It's a double header on the Sound of Inbound! Mack Garrison and Cory Livengood are the co-founders of Dash Studios, the Raleigh-based animation and motion design studio behind work for brands like Verizon, IBM, Cisco and Red Hat. Now in their 11th year, they didn't stop at building a top-tier studio. They also built a community with Dash Bash, a national animation conference right here in North Carolina.
We put their partnership to the test with a little newlywed game and talked about how they found their lanes as co-founders. We also covered how they bring real creativity to complex B2B brands and why they planted their roots in North Carolina. Then we dig into AI: where it helps, where it raises ethical questions, and why taste is the antidote to slop. Finally, they tell the story of how a five-year anniversary party turned into Dash Bash.
Check out this episode on YouTube and Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
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Hello everybody today on the sound of inbound we have a double header Mack and Cory from Dash Studios will be joining us they are here in North Carolina but I got to meet them last year at a very special conference called Dash Bash it is every other year here in North Carolina it's a super great event for animators and it's going to be really exciting to have a power couple on for the first time yeah so these guys have been partners for a number of years and they actually went to your alma mater NC State go Pack go Pack uh we got to love those folks from NC State anyway here on the show today we're going to be talking about partnership we're going to be talking about building a magnetic brand especially with your own conference your own branded event that's just in itself a rare a rarity and so I think we're going to have a great conversation we're hoping to put them to the test to see if they really know each other with a little newlywed game yeah yeah it'll be fun we'll see how it goes okay so here on the Sound of Inbound please welcome Mack and Cory from Dash Studios.
[01:07] When brands like Verizon IBM Cisco Blue Cross Blue Shield the YMCA RE/MAX JP Morgan and so many more want to bring their stories to life they dash see what I'm doing there guys they dash to the next two guests here on The Sound of Inbound but what really makes them interesting is that they didn't just stop at building a great animation studio called Dash Studios they built a community they also are the creators of a very very popular conference called Dash Bash it's a national animation conference that takes place right here in North Carolina that blends TED style talks with hands-on sessions and real creative energy and I think it's turned into something really special when I got out to attend it last year I was just wildly inspired by these two today we're going to get into exactly what makes a great partnership work how they built a unique way to connect with and grow an incredible creative community i got that and how they both were able to turn something into a very magnetic brand you know both for their conference and for their studio they are running a very top tier business and I really want to get into how they tick and how they make things work so please welcome here on the sound of inbound Mack Garrison and the best last name I've ever heard in my life Cory Livengood the co-founders of Dash hi guys how's it going.
[02:10] Hey good thanks so much for having us Aaron we should have just taken Cory's last name for the name of the company i mean let's be real do you have an origin story on that name do you have anything any story about that well you know it's it's surprisingly not that uh not that deep it's German it means exactly what it sounds like it means um good you know living good good life uh Liebenoot I believe would have been the the German pronunciation but uh yeah and uh yeah no I mean that's about it really i mean when it came to the studio at least coming up with our name for Dash you know it's funny uh people we always say publicly like "Oh Dash it's short and sweet implies movement we're an animation and motion design studio." But on the back end I think we had like a hundred names that Cory and I could never agree on it was like the one where we're both like "Yeah all right that works."
[03:06] Well for me it it is i wonder does it mean something more now than it did when you first started does it have more meaning to you i'm sure it does have more meaning to you but really does that mean does that name mean something to you guys on a daily basis does it have something more of a deeper meaning i don't know what do you think Cory on your side yeah I I would say yes i think Mack's joking but it's true i mean we went through a ton of names and we can never really agree and we landed on something that meant something to us but also we just needed to write something on the piece of paper and keep moving you know but now 10 years later you know there's there's a pride behind it now because of what we've turned it into i think I mean if we ever were to do like a rebrand or something it would probably be visual but not not the name kind of thing you know what I mean like we've we've grown a lot more attached to it over the years i think it's like one of those things just echoing what Cory said that you know at the time when we started the company we didn't have any idea the longevity and where it would be right i mean it was an experiment with two young kids that we were throwing together and then 10 years later now it it encapsulates so much and so much of each of our personalities and our journey so I would definitely just say the same thing Cory did is that I think there's more weight now probably than we had on it when we first started.
[04:15] Uh yeah when I I started a business many many years ago with a friend and we did not know what to name our studio our little teeny studio and we had both seen a movie recently Sideways the one about the wine country and we just thought it was hysterical we're like let's call it Sideways but I could not find a domain so we went with Go Sideways and at first we didn't think about it we didn't think about if it had any kind of ludeness to it but we go to New York we a meeting with Pfizer and then downstairs on the little plaque that was like in front of our conference room it said Pfizer go sideways i'm like whoa that doesn't that doesn't really work now so sometimes the name doesn't scale well you should you pivoted on the spot we're like we're just not doing Merlot right yes exactly exactly we're not doing we're not doing Merlot um Exactly right um so yeah so I think one of the first things I wanted to talk to you guys about what what makes a really great partnership and I thought to do that we would play a little bit of a newlywed game but you guys are an an old couple so I feel like this is something you guys should both be able to do really really easily so I'm going to do this rapid fire set of questions and I want you either point to yourself as you or that or that or if you want to point to your partner does that sound cool yeah sounds good where where is Mack on my screen here you just point at the screen just point at you all right there you go we can do it that way okay so the first question I have is who is more likely to say this could be cooler and just blow up the scope oh oh I love it that's what you get for two creatives running a That's why we have producers that's why we don't make those decisions anymore i love it okay the next one who is more of a tech head Cory for sure okay all right it's cool um who is more I think I know the answer to this one who is more on stage at Dash Bash definitely yes uh you I would call you the front man at times right Mack sure absolutely for sure Cory Cory lays a good baseline back there for us yeah thank you okay i like this one too this one because I think when you're in the creative arts you have to be both the creative and a technologist of sorts uh but who can MacGyver their way out of a sketchy situation Cory i think so for sure okay all right i like that um who is the better singer me for sure Cory's just laughing because he's thinking about all those like social dance videos that I've like put together and doing stuff morning standup meetings Mack just sings sometimes you're right i do sing sometimes on standup y'all don't y'all don't even know what happens at standup at Dash i got a surprise for you guys in just a moment.
