[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:05] DC: It takes the right skills and the right innovation to design and manage meaningful print marketing solutions. Welcome to Podcasts From the Printerverse, where we explore all facets of print and marketing that create stellar communications and sales opportunities for business success. I’m your host, Deborah Corn, the Intergalactic Ambassador to the Printerverse. Thanks for tuning in. Listen long and prosper.
[EPISODE]
[0:00:31] DC: Hey, everybody, welcome to Podcasts From the Printerverse. This is Deborah Corn, your Intergalactic Ambassador. And today I am joined by Shayne Terry and Emilee Christianson, the new leadership team at Trekk, a creative and technology agency based in Rockford, Illinois. Shayne and Emilee are not only longtime Trekk team members, they’re also the daughters of the agency’s original founders.
Now, as CEO and COO, respectively, they’re carrying forward the founders’ legacy while charting a bold new path for the company. Trekk has been at the intersection of creativity, technology, and storytelling for more than three decades, helping brands connect with audiences through strategy, immersive experiences, and digital innovation. Together, Shayne and Emilee are guiding Trekk into its next era, one built on collaboration, curiosity, and the same inventive spirit that started it all. Welcome, ladies.
[0:01:42] ST: Thank you.
[0:01:44] EC: Thanks. Excited to be here.
[0:01:45] DC: Excellent. I mean, it is just so wonderful to have newly minted COOs and CEOs who are women. But the former CEO was also a woman. So, this is not new for your agency. Congratulations to Trekk. You’ve both grown within Trekk over the years. Can you share a little more about your individual journeys and what your new roles as COO and CEO mean to each of you? And Shayne, you are the COO. And Emilee, you are the CEO. Correct?
[0:02:21] EC: Right.
[0:02:22] DC: That is correct. Okay, just making sure. Okay, let’s start with COO.
[0:02:27] ST: Yes. Emilee and I, our story with Trekk goes way, way back because our parents, my mom and her dad, started the company together in 1995. We’ve known each other basically our whole lives. We both grew up in the company, watching our parents grow it over the years. And then I joined the company about 8 years ago. Before that, I was working at a healthcare technology startup. I was in operations and then HR.
And then I think my mom always had this dream that I would come home to Trekk. And for a while, I was like, “No, I’m doing my own thing.” And one day it just finally felt right. So I joined the company. And since then, I started as a copywriter and worked my –
[0:03:22] DC: Oh, I love copywriters.
[0:03:24] ST: Yeah. I studied English. And I’m a writer outside of work as well. And it just seemed like the perfect – a company that I knew that was doing creative, exciting things where I could write. And I was excited about that. And then just fell in love with the agency and the people. And eventually took a leadership role, and here we are today.
[0:03:47] DC: Here we are today. Now, Emilee, you and I have known each other for quite some time. Trekk is the agency or one of the agencies of record for Canon. It was Canon Solutions America at the time. I’m not sure.
[0:04:02] EC: Océ before that.
[0:04:02] DC: Oh, and Océ before that. And I’ve seen you help their think community grow. I’ve seen the amazing work that you have done to help Canon maintain and grow the leadership in the marketplace that it has. So, I’m really excited that you’re taking over as CEO. Can you share a bit about your journey, and what does this mean for you?
[0:04:28] EC: Yeah, thanks for that. Yeah, like Shayne said, we joke that I’ve been around for about 11 years getting a paycheck. I’ve been around for 30 years, just hanging out. So, it has been since the beginning; we got our start in websites, but we’ve also been in the print industry since the beginning. We’ve worked with different kinds of software, in finishing, in paper, in manufacturing, the OEMs. So, we’ve seen it kind of grow and evolve, and change.
And it’s been an interesting thing to be an agency that is obsessed with evolving and growing and holding that tension with traditional marketing in print and using those two things together in a way that drives forward marketing performance and is really grounding. I think a lot of clients come to us outside the industry, and they’re like, “Ah, print.” But it’s a really fun thing for us to like, “Hey, remember, they used to print things and send out mail.” And it’s a grounding thing for us.
