A Conversation with Darren Magarro of DSM Agency
Darren Magarro, founder of the innovative DSM Agency, had some fascinating founder insights to share about jumping off the cliff and building on the way down.We covered email, digital marketing, real-time content, teams, management and a host of side topics!
TRANSCRIPT
Matthew Dunn
Good afternoon. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the future of email marketing and my guest today coming from New York if I'm not mistaken. Darren McGarry president and founder of DSM a, I had to say I looked at your record one heck of a fast rising agency. Darren, welcome.
Darren Magarro
Thank you very much. It's great to be here.
Matthew Dunn
Nice connect and have a live conversation on zoom. We do all this all day, right?
Darren Magarro
Yeah, we actually I got to represent though we're not in New York. We're in northern New Jersey, Northern
Matthew Dunn
New Jersey. Okay, thank you, Jersey. You know, on this side of the Mississippi on the west side of the Mississippi, we lump it all together. It's like that New Yorker magazine was you know, New York and and, yeah, this is like that. Feel people in a bit on on on DSM. Um, you're the founder, the guy in charge, and you guys have been at this for a good long stretch.
Darren Magarro
It was 14 years. February 7. Yeah. No, literally came from the Manhattan the big agency world. to boil it down, you know, really simply cave, I got married, no five, decided that I didn't want to travel. I was working on Toyota at the time. So obviously, the clients out in California, was spending part of my time out there and just didn't want to do it came and decided to move to an agency here in New Jersey, was there about six months. And as every ridiculously dumb entrepreneur decides there's got to be a better way to do it. Yeah. So I bought my laptop and went to IKEA bought a desk, and my wife and mother in law were down in Florida on vacation at the time, we didn't have kids. And it was a Friday night, and I waited for them to call and I was like, Hey, I'm starting an agency. My wife is like, okay, like next year, and I was like, nope, Monday.
Matthew Dunn
That's a great story, honey. Hi, guess what?
Darren Magarro
Yeah, wow. Yeah, there was a silence. They were out at dinner. Like a 32nd. Silence. And I was like, I got it all figured out. And I was like, I had nothing figured out.
Matthew Dunn
And the impulse was there.
Darren Magarro
Yeah, the impulse was there, through. You know, I call it serendipity. Just through that, you know, my strength is building relationships. And, you know, in talking to people, and, you know, we hustled our way through the first year. And by the second year, we were, you know, grossing probably a half a million, and it was just good. Now, we, we really specialize in like businesses that are, and it's evolved over time. I mean, we have some national clients now, but it really started as an agency to the reason I rent New Jersey, I say, I read New Jersey, is because we're about 25 miles out of Manhattan. And we're kind of like New Jersey is like men, you know, like New York City's little stepchild. Right. Right. So we really worked hard to, you know, the state, there's a lot of great agencies in New Jersey. And over the last 14 years, we've worked hard to, to build that up, and, you know, through through relationships, and the team and our team is every, every CEO is going wherever, you know, President is going to be biased to their team. But yeah, you know, we're only a 15 person shop and oh, well, we're really good at what we do. Yeah, that's, that's been the impetus for growth.
Matthew Dunn
Wow. Well, that's, that's good for you. Right? We went out, went to IKEA got the desk and went for it. And um, was it just you at the start?
Darren Magarro
Oh, yeah. I actually, it was funny, because I had a buddy of mine, who was a designer from the agency who was still working at the agency I came from, and in his, you know, off hours at night, you would moonlight as my creative guy. Oh, wow. And then about that was like, March in October, I met our creative director, who since moved on from the agency, but um, but yeah, we were together for, you know, he came in October of Oh, seven. And we started in like, a formal arrangement in January, oh, eight. And then we through other people, I met our SVP of accounts through being on the board of an animal shelter. You know, just, that's how that's how it came to be. Now you're giving a name
Matthew Dunn
and things and people attract people, they're, they're gonna that they should attract, right? Kind of in the world. Um, this is an oddball question to ask, but and I'm thinking in terms of people who are who are listening who may go, Hmm, what's an agency do like, paint that picture for someone or what's your agency do?