[06:45] Okay who would accidentally start a new business while on vacation or over lunch oh yeah it'll probably be me I would think okay i would go along with it i would still I'm very supportive but probably Mack I think um I think everybody should know that we have two very very successful NC State grads on the line so tell me really quickly who is the bigger NC State fan and of course we have a throwback hat somebody's wearing one right now who's the bigger NC State fan uh probably Mack probably really okay all right yeah i mean that doesn't mean I'm not but Mack's been to more games he's got more swag you know i think he's he wins the crown okay cool all right and then on the topic of of music for a second who is more likely to rock out and I have a soundtrack maybe I wrote some music for you animators of the universe the universe oh so I'm just pitching for what opening music needs to be at next dash bash now I'm remembering your background in audio production i'm like "Oh yeah that's right." Cory we need to have like an animation that goes along with that like I can already I can see it.
[08:04] Yeah so I hope that most of our audience knows what this is a throwback to but there was a pretty pretty uh popular show back I think in the 80s uh about the Flash and the opening music uh was this like hysterical big 80s hair band rock music and it just fits so well for you guys i mean look at you both you look like you should be in the band Kill or something like that that's so funny i love it that sounds so good yeah it's hysterical and it lines up so well and you are the masters of the of the animation universe and you bring in animators from across the universe so I just thought that would just be fantastic i love it what that's the coolest way to start a podcast I've ever been a part of is to have someone write me a song i've never been so hyped up in my life Aaron this is amazing.
[08:48] Okay well this leads to my next question okay where do you guys find inspiration because I was looking through your folio on your website and I have this issue with our stuff too you know we work in B2B and I think a lot of folks think there's no creativity in B2B but when you look at all the companies you've worked with a lot of that work is actually more categorized to not really the consumer world but more the business world so I'm just curious about how you guys find inspiration and can inject creativity into what might some people might think is kind of boring world but we don't make it boring uh Cory I'll let you take this first one just because we were actually just talking about this with you earlier this week yeah it's a good coincidence we just posted some or about to post some socials about the same kind of thing i think um as far as just finding inspiration at large maybe whether it's B2B B toC whatever I think it's really important to kind of unplug and go offline and not get so hung up in the like Instagram scroll or like you know the even Behance even all the other you know Vimeo as it used to be because I think you run the risk of just copying everything you see I mean not in a bad thing and and all all art in some way is derivative right so for me I I I really like to you know go to museum museums look at magazines uh older older resources things like that my dad was a graphic designer he's got like hundreds of old communication arts magazines that I'll just flip through you know like that kind of a little more analog and then see how you can translate that into like digital media like we we make they're hiring you because I feel like you're the one that has to think outside that box and um they're so looking down and you're looking out so they're coming to you for you're the one that's supposed to be out there finding inspiration in the world around you and do they appreciate that if you do it that way i don't I I I would imagine that they would appreciate it if they had any inclination and by that I just mean you know they like what they're seeing and they come to us for a reason but they don't always know sort of how the sauce is made as it were.
[10:44] Um yeah and also I think it's important to note too that like we publicize a lot of the work that we put a lot of energy in and a lot of creativity in and that doesn't mean that there aren't projects that that pay the bills that are more corporate that are more stuck in the the brand that we're working with you know that kind of thing i think it's important to acknowledge that like we couldn't exist without those brands too and without the work that they give us and the partnerships we have with them they might just not be as flashy and they might not make the the homepage you know what I mean i also think the only thing I was going to add was just you know one of the tenants of our studio and something we really specialize in is simplifying complexity you know we help brands connect to their communities and they turn to us because they have a really great product or service but just trip over themselves trying to explain it in the most simplistic terms and so oftentimes the creative that we're creating is a derivative of the exact needs of that particular project so you know some things might necessitate a demo video and stereotypically a demo video might be looked at like oh that's boring how could you make a demo video exciting well that's a limiting constraint that you have on yourself because of previous demo videos that you've seen but the way we like to look at it is like okay how do we make this the most exciting demo video that anyone's ever seen we know that needs to be the solution how do we build off of that and often times because we work with complex industries these are historically groups that have not played around with what really good creative can look like and so there is a lot of opportunity for us to come in and say "Look at the amazing stuff you've done here's how we can build off it this is where you can be and just because you're operating in this more sophisticated industry or complex industry doesn't mean we can't make some cool stuff."
[12:22] Yeah that that's a that's a great great point for both of you i think that a lot of folks come to us because we're trying to find and you guys do this really well find the story within the story to try to use that as our inspiration to start building something really creative from that the client could never really see because all they're doing is trying to sell a house or they're just software or whatever they're like "Well we're trying to do is sell a house yes but this the house has a has a has a soul." Uh you know so there's a lot of things that I feel like we try to imagine things you know that isn't even there and I feel like that's what's engaging when we can bring that inspiration into the mix uh and I love the way that you guys do it it's absolutely fantastic um I was curious and I kind of mentioned it before but for both of you u what do you feel like is the biggest difference in your output now than it was when you first started out like do you feel like there are some things that you can do more there's more creative latitude there's less creative latitude how how have things changed since from when you started to now well I mean I know when we first began uh the explainer video was like on the rise so like you think back to the UPS whiteboard animations i mean circa 2015 that's what everyone wanted it was sort of a single piece of creative that solved the problem for everything and over time with just so many different channels that we're targeting now clients needing to appear in different spaces there's just a whole new ask when it comes to motion things from like in-app animations or like systemizations and motion brand guidelines uh scalability of what we're doing so folks are interested less in the single hero piece and more of like how can I make a single investment and have it appear in all these different ways to kind of elevate our brand.
