Business Growth And The Merits Of Being An Outsider
What Does Business Development Mean For A Creative Digital Studio? We Asked Moonfarmer’s Zack Stone To Find Out.
Zack Stone is a natural leader — and I’m not just saying that because he’s my manager. I’m lucky to say that we actually get along really well. When we’re not sharing music or swapping pictures of our dogs, we’re working together as the business development and marketing team at Moonfarmer.
I’ve learned a lot from working with Zack, but I wanted to know more about how he thinks. So we sat down and had a great conversation about leadership, how being an industry outsider is actually a good thing, and why individual growth opportunities are necessary for companies to thrive.
Hi Zack! Can you start by describing your role at Moonfarmer? How long have you been at this?
I am the Director of Business Development at Moonfarmer, which I’ve been doing since December 2018. I’ve seen the term “business development” used in various ways by different people. Sometimes it’s just used to mean “sales” or sometimes it means “marketing,” but I like to interpret it more broadly. To me, business development means growth.
On a day-to-day basis, sales and marketing are the two big verticals within my purview. My expertise covers both, but it leans towards the sales end of things, so I think an important part of my job is overseeing my team’s growth — specifically your growth in the marketing field, Erin.
I also see my role as directing the growth of this business at a strategic level. I am constantly focused on growth areas for our business, which doesn’t just mean transactions to close new deals, or new ways to market our services. It also means finding new areas where our business can succeed, and to find new ways to profit that perhaps we haven’t explored before.
That’s such a great way of thinking about your work. I’d love to hear about how you developed this philosophy. Can you tell me a little bit about your background prior to Moonfarmer?
After graduating from Williams College in 2009, I worked at a number of sports and entertainment marketing agencies: Octagon, CAA, and Wasserman. Then I transitioned to a partnership sales role at Minor League Baseball. And then I came here to Moonfarmer!
Working at those different agencies exposed me to a lot of best practices in how to run a professional sales operation. I try to bring those lessons to bear here at Moonfarmer. My experience at agencies was very much about learning how to be nimble and how to adjust to changing environments pretty regularly. That’s a skillset that, had I not developed there, I don’t know if I would have found a comfort level here at Moonfarmer. That dynamic is accelerated five-fold here. We’re a fast moving group. Every deal we close, every new client we work with, every new endeavor we take on — is a new direction for us. And we’re truly shaping that direction as we go, especially in sales and marketing. I think that’s exciting, but it would also be intimidating if I didn’t have that background.
I think that dynamic is kind of inherent to the tech industry. Technology is evolving all the time and industry standards are constantly changing, so it makes sense to me that the business side would run parallel to that. Did you find it challenging to step into this industry without a background in technology?
I would say, for me, that it’s been both a challenge and an asset. It was challenging in my first twelve months at Moonfarmer. I had to grapple with the vocabulary, learning the industry standards, learning how work gets done, what the different phases of work mean to a client vs. what they mean to the production team. Understanding the material took time. And I don’t consider myself a finished product as far as that goes, and I may never be. I think even the people who already have a deep understanding of these things — the Dan Stones, David Campbells, and Andrè Malkines of the world — they’re constantly learning new things. And they’re never satisfied. So I’m learning from them and others in addition to my own research, but I don’t expect I’ll ever get to a place where I fully “get it.”
And that speaks to the benefit, which is that I’m an outsider in this space. I protect my status as an outsider and I’m proud of it, because it means I see our challenges from a different perspective. I also think it makes me a helpful translator for clients who also don’t have a technical background. When we talk with new clients about how to organize a sprint or scope of work, I know what that looks like from their perspective. Sometimes these topics can get technical or caught up in the technology, and I’m able to make it more accessible.
Yeah, when Dan Stone is speaking to a potential client, he’s so passionate and smart that I can see it being less accessible to someone who doesn’t have the background knowledge. But you’re the ideal complement to that, because you can relate to how clients feel but you have the insight.
Absolutely. I think it goes back to what I was saying earlier about bringing my past experience and perspective to Moonfarmer. Being a technology outsider has allowed me to focus more on the business principles and fundamentals. I am primarily looking through the lens of analyzing Moonfarmer as a business, rather than just a creative endeavor. I’m not saying that “creative endeavor” isn’t the right way to look at Moonfarmer, but in order to improve this business we need to view it from multiple angles. Thinking of it as a creative endeavor is one way. Thinking of it as a business fundamentally is another way. And with that latter part I can bring a lot of value.