Darren Magarro
We're a full service agency so agencies can be the thing I love about an agency is it could be anything you want it to be. Okay. It's a blank canvas. What I will tell you is that a good agency, I think There's three pillars to a good agency. And it has nothing to do with whether they're a creative agency or a digital marketing agency or a traditional agency or an SEO agency. Okay. And agency, if it's one person or it's 50 people, they should one be transparent with with the client. So not have a problem with saying no, I think that a lot of agencies get into a lot of trouble, because they don't have the confidence to say no, to to a potential client or to a client that they're working with. They get steamrolled to, they should make life easy for a client, the whole purpose of a good agency is, you know, there's there's two ways to go about it. Either you're gonna hire somebody internally, to run a department, or you're going to hire an agency to be able to do that. An agency with regards to payroll taxes, all that stuff. Usually, if you find a good agency, you know, a lot of our clients, we've been around for 14 years, some of our clients have been with us for the full 14 years. Well, it was literally like me hustling, like friends and family in my hometown. And I think, like people felt sorry for me at the beginning. Like they're like, yeah, we'll throw you a project or something. And then over time, it builds up and we provided value. And really, that's the third thing. A good agency should provide value. Yeah, no matter what they do, they should be transparent. They should be, you know, making your life easier. And they should be providing value, whatever service they do, they should do it well, and they should, they should do it. with honesty and integrity.
Matthew Dunn
It's good philosophy, honestly, good, good philosophy and good approach for for any business, but especially nice to hear it laid out for an agency like that. You got, you've got to have, you've got to know how to do some stuff that would be expensive to try and replicate in the in house department alternative, right?
Darren Magarro
Usually, yes. Yeah. Usually. Yeah, usually. I mean, what we've found over time has been I use the word ally, it's an evolution. You know, on the digital side, we started primarily, my background was in television. So I was a media buyer and television for accounts like Toyota. And you know, this was I graduated college in 2000. So my early years of this agency, were primarily all traditional media, whether radio, TV, you know, billboards, whatever, you know, whatever was about 2013 ish. I had a another guy I went to high school with came to us was laid off from a job, and, you know, put together two decks for our clients and said, I think I could bring value. And that was the talk about serendipity. hadn't seen the guy in like, 12 1012 years. And I was like, all right, yeah, we came in on a Thursday brought the decks and it wasn't looking for an interview looking to start his own agency. And I was like, You're not leaving the office till you sign a contract? What and God,
Matthew Dunn
he up, so he opened up. Sounds like he opened you up into new new forms of media as well.
Darren Magarro
Yeah. So and when he came on, he opened up the digital side of the agency. Okay. And from 2013 till now, that's been, really the evolution. I mean, the digital side, it's probably 80 to 85% of our business now. Yeah. You know, on the full service side, we still have a creative team in house, we still have an in house developer, you have account managers, we have our SVP of accounts that runs the traditional side, with, you know, with my help when when needed. But we're really nimble. We, we moved into a new office in 2017, with about 22 people, and we've doubled the size of the business, and we're now 15 people. So we've learned to, it's a testament and credit to the two women that I have on an honor staff, our CFO, Charlene and our CEOs, Anka, they came in. And I think in learning from my mentor, the number one rule that he taught me, he had a 35 year career at Viacom, and he said, You need to know when to let go and to give things to people that are better than you. Yeah, they're more proficient at it. Yeah. And Cynthia came in and really streamline the operations and Charlene came in and you know, really took over the financials, took it off my plate, and now here we are to inc 5000s later and, you know, doubling the size of the company, and we're just, we're doing really great work. Yeah, with a really great team. Yeah. And we're efficient at doing it.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, well, 15 to 15 to 10, you know, 15 people to tackle that. And he mentioned the ink award, which I'd noted, I think on your LinkedIn profile you got it got to be doing stuff right on, how do you how do you and maybe what you can focus on last year on. You've got to you've got the varying demands of clients in the marketplace that you're trying to help them in. You've got a world kind of turned upside down in the middle of pandemic, you've got, obviously talented people that you work with on a team. How do you how do you how do you keep them reined back in and balanced out so that you keep that going for the long run?
Darren Magarro
We built it into the culture of the agency. A lot of the folks at DSM are New York City expats. So I'll give you an example our our CEO of Zynga, she was working at Conde Nast prior to coming to DSM lives in suburban New Jersey has two kids, and we've put at at our core work life balance. So if you were not for everybody, you know, if you want to grind it out, you want to get a lot of young kids, they want to be in Manhattan, they you know, and I and I encourage them to do that I encourage anybody young to get, you know, experience at a big agency, it was, you know, phenomenal. For me, it gave me a sort of set the the fundamental groundwork for what I need to do on a daily basis now.
But we're an enclave for New York City experts. Yeah, that we put a value on work life balance.
