason Steed:
The day to day, yes.

Kyle Knowles:
So money keeps coming in with a larger staff, but usually when you’re on your own, you don’t work, you don’t get paid basically.

Jason Steed:
Yeah. So yeah, Kyle, to your question, what made me go create Steed Studios from Oxygen Studios, right? It’s hard to pinpoint. I just thought I had done this as a student at BYU. I had some clients. I loved the fact that I could set billable rates and I could just manage some upward growth. Oh, I’ll tell you why. I just remembered why I wanted to go into business with myself. There are three reasons. Seriously, this just came to me. I wanted to be able to answer emails during the day, personal emails during the day, and feel okay about that. I wanted to be able to go to a matinee once in a while during the business week. And I wanted to get really rich. So those were three motivations back when I was 27, 28. And in that time, I’m still working on all three to find the time.

Kyle Knowles:
Have you gone to a matinee at least?

Jason Steed:
I’ve taken the staff to a matinee a few times, yes.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay. Have you answered any personal emails?

Jason Steed:
I have also answered some personal emails.

Kyle Knowles:
So it’s only number three. I don’t know if we can go there.

Jason Steed:
That’s where I’m going. I would love to see this company mature and reach a space. As well, I’m very comfortable to say that I’m working and in negotiations to have a junior partner be part of this adventure, and this will be a great opportunity. She’s someone who has worked many years with us, and I love to feel that… There’s something to be said about the ability to share just a slice of that responsibility and those stresses and those opportunities with somebody. And so I’m really excited to have this more formalized and we’ll have some fun energy moving forward. So looking forward as well. Here I am in year 20 and a half, we’ve got some great people and some great plans in place and some great clients and really eager to grow and to just spend the time. I always look at it, I’m grateful for my outlook on it’s really about the journey and not the destination. I could be doing this for another 35 years and I would love it. I may not be. There we go, at what’s in our future.
And I know that the circumstances are that, for example, our industry, our clientele benefited from the fallout of COVID 2020. And by virtue, our business got busy. And that was just a luck of the draw. Because I know some very smart people, some classmates, some colleagues, some friends who have thought about it through much better than I have, that just did not land in a good place from that shakeout. So the space of being an entrepreneur it’s so hard. I told you I’m not the guy to write a book on this because I don’t know that my process was something that I would recommend that anyone follow. It was just filled with circumstances and reactions and just hoping and working. And I’m always been a hard worker. I love working. I love to earn a day. And certainly that goes far and that’s certainly a very important component, ingredient in the recipe. But there are circumstances that you have to admit you don’t have control over.
So I’m grateful for every day that I have a place and clients who are appreciative of our work and are eager to work more with us, and a team of 10 who just shows such respect for each other and just has such a variety of interests and talents, and we overlap and we meld so well. Just about every one of us can offer value to any project that comes in the door, from identity design to promotion for events, large format, to digital media to video and multimedia and email marketing and microsites and landing pages and website development and all those kind of communication pieces and the traction from a well thought through marketing campaign and the print materials and the packaging. And we all have a chance to share in that.
And it does good from a structure standpoint as well where the projects come in and they go out and there’s that wave ebb and flow. But we can divvy out assignments so effectively with our team. And again, we are willing to just push through, challenge our comfort zone and try new things every day and be willing as well to put in the time for template maintenance and production and also those valuable components that comes with the package as an ad agency.

Kyle Knowles:
So you’re an artist. You went to school first on piano performance.

Jason Steed:
Yes.

Kyle Knowles:
And you had a scholarship at the U. Then you ended up getting a graphic design degree from BYU?

Jason Steed:
Yes.

Kyle Knowles:
And then you’ve launched a couple of businesses and now you’re 20 years into Targa Media. Have you had to make the transition from basically maker or that artist maker type person to manager, or are you still doing making for Targa Media?

Jason Steed:
It’s a very great question, Kyle. I appreciate you a asking because it’s been very hard for me to let go. I have tended to wanted white-knuckle it. If you want it done right, you do it yourself, and otherwise you hand it off and it’s not done right, and then you do it yourself and it costs more money and it took more time. And so for a long time, I was glad for my… I love being a technician. I love producing. And that helped me to bid out more effectively on project costs and timelines.

Kyle Knowles:
Because you knew how much time it would take you?