[13:53] Yeah what do you what do you taste Cory on that yeah I I think that's definitely accurate i mean even when we do make one video it's it's never one video it also is a myriad of cutdowns and different aspect ratios and different snippets that we pulled from it even one video has is now a campaign every time right and I think that's just sort of the world we live in now to Mack's point I also think we've been a little bit we've been more open-minded as we've gotten older as a studio we don't even always use the word studio anymore sometimes we're a motion agency sometimes we're we're just we're more willing I think to play in other sandboxes that we we know our specialization is animation but if we're working with a client that we really love and they need some graphic design work okay let's try that let's take that on if we're working with a client and they want an interactive okay we can partner with people who are developers and kind of work together to build something like that or a live action shoot we'll put together a crew will go on set you know so I I think honestly if anything we've widened our our net a little bit aperture yeah our aperture thank you as we've gotten you know a little older as a company.
[15:00] Yeah well well I was wondering just over the years you kind of mentioned this to me when we were doing some of the pre-interview stuff about what makes a great partnership and I'm wondering if you both have found some things that you've matured into over the years where you be have one strength versus the other or certain kind of roles become more prevalent and I'm curious about how that has evolved over the years because you guys have now been in business is it more than 10 years now yeah we're in our 11th which is 11th year so congratulations on the decade thank you that's absolutely fantastic so tell me a little bit more about what do you think both from both of your perspectives really how have you seen your strategy about approaching partnerships evolve over time i'm so curious to hear what Cory has to say on this too but um you know I feel like when when we first started I think there was a huge luxury that Cory and I had worked together at the same creative agency before starting Dash for about 5 years with one another and so there was a huge amount of investment already and just seeing how the other person works understanding where their strengths and weaknesses are so as we were building a friendship we were also starting to understand just how good each other were at the craft that we brought to the table and there was an understanding of like cool this person works hard they're really dedicated and they believe in good creative work so when we started Dash we were really lucky that we kind of had that running start and like most partnerships I think there was you know friction is the wrong word but we were just had to figure out where our lanes were in the early days everyone's doing a little bit of everything there's naturally like crossing paths which you know when we're both very pointed creative people and we have our opinions that was always something a little challenge to navigate but as we've grown as a studio we've kind of fallen into our lanes which has been really helpful you know Cory heads up all our creative manages the aesthetic of every project we take on uh along with our art directors uh but that's his lane and understanding that I'm welcome to have feedback and I'm welcome to have ideas but it comes through Cory to make sure that that's okay that it gets disseminated first and then For me it's definitely landed more on the entrepreneurship side just as we've grown um I found myself more on the front end of the studio kind of talking to people thinking more about the strategy and it's been a really great pairing because we both operate in tandem with one another and then have the opportunity to chat um on on key issues that we need to talk through so that's been really great but yeah Cory curious your your take on.
[17:10] Before we go to Cory for a second though just to focus on this for a moment so you're saying wearing a shirt that says sales is not as cool as wearing a shirt that says designer well you're right this is very uh this is very on brand right now i still think of myself as a designer uh more than I do with sales because I think sales naturally just has the wrong connotations and what we do is we're problem solvers and to me that feels more like a designer than sales so I'll oftentimes catch myself people like what do you do for a living you know I might either say entrepreneur sometimes I still say creative director but sometimes I still say designer because I do think foundationally something that makes Dash really different is we're not started by business people trying to make this agency successful we're started by creatives that have a very creative first mentality with the work we take on that's great i love that well you could say solutions architect yeah sure or or just put pixel pusher that's a good one that also works too that one work too.
[18:06] Okay Cory about you and the irony too is that of the two of us Mack is the only one who's had any formal design training so it is sort of funny that I ended up in the uh Oh didn't you go to the design school at NC State no I went to um I was in the humanities humanities and social sciences program i didn't know that oh what was your major at NC State it was film and theater and so you know certainly a overlap especially in the film space narratives and things like that but not graphic design or any of that really right but the film making mentality is is absolutely core to your every single day right yes for sure it's it's definitely not a huge departure but you know did not go through the the ringer in the design school like a lot of my colleagues did including Mack so that's just kind of interesting.
[18:53] Well and then to dovetail on that I think that's actually made for a really special combo because it definitely I am a big idea person thinking about the nuances and the grandeur of how this stuff should look and Cory just learned it in a very technical way and so oftentimes I would run into these hurdles of like here's a cool idea but how do we actually bring it to life and Cory with a technical background I would be like oh we do XYZ and then I think I brought Cory more into the world of like the big idea and so it's really been a nice like kind of symbiosis we've had with one another yeah we also split a lot of the creative when it comes to the bash to the dash bash stuff i know that a Mack's right he's always welcome to weigh in on a client project with creative input if he wants to and I appreciate that you go through me and you give me the you know I have the ability to say no we don't have time for that or whatever it might be but when it comes to the conference or to our own branding um I think Mack you get to stretch your design chops and your creative direction shops a little bit more there because we have a lot more control over that and I can focus on the clients a little bit more so I think we still do a decent job of kind of sharing that design because we both love that part of the job and I neither one of us really want to fully give it up you know i know when we said at the very beginning we were like which one of us would be like derail a project to make it more creative both of us were still like yeah that's me.
[20:05] Well for me the um the role that I think that maybe I play as well is is more like chief evangelist um because I I've been in a lot of the roles that our team members have been in and so I am very empathetic to what they got to do next and for Mack for you when you're talking to a client you would already know what it's going to feel like to move it into production and how it's possible and if you were just uh in a with a business degree it may not really help with the discussions that really get into maybe some creative space when you're talking to that early discussion with those clients uh you want the Red Hat folks to really be inspired so you're trying to get them excited about I'm sorry you're wearing a red hat but Oh yeah no of course you do work for Red Hat we do yeah 100% i think you know Cory and I's um Cory and I's background and starting with animator position and then working up to both doing creative direction things like that over the years has really empowered us I think in those meetings to understand what's feasible what's not feasible uh how we would approach something brainstorming and riffing on ideas I think one of the biggest benefits of working with us is just how creative we can be on a singular call like we've seen between the two of us I don't even know how many videos we've made including like our past work at the previous agency and where we are now I don't know a thousand videos something like that so we can Cory and I are so good at just feeling what the other person is thinking on the call that we can riff off stuff and be on the same page without ever saying anything all right I want to get to my next question but you did bring up one point i've always felt like if you were to take all like it's same for us if we were to take all of our work and put it all stringed end to end is there enough time to ever watch all of that um it would probably take days and days and days and days and a thousand videos yeah i mean gosh that's that's a lot of work it's a tremendous amount of work.