Matthew Dunn
So Nice, nice. That may. And that may, you know, building that into the get go, obviously, it's not like you can paste it on later. But I would think that that would have been an advantage in the middle of the, you know, in the middle of the turbulence of the last year, like people kind of have their feet on the ground and who are members of your team and at the company. Has New Jersey seem to set New Jersey I would guess hasn't been affected the way I've read about, like Manhattan being affected by people just saying, okay, pick up stakes, I can do this remote job from somewhere else.
Darren Magarro
For us, it was easy, honestly, I mean, and I don't say that in a, in a disregarding kind of way. We live in the suburbs of New Jersey. So it's been like the opposite. For us. There's been an influx of, you know, older folks selling their homes here that have been here for you know, my friend's parents getting offers on their houses for ridiculous amounts of money, because people just wanted out of Manhattan. And you know, they picked up and went to South Carolina or Florida or wherever they were
Matthew Dunn
wherever. Yeah,
Darren Magarro
yeah, Ross, for us, the transition was seamless. And that, you know, we have, we're pretty close to the New York state border. Okay, so we have a few of folks in the agency who work and live in New York State and working in New Jersey. Okay, um, transit, the hardest part of the transition for us was moving our designers Big Macs out of, like, into their cars. And, you know, we were up and running day two. Yeah, yeah. But it's, you know, everything has affected people differently. You know, we have young folks on our staff that are, you know, just moving into their first condo or whatever, that, you know, boyfriends or girlfriends. Yeah. All the way to folks, like, you know, myself and some of the older folks in the agency that you know, are married, have mortgages have kids, so everybody and everything in between?
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, that's it. This is Ben and it's a little when you're when you're suddenly have to work. You have to work out of this place. The physical particulars of the place start to matter in a really different way. You know, work from home sounded glamorous, I think for some folks into they went, Oh, yeah. Oh, I need a chair that doesn't stink. You know, I really need the big monitors. If I'm a designer developer, I cannot do the work on some squidgy little laptop screen and that kind of stuff. Yeah.
Darren Magarro
Yeah, I think for us, like I said, Charlene, and zinc have done a really good job of it. And as some of the middle management folks, we've, we've given them the opportunity to, like, participate more in in the management process and seeing that it's not like, easy. But I yeah, but I think for us a big testament to why it's been pretty seamless, is we kind of met everybody where they were at, okay, you know, whatever your situation was, as long as you were getting your work done, and you were being responsible. Right, right. You know, we're not the biggest staff so it was a matter of trust, trusting your kids with you know, first time they're doing stuff.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah, that you know, it's uh, I've always said hire for character who teach other stuff. You can't teach that you can't teach the soft skills. Not not Yeah, not really. And and in a in an era where whatever you're working on, you will be working on something different, you will have to learn skills within the next, you know, year months, whatever, you better back on the soft skills and get the attitude of learn stuff. I mean, you just mentioned taking an agency from, you know, the older forms of media into digital. And that's now the dominant piece of the business. So you had to learn a bunch of stuff about that yourself along with the team obviously,
Darren Magarro
had to learn a lot about it. But I also trusted a big part of it was trusting the people that were, were getting it up and running, and not like sticking my nose where it didn't belong. I think there's a very fine line for any leader that's going through it, you know, like, be a part of it and know that you got your peoples back. Yeah. But also like, stay the heck out of the way. not want it? Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. Yeah. What, you know, top line impressions, incredibly complex subject, but having the having the time, and work and background in traditional media now spending more time on the digital side? what's, what surprised you about it? And what do you what what do you find is very much the same in some fundamental ways.
