Scot Keith: Cultivating a low overhead, high talent team to win Strategy Agency of The Year

Podcast

March 24, 2021

Get an inside peek into how this Award-Winning Strategy Agency of the Year is doing things differently. With 37 people (and growing), his agency has no departments and instead uses a concept called casting, to bring the right people into the right creative projects. Hear how Scot and his team reduce the fear of failure and perfectionism paralysis by actively showing clients the quantity of ideas that failed to get to the quality ones.

Scot Keith is the co-founder and CEO of 123w an idea and design agency that launched in 2013 with humble beginnings in a small garage in Vancouver. Scot has a long-standing success record in creative agencies, before co-founding 123w, he worked at Palmer Jervis DDB, Lowe Roche, and helped to start-up Zulu Alpha Kilo and his first company Kommunity.

On this episode of Small But Mighty Agency:

3:44 – How the greatest weakness in his business became the greatest opportunity for his brand positioning.

4:28 – Why are 45% of his team members creative directors?

8:32 – Why say no to having departments and how he uses the concept of casting

9:33 – The core principles of casting and going against the casting stereotypes for the most creative campaigns

12:21 – Why creativity doesn’t come out of thin air and his methodical approach to creativity

14:02 – How to consistently arrive at great work

14:33 – Why showing clients where you failed is an ingredient for success

18:33 – The value of being relentless and the impact on his business

19:55 – Why having an award winning agency parallels a winning sports team

21:56 – The most important lesson you can learn as a leader

Show Links

123w Website

Scot Keith Linkedin

Simon Sinek

Malcolm Gladwell Book “Outliers” (10,000 hours)

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