“High Expectations” — with Hayley Anderson, Co-Founder &CCO, Soona

Today, we’re speaking with Hayley Anderson, Co-Founder and CCO at soona. We discuss her experiences learning digital cinema, the importance of believing in yourself, and how soona is revolutionizing how content is made.

Today’s episode of Journey Map is brought to you by MindManager.

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Welcome to Journey Map, the audio experience that deconstructs the career paths taken by some of the world’s most interesting people. Today’s guest graduated from DePaul University with a Degree in Digital Cinema. She began her career as an Intern at Ork Posters. Then in 2012 she worked as a Video Intern at public relations firm Weber Shadwick. She is quickly promoted through working next as Associate Producer and Editor, then Producer and Editor, and then Senior Producer and Editor. In 2016 she leaves Weber Shandwick to become a Senior Motion Designer at video production company Mighteor. In 2018 she takes on the role of Director of Creative and Animation at Mighteor. Then in 2018 she teams up with a co-worker from Mighteor to found Soona. For those of you who don’t know Soona is a Content Studio that prides itself on its ability to produce fast content for customers. They have physical studios in Minneapolis and Denver, but they recently launched Soona Anytime which enables customers to ship their product from anywhere in the U.S. to one of Soona’s studios where a photo or video shoot will be planned. You can attend your shoot online from anywhere with any device and then shop your photos, which can be delivered in 24 hours. Very cool stuff.

Today’s episode of Journey Map is brought to you by MindManager. Journey Map listeners know that with the right map you can take your career anywhere you set your mind to. MindManager work management software puts your ideas,plans and projects on the path to success by transforming them into dynamic digital maps, charts, diagrams and more. Mind Managers flexible visual format makes it easy to capture, organize, understand and evolve critical business information and with powerful collaboration sharing features it’s the perfect tool for keeping remote teams aligned, on track and headed in the right direction.You can take a free thirty day no commitment trial today by visiting www.mindmanager.com/journeymap.

DH: Today’s we’re talking to Hayley Anderson, Chief Creative Officer & Co-Founder of Soona, she is also a Forbes 30 under 30. Hayley, welcome to Journey Map!

HA: Thank you! you’ve done your research. It sounds really nice when you say it all in a row.

DH: I know right, I often say we just build people up so that we can ask the really hard questions in the interview. I want to start with your education bachelor of arts in digital cinema. What does that encompass if you give us an overview?

HA: I mean I’ve been doing video my whole life. I started really young doing you know lego animations with my brother, but when it came to senior year of high school I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do and I was like well the only thing I really love doing is anything that involves video. I also really liked art but I started looking at colleges and it seemed like it was mostly film where you didn’t really get to learn all the you know tech side of things you can’t get your hands dirty it was more like you’re studying film theory. I wasn’t really interested in that, but I found DePaul in Chicago and they didn’t even teach you like film basics. They taught you immediately digital cinema and that involved the whole process, so like you can get your hands dirty an animation, producing, and writing all of that sort of thing. I was super interested and immediately loved it my freshman year.

DH: We’ll come back to this image of you filming lego with your brother a bit later. But your time at Weber Shandwick you’re there for over 4 years and it’s basically every single year you get promoted. So starting as Associate Producer and Editor, then Senior Producer and Editor. What do you think it was about your skill set or what were you bringing to the table? I’m realizing this sounds like a job interview question…

HA: No worries.

DH: What do you think it was that you were bringing to the table, or what was your unique skill set that was kind of rapidly allowing you to ascend that corporate ladder?

HA: Yeah so doing the digital cinema route they really teach you like the general of everything. So I was able to shoot a camera, I was able to take pictures, I was able to edit, they taught us design, they taught us the beginning of motion graphics and animation. I was kind of an amateur and all these things so that was helpful for a place like Weber Shandwick where at the time the video team was very small, and they weren’t really sure how to evolve it. I guess it’s kind of crazy in the agency world. I mean there’s lots of layoffs that happen and in my first year there as soon as I got promoted from my internship they laid off the video team except for me, so I kind of had to build it from scratch very early on. I think some of the things that made me successful there was like really reaching out to every team they were trying to silo by type of industry like health care, technology, and I was able to work with every team so people started to know me which was helpful I think. Then part of what made me so successful was changing my brain to really understand the client even if it wasn’t a very exciting project. I kind of just decided that it was the most exciting project and I was going to figure out how to make it worth my time and make it fun for myself selfishly. I think that actually it was really successful because I actually cared about all the work that I was doing. People started noticing, people started to be really happy so I think I can attribute it to that otherwise I had a diverse skill set that was hard to find and Minneapolis.

