A Bit About How Things Work at Second Wind (Patreon)

Hey, Jack here.

We’ve heard from a lot of you recently, asking about how our management structure works and how big decisions are made here at Second Wind.

Here’s a rough breakdown of how some of our business-side works.

• We are a CO-OP which means that many of our full time staff are co-owners of the company but not everyone who works for Second Wind is a co-owner.

• As owners we all get a split of profits.

  • We do earn different salaries based on job responsibilities.

• We have a board of directors that determines:

  • Adding/Removing Owners

  • Taking out loans on behalf of the business (we have not done that, nor do we plan to)

• We also have a leads team that manages all of our contractors.

Which is where it gets a little tricky, because at Second Wind, we’re all contractors and some of us are Owners. So the Leads deal with the Contractors and the Board deals with the Owners.

Currently Leads and the Board are the same 5 people – Yahtzee, Nick, Omar, Marty, Jack

Leads were agreed on by the staff at the of forming Second Wind and the Board of Directors is voted on once a year.

There have been times where new leads were suggested but, so far, no one else has accepted a leads position.

Responsibility of the Leads:

Omar -- Lead Editor - Organizes all Video Editors, delegates editing jobs

Marty -- Managing Editor, Edits scripts + coordinates release of written, scripted video, streams, and podcasts

Yahtzee -- Lead Talent - Creative Direction

Nick -- Channel strategy/direction, community management, sales

Jack -- Business Operations, Human Resources

The role of the leads is to finalize decisions about contractors and general channel/company direction then make appropriate action plans.

Here’s some gray areas about who gets to make what decisions. Like any business structure, not every staff member is or should be involved in every decision.

For example, small company purchases or when to publish Patreon posts or articles - Leads can make those decisions in an effort not to bog down the staff's work. Or if Yahtzee wants to change something with Fully Ramblomatic, that should be his decision. BUT what if it’s a decision about an ad in the episode or how the credits appear… things that could potentially affect the channel and company as a whole???

Obviously it’s a balancing act, making sure individual creators have the freedom to make what they want while maintaining some sort of channel standards.

Choosing when to bring decisions to the larger group is up to the individual staff members or the leads as they deem necessary.

And that’s why we have…

Meetings: Spaces to share what we’re working on and bring up any issues or concerns.

• Weekly Leads Meet

• Weekly Staff Meet

• Weekly Sales Meet

• Weekly Video Editors Meet

• Weekly CCC - Creative Meeting

• Monthly Owners Meet

Recently we’ve initiated monthly individual “vibe checks” with all the full-time staff to make sure that any concerns are being heard.

A complaint that we heard was that there were some staff members who felt their ideas were not being given due consideration or that they were feeling bottlenecked.

Going back to thinking about who gets to make what decision, because his job involves the channel as a whole, a lot of decisions were going through Nick and only Nick. This wasn’t done because of a megalomaniacal power grab or anything… simply because when you’re in a group, someone needs to point in the direction we’re going.

Also, this isn’t a condemnation of Nick’s judgment or insight… but as a group of collaborators, no one person should be making the majority of the decisions for the channel. 

We’re learning a lot of lessons as we build the company, especially about our individual strengths and weaknesses. The feedback we received about our decision making process has caused us to open a lot of doors we didn’t know were closed or even there. Now we have an official HR department (Jack) whose job it is to organize meetings, write notes, and follow up with proposals and concerns. We’re having more focused meetings about stats, art, and specific shows, and getting a better understanding of our group consensus to ensure that decisions aren’t made by any individual but by the group.

This doesn’t mean we will always agree with each other. And this doesn’t mean that everyone’s idea will automatically be acted on. But the hope is that all of the owners are given the space to be heard. Then we can get proper group consensus for channel-wide or company-wide decisions.