Being CEO next year, I’m excited about continuing that passion that we’ve kind of developed as a creatively focused, both that tension of technical and creative and traditional print marketing, kind of together. That will continue to be a throughline. So, I don’t think we fully know what our roles are going to look like on the day-to-day yet. I love working with clients, so I will still be guiding client strategy and doing a lot of the same things I do today, and I’ve done my entire time here, but we’ll see what changes happen. You don’t know what you don’t know, you know? We’re learning.
[0:06:10] DC: Correct. Here’s a secret. You guys get to decide what you want to do now. That is very empowering, right?
[0:06:19] EC: Yes. Yes.
[0:06:20] DC: So you can do everything that you want to do. Get rid of the stuff you don’t want to do. Although I would say at least keep one thing that nobody wants to do, so they see you’re part of the team.
[0:06:33] EC: Good advice.
[0:06:33] ST: Good advice.
[0:06:33] EC: That’s good advice.
[0:06:35] DC: This actually leads me into my next question. You’re taking over next year. There is continuity that has to remain. I mean, unless you’re going to change everything and you want to bring your clients along for a ride, what do you feel are Trekk’s greatest strengths? And in thinking about the future, where are you thinking about pushing the agency into new territory? And I’ll take an answer from whoever wants to start.
[0:07:06] EC: I can start. I’ll give the quick answer. You can expand on it, Shayne. There are three things, really, that I think are our strengths. First is we’ve always been known for our unparalleled creative. We do really strong creative, but that’s also in our DNA. It’s how we think. We like to solve a problem. We like to get creative about how we think.
The second thing is our technical expertise in our in-house development. Our in-house technical has always been there. But each person is also kind of the master of their own universe and has that expertise. Each person individually contributes to solving problems with our clients. And then last is our really good service and relationships that we’ve always kind of been based in. And then that all kind of put a pretty bow on the fact that we are an independent, creative, full-service agency. And that’s unique. We’re not trying to like 10x the company. We’re not trying to take this into something completely different because the DNA of the agency is our DNA, too. Literally.
[0:08:12] DC: Mm-hmm.
[0:08:13] ST: Yeah. I’ll add to that. One of our company values is we constantly evolve. And we’ve been that way since the beginning. And that’s where the real technology part comes in. We’ve always been open to new technologies. How can we use this new technology to help our clients communicate, achieve their goals, reach their audience, and improve their customer experience? And we’re historically really good at being able to tell hype from real valuable technology.
And we’ve watched our parents go through some cycles. We saw them make it through the .com bust and many other cycles since then. And I think the big one we’re looking at now, obviously, is AI. How is AI changing the internet? One of the things we provide for our clients is websites. I’ve been saying this for the last couple of years. What is a website for? What is a website for today, when you can go to ChatGPT and ask your questions and get your answers?
The reason for being for websites is changing, has changed. And so we’re here to guide our clients through that to be thought leaders in that space, while also, there’s so much AI hype, figuring out what we can ignore, what’s hype, and where do we want to really double down on how this technology is affecting our clients and how they can capitalize on it.
[0:09:46] DC: We could probably have an entire podcast just on websites and AI, but I’m not going to divert this podcast. And I do want to stay on the topic of AI. And it’s actually more interesting to me because you are a copywriter, Shayne. So, we see everywhere that AI is transforming marketing, and design, and sales, by the way. There are people who think that they can do it themselves now. And I’m not saying they can’t. But how are you thinking about the balance between human creativity and the speed and optimization of workflow and processes that machine intelligence inside Trekk can use to even say, “Okay, we’ve got a new product, and it’s a lemonade. Tell me some stuff about lemonade.” Is that okay?
[0:10:45] ST: Yeah. So we have taken as an agency a human-first approach. And that means we are not using generative AI to generate copy or generate images unless a client asks on the images side, which has happened a few times, and if it’s happening in partnership with a client.
[0:11:07] EC: Yeah. If they’re like, “I want a koala juggling bananas sitting on a press.”
