Podcasts about rob you

Haaaappyyy Thursday Cousins!!!!The cat is officially out the bag!!!! Our very own Amir is MARRIED!!!! It has been so tough not being able to share the news with you guys until it was official lol but we're finally able to talk about it! Everyone congratulate him in the comment section so he can feel all the love!Thank you to everyone who has sent us messages on the CCP page and our personal pages, jazakAllah for all of the well wishes and du'ahs!!! We love you guys, Amir was definitely overwhelmed from all the love!Thank you guys so much for always rocking with us! If you like what you hear, follow our page for more episodes uploaded every THURSDAY!Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more videos:https://www.youtube.com/c/CousinConnectionPodcastFollow us on:IG | https://www.instagram.com/cousinconnectionpod/Tiktok | https://bit.ly/32PtwmK---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------EPISODE 141 TIMESTAMPS:0:00 -- COLD OPEN13:14 -- Making the perfect ring17:40 -- The proposal STRESSED AMIR OUT!!35:36 -- living our best life in Cancun36:36 -- Diving 20ft & Conquering fears40:34 -- Swimming with fishes in the middle of the Ocean45:55 -- The restaurant let us break our plates?!?52:41 -- Get ready to be eaten alive in Cancun!!!56:04 -- The Cancun airport will ROB YOU!1:00:26 -- New Vlog Roll-outAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Rob Finn? …Hello Finn?芬恩?...你好芬恩？Finn Oh sorry Rob, you caught me napping. It's that time of day when I need to nod off – or in other words, fall asleep.芬恩: 哦，对不起，罗布，你发现我在打瞌睡。 一天中的这个时候我需要打瞌睡，或者换句话说，需要入睡。Rob Well, sleeping on the job – or sleeping at work - is no bad thing – and I hope today's programme will wake you up to the idea that sleeping in the workplace might be a good thing.罗布: 好吧，在工作中睡觉——或者说在工作中睡觉——并不是坏事——我希望今天的节目能让你意识到，在工作场所睡觉可能是一件好事。Finn Oh really! That's good to hear. I would have thought that sleeping at work was against the rules.芬恩: 哦真的吗！ 听起来还不错。 我本以为在工作时睡觉是违反规定的。Rob: Not in every office, Finn, and I'll tell you why soon as well as explaining some sleep-related vocabulary. But now you're wide awake, how about a question?罗布: 芬恩，并非每个办公室都如此，我会尽快告诉你原因，并解释一些与睡眠相关的词汇。 但现在你已经完全清醒了，有个问题怎么样？Finn OK, let's hear it.芬恩：好，让我们来听一下。Rob When the former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was in power, she did her job with very little sleep. Do you know how many hours of sleep she is said to have had each night?罗布: 当英国前首相玛格丽特·撒切尔掌权时，她几乎不睡觉就完成工作。 你知道她每晚睡几个小时吗？a) Three hours 三小时b) Four hours 四小时c) Five hours 五小时Finn I always thought she got by, she managed her job, with just four hours of sleep a night.芬恩: 我一直以为她能过得很好，她能完成自己的工作，每晚只睡四个小时。Rob Not much, is it? We'll find out if you are right or wrong later. I'm not sure if she chose not to sleep for long or she just wasn't able to sleep for long. Someone who can't sleep is called an insomniac. 罗布: 不多，是吗？ 我们稍后会知道你是对还是错。 我不确定她是否选择不睡太久，或者她只是无法睡太久。 无法入睡的人被称为失眠症患者。Finn And I'm certainly not an insomniac. I enjoy sleeping all night and some of the day too. And Rob, you said napping during the day is a good thing?芬恩: 我当然不是一个失眠症患者。 我喜欢整夜睡觉，白天也喜欢睡觉。 罗布，你说白天小睡是件好事吗？Rob It's always nice to have a short sleep – or what I call 40 winks – during the day, but when you're at work this can be a problem. In some companies, like Google and the Huffington Post, workplace naps are positively encouraged. They're seen as a way to make staff more productive.罗布: 白天短暂的睡眠（或者我所说的 40 次眨眼）总是好的，但当你在工作时，这可能会成为一个问题。 在谷歌和《赫芬顿邮报》等一些公司，积极鼓励在工作场所小睡。 它们被视为提高员工工作效率的一种方式。Finn So you mean they work harder and are more creative because a power-nap – a quick sleep – makes workers feel refreshed and more alert. I like the sound of this!芬恩: 所以你的意思是说，他们工作更努力，更有创造力，因为小睡——快速睡眠——让员工感到精神焕发、更加警觉。 我喜欢这个声音！Rob An Australian health writer called Thea O'Connor, is a founder of a campaign called Nap Now which is trying to make sleeping at work more acceptable. She calls herself a 'naptivist'! Let's hear from her now. What does she say is stopping us from doing this?罗布: 澳大利亚健康作家西娅·奥康纳 (Thea O'Connor) 是一项名为“Nap Now”的运动的创始人，该运动旨在让人们更容易接受在工作时睡觉。 她称自己为“Naptist”！ 现在让我们听听她的消息。 她说了什么阻止我们这样做？I think that our culture is a bit crazy not to embrace it, and one of the reasons we don't is our attitude, you know it's quite counter-cultural to do nothing in order to get ahead. I just really see that it's time to disrupt the prevailing work ethic which is all about work longer and harder.我认为我们的文化不接受它有点疯狂，我们不接受它的原因之一是我们的态度，你知道为了取得成功而不采取任何行动是相当反文化的。 我真的认为是时候打破普遍的工作观念了，这种工作观念就是工作时间更长、更努力。Finn: Right, so she wants us to embrace – to accept – the idea of a workplace power-nap. But it is our attitude – the way we think about work – that stops society from accepting this.芬恩: 是的，所以她希望我们接受——接受——工作场所小睡的想法。 但正是我们的态度——我们思考工作的方式——阻止了社会接受这一点。Rob Yes, she explains that it is counter-cultural – so going against the normal way of thinking – to actually do nothing and have a snooze.罗布: 是的，她解释说，实际上什么都不做，打个盹是反文化的——因此违背了正常的思维方式。Finn That's why she is trying to change – or disrupt – our current work ethic of working longer and harder. She believes this doesn't necessarily bring better results. But Rob, is this idea just a fad – something that's popular for a short while?芬恩: 这就是为什么她试图改变——或者说颠覆——我们目前工作时间更长、更努力的工作理念。 她认为这并不一定会带来更好的结果。 但是罗布，这个想法只是一种时尚——只是流行了一时的东西吗？Rob Maybe, but research has certainly shown that good quantity and quality of sleep is important for our wellbeing. A few years ago research by the East of England Development Agency found 30% of people have their best ideas in bed compared to just 11% who have them at their desk. It called for companies to install beds in the workplace.罗布: 也许吧，但研究确实表明，良好的睡眠时间和质量对我们的健康很重要。 几年前，英格兰东部发展署的一项研究发现，30% 的人将自己最好的想法放在床上，而只有 11% 的人把这些想法放在办公桌上。 它呼吁公司在工作场所安装床。Finn Well, there aren't any in our office yet Rob. I think putting beds or areas for naps in the office would help us workers feel more able to rest and recharge our minds.芬恩: 好吧，我们办公室还没有人，罗布。 我认为在办公室里放置床或小憩区可以帮助我们的员工感觉更容易休息和恢复精力。Rob An alternative idea would be to change our working hours. The UK's Sleep Council claims the nine-to-five work culture does not fit into the natural sleeping pattern of the human race and bosses need to introduce a more sleep-friendly working day.罗布: 另一种想法是改变我们的工作时间。 英国睡眠委员会声称，朝九晚五的工作文化不符合人类的自然睡眠模式，老板们需要引入更有利于睡眠的工作日。Finn That sounds like a siesta to me - a short period of sleep in the middle of the day that people in warm places like Spain often have.芬恩: 对我来说，这听起来像是午睡——在西班牙等温暖地区的人们经常在中午休息一段时间。Rob: My problem with a siesta is that if I have a sleep in the afternoon I'd never wake up!罗布: 我午睡的问题是，如果我下午睡一觉，我就永远不会醒来！Finn Well before you nod off now Rob, could you please tell me the answer to today's question.芬恩: 罗布，在你打瞌睡之前，请你告诉我今天问题的答案。Rob Yes. I asked you if you knew how many hours of sleep the former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, is said to have had each night? Three, four or five hours?罗布：是的。 我问你是否知道英国前首相撒切尔夫人据说每晚睡几个小时？ 三、四、五个小时？Finn I said four hours Rob.芬恩：我说四个小时，罗布。Rob You are right. It has often been said she needed just four hours of sleep – only on weekdays, not weekends. Well before you have another power-nap, could you remind us of some of the vocabulary we've heard today:罗布: 你是对的。 人们常说她只需要四个小时的睡眠——只在工作日，而不是周末。 在您再次小睡之前，您能否提醒我们今天听到的一些词汇：Finn Yes, we heard:芬恩：是我的，我们听到了:napping小睡nod off打盹sleeping on the job工作期间睡觉insomniac抢眼40 winks40次眨眼power-nap打盹naptivist潜入主义者attitude态度counter-cultural反文化work ethic工作风格wellbeing福祉nine-to-five朝九晚五siesta午睡Rob Thanks. We hope you've enjoyed today's programme.罗布: 谢谢。我们希望你喜欢今天的节目。

Discover the fascinating ancient art of coppicing as we visit Priory Grove in Wales' Wye Valley, where the technique is still practised on a small scale to benefit both people and wildlife. We meet site manager Rob and contractor Joe to learn more about the coppicing carried out here, and how this interaction between people and nature has enabled the two to develop and evolve in tandem. Also in this episode, find out how an unfortunate end for ash trees resulted in a fantastic sea of wild garlic, the team's efforts to encourage dormice, bats, pine martens and other wildlife and which tree to identify by likening the trunk to elephants' feet!  Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk Transcript You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people, for wildlife.  Adam: Well, today I am off to Priory Grove, which is next door really to the River Wye near Monmouth in Wales to meet the site manager Rob there who's gonna give me a bit of a tour. It's predominantly made up of ancient woodland and provides a wide range of habitats for wildlife. Things like roe, fallow deer, they're known to forage throughout the area, and a wide variety of bird species, including the tawny owl, sparrowhawk, and the great spotted woodpecker, which can all be seen on the wing here. All very exciting and I've just got to find it and find Rob.  Rob: Hello, I'm Rob Davies, site manager, South East Wales.  Adam: So tell me a little bit about where we are and why this is significant.  Rob: This is Priory Grove woodland. It's quite a large site on the outskirts of Monmouth, but nobody really knows what its history is. It's it's called Priory Grove, presumably because it was attached to one of the monastic estates round here. And that probably accounts for its survival as one of the one of the largest ancient woodlands next to Monmouth. And it did retain a lot of its coppice woodland, which is quite important for biodiversity.  Adam: Right. And what we're, I mean, we're standing by some felled, are these oak?  Rob: These are oak. Yes, oak, oak in length.  Adam: So why why have these been felled?  Rob: This is part of the coppice restoration programme, so coppicing on this site has been a management tool that's been used for hundreds if not thousands of years in this area and it's used to produce products like this, this oak that will go into timber framing and furniture and all those good things. And also, firewood is part of the underwood and the the the hazel and the the the understory coppice. So products for people and in the past it was used for all kinds of things before we had plastic. But it's still very useful, and so because it didn't cease until recently on this site, the animals and plants and the fauna that relies upon this method that have evolved with it essentially in the last 10,000 years or so since we've been managing woods in this way, still are present here on this site or in the local area. So if you continue the cycle you continue this interaction with the wildlife and you can help to reverse the biodiversity declines. So it's very holistic, really this management technique. But it does mean that to make space for the coppice regrowth, because trees don't grow under trees, you know it needs the light. The light needs to be there for the coppice to come up again. You have to take out some of these mature oaks that were planted 150, 200 years ago, with the intention of being used in the future. So we're planting things and we're carrying out the plans, we're bringing them to fruition, what people enacted a couple of hundred years ago.  Adam: It it's interesting, isn't it, because it it it is an ancient woodland, but that doesn't mean it's an untouched woodland, because for hundreds of years it's it's been managed. Man has had a hand in this and not only that, commerce has had a hand in that, so often I think we think of these things as a dichotomy. You have ancient woodland, nice, pristine sort of nature, and then you have sort of horrible invasive commerce. Actually, I think what's interesting about this site is that there isn't that dichotomy. They both work in tandem, is that fair?   Rob: That's right, it's a false dichotomy. So the reason these woods have survived is because they were used for people, and because of the way they're managed, coppicing and thinning is quite a sensitive technique, it allows space for nature to be present and to develop and evolve in tandem, so they're not mutually exclusive.  Adam: Yes. So tell me about coppicing is an important part of this site, tell me a little bit about what you're doing at the moment with that.  Rob: Yeah, so we've had a grant actually from the Wye Valley AONB from, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, to to do some coppicing work on stands that were coppiced about 20 years ago. So we're continuing that cycle. And we've been working with a company called Wye Coppice Community Interest Company, Wye Coppice CIC, and they're quite developed in, in the Wye Valley area. And we formed a good relationship with them and through them we've been able to do half a hectare of coppicing up on the other slope higher up in the site there. If you like we can go up and meet Joe?  Adam: That would be wonderful. Yeah. You you lead on I will follow. Well, you can hear from this I'm a bit out of breath, we've claimed, OK, I'll be embarrassed to say it's a hill, a small incline, but we've come across this stand of of felled trees. So just tell me a bit about what's going on here.  Rob: Exactly. So all these stumps you can see scattered throughout the stand. This is the coppice, so it's cut down to just above base ground level there now and it will just regrow. So it's kind of a natural defence strategy that we're just exploiting. So it's it's been used to, it's, you know, since it evolved things like hazel especially, it‘s used to being browsed off by animals, the animals move on and then the tree just comes back. So it's like a phoenix strategy it comes back, back up again. We're just exploiting that. So we'll cut the tree to base and then we'll protect the regrowth from the browsing animals and then the tree will come again.  Adam: Right, and this is the work done by Joe?  Rob: Yeah, this yeah so this is the work done by Joe Weaver. Joe's just down the end there actually if you want to come and meet him.  Adam: OK, let's go have it let's go meet him. Ohh I've got stuck. OK, so Joe, this is all your handiwork.  Joe: It is, yes.  Adam: Tell me a bit about what what it is you do then.  Joe: So I run Wye Coppice CIC, we're a coppice contracting company and working with Woodland Trust, Natural Resource Wales and Wildlife Trusts throughout the Wye Valley and we're embarking on a project to restore areas of the Wye Valley to restore, do a coppice restoration project for for various organisations throughout the Wye Valley. The what you see, what you see here is about 1 1/2 acres of cut down trees with 7 or 8 standards.  Adam: What are standards?  Joe: The standards are the trees that we've left behind, so, so they're the large, they're the larger trees.  Adam: Oh, I see right. So you wouldn't be coppicing, these are very well established big trees, you don't coppice trees like that, you coppice quite small trees, don't you?  Joe: Yes, so all the small diameter understory trees we've cut down to ground level and and they will, they will resprout and grow back again. We can then come back in 10 years and recut them and have a healthy supply of continue, a continual healthy supply of pole wood.  Adam: And yeah, so what you're trying to get with coppicing is sort of quite it's quite small diameter wood, is that correct?  Joe: Yes, generally speaking, so this is a restoration project you can see this first cut is fairly large diameter. And so most of this will go to make charcoal but generally speaking after 10, maybe 15 years of growth, we'll have poles about sort of thumb size and maybe up to about 50 pence diameter.  Adam: Right. And that's ideal size, is it?  Joe: And that's a really good size for products like bean poles, hedging stakes and binders that go on the top of naturally laid hedging and then various other pole wood applications.  Adam: And and when you see a coppiced tree, evidence that it's been coppiced, there's, I'm trying to look over there, is is this where you see lots of different branches actually coming out from the stump in the ground? That's evidence that's been coppiced, cause it not just one thing grows, lots of them?  Joe: That's right. So you can, if you have one birch tree standing up, for example, you can cut that down to the ground, and when you come back in a few months' time, you'll notice about 5 or 6 shoots coming from that one stump at the bottom of the ground. So if we can protect that from deer browsing and rabbit browsing, then those stems, those five or six shoots will grow up into individual stems that we can then use use in pole wood products.  Adam: It's odd, isn't it that that happens, though, that you chop down one sort of main stem and you get four or five coming back, that's sort of an  odd natural thing to happen, isn't it?  Joe: It is. I think it's the tree's response to the stress of being cut down. So it sort of puts out a lot of it puts a lot of energy into regrowing new growth to try to survive because essentially these broadleaf species, trees, they're they're forever growing, you can cut them down they'll regrow, cut them down again, they'll regrow again. So it's a constant cycle of of regrowth.  Adam: Yeah it's it's like sort of, you know, thumbing their nose at you isn't it, going well, you cut me down well I'm gonna come back fivefold. You know, that's it's a sort of really funny response.  Joe: Indeed. But we can reap the benefits of that.  Adam: Yeah no, no, it's, I get, I get why that's good. And coppicing itself, that, and that's an ancient art, isn't it?  Joe: It has, certainly here in the Wye Valley it was practised at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to produce charcoal to power the Industrial Revolution until coal was iintroduced and so it happened for hundreds and hundreds of years here.  Adam: Right. So you think, do you think I mean there's no need for you to be an historical expert on the history of coppicing, but do you think that's the first big sign of it happening, sort of Industrial Revolution time?  Joe: Certainly around here it is yeah, and there's some of the coupes that we've cut, some of the coppice areas that we've cut here, we've found evidence of charcoal hearths. So you can see flat areas with bits of charcoal sort of sliding down the bank.  Adam: So that would be ancient sites in here, well, ancient, I mean, a few 100 years old of them actually making charcoal in this woodland?  Joe: Yes, in this woodland, throughout the Wye Valley all the way throughout the Wye Valley here, yes.  Adam: Amazing. Now so your company, it's not just a traditional sort of private business, it is a a different sort of form. Just explain how that works.  Joe: So we run a community interest company and that allows us to access grant funding if we need to. Essentially, we're run as a private business, but we are able to do community outreach work as well and that's part of what we do is to try to educate people about sustainable woodland management.  Adam: And how did you get involved in all of this then? Did you grow up as a boy going I want to chop down trees to make fences.  Joe: No, I didn't. I was walking in the Dolomites, I saw two stoats fighting and thought woodland life is for me *laughs*.  Adam: Ok, well, fantastic, never heard that, so inspired by the the battle between two stoats and the and and the Dolomites. That's fantastic, but a hard life, I would have thought to run a business to, I mean it's physical work anyway, but that's my perception from the outside, is it hard work?  Joe: It it can be very difficult, it does have its benefits. Obviously it keeps you fit and it gets you outside but yes, it is a hard life and and you know it's it's quite a technical job as well and the training is expensive so we're trying to introduce a training programme as well through through our through our business Wye Coppice to try to get young people interested in woodland management.  Adam: And do you find that people sometimes don't understand or or perhaps disagree with the fact that commerce and nature can be actually mutually beneficial? Do you find that an issue at all?  Joe: Yes I do. Yes, and we're we're we're always willing to stop and talk to dog walkers especially. Shortly after COP26, we had two dog walkers come past and shout at us for chopping the trees down, after sitting down with them and having a cup of tea, they bought a bag of charcoal off us.  Adam: Right ok very good there we are. You're bringing them round one by one, one by one, those customers are coming over. Well brilliant and we've had not a bad day. I thought I might have to put my wet weather gear on, but it's been it's been OK. Anyway well, that's brilliant thank you very much. That's been really interesting.  Joe: Thank you.  Adam: So we've got this stand of trees we're looking at Rob. A couple couple of oak. Did you say that was a lime?   Rob: That's a lime yeah.   Adam: That's the lime, that that one with lots of ridges in it is that the lime?  Rob: That's it, yeah.  Adam: That's the lime. So why have you left these trees? Is there particular reasons you didn't take these ones out?  Rob: Yeah. So these as you can see, these are all mature trees and so you don't take these decisions lightly. So when we coppice this sort of half a football field area here, there were thirteen of these big mature trees, trees you can barely get your hands around as they're so large, taken a couple of hundred years to grow, so you've got to be quite careful and quite selective, although you need the light. There's an old adage about oak trees, it goes something like this that to fell an oak tree you need three things. You need a good eye, a sharp axe and a cold heart because these trees, you know they've been grown and nurtured and developed, and they're impressive life forms. And so it's not something you do without considering it very carefully so so you can see a couple of trees in here which are a couple of oaks, good size, but they're full of ivy, very dense ivy and that's very good for wintering bats. For hibernation, or for potentially summer roosting.  Adam: So the bats would live just amongst the Ivy, they'd sleep amongst the ivy?  