[21:40] So here's something I was just curious cuz people do find this as a curiosity listening to this particular podcast it's things that work and things that don't work so I'm wondering like what is some of the biggest mistakes that some of the clients might make when they're making assumption about how they're going to work on or produce video um I right off the bat I would say timeline what clients think a reasonable timeline is uh what reasonable budgets are oftentimes that's just a misunderstanding of the process that goes into the motion design work that we do and the different phases and checkpoints that we have to have to ensure this project uh meets success so I think often times there's a bit of education that kind of comes into the fold on just catching people up where it's like if we do it with this tight timeline or this budget this is what it's going to look like versus this is the ideal approach that's usually the number one hurdle and then I think the thing that slows down projects the most is actually messaging you know clients get very excited about jumping into the exciting part the creative right and what we're bringing to life but core to everything we do is the bespoke messaging that we tailor to every one of our clients what are we going to say how are we going to sound you know is it the thought leader kind of piece or is it more conversational all that's really important and oftentimes takes longer than I think folks realize.
[22:54] Yeah all right i'm going to put this one to Cory Cory how do you avoid putting bolt lists into videos I'm sure you guys have had to deal with this because if I'm dealing with it and my team's dealing with it I'm sure you guys are dealing with it do you have that issue do you have people come to you with a script we're like "We want this this this and I want to bolt." Oh yeah for sure you know and again going back to what kind of video they're looking for and what the what they're actually trying to get out of the video then sometimes okay maybe it's appropriate it's fine if this is going to be a long tutorial or a PowerPoint presentation have your bullets but yeah normally if it's more of a marketing video or it's something that's meant to advertise a product we can you know kind of show them other other videos we've created where we've solved that problem and like hey look here's a more interesting way to get this information across or like hey I'm the layman and if I were watching this video I would feel like we could probably like shorten this or change this and you know honestly most of our clients are pretty receptive to that kind of thing to us kind of having a little back and forth with the scripting and with the messaging.
[23:53] So to jump on into that for a second do when you share ideas uh with your clients are you using your existing work or do you like that's at the catch22 that I'm sure people starting off the industry don't have their own work to show but do you use your own stuff as an example of where they can go with their with your next client's project or do you use outside sources as well nowadays mostly our stuff or we at least start there and if we can't find a great example that we've created that's usually a good sign for one thing for us creatively but also it's like then we may look into other you know other sources or other you know videos we've liked and bookmarked along the way earlier on a lot more outside stuff or like mood boards that are less motion and more like here's the vibe we're going for and it it might be a you know a pastiche of different you know media from all over the place yeah okay cool.
[24:40] Before before we move into any kind of break right now I got one or two more important questions to ask you both are you you're not both from North Carolina natively or are you both from North Carolina yeah born and raised Cory's in Greensboro and I'm born and raised in Raleigh so we didn't go too far did we yeah you said somebody went to Michigan was that your father oh those are my in-laws my in-laws are from the Michigan area okay all right but I do think there's like some kindred spirit between like Midwesterners and the Southerners it's like we love food we're kind people so it it worked out on my side at least marrying into it and that's same for you too Cory yeah I'm from Greensboro and moved to Raleigh in 2002 to go to NC State and stuck around.
[25:20] Okay so I think we talked about this also in the pre-interview what is the importance of North Carolina to you both so Cory I want to start with you because I think you had shared with me also that it does mean a lot that we're here in North Carolina and that we're celebrating not just the culture but the area and all that kind of great stuff so what's what's the importance of North Carolina to you yeah I think that there is or at least used to be and I'm glad to say that um a sort of stereotype or an assumption that the best creative work is coming out of New York or LA or Chicago or London or or what have you but it was important to us when we started the studio that we wanted to sort of still represent our region knowing growing up here going through the design school or just you know seeing like I mentioned my my dad being in the arts growing up as a kid i knew that creative people existed in North Carolina and in the South at large even outside of Atlanta but like uh not a lot of other people did know that or didn't think about that and so for me it was important for us to you know even though we have staff that are remote now put our roots down here start the studio here kind of own our first couple demo reels had like a big North Carolina in the front of it and like just really leaning into to that i mean even at some of the conferences we would go to Mack would like dial up the southern accent whenever he would ask a question and be like "Hi I'm Mack from North Carolina." And like you know just lean into it and kind of educate people and not in a a passive aggressive way that like hey you don't have to be in some of those major markets for creative work to be produced and in a lot of cases you can be a little bit cheaper if you're not in New York frankly uh and you can have that value ad to your client so it's it's really important to us to me anyway and and I think we I think we noticed this as well but I'm gonna call you guys a power couple because there are some other famous power couples coming out of this area too uh the um Good Mythical Morning Show with Rhett and Link also NC State folks and the Duffer Brothers right and they did Stranger Things and oh my gosh I don't know what school they they went to high school I think in Durham right they didn't go to college here too did they i think they're Durham folks the But I think you're right i don't think they went to college here yeah but still North Cackalacky right that's right that's right i don't know the origin of North Cackalacky where that comes from but I've just tried to embrace it myself it just rolls off the tongue and we feel like we need to embrace it it is rolling off the tongue i'm not going to take my shirt off and spin it around my head i promise I won't.