DH: Speaking of diverse skill sets, I think something that I’m most impressed with in Soona we’re gonna get into the founding story in a second, but just to segue from the skill set that idea of putting your head into their customers, and thinking through empathy to see what their experience is like, what their business is about. I had mentioned when we first jumped on our call for before we started recording, I had heard of Soona before and been impressed by it before we had even scheduled this interview. I think what has always impressed me the most… I should dig up before we founded our agency there is this very s***tly produced (yes that’s a word) video that we did which is very similar to the structure of the video you have that explains how to use Soona at least in terms of your Shopify integration video that I was watching. You know here’s the process: you send us a briefing, you select the categories that you want, you select the length and the style etc. I’m doing it no justice, I encourage people to check it out, it’s very well done, and a very cool product that’s where I’m going with the point. Anyway so we were just an agency and we launched the company about us video and it made it seem like what we had actually done was create tech products, Because we had a very similar like “Hey you’re up all your stuff here, and then we’ll deal with it in the content calendar” etc. We actually got written up in some pretty major tech blogs as well and it was foolish. No one contacted us for agency services but people contacted us thinking that we had some sort of like technology platform that was gonna help them. But anyway, when I first came across Soona what I was most impressed with was that your idea itself makes a ton of sense and we’ll get into that in a second, but it’s how well it’s been executed in terms of removing the friction and the barriers through technology and the internet to allow what would normally be something to do in your backyard, or in your home town with a professional that now you can handle the request from anywhere in the U. S. or essentially could be anywhere in the world. What about your background or experience made you realize that you would have to nail that technology integration piece just as much as the actual work that you do itself in order to make the business viable?

HA:I mean at DePaul I’m not a super shy person, but I’m kind of shy and it was always hard for me, it felt like it was invite only to get on some of the sets for the bigger productions. I felt like there were hidden classes I wasn’t in or hidden groups I wasn’t in or something, it just didn’t feel friendly and accessible for some of the sets. I’ve always had it in my head that production is un-friendly, not everyone’s invited, it’s hard to get into, people are mean on set. It was always a goal for me to make it like the friendliest thing because production is really fun, you’re making stuff and recording it, and you can use it in all these ways. It’s such a fun experience, so I think part of why I started Soona and part of what I was trying to create even at Weber Shandwick was like “How do we make this production life more accessible and friendly to everyone?”. I don’t really believe that you had to be like a director or hire a big director to actually get good quality stuff, so that’s why we really focused on this technology. I think I just also love technology. I really started to become more of an animator because I like art but I also just love how hard it is to you know create animations like you have to think about physics and work through these difficult programs. I find a lot of joy and not so that’s probably another reason.

DH: So a year and a bit in I’m going to make a guess that you’re probably quite busy these days. With everything going on in the world and the idea of being able to get a virtual production set as everyone’s also trying to take their business online to offer an e-commerce solution. Since January 2019 when you guys launched what has been the biggest high and what has been the biggest low that you’ve experienced?

HA: I think probably one of the biggest highs when we launched the virtual shoots or we’ve been calling it ‘Soona Anytime’ but we’ll probably just call it Soona in the future. But like the possibility of people being at home watching their content being created, they’re talking to the other crew in real time through our chat and then their content’s being uploaded immediately sent to their own computer and their own phone. Once that became a possibility in my mind it was just like “Oh my god we can do this?” It’s just like even in traditional productions I think it’s hard to review and change footage immediately and being able to make it so the person’s not even exactly there, that was a huge high moment. Now seeing people post on Instagram stories saying like “Hey I’m at home under a blanket directing a photoshoot” I love those they are my favorite things to watch. In regards to a low I do still love our retail locations, it’s like a way for me to experiment with different ses and create art in real space. Our Austin Texas location is supposed to be open right now and so having it sit there without a new crew we wanna hire, having to wait for that is probably a low. I was really looking forward to spending my time in Austin this year, building it up, and hiring a bunch of people.

DH: Why the dual model? other than your connection to the physical space like you just said. Why the dual model? Why have virtual and these retail stores as well?