Rob: Yeah when it gets as dense as this, when it's really all knotted, entwined, there's lots of gaps behind it. You could stick your hand in and find little cavities and several species of bat, especially pipistrelle, they they will hibernate over winter in this kind of growth. So you really don't want to be disturbing this.  Adam:  Right. And and what what's, is there something specific about lime that wildlife like is there any particular wildlife?  Rob: Well, it's good for bees. It's good good good pollen.  Adam: You get beehives in there? Oh I see, the pollen itself is good.  Rob: They like the flowers. Yeah yeah it produces lots of the small leaved lime it produces lots of good flowers and and it will attract aphids which is actually a food source for for dormice in the summer. So they they feed on the feed on the lime sap, you know if you park your car under a lime tree, you'll get this very sticky kind of substance coming off it.  Adam: Yes, yeah, yeah. Of course it does. Yes. Yeah, yeah.  Rob: So that attracts aphids, attracts the dormice, it's good for insects who like nectar as well. So it's a it's a very valuable tree and and you know  Adam: So interesting it's it's not valuable commercially, it's valuable for nature.  Rob: Yeah, absolutely. And it's quite it's quite a special tree in the in the Wye Valley, it doesn't occur much outside this area naturally, and it's kind of an ancient woodland indicator in this part of the world, perhaps not officially, but it's a.  Adam: OK. Any other trees we've got here?  Rob: Yeah. The rest of the trees, then are beech.  Adam: Right and you've kept those why?  Rob: Yeah, because you can see if you look at this one here, it's got quite a few cavities in it at the base at the top, beech tends to do that. It tends to take, form little cavities, rot holes and ways in, and that's ways in for fungus and then they eat out and hollow the tree. So the potential for harbouring bats again is very high in these trees. Without sort of going into them, doing some invasive exploration, you can't tell, but it's it's very high potential for bats. So again, bats, all species of bats in this country are protected under law because they've had massive declines like a lot of woodland species. And so we'll do everything we can to retain that habitat.  Adam: It's it's the Field of Dreams, philosophy. You you build it and they will come.  Rob: Yeah, yeah. This as long as it stays there, it'll always be valuable as habitat and so at least then, there are future sort of veteran trees within this stand.  Adam: It is interesting you you've already, I mean, we've only done a short part of this walk so far, but you talked about whoever was managing this woodland 100 years ago knew what they were talking about. And I think that's fascinating that we don't know who that person is or who who they, who those people were. And in 100 years time, people won't know who you were p.sumably, but the the evidence of your work will be here. They'll go yeah, that was a good bloke who did all this and left us with something.  Rob: That's it, you you don't plant trees for yourself, you plant trees for the future generation so you know, I won't see the oaks I plant develop. I'll be dead long before they mature and it's the same for the person who did this. But you can see the ones we took out, the ones I took out and selected were tall and straight. And that means that the coppice is well managed, because there was enough light for the hazel in the understory to come up straight away. If you cut hazel to the ground and you protect it, in a couple of years, it'll be way above six, eight foot and it'll just continue to get higher and higher over the next few years. And what that does is it shades the stem of the oak and it prevents side branching. So you get this very tall initial first stem. And that's what you're looking for. And that's what these trees had. So this would have clearly been cared for and these trees have been selected, they were on a journey from the moment they were planted.  Adam: OK. And just on my journey of education about trees, how do, what, they're beech, I wouldn't be able to spot that myself, what tells you they're beech?  Rob: It's a smooth trunk. If you look at this one here now you can see I always think of them as sort of elephant legs. They're grey and they're tall and they're smooth and they quite often have sort of knobbly bits on the base like an elephant's foot. And if you go through a stand of pure beech, it looks like it looks like a stand of elephants' feet, really tall, grey stems and these big huge buttress roots.  Adam: Fantastic. I am never going to forget that and I will always think of elephants when I look at a beech, a brilliant brilliant clue. Thank you. Right. So where we off to now?  Rob: We'll walk around so you can see the top of the coupe and just see the extent of it and and then we'll walk back down perhaps and have a look at this oak.   Adam: Brilliant. Well we've come to the, over the brow of the hill and along this path, there's a tiny little path for me to walk, and on either side there's a carpet of green. And I think I know what this carpet of green is. Rob, what is it tell me?  Rob: This is wild garlic.   Adam: Yeah. This is the time of year, is it?  Rob: Yep, you can see the flower heads. Ramsons it's also called, it's just about coming into flower now.  Adam: Sorry they're called what?  Rob: Ramson.  Adam: Ramson. Is that the flower itself is called ramson, or is that?  Rob: Well, just the plant.  Adam: We call it wild garlic but it's it's real name is ramson?  Rob: Well some people call it ramson too.  Adam: Right OK. And I never, I mean I have never picked and eaten anything from a forest because I am sure I will kill myself, but all of this, I mean, I've seen loads of people do that, pick wild garlic and it's, I mean there's there's acres of the stuff here.  Rob: It can it can yeah any kind of wild plant comes with the caveats that you need to know what you're doing.  Adam: Yes, which which I don't.  Rob: Yeah, absolutely. It's funny yeah, this site is quite well known for its ramsons, for its wild garlic carpets. This this is in response to something here, quite a sad thing actually. We're right next, you can probably hear the road noise there, we're right next to the main road from Monmouth into the Forest of Dean, Staunton Road there, and unfortunately, a lot of the trees along the road edge were big, big, mature ash trees. And they all had dieback and they were all dropping limbs and about to crush a car. And so, you know, we take that very seriously in terms of health and safety so the trees just along the road edge, we left the ones in the wood, just the road edge trees we had to do something about them, so they've either been reduced or felled and what that's done in this woodland where in the last 60 years, you have had very little management, like most woods, post war, very little has happened. So it becomes very high, very closed canopy, very dense. And what's happened, because of the ash felling is, you've got this pocket of light here and the ramsons have immediately responded to that. So this wasn't here last year. This carpet like this.  Adam: What so this is this is brand new?  Rob: This is brand new. It was the odd plant coming up every year, patches of it.  Adam: I'm shocked because this looks like something from the Wizard, if this was yellow, this would be we'd be in the middle of the Wizard of Oz set here, the yellow brick road. It just I mean it it's just a beautiful, winding, lush, dense path of wild garlic. It looks like it's been here forever.  Rob: And in a sense it it was. It was just waiting for the opportunity, waiting for that temporary disturbance caused by the ash felling. And so like with the coppicing, that's what we're trying to recreate essentially, is these temporary pockets of disturbance where you you break up the canopy, you get this flush of greenery and then until the trees recover it and regrow again. So you don't want this homogeneous block of woodland really. You want, you want variation, because that's the key to success for, for wildlife and biodiversity, different niches, different ages. If you look closely, you can see it's not just the garlic either. You can see wood anemone, you can see greater wood vetch, you can see little violets. So, you know, quite quite a lot of species are now taking advantage of this temporary light that the ash felling's produced.  Adam: It is a nice positive message, isn't it? Because ash dieback has been a real tragedy. But even in the midst of problems there are opportunities which nature comes back with, it's an optimistic sign.  Rob: There is and so this as I say, you know these these trees would have coppiced without us because you know when animals browse them, they they they they come back after that so all we're doing is sort of recreating these natural processes through the management of the woodland. A once in a lifetime storm might have knocked these ash out or a hurricane, something like that, could have felled the whole area and then temporary open space, the plants capitalise and then the wood comes back again, so we're just just mimicking what nature does anyway.  Adam: I'm going to take a photo of this, put it on my Twitter feed. It's fantastic. So we've just taken a little stop on this path of wild garlic. So over to the right is well, I thought it was a bird box, it's a large bird box. You tell me it's actually something very specific.   Rob: Yeah, this is a pine marten nest box cause there was there has been a big release of pine marten. Pine martens are native to this country. It's kind of like a large weasel that lives in the trees. That's a really bad way of describing it, but it's a it's a mustelid. It's a large, impressive, intelligent animal and they were sort of pressed to persecute, to extinction, with persecution in the past. But they're very important in these woods for regulating, you know, the biodiversity, they, they prey on the grey squirrel especially, and they'll regulate bird numbers like any predator does. So it's it's great to see them coming back and it's a success story actually, because a couple of years ago now there was a release programme where captive animals were put into the Forest of Dean which is just over that direction. And so we put up some boxes and monitored them and pine martens are moving back into this area now. Whether they're using the boxes or not, we're not entirely sure, but they are moving in, so it's a, it's a really good story. So we'll do whatever we can to sort of encourage them because we've we've lost a lot of this old growth woodland that we're trying to protect and so they haven't got the nest cavities, so temporarily we'll provide this habitat.  Adam: And over the other side of the little dip, there's another pathway and it looks like the bank has been cut away and it's very black so that it doesn't look quite natural. What's going on there?  Rob: Well the the track that's been put in there is exposed, an earlier industry, so that's that's a charcoal platform. See what is it about five, five metres in diameter. Sort of sort of circular and very, very thick layer of charcoal. A huge fire has been there, but that's that's lots and lots of fires, one on top of the other.  Adam: So this is this is not current, this is probably a couple of hundred years old?  Rob: I think the last burn in this woodland would have been before the Second World War.  Adam: Oh right, so not that old.  Rob: Well, I mean, if they were still burning, they would have had the odd one, but this probably dates to sort of the the height of the the periods of the the late 19th century. So this here, it's been buried and forgotten about. But it shows you as Joe was saying earlier, at one point this was a managed wood and quite a few woods in Wales if you look on the maps you'll see things like coed poeth, which probably roughly translates as sort of hot wood or or burning woods, very roughly, probably, which gives you, may may give you an indication that these woods were worked and if you came here, you would have probably seen people living in the woods with the charcoal, tinner and charcoal workers, especially in the the 19th century, would have moved in in the summer to do the charcoal production with their families.  Adam: Just living in a tent or something?  Rob: Living in on site yeah, because then you know you don't want to move products, move things twice. You know, it's it's an economic, so you bring your family in, you produce your product, and then you come out with it at the end of the season so it's very peaceful here today. You can hear the birds. It's great for wildlife, but it would have been a managed landscape and we're trying to introduce a little bit of that. Obviously not people living in the woodlands anymore, but there's space for both here within this woodland, a bit a bit of coppicing a bit of management and reserve areas.  Adam: And I mean, I I hadn't quite noticed it while we were walking, but now we're we're standing here on this green carpet, there is an overpowering smell of garlic, it's quite extraordinary. It's very fresh, you know, sometimes when you're in the kitchen and the garlic it's it's, it's not fresh, it's pungent, but this is, you know, it's mixed with the sort of cool air, it's a really lovely smell.  Rob: It's making me hungry, actually.  Adam: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Well I was thinking whether I should pick some for dinner.  Rob: Chop some up. Pasta sauce. It's lovely with that.  Adam: Yeah, yeah, yeah, lovely. And and there's another one amongst this wild garlic, it's clock, what was it?  Rob: Yeah, this one here, it's the town hall clock or moschatel as it's known.  Adam: Town hall clock that's it. So just, what's the what's its proper name?  Rob: Moschatel. Well, that, that's it's another acronym, ah pseudonym really it's moschatel.  Adam: Moschatel.  Rob: Or town hall clock. I forget the Latin actually, to my shame.  Adam: Is moschatel the Welsh word for it, or it's not  Rob: No, it's not. It's a general general word, just a colloquial local term.  Adam: And why is it called the town hall clock?  Rob: Look you can see these four, the flowers have four sides to them, like an old town hall clock would.  Adam: Right, lovely. It's really quite, quite a rich path we're wandering down.  Rob: You see the the bluebells are out look just now, if you look up into the wood there you can see them. In Welsh they're called clychau'r gog, which is the cuckoo bell.  Adam: Wow. Cuckoo bell.  Rob: Because it comes out when the cuckoo comes. Apparently, the grant paid for like a fence, contractors to fence off that, this boundary here, stop the deer coming in from the Dean. To stop the wild pigs actually, pigs are a  Adam: You get wild pigs here?  Rob: They're a nuisance round here, yeah.  Adam: Wild pigs?  Rob: They call them, they're not really boar, because a boar will produce like, I don't know, maybe a litter of six, and these pigs will do 22.   Adam: Right. Blimey. And how big are they?  Rob: They look like boar.  Adam: So and boar can be quite violent, can't they, quite aggressive.  Rob: Yeah, they're sort of half breed, half pig, half boar. They're big animals, got a cute little stripey piglets, just like a boar does. But they, you know, they're exponential in their reproduction, so they're  Adam: And and they're around this wood?  Rob: They're here.  Adam: So do they cause a problem with eating or do they nibble on the new trees and stuff?  Rob: Yeah, yeah, well, they sort of rootle, I mean you want boar, because they were here originally. You want boar, like the deer, you want them in sustainable numbers, they're all sleeping now.  Adam: Do they come out at night?  Rob: They only come out at night yeah.  Adam: I'll have to return.  Rob: Yeah. I mean you'd see them if you went up to the top path up there.  Adam: We haven't done a night podcast. I think we should do some bats and.  Rob: You can do bats, if you wait, while you're waiting for the badgers to come out, you can do the bats. There's a few sites around here where you can watch them.  Adam: OK, well maybe  Rob: I'm sure there's other Trust sites where people know.  Adam: Maybe I'll come back.  Rob: One summer when I was doing my bachelor's degree, I was working in Llanelli in like a, just a café just to get some money. I was working with the local girls there, I'd been out surfing in Llangennith on the Gower the day before and I was like just telling her how the seals came in because they chased the mackerel in just beyond the surf line and I was sitting there and the water just boiled with the stench of of fish and mackerel and I looked around and two seals popped up and they were driving the mackerel into the back of the waves to hunt them. I was telling her this and she was like, what, you're telling me there's seals in the water here, in Llanelli, where? I said just in the Gower. Seals? Like seals seals, like live in water? I said there's seals there, yeah, they've always been there, we just don't value what's around us.  Adam: We don't notice it.  Rob: We don't notice because you can't see it, you don't see it, yeah.  Adam: It's interesting, isn't it, Attenborough has done a series recently on the UK and you go, you don't have to go to Africa or Latin America to see these things.  Rob: There you go. I was in West Wales last week in Aberaeron, and you can see bottlenose dolphins. Increasingly under threat there's that number of point but yeah, but they're there. You can see the seals, you can see them all around us, yeah. This is doing well.  Adam: Well, I'm going to have to leave our little trip down the Wye Valley with some rather unexpected chat about seals and bottlenose dolphins and a promise to return one dark night to meet some bats. Until next time, happy wandering.  Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks with Adam Shaw. Join us next month, when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. Don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you're listening to us and do give us a review and a rating. And why not send us a recording of your favourite woodland walk to be included in a future podcast? Keep it to a maximum of five minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walk special or send us an e-mail with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to podcast@woodlandtrust.org.uk. We look forward to hearing from you. 

Q u o t e s: Wear Gratitude like a Cloak & it will Feed Every Corner of your Life. 2nd: Stressing about the Future will Rob You of Today's Joys, Live Your Life One Day at a Time. S e g m e n t s: Ways To Calm Yourself When Life is Getting Tough 1. Walk 2. Indulge 3. Be Generous 4. Sit in a Coffee Shop or a Busy Street & Soak Up Your Surroundings. 5. Educate Yourself 6. Preparation 7. Strengths h o u s e k e e p i n g Share. Subscribe. Review. o u t r o: You Deserve Relationships That Never Make You Question Your Worth. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/saunaie/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/saunaie/support

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SHARM EL SHEIK, EGYPT — Governments and dictators assembled at the annual United Nations Climate Conference agreed to seize massive amounts of wealth from what's left of the western middle classes to pay global warming reparations to the UN and third world governments, explained The New American's Alex Newman in this episode of Behind the ... The post UN Climate Summit Agrees to Rob You for “Reparations” appeared first on The New American.

Don't let winter ROB YOU of your yearly profits! Keep your painters BUSY and keep your income high! In this episode, Brandon shares 10 strategies that WILL NOT let you down when winter comes for your painting business.If you enjoy this content make sure to follow the Painters Acadmey podcast on your streaming platform of choice!Learn more at https://www.paintersacademy.com/Find us on social media!Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheAPPC/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rbrandonlewis/

Will the next Gary Keller please stand up?! Rob and Greg discuss who has the potential to be the next Gary Keller? What does it take to establish yourself as a powerhouse in real estate? What qualities does Gary Keller have that upcoming leaders of the industry are lacking?  From narrowing down the next real estate superstar to discussing Compass' implosion to examining the rise in inflation and profits compared to the stagnation of income, Rob and Greg get heated on the topic of: “Why should a company pay its employees more if they're not being more productive?” Industry Relations is sponsored by NoteRouter at https://www.noterouter.com/ Industry Relations welcomes our new sponsor Earnnest at https://earnnest.com/ Listen to the Industry Relations Podcast, available on all podcast platforms: Listen to the podcast on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/industry-relations/id1204450450 Listen to the podcast on Stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/show/industry-relations Connect with Rob and Greg:  Rob's Website https://notorious-rob.com/ Greg's Website https://www.vendoralley.com/ Our Sponsors:  NoteRouter https://www.noterouter.com/ Cloud MLX https://cloudagentsuite.com/tools/mlx Notorious VIP https://notoriousrob.com/notorious-vip/ Quotes:  Rob: “As an anarchist, I want the government out, but more from an economic standpoint. It has to be production, right? If they're creating ten widgets a week today, they have to be able to create 11 next week.” Rob: “You can pay people more if that's going to make them more productive. Without an increase in productivity, why would you pay someone more?” Rob: “The point that I'm making is it feels like unicorn, reality-denying, socialist bullshit to be like, ‘corporations should just pay people more.' You can't just pay people more; there has to be some connection productivity.”