[27:35] Yes I would say that too but what how about how about for you Mack what's the importance of North Carolina for you uh yeah you know growing up here I've got uh a long lineage of families from Raleigh you know my dad worked for the county my mom was a public school teacher so from the get-go community was really important and so I just got to know the community of North Carolina really well it it really feels like my people um I think they're an incredibly giving bunch welcoming bunch and to me I feel like it's made us successful as a business to tap into some of those key pieces that were so core to Cory and I growing up in this state and to be able to bring something back to an area that has given us so much and given me so much over the years was just a very natural thing to do um and so I know in the early days Cory and I even had conversations about would this be elsewhere would we be in like a New York or LA or be better served um opening a shop there but at the core we always kept coming back to just our roots and and what has made us who we are today and that's growing up here in North Carolina so yeah echo everything Cory just said.
[28:31] Yeah the the area has embraced all sorts of innovation the whole Research Triangle Park area the way that the feeder schools have really infused all sorts of different kinds of thinking into maybe you're liberal thinking but thank you for it uh into the um into all sorts of businesses from technology to pharmaceutical to agriculture all sorts of interesting things in our area and I think it's taken a while for it to take hold but I mean now we have some major major major companies that are calling this their East Coast headquarters and I think that's starting to show that the technology has been an enabler to kind of say we don't have to be in one of these major metropolitan areas that North Carolina and including the Raleigh area I'd hope could really be a great source for opportunity i also think you know business is a lot about timing and I I you know I think there's a lot of skill set and luck with everything that everyone does and I think we had a right mixture of that you know the fact that the explainer video was on the rise no one really knew how to do animation and at the time of starting this in 2015 there weren't a ton of players in the Raleigh area doing what we do at the skill level that we were bringing it to the table and so just as North Carolina was growing our studio started to grow so it really just made sense for us to be here and we found an opportunity that I don't know if we would have found if we had gone to a bigger market so it was the right place right time for sure that's awesome okay we're going to take a quick break but when we get back we're going to get into the topic of the millennia AI i wish I had a track for that i did not make How did I not make a track for that wait wait wait do I have that one that would be hysterical if I had one of those uh do I i don't know if I do oh there you go that works close enough close enough close enough so I do think um I do think we need to get into that and we also need to talk about Dash Bash i think that would be really fun for everybody to hear about more about the origin story for that and where it's going to go next so everybody please hang on we'll be right back here on the Sound of Inbound with Mack and Cory from Dash Studios.
[30:36] Hello everybody we are back here on Sound of Inbound with a double header of course our friends from Dash Studios we have both Mack and Cory they are the founders of Dash Studios and they also had started a beautiful I would call it more like a movement uh with uh Dash Bash and we're going to talk about AI and we're gonna talk about Dash Bash in the second half of the podcast and I really appreciate you guys being here today so just to kind of jump into it I think we would love to talk about what is going on with AI and how you're all dealing with it uh I think I don't I said mentioned to you over the break that I'd seen that you written a um kind of a predictions article on things might go trend-wise in 2026 so I think that I think the general conversation right now is just about designers and animators are kind of get nervous if we're not already nervous about what AI is doing impacting our career and impacting the industry and uh what we're doing to kind of manage that so I thought maybe just to kind of start off with from both of you uh what's your current feeling on AI is it is it a friend or is it a foe or is it a friend yeah I mean at least for me personally I I feel like AI brings a lot of mixed bag i mean we know creatives and designers who are really pro-AI and are using it every day and we know folks who uh loathe it with a passion you know my philosophy on it currently is it's a tool and I think it's one of those things that when used correctly that it can actually do a lot of good you know I think about some of the projects that Cory and I have worked on where we've needed to upscale low res imagery or do some rotoscoping or pull together like a quick edit some of those like process-based AI approaches are amazing it makes our lives a lot easier where stuff becomes problematic is the appropriation of other artists and that's where other creatives are scared and they have a lot of right to be scared in that regard and so it's the wild west right now and so my philosophy and our philosophy which we're currently developing at the studio is just to be very intentional about which tools and AI approaches we're using and just making sure we're understanding how those companies if we are using those tools are getting and gathering those images.
[32:43] Yeah those great insights and how about you Cory yeah we're we're pretty aligned on that i think um it would be a mistake to ignore it even when it is threatening just because it's here you know it's going to be part of the workflow it's going to be part of the pipeline and in some ways it's useful i mean you know we've used it a few times to generate a what is a what would have otherwise been a stock video that we would purchase for a video we were able to generate to get a little bit more what we want and and that I feel like is a use case that you know makes a lot of sense but to Mack's point you just have to be really careful about where you're sourcing it from we've been educating our clients a lot who are excited about it on like we are not saying no to this we will explore these options but you should know that for the most part we can't guarantee that you have the rights to the images that we're putting in your video uh I mean we just can't guarantee that right and so you have to kind of go through your own legal process and think is it worth the risk for me to use this technology just because I hear that it's cool if Dash has some other solution right and so I think for us it really is just about educating ourselves learning what the options are and kind of going as deep as we can go on like what are the ethical policies at these different c companies right like what do they say they stand for.