[0:11:15] ST: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
[0:11:16] DC: Okay. I do want to interject here for one second. Currently, you’re buying stock art or having photo shoots. Is that how you’re handling it?
[0:11:24] ST: Yeah, there might be stock. We do a lot of original photography as much as we can. We have photographers and videographers in-house who are doing original photography and videography as much as possible.
[0:11:36] EC: And 3D. 3D rendering.
[0:11:37] ST: And 3D. Yeah. But that’s not to say – we’re not using AI to say generate a blog post. But we’re also not Luddites either. We’re not sticking our heads in the sand. We’re figuring out how can we use these tools to make our work better. For example, one of the ways that I love to use AI in the creation of a blog post is to create basically a small language model, not a large language model, using the resources that I’m going to be using and studying for the blog post.
For example, I might have a recording of a call that I did with the subject matter expert at the client. I’ve got an hour of talking to them and asking them questions. Then I might have a webinar that they gave to their industry organization. And then I might have a couple of articles that they’ve written in the past, and I’m supposed to write something in their voice, you know. I’m going to put that into a tool like NotebookLM and say, “Okay, digest all this information.” And then I can ask it questions.
As I’m writing, I can say, “What was the product number that was mentioned here?” And then it’s giving me the answers based on the fact that it’s ingested all of that material. That’s a way that we can use it to make us better, but it’s not doing our work for us. And then the other way we’re really thinking about it is how are searchers out there using AI? And how can we make sure that our clients’ names are showing up in those tools? When somebody goes to ChatGPT and asks, “What’s the best product for this?” I want ChatGPT to give one of my clients’ names and help them buy from my client. That’s really what we’re focused on.
[0:13:30] DC: Emilee, anything to add to that?
[0:13:33] EC: Yeah. I mean, I think the other aspect of it from the client-facing side is that our product isn’t set in stone. It’s our people. It’s what the service and the things that our people can produce. So our human-first approach is how do we empower our people first. We’re not trying to replace our people with AI tools. And that was decision number one was like let’s empower our people. Let’s make what they do even better. And that’s kind of like the boundary.
And then from there, it’s, yeah, just the ongoing opportunity. Then how do we help our clients with understanding it? Because they come to us with a lot of questions of like – they might say our website traffic is dropping off. And we can say, “Well, that’s actually because they’re moving over here, or we have that kind of context.” But they also are being asked to have a strategy for it or how to respond to it. And that’s like the non-marketing consulting and partnership that we kind of come alongside our clients a lot of times with, helping them determine how to talk about this in their own context, because we went through it ourselves first.
[BREAK]
[0:14:41] DC: Girls Who Print provides women in print and graphic communications with information resources, events, and mentorship to help them navigate their careers and the industry. As the largest independent network of women in print and a nonprofit organization, our global mission to provide resources, skill-building, education, and support for women to lead, inspire, and empower has never been stronger or more accessible. Through our member platform and program, as well as regional groups forming around the world, your access to Girls Who Print is just a click away. Gentlemen, you are most welcome to join us as allies. Get involved and get empowered today. Link in the show notes.
[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:15:28] DC: It still must be a difficult time, however, because I know even in my travels, I talk to PR people and marketing people and especially social media people, content creators who like everyone’s telling me I don’t need you anymore. Designers as well, because they think Canva. If I can use a templated design tool that I’m a designer. Okay, maybe you are. Maybe you’re not, but you still need to have a growth strategy and address this in some manner. So, how do you or will you are you thinking about approaching business development, even in crafting proposals to communicate human-first, which are the new opportunities you’re looking to pursue, maybe in different lanes? And how do you ensure that your clients or the next ones align with your values? I’ll ask you, Emilee, as a CEO.
[0:16:28] EC: Yeah. I think that the way that we approach our new business is we had to first identify who is a good fit client for us, and what are their stances on some of these things, and what do they really need. And putting ourselves in their shoes, because we work primarily B2B. We do work in B2C, some. But we’re all consumers. We’re all people. And so we find putting ourselves in their shoes first to say, “Who do I really want to work with? And how do they want to talk to me?” And then do our outreach from that perspective.