When a Burger King Cheeseburger considered is weaponized in a battery assault charge, you know it's going to be stupid. When God allows a skunk to spray a man who tried to rob a church...WHILE he's being arrested, you know it's going to be stupid. And when you need an educational video to teach millennials how to use an over-the-air TV antenna so they can receive "free TV", it's going to be stupid! Which is why you're going to hear stories like this on this podcast! And my Insane FL Nephew, "Pancho Guero", & I both have plenty to share... Camel burgers need to be your next NJ food adventure. Yes, really; Family Sues Funeral Home Claiming a Maggot Wriggled Out of Their Loved One's Eye; New Health Trend: Taping Your Mouth Shut While You Sleep; After 22 Years & 120 Court Hearings, a Guy Finally Got a 25¢ Refund; New Scam: Notes on Cars That Say "Pay Me So I Don't Have to Rob You"; Purchases That Cashiers Might Think You're Stupid for Buying; Family Spends 48 Hours in the Wild Due to Google Maps; It Should Be a Lesson for Everyone; Guy Calls Out Neighbor for Not Cleaning Up Dog Poop...So Neighbor Defecates on His Lawn; Miller High Life Is Selling Alcoholic Ice Cream That Tastes Like a Dive Bar; Naked FL man wielding machete tried to steal another man's clothes; Lottery Loser Shoots A Store Owner With Homemade Gun; There's a "Karen" Action Figure Whose Nemesis Is "Joe the Manager"; There's a "Karen" Action Figure Whose Nemesis Is "Joe the Manager"; Spirit Airlines Employee Suspended After Fighting Woman; Drug Dealer Arrested After He Sends "Random Text" to County Commissioner. "Pancho" will also answer a couple more questions about life from a couple of folks seeking his sage wisdom & you can play along with "Pancho" to see if you can do better than he can in answering the stupid questions from this week's "Insane Game Show"! Don't forget to download the TELEGRAM MESSENGER & join the "Insane Erik Lane's Stupid World" Channel to read the actual stories used for the podcast & check out the photos & videos with them! It's FREE & available for Windows, Linux, Android, & Apple for both mobile & desktop! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/eriklane/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/eriklane/support

Joe Soltis, CEO, ChoiceLocal (Cleveland, OH)   Joe Soltis is CEO at ChoiceLocal, which Joe describes as “the top performing franchise growth engine” with a “money back guarantee.” The agency offers a wide scope of services for franchisors and franchisees of over 50 brands, enabling them to provide “Fortune 500 level customer service, results, strategy, and ROI on the franchisee level” for a “small and medium size business price.”  Large clients might be parent companies of franchise systems, franchisors owning 20 or more franchise systems where each system may have from 20 to 200 franchisees – and up to as many as 6,000 internal franchise units. Small franchise systems may have 10 units. For these smaller clients, the agency facilitates franchise development, consumer, new customer, location, company, and digital talent recruitment marketing. Joe says hiring is a challenge, especially in the franchise space. The agency needs to understand its client's hiring needs, the kind of candidates it desires, and the historical hire rates to know the number of applicants to target . . . then reverse engineer the hire rate/cost per quality candidate by channel and implement the most effective marketing strategy to ensure future growth. Joe says they use the same channels as they do for consumer marketing (in a different order), plus some that are recruitment specific. Joe notes that franchise operations need to beware . . . a lot of agencies will lock clients into proprietary technology solutions . . . that don't fit. ChoiceLocal strives to find the right tools for each client to build a “win-win” ecosystem where franchisor, franchisee, and the agency all win. He says it's important that the tool providers are companies sensitive to client needs, adaptable to a changing market, and willing to invest in “making sure that you can use their tool to provide the best in the world customer service to your end customers.” Joe started his career working his way up for 10 years in a company that grew to serve Fortune 500 companies. At a time of great personal loss, he changed the direction of his life. In his words, I always said I wanted to be successful so that I could help people, and that day it changed to “I don't want to just build something; I want to help people and I want to do it now. I don't want to be successful so that I can help people later. I want to do it now.” Joe started ChoiceLocal with the mission “to help others” – the agency's franchisor and franchisee partners, agency teammates (to make their dreams and aspirations reality), and people in the community.  Joe structured the agency with the goal of having employees work their 40-hours, then “unplug and leave work at work.” With a teammate Net Promoter Score in the 70s (far exceeding the “good” score, which is in the 30s), the agency has been a Top Workplace in Northeast Ohio for the past five years. When Covid struck, the agency created a ChoiceLocal Economic Stimulus Package to help its customers “grow through the downturn,” an initiative that Joe estimates saved 30 franchisees from going out of business.  Giving back to the community is “baked into” the agency's DNA, with 10% of profits dedicated to helping “kids in need.” Joe says the agency's “big hairy audacious goal is to help 10,000 kids a year.” As of this interview, the agency had already helped 6,000 kids in 2022 through such things as meal programs, partnering with Habitat for Humanity to provide a home for an in-need family, and through team members' personal volunteer work in the community. Joe says the next thing after achieving this goal would be to “raise the goal.” Recently, the agency spun off a dental franchise, Broadview Dental Group, which Joe targets to be “the largest provider of dental care in the United States within 10 years.” Expectations are that dentists following this franchise system “can have 4.5 times the profit of a typical dental practice and only have to work three days a week to do it.” In this franchise system, a dentist maintains 100% of the business's equity and, on retirement, can sell the franchise. Joe can be reached on his agency's website at choicelocal.com, by following ChoiceLocal on social media channels @ChoiceLocal, by following Joe on Twitter @helpothersjoe, or by connecting with him on LinkedIn.  ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Joe Soltis, CEO at ChoiceLocal based in Cleveland, Ohio. Welcome to the podcast, Joe. JOE: Rob, great to be with you today. ROB: Excellent to have you here. Why don't you start off by telling us about ChoiceLocal? What is the firm's specialty? What is your superpower? What are you known for? Hit us with it. JOE: We're the top performing franchise growth engine. We work exclusively with franchisors and franchisees, and the reason we do that is we want to give Fortune 500 level customer service, results, strategy, and ROI, but we want to be able to do it when you look on the franchisee level at a small and medium size business price while delivering that. When we do that, we offer a money back guarantee. We're the first and only franchise marketing agency to offer that money back guarantee. We work with 50+ brands. We're one of the fastest growing companies in the U.S., members of the IFA, the whole nine yards.  ROB: Wow, congratulations. There's a certain clarity to that that is certainly appreciated. Let's peel it back just a layer. When we think about franchise, I think some of us think about restaurants, but there are franchises of all stripes. There is plumbing. There are franchise marketing agencies, for that matter. So what does a typical customer look like? Is there a particular range of franchises, of locations? Because you could have two or two thousand. What's a typical engagement look like? JOE: We work with some franchise systems that are owned by what we would call a platform, like a parent company that owns franchise systems. There are some franchisors that we work with that actually own 20+ franchise systems, and within each of those franchise systems there can range anywhere between 20 franchisees on the small side and 200 on the large side. So, we're talking within these companies 2,000-unit franchise operations, and some franchise systems that we work with even have 6,000+ franchise units within them. Also, on the other end of the spectrum, there are franchise systems that we work with that are 10-unit franchise systems. We power them on franchise development, we power them on consumer marketing and new customer marketing for their franchisees as well as their company and locations, and we also power their talent recruitment through digital marketing to drive highly qualified applicants. Staffing is obviously a huge challenge in today's world, and particularly within the franchising space. ROB: That's a little bit of a wider scope of services than I think we often hear in local marketing, especially once you get into the recruitment side. So that's interesting. Is it the same channels for getting customers in and getting employees in? Is it different? What's the mix of touchpoints there? JOE: It is the same channels, used in a different order, plus there are additional channels that are recruiting specific. Obviously, there's different job boards that are highly important in the recruiting space, and then there's also a whole host of digital channels that can be activated, from geotargeted Google Ads to Facebook advertising. Each of them has their strengths and their weaknesses. Our job within these franchise systems is to understand what their hiring needs are, who they're looking to hire, what their historical hire rates are so we know how many applicants we need to drive, and then we can also reverse engineer the hire rate by channel, and then we can from there figure out their cost per quality applicant by channel and then develop a marketing mix that's going to allow them to continue to grow. ROB: There's a lot going on there. Over time we've seen different platforms that have tried to jump to the forefront to help, I think, organizations like ChoiceLocal, handle marketing for multilocation, for franchises. What's the state of the tool ecosystem for this? Has any tool that tries to help with this problem and actually create a library of content to push out to different locations worked? Or has it not worked and you end up building some of those solutions yourselves? How do you look at dozens of locations, different local needs, some shared content, that sort of thing? JOE: There are a lot of agencies that will come in and sell franchise systems, their own proprietary tech in order to bring that about. What we've generally found is when these marketing agencies bring in their proprietary tech, it's more in the agency's interest and less in the interest of the franchisor and the franchisee. Essentially, it's “Here, take this marketing solution. Take our proprietary tech, and then it's impossible for you to leave us.” That's how they set that up, and it can create some difficulty and a lot of angst within these different franchise systems. When working in the franchising space, what you need to do is build a win-win ecosystem where the franchisor wins, the franchisee wins, and as a byproduct of that, as the agency you win as well. There's a whole host of various tools in this, from Rallio to WebPunch to SOCi. There's a lot of others. Yext. These are all various powerful tools that can be used and deployed. There's other powerful tools in the call tracking space, too. You have companies like CallRail who do a really strong job with this, with call analytics and those types of things. The job of the agency is to find the right tools that are right for that franchise system while also using their agency buying power to leverage economies of scale and do what's in the best interest of their client partners. ROB: If I hear you correctly, there's not a one-size-fits-all best franchise management tool. It is a little bit of a best of breed, it's a what are the needs of your particular brand/set of stores, that kind of thing. Sometimes it is Yext, maybe sometimes you bring CallRail to the table. You're the experts, and you're prescribing the menu that you recommend. JOE: Yeah, that is right. One thing, too, as you follow these companies – depending on how much they're investing in R&D, how much they're willing to listen to their customer, how much they're willing to allow their agency partners to fuel their product roadmap and guide their product roadmap – that's really how you're going to pick your partners, in large part. There's a lot of these SaaS companies that are not very customer service minded. They're more like “Get in, sign up for a product, and then leave us alone” kind of deal, and as an agency, that's not the kind of partner you're looking for. You're looking for ones that will invest in making sure that you can use their tool to provide the best in the world customer service to your end customers. Why I say that is that's something to look out for in the beginning. And the other reason I say that is the companies that are willing to invest in their customer service also tend to invest in their product development, and you'll notice there's ebbs and flows of who's good and who's bad when they do this. And things change, so you've got to find a partner that's always looking to change and adapt with the market as it changes and evolves. ROB: It's interesting how the cast of characters has changed. When I google for this problem space, Hootsuite is out there, Content and Sprout are out there contending for just a small slice of that franchise deal. But you know they're chasing every other vertical in social as well. I can certainly appreciate – we're in Atlanta; CallRail is a neighbor company here. Do you know their roots a little bit? It's an interesting background on them. JOE: It's a really neat company. ROB: The founder started off with a site to help people with BMWs that were out of warranty to find a local repair shop. My understanding is if you have a BMW that's out of warranty, you need a local repair shop. That's what I've heard. So, he started off doing lead gen for these local shops and then built call tracking to help prove the value of his BMWershops.com website, and ended up building CallRail from it. JOE: What's neat about CallRail, too, is they really have come in – there's a lot of companies that historically have played in that place, and they really trounced them. Some of their advanced features and some of their call analytics, listening to calls, transcribing calls, turning them into qualified leads, or basically saying what's a qualified lead, what's a hot lead, what's not a lead, and how they built some of that technology – it's pretty cool stuff. ROB: Yeah, there's a tremendous customer focus there. I do want to shift gears for a moment; I want to get to the origin story of ChoiceLocal. What led you to create this firm? What led you to this point of focus, of all the areas you could have focused on helping and niches you could have served? JOE: I served at a company that served multibillion dollar companies. I was a Vice President of Operations of Product Development there. We served Fortune 500 companies – FedEx, CBS, other multibillion dollar publicly traded companies. That's where I spent my day and that's who I served. We built a team of 180 full-time digital marketers. Kind of a neat story. Started as employee #8, within a few years worked my way up to VP of Ops and Product Development and did that. It was cool. I learned a lot and I had some really great mentors while I was there. The owners there have done some really amazing things outside of agency, just building multimillion dollar companies and multibillion dollar companies and taking some of them public, like NCS Healthcare and others. So, I learned a ton while I was there over that 10-year period. Then in 2012, we had a pregnancy. Went into an ultrasound room with my wife and there was no heartbeat. So we lost our son, Ben, pretty late in the pregnancy. I always said I wanted to be successful so that I could help people, and that day it changed to “I don't want to just build something; I want to help people and I want to do it now. I don't want to be successful so that I can help people later. I want to do it now.” That's actually how ChoiceLocal got started. In its simple form, our mission always has been – our mission and our core values were written prior to even having a business plan – our mission is help others. We help our partners succeed, our franchisor and franchisee partners, help their dreams and aspirations become a reality. We help our teammates' dreams and aspirations become a reality. We've been a Top Workplace in Northeast Ohio five years running. We have a teammate Net Promoter Score in the 70s, which is unheard of high. You ask people, “What is a good employee Net Promoter Score?”, the answer is 30. We're hanging out in the 70s. So, we really work to live that mission and really care about others. Working in the agency space, a lot of agencies will bring in talent, they will work them like crazy for like five years until they burn out, and then they leave and they go in-house. Having experienced that and have friends who've experienced that in other companies, I wanted to do something fundamentally different. That's why we founded ChoiceLocal and built it the way that we have. But our mission of help others is also giving back. We take 10% of the profits out of the company and we use it to help kids in need. Our big hairy audacious goal is to help 10,000 kids a year. We created the Benjamin Isaac Foundation, named after our son, Ben. We just gave a home to a single mother with three kids. Her name is Brie; she's got three beautiful boys. We just had their house dedication two weekends ago, and that was through Habitat for Humanity. We were the sole sponsor for the home. Got to meet her beautiful boys. We helped them move in, had the housewarming and a dedication. It was so cool. It's just so cool. We do tons of other stuff like that. So far this year – it's now June, and we are at a little over 6,000 kids that we've helped through various charities that we partner with. ROB: Well, 4,000 more to go and then another goal. JOE: Yes, raise the goal. ROB: There's a depth in that origin story. I think something that is interesting to think through – when you have a team, when you're giving to causes, how do you connect the day-to-day of what the team is doing to the causes that the company is giving to and really ensure that there's an authentic connection there? I think it can be very disconnected sometimes. Here's the owner, here's the team, we're building this stuff, some money got shot out over here – to a good cause, but maybe it doesn't feel relevant to the day-to-day. So how do you think about connecting the team to the cause? JOE: That's a great question. It's a really great question. The first thing is we hire for people that have the core values that we have. Family, giving, integrity in all things. There's certain ways that you can interview people to make sure that they have those. And if you actually study some of the psychology behind it, if you study various hiring techniques that are used in books like Topgrading and WHO and those types of things, there's ways you can interview for those core values and competencies to screen people out that don't have that. So, you're hiring people that believe what you believe and then you're coming into a culture that celebrates those core values and celebrates those things. For example, we have a team meeting every single month where we update on everything that's happening in the agency, what's going on with business strategy. We're transparent on financials and performance and all of those things so everybody can see what's going on. We have a part where we talk about help others and core values. In core values, people nominate teammates and they celebrate how they live those core values out, and we tell those stories. A lot of those core values are how we help our partners and internally, but it's also how we give back. And then we tie in our financial performance. We then say, “Because we were able to do this, we were able to give Brie and her three boys this gift.” We make it very personal. Along those lines, we also have quarterly volunteering. We try to get every teammate to volunteer once a quarter so they can see, feel, and touch the work they're doing. My personal favorite is when we go to the Boys and Girls Club of America. Those kids need love, they need support, they need good mentors, and when you go there, you feel fantastic afterwards because you've been able to deliver some of that for them. So that's really powerful. And then we also do this BHAG walkthrough. BHAG stands for big hairy audacious goal. We have this roadmap, and then we say, “Here's three kids that were helped because of this. Here's 1,600 kids that were fed for a year in a place of education.” We did this charity giveaway through our annual thing at the International Franchise Association called the ChoiceLocal 10k Charity Giveaway. People enter a drawing giveaway. There's a really cool story – there's a woman who served as a board member of the International Franchise Association; today she owns about 20 Taco Johns franchises. Very successful businesswomen. She picked the Great Harvest Heartland as her charity, and she ended up winning. What I found out after she won is that as a kid, she was so poor that she needed to go to the foodbank to eat. So, it was a very personal gift for her. That's the type of stuff that really hits home, when you always tie it to that personal story. And then when you say, “Because you were able to do this specifically,” and you name the person, “it allowed us to be able to do this.” Sorry, I'm passionate about this – the last thing I'll add to it is helping the business owner. This particular franchisee is having a really hard time and they're on the verge of going out of business. We had a good amount of this through COVID. We announced the ChoiceLocal Economic Stimulus Package for our customers. We have this whole “grow through the downturn” quarterly priority and theme. We saved probably 30 franchisees from going out of business during COVID, and that was really cool. We celebrated each one of those as a company during the team meetings and made a really big deal out of it, because it's a huge deal. They put their life savings into the business. Together, we helped save their business. That's flipping awesome. It's really cool. ROB: What an opportunity. I hear a certain proximity that you're referring to within the team. Is all of your team right there, one office, one team? Is that your world, or are people in different places? JOE: It used to be that way, pre-COVID. We were in the office three days a week, and Monday/Friday work from home. COVID hit and we went 100% remote. Then we had highest teammate Net Promoter Score ever, highest client Net Promoter Score ever, highest revenue ever by far, highest profit dollars. We're like, this is working really well. So we surveyed our team and said, “What do you guys want to do?” and everybody said basically, work from home, come into the office once. So, we instituted that. What we then found is about 10-15% of our staff in a given week would come into the office, and they'd come in on different days, and when they came in there was like 3% of our staff there. It felt a little lonely, and some people like that connectedness. So I just met with our leadership team on this this past week; we're probably going to be instituting now – we do a lot of stuff on Slack. I know a lot of companies do. Basically, we're going to have ChoiceLocal In-Office Day. It's going to be completely optional, but everybody that's going to go is going to go into Slack, fill out this poll, and RSVP and say “Hey, I'm going to be in the office this day” and try to get other teammates to come in. And then they're going to have a group of probably 30-40% of the company in on that individual day, and they can hang out together. Plus we do all the fun stuff. We have team meets once a month. Those are in person. About half the company comes to those; the rest are virtual. We bring in catered food. We're in Cleveland, so we're going to watch a Cleveland Guardians, which used to be the Cleveland Indians, game. ROB: Yeah, that's an adjustment there as well. JOE: Stuff like that. We do Topgolf. We do a big Christmas party every year. Stuff like that. It's fun. It's so fun. ROB: It sounds like an adjustment, but it sounds like listening to the team, it sounds like adjusting well. When I think about folks I've known in the agency world in Cleveland, there's no shortage of opportunity to lose your team to the revolving door of brands. That seems like it's probably the way of life there – not to mention the regional opportunities with vendors. It really does take some work to keep them on the agency side, I think. JOE: Historically, at my prior agency that was definitely a continual challenge. We launched ChoiceLocal with the mission of help others, with the goal – we're not perfect at this; I don't want to sugarcoat it – but with the goal of being a fast-paced, high energy environment, but you work 40 hours, then you unplug and you leave work at work. We were able to build our systems so that's possible. We historically have had almost no turnover. Now, with that said, this year during COVID, our turnover rate has spiked a bit, but it's nothing like I was ever