[33:55] Well I find it so interesting too often times we'll get a client who comes to us and they say "Hey how are you all using AI or could you use AI in this uh video that we're using?" And what they're really asking and the question they have at hand is like "Hey how can we make this a little bit cheaper or more efficiently?" You know that's what they're asking they're using AI as sort of the starting conversation point so oftentimes they come to us thinking something needs to be AI but with a lot of the tools and processes we do we can show how we can systemize and build this work that is scalable that is modular and they're like "Oh this is amazing." This goes back to what we were talking about earlier and just where the landscape of work is what used to be the hero explainer video is now coming into systems and processes and how we build things to save our clients money and make something that's not only going to work now but could be evergreen in the future adobe has recently put out some tools that I think remarkable remarkable remarkable tools take a photograph bring it into like Photoshop and then change the freaking angle and change the lights on it and it has depth now or objects that were initially 2D are now 3D and I think there are some things that when people say "Are you guys are using AI?" I'm like "Well it's on it's on everything so we're not going to avoid it so where are you talking about using it?" So I like when you said earlier that it could be a tool and I think about like the analogies of even the vlogging industry that we're looking at right now um people started off with just using their web camera then they moved to something like a little DJI Osmo and now they're looking at a cinema graph or cinema sorry cinema a cinema camera like they just keep upgrading where they're starting from and for me the um because we're thinking about this ourselves but even with AI I do see it as an interesting starting point to visualize an idea quickly and then it's a sketch pad that we're just referencing for the production what do you guys think on that do you ever use it in that manner to definitely fully agree whe whether it's just ideating with like a text prompt or if it is like an image generator but more to get an idea out of our head than to actually use in production because I mean I mean rare is the time where you can generate something that then is good enough to be used in the final product it's so rare and a lot of clients I think who don't know any better think that that's what they're seeing i can't say the the client but we had a pretty funny situation just like yesterday or two days ago that was like we got some feedback on a video with a real actor about can we do the avatar different um like I don't like the way you know like they just assumed it was an AI avatar that we had to generated as this like talk to camera actor and it wasn't it was a real human being and so it was just really interesting that people are like looking for it and finding it even if it's not there where we had somebody that said um the voice over actor that was not an actor they thought it was all computer-generated and we're like no it was actually a person it was the same thing it's like the opposite like oh there's no way that's a person i'm like no no really it is they don't believe it.
[36:40] Yeah i was cur I was curious as far as like what do you think is the more ideal workflow and maybe that is the today workflow and then what you might think I'm almost afraid to say it but like where do you think we're going to be at the end of the year with these tools how would you leverage it in your workflow and then what do you think is going to happen in the next six months i think a lot of it's utilitarian like Mack said you know extending a background erasing something from an image i mean some of the earlier AI tools are still some of the most useful ones I think from a workflow perspective i think it's what you said uh when it comes to I have this idea I need to sell a client on i need to get it out of my head so I might use a generator to get that like on a call share a screen hey what do you think of this like you know kind of thing and then I think as far as where it's going I mean I I just hesitate so much because it's just changes every week i mean today Sora is shut down you know what's going to happen tomorrow i don't know like Mack you might have some more forward thinking yeah what is that news sorry tell me that again oh Sora open AI is shuttering Sora uh the the Oh what are they they they're not going to replace it no there's copyright infringement going on with it and there's a bit TBD on what ends up happening or something comes next but at least the news as of this podcast right now today um it has been shut down um very interesting.
[37:55] Yeah you know the thing that I would add on to what Cory is saying is like I think there's twofolds here and it's important that I think we address um the first thing that you had asked about designers and their worry and their concerns about where the industry is evolving because from my perspective I think designers and especially motion designers who are already considered very multidisciplinary folks are in the best position for success because at their core they're problem solvers and I genuinely believe that the future is going to be run by people who can make things happen who can take ambiguity and find solutions within it right that's all design is here's a problem and a project that we have how do we get there and so motion designers are already used to working with a myriad of tools to bring the stuff to life and we're essentially just saying "Hey can you take on more tools?" So they're very comfortable in that space so anyone who's sitting here and they're like "Man I feel so worried about being replaced." They'll never be replaced taste is the antidote for slop problem solvers are the antidote for slop and so if you are constantly making yourself a problem solver and curating what good work looks like and being a steward and practicing yourself you'll be in a good position to succeed so if you're a designer and you're listening to this podcast don't worry that's the first where things are changing and where I think you're going to see big adjustments across industries everywhere is what has been these older processes are now going to be viewed as archaic as we move into the future of new deliverables what does that mean Mack what does that mean what that means is that we as creatives we have processes for everything we do we have a whatever six week 8week process you do step one step two step three it all leads you up to a final deliverable so that the client's on board you're on board everyone's on the same page what's happening now is that there is a compression of timelines and a compression of those processes as things can happen a bit quicker do you need to segment this stuff out into many steps as you had previously done or can they be combined to happen a bit faster maybe a good example would be let's say we had a storyboard phase storyboards are still images that are sketched out that are paired up with a script so that everyone can understand how the story is unfolding subsequently you have an animatic which takes a little bit of motion and kind of times that out so you understand how quickly or slow the video is going we're seeing already that that process can be combined into one so you're not doing each of those individually that historically would have done that is now being pushed into one phase that's going to happen across the board and so what that means when we're thinking about these new tools and processes is if you can move quicker those that are going to succeed are ones that are able to understand that their process needs to change to meet the moment in the time that we're in.
[40:41] My gosh this is a perfect Okay so a couple things that are great about this and I hope it's a good segue as well but I think personally I'm I'm a kind of a big big proponent for getting deliverables out the door like let's not wait and take forever never clients want to see results so let's get make sure every week there's something to deliver on when I've been in the it touched the very tip of the iceberg of doing any kind of video production especially at conferences when I've been the most successful is when I just get that video out i don't overproduce it i just get it onto the streams as quickly as possible they seemed pe people seem to enjoy that almost real time uh you know as you said like before we're really getting efficient about a workflow but um that real time example of like let's get uh this experience then try to variously live through the experience and having it to show online as quickly as possible that will be better than me doing a big glossy glossy video 100% Aaron I got to jump in here you're going to love this uh I was at I was at I heard this presentation from this woman KK Walker who is I think like the head creative director or a creative director at Google and Their whole mentality when it comes to creative now is this term that they're using best demo wins which is this idea very techy right but it's like get it into the space your input is more important now than almost what your output is where I think historically we've been so focused on how sharp and good the creative looks almost like what can you do on the input not like input into like AI stuff but just what you're putting into something how quickly you can do that put it out there get the market to react to it and then audition it and try something new that is that is the landscape we're in that's what you have these big companies like Google's doing and we're starting to recognize that on smaller scale now.