Jason Steed:
Yes. And so I have loved, I loved and I have embraced, that point at which on whatever day of whatever year, a three and a half years ago, I had to let go because I was bottle-necking the process and stifling some creativity. And I had to trust and I had to trust myself. I think I tend to trust others, and I had to trust myself to just let that process be more valuable. I had to be more valuable. And so I’ve loved the opportunity to be a manager, to be thinking and anticipating and take that time and to be out of touch sometimes with projects that come through and to be pleasantly surprised with, “That is very cool. I thought this was this kind of project, it’s this instead. And I love how that’s maturing.”
And my team has been very patient with me as well because they know sometimes I get in and I fuss and I tinker. And that’s fine. I think I offer a lot of value where I can offer my experience, 25 plus years of focusing on client messaging and segmented marketing and the nuances of creativity and the balance of design and the attention, the deliberate attention, and the opportunity I have to say something in five seconds with a more refined design where it takes 30 seconds with a more chaotic and a less thought through design. So it’s really fun stuff to get my hands on. But yes, the team has been very patient with me as I continue to cycle through those challenges and of trusting myself.

Kyle Knowles:
So the transition to manager, you mentioned maybe three and a half years ago, so was that when you started getting busy?

Jason Steed:
Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
COVID and those kinds of things, the clients were getting more customers or whatever, and you had to go, “I have to let go and I have to transition to be more of a manager.”

Jason Steed:
Yeah, for sure. And three and a half years ago, being a manager looked much different than it does today. I am spending a lot of time in a role where I get to supervise and handle HR and look at clerical and team morale and business decisions and purchase decisions and all of those things. I remember in one of the first two weeks as a graphic designer at BYU, one of our professors said, “Just so you know, you’ll reach a point in your design career where you’re actually splitting your time 20% design, 80% management, organization, business.”

Kyle Knowles:
Administration.

Jason Steed:
Administration, yes. Admin. And I thought, “No, not me. I’m always going to be designer. I’m just always digging it and I’m just going to produce stuff. And they’ll love it and they’ll, ‘Oh, go produce some more things and we’ll pay you for it.’” Then you realize that there’s a lot involved in productizing or branding a new business and giving it a definition and being consistent to it and following through with that model and making it so it can replicate and it can grow and it can transport, and it can transform with personalities of team members that come on board. And all that fluidity requires 80% administration, 20% design.

Kyle Knowles:
And is that because he knew that as you move from graphic designer to senior graphic designer to design manager to I guess associate-

Jason Steed:
Like a supervisor or a director.

Kyle Knowles:
What is it? Associate director, a creative director, art director?

Jason Steed:
Creative director, yes, mm-hmm.

Kyle Knowles:
What are the differences between art director, creative director?

Jason Steed:
Okay. Yeah, sure, that’s a great question.

Kyle Knowles:
Can you explain that?

Jason Steed:
So art director would work with a team of design creatives, a senior designer and a developer and multimedia specialist and help to work in storyboarding space and concepting, concept boards, and all the fun visual things that take shape. A creative director gets to work with the art director, but also gets to work with the content development and content marketing team, the copywriters and editors. So the creative director just has that extra opportunity to bring those elements together, photographers, videographers, maybe a talent for headshot, video shoots or those kinds of opportunities. So it just becomes they get to aggregate a little bit more, not just in the visual aesthetics side of it.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay, so in a career trajectory or progression, you’d be an art director and then you would move up to creative director? Creative director is the top dog basically?

Jason Steed:
Right, right. I suppose then you could move up from there to VP of marketing, and now you’re working with, besides just that creative team, now you’re working on maybe media buying or placement, or you’re working on journey mapping and of a campaign, you’re looking at maybe a six-month maturity of a campaign or a set of mini campaigns. You may be looking at new product announcement opportunities. You might be delving in a little bit more to getting to know audience segmenting and those kinds of things. So the marketing side of it is definitely a bigger picture than just the creative side of it.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay. Thanks for answering that.

Jason Steed:
Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
So what was your superpower? What was the thing that when you were a maker, what was the thing that you really loved doing and the thing that you brought to the table that was like, “This is my specialty.”?