used to. In a year we would have maybe, out of 100 people, like 1 to 2 people leave that we didn't want to leave. Historically. This year that number is probably up to like 4 out of 100. ROB: Yeah, that's turnover, but it's not a high turnover rate. It is managing what it is. It sounds like you have learned a lot along the way. As you think about lessons you've learned building ChoiceLocal, are there particular things you think of that you would wish to go back and tell yourself to do differently if you were able to? JOE: There's a whole host of things. One of the things I have as an advantage is I was a political science major, and I learned absolutely nothing in college that is useful to me today. [laughs] ROB: A beginner's mindset is what you're saying. [laughs] JOE: Yeah, exactly. There's this book called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, and there's so much truth to that. I was raised treat others the way you want to be treated, and that's how I've always operated. I've always brought that to what I do because I thought it's the right thing to do. But I've actually found it's an amazingly sound business strategy. What I'm going to say now may be a little bit controversial, but there's so much stuff that you learn in business school, like when you're getting your MBA and those types of things, and so much of that you need to throw out and ignore because it's trash. For example, you're a service-based business, so a person is not a commodity. A person is not a tool to be used. A person is not a KPI. They are a person with dignity, a person who has a family, a person who deserves to be cared about, loved, and appreciated. If you just do that and focus on that first, the business results tend to take care of themselves. But at the same point, KPIs are important. Accountability is important. Ensuring that you have that is critical. Knowing that you hire right for core values first and for performance second, but also critically important – all of that integrates really well, and those are really important things. The last thing, from a mistake that I made, that I'll say is there's a book called Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Else Smarter, and basically the premise of the book – and this happens for a lot of folks in agencies, particularly in leadership positions – how did you get successful? You got successful by busting your butt and being pretty smart about the way you do things. That's how you were successful. The weakness that comes with that is as you get a bigger team, you need to shut up, you need to ask questions, and you need to be humble. That's the next level. And that book, for me, as I was evolving and growing as a leader, taught me those skills. It played a really important role, and now it's something I believe in so strongly. I met with a future VP of our organization who's probably going to get promoted to a VP very, very shortly, and I said, “Read this book. Take it to heart and do it.” Then I said, “Here's all the stupid things that I did, and here's how this book helped me.” ROB: You start to pull apart some pieces, many questions come to mind. I start to think about – clearly, when you talk about future VP, there's some planning there. There's still some awareness of individuals in your organization, even though at 100 people, it starts to get hard to know everyone. Especially when some people aren't even coming in one day a week, possibly. It's an interesting mix. I think this probably had to be intentional for you as well – building up the leadership team. What are the pieces you've put in place at different stages in the business to build around you to be your best, but also to help the company be its best, maybe where you aren't? JOE: Hire generous people, people that love helping other people be successful. If you have people on your leadership team that don't believe that, don't have them on your leadership team. And if you don't believe that, work on it. [laughs] It's so critical. You need to hire generous people, surround yourself with generous people. It's funny; I was like, we're the world's best at marketing for franchise systems, world's best at franchise development, consumer marketing for franchising; we're the world's best at recruiting for franchise systems. Why don't we just own a franchise system? So, we launched a separate franchise system, hired a guy who led another franchise system to $750 million in network revenue to be the CEO of it. And he believes what we believe. What attracted him to us first and foremost – and he's got an amazing track record in franchising – was our values. He's a generous person. He believes in integrity. He believes in accountability and performance at the same time. So, you've got to find people that believe that and have those competencies. The other thing I'll say is it's important, if you're hiring somebody to lead a business, that they understand that business. You can do it and you can be successful if you don't understand it inside and out, but it's way harder. If you can find people with the right values but also who have worked at different levels in that industry over the course of their career, they can understand the strengths and weaknesses of various decisions, and when you make a decision, how it affects people in different parts of the organization or what you're actually asking and what it entails to make it happen. Which tends to result in better decisions being made, better business performance, less mistakes. Those are the types of things that you really look for. ROB: What franchise business have you got yourself into, then, now? JOE: The name of it is Broadview Dental Group. Our vision is to be the largest provider of dental care in the United States within 10 years. We have some aggressive plans, but I am very confident that we're going to be able to pull it off. ROB: And I've heard that some different models of roll-up franchise operating groups – I've heard they're taking the dental world kind of by storm. The independent dentist is starting to dry up a little bit. Are you seeing that? Is that part of the move? JOE: Yes, it is, and it's sad. What's ended up happening – there actually is one other franchise system in the dental space. I wouldn't call it a real franchise system. That sounds arrogant. I don't mean it that way. But if you look at how franchise systems typically operate, where they basically have some sort of buy-in and then some sort of royalty, it's set up very different with the buy-in being extremely, extremely, extremely high. It's different. But if you look at most of them, they're called DSOs or DPOs, and what they basically do is a dentist is like “Hey, I want to get my practice to the next level.” Then these DSOs or DPOs, which are typically funded by venture capital – this isn't always the case, but typically with venture capital, they care about one thing, which is maximizing shareholder wealth. They'll say, “Okay, you want to take your business to the next level? Sign here. We get 70% equity in your business up to 90% over time, and we can fire you if we want to, and we'll help get your business to the next level.” When you're a dentist and you're passionate about helping others and you're passionate about your practice and your trade, you basically just need a really good business mentor, and most dentists really haven't had it. So what we're doing is giving them 100% equity in their own business, a way to get to the point where they can have 4.5 times the profit of a typical dental practice and only have to work three days a week to do it, and all they need to do is follow our system. And they own 100% of their business. They can sell it when they want to, and when they sell it, they'll sell it for a higher multiple because guess what? In franchising, when you sell your business when you're ready to retire, it's worth more because it's a franchise system and it's proven. There's less risk involved. ROB: Right, it's not (Your Name) Dentistry. It is part of an umbrella. There's brand equity there, there's a system. They don't have to figure it all out. One of my college roommates, his dad was in the dental world, and when you mentioned the high fee to buy in – he always told me dentists like to buy expensive things, so I guess the franchise must be one of those things, just priced for the market, I suppose. When we look ahead to what's next for ChoiceLocal, what's next for marketing in the franchising world, Joe, what are you seeing? What are you excited about for the firm, for what is going to be necessary for your clients to continue as the marketing world evolves? What are you seeing? JOE: There's so much exciting growth ahead. One of the things that I love about being an agency that focuses on ROI and provable results is every time there's an economic downturn, it's good for the agency growth and it's good for your customers. What happens is when there's an economic recession, which I believe we're headed into – we have horrible inflation and there's certain policies that have to be implemented to bring it under control, and the result of that is going to be a recession. What happens in those cases is companies tend to pull back in marketing. But if you're driving marketing where for every dollar they spend, you're giving them $18 in new customer revenue, it's stupid not to spend that. You can grow through the downturn. You can take market share. Imagine putting a dollar in the stock market and getting $18 back within a year. It's a brilliant investment. It's a simple investment. So, what's going to end up happening is that's going to accelerate growth within agencies that are ROI-focused as this economic recession hits, and for however long it hits for. That's exciting. But what I'm also excited about in the newer leading-edge things within agencies is the ability for big data backed with artificial intelligence to transform marketing, to transform business, and frankly to transform medicine. I was talking with the COO of ChoiceLocal, who serves a role with Broadview as well, and we're like, who ever thought that two internet marketers would fundamentally change healthcare and dental care in the U.S.? You'd be like, “Explain that.” It's the same thing you do in marketing with big data. If you have a massive amount of data in a HIPAA compliant way, you can anonymize it, data mine it, and find correlations and causations and literally, with that type of patient data pool, you can change medicine. Similarly, you can do the same thing with marketing, where you can data mine, you can find ways to micro-target ideal customers based on who current ideal customers are – and you may not even know what some of those things are – and then you can target them and measure the performance and lift. That's crazy cool stuff. And that's the newer leading-edge stuff that's really exciting, particularly when you're dealing with franchise systems and the volume that's behind that. ROB: Right. You've got volume there, you've got a growing scale in the business. To think about leveraging it for more than just “Hey, we're bigger” – lots of interesting things there. Joe, when people want to find and connect with you and with ChoiceLocal, where should they go to find you? JOE: They can go to choicelocal.com. Everything is there. They can follow ChoiceLocal on pretty much every social media channel that exists @ChoiceLocal. So they can do that. They can follow me personally on Twitter @helpothersjoe or connect with me on LinkedIn. I try to post a lot of content there that's specific to purpose-driven business, which is a huge passion of mine, as well as franchising and marketing as well. So yeah, @helpothersjoe on Twitter is for me personally. ROB: That's excellent. Joe, thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for sharing your experiences. Congratulations on what you've built so far and why you're building it. I think everyone listening has enjoyed the depth in the origin of the business and the intentionality as you build it. JOE: Thanks, Rob. Thanks for all you've done and thanks for having me on today. It really is a great pleasure. Really appreciate you. ROB: All right, appreciate you. Take care. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Robin Raj, Founder and Executive Creative Director, Citizen Group (San Francisco, CA) Inspired by Marc Gobé's book, Citizen Brand:  10 Commandments for Transforming Brand Culture in a Consumer Democracy, Robin Raj, Founder and Executive Creative Director at Citizen Group, started his agency in 2006 to work with entities committed to meaningful and measurable pro-social impact. His agency's proposition is that organizations build brand value when they “walk their talk” and operate in ways that enhance society for their employees, shareholders, and consumers.  Robin notes that the rise of social media has created a window on organizational operations . . . companies have a harder time projecting a “corporate mirage” that “everything is okay” when people can now see what is going on, assess practices, and ask the tougher questions. Clients today include for-profit companies, nonprofit organizations, municipalities, cities, and trade associations. Working with Amnesty International and other NGOs while he was at Chiat/Day early in his career, Robin became aware of two operational economies: “the Moneyball ad world, where money is thrown around (half a million for a 30-second spot)” and the $15k budget for creating a nonprofit PSA environment. Gobé's book identifies the trend toward citizen branding as a convergence between these two economies. At his agency's inception, Robin worked with Walmart's sustainability effort and explored how big-box retail stores needed to change their operational practices to support sustainability, creating “a race to the top for brands to reutilize, recycle, (and produce) less waste” and a model for future initiatives with other organizations. Brands get a lift from doing the right thing, he says, both for society and for the environment. In his early adulthood, Robin says he didn't know that people had human rights. He says the 30 articulated in the United Nation's post World War II Universal Declaration of Human Rights made a big impact on him. Citizen Group is involved in a diverse range of projects. It is working with: Sports apparel retailer Lids on a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiative (They Gave Us Game) to recognize and honor early Black sports leagues.  A group called Leading Age on the Keep Leading Life campaign to showcase the variety of caregiving and expert services available to people who are aging. With close friend Jordan Harris, Robin shares a concern about the need to promote electric vehicles. Citizen Group commissioned a study to investigate the feasibility of shading California's 4,000 mile aqueduct system with solar canopies to reduce evaporation, conserve water, reduce algal growth, and generate power. Annual water savings for a complete end-to-end system were estimated at 63 billion with the solar array along the aqueduct system's existing utility corridors rather than taking up working land. A spinoff company, Solar AquaGrid, will be working Audubon Society to study environmental impacts and with the state and irrigation districts to plan the first demonstration project, and break ground on the pilot (proof-of-concept) project this fall. Robin can be found on his agency's website at citizengroup.com. ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Robin Raj, Founder and Executive Creative Director at Citizen Group based in San Francisco, California, with some other fascinating interests as well. Welcome to the podcast, Robin. ROBIN: Good to be here, Rob. Thank you. ROB: Excellent to have you. Why don't you start off by telling us about Citizen Group, and what is the firm's superpower? What are you all known for? What do you do well? ROBIN: Well, I started Citizen Group in 2006, and it was really inspired by a book of the same name called Citizen Brand. This is where I can give a shout-out to an author by the name of Marc Gobé. I was really moved by the book, written in about 2003. The thesis of the book is: sooner or later, all brands will have to behave as citizen brands. That really caught me because it was like the spear in the chest moment in terms of the societal challenges we face and the responsibility brands and corporations and civil society have. It also predated, presaged, the rise of social media that has made the rise of citizen brands possible. We expect more from the brands we purchase and are loyal to. If they're not walking their talk, it can be a liability versus when they can really take the initiative and operate in a way that enhances society for their employees, for their shareholders, for their consumers. Then that builds brand value. That was the proposition. So I started Citizen Brand, and we've been working since that time with a variety of entities, for-profit companies, nonprofit orgs, municipalities, cities, sometimes, trade associations. But what they all have in common is some commitment to have pro-social impact that is meaningful and measurable. ROB: Let's pull into that a little bit. Give us maybe an example, if you can, of a client, of the sort of work you've done together, of what this looks like in action. ROBIN: Well, in the early going, roundabout 2005-2006, I had the opportunity to work with Walmart's sustainability effort. Those were two words that didn't necessarily go together at the time. It raised a lot of legitimate skepticism. But in fact, under the tenure of their CEO at the time, Lee Scott, they really saw the future as it pertains to big box retail and how they would have to change their practices, be it in terms of packaging, creating a packaging scorecard – they created more of a race to the top for brands to reutilize, recycle, less waste. And many other initiatives. In fact, they formed 13 sustainability committees in their transportation, their energy, their seafood. That's been the model. I've also done a lot of work with what is now called the Great Sports Alliance, but it started with the nonprofit NRDC and the interest on the part of professional sports – the venues, the arenas, the teams – adopting sustainable practices, again, throughout their supply chain. Energy, waste, water, transportation, how they procure goods. That story needs to radiate through their internal supply chain to their external stakeholders to their consumers. So having meaningful initiatives that then you can start to develop stories that really show the impact and the lift that brands can get from doing the right thing – that's the common denominator. And those were two stories, ongoing, that started around the time we started Citizen. ROB: That's early, and I feel like some of that has not even arrived yet. Something I feel like we're starting to hear a little bit about is measuring the environmental impact of a business and the different layers of measurement. You're probably the expert on this and not me, but some people will say, “All of our power consumption is green energy.” It's like, okay, but – you mentioned the supply chain, you mentioned suppliers, you mentioned up and down the organization. So outside of the stick that may be coming on that, whether it's in public markets or whether it's regulatory, how do you get businesses to think about the carrot when in their own initial reaction they might say, “We do the right things here,” and it's true in maybe the first or second order effects, but when you get to the third order effects, there's a lot more to work on? ROBIN: No doubt there is. And it can be challenging. But creating an initiative that you can build the sociopolitical will for, and then building on that, creates the momentum. Creating a coalition of the willing that this is the trajectory that the company or the organization wants to take is fundamental. And it's not just environmental, by the way; it's social impact, fundamentally. ROB: Yeah, which now we have acronyms around, again. But there's a material difference, I think, between – you can check a box, you can have an ESG statement, you can have committees. It's something else entirely, I think, to not just have a committee and to actually execute. How do you think about ensuring that those committees, that those initiatives have meat to them and are not just window dressing or greenwashing or whatever else we want to call it? ROBIN: So much of it is susceptible to greenwashing, and perception is a whole other thing in reality between half-empty and half-full. Walmart took a lot of spears early on, but people have seen the credibility that has come from meaningful adoption of practices. And it's happening across the corporate world, albeit not fast enough. I'll give you a case in point. There was a vote taken yesterday on compulsory board diversity – in other words, more women, more people of color on boards – struck down because, ironically, it was perceived as discriminatory. [laughs] Here in California, where we lead, we've gone in recent years from like 17% to some 30% women on corporate boards. That's a good gain, but it ain't anywhere near 50%. We're a country that doesn't like regulation. It's something I struggle with a lot because we can talk a good game about law and order, but law and order requires rules of the road, and it requires a well-governed society to be a healthy, functional society. In the meantime, corporations run the roost. The common good is crippled under the weight of corporate good, which quickly can curdle into corporate bad. I'm talking about Big Oil, Big Ag, Big Tobacco, Big Plastic – something I'm very concerned about. That implicates Big Beverage, the Coca-Colas of the world, the plastic, the fossil fuel industry, that has a responsibility to take care of the crap they put out there. Not to mention the downstream health effects. So, you need to look at it all, and we don't have claim to the answers writ large, but we take on initiatives where there's bounds and outcomes that we can point to. ROB: Right. Sounds like you've got a lot of work to do, is what it sounds like. ROBIN: There's no shortage of work for all of us to do. ROB: That's right. ROBIN: I guess it may sound kind of schoolmarm-ish, but I really believe that – we talk about the experience economy and this and that economy; what we need right now is the responsibility economy. It's time for grownups to be grown up. ROB: Robin, you did mention the genesis of the firm. Let's talk for a moment, though, about the pre-genesis of the firm. How did you decide to start in the first place? You've mentioned the inspiration, you've mentioned the book, but what made you jump off the cliff and start Citizen Group in the first place, coming from where you were? It's not always the easiest way to live. ROBIN: No, it was a reckoning, but it was a convergence that I'm really grateful for. My story was I came up as a copywriter, a writer. Came out of journalism, music. Went into advertising and had the privilege to work at some excellent shops – Hal Riney here in San Francisco and ChiatDay. As a writer and creative director, learning the potency of storytelling, visually and verbally, in short form commercials, and even pre-internet, before we had branded content – but it was still getting you to read the printed page, telling a story on television. I had done a lot of work since the 1980s when I was in New York at ChiatDay with Amnesty International, a leading human rights organization. I got exposed to Amnesty's work because of the rock events they were putting on at the time – the likes of Springsteen and Sting and Peter Gabriel doing world tours, promoting this concept of human rights. As a twenty-something, I didn't know from human rights that we have human rights, and there's 30 of them that are articulated in the International (sic., Universal) Declaration of Human Rights created after World War II. It really struck me. I continued to do work on behalf of Amnesty and other NGOs, and I realized that two economies were operating. There was the Moneyball ad world, where money is thrown around. Half a million for a 30-second spot was not an uncommon thing at that time. And you might have $15k to put against creating a PSA on behalf of a nonprofit org. Really two different economies. And what was more important just didn't follow in terms of where we place our value. The Citizen Brand book really said there's a convergence going on here. Like I said, I had no idea that a few years later, the rise of social media would accelerate it to such a degree that companies had to walk their talk. They couldn't simply put on a corporate mirage and pretend everything was okay; people were going to look more closely at their practices and interrogate, in a healthy way. And that created the impetus for what we see more of today. ROB: You've been doing this thing for a little while. What are some of the lessons you've learned in the process of building the firm? What are some things you might go back and tell yourself to do differently if you had that chance to talk to yourself? ROBIN: Lessons learned. I might've applied more focus to social impact earlier, even though I've been doing it for a while now. I think about years – I won't say wasted. They were not wasted. Great experiences, and learning the craft of advertising is part of my skillset. But having the lightbulb go off sooner in terms of applying more of my working years to making a difference in terms of social outcome is something that if I could rewind the clock, I would put more years in that quadrant than the fun and games I had when I was youthful and indiscreet. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] You wouldn't have been as youthful and indiscreet if you had done otherwise. But I hear you. There's those corners we turn where we realize in some way or another – we get more serious; we discover a path that we can run well on, and we certainly wish we had found it sooner, had started that impact sooner, because we get so much better as we keep going. So I completely understand that. As we mentioned at the top, you are a man of many talents and many thoughts and many ideas. Something that I wasn't really aware of that you mentioned was the Solar AquaGrid. Tell us about that. I don't think those words naturally go together in most people's minds, so unpack this for us. What's going on here? It's intriguing but momentarily confusing, and I think it'll all make sense through your words. ROBIN: Yeah. One of my closest friends and dearest collaborators, Jordan Harris, we've done a lot of work together for Rock the Boat and other social causes in relation to promoting the rise of EVs, the EV revolution. It was his genesis – we both travel up and down the state, from Northern California to Southern California, seeing these open aqueducts that convey our water, and year on year, the increasing drought we have here in California. It got him scratching his head because he lives part of his time in France, where the canals are tree-shaded. They're tree-lined and shaded canals, whereas here our canals are open and exposed, and we couldn't help but think: how much water are we losing each year in terms of evaporative loss? Because heat rises. ROB: How much? ROBIN: Well, we commissioned a study. We started a project first at Citizen to commission a study. We sought out the best researchers we could find, and they're based in UC Merced, which is the home of University of California- UC Solar and UC Water. We commissioned a study that said up to 63 billion gallons of water could be saved annually if all 4,000 miles of California's canal system, aqueduct system, were covered with solar canopies. And many other compounding advantages, because when you cover the canals, you're producing obviously clean energy, renewable energy that can be used locally by the communities. We're going to need a lot more renewable energy on tap if we are going to shift towards an EV-driven economy. And then there's the avoided land costs, because rather than taking working lands, farmlands, to put solar farms, solar arrays, why not have these existing aqueducts, these existing utility corridors do double duty for us? The more we got into it, we discovered that there can be reduced maintenance costs because the solar shade over the open canals, the open rivers, reduces aquatic weed growth. So there's less dredging up of the algae underneath. And it has waterfall implications, rather than dumping more chemicals into the water. Long story not so short, one thing led to another and we started to examine holistically all of the potential advantages of such deployments. We developed a company, a spinoff that is called Solar AquaGrid, where we're consulting with the state and working directly with irrigation districts – most notably with Turlock Irrigation District in the Central Valley – planning the first demonstration project. We were successful in getting state funds to do pilot. So we expect to break ground in the fall. I'm quite excited about that because now we can really put these premises to the test. The whole idea is to study in order to scale, because you only gain the advantages of this idea, a big idea, a rather obvious idea – we weren't the first to come up with it – but now we're on a path where we are very fortunate to be able to study and build on the findings. ROB: California is a big state, lots of people, lots of opinions; are there any particular groups you're concerned about having concerns about this? Are there impacts on wildlife? Are there impacts on other things that people would worry about? It probably can be mitigated, probably a net positive, but what's the group that's going to fret about these? ROBIN: We talk about that a lot. We are inviting naysayers to come with their questions because the whole purpose is to interrogate this proposition and learn, where are there holes? We want to be mindful not to replace one problem and create others. That's not our intention. We set Solar AquaGrid up as a for-benefit company that is predicated on public, private, academic cooperation. To that end, you raised the issue of wildlife; we have enlisted Audubon Society as a research partner because we do want to learn, what are the effects, the unforeseen potential consequences of covering large swaths of the canal? So we're going to learn all this. If you want to do another podcast in about – call it 24 or 36 months, we'll have more to talk about. ROB: That'll be fascinating. The next thing that comes to my mind also is, you talked about France, you talked about their waterways. You get into some interesting questions. They have waterways. They're tree-shaded, so you could cover them with solar panels, but the trees are going to make not as much solar. Is it potentially beneficial enough to where you take down trees to put the solar over it? Because the trees are there, they keep it shaded somewhat, but it's still uncovered. It's still evaporative. ROBIN: Beautiful. There's beauty in complexity. These are the questions in terms of net positives and net losses regarding, in that case, biodiversity. By the way, we here in the U.S. are not the first to deploy solar arrays over canals. It was first done in Gujrat, India, where there are projects we've actually gone to school on and have learned from those past deployments – both what to do and what not to do. ROB: That's fascinating. We have a business partner whose primary office is directly in Gujrat, so I am familiar with it. I have looked at it. In their case, they chose to set up there because what I've learned is that India's all one time zone, and Gujrat is the farthest west you can get, just about, so you get the best overlap with the U.S. if you're there. So that was interesting. We ended up alongside an outsource team, and then we started asking why they were there, and that turns out to be the why. ROBIN: I did not know that. That's cool. ROB: I imagine the same thing applies to – I think China's also on one time, so who knows where that leads. But speaking to your journey, speaking to Citizen Group, speaking to the type of work that you do – we've talked about some things already that you're looking forward to, but what's coming up for Citizen Group? What's coming up for the type of work you do that is exciting for you? What else is next, beyond what we've already spoken about? ROBIN: It's the range of projects, the diversity of them, that makes it fun. Challenging and fun. There's so many ways to make impact, and there's new ideas to think about every day. But one of the projects that has been exciting this spring is in the area of – it goes by another acronym, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. The sports apparel retailer Lids has developed an initiative to recognize and honor the history of the early Black leagues: the Negro Baseball League, the original Harlem Globetrotters, what was called the Black Fives; before there was the NBA, there were the Black Fives. These were leagues and teams in the era of racial segregation. These are the players that invented the modern game. In fact, the name of the campaign that we've developed is called “They Gave Us Game.” It's been a blast because I'm a sports fan, particularly basketball, and going back, the whole tree of influences in terms of – much like music, how every generation is influenced by the generation previous, and how the moves and skills developed in one era that proved successful and now you can see in the game of our players today. That's been fun. So they've come up with this apparel collection called They Gave Us Game. We've also been working in the area of services for those among us who are aging. Which is all of us, right? But there are more Americans that are living longer, and as a result, there's more services available that most of us don't necessarily recognize the variety of caregiving and expert services. So we've been working with a group called Leading Age to create a campaign called Keep Leading Life that showcases the range of services available to people. ROB: Got it. We'll look forward to those things as well. Robin, when people want to find and connect with you and Citizen Group, where should they go to find you? ROBIN: We have a website. It's called citizengroup.com. ROB: That's a good website. That's easy to remember. Very appropriate. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, for all the work you're doing for all of us, and for sharing a little bit about it along the way. Grateful to hear your journey. ROBIN: Thanks for your interest. It was fun talking to you. ROB: Excellent. Have a wonderful day. Take care. ROBIN: Take care. Thanks. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Amanda Parker, President and Owner, Collective Alternative (Indianapolis, IN)   Amanda Parker is President and Owner at Collective Alternative, a full-service agency that focuses on growing small, mostly local businesses. She started her agency 14 years ago to bring together her background in strategy and development, experience as the Vice President of Marketing for a homebuilder, and passion for Mom-and-Pops, new home construction, and small, home-service businesses. Typical agency clients might include a local plumber trying to compete with bigger plumbing competition. In this interview, Amanda explains there are a number of differences for successfully working with small businesses as opposed to mega-brand clients. Marketers typically work fast. With small businesses, she has found that it is important to slow down, communicate with the client, and let them know what the agency is trying to accomplish, the end goal/objective, and the benefit of the end goal. They require a lot more “hand-holding” through the process, she explains, and they can't “afford to waste a single dollar.” Amanda feels it is also critical to “protect” these smaller clients, to watch both the market and the economy. She also believes an “it's just business” approach does not work. Larger companies have the resources and resilience to “experiment” with marketing strategies. With smaller companies, errors bleed through to the bottom line and can affect an organization's survival. With smaller companies,  It is so personal. It doesn't get any more personal for a small business owner. They have sunk everything into it. They're working 12-16 hour days. All they want to do is provide for their family, send their daughter to dance class, send their kid to college, whatever it is. It's personal. Amanda says she is quite cognizant of her personal weaknesses. In building her agency, she focuses on hiring people who can bring complementary strengths, identifies potential areas of growth, supports continuing education efforts, and brings in experts to help her team “accelerate” their careers. Some of the agency's local clients go national. One client they are currently working with provides rehabilitative and mental health care for first responders (fire and police). The client will soon launch a national first responder mental health platform called Shield, which excites Amanda because it facilitates open discussions of mental health. Amanda can be reached on her agency's website at: collectivealternative.com or thecaway.com, or by email at: amanda@thecaway.com. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm joined today by Amanda Parker, President and Owner at Collective Alternative based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to the podcast, Amanda. AMANDA: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Very excited to be here. ROB: Absolutely. Great to have you here. Why don't you start off by telling us about Collective Alternative, and what distinguishes the firm? What is your superpower? AMANDA: Oh, our superpower. Our firm is unique in we focus on small business. My background with agencies and things like that, I was on the larger accounts, but I really fell in love with the mom n' pops, the small businesses of the country, and wanted to give them an opportunity to compete and gain some market share. So, we really focus on those mom n' pop businesses. I love home services. When I did work on the client-side, I was the Vice President of Marketing for a homebuilder, and I fell in love with it. It got in my blood. So, we love home services and new home construction and all of that. But I just love my small business clients and to see their growth. It's just amazing. ROB: That's excellent. Those businesses, you say small; are they largely local? Are some of them national in scope? Is it heavy into services? Are you helping the local plumber go up against the big guys, or what are the industry specialties? AMANDA: The majority of our clients are local. We are definitely helping that local plumber go up against the big guys. Even the bigger guy in the area, right? Which I just love. But we do have some clients that are national, or they've started local and they've grown nationally. We have one client that started here in Indiana, and they provide rehabilitative care, mental health care, all of that kind of thing for first responders – for fire and police. And they are growing on a national scale, especially with a new product they're taking to market this month. So, it's really cool to see that growth and be a part of it. ROB: That's really exciting to be able to help with that. What is it that you think changed as the firm grows that makes it maybe a different firm specialty? How do you define small as in small business, and what is it that really makes the scope of what they need a great fit for you? AMANDA: My background is strategy and development, so I really focused on when you're a small business, you cannot afford to waste a single dollar. I really focus on the strategy behind everything that we do. We don't throw things at the wall to see what sticks. We are very focused, hone in on – we may do some A/B testing, but for the most part it's planned out. We know what the payoff is going to be. We know we're going to deliver the right ROI for our clients, and we really focus in on that strategy to make sure that every dollar they give to us is working for them and paying off. ROB: There's definitely a certain pressure. They don't have a lot of extra dollars for experimental budgets when you're talking about a small business. And I can imagine there's probably a range of services you can engage in. How far across the range are you going? You can do anything from SEO, you can do SEM, you can do paid organic social, you can do media, TV, billboards, out-of-home. How far does the rabbit hole go with these clients? AMANDA: We're actually a full-service firm, so we do everything that they need. One issue that I always heard from my small business clients was they felt like they had to repeat their initiatives over and over again to a number of different marketing partners. At one point they're talking to a PR person; then they're talking to a digital firm; then they're talking to an SEO firm. It was just all over the place, and they never felt like they had the unity, so they couldn't tell if their dollars were really working for them or not. I brought all of those different expertises in-house with different people leading those different areas, and now everything is under one roof and we all collaborate and talk together. So, they don't have to repeat and they can really see the benefit of it. ROB: Some services, it's pretty straightforward; you can show somebody “You're a plumber, we ran this ad, we tracked the phone numbers, here's your calls.” Maybe if they're really detailed, they can see what they got from that. How do you look at something that can be a little bit of a longer term investment? Let's say you're looking at – whether it's an awareness campaign on a digital billboard, whether it's maybe something where the outcome – sometimes it's not 100% certain how well you can do in SEO and what keywords you can optimize for. How do you think about helping them through that process of investing over time? The outcome is a little bit unknown, but directionally, you know because it rhymes with plenty of other clients that you've seen. AMANDA: I think it's more a matter of educating them and almost holding their hand through the process so they understand what it is that we're trying to accomplish, they know what the end goal or objective is, and they know what the benefit of that end goal is. A lot of times as marketers, I feel like we go so fast – and we know it, and we know the acronyms and everything else, so we just keep going and going and going, and we don't slow down enough to communicate to the client and let them know, “Okay, here's what this means for you, and here's why I'm doing it, and here's what I'm hoping to see out of it or I expect to see out of it, and here's what that means.” So just really overcommunicating that. ROB: Got it. I can certainly see that. And then there's I think also a challenge, then, of equipping more and more of your team to walk clients on that journey. How do you help give your team the playbook that is needed so that – you can't hold everybody's hand anymore, right? AMANDA: I can't. But I want to. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] All these nice little small businesses. They need somebody to hang out with them and help them and hug them, yes. AMANDA: Yes. I so want to, but I can't. So, it's really making sure that my team understands our culture, understands our mission. And if they do and they believe in it and they buy into it, then I know that they will continue to communicate that and advocate for the client. And that's what I've seen. It really comes down to educating the team on what our mission is and then making sure that they believe it in their soul and then get out there and do it. ROB: Excellent. You mentioned a little bit of your past life and some of the work you'd done for clients before, but that's still a long distance from actually starting your own agency. So, what was it that pushed you across that boundary and led you to start your own firm? AMANDA: I constantly heard that I was too vested in my clients and that “it's not personal, it's just business.” That kept me up at night. I struggled with that so much because, for a small business, you'd better believe it's personal. It is so personal. It doesn't get any more personal for a small business owner. They have sunk everything into it. They're working 12-16 hour days. All they want to do is provide for their family, send their daughter to dance class, send their kid to college, whatever it is. It's personal. I could not get that to settle with my soul, so I remember coming home one day and I told my husband, “Yeah, I'm done. I'm going to do this on my own and I'm going to make it personal.” And our tagline is “Making business personal.” He was like, “Okay, girl, go for it.” And that was 14 years ago. ROB: Wow, so 14 years. What have been some of the step functions, the inflection points on the journey? Whether it's key hires, whether it's service areas, whether it's a certain degree of scale or things that you don't do anymore that you used to, what have been some of those key points in the business? AMANDA: I feel like I have had this rollercoaster journey as a business owner. I'm sure a lot of business owners feel that way, but I have made some doozy mistakes where you hire the wrong person and they don't buy into the mission, but you just liked them so much, or you felt they had such potential but they don't want to realize it. I don't know. So, some bad hires along the way. But I've had some really great hires. I created a leadership team around me of some magnificent, magnificently talented people, and they are just incredible. I am so blessed to have them. As you know, this industry changes on a dime. Today it's one thing, tomorrow it's another. You have to stay up on that. So, making sure that we hire people who want to change with that and want to realize what's new – I mean, five years ago what was TikTok? Come on. It's just really making sure that we're staying on top of things, that we know what's coming, that we're watching the market, we're watching the economy. We have to protect our clients in ways that other firms don't. ROB: Have you found some local business clients for whom TikTok makes good sense and resonates well? What have you seen there? AMANDA: It's funny; because they're home services – and I will say, in Indiana compared to maybe where you are or California, we seem to be a little bit behind some of the coasts. Several of my clients, their big thing this year was getting on Instagram. It is what it is. And now I'm trying to talk to them about influencers and “let's get in with an influencer, let's do an influencer campaign.” It's harder for them to understand what that is or see the benefit of that, but they're coming around. We're doing some cool experimental things for them to see what that looks like. I know it's their trust in me that's pushing that, which I appreciate beyond words. But they're getting there. [laughs] That's all I can say. ROB: Sure. And I wonder also, not so much even for anything to reflect on you or your clients, but also as I think about the intersection of the businesses that you work with, simply put, the TikTok feed is not really optimized for local. That's not an axis that it tends to revolve around, so I could see it being a tricky investment just from that part alone. The dynamic isn't getting followed. The dynamic is showing up in the algorithmic feed and blowing up there. And TikTok would rather have somebody telling a joke or doing a dance or falling on their face or cute animals than “Here's how you prepare for freezing your pipes in the winter, and here's my dance for doing that.” It's a different thing. AMANDA: [laughs] Yep, exactly. ROB: You mentioned, and I'll pull on it a little bit – we don't always get a chance to talk through the thinking that goes into exec team, who's on that boat, what roles, what structure. How have you evolved and emerged and thought about this executive team around you and who's on it? AMANDA: I think pretty uniquely in the fact that I have tried to be very self-aware of my weaknesses. My skillset does not include design. It does not include website creation or even brand management, for that matter. So, I knew early on I need very strong people with me on that side that can see the strategy in that and really support me there. So having a creative director, a VP of Creative, was really important. She was my first hire, and she is still with me today. I have a designer that has been with me for 12 years. It's treating them like family, but filling in where I know that I am weak and I need to surround myself with strong talent. I think that has been so beneficial for me because then we've grown together. We can collaborate together, and together we do some really amazing things. ROB: It's interesting when you have someone involved who excels in an area that you need them. You need them to be stronger there. How do you think about continuing to develop those team members in areas where you're not more of an expert? There are places where you have your expertise and it's your job to equip and cast vision, and then there's stuff that you don't know how to do, and that's why people are there. How do you help your team grow with the firm? AMANDA: They still want to grow. They want to accelerate their career, they want to learn other things. We do a lot of training. We do a lot of bringing experts in. If they want to go to a conference or something like that, all of that is on the table. We do a lot of sharing newsletters, articles, videos. We do a lot of that back and forth so we all have that knowledge base, but they're still learning. And then it's constantly giving them a challenge. “Here's an area of growth that I see,” and getting them to realize that, see that, and then jump in and participate in it. ROB: It's always an interesting challenge, especially when you get outside of your wheelhouse a little bit, so I do appreciate that thinking. As you reflect on the journey of the firm, Amanda, what are some things you think about? What have you learned along the way? What would you go back and tell yourself “Don't do that, do it this way” if you could? Reflect on those things you might've done differently if you were starting from zero. AMANDA: Oh, my goodness, that list is lengthy. There have been a couple times that we were primed to grow, we knew we needed help – this is where I learned this lesson – and instead of hiring for culture or fit that way, we hired doers that could just support the work and do the work. It just didn't work out. It was a huge influx of people all of a sudden that we weren't ready for. We didn't train them appropriately. We did not set them up for success. That was a big lesson for me to learn, that I had hired the wrong way. I always try to leave people better than I found them, and I know those people I did not set up for success, and that was really tough for me. It was tough for me to get over that and move on to, “Okay, I had perhaps a negative impact on their life. I still need to take care of my clients and continue to build, so I need to reset. What does that look like so I don't do that again?” That's tough. It's tough as a business owner to know that you have that kind of impact. ROB: Yeah. But it's personal. You said it from the start. That part of the business is personal for you as well, so it's consistent. It pulls through. Even the wrong