[42:23] Yeah there's a lot more allowance from their audience they're willing to take the lower quality production in order to get the results much faster uh and I think they're appreciating the rawness of it and they're almost being able to appreciate how much we have to go through to produce these things when they're not super duper duper glossy uh so it actually as I'm doing some research on cameras right now even for our own podcast I'm realizing how much more you can do in camera and we wouldn't have to do a with post-production and that's also a combination of trying to figure out a better workflow because that wasn't always possible but we go back 30 years people are using film uh you know so you had to get that developed before you can even start the process of thinking what the output's going to be yeah Cory what do you think anything on that yeah I I also think it's in a way all this is true and especially for internet and social content it's like that i mean I do think that when you when you reach out to like the you know OTT or broadcast TV spots you still do kind of get a lot of that glossy stuff the stuff that takes these huge productions and things like that i also think sometimes it's a little bit cyclical i mean right now it is like a cool new thing but even right now you're starting to see companies want a stop-motion video or you know you see the Project Hail Mary and they do a puppet for the for the alien instead of CGI like there is a also an equal reaction to this AI stuff which is I want you to make something for me to handcraft something for me and so I know probably a lot of designers hearing this don't like the idea that things are lower quality but faster but I don't think it's one or the other I think there's still like honestly a backlash to that with some brands and some industries and some deliverables.
[43:56] Well it even goes into the predictions that Cory and I were talking about for this year we see hyper creative hyperinvestment into novel creative coming back just Because you know the reality is anything new is going to wear off and like while this AI stuff seemed pretty impressive initially it's a lot of sameness and we're everyone's starting to realize that like man how do we differentiate ourselves in into this sea of content landscape and it's investing in good unique stuff that grabs your attention stuff that looks handcrafted so like Cory alluded to stop-motion the amount of stop-motion requests that we've already gotten this year is just really interesting compared to the last decade that we had Gromit Oh my gosh sign me up if anyone's listening to this and they want to do it hire Dash we're here for it 100% okay all right i want to do the music for it.
[44:40] I was going to say though it feels almost magical that two video guys create your own live event but you put this in your article too and I absolutely agree with this and I've said this so many times on this podcast uh AI cannot replace the live interaction like that's just not going to happen and as much as they think we can hyperpersonalize with all these tools and all that kind of stuff at the end of the day we still want to talk to somebody we still want to interact with people and you guys have found this amazing formula to take the magic of Dash ah and bring it into Dash Bash and I think that's a really fantastic opportunity to talk about the value of a live event and the value of networking the value of of inspiration by proxy so I think first off it would be fun for you to just share really quickly the origin story of the Dash Bash conference because I think it was basically a party that turned into a conference is that right did I get that right yeah 100% Cory and I we realized coming up on our five-year anniversary we had not done anything to celebrate our existence like every year it was like sick we still exist so the bash I was like Cory we should throw a party we should invite our friends you know maybe we get some people come travel out of town maybe the folks coming out of town could say a few words he's like is this an event or or a party or a conference and it was kind of like the door i was like wait a minute on a stage yeah this isn't a bad idea you know I think uh Vivek Murthy he's a former surgeon general of the United States uh talked about loneliness as an epidemic that's hitting the US you know and I think that's coupled in with the post-pandemic world of being separated and then also the fact that workforces are decentralized and working everywhere people are finding themselves by themsel more often than before and there just I feel like was this need to connect especially in more of the freelancer or creative and agency space where people really are separated and so in throwing the first event what was supposed to be something oneoff we just felt like we really flipped the switch on what people were looking for and it and it's great because it's like film festivals it's like you worked on something but that shared experience just cannot be matched unless you're literally in the room you know like if you talk about like old TV like when M*A*S*H was on we're talking about you know decades ago everybody watched the same show that night so there was kind of like the shared experience the next day you talked around the show that you just saw and oh my god what happened on that show and that's gone now where you can do all this asynchronous kind of stuff and you're right the loneliness factor is massive and that's in every industry i believe it because the events are kind of kind of had like a resurgence almost like a renaissance coming back around and saying there's a value for us to get together and then how to make a how to make it into an experience that's memorable and useful in a very niche space is a still a very difficult thing.
[47:15] So Cory do you like having Dash Bash are you in love with that show are you going to do more of them uh it's probably my favorite thing that that we do um I love all my clients and I love all the projects but the bash just is something really special I think and it is that working so hard for so long over a year for this one weekend and then you know you're you're worried is it going to is it going to go well are we going to get good speakers kind of feels like a wedding it does and it's just like is everyone's flight gonna get in on time i mean everything every little piece of minutiae and then you get there and it's just so much fun and everyone is just beaming to be there you know people look forward to it all year i look forward to it all year i think it's just a really great the the the energy is is really hard to describe i mean you've been I think you can you can pick up on that i mean the the exclusivity factor I was at first a little annoyed by it i'm like what do you mean you only do it like maybe every other year uh but you know there's that flower in the desert that only like blooms like once I forgot what it is like once a year or once every hundred years or something like that and when it does though everybody freaks out it's like you appreciate it so much more and so I do feel like what you have created has its own it's got its own energy i love it and when I did attend there were some like there were some amazing inspirational moments there were some tearful moments i was like high-fiving people you were just excited for other folks what they were able to accomplish and you were also astonished about how much these people can accomplish by themselves and what they've done with their teams it just blows my mind um and I'm sure you guys have learned a lot from it i mean if there were ever was going to be a Dash Bash in the future would you change the formula up would it be what it is now.
[49:00] Yeah that's a great question i mean I think first and is something that's really important in recognizing why I feel like our our event feels different and why I think it was successful a lot of conferences that Cory and I have both gone to you know we find that a speaker gets up on stage and they say "Look how great I am and look how great the work is." And like nothing against that that's a great pitch but we can all find that online what we're looking for and what we want on the Dash Bash stage is someone that can tell us a human story something that's relatable tell me the moment you failed and how you pulled yourself up or what did you navigate in a personal life that reflected into your business work where it's always adjacent and so there's a real touch point with that that connects with our audience i also think the second piece is that the speakers we have on stage are typically folks who don't speak regularly or have not been on the big stage you know there's a lot of folks in our industry who speak at reoccurring events and things like that and there's sort of these big names but we really try to make this a very inclusive event a very diverse event both from age ethnicity background um you know approach stylistically so there's always representation that you can find in very different capacities and I think that has helped draw the right crowd that we want here because the crowd is almost the most important part we we are less concerned about the speakers that we get and we more are creating an event for the audience it's a an event where the audience has an opportunity to connect and get out of the conference just as much by talking to one one another than they do from the speakers themselves and so by curating and creating an event that really is really really tailored to the audience I think that's what's created something special and and this community piece that Cory says is his favorite part of Dash and and honestly it's mine as well too it's something that I think has surprised us on how much we love putting on this event and it's something that we're excited to hopefully continue in the future.