For example, our outbound campaigns, if we’re doing something like messages on LinkedIn or emails, which are cold emails. That’s a rough business right now. That’s not working as well. But if you own it in your messages, it’s things that they can expect when they’re working with us. So, I’m going to be transparent. I’m going to say, “Hey, I saw some intent signals that we’re showing you were looking for this thing. We offer this thing. If you want to talk, awesome. If not, just tell me to go away. Fine. No feelings hurt.” Or like, “Hey, full transparency. I’m emailing you and also three other people at your company.” Because a lot of those times when I get the messages, somebody else is like, “Oh, I got the same message.” And it’s canned, and it doesn’t feel personal. But who we are as an agency is authentic, human-centered, and very personal because we pride ourselves on this excellent service. And so we want to create that experience even in the new business territory.
That said, it is still difficult to connect with the right people at the right time. And that’s where I hate the phrase eating our own dog food. Shayne, is there a better phrase for that? You know what I mean? We need to do the things.
[0:18:11] DC: You’re getting high on your own supply.
[0:18:14] ST: Another one.
[0:18:15] EC: It is the cobbler’s kids always have holes in their shoes.
[0:18:18] DC: Yeah. Or I had a dentist whose kids had the worst teeth I’ve ever seen in my life.
[0:18:25] ST: There you go.
[0:18:25] EC: It’s that. And it’s been easy for us to just solve everyone else’s problems. And now that like we’re kind of shifting into this new year, where we’re taking over ownership, we’re having to take this bigger picture approach, we’re kind of thinking about, “How do we turn those marketing engines back on for ourselves?” And that’s a fun process.
[0:18:47] ST: Emilee’s becoming a LinkedIn influencer. If you don’t follow her already, go connect with her on LinkedIn.
[0:18:54] DC: And we will put notes, all those links in the show notes, by the way. Hopefully, we’ll get you some more listeners.
[0:19:00] EC: I’ve got some hot takes, you know, drop those occasionally.
[0:19:03] DC: But hot takes are good. Opinions are good. Transparency is good. Speaking of transparency, do you do any pro bono work?
[0:19:12] EC: Yes. We work a lot in our community. Our agency is based in Rockford, Illinois. And there are a lot of organizations there. And all of our people are based there. And so, we really believe in hiring local, being a part of the community there, and working with government agencies, civic agencies, and just all the nonprofits that are there. So we do do some work with them and a lot of smaller projects. Or that kind of thing that are big impact for them, that has been a bigger push this year, especially.
[0:19:44] DC: Excellent. Well, thank you for that, ladies. You’re both now in a position to shape not just the creative work but the people behind it. You’ve mentioned this before in our conversation, but how will you foster mentorship, career growth, and help build the next generation of leaders who are already inside Trekk? Let’s start with you, Shayne.
[0:20:12] ST: Yeah, many of our employees have been with Trekk for a really long time. For example, the rest of our leadership team, we’ve got someone who’s been with Trekk 26 years, someone who’s been with Trekk 21 years, and someone who’s been with Trekk 15 years. I don’t know if I’d call it mentorship. But there’s a lot of investment in the people who are currently in Trekk, and that’s been going on for many years.
One of the first things we did when we first announced to the company that Emilee and I were going to be transitioning into ownership was we scheduled a listening tour. And we sat down with every single person in the company. And we did this offsite so they could get out of the office and just get away and have a coffee and do some dreaming. And we asked them all questions about their career development, their future. What are they looking for? When do they feel like they’re thriving? If they had a magic wand, what is one thing that they would change to make their day-to-day better? So that we could get a complete picture of the team and where they feel like they’re at and what they’re looking for. Because it’s really important to us that, like I said, people stay at Trekk. We want them to feel like they’re still growing.