decisions aren't just like, “Oh, forget that person, they should've known better.” You see that in business, and some people operate that way, and that's personal. That gets taken very differently, personally. It's a different lane. AMANDA: It really does. It's kept me up at night. And then there's those things that if I could go back and tell this person “I'm sorry, I didn't know what I should have known” or “I hadn't learned that lesson” – you want to, and then at the same time, you're the boss, so you're always going to be the bad guy. [laughs] I mean, where's the line, right? ROB: Yep. We're in an interesting spot, an interesting turning point. We're coming into the summer of 2022. Everybody's done their different versions of office and no office, “how is my team structured, where is my team?” How are you thinking about the location and gathering of your team in-person as we're going through 2022? AMANDA: That's funny. When COVID came – and that was another lesson in and of itself – but when COVID came on, I was watching the news. I sent all my team home early. Before the mandate even rolled out, I had sent them to work from home. In the middle of May, my leadership team called me and said, “We're going back to the office with or without you.” And that was May of 2020. I was like, “Um, there's still a mandate.” I'm trying to talk through it, and they're like, “No. We need to collaborate. This is what we do for our clients. We're going back to the office June 1. You do whatever you need to do to make sure that happens, but we're going back to the office.” It just so happened to roll with the timeline; they had lifted some restrictions at that point, so we could. And we've been in the office since June 1st of 2020. We've been very fortunate with – we try to stay healthy. If somebody's sick, stay home, that kind of thing. But yeah, they want to be here. They want to collaborate. So that's where we are. ROB: It sounds like you didn't have to pull them into it. Did you have anybody who tried to move somewhere or tried to go remote first? Or that just wasn't your lane? AMANDA: We did lose two people. One person had to move to Texas to take care of her family, and then another person was just not comfortable coming into the office and she actually quit. That was unfortunate, because we liked both of them, but this is where we do our best work, and we have to perform for those clients. ROB: I'm sure you've had to, whether it was those folks and you had to backfill them or new roles you've had to hire – have you found that there are people who are ready to be in an office? That's a lane you've chosen and they're like, “These are my people, I want to be in an office too”? How are you seeing this from a recruiting advantage perspective? AMANDA: That's funny; I was just on an interview yesterday and she said she's worked from home since 2018, and she wants back in an office so bad that she's changed her career path and is moving over to marketing so she can go back in an office. It's out there. People want to be back to work. They want to be back in an office. I think you have a mix. There are still some people that are enjoying the work remote. But for the most part, I've seen, and we've heard in our interviews, people are ready. They are ready to come back in. ROB: I think a lot of people really want clarity, too. They want to know what the plan is instead of being in permanent limbo. You see some of the tech companies are back and forth, and people don't quite know. There's people who moved to Idaho from Silicon Valley. They're building a house there. They're not going back. AMANDA: Yeah, exactly. ROB: But where you're in limbo or it's like now you're going back – infamously, this past week, a VP of I think machine learning at Apple just said, “No, I'm not coming back to the office. I don't want to do that. I will take a job somewhere else.” Now, them announcing that loudly is probably a good way to get some recruiting calls as well. But I think people want to know, and when it shifts, I think that's when the moment of truth happens. We have hired all over the place, so we can't put the genie back in the bottle. We did most of our growth during COVID. We've found ourselves in making a different choice. But our choice is still that we're going to get together several times a year in a different place, and we're still going to get on planes and spend time with sufficiently large clients. I think people still kind of know that. They want to be in a lane where they value getting together sometimes, but they want to be at home. I think the clarity of letting people know, as well as the proof – people can see the proof. They can see the proof on your LinkedIn. Where are your people? If all of your people are in one place, they're going to take that message. If people are all over the place, they're going to feel safe being somewhere else. We just hired somebody in Canada, which is a whole other interesting thing. We'll enjoy getting to know her. AMANDA: I love the fact that remote opens up so much opportunity for people, and they can change to a different company or they can change to a different career path or whatever. I think that is perfect. But my team loves being together, loves to collaborate together. It's the culture we've built, so we're all here in Indiana and going to stay put. ROB: I'm glad it's working for you. As you're looking forward to the future of marketing, the future of services you provide, the future of your clients, what's coming up for Collective Alternative that you're excited about, for clients, for the overall trends in marketing in general? AMANDA: That's a great question. We have right now – and I mentioned it a little bit earlier – one client that is launching a new platform. It's called Shield, and it is a mental health platform for first responders, police and fire. I love the fact that we get to be very real and talk about how challenging their job is and how they do have those same needs that other people do. We get to talk about mental health openly. It's so taboo, especially in that field, so if we can start to penetrate that and really start to show that even anonymously, they can take these assessments and see where they're at, gauge what is going on, and they can self-assess – then maybe that helps them, or maybe that tells them, “Oh, I do drink a little bit too much. Maybe I should reach out and get some help with that.” Or “Maybe I should cut that.” Whatever it is so that they can be healthier, be better, and be better representatives of the community. So, it still has that community tie, but it's on a national scale. I'm really excited about that. As far as trends, like I mentioned, the influencer thing. We've got a couple influencer campaigns going on, one with a remodeling client of ours. He's all for it, so we're talking about lifestyle and remodeling trends, and it's been a lot of fun. Just doing some of those things to really set our clients apart and speak more to who they are and showcase that – I love it. I love it every day. ROB: That's exciting. There's a lot of good things coming up. I think it's a really opportune time to engage people in some change that they're seeking in their lives. I think people have realized – kind of like where they choose to work. They're in whatever rut they've been in, but there's some energy to do something different as other parts of their lives change. That's very exciting and very timely. Amanda, when people want to find and connect with you, with Collective Alternative, where should they go to track you down? AMANDA: They can visit our website, collectivealternative.com, or thecaway.com, or they can reach out by email, amanda@thecaway.com. Give me a call, you name it. There's a number of ways; you can find me all over the web. ROB: There it is. Excellent. And you can find you in your office as well. AMANDA: Right. ROB: [laughs] Thank you so much, Amanda. It's been good to learn about you, to learn about Collective Alternative. Thank you for sharing your story and your journey with the audience. Really appreciate it. AMANDA: Thank you for having me. It was so fun. ROB: Thank you. Take care. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Kevin Roy, Co-founder of GreenBananaSEO based in Beverly, Massachusetts   Kevin Roy is the Co-founder of GreenBananaSEO, a full-stack digital ad agency, best known for search engine optimization but also providing paid media, Google AdWords, Facebook, and programmatic display services. Over the years the team has developed a number of internal systems to keep up with the work, including 24x7 online ordering system that funnels agency orders to his team and creates a workflow. Kevin says the agency always has more web development work than it can “keep up with” but over the past 15 years, it has always been a “loss leader.”  The agency's motto is “Page 1 or you don't pay.” Kevin explains that the agency does not guarantee the agency's services will get a client on Page 1. It's about whether the client pays. Unless we get our clients on Page 1 for the keywords that they pick, they don't pay us. If we don't get them ranked, they don't pay us. If we get them ranked and lose their rankings, they don't pay us. We have to get them ranked and keep them ranked Part of the “secret sauce” of the agency's success is a comprehensive understanding of Google's webmaster tools and its ever-changing rules. Websites are optimized “based on a few very important factors.” The agency has an 80-step process, which is frequently updated to adapt to Google's policy changes. As a recent example of a new Google requirement, Kevin cites desktop viewability. The agency has integrated this requirement into the websites it manages and tested the sites to ensure they meet “all those metrics.” Kevin warns against using “tricks” to “game the system” to get a site ranked. He says, “Google is always going to be bigger and have more resources” and will eventually figure out the “game.” “That's not a position you want to put your client in,” he says. He believes it is more important to “just try to provide quality and relevance” and then adds, “It does take people a little longer to get ranked when you follow the rules, but it also is harder to lose your ranking when you do.” When Kevin decided to start his agency, he offered to build websites and run SEO for three successful businesspeople on two conditions:  that they not tell anyone that he “did it for free” and that, if they were happy with his work, they would recommend him. The strategy worked. Today, the agency is 100% referral and “business just keeps coming in.” At the beginning of client engagement, GreenBananaSEO provides a free website audit and recommendations based on what it perceives to be a client's problem. Kevin says the agency is a “digital executioner” with an SEO division and a paid media division (focused on key performance indexes/conversions). He says the agency does “almost everything on a screen that's paid” including OTT (over-the-top) television, programmatic, geofencing, geotargeting, and addressable media. No billboards. No direct mail. “It's all paid media,” he explains, and the agency is “hired by people to make their messaging and their branding work.” Kevin can be reached on his personal page at: ijustmetkevin.com.or on his agency website at: greenbananaseo.com. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and my guest today is Kevin Roy, Co-founder of GreenBananaSEO based in Beverly, Massachusetts. Welcome to the podcast, Kevin.  KEVIN: Hey, thanks for having me. ROB: Great to have you here. Why don't you start off by telling us about GreenBanana and what you specialize in? KEVIN: We don't sell bananas. GreenBananaSEO is a full-stack digital ad agency, and we're primarily known for our search engine optimization, but we also have a significant portion of our clients run paid media, Google AdWords, Facebook, programmatic display. One of the reasons that a lot of people know us for search engine optimization is our mottol, which is “Page 1 or you don't pay.” So unless we get our clients on Page 1 for the keywords that they pick, they don't pay us. If we don't get them ranked, they don't pay us. If we get them ranked and lose their rankings, they don't pay us. We have to get them ranked and keep them ranked. And the big secret is there's no secret. You just do what you're supposed to do. Google publishes their webmaster tools. They're not fun to read. [laughs] We read them and we optimize people's sites based on a few very important factors that I could always touch on later. But you don't try to game the system. You just try to provide quality and relevance, and you magically rank. ROB: How do you think about socializing that knowledge across your team? Some people who are there might have an intrinsic knowledge of what it takes, they've digested the notes on what Google likes, what Google doesn't like. But somebody new comes in or somebody's new to the industry – how do you think about putting them on the path of not looking for tricks and of doing the right thing? KEVIN: That's a great question. We have a process. We have an 80-step process and we teach our members to follow that process. But we also have a hierarchy of SEO director-level knowledge that are always going and looking for the latest changes that Google has published that they made and how we have to adapt our process to that. Something that just came out recently was desktop viewability. It's something that Google is amping people for if they don't have the right desktop viewability, so we have to make that part of it, go in and test that, make sure their site is hitting all those metrics and adapting the site to that. ROB: That makes sense. SEO has a long history, and it's been through – you're making reference to tips and tricks, and there were all these conversations about “secrets.” There were tools people would provide that would tell you these secrets. Did you always come at it from the non-secrets angle, or was that an evolution and there were some tricks that once were kind of helpful, but have really attenuated as Google has evolved its algorithm? KEVIN: The thing that's always stuck in the back of my mind is how massive Google is. There are tricks and things that you can do to game the system and try to get the site ranked, but Google is always going to be bigger and have more resources, and they are ultimately going to figure that out, and that's not a position you want to put your client in. I always say, it's not if you get caught, it's when you get caught. So if you decide that's the game you want to play, then buckle up. Maybe that's something you want to do, but that's not what we do. It does take people a little longer to get ranked when you follow the rules, but it also is harder to lose your ranking when you do. It's a lot more beneficial. And our clients are real businesses that are really trying to promote their work, and they can't afford to get caught for something we did. ROB: Page 1, that's a great target. Are there ever keywords I would want to target where you would look at me as a client and say, “You know, I get it, but that's a no. We can't guarantee that”? Is there a target that's too high? KEVIN: There are two parts to that answer. Number one, we don't guarantee ranking. We guarantee that if we can't get you there, you don't pay us. So when people call and say, “Hey, GreenBanana, we need to get on Page 1 in a month for these keyword phrases,” I'm like, “Great. We have an AdWords campaign for that. I can guarantee you'll get on Page 1 with a Google AdWords campaign because we're going to bid higher than your competitors for that.” But there are certain things Google takes into consideration, like domain authority, how long the site has been living, how much content is on the site, and that a lot plays into how successful we think we're going to be before we start the campaign. So if you started a brand new dating website today and said, “I want to get on Page 1 for dating,” I would say, “Okay, it's going to take us about 18 months to get you ranked. This is what it's going to cost when we do get you ranked. Sign this contract.” And you'll probably say, “I can't afford this.” [laughs] Because eHarmony and Match.com and Plenty of Fish and those people have teams and teams of SEO people. So yes, we can do it, but a lot of times if it's a super broad term that is hyper, hyper-competitive, like – everyone calls us for mesothelioma. SEOs have been working on that for 15 years, so we have 14½ years of catch-up to do. It's going to be expensive. ROB: That all makes sense. Where did this whole thing come from, Kevin? What made you decide to start GreenBanana? KEVIN: I used to be the web director for a company called eRoom Technology that ended up getting bought by EMC. It's a workspace collaboration, kind of like – I don't know if you use Basecamp or Teams. ROB: I know all the stuff. ClickUp and so many things now. KEVIN: Yeah, all those collaboration spaces. The company got bought out, and I had a team of people under me, and next thing you know I was doing about two hours' worth of work doing web edit updates and going to the gym for the rest of the time and realizing my job was not going to last long. When my boss got let go, I went off and decided to start my own company. I got a good severance package, and I went around and found three people in the area that were really good, that I thought were successful businesspeople, and I said, “I'm going to build you a website for free. I'm going to do your SEO. You're not going to tell anybody that I did it for free, and if you're happy with it, you can recommend me.” That's legitimately how the business started. ROB: Wow. KEVIN: Two of them worked out. One of them, that company either moved – I can't even remember what happened. But two of them recommended me, and that started the spiral. To this day, I spend my time – we don't have an outreach program. We don't even do our own SEO. If you look at our SEO, it could be a lot better. I know the audience can't see this, but the left-hand side of this sheet, there's 30 RFPs that I had to write last week, and we're 100% referral. We just try to help people. We'll do free audits for people and say, “This is what we think you should do. Your problem may not be able to be solved by SEO” – for example, if it's a product that no one's ever heard of before, SEO Is not what you want. It's going to be programmatic or social to get in front of people that might like your product. So we spend our days doing that, and miraculously, business just keeps coming in. It's been like that for 15 years. ROB: When you mention RFP, is that an expression of interest from a client who needs a proposal, or more of a formal RFP, competitive…? KEVIN: That's a good question. I don't write RFPs. Actually, I did. I wrote two and spent weeks doing them and no one ever called me back, so I don't write RFPs. [laughs] People calling us and asking for quotes, that's what I call RFPs. ROB: Understood. So, you're turning around a proposal, someone says, “What does this look like?”, you do a little bit of discovery, “I want to rank for this, I want to rank for that,” you turn it around and tell them, “This is what it looks like.” KEVIN: Yeah. We do an audit and then come and tell them, “Hey, is SEO the right thing for you? If it is, we'll help you pick some keyword phrases.” Then we send it to them, there's usually a little back and forth, and then we decide if we want to move forward or not. ROB: You just mentioned programmatic. I know earlier you mentioned not just SEO, but paid search, and then you mentioned social, which I didn't hear you mention earlier. Scope of services is always an interesting conversation. Where do you draw the line? Are you doing paid social? Do you do organic social? Where do you say yes, where do you say no? KEVIN: It's all paid media. We do almost everything on a screen that's paid, like OTT, which is connected to television, programmatic, geofencing, geotargeting, addressable. What we don't do is anything print. We don't do billboards. We don't do direct mail. People hire us because we're digital executioners. We don't even do – if someone calls and says, “I want the sexiest branding of anybody,” that's not what we do. We're hired by people to make their messaging and their branding work. We have an SEO division and we have a paid media division. The paid media team is solely focused on KPI or key performance indexes or conversions. When someone comes to work for GreenBanana as our paid media side, especially if they're from another agency, I tell them, if you're really, really good at this job, you can sell reporting for maybe two to three months. But you can sell conversions and leads forever. So everything that you're doing, you should absolutely figure out in the very beginning. We don't start a campaign until we figure out what the goal of the client is, and then you take the media that you're serving and drive it to that goal and try to maximize it. Sometimes social, like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, will outperform Google AdWords, or programmatic will outperform Twitter. A lot of our clients will come to us with, “Hey, I want to spend $5,000 in social and $2,500 in AdWords,” and we find out after running a campaign for 30 to 60 days, “You know what? AdWords is getting you double the amount of leads for the budget. We recommend you switch and pull your money from social into that.” And they always say yes, because the client doesn't care who we're giving money to; they just care about the success of the company. So that's how we do that. Our account execs are really well-versed in every single medium, and they're medium agnostic. They don't care if budget gets pulled from one medium to another, even if it affects our margin at GreenBanana, because our job is to get the campaigns to be most successful. Those are the clients that increase budget, that stay with us forever. We have a plumber that has been with us for 13 of our 15 years, and they went from spending $750 a month to $40,000 a month over that long period of time because the campaigns that we're working on are producing results. ROB: Right. It's an engine for their business now and would be a fairly terrifying thing to switch out, I think. Also hard to get too different – even if they wanted to test out a competitive firm, it's a little hard because then you're bidding on some of the same stuff, I would think. KEVIN: Oh yeah, that's a great point. You can't run two Google campaigns because if you have two firms running two Google campaigns, Google's only going to show one, and the one that's showing is going to actually be more expensive than the one that isn't. You just outbid yourself. So if you're a company ever trying to pit one agency against the other, don't have them run the same medium. Don't have them both run Facebook or both run AdWords. It's a terrible idea. ROB: That sounds like a good way to spend $80,000 a month instead. KEVIN: It's a good way to blow a lot of money, yeah. ROB: You mentioned you had this initial flywheel in the firm, three test subjects and some referrals, and still growing and spinning it by referrals. What was the moment – your title is co-founder, so where else did this start, and when did it start to expand beyond the co-founder territory? KEVIN: It got to a point where I was – we do web development in-house. We never talk about it because we have more than we can keep up with, and for some reason, in 15 years it's never been profitable. It's always this loss leader. So I was doing a lot of web development, and I was outsourcing the stuff that I couldn't keep up with. The outsource company that was local called me and said, “We can't keep up with the demand that you're sending us. Here's a guy we recommend you send some of this stuff to.” His name is Mark, and he's my business partner now. He and I really hit it off, and I said, “Let's just get in this together because we have complementary skillsets.” So that was the co-founder piece. When it went beyond it, we didn't have any money when we started. We didn't have any private equity. No angel investors. We would save a little and then hire an employee, and save a little and hire an employee. If you look at the trajectory of GreenBanana, we've always grown, but it's been a slow, steady organic growth to where we are right now. There are companies that have surpassed us that haven't done that, and you could argue that's a great way to do it, just got a big influx of cash and hired a team. But we said, no, we're just going to keep reinvesting the money we make and build and grow and learn. As we grow, we build. We have internal systems that we've built because we have a lot of other agencies that are clients of ours. We built an online ordering system so at midnight, an agency can put in all the orders and have it funnel to my team and create a workflow. But that didn't happen overnight. It took us a year and a half to build it. ROB: Right. You mentioned this commitment to steady growth. It can be tempting to push the fast-forward button. How, over this time, have you resisted the temptation to – whether it's to take a buyout and take some growth there, whether it's to take in some money and boost some hires – how have you been thinking about that as you proceed and stuck to the path of building growth organically? KEVIN: That's a great question. In the beginning, no one was coming and asking us, “Here's a bunch of money to go do something.” So that was easy. We did have some periods that we got a lot more customers than we could handle and we made mistakes. So that also made us nervous, and making sure that if someone just handed us a blank check, we probably