New York, April 9th, 2019

Sanborn is an independent digital agency based in New York City and Los Angeles and founded in 2004.

Chris Sanborn, started the company from his studio flat when he was 27 year-old. He confesses that he never intended to create a company at the time. “The original name of the company was Sanborn Media Factory,” recalls Chris.

“I was just freelancing trying to convince people to give me web design and development work despite the fact that I was a history major with no real computer science or design training. So it’s named “Sanborn” because I’m a vane egomaniac who loves the sound of his own name and the “media factory” part was an attempt to make it sound like it was bigger than just me so as to open a few more doors that might otherwise be shut.”

In 2016, trying to simplify matters and as most clients already dropped the second half of the company name, the agency was renamed just Sanborn.

Can you describe your agency in three words?

Garden of Candor.

How many people work at the agency?

We are 25 digital producers, designers, engineers, and video producers. Folks are spread out across the US but we have offices in NYC and LA.

How did you get started in the industry?

I was lucky to have entered the world of “making things for the internet” when the internet was still very young. Back then (late ‘90’s) if you could code a little HTML and use Photoshop – you were in the game. For the most part though I just taught myself a few fundamentals and then quickly learned to hire other people who were smarter than me to grow the business.

What inspires you in your work?

Developing talent inspires me. The thing that really gets me up out of bed in the morning is figuring out how to create an environment where people have the freedom, process, culture, tools, other humans, and space to get better at what they do. It can be intimidating working with people whose intellect or god-given skill are eerily more powerful than your own but only one thing makes me happier than finding those people and that’s making them better.

It’s not my job to teach people to be better, it’s my job to create an environment where the confluence of the right mix of people and ideas and processes naturally yields growth and improvement for the people who spend their time here. I just love all of that.

Could you name three important things or experiences that have brought you to where you are today?

Working in the service industry was a big driver: After college I took a couple of corporate-y corporate jobs that I ran away from because they felt all wrong. I spent a few years as a bartender in Chicago and had essentially no career focus at all. That experience taught me a few very valuable lessons. In any job like that you learn what it’s like to have a customer. The dynamics of that relationship are very stark and clearly understood when you stand across a bar from someone you have to deliver not just a good product, but an experience.

My parents told me I could be whatever I wanted and they actually meant it: I took a very circuitous route to where I landed, and I was supported and given the space to figure it out every step of the way. Being able to say “I have no idea” in response to “what do you want to do with your life?” and having that be okay is hard. My parents made it look easy.

I had some terrible jobs and bosses: Sometimes you figure out what you need from life and work by negation and that certainly happened to me. I don’t look at those experiences as a waste of time or negative at all. They crystalized what I wanted to find and pushed me to create it instead of uncovering it.

How do you know that you are leading, and leading well?

You know you are leading well when no one is confused. Clarity is nine-tenth’s of good leadership in my view and it’s very, very hard to get right. If a group of people doesn’t understand you and the direction you’re trying to take things, that’s your fault, not theirs. I think good leaders understand this and take ownership over it. Bad leaders scratch their heads when the people they lead don’t do what they want or expect. Being clear is a very thing to do hard and I have great respect for those who do it well.

Tell us three things you like and three things you dislike about your current position.

I like:
– Being able to spend as much time as I do with my family. 20 years ago the tools for remote work didn’t exist the way they do now and I would not be walking my kids to school every day. I’m grateful for it.
– Transforming the business. We’ve been able to find new ways of doing business and exploring entirely new capabilities in the last couple years and the excitement behind that is just genuinely fun and exciting.
– When I started the company I was in my late 20’s and I think it was hard for some people to take me seriously. I’m just north of 40 now and even though I don’t think I’m that much smarter than I was then, I think optically it’s easier to trust your budget with a human who has some grey hairs.

Don’t like:
– I miss being in the mix with people at the tip of the spear in the mud and the muck. I have to stop myself from getting in the weeds of the work because I genuinely find everything we do interesting and fun. But staying focused on growing the business instead of executing is sometimes hard for me.
– Traveling. It was more fun when I was in my 20’s. Now I just miss my wife and kids when I’m gone for more than a day.
– Not seeing people face to face as much. Remote work has brought us many gift…but I do often miss seeing all our employees in one room.

What is your approach to motivating and developing talent?

Most of the people who come to work at a smaller shop like ours are pretty well motivated already, so that part is really almost taken care of out of the gate.

As far as developing talent I think you have to find the right mix of support, trust, and freedom. Give people the support they need by removing obstacles and opening doors. Trust them to do their best work. Give them the space and freedom to do what you hired them to do. It’s not easy but it sure is fun to watch when we get it right.

What are a few resources you would recommend to someone looking to gain insight into becoming a better leader?

I try to keep at least one lunch meeting a month scheduled with someone who is a person I admire or am curious about where I can use that time to talk shop and share notes. There’s no better resource for this type of stuff than talking to other people who are out there trying to solve for the same challenges.

If you’re looking for a book I’d say Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book on Abraham Lincoln, Team of Rivals, really put a lot of things in perspective for me. Lincoln’s gift was that he was genuinely magnanimous. He just wanted to get shit done and he brought together a group of people who hated each other to work on things that mattered. He didn’t care about himself, he didn’t care about getting the credit, he just wanted to get it done and he did.

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

I’d like to be a firefighter. My town has a volunteer department so I suppose that’s not a profession but if I can square away the time for it, I think having that kind of clarity of purpose in life would be pretty great.

What is the most interesting project you have worked on and why was it interesting?

We built an augmented reality app for Dan Brown (author of the Da Vinci Code and other novels) once where the goal of the app was to use his physical book as a portal into Dante’s hell. At the kick off meeting, I sat across a table from him as he explained how the app could have no fire in it (his vision of hell did not include fire). That was a tough one… but we nailed it.

Thanks Chris!

By Geny Caloisi.
genyc@topinteractiveagencies.com

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