Jason Steed:
Okay, that is a great question, and I am sure that my on the spot answer is a typography. I love the power of typography. It is not the art of map making, by the way. It is the art of working with type fonts and their position and the choice of them and what they communicate just in and of themselves. The hierarchy of message, the implied sophistication. If you are trying to convey that, that typeface is so essential and supports that, if you want to say accessible and down to earth or gritty or grunge or timeless or wherever your audience is drawn. There’s so much interest, intrigue and power in typography. Also, I’ve always loved visuals, photography as well, the impact that those visuals can have on the page.
So it’s kind of a culmination of the elements that just sit on the page. And my role for many years has been, as I’ve framed it, I’ve been getting rid of the distractions. In design, if I can remove as many distractions as possible, then I’ve created a piece that has a lifespan, that has a shelf life, that has impact and has relevance. So that’s a kind of fun way to look at it, get the things on the page and then question everything. “Can this come away? And if so, what does it do? Oh, no, that needs to stay.” So that art of getting rid of the distractions has been something that I think has served us well as part of our secret sauce, as part of our unique value proposition.

Kyle Knowles:
So would that be considered layout because typography and then the other elements like photography and those things, and then you’re designed by subtraction, basically?

Jason Steed:
Yeah, design by subtraction. It could be layout, when we’re talking about a physical tangible piece, a desktop publishing. In a space of a video, maybe a 30-second sizzle video that wants to just pitch a new product release or a new event in the area, there’s still great opportunities to get rid of distractions in that process. And it’s not all about all of the transitions. Just because they’re available doesn’t mean you should use them. And that’s great. Or even getting rid of the distractions in a 500 word elevator pitch for a creative brief. There’s getting rid of distractions in a timeline, in a storyboard script, in a larger bus wrap in a event, and a post-event promotion in an email trickle campaign. There’s so many opportunities there to just challenge and just simplify.

Kyle Knowles:
And do you get an opportunity to do any of that typography, or is that something on the weekend you’re making something for your family? When you get to do that?

Jason Steed:
Trying to refuel the well? Refill the well? I absolutely get a chance every day.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay.

Jason Steed:
And I love the opportunity that I have-

Kyle Knowles:
So you are still making?

Jason Steed:
I’m making.

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah, okay.

Jason Steed:
What I find is my role right now, and it may continue to evolve and it may become something a little less hands-on, but I have the opportunity to share initial reactions and to help craft and steer and educate and challenge the team members, the creative team on the floor every day with, I’ll do this quick, I call it Frankensteining, and it’s where I just take a screen grab of the progress that’s routed with me, and I’ll just throw it into Photoshop or bring it into whatever app, Illustrator or something on an Adobe platform, and I just start cutting and pushing this flattened art and make a box here and give it a label. And I force something to overlap. I make a mess in the process of just helping to… As a fast, expeditious way of just sharing some ideas to let the eye flow through the piece a little bit more efficiently. Let the call to action, let the dangling carrot be more prominent. It’s just some distractions, just simple things, alignments and margins. And in the desktop publishing space, orphans and widows and rivers and those kinds of things, again, they’re so subconscious.
And I love the pushback that I get when someone will say, “I am not a designer. Why would I even care about the wrap of that paragraph?” And my answer again is, “I can get rid of one more distraction by not having this hanging word or phrase or breaking a paragraph up in a weird way.” You can’t put your finger on it, but I know subconsciously that with simple massaging, this is not reinventing kind of things, simple massaging, all of a sudden you have a piece that just communicates 25% more effectively or captures a larger group or just stays a little longer on the desk or bookmarked or whatever the case may be.

Kyle Knowles:
I can tell you’re very passionate about this and you’re someone that someone would want to bring something to get the feedback because you would really go deep with it and make it better, even if it was just one change that you made.

Jason Steed:
Right. And again, the technician part of me would say, “Why go through the trouble of quick slapping together broken up tiling and sending it back over when I could just open the file and make the connections really quickly myself and send it along?” I think, of course, there’s reward in knowing that there’s mentoring that’s taking place, sharing of the ideas and the method and motivation that I have and how well it’s received, and the chance for the team just to dig in and discover and challenge and say, “You know you couldn’t actually try that with your Frankensteining and here’s what it looks like as you described it.” I’m like, “Yeah, that’s not it. That’s not going to work, is it? Thank you. Thank you for the feedback and the courage to challenge as well.”

Kyle Knowles:
And how do you create that space where people can feel comfortable even just generating ideas, right? Because a lot of times, I’m always saying, “All ideas are welcome here.” Because some of my ideas get the silent treatment basically. So how do you create that space for your team to be willing to share any ideas, even if they’re crazy, and then get to something that’s good?