If you’ve been at the same company for 20 years and it’s a small company, it can feel like there’s not a lot of upward trajectory. So growth happens with, “Am I learning new skills? Is my company investing in me? Am I going to conferences? Am I meeting people? Am I having new experiences? Am I working on new types of projects? Am I learning new technology? Am I getting to lead something where previously I was following?”
We basically did this listening tour so that we could sit down and make a plan so that everyone on the team feels like they are getting those things in the way that’s most impactful to them, because we also learned from the listening tour. Some people really care about I’m getting new experiences. Some people don’t as much. They want to feel like they’re useful. They’re helping. They’re being of service. And so getting really deep on each person’s motivations helped us come up with a plan that’s unique to each person as well.
[0:22:34] DC: Amazing, Emilee.
[0:22:36] EC: Yeah, we had left it open at the end, “What questions do you have for us?” And so that there was that beginning of this building trust with them of, “You can come to us with questions.” And almost everybody asked, “What’s your vision?” And Shayne and I, the first person asked it, and we were like, “Well, we don’t know yet,” and that was mostly because, like I said earlier, our company is our people. And we don’t want to change things dramatically, but we wanted to understand where do our people want to go, where do they see themselves in 5 years if they had this magic wand? And so we felt like casting the vision for the future needed to be something that we were all a part of. And that listening to her kind of helped us collect that vital information to then set the course for where we’ll start.
[BREAK]
[0:23:26] DC: Are you looking to elevate your game, take your bottom-line customer relationships, and events to the next level? Then, I want to work with you. I’m Deborah Corn, the Intergalactic Ambassador to the Printerverse. I engage with a vast, global audience of print and marketing professionals across all stages of their careers. They are seeking topical information and resources, new ways to serve their customers and connect with them, optimize processes for their communications and operations, and they need the products and services and partnership you offer to get to their next level. Print Media Centr offers an array of unique opportunities that amplify your message and support your mission across the Printerverse. Let’s work together, bring the right people together, and move the industry forward together. Link in the show notes. Engage long and prosper.
[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:24:28] DC: This is the first time I’ve ever heard about a listening tour, and I’m stealing it and I’m telling it to everybody. I mean, what you’ve just said is so incredible. First of all, in any sort of transition like that, people usually get terrified that they’re going to lose their job, right? And to make a change, there has to be a change, you know? And the way you approach it is the way I always suggest people approach it is that we’re not making changes, we’re potentially making improvements. And how can we improve your world, you know? And I love that.
And that also opens up the space for women to take the power of saying what they need because they’re being asked. And maybe they need to leave a certain day at 3:00 pm to handle something out of the office. And you can work with them to come back online at 7:00 pm. Or some people are splitting jobs, just depending. But I just think that your approach is exactly what every business should do, especially with the younger people. They want to understand that what they’re doing means something not only to the company but to the world, somehow, as well.
And it seems to me that you are mentoring people because you’re giving them the space to do what they want to do to shine how they want to shine, and potentially give them the tools or the education or the training that they need to accomplish those goals, because it’s good for the company. It’s good for employee retention, and it confirms your commitment to the place that you work as being a community and part of a community.
[0:26:16] EC: Mm-hmm.
[0:26:16] ST: Yeah. We have some of the most talented people I have ever worked with in my career. This team, I mean, it’s the reason that I – at first, when I took the role at Trekk, I was like, “Oh, I’ll be here for maybe a year and then I’ll figure out what I want to do next.” And it was the people that kept me. And I love working with them. And at the end of the day, I mean, going back to AI, I’ve seen all these videos out there of like, “I fired my whole team. And now I’m a marketing agency of one because I built all these AI agents, and I’m making all this money.” That sounds terrible to me. That sounds not fun at all. The people are the reason that we’re here.
Both the clients and our coworkers, we get to do this really fun, challenging, creative work together. And then we get to see the impact of it when it goes out into the world, and we get to see how happy the clients are. And that’s the why behind it and why we put so much investment in our people.