wouldn't know what to do with it. If the opportunity came where someone said, “Here's a bunch of money and here's the 10 agencies that we've grown exactly like yours,” that would be a lot more attractive. Now that we're at the revenue that we're at, we're actually getting people that are asking us for that. But we haven't gotten anything attractive enough to have us say, “We'll give up half the business for that.” That's actually the answer. The answer is nothing's been attractive enough. ROB: That seems to be the case in services in general. I hear, at least, quite often that you're measuring the value of the business based on EBITDA, based on your actual earnings, and maybe you can back out some expenses that have been loaded onto the business, that kind of thing. But really, if you're healthy on EBITDA, then the business needs some cash to grow and some cash to distribute, and what's the hurry on the sale? The terms aren't usually enough to make you say, “I couldn't make that much profit in three years.” KEVIN: Right. Exactly. That seems to be what's happening. Also, I don't think digital's going away. I do think that certain mediums may come and go, but we're medium agnostic, so if Facebook blows up next month, it's going to stink, but we can shuffle. ROB: As you reflect on this journey so far – I guess you're about 12 to 13 years in – what are some things you've learned on this journey that you wish you could go back and tell yourself to do differently? It sounds like you wouldn't tell yourself to go take a check and get bought out, but I imagine there are some things you would consider doing differently along the way. KEVIN: I think a lot of it is psychological for me. If I could go back and say to 12 or 13 years ago Kevin, I'd say part of being an entrepreneur is there's a lot of times where you're taking three steps forward and two steps back. But the two steps back are never that bad. I've spent countless sleepless nights thinking of the worst thing that could possibly happen, and it's never happened. Not even kind of happened. It's legitimately never happened. So, if I could go back, I'd say stop worrying about that and focus on all the positive things because that thing's never going to happen. And if it repeatedly hasn't happened in 13 years, it's not a coincidence. So I think that's something I wish I knew a long time ago. But it's also something that I continue to wrestle with because it's kind of burned in the back of your brain. ROB: Absolutely. I needed that reminder from some other entrepreneurs yesterday. You have that moment, you have that day, where something small bad does happen. We had a job offer out that I was really excited about, and the last eight offers we put out were all accepted, and this person said no. I was like, oh man, that was not the answer I wanted. But same thing – you lose a client, but along the way, you've planted those seeds so that six months from now, you're going to say, “That was a speedbump. That was not the end of the world.” We grew from there. A lot of folks said their experience has been they hired somebody better right after they got a no. It's that long perspective, and I think planting the seeds and knowing you've done the work along the way. KEVIN: Right. There's a great quote – I don't even know who said it, but you don't find a way to go around the problem; you find a way to go through it. It seems to work out. We had an employee that stole almost a quarter of our business, left with that, and we made it back in a year. It's honestly the best thing that's ever happened. So things like that, at the time, horrible. And then I wouldn't change a thing now. ROB: [laughs] You might give them 50 cents to go do it. KEVIN: Seriously, yeah. ROB: They took maybe some customers that were more challenging to manage or maybe more loyal to a person than to the process. There's a lot to think about there. KEVIN: Yeah, and it makes you sit and evaluate and say, “What things do I have to do and what do I need and what are the things that are necessary?”, and you end up becoming better. That's what entrepreneurs do. People that aren't entrepreneurs don't understand it because those people are the ones that won't take that risk and say, “I've got to go. I can't do this. I can't handle this stress.” The entrepreneurs say, “I've got to figure out how to deal with it, because this is it.” ROB: Right. Kevin, as you look ahead to GreenBanana, the future of GreenBanana and the practice areas you're in – you mentioned maybe some channels go away, maybe there are some ways you're thinking about shifting the practice – what does the future look like? What are you excited about? KEVIN: I'm excited about – technology is increasing. Whether you find this good or bad, creepy or not, the amount of data you have on client behavior is only getting better and enabling us to be more accurate in helping our clients hit their conversions. So that evolution is really exciting. With the products that we have, like Google launching GA4 – they already launched it, but GA4 is better than Universal Analytics in how you can see data. Those things inside the products are great, and there's also all these other new products that are really exciting. I'm personally really excited about decentralized finance and crypto. We're trying to figure out a way to accept crypto payments. It's a pain in the butt to figure it out, but little things like that are fun for me, and I think as long as you're excited about learning about new tech, there's always going to be a business for a digital agency. ROB: That's interesting on the accepting crypto side. Even for existing financial applications – we had a client who wanted to pay us their discovery budget on I think Venmo, and getting a business account up and running on these services from a KYC perspective, instead of a personal account – half the time it's like they never even thought about it. There's a lot ahead of us on that front, I think. KEVIN: Yeah. That's the part we're having trouble with. If you want to send me crypto to my crypto personal wallet, it's easy. We can do it literally right now. But getting it into the business, getting it into QuickBooks, getting it to my accountants – I was like, whatever. Future Kevin will work on that. [laughs] ROB: Is there any particular business that you're seeing, some type of business that is perhaps most open to paying in crypto? What's that look like? KEVIN: None of the current businesses we're working with – I won't say none of them, but most of them wouldn't consider it. It's just something I'm personally interested in and I think it's going to happen. ROB: Absolutely. A lot of these things took some time, and then it's daily happenings. Pulling a little deeper into the topic, what are you seeing in defi and crypto? What direction excites you the most? Sometimes we're placing bets; sometimes we're just thinking about placing emotional bets with where we place our attention. What's drawing you as the most tangible next few things that are going to happen? KEVIN: I'm invested in crypto. The things that have done the best for me are Bitcoin and Ethereum. I do read some other defi newsletters, but full disclosure, none of them have done great. But I haven't really gone crazy into it. I spend most of my time on my company rather than researching that. I think the ease of transaction and the transparency of the transaction is so important, and I think that is what is going to – once people start to get more comfortable with decentralized finance, the ability to send money back and forth where there's a trackable ledger of it, I think that is really going to change business. I mean, for us to get a check from someone, for us to send money back and forth, for us to do an ETH transaction, it's our billing department on a phone call with someone, it's back and forth, it's waiting for 24 hours. Wallet to wallet is a QR code and a button, and it's there, and the ledger's there. I really think that's going to start to change the world if people can let go of the fact that they're not comfortable with it. ROB: There's a lot there and there's a lot to learn from all at the same time. Some of this stuff is kind of hard, some of the fees are kind of high, but you also see – I was just out at South by Southwest in Austin, and one of the most visible activations there was for an NFT collection called Doodles. They'd let you in the activation with your SXSW badge, but they'd let you in the VIP line if you could prove that you were a holder of a Doodles NFT. Which is about 12 ETH, so it's… KEVIN: Yeah, that's a lot of money. ROB: Absolutely. Looking at that, someone was like, “Could you just buy it and sell it?” I said, it depends on whether the thing's been pumped by the conference. If it's pumped by the conference, you're going to lose 2 ETH just because you bought it at a spiky time. That's bad news. KEVIN: I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the value of an NFT because it's a picture on a screen that everybody can take. I know you pay and it's yours, but you and I could take screenshots of each other right now. It's hard to tell who owns it. ROB: In this case they actually were validating ownership against the blockchain. To get in, they were actually authenticating the ownership. But definitely hard right now. KEVIN: Exactly. It's a currency that's validated, but it's like, what's the value of having that picture other than getting an entrance? I understand that piece of it, but sticking it on your computer and saying “I own this,” like the picture behind me – it's not really worth anything. I'm still trying to wrap my head around NFTs, and that's my fault because I know that they're really taking off. ROB: There's a lot to go there. Even in the judgment of art. I can buy art at IKEA or I can buy art at Sotheby's, and those are two very different things. But I can buy art at IKEA that probably looks like something I could buy at Sotheby's. The value there is subjective, and where it lands, who knows? KEVIN: Yeah, exactly. I heard this really interesting podcast about a guy that was spending – he's a wine collector, and some of those bottles of wine are hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he said, “I drank one and it really wasn't that good.” [laughs] “You can get a comparable wine for $28.” ROB: Absolutely, or $3 at Trader Joe's, right? KEVIN: It's like, is that $400,000 better than the $3 one? [laughs] Or is it 15 times better? ROB: Kevin, when people want to find and connect with you and with GreenBanana, where should they go to find you? KEVIN: I used to lose my business card all the time, so I bought ijustmetkevin.com. ROB: Nice. KEVIN: That'll take you to my page. Or you can just go to greenbananaseo.com ROB: That is excellent. Kevin, thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for sharing your experience, your knowledge, things you've learned. I think we're all better for it. Thank you very much. KEVIN: I appreciate your time. This was wonderful. Thank you. ROB: Best wishes to you and the team. Take care. KEVIN: Thanks. Take care. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Mardis & Phnam Bagley, Creative Directors & Founding Partners, Nonfiction Design (San Francisco, CA)   Mardis and Phnam Bagley are Creative Directors and Founding Partners at Nonfiction Design, a company that started originally as an industrial design firm but morphed into a future-focused studio. The studio works with startups, Fortune 500 companies, and governments to solve huge, complex problems and “change the world for the better.”  Phnam says all of their clients are long term and come to them “to solve huge problems about the future of education . . . living on Mars . . . food . . . neuroscience.”. The studio strategizes with a lot of these leaders in innovation, technology, and science to help them get their products “into the hands of people that need them.” The studio pushes clients “into extremes” to solve technical, experiential, and design problems “through ergonomics, through human factors, through thinking about behavior change.”  Mardis explains one of the challenges of this work – that people have to “fight the biases of the past.” A recent project was with Movida, the School of Lifelong Learning, which wanted to rethink the future of education. Nonfiction set up two teams, one that dug into white papers from the past, and the other, a group of creatives unexposed to this data, that freely brainstormed the future of education. In the end, both groups came to the same conclusion . . . but the creatives had actionable solutions for moving forward. What did this exploratory discover about education? In this interview, Phnam outlines a few conclusions – one, that children would benefit from letting them “be and stay absurd.” She says, “Not everything in life needs to make sense, needs to be efficient.” She adds that life would be better if we sometimes spent time “doing things that don't make any sense.” She believes today's society schedules too much of children's time. Teens, especially, need “time to rest physically, to rest the brain, to talk to other people, and to be bored” in order to grow to be healthy adults. Mardis says, “Developing a solution that's completely individual to the client's needs is really, really important to how we conduct business and how we keep satisfied clients.” With an eye to the future, the studio has started working on a “more circular economy model,” where design not only takes into consideration recycling, but also repair and remanufacturing.  The Nonfiction Studio team is diverse . . . from “many different cultures, many different countries.” Mardis, with a background in industrial engineering and branding, says they don't look much at résumés or portfolios. Phnam, an industrial engineer with a master's degree in (aero)space architecture, says the studio hires people “because they have something very interesting, and most likely that thing has to do with their past – what kind of career they've been through, what kind of country they come from, what kind of past they've had.” The husband-wife team presented “Designing the Future of Everything” at South by Southwest 2022 two times due to demand. Mardis, Phnam, and Nonfiction are available on Twitter and post future of design videos on Instagram. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Mardis and Phnam Bagley, Creative Directors and Founding Partners at Nonfiction Design based in San Francisco, California. We have a special two-guest episode because we had two speakers and they like to spend time with each other. Why don't you start off by telling us about Nonfiction Design, and what is your superpower? PHNAM: Sure. Phnam here. I'm the wife of the Bagley duo. Nonfiction is a design firm based in San Francisco. Originally it was started as an industrial design firm because that's both of our backgrounds, and it turned into this future-focused studio where companies from startups all the way to Fortune 500 companies to governments come to us to solve huge problems about the future. When we say huge problems, we're talking about education, we're talking about living on Mars, we're talking about future of food, and we're talking about neuroscience. This is what we do. ROB: That sounds like a wide range of things to solve. How do you go about knowing how to solve all these things? PHNAM: We are an extremely curious group of people. There is not one subject in the world that we don't want to tackle because, in the end, what we want to do is change the world for the better. Impact is really at the core of everything that we do, whether it's thinking about the future of future humans or what we need today in the medical industry. That's what drives us. That gives us the motivation to work and make other people's lives better. But also creating the foundation of a future that we want to live in, because when you look at the news, for example, a lot of things are not going according to plan. And I believe, and we believe, that designers have the power to change that. That's why we started this company. ROB: Is there an example, maybe, of a future that you have had to recently think through? And what did you think about it? MARDIS: Hi, this is Mardis Bagley. Great question. I think one of the things we like to do is shake up the status quo. When we're thinking about futures, we often have to fight the biases of the past. Stepping out of this entrenched thinking. One of the projects we worked on recently is called Movida, the School of Lifelong Learning. Thinking and rethinking education is a very, very complex problem. One of the things we did right off is we said that we don't want to step too deep into research and repeat all the past, or even bias ourselves in thinking about the opportunity of the future. So, as we do this, we're a number of creatives from all over the planet; we're a very diverse studio of men, women, many different cultures, many different countries. But we all have some sort of experience. We have a certain amount of intuition. We all have been through school on many different levels. How do we redesign education in the way we think? What we did is we started designing it straight out of the gate. We pushed research to the side, which sounds kind of crazy. We totally avoided research in redesigning this school and this education system, and we came up with these really unique ideas about how to approach school and expand the minds of young children in a way that spoke to their wellbeing. It spoke to future generations. When we're talking about designing education, we can't design education for jobs that we don't yet know what they're going to be or the technologies that are going to empower them using the thinking of education that is well over 100 years old in the process. While we're doing this wild ride of creativity and exploration on one side, we had a secondary research track talking to leaders in education from MIT and Stanford. But we never let them talk to our creatives on the other side. We let them have independent paths as they explored forward. What happened is after a few months, we ended up at the same exact location in terms of knowledge, in terms of understanding education, and how to break the norms – except for we were reading whitepapers that are decades old on one side, and on the other side is purely months of creativity. We got to the same exact location except for the creatives came out with solutions that are actionable, solutions that are ready to change young people's lives. ROB: It might have even been hard to get to those solutions starting from the whitepapers, right? You started from another place and maybe even went some places you would never go. Part of brainstorming sometimes is proposing the impossible, the inappropriate, the unacceptable, but then bringing it back in bounds. So, what's a solution that we didn't know to a problem? PHNAM: Letting children be and stay absurd. The fact that not everything in life needs to make sense, needs to be efficient, and sometimes spend your time doing things that don't make any sense. That's part of being a child. So, reintroducing that in the way you interact with yourself, you interact with others, and you interact with the architecture of a school – that's what we wanted to bring in there. There are certain aspects of the school that don't really have a means. So that's very much part of it. Another thing is that when you look at the schedule of children today, it's a lot of going to school and going to after-school, activity, activity, activity. Their schedule is packed, and their parents are just driving them from one place to another. Really spending the time to rest physically, to rest the brain, to talk to other people, and to be bored – that's very much part of human evolution. It's a need that we have that we've taken away with all the screens and all the activity. We want to integrate it back into the lives of the kids so they grow up to be healthy adults. ROB: Are they allowed to be lazy at the same time, or can they do that at different times? Because structured lazy time seems like it would still be kind of in the pattern, but somebody's going to go crazy thinking about letting each kid be lazy when they want to. How do you pull it off? PHNAM: Laziness is something that we know of. We call it laziness, but really it has a lot to do with physiological changes – in teenagers, for example. When you grow, you actually need to sleep more. You actually have to rest more. We've been forcing a schedule that's extremely unnatural onto growing young adults, and that's not really working. What that does is teaches humans to learn how to read their own body and to give their body what they need. That's very much part of growing up and learning about the world. ROB: I think adults could learn that, too. We still need to learn how to accept that permission. I've done the audience a disservice; I've failed to mention why you have a loud fan club behind you. The reason is that we are live at South by Southwest at the interactive portion of the conference, primarily, this big old festival of people getting together in Austin, Texas for the first time in three years. You both are here to present a session. You presented it twice. What people don't know if they have an event is you sign up for the session, and if it gets a lot of popularity, they schedule you for it again. So, you presented this twice because probably some combination of reputation, a good sizzling headline and summary, a following, and all these things. Your session was “Designing the Future of Everything.” What content, what frameworks, what ways of thinking – or was it more examples? What did you share with the audience? What did you want them to take away? MARDIS: I would say that at the foundation of our company, we like to say we turn science fiction into reality for a better future. If you step back and start to ask yourself what does that really mean, we as a company, Nonfiction, work with a lot of leaders in innovation and technology, technologists themselves, scientists. Oftentimes these technologies have a hard time getting out of the laboratory. They have a hard time getting into consumers' hands, into the hands of people that need them. We come in and make these technologies available to people through ergonomics, through human factors, through thinking about behavior change. Very much so, as the title suggests, we do it for everything from medical devices to consumer devices. We work in aerospace and we work on-planet and off-planet. Recently, we're happy to say that we won first place in the Deep Space Food Challenge with NASA as well as the Canadian Space Agency. ROB: Congratulations. MARDIS: Yeah, that's very exciting. We're building things that will hopefully leave planet and make future astronauts' lives better as they travel two and a half, three years into space to Mars. ROB: What's needed differently on that three-year journey? What did you have to design for in that context? MARDIS: I'll let my partner, the outer space architect, answer that one. ROB: I like that job title, too. Wow. PHNAM: Yeah. I actually went to school for that. It surprises a lot of people. 