Jason Steed:
Yeah, it’s a great question, Kyle. I am a big proponent of leading by example. And so the worst ideas, the worst creative ideas… Let me say it this way, I always win on sharing the most bad ideas.

Kyle Knowles:
So you lead with some bad ones, so people are willing to go, “Oh yeah, that was a bad one.”

Jason Steed:
I lead with what I hope are all awesome ideas, inspiring, brilliant ideas. “Oh, Jason, I can see why you’re doing this. I can see what 25 years of experience does.” But truth be known, the stack of ideas, good, bad, and ugly are not necessarily in the order that we want them. And I try just to push them right out of me and just get them on the table. And along with those really bad ideas are some pretty cool ideas and some mediocre things and, “I don’t know.” So that’s why I went out. I have to just bring it all just stream of consciousness, just spit balling, just war rooming, just whatever you call it. Just, “How about this? Oh, that made me think of this. That’s funny, right? Oh, I’m the only one laughing in the room. Okay, that’s not funny.” And that just encourages, “Okay, this is a safe space. Okay, well, I can’t possibly think of an idea dumber than what Jason said, so let’s start talking.” I love those opportunities.

Kyle Knowles:
And even though you’re the manager, you’re the owner, you get a chance to be creative every day?

Jason Steed:
Mm-hmm, yeah, I do.

Kyle Knowles:
And have you made that as a non-negotiable or something that, “I get a chance to be creative every day.”? Or is that just the way it worked out?

Jason Steed:
I think it’s just the way it worked out. I offer value that way. I know it’s a huge value for me to be hands on in the creative discussions. It just is. And I love it. And I learn from our art director, I learn from our designers and our creative content marketing leads and our account admin and our assistant marketing lead, and we all are part of that creative brainstorming process that doesn’t get divided out and, “You guys, you do the creative and we’ll do the budgeting and we’ll do the management and we’ll do the handholding and we’ll do the assessing and the postmortem and all of that.” As our team, I love that we have the luxury in terms of the size of our team to all be involved and to all contribute to that process.
It makes us unique in that sort of un-ad agency way as well, where there’s just not a senior liaison that reports to an account manager that goes to a project manager that then does a brief, and then it gets down at that level and it comes back up for air, or it gets taken into a three-week soundproof room where the big idea is being generated and you just cross your fingers that they don’t use the headline that they used last year. So I love breaking, just really defying those sort of norms or expectations in the ad agency space. So hence that idea and that concept of an un-ad agency. And we do other things as well to really break that norm as well. No stacked billing where four people in a room spending an hour on a project, that can be pretty expensive. That’s like law firm costs sort of things. And we will not do that. We will identify one of the multiple people in a stacked discussion bills and the other one or two or three do not. And that’s fine.
You could say, “Well, that encourages solo working from a productivity standpoint.” Well, yes, from a billable productivity standpoint the metrics say, “Bill as many dollars as you can for the time.” But when it comes down to it, that importance of the team building and the morale and the contributions and the depth of ideas that come from combined thinking and that shared time and those face-to-face moments just are really valuable to us internally. And oh, by the way, they do a lot of good as well as they get out into the field. They do the client good, and they do the customer for the client a lot of good as well. So those are just a few of those un-ad agency things that I just love for us to embrace.

Kyle Knowles:
I love it. You mentioned Heather.

Jason Steed:
Yes.

Kyle Knowles:
And I wanted to just ask you how important a life partner who’s also a business partner is to Targa Media?

Jason Steed:
Yeah, that’s a great question. So Heather, my wife and I, we met in design school at BYU and dated there and got married shortly after we had graduated. And so I think of her as my art director for ideas, and she’s someone I can bounce ideas off of. I love that she hasn’t had to be an integral part of the day to day of the business. I love that the team sees Heather as someone who’s rooting for all of the team and is helping me keep my sanity and keeping me sharp and on my game for the most part. And as well, I get to check in with her from time to time and let her know how we’re doing and let her let me know how I’m doing. So I’m just grateful that she has that space and that we don’t have to overlap that time together. So she’s just the silent and strong partner.

Kyle Knowles:
That’s excellent. And are your kids following in your footsteps with design and music and all things Jason Steed or what? How is that working?