Darren Magarro
The surprises in the digital world, just because everything moves so quickly, again, every time you're, you know, our strategy director in the digital team, like, though, you know, they'll want to test everything all the time. Right. Right. You staff, you know, you'll think like, Hey, we just bought a piece of software like three weeks ago, like, but there's something else that I know, yeah, we want to test that. And yeah, so it's, it's being flexible enough to give them the, you know, having them having the trust and the the means to be able to have the, you know, the best that they can in order to do their job. Yeah, I think that's important. The fundamental, you know, thing that sort of never changes. Again, I go back to what I was saying at the beginning. It's a transparency element. You know, we've been doing this for 14 years, we've made mistakes, like, Own your mistake, you know, and I think that's important. And it's a reason why our clients have stayed with us. Like, there's nothing worse than when you're having an experience is something something goes wrong, and somebody won't own up to it. Yeah, like, we all make mistakes. It's Yeah, you know, we're human beings, but own up to it do better next time, and, you know, put forth the effort, I've never had a client that's gotten mad at us for owning up to a mistake. And like saying, we're going to do better, they might, you know, the initial reaction might be upsetting or angry, once they process it, and they're like, wow, these guys are owning it. And they're, you know, they're willing to take it on the chin, and they're willing to do better. That's where I think the rubber meets the road.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. Well, it also that, you know, the strengths of that sort of relationship first values first approach gives you gives you latitude to, to make the mistakes without which learning is just impossible, by, you know, the first first agency that and I'm making this up right first agency that said, you know, we can help you get website visibility on search engines, which, you know, at one point was a novel proposition, right? Probably made a ton of mistakes and didn't really know how to do it. But they, you know, knew that there was some value there, and we'll figure it out for you or with you, together as we get there. And you got to have some tolerance for that. I was talking with cash kinnaman what the conversation was a bunch of email marketers on a on a zoom call the other day. And one of the questions I threw at them is like hat, email, folks. Not necessarily agency folks. I'm sure they feel the same way. But email folks like big production shops, lots and lots of email. I said, you guys are always so busy working your like, production demands are so incessant, that I don't see a lot of I don't see as much appetite for experimentation in your field as I think you need. And they all kind of nail Yeah, you're right. Right. It's kind of the nature of the beast tech. We're too busy. And I said, if you don't build that in, if you don't build the latitude that we have to try stuff. We can't just keep repeating the same thing. Sooner or later it's going to start to fizzle out. Right? Can't cannot because the world moves on.
Darren Magarro
It's like anything else. You know, like what, what we've learned and what we give, you know, the team again, we have the largest digital marketing team, but you know, we're a HubSpot partner. We get it. Yeah, we you know, to go to inbound virtually this year, and you know, that stuff is locked in and it's like, looks like a given. Yeah, you guys need to be doing this stuff in order to not only learn what's going on in the in the In the world of digital marketing, but like, there's so many great speakers and a large part, I think of what gets missed. This is like my, my whole focus here is more of like a brand ambassador now. And, you know, it's for both DSM and for our clients and getting out of like, your comfort zone and, and, and getting involved in things that you know, at first you're like, this doesn't really interest me, you're like, but they kind of need to know about it in order to like, stay up with the, with your staff and, you know, digital marketing for me, like I'm not I'm by far the probably one of the least expert, you know, people at DSM. Okay, but the team that we have there, it's important that they're bought into what we're doing. And to, you know, from the leadership from the top down, to get that empowerment to like, want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. I just I believe in that all heartedly.
Matthew Dunn
I've seen on the brand ambassador comments. Good, good, good, good moniker. Um, and let's intersect that with HubSpot. I want to I want to see your thoughts about a particular area. Marketing now gets itself involved with questions of privacy and control in a way that I don't think it did in a more massive broadcast era. And you end up making surprisingly, ethics calls at times in marketing decisions. He comments on that.
Darren Magarro
Yeah, I mean, with regards to what we're doing, I mean, we joke that HubSpot, like I can tell with our marketing down to probably the within five minutes of when somebody is going to call us like a new lead. Right, which, which is scary. And it's very big brother. Yeah. But our agency and the world in digital marketing is driven by data. And without having that data, we're not able to make our us and our our clients are not able to make educated guesses. It's completely turned the traditional landscape into something that like I said, like, just through landing pages with HubSpot, and the back end, and you know, all those Yeah, all those touch points that we have with somebody during the sales process. Yeah. Like I can see when they're gonna call I know who they are. It's actually connecting me with people that have since moved away from my hometown that like, I've, I've known, you know, I went to grade school with and are now like, reaching out for marketing. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's the, it's the way the world's going it's big brother to say the least, you know, but it, that data, helps educate our clients and helps us and, you know, not in an unethical way, I would certainly never purport to you know, have our clients reach out in unethical ways and things like that. But yeah, one of our mottos when we're building good content for search engine optimization, or, or just content in general for paid social or Google ads, or whatever it may be. stop selling and start helping. Yeah, like, if you if you build your content in a way that is helpful to your consumer, not only is it going to be good for the consumer, which is going to build your brand authority with them, but Google's going to love it, because that's what they want.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. And they'll see the time on page and, and signals like that. Yeah. It were instrumented up and spewing data in a way that I, I'm not sure any of us ever imagined. And so let's get your hands around. And it can be it can be scary for people, I think for everybody. But I think for people who feel like they're, you know, feel like they're in less control, but don't really understand how it all works. And at the same time, we're all opting in and you know, some sense, I had a a friend Oh, I asked him about when this this, the state we live in Washington, introduced the opt in reporting in the early days of COVID. So that, you know, if I had been near someone, and it was a Google my Google and Apple project if I had been near someone and they turned up with positive infection, that I would get an alert that I had been there something like that. And I said to my friend, you know, are you going to turn that on? He was like, No, no way. Like, why? Well, I don't be tracked. They said, you're carrying a cell phone in your pocket, and you don't want to be tracked. reconcile these things for me, would you like your