HA: Yeah so we started with retail. We didn’t believe or you know we didn’t know that the virtual model was possible when it started. What we wanted was to have that real time you know play back in the studio and be able to mix and match backdrops easily, and have whole prop walls like we do. We thought at first it would have to be connected to the internet and it had to be fast, so that’s when we started it. But we also get so many loyal customers that way and we are also able to do headshots, explainer videos, and testimonials that kind of thing in the studio. Where as virtual you can’t really do that unless you’re virtually hiring a model or sending someone. So we still have that model, we were 75 % local customers before COVID happened so now obviously we’re all virtual, and we’re ramping that up very quickly. I’m very interested to see if after this is over what the balance will be between virtual and retail.

DH: Speaking of those retail locations again they are in locations that you might not think of as where you would set up homes for creative services maybe Austin aside but Minneapolis and Denver? Ok Minneapolis you work there you worked at Weber Shandwick that would make sense. The connection I guess we share in terms of a bit of but local currency is that I’m here sitting here in Ottawa where we have Shopify which is a major partner in terms of your deep integration with the platform. I’m guessing many of your customers own a Shopify store? but Shopify is also kind of famous for being a big tech unicorn based in Ottawa not in San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, or Toronto. What do you think it is about the markets that you’re in (besides Minneapolis which is pretty obvious) but why Denver? Why Austin? Where do you think you’ll go next?

HA: Well the personal reason as my co-founder Liv lives in Denver and I live in Minneapolis. But other than that Minnieapolis has tons of agencies it’s one of the biggest agency cities in the US, and then we also have you know all these fortune 500 companies any content. Then Denver has this crazy startup community, it’s insane I didn’t know about it until I started going there to work on Soona with my co-founder. But there’s a huge start up community and all these e-commerce businesses that are just growing they’re going crazy, and so Denver is actually a great place for creating content. Then Austin, we picked Austin after doing some research on e-commerce companies and after making some relationships with companies and people down there. Austin’s been growing like crazy and we also just kind of fell in love with it so that’s why we made that our third location and then we’ll see what our plans are after this year, but we had the expectation that after opening Austin then we would start to do the bigger cities making a bigger name for ourselves in New York and LA. I think it’ll be interesting to see how these virtual shoots are working, and if people even want an L.A location, or even want a New York retail location. So that’s the kind of back story on those.

DH: So if you could go back to your younger self shooting lego videos with your brother and tell that child where your journey would take you in terms of having these multi location retail stores, this really cool model, a growing virtual business that is equal parts creative and technology. Do you think that the child version of yourself believes you and what do you think their reaction is to learning where you’re going in life?

HA: I don’t think the little child Hayley would believe me like. I’ve recently been going through like old school documents and I just had such little expectations for myself. So I don’t know, I mean I think it maybe would give that little kid more self confidence than what she’s doing. I don’t think I ever would have thought that I’d be at where I am right now. If I ever thought of being an entrepreneur it would be like opening my own shop you know just like a nice gift shop with art prints. I never saw myself doing what we’re doing now. I mean I couldn’t have done it without Liz Giorgi, my co-founder. She’s like a catalyst for growth, she’s the one that pushes me. I think that’s where it blew up.

DH: If you could give one piece of advice to your younger self. What would you say why?

HA: I’d probably say “You’re right” like believe in yourself, you’re right and you’re way better than you think you are right now. Because I think of where I grew up it was this competitive really good public high school I went to. I mean it was like 4000 kids and there was someone with the same first and last name as me. I kind of felt like I was dumb to be honest and so I think I always had low expectations for myself until I got out of high school and started like working in the real world. Where I understand like I had my ideas are good ideas and I don’t mean to make a joke every time I want to say something like and I do have something to say and it’s important. So I think I would just reassure little Haley that she is smart and she does have great ideas that should be shared.

DH: Well you had lots to say on our podcast today and I so appreciate you doing so. Thank you for joining us and thank you for sharing your journey. Also just congrats on everything you’ve accomplished and I’m sure it’s not the last that people are going to hear of you. For anyone who needs to have some really great quality photos, videos, headshots, etc. produced for an online store I definitely would check out Soona we’ll include links in the show notes. Thank you again so much and hopefully we can do this again sometime.

HA: Thank you so much.