We were lucky to catch up with Ashley Landers recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ashley, appreciate you joining us today. One of the toughest parts of scaling a business is maintaining quality as you grow. How have you managed to maintain quality? Any stories or advice?

As a new business owner, I really appreciate this topic because it’s one that my two partners and I discuss often. Growth is great, but not all of it is good for business. If you grow too fast, or have unbalanced growth, that growth can be temporary. If you want growth that leads to long term profitability, you need a steady plan for it. Unmanaged growth puts a strain on resources, which can tank the quality of your work – and ultimately, your reputation. Balancing growth with quality control is crucial for a company to ensure long-term success.

When we bought Texas Creative, it was exciting because we were buying a legacy company. That meant we got to keep the legacy relationships and talent, but we also got to push forward and develop a more advanced tech stack. Doing that helped us improve processes and optimize our quality controls, so that then we could be ready to accelerate with sustainable growth.

Quality Controls in this new era of Texas Creative means:

Investing in Our Talent.

We streamlined our review process, and clearly defined growth goals for every employee. That includes self-assessment tools that allow employees to also hold us accountable to our own core values.
We’ve taken a more aggressive approach to hiring talent, so that as we grew, we could quickly staff up without overextending our best resources – our people.
We’re driving professional growth by offering new training and development opportunities.
By putting “talent to task,” the right skill level is matched with the right type of work.

Leveraging Technology.

We give our software products a thorough review from multiple vantage points that extends far beyond the technical aspects before we adopt them.
We’re not afraid to engage with vendors where possible to provide feedback to improve existing tools.
If existing tools don’t meet our needs, we build our own software automation tools with our in-house development team.
Our custom-built documentation portal gives us the flexibility to maintain collaborative standard operating procedures (SOPs) and identify possible automations.

Clearly Defining Our Culture.

Culture is an evolving expression of your business operation, so we established a small group of thought leaders who meet regularly to focus on morale, identity and trends.
We kicked off our new era of ownership with a refreshed brand and a fresh, new modernized workspace that facilitates the collaboration and flexibility we need for our “remote-first” culture.
We live our culture and lead with our core values, as well as something we call employee commitment statements, giving employees the power to hold the organization accountable from the bottom up.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

For more about my background specifically, you can visit a previous interview I did with Canvas Rebel. So I’ll shift focus to Texas Creative as a whole.

On paper we’re a full-service marketing agency, but at our core, we’re ambitious communicators. Innovation is in our DNA. We started out as a high-profile design firm that was well-known as the first agency in town to create websites for commerce in the early days of the internet. We’ve always been hungry, and we embrace the unknown and the unexplored with joy and curiosity. One of our key requirements when hiring is to find people who like to “sit in the front row.” We’re a group of lifelong learners and explorers who are constantly looking for what’s next in our respective fields of expertise. I like to say we’re the Ocean’s 11 of the marketing world, because every single person on our team was hand-picked for their unique skill set. We’ve staffed up with subject matter experts who are masters of their crafts, and it’s really incredible to watch them work.

Over the last four decades, Texas Creative has evolved into an award-winning full-service agency. We apply our core tenets of strategy, creativity and innovation to every project we touch. And we do it all by encouraging a diversity of thought, an open and honest exchange, and a culture of kindness. That goes for our employees, and for the clients we choose to work with.

I think maybe what I’m most proud of, is that this secret formula works. We’ve got this well-oiled machine that is churning out incredible ideas and projects quickly, efficiently and with laser precision – and it’s all because of our culture.

We hire well, so that we can trust our people. Because we trust our people, we converge and diverge on projects with almost a musical rhythm. No one works in a silo, and yet we can meet on a project, go off into our own space to work on our parts, then come back together and we’re still in sync.

Any advice for managing a team?

I think high morale starts at the top. You have to have strong, collaborative leaders who love what they do. The strongest leaders in my opinion are walking examples of these three things:

Listen, then lead.
Give grace.
Empower others.

When you have a leader that does all three really well, the team’s response is highly emotional. It creates a “fail forward” mentality that takes a team from good to great. The word I use is “admiration.” When teams admire their leaders, they want to work for them and work like them. It creates a reciprocity of productivity and happiness throughout an organization.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The power of “No.”

I think this is a really important lesson for anyone, in any industry. In fact, I was just talking about it with my 9-year-old son. I joke that he isn’t afraid of a “no.” Mostly because he will ask me for anything, even when he knows a “no” is coming. Sometimes he can be relentless, but I admire the confidence and optimism that he just might get his “yes” this time. And because I know how important this quality is in life – not giving up – I don’t want to take it away from him. So, I never tell him to stop asking.

For me the power of no works in two ways.
It trains you to be prepared to receive a no, which you can’t do if you don’t try. Professionally, it builds confidence and resilience.

At the same time, the power of no works when you are the one giving the no. When our schedules are time-starved, we have to learn how to prioritize what to say yes to and when we have to use our power to say no.

Early in your career, saying yes to as much as you can is great. It helps you identify what you might want to say no to in the future. But as you grow in life and in work, prioritization and the power of no becomes invaluable.

It sounds easier than it is. I still have to remind myself that while it always feels good to be asked to participate, try to remember what’s important to you and where you want to prioritize your time and stand firm. The need is long but life is short.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://texascreative.com
• Instagram: @texascreative
• Facebook: @texascreative
• Linkedin: @Texas Creative
• Youtube: @TexasCreative