Darren Magarro
it's the way it does? Yeah. It's It's It's a, it's a powerful instrument that is with you all the time. You're on it. We have a 12 year old daughter, and we're just getting into that phase where she'll be out his phone. Yeah, yeah. She's on it all the time. Yeah. And you know, her response cuz my wife and I, she works for her family business. They've been around for like, 117 years. I tell my, my own business. She's like, well, you guys are on it all the time. And I'm like, Okay, well, we're not talking to friends. We're actually doing like some work and, you know, doing the important stuff like checking sports scores and things. Yeah, yeah.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's a that's a there's an on ramp. That's that's part of the decision is a parent's got to be even tougher. Now. Most of my sons are older than that. But that sort of what amount of what amount of connectivity? How many devices, how much time on them. And the line is gonna keep shifting back. I mean, I hear of elementary school kids with smartphones in their pockets. It's like, it's not actually that surprising to hear now. I was glad when mine were in high school that I could go. Okay. Yeah, he's still at school. Fine with him crazy, but I like being able to know, right? Yeah,
Darren Magarro
it's, it's, it's finding a balance. It's absolutely important. Again, I'm sort of, you know, our 12 year old is the oldest, so we're just starting to get into this. Yeah. But behind them, I have a 10 year old and then I have a 66 year old. Yeah. So I can't even imagine what it's going to be in six years when my youngest is, you know, in the sixth grade. Yeah. You know, it's, it's scary. But, you know, that's, that's the way the world is going. There's parts of my job that I absolutely love, because they think, you know, like, digital marketing, they think it's like, the coolest thing ever. Yeah. But, you know, it's, it's, it's finding balance. I think that's a really good word that you use, striking a balance and, and having an understanding, and I think it's applicable for for us with the agency with our clients. Sure. Oh, yeah, absolutely. How do you know, we would never cross that ethical line. But it's like, all this stuff. And it's amazing when you see the face of somebody who's been primarily in like the traditional world, and is making the jump for the first time in the digital world. And they're like, we can know this. And we, like, how did you, you know, we joke with some of our clients that we signed, we're like, we knew you're gonna call. They're like, how do you know, we were gonna call? Like, cuz I'm tracking every single business as well. We do. Yeah. Like, I'm literally tracking you page by page through the website. Yeah. And we show them that the first time they're like, Oh, my gosh,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, it's pretty cool. It is cool. And in a minute, it is, uh, stuff works, it is not going to go well, though. We are. I mean, at the moment, you and I are talking here, we're at a turning of a corner with Apple turning off the idfa and starting to ask for app permissions. And that's more complicated than it looks. But that's a simple version of it. And then third party cookies, in theory, starting to disappear like that, that the the wild west of tracking everything. We're starting to put up some barbed wire, and we're starting to put up some, you know, some laws and regs and things like that. And I think we need to keep asking the questions and doing that deliberately instead of ignoring it.
Darren Magarro
100% agree, especially with with two young daughters, I think it's slowly Yeah, you know, it's it's super important. On the other side of it, it's where, you know, it's like, with everything, I don't know, I always come back to it. And I it sounds cliche, but it's like, everything needs a happy medium. Yeah. You know, it's like the pendulum swings way too far one way, then you have to bring it back. And you have to find out where it is, then it gets like way too far the other way. And so finding that happy medium, I think is a good way of putting it in. You know, we'll see how it goes.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll see. And we'll we'll we'll figure out how to make it go. As well, because we're talking about such a profound and large scale set of changes. We're not going to get it right, right off the bat. We'll start legislating and we'll go up that was too far. There's too much. There were some I have to say we made some relatively good decisions, I think in in the 90s. The DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, gave us latitude to let this thing grow, because we didn't know what it was gonna be. And you know, in the rearview mirror that 26 words in Section 230 looked we looked just brilliant. I was probably throw away at the time almost. And now we're going all right, do we need to change that? Pull it in a little bit? Well, let's keep talking about and figure it out. Right. We make the rules for ourselves collectively, as the process right? Yeah, it's a it's
Darren Magarro
a living breathing thing. And yeah, it's similar to it's similar to the marketing that we do you know, are we going to bat 1000 on every you know, every campaign, we do know that. But the beauty of it is that we can fail fast and we can learn quick. Yeah. And we can apply that learning to doubling down on the things that are working and pulling, you know, things away from the things that don't.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, there's the the cycle time of marketing must be just insanely faster than it was, you know, when you started your agency, like, boom, boom, boom, boom, and, and, and the level of informativeness, right, the level of data driven decision making, it's just a completely different ballgame. And media was a statistics game, predigital, you know, Nielsen households and whatnot. It's like, okay, probably this we don't know for sure. And now, you're, you're tracking my pics, you're tracking me on the website? And gonna call?