[50:52] Yeah it's a great opportunity to commiserate and celebrate i think that's the cool part about it that it doesn't have to be all positive crazy we all have a crazy job again we push pixels that's what your shirt should say and you know and and it is very difficult sometimes we're really strung out and we get really burnt out and we need some outlet to kind of share that experience that we're going through get re-energized inspired and get back out there again i just wish it could happen more than every couple years but still I'm I'm excited about it look you got to watch out for our health Aaron Cory and I We got Yeah we got to keep you guys healthy got to keep We have a studio to run too you know there's that whole thing and then there's that um okay i got two more questions for you both uh the first one just here is just what is exciting to you both these days like what really excites you both um for me I feel like I think change is scary uh but it's less scary than stagnation and so to me we're in this place right now where there's a whole bunch of opportunity ahead of us our studio and the ability to produce a myriad of work has never been greater than it is right now and the opportunities that are out there and our ability to deliver from clients at enterprise level to also mom-and-pop shops that we believe in has never been greater than right now and so yes it's scary but I also think this time and our lives and so much change it's really exciting and I feel like there's a lot of opportunity ahead for Dash so that's what I'm most excited about.
[52:13] Beautiful how about you Cory oh got to follow that one huh yeah i uh I am The world is my oyster now what thank you uh yeah I'm excited to see how the motion space has evolved into being more of these like systems and processes and being a bigger more interesting part of like brand thinking i mean some of my favorite projects recently have been on the like motion branding side or been on the like coming up with a system for a company versus a video for a company and I think that's going to just keep happening more and more and I think I just think that's really interesting because it starts to bring in the opportunity for new tools for interactive stuff for things that are just a little different than a a rectangle video you know what I mean and so that that is exciting to me um as we move forward in addition to everything that Mack just said the the part the part that I feel like I want to appreciate but I it's hard to right now is like um well if I think about people like in the late 1800s into 1900s they saw things that must have just blown their mind like people born in the late 19 1880s saw a world go from like horse and buggy to airplanes in the sky and all sorts of other things go on that how could I mean electricity and uh it just beyond belief really and I think we're right now in a moment where we're experiencing that we just don't we're just in the middle of it it's hard to see what what the next stage is going to be but I think people will ask us you know in 1015 years they're going to be like what was that like we were freaking out yeah of course we were all freaking out.
[53:48] Okay last question for both of you is just really because I think you are in a space that is extremely exciting and I just was wondering if you guys have any advice for anybody else out there that's pursuing a career in the creative arts so it doesn't have to just be in the design world or in the um in the world of of motion graphics but I'm just thinking in the creative arts alone i think you both might have something really interesting to provide those that are considering it you want to go you want to take this one Cory yeah yeah I mean not to not to beat a dead horse but I think Mack is right to try to position yourself as a problem solver and to be open-minded to solving that problem in a myriad of ways and not just in the one way you you might you know jump to first to think about it broadly and I think that's going to be how you kind of pitch yourself to get a job in house a freelance gig is sort of being able to show up and say "Here's some beautiful work here's the thought process that went into it right that second half that thought process part is so so important to us when we're hiring anybody and I just think that that is something that can sometimes get lost if you're just worried about the final product yeah understand i appreciate that that's great.
[54:55] How about you Mack yeah there's this thing called like pace layering um and it's this idea of like how complex systems like civilizations organizations or kind of buildings um move forward and evolve and it's like if you can imagine like a globe and everything at the top is moving a little bit faster than the stuff at the bottom so you have like fast fashion commerce infrastructure governance and at the bottom is culture and to me when I think about advice that I would give to other creatives out there is just the importance of good culture and culture is a really broad term that encompasses so much but so much of culture is filled with the arts and being creative and finding that expression and so people will always chase the trends the trends move so quickly they come and go they're in and they're out but if you focus on building good culture you focus on the core root of why you're into something why you love it and really leaning into that no one will ever be able to take that away from you and no AI tool will ever be able to take that away from you i think I would translate that also into finding a team that has that like-minded culture too i think you when you find a great job or even any job you enjoy it more if the team is really on the same level with you and they can all enjoy it together i think it's because then you can go through the highs and the lows together uh if you don't if you don't like the team it doesn't matter what you're selling it's it's still not a great experience so I feel like when you say culture I think that's something that has to really be felt and shared amongst like-minded folks you want to work with every day 100% 100% all right.
[56:28] You guys are both beautiful i would like to thank you both for joining us here on the sound of inbound for anybody that wants to find them online they are if I hope I get this right guys it's they're on dashstudio.net did I get that right you got it correct got that right okay and if you want to catch them at their amazing leprechaun of a uh event called Dashbash they will eventually tell us if they're going to put this on or not and hopefully we'll see uh if there's a future date that we can all join them but no date has been arranged just yet so please stay tuned and check out dashbash actually is it dashbash.com dashbash.net we're a .net family okay so go to dashbash.net for any announcements on that and you can also see some of the things that they've done in the past with that beautiful beautiful conference so Mack Cory you guys were wonderful thank you so much for joining us here in the Sound of Inbound again if you want to connect with these both um you can also find them on LinkedIn I'm sure and they will love to connect with you uh we're all great mentors of the space so I'm sure if you do reach out to them they're happy to give you some advice on how you can get connected in the creative arts so again thank you both for joining us here on the Sound of Inbound uh we'll see you guys soon.