I imagine that perspective has an effect on what you bring to the table as part of Moonfarmer’s Leadership Team. What does that entail and what are your goals for yourself in this space?
There are five of us on the leadership team that bring different skill sets and experiences we’ve each had individually in our careers. Dan oversees the whole thing and then we have four directors that represent the various departments at Moonfarmer. I see my position on that team as bringing a fresh perspective to the ways in which we can grow our business. As we talked about, I think my experience with big companies, big agencies, and working with brands in the past allows me to shine a light on some new ways of thinking among the leadership team. We have a great opportunity to professionalize some of our tactics and some of the ways we operate this company.
Something that I really look to lead as part of the leadership group comes back to the idea of growth. Recently I helped to direct a revitalized strategic plan for the company. Our plan combines an overarching Moonfarmer vision, values and mission with departmental agendas that support our top-line goals. One of my priorities in this process was to wrap up the company strategy into growth plans for each individual. I see company growth, departmental growth, and individual growth all as part of the same effort. I think as individuals grow at our company and as our capabilities grow, that has direct correlation to growing our business. That’s kind of my philosophy.
On the subject of leadership and growth, you’re also my manager. At the moment, it’s really just the two of us leading much of the sales and marketing operation day-to-day. We’ve discussed before how challenging that can be sometimes. What’s it like to direct such a small team?
I’ll start by saying I think there are more advantages than disadvantages to working with a small group. And that’s part of the reason I joined Moonfarmer in the first place. It’s not a large team overall, and that’s one thing that makes us different.
Managing you and working as a team on the marketing and sales efforts at Moonfarmer comes with its challenges. Though we do bring other Moonfarmers into our efforts, you and I are the spearheaders, and we only have so much capacity between the two of us. We are trying to lead some ambitious efforts, but we’re limited by time and our abilities to commit to this role as only two people. But overall I am very excited to work directly with you every day. That’s a great dynamic where we really get to understand how each other works and I think we’ve gotten to a place where we almost know what each other is thinking a little bit, which is always helpful.
Totally. I think we make a great team!
I also think you and I have a very different perspective on business than many of the other members of our team because we are in a completely different domain; marketing and sales vs. product development or client services. So another ongoing challenge has been learning how to level with the rest of the team, how to communicate with them, and how to share goals in a way that everyone understands and can align with. I think we’re always trying to get to that place where everyone is on the same page even though we have vastly different skills. That’s something you and I are always thinking about, and I’d say we’ve made a lot of progress.
It kind of goes back to what we talked about earlier with being an outsider. That vantage point must give you an interesting perspective on what sets Moonfarmer apart from other companies in this space. What do you think makes us unique?
Yeah, good question. You know, I’ll put my marketing hat on for a second — we have our unique selling points that we like to talk about: our team, our process, and our location are definitely things that set Moonfarmer apart. Erin, you know that better than anyone and articulate that better than anyone, which I’m proud of saying on your behalf. From my own perspective, Moonfarmer is extremely dedicated to its craft — to a person. Every crew member here is extremely dedicated to their craft, and it shows in the finished product.
One of the things that makes us really great is that we’re at our best when we bring our clients into a collaborative effort. I think some of our competitors, from what I can tell, would rather operate at more of a distance from their clients. But we perform better and the end product comes out better when our clients are a part of the process and a part of every important conversation.
Another thing I’d call out is that we’re not just a company; we’re a member of our community. We have a long-standing history here in the Hudson Valley, the Kingston community specifically — we’ve been around for 18 years! Also wrapped up in that is the fact that we’re a wholly domestic company, but aside from that, it’s our commitment to community that really sets us apart. We represent ourselves with more of a personal touch. And with a lot of our clients we’re able to deliver extra value because their victories are our victories. We’re all in the same community.
Zack Stone is the Director of Business Development at Moonfarmer. Check out his bio on our website.
Bixby is Zack’s dog. He is a very good boy.
If you’d like to discuss ways to grow your own company, talk about baseball, or tell Zack how cute his dog is, you can contact him directly at zack@moonfarmer.com. He’d love to hear from you.