Darren Magarro
Yeah, you're, you know, back in my, you're taking me back to my old agency days with with Nielsen numbers, but it was the household universe and then demographic with those demographic, you know, you know, numbers and things like that. But now, it's I mean, our strategy director on Facebook and Instagram, I mean, the level of targeting that he could put in a house is scary.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's really, it's scary. But it's also incredibly efficient, right? It's like, Oh, it's we shouldn't spend your ad money on, you know, your your ad money for, you know, outdoor gear on people who don't do that, like, that would be dumb. And so if we can avoid it, we will? Yeah,
Darren Magarro
yeah, absolutely. It's a big part of, it's a big part of our pitch. I mean, it's a big part of why, why we've been successful, it's, it's, it's a big part of the value that we bring to the table. You know, if you have an agency, and, and they're not bringing that sort of level of expertise to the table, yeah. You know, might want to rethink what you're doing, because what they're doing, we're not, we're not the biggest agency. And again, we can we can bring a level of pretty granular information. Yeah, who are clients that really makes it useful?
Matthew Dunn
Have you had in, in, in growing the digital side of the practice? In last, you know, X number of years? Have you had to increase the sort of science and quant skill set or personnel set a bunch? Because you're talking about math and data at a pretty big scale when you're doing marketing?
Darren Magarro
Now? Oh, it's a no. What we've done is really brought in good humans that understand people. So, you know, marketing, as they call it, you know, it's the perfect balance of art and science. Yeah, the science that we bring to the table we're doing so with software that we use that is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for us. Yeah. And what I think the beauty of at least good marketing is, is taking that data and bringing it to life. So you need to have a really good team of people that are good human beings that understand the human persona, to take that data and bring it to life. That's where like the art and the science meet, and it becomes beautiful music.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. Nice. Nice. nicely put, yeah, and you're right about the tools. And that's a you can hire a heck of a lot of brainpower these days. In the form of software.
Darren Magarro
Yes. It's like it's it's made us it's what has made us extremely efficient, and, and is kept our headcount count down. Yeah. I mean, the level of overhead is significantly less, because of what you can do because of the tool. Our team is so dangerous. Yeah. And we, you know, with our people there, they're able to do now what, probably 20 years ago would have taken like 50 people that Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
you've Right, right. And and with an even higher level of precision and an even faster cycle time, then, you know, the new 50 people a long time, you know, not that long ago, but a while back, yeah, interesting. I've been a nut. I like I enjoy the data and quants stuff I don't have the background for doing it. I'm making, you know, making it up as I go. But I'm a longtime student of visual communication and visualization and it tickles me know in to see the march of the tableau and similar tools of taking all the bits and bytes in ones and sixes and starting to make them patterns we can look at and find meaning and tell stories from because you're not you know, you're not going to get it out of the mass of the data in the raw you need to see it you need to put it in front of your eyes in some way.
Darren Magarro
It's taking all that info again, marketing is marketing and that you know, like I think people overcomplicate it. It's really about taking data in behavior and marrying it to like a beautiful art form. Making it visually appealing and things like that. Yeah. And if you can, I don't care how many people you can do with one person, if you can, if you can make that connection. You're you're touching, you'll be able to touch someone's soul.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. And that can that's the word right there connection. Yeah, you're right, you're right. It's like, em, will we're putting it in words, or we're putting it in, in in images, or the combination of those things, but we're really trying to do is, you know, fire that thing that says, Wait a minute, you and I have something, you know, have something between us that that works or is a value where, you know, we do business on the basis of that or something like that.