Jason Steed:
Yeah. I remember as a concert pianist with a two-year full ride piano performance scholarship, it was a lot required of me for hours and dedication and sacrifice. And it was the culmination of a lot of being a piano player and not being very adept and coordinated at sports other than Ultimate Frisbee, as you mentioned at the beginning of this. And wow, that felt like I really achieved something and I really broke barriers. And so I knew I knew how to help others find the dedication time and be persistent and the value of something like a real foundational skill in music. I learned as well after about the first year and a half of trying to force hours of practicing from our oldest child, Savannah, who then was 7, 8, 9 years old, that that wasn’t going to happen. That was not the way. I was not productive in that space. I was losing a lot of momentum in forcing that time, that dedication. So I stepped back and I just allowed things to take shape on their time. And so with all of our kids, so bless Vanna’s heart for being willing to be that first child.

Kyle Knowles:
The experimental child, always the oldest.

Jason Steed:
And to step away. And as a result of me really just having music in the home and art in the home. Heather is an amazing artist and craftsman. She is a potter, she is a sculptor, she is a painter, a photographer. So there’s a richness of arts in our household and that has a great power to rub off on the family. And so yeah, Vanna was an excellent percussionist and went on to her first year of college with a percussion degree. And we have a music dance theater major in Erin, our second oldest. And our two boys love the opportunity to just take part in music and be curious in art and sketching and digital artistry and all of that. So that’s been fun to see how that develops. And in fact, our oldest daughter, Vanna, has been for about nine, 10 months full-time with us at Targa Media.

Kyle Knowles:
Doing graphic design?

Jason Steed:
Doing graphic design and multimedia and everything. She is just willing to say yes. She’s willing to say, “I hope so. I’ll try it. I’m curious.”

Kyle Knowles:
Nice.

Jason Steed:
And it’s just a beautiful thing to witness. So she’s been a major contributor with our firm. Out of necessity, I needed her, she was looking for work. She had some great experience in communications and digital sort of experience. And to have her being willing to be the boss’s daughter, for whatever baggage that comes with, the team treats her as one of their own. And there’s just a real kind of a level fun playing field that I witness. I certainly hope that’s the case.

Kyle Knowles:
Well, who’d have thought that a mom and dad who were both graphic designers would produce a graphic designer?

Jason Steed:
It’s true. Up until a year, a year and a half ago, there was a lot of interests for the kids, and I was glad that we didn’t have an agenda for them. And I’m glad to see them picking their own paths from the creative and arts side of things, to music, dance, theater, to engineering for our older son, and just a nice variety.

Kyle Knowles:
Nice. I’ve so enjoyed talking to you tonight. I’ve learned so much. I wanted to ask you just to give a 30-second tell and sell about design because designers now have a kind of seat at the table. You see chief design officers at big brands now, and they’re not just off in the corner, they actually sometimes have a corner office and they’re sitting around the executive table with the CEO and others. How important is design to a company?

Jason Steed:
Right. Yeah, it’s a great question. I think as you try to establish brand equity consistency in your message, obviously that can come from various directions. That can come from brand strategy and marketing and audience research, and it can come from sales and a lot of places. I think design just is a very powerful way of simplifying the intent of the brand, simplifying the unique value proposition. Simplifying, I don’t mean to imply that mitigates its impact. It’s very powerful. Design is what embodies the entire vision statement and mission statement of a Fortune 500 company in the form of a logo on a baseball hat. That’s a pretty tall order. What a cool… It’s an honor to be able to take part and take on something like that. And so from a design standpoint, you could talk about product design that has a different look and a different intent that comes down to more kind of the schematics and maybe the user experience and so forth.
But from a design, a visual aesthetic standpoint, yeah, for sure, there’s a real need for that critical thinking for those basic pragmatic principles of design balance and design theory. I think of my design textbooks from college. I remember buying them, cringing for the $40 a book price tag back in 1995, ’96, picking up these books on typography and balance and color theory. And it’s hard to see that that’s still being taught and valued, but it continues to be a timeless value add to a company. So firms really do seek that out. Companies really do seek out the longevity that smart design balance and design aesthetics can bring to a brand. Yeah, there’s my 30 seconds. Plus a minute.

Kyle Knowles:
Thank you. So if you were going to start a business today, what three books would you use as your board of advisors? You can only choose three.

Jason Steed:
Three books. I would pick Tribes by Seth Godin.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay.

Jason Steed:
And I would pick Start with Why by Simon Sinek. And I think actually those two books are so powerful that I wouldn’t need a third.