[0:27:22] EC: Yeah. I think a surprising thing for me in the takeaway with the listening tour was the way that I felt growth afterwards. I expected to collect this information and digest it, and then we would set our vision. But I felt like, “Oh, now I’m actually hearing what you’re saying.” I might have heard these things that’s come up in other times, or like behavior patterns, and I just thought, “Why can’t you be this way?” Or that sounds rude. But you don’t understand somebody as much. And then you ask them these questions and you hear their answers and you realize, “Oh, this is on me. I need to adapt the way that I’m thinking about their success, because that’s not when they’re thriving.”
And if I want a future where each person is thriving, I need to know what that looks like and give that to them in adjusting my own perceptions in a lot of cases. I think that was a surprising takeaway was like, “Wow, I feel growth from hearing from them.”
[BREAK]
[0:28:24] DC: Like what you hear? Leave us a comment, click a few stars, share this episode, and please subscribe to the show. Are you interested in being the guest and sharing your information with our active and growing global audience? Podcasts are trending as a potent direct marketing and educational channel for brands and businesses who want to provide portable content for customers and consumers. Visit printmediacentr.com, click on podcasts, and request a partner package today. Share long and prosper.
[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:28:58] DC: Ladies, I’ve actually grown from this conversation, and you’ve given me such great advice to pass along to people I come in contact with when I’m speaking at events and things like that. My last question, it’s a future question, but it is how will you measure success as you take Trekk into the next chapter? And how are you going to know if you’ve achieved it?
[0:29:29] EC: Do you want the boring answer or the fluffy feel-good answer? Because there’s two.
[0:29:34] DC: I’ll take both.
[0:29:35] EC: Okay. The boring answer is that we will meet our revenue goals, that we won’t sink the ship. We don’t think we’re going to sink the ship. But we are taking over something new. It is a new adventure. I think just, yeah, keeping good relationships with good clients and hitting our revenue goals. That’s success number one. Bigger picture success.
I have always told our team the last couple of months, my vision is that I see a garden and each of our people is thriving and doing work that they love, that they feel good about doing, and they feel inspired, they feel healthy. And that means having the right fit of clients, the right amount of growth and pruning with one another, and helping to be direct and share honestly, transparently with one another. And yeah, get to that place where each person’s answer to that question on, “Where do you thrive?” that they’re living in that place. And that we, as owners and leaders, are thriving as well. Because I think if we’re thriving, everyone else will. If we’re miserable, it’s going to drip all the way down, and everyone’s going to feel miserable. That’s my two answers.
[0:30:53] ST: At a creative agency with creative people, when you are inspired, that’s when you’re going to be doing your best work. That’s one of our measures of success. And of course, also, our client success. So when our clients are successful, then we are successful. We’ve got this portfolio of clients, and we’re looking at all of their success metrics as well. That’s how we’ll know that we’ve achieved it.
[0:31:20] DC: Excellent, ladies. Thank you so much for your time. I will put links in the show notes to Trekk and anything else you want to share, YouTube channel. I know you have a podcast. Why don’t you talk about your podcast?
[0:31:34] ST: We do have a podcast. It’s called Sidetrekked. And each episode, we take a client question about marketing and we answer it.
[0:31:42] DC: Oh, I love that.
[0:31:43] ST: Yeah. We share case studies and times we’ve actually done what we’re talking about or solved the problem that this person has. And you can find it at trekk.com/sidetrekked. And Trekk has two K’s.
[0:32:01] EC: Not the bikes.
[0:32:01] DC: Like I said, I’ll put a link in the show notes so people don’t have to spell. Excellent. Well, hopefully I can entice you to run your podcasts on Print FM, where industry podcasts are rotating 2/47/365. And I just want to, again, thank you so much. Good luck. If you need anything from the Printerverse, you know that I’m here for you. Until next time, everybody, print long and prosper.
Thanks for listening to Podcasts From the Printerverse. Please subscribe, click some stars, and leave us a review. Connect with us through printmediacentr.com, we’d love to hear your feedback on our shows and topics that are of interest for future broadcasts. Until next time, thanks for joining us. Print long and prosper.
[END]