Darren Magarro
It's the age. It's the age old question of, you know, it doesn't matter what age you're in. Yeah, you have what I need. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. You have what I need. Well
Matthew Dunn
put, yeah,
Darren Magarro
yeah. If you have what I need, and you're, and I trust you, I'm probably going to buy from you. Yeah, I may ask some questions. But like, the brands that I buy, yeah. They're very limited. Because I, you know, I just, that's what I like. Yeah. You know, they mean something to me. Never imagined. Yeah. And they've and they've earned it by either, you know, good visuals, or, you know, they're useful or whatever, you know, whatever that inflection point is, or was that that caught my attention?
Matthew Dunn
Nice. Nice. Hey, completes complete curveball for you. You were a history major in college? Yes. Yeah. You find any one? Do you find any time for continuing learning reading history? I mean, it's all at your fingertips now. And how's that? How's that helped you?
Darren Magarro
My history. I went to Lehigh University, where I transferred into Lehigh University. In 2000, sorry, 90, I'm dating myself now. 97. And it's a big engineering school. And the only way I could get through it, I'm not a math guy was history. I always loved history. I was always in like, AP history in high school. Yeah. I am a historical type of I still have, you know, I don't read as much of it as I did in college or whatever. But I love the history of the industry. You know, the whole Mad Men thing and yeah, you know, love the show. And just going back to like, the early days and reading about it and reading about how it was and, you know, it's it's romanticized, in a way, but it's, you know, there's, there's a beauty to it, that, that you can see the evolution and sort of that, what you were talking about the patterns of, you know, what you're seeing and what worked and what didn't, and what you like, and what you don't like, a lot of the history part now for me, has come in. I was last night, I got a National Geographic, they had a special on pirates, and my son who's 10 years old, like, loves pirates. And so we started reading about all the different pirates in you know, the, you know, like, Black Beard in, in, in the Americas and pirates in Europe going all the way back to ancient, you know, yeah, ancient Greece. And it's just really, there's still an element and entertainment element for me. And it's, I'm pumped that he enjoys it, too. Yeah, yeah, I've been having I'm, like, read a section of the National Geographic about, like, you know, Pirates of the Caribbean and yeah. And then it's, like, read it back to me and tell me what it's about. And like, I'm learning things that I didn't know that, you know, I didn't do pirates or anything. When I did my, my senior thesis. I didn't study that stuff. But it's history tells us a lot about the future. And so there's always something that ties us with that fabric. So yeah, yeah, I enjoyed snow. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn
And, and, you know, the, the Mad Men who were figuring out how the the new landscape of primarily television is, as the media changed at that point, like, it's not like there's a rulebook, they were figuring it out. And some of them very, very ingeniously. And we're trying to do that in this you know, fractured landscape of the digital in the same way it's like we did it's not it's not cut and dried. There's a lot of creativity and improvisation and mistake making to say how can we how can we make this work on you know, do this on Instagram or via Facebook or what whatever like it, it takes some some pioneering work, especially when the media is very, very new and very raw to do that. My my My son's back, go, you know, sort of early teen years, just something like that. I remember they, they stumbled across a Windows game called Sid Meier's pirates. And they still talk about it now over a decade later, one how good it was, even though it's relatively crude in, it's not gaming in the way gaming is, you know, meant today. Like, it was great, it was fun to play, to see I know more about Caribbean geography than from playing that game, you might see if there's a, see if there's a place that's got that available to your son, because they just they really got glued to it. And they still talk about it a decade later.
Darren Magarro
It's it's those things that, I think an important part about what you said, you know, very simply, without failure, there is no progress. And I think that's a big part of what our industry is about. as frustrating as it is times and, you know, unnerving as it could be when you can't seem to find the answer.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. unpredict that's,
Darren Magarro
that's where progress happens. Yeah, I've seen it countless times over the last 14 years,
Matthew Dunn
and you get a little smarter as you go along. Well, are you going to do a speed round before we wrap up? I guarantee it won't hurt. Sure. Okay, he's up for speed round. always up for speed. Right. So dogs, cats, both or neither? Dogs because I'm allergic to cats. Okay, there you go. A name a favorite place.