Kyle Knowles:
Wow. That’s great.

Jason Steed:
Kudos to those two authors.

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah, no kidding.

Jason Steed:
Probably something from Guy Kawasaki as maybe an ebook. From Guy Kawasaki.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay. Selling the Dream, I think is one of his.

Jason Steed:
Yeah, he was with Adobe for a while and have had a chance to bump into him a couple of times.

Kyle Knowles:
Oh wow. You’ve met him before?

Jason Steed:
Yes. Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
That’s really cool. All right, let’s go straight to the lightning round. Favorite candy bar?

Jason Steed:
Favorite candy bar is Whatchamacallit.

Kyle Knowles:
Favorite musical artist?

Jason Steed:
I would say Toto.

Kyle Knowles:
Favorite cereal?

Jason Steed:
Honeycomb.

Kyle Knowles:
Mac or PC?

Jason Steed:
Mac.

Kyle Knowles:
Google Gmail and Workspace or G-Suite, or Microsoft Outlook and Office?

Jason Steed:
Probably not Microsoft. So whatever other options are on the list. G-Suite.

Kyle Knowles:
Dogs or cats?

Jason Steed:
Dogs.

Kyle Knowles:
Phantom or Les Mis?

Jason Steed:
Oh man. Phantom.

Kyle Knowles:
Good answers.

Jason Steed:
Those are good. Some of those I was lightning and some of them was a little slower on the [inaudible 01:04:25].

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah, took you a little bit. Took you a little bit. So where can people find you and Targa Media? And also we’ve got to get to this, the ’80s livestream.

Jason Steed:
Sure, of course.

Kyle Knowles:
Tuesday Night Music Club ’80s livestream. Where can they find you at?

Jason Steed:
This has been a lot of fun. Heather and I just had this thing in the back of our heads, “What if we just took requests and did our best job at attempting them?” And so that took form about a year ago as our Improving the ’80s Nights.

Kyle Knowles:
And do you have backing tracks? Are you just a drum machine, you’re on guitar, piano, what’s happening?

Jason Steed:
It is so crazy. No backing tracks, no drum machine, no chords, no sheet music, no chord charts. We use lyrics from an iPad. As a request comes in, we hit the mute button for 30 seconds to let our smart speaker get it in our heads. We’ll have a drummer, Scott has been our drummer for a long time, and we have other drummers. And then we have a guest vocalist or two who’s just a good friend from community theater or the neighborhoods, and we just unmute and we just go to town.
I’m the pianist. If I hear if I’ve heard a song, my left hand knows the chord structure, at least a fairly good semblance of it. My right hand knows the intervals for the melody lines and the guitar solos on a keyboard. And we just jump in and we see how far we can get without crashing and burning. It’s a real blast. It’s so fun. I have this fun husband and wife thing that we just kind of thrive off of. It doesn’t take big commitment of time. We don’t have to rehearse. And you can find more on either YouTube or Twitch at Improv80s is our

Kyle Knowles:
That’s 8-0?

Jason Steed:
8-0-S, yes. Improving the ’80s. Almost improving, but not quite. It’s really just improving, improvising.

Kyle Knowles:
So Improv80s?

Jason Steed:
Improv80s, yeah?

Kyle Knowles:
On Twitch?

Jason Steed:
On Twitch and YouTube.

Kyle Knowles:
And then you have to be friends to do the Facebook?

Jason Steed:
And then Facebook is obviously I’m always streaming public, so if they found facebook.com/jesteed. Then on Tuesday nights you’d catch the livestream. And that’s where we’re looking for requests, on the fly requests. That’s where our live requests are coming from.

Kyle Knowles:
From Facebook?

Jason Steed:
Yeah, from Facebook. Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
Awesome.

Jason Steed:
But it’s been fun to toy with the technologies and again, just have a family, husband and wife kind of a thing going on.

Kyle Knowles:
Awesome. And I will include links to Targa Media and all things Jason Steed and the Improv80s on the show notes. But thank you, Jason, for being so generous with your time. I hope you have another 20 anniversaries plus at Targa Media. And I look forward to seeing the great things you and your team do in the future.

Jason Steed:
Kyle, bless you for all the work you do to put these together. This has been a real honor. Thank you.

Kyle Knowles:
Thank you for being here tonight.

Jason Steed:
You bet.