Darren Magarro
The place I'm going to tomorrow? Playa Del Carmen Mexico. Beautiful. The people are amazing. Then there are a bunch of times the food is fantastic. Yeah, just it's very old world meats kind of new world. Yeah, it's not it's not glamorous, but it's just really nice. And the people are awesome. And it's our you know, my wife and I it's our happy place
Matthew Dunn
is your happy place. Oh, that's fantastic that you're going there on. Okay. Last speed round question. Favorite or current favorite book or author? Oh,
Darren Magarro
I actually just got done with Matthew. Matthew McConaughey. His book. Oh, yeah. green lights. Yeah. It's kind of like a him telling the story of basically from dazed and confused when he like, got his first shot and acting. Yeah. All the way to now. And although, you know, like his parents and growing up in Texas, and it's a really awesome book. Oh, good. Amanda. And I'm not a I'm not a like a reader per se. I enjoy reading but like, I don't do it all the time. I don't do it as much as I used to. Yeah, but great green lights by Matthew McConaughey was fantastic.
Matthew Dunn
Excellent. Thanks for the recommendation that the kids bedroom, in dazed and confused, is actually the bedroom of a buddy of mine from Austin. He didn't tell me that until like 30 years later. Oh, yeah. You remember that bedroom and days and give you that was mine. They were low scouting locations and What? Really? Yeah, really? Really?
Darren Magarro
It's Yeah, my like, that was that movie came out. And I think 95 Yeah, I was my senior year of high school. And I was born it was it took place in 77. the year I was born. And there's just so many parallels. It's like, I still want like tomorrow when I get on the plane. That's like my go to every time I get on a plane fired up. I love it.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, because he was a student. I was in grad school at UT Austin. And he was a student there, I think at roughly the same time and didn't over overlap with him or anything. But he wasn't well, he wasn't. Was it super well known or famous? You know, as a college student, he sort of career took off. I like I like the career arc. He's had he's become really thoughtful about why he does what he does. And I'm going to guess that's, that's in the book as well. Like, if,
Darren Magarro
if that's what you dig about makhan a get the book and read it because it's it's very, it's very raw, like, he goes into detail about where he was, how he did things. Why they happened, you know, is not a was definitely not like, apologetic about, like the line from you know, all right, like he came up with all right, all right, all right. Like, that was his signature line. And it literally just, he put himself, like in the role and like, that's what came out. And it was like, that's the iconic line that I built my career. Right. And, you know, there's, there's, there's, a lot of times in the parallel that I'll leave you with here is that like, there's a lot of times you try to plan and I tell this to young people that like I mentor, there's like he try to plan for everything. And as you get older, you just realize that some things you can't you know, some things are just kind of, you gotta you got to be able to roll with what's going on around you. It's not easy, either. You know, I am not that person, I am type A, when it comes to that kind of stuff, I like to be in control of my environment. But I've learned over time that, you know, there are things I can control, and I do my best that I can to provide what I can. But there's some parts of it that are, you know, only the big man knows, no, I go along with it.
Matthew Dunn
So I get to tell you, my favorite thing about this conversation is, well, what my favorite thing is actually hearing everything you say about your company, like it's clearly close to your heart. And that's, that is just like, that's a treasure, to learn about the experience firsthand, the fact that we didn't talk about email and email marketing, and so, right, it's just a tool.
Darren Magarro
Yeah, well, I mean, if you want to, and you certainly, you know, we do we do it enough, but you probably do it enough. The bigger I don't I don't know. Like I just as I've done these over the last, you know, 15 months, you have a bunch of women and the story. There's so much intrigue of and and knowledge that has come to light just from people reaching out to me being like, do your story is crazy. How, why did you do that? Yeah. Like I was just like, I had a really awesome wife who, you know, was behind me. So from like, a methodical standpoint, I was able to do it, but ya have to? You have to try like it goes back to failing. Yeah, there was always people were like, oh, Weren't you afraid of failing? Now? What like, what it's like, I tell people, what's the worst somebody can say to you know? Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, what's the worst thing could happen and and the hard time, the hard times, and the things that don't work? tend to be the best teachers?
Darren Magarro
Absolutely. Trust me, there were days where, like, I want to bury my head in the sand. Yeah. You know, you come back. It's like golf. I don't know if you play golf, but you get that one shot every right you know, round. It's like the mafia keeps dragging you back in like, you just can't get out. It's like, it's like that one shot. You might have shot like 140. But that one shot you'd like hit it clean. And yet, you know, you you put it on the green from like, 180 yards out and you're like, Alright, this is why I got to come back.
Matthew Dunn
Right, right. If I if I can do it once my brain says you could you could do that. Yeah, yeah. Well, what a pleasure. Darren magaro founder and president of DSM Darren, I hope you have a fantastic time in Mexico with your wife and I really, really did enjoy speaking with you. Thanks for making the time.
Darren Magarro
Thanks a lot. Matthew is great. Great being on with the I appreciate it.