15 years ago, I got a master's degree in space architecture from the University of Houston. Back then, space architecture was very based on systems engineering, like what volume is necessary to help astronauts survive in space? But when you look at space today in 2022 with the SpaceX and Blue Origins of the world, it becomes clear that people like us are going to be part of the space industry in the future, whether as tourists or as people going to work up there. The reason why it's so important for designers and architects and creatives to be part of all of this is because we understand humans. We know how to ask the right questions and to turn these answers into solutions that actually mean something to humans. So far, we've been designing space interiors very much like spaces for survival. When you look up the ISS right now, it's not really a place you want to hang out in. So really thinking about making space more human is one of the models that we go after. We want to invite more designers, more architects, more creatives, more artists to really help us with that change. It does take a lot of disciplines to design for space because not everything works the same way. Here on Earth, opening a door is like you put your hand on it, you turn the knob and you're done. Up in space you have to hold on to something else; otherwise you're going to be pushed back. You have to think about food the same way – eating – what can be sent there, what can be safe to eat, what can protect you from cosmic radiation and things like that. What is the long-term effect of microgravity on your body? There's been the famous twin project, Mark and Scott Kelly. One of the twins went up to space and one stayed on Earth, and we saw the difference physiologically and psychologically, what's been happening between the two. So, based on that type of knowledge, how do we design better interiors and better products and better medical support for us to see ourselves in space? ROB: That seems like it must've had so many constraints to it, but also some constraints that maybe weren't actual – that you were told were constraints but weren't. What did you find was a constraint that helped you be creative and get to an unexpected solution? And what was something you were told you couldn't do that you found out you actually could? Was there anything like that? PHNAM: We believe that without constraint you can't design. You're just going to come up with something that –  ROB: “Let's just put a five-bedroom house in space and call it good, we're all happy,” right? It doesn't work that way. PHNAM: The constraint is space, of course. If it doesn't fit in the payload area of a rocket, as of today we can't bring it up. One thing that's very different between designing for space and designing for Earth is weight. When we design something for Earth, weight is limited by shipping. In space, weight is money. I think it was in 1981, bringing a kilogram of mass up in low Earth orbit was like $81,000 or something. Now it's less than $2,000, depending on what it is. So yeah, we have to think about things like this even before we design anything. ROB: Let's rewind a little bit. Where did this whole thing start? What made you all decide to bring Nonfiction Design into existence rather than just having a job? MARDIS: Well, Nonfiction has been around for six years. Phnam and I have been in the industrial design industry for well over 16 years now. I've had a previous career in branding, and Phnam in aerospace as well. But what really brought it into existence is we were contracting, working in many different agencies over the years – all the big names you might recognize. We felt like there was a culture, there was a style of working that maybe could be refined. And I'm probably being kind. [laughs] We just felt like we could do it better, or at least let's say different. We felt so compelled to give it a try. Some of the things that we wanted to fight against is we didn't see enough diversity or inclusion. I mentioned that earlier. We have a very diverse crew, and that's part of our secret sauce – listening to everybody, being very inclusive. But also breaking away from the norms of what we call industrial design now. It's not just shape development or form development. That is part of it, making beautiful things, but we're well beyond that. We're into user interactions. We're into designing for impact. We put a lot of things on the planet. Our efforts put a lot of things in people's hands, and many of them go to the landfill. It's a very linear model. We've started doing a more circular economy model where we think about designing not only for recycling, but for repair and remanufacturing. We're thinking about our impact and we're thinking about that lifecycle of a product along the way, and how can we do less negative impact and more positive impact? Positive impact would be impacting the planet in maybe an upcycling way or a regenerative way, but also impacting people's lives along the way. ROB: How much of what you do is somebody coming to you knowing they want that whole package, and how much of it is them coming to you having seen something you did and they want one thing, and you have to bring them into the bigger picture? PHNAM: A lot of our clients today come to us with a question. They're like, “How do we solve this endemic problem?” Then we strategize together on how to solve that problem, whether it's a hardware solution or a software solution or whatever. Then from there, we build this relationship. Every client we have is a long-term relationship. We push them into extremes. One extreme is hypercreativity. They came to us as a design studio because they want us to show them what they can't get themselves, number one. Number two is that we as a design firm are extremely technical. We're not afraid of going very deep into the mechanical engineering, electrical, firmware, all that stuff because it's necessary. We need to be part of the process. So really solving the technical problem at the same time as solving the experiential and the design problem is what we do well. As we do that, we take the hand of the clients and show them how it's done. We don't have a recipe that we apply to all projects. That's actually a question we get asked all the time, “What is your process?” We probably have a different process for every single client we have. ROB: Wow. PHNAM: Because each of the clients has very specific needs in time and space and in industry, so we have to craft something very specific to each of them. ROB: I heard you say that a little bit when you were talking about not wanting to look at the whitepapers when you're designing a solution. It's not your process is always to put blinders on and not look at what's out there, but sometimes it is, and it depends somewhat on the solution. It's also an interesting positioning because a lot of creative services firms are out there – it's almost like if you need some more of this work than you have capacity for, then go call these people. “I need somebody to do a little bit more paid marketing than I can do internally.” You all are positioned in a way where they probably don't have the technical knowledge, and they are literally saying, “We don't know what we don't know. Please help us.” How do you communicate that when everybody wants to put a services firm into a category? How do you help people find you when they don't know the category they're looking for, maybe? Or is there a word of like five companies like you, and everyone else is somewhere else, that they're looking for? PHNAM: It's funny because I can't really think of any company that does the things that we do at the level that we do it. That's why we started this company: we saw that hole and we were like, “We can be that.” MARDIS: Yeah. Getting back to the question you were asking earlier of – do we guide our clients or do they come to us with a very specific ask. I think we like to assist our clients in dreaming. Dreaming of something bigger than themselves. We have to shoot for the stars to land on the moon, right? Let's go really far and allow them to dream, and then we're really good at fulfilling that dream. We have a lot of resources in-house, but we also have really good partnerships. Developing a solution that's completely individual to the client's needs is really, really important to how we conduct business and how we keep satisfied clients. ROB: How do you think about what to partner on versus what to cultivate as your own capability? What's something you know you send out of house because it's not your lane, but you need a steady partner for that kind of capability? PHNAM: I think it depends on the scale of things. If you need just a little bit of touch-up on mechanical engineering, we can probably do this in-house. But if you need a whole program developing new mechanism and new testing and all of that, or very specialized knowledge in acoustics, for example, that's when we tap into our network. Another network that we have is in material science. None of us are material scientists, but we work a lot with materials. But when it comes to the science of it, the scalability of it, and the transparency behind the sustainable decisions that we make, we actually go to see scientists or a specialist of that kind. Over the years, throughout our career, we have built this amazing network of people who can pretty much answer everything we want. And if they don't know it, they will know someone who knows. That's very helpful. ROB: That makes sense. Sometimes the fastest way to the solution is just saying out loud that you don't know and throwing it out into the world and somebody points you there. But when you're struggling, you're like, “How are we going to do this?” You don't know how you're going to do it and you feel trapped. PHNAM: Not knowing is actually where you have to start, in our book. If you start a project and you know exactly what you're going to do for the rest of the project, you're probably going to do what someone else has already done. But if you don't know, or if you're in a very uncomfortable space where you're like, “Oh my God, this project is so big, I don't know where to start” – that's a good sign. ROB: You mentioned you all have been in this business for six years. What are some things you've learned in that time that you wish you could go back and tell yourself? A lesson or two, maybe “rethink this” or do it a little differently? PHNAM: I can give you one quick answer. Business development is extremely difficult to find externally. We've had people who helped us and it was not very successful. We realized two or three years ago that Mardis and I are actually much better at it than people who have that on their business cards, for our particular company, because we have the vision. We know what our company should be doing and what it should not be doing, and we know how to speak about it with passion. We can also modify our spiel to be a little bit more business-oriented, to be a little bit more design-oriented or future-oriented. That connects a lot better with the audience that we're going after. We don't sound like salespeople. We really go deep in conversations with potential clients very quickly, and I think they see that authenticity and they're willing to go deeper with us immediately. ROB: There's a credibility in your experience. There's the founder authority in knowing the heart of the business. What do you think, Mardis? What would you say you might do differently? MARDIS: I do think Phnam nailed it. That would be by far the biggest thing. ROB: How do you think about growth, then? Do you feel like you grow by scaling your influence together and larger engagements? Do you think there's a place where you find a “mini Mardis” or a “mini Phnam” to come in, somebody who actually does have – I mean, that intersection. I've seen folks say it before. It's like, learn how to build something, learn how to sell something, and you'll be unstoppable. You all are in that “technical but sellable” lane. So how do you scale, or do you want to? MARDIS: I don't think either Phnam or I could handle a mini Mardis or a mini Phnam. Let's just be outright about that. [laughs] Again, respect to so many other talented people that might come to work for us. We love diversity. We love having clients of all different sizes, different shapes, as we've mentioned, in different verticals. This is all really fun and exciting to us. We take knowledge and apply one aspect from one category to another all the time. In a funny way, we kind of ebb and flow with the clients, and we select them as they come. PHNAM: And I think it's kind of like the same way we hire people. We could hire people who think like us and act like us, have the same hard skills as us, and just apply them. But what we look for is people who think differently but have the same drive as us. The way we choose concepts to go forward with is not. “What do I like as the founder of Nonfiction?”, because that's pretty limited after a while. What we look for is, “What is going to blow our minds so it can blow the client's mind, so then it can blow the user's mind?” We always go for that. And then, once we've made that decision, we turn very quickly into “let's prototype it, let's test it” mode. Every time we're uncomfortable with a solution, that's usually the nugget of something extraordinary. We design the future. The future is not here yet. If we're comfortable with everything that we do, we're not doing our job. We need to make ourselves uncomfortable within our team first, welcome our clients to do it, so the rest of the world can do it too. ROB: Is there any signal that you might be just slightly too far in the future? Obviously, 20 years out might be too soon for a lot of things. How do you know when you need to pull it back just a couple of notches? How do you get there? PHNAM: Nonfiction at its core is the merging of five different disciplines. It's business, technology, science, art, and design. When you practice all of this, specifically business, you always have to make sure that whatever decision you make makes sense from the business perspective. If I'm coming out with a product in two years and the people who we're designing for can only afford $300, I cannot come up with a concept that's going to cost $2,000. So, we have to make decisions like that, check in often, and make sure that what we come up with makes sense, because in the end we are not here just to come up with concepts. Honestly, anybody can come up with concepts. Even non-designers. But the magic is how do you turn a concept into something that's real, into something that's attainable, into something that has the potential to change people's lives? That's why we call our company Nonfiction. Science fiction has been around for a very long time. We all want it. But who is going to turn that into the real thing? It's going to be people like us. ROB: That's a great positioning: to build near science fiction, but call it nonfiction to make it concrete. It's an excellent place to be. You mentioned hiring for diversity. If you look in the creative services world, I think diversity is often achieved, but perhaps it's achieved by optimizing for some people in some roles, some people in some other roles. You have 90% of this role are guys, 90% of this role are women. All your ethnic diversity is over here, all these people are white Americans. How do you think about diversity in roles and hiring for people in positions that are harder to find diversity in? MARDIS: I do think that we're very lucky that we're a small enough team where we don't have the large diversity challenges. Not to say that it doesn't exist, but we do challenge our team members to adapt different skillsets, to step outside their comfort zone, to think about it in a different way. PHNAM: Another thing is that we're not doing diversity for the sake of checking some boxes. It actually came very naturally. We don't hire people just because they're not white men. That's weird. We hire people because they have something very interesting, and most likely that thing has to do with their past – what kind of career they've been through, what kind of country they come from, what kind of past they've had. When we interview people, really what we want to hear is what kind of crazy stories they have to tell us. Do they have a sense of humor? Are they able to tell stories that I've never heard before? And then the skills are just going to come, because everything we do is for the first time anyway. As long as you have the bare minimum, you can figure it out. MARDIS: I'd say when we do hire people – it's funny; we have a joke around the office. We don't really look at resumes or portfolios that much. We look at them a little bit, but really it's a conversation. Talking to people, understanding what they're about, who they are, their personality. This is a great way to filter through people that will work in a smaller team and won't work in a smaller team. You don't always have that ability when you're in a really large organization. You're being filtered by AI or some sort of online tool long before it gets to a human, and the human has all the different constraints. With us, we have great conversations. We go out for cocktails. It makes sense. We're doing a lot of filtering long before we've got them in the office. ROB: It's very interesting. It makes sense. Even if you go back to what you're talking about with the lifelong learning school, that's going to get to the right solution when you talk about everybody's experience in school – what baggage do they feel like they're carrying from that? What do they wish school had done for them? You can get a diverse set of experiences in a lot of ways there. So I can certainly see how that would come in handy. Mardis, Phnam, when people want to find you, when they want to find Nonfiction Design, how should they find and connect with you? PHNAM: We're actually very active online. On Twitter, you can follow both Mardis and me and Nonfiction. Our Instagram is quite active as well. We post our video series on it. We have a video series on future of design. Basically, it's years of experience that Mardis and I have accumulated over time – we're just sharing that very transparently with everyone, and we're doing it in layman's terms. You can be a child, you can be someone who has nothing to do with design, you can be an engineer, you can be the head of a company – it doesn't matter. You can connect with us as designers, not as Nonfiction, as just plain designers. We share our methodologies. We share our way of thinking, and we share our vision of what the future of many industries is. ROB: I encourage people to go check all of that out. I love how you've open-sourced a lot of that. People are so scared about what they share, but there's the total package that you all have put together that delivers for clients, but there's little seeds of thinking that still help other people. They're not going to go steal your lunch money. Mardis, Phnam, thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for meeting up. Congratulations on the encore session here at SXSW, and I wish you all excellent travels back to San Francisco. MARDIS: Excellent. Thank you. It's been our pleasure. PHNAM: Thank you for inviting us. ROB: Thank you. Take care. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Josh Goldblum, Founder and CEO, Blue Cadet (Philadelphia, PA and New York City, NY) Josh Goldblum is Founder and CEO at Blue Cadet, an experience design studio with around 30 employees in Philadelphia and 15 in New York.  Twenty-odd years ago, Josh worked in-house at the Smithsonian Institution, producing digital products and integrating technology into physical environments. Unfulfilled because big projects only came around every few years, Josh left and freelanced for a number of museums, doing single-touch Flash design and development. As his on-man Blue Cadet operation became a growing team, projects expanded to encompass touch tables, touch walls, and projection; technology evolved and became increasingly more sophisticated; and the organization's internal systems had to be more formalized to meet the needs of the larger business. Today's experience technology is far more powerful, interesting, and relevant than that in the past. Flash has been replaced by Real Engine, Unity, and JavaScript. The Blue Cadet studio continues to design large-touch surfaces and build immersive experiences but now works with augmented reality, haptics (touch-related communication), and using technology and digital products to make cultural content in physical spaces more immersive, engaging, and “magical.”  Although much of the firm's work is for museums, it has recently expanded to provide these immersive services for executive briefing centers and such brands as Nike and Google. Josh says it's important that the studio creates a “content experience that's not just decorative, but actually tells a story that feels true to the space.” In working with clients, Josh finds it helpful to carve out a little paid research at the beginning of a project to prepare an ideation spread where the studio can research client needs and present ideas. At the end of this initial period, the client can either work with Blue Cadet or take the ideas Blue Cadet developed and work with another studio. Josh says, “It's better to carve off a little space to redirect (the project) than to get into that death march of implementing something that's just not going to be that great.” That time upfront also helps Blue Cadet discover what it is that a client really wants, whether they can provide what the client wants, whether they want to do the project, and whether the parties can develop a solid working relationship. Josh participated in a panel session discussion of Trends and Challenges for Experiential Culture at the 2022 South by Southwest Interactive Festival. He says he is most active on LinkedIn, where he shares a lot of concept prototype material. ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm joined live today at South by Southwest Interactive Festival by Josh Goldblum, Founder and CEO at Blue Cadet based in Philadelphia and New York. Welcome to the podcast, Josh. JOSH: Thanks for having me. ROB: Excellent to have you here. Why don't you start off by telling us about Blue Cadet and what is your superpower? What is your calling card? What do people come to you for? JOSH: Blue Cadet is an experience design studio. Most of us are based in Philadelphia. There's about 30 in Philadelphia, another 15 up in New York, and then actually, when I say “us” based in Philadelphia, we just moved out to LA. So my family moved to LA. We're the only ones out there. We're mostly known for experience design in the cultural space, and also really a lot of technology in physical space. Twenty-odd years ago, I was inhouse at Smithsonian doing digital product work, but also integrated technology into physical environments. So we've been in that experience design space, figuring out how you marry technology into public spaces, how you take cultural content and make it interesting. That's what we've been doing, and we do it across physical space; we also do it across digital products.  ROB: Got it. It rings of museums or themed places, but I can also imagine a building that wants to have something and not just be a hollow shell. What does a typical space look like for you? JOSH: We do a lot of work in the museum space, like the traditional museum space. All the big museums are generally our clients. We've worked with a lot of them. Everything from like science centers to history museums to art museums. We did a Van Gogh projected experience with the Art Institute of Chicago way before they were doing all these projections. ROB: All the immersive experiences. JOSH: Yeah, we've been doing that for a long time. But then recently we've been moving more into brand work. We've been doing some work with Nike, which has been really exciting. We've done work with Google. trying to take a lot of that museum flair, which is an obsession with content and making sure that what we're saying is true, and trying to figure out what's interesting about a brand and giving it that treatment where you're elevating the personalities, elevating the science. You're making something that's smart but also engaging. ROB: Where are they doing those things? JOSH: These are executive briefing centers, sometimes. These are museums or brands. Some of these are online. And then we started doing a little bit of work for real estate companies, just trying to – it's not for me. [laughs] Just to activate some of their public spaces as well. Again, trying to bring in content experience that's not just decorative, but actually tells a story that feels true to the space. ROB: When I think about this space, I start off thinking about the sleepy old kiosk that became a touchscreen and the keyboard is broken. Did it start there and proceed from there? JOSH: Yeah, I would say when we started out – Blue Cadet was my freelance handle. I was at the Smithsonian; I did a pretty cool project there that got a lot of attention. The Smithsonian being what it is, they only had big projects every few years. I was getting kind of bored, so I left and I started going around museum to museum. I was essentially picking up jobs doing Flash design and development. When we first started out, it was a lot of those single touchscreens and those things that were kind of cheap. No one was going to lose their job if we really screwed up. But we overdelivered. We did really great stuff, and we grew on the backs of those reputations and then started doing touch tables and touch walls and projection mapping. These days, we still do a lot of large touch surfaces and things like that, but a lot more thinking about the technologies that are more interesting or relevant. Now we're doing a lot more with AR, things that are haptics, camera vision. Also just trying to figure out how to make an environment more engaging and magical. ROB: Some of the advantage, even, of the march of technology is that probably some of those early Flash things you were doing were still rather expensive and still took a big commitment. I think some of this has allowed the technology to come down into simpler spaces. My team's done really simple electron-based kiosks with a little bit of sound, a little bit of animation, and it makes it more available to more places. JOSH: Yeah. It's interesting because Flash was an amazing tool. Flash really allowed you to do a lot of very, very cool things. When Steve Jobs killed Flash, essentially – which he pretty much singlehandedly did – there was actually a little bit of a lull in experience design where the tools had to catch up. But now you see things like Real Engine, Unity – but even what you can do with JavaScript. You can do everything that you used to be able to do in Flash now to the nth degree. And it's much better. Flash probably should've died. ROB: How often does as client come to you with an idea of what they want? How often do they come to you with a topic – “Here's this topic, here's what we want to show people; surprise us”? Or is it more “We have an idea and a direction”? Do you know how much space you're dealing with? It seems like there's a lot of variables in there. JOSH: A lot of times if we're dealing with a museum client, they might have a big exhibit or something like that. Or even a brand, they have their stories, they know what they want to convey, they have the space. But then they come to us and they're like, “How do we tell the story? How do we do this?” A lot of times even if they come in with very, very fully baked ideas, we'll roll it way back into strategy and be like, let's create a little bit of space to figure out what you can do with contemporary technology, with contemporary tools. What can you do to make sure that content or experience really shines in a way that's not been done in the same way with different content six months before? ROB: It sounds like it's really a consultative opportunity, right? To show them – maybe they start somewhere, but sometimes they don't know what they don't know, in a very good way. You have a broader span of the industry. That's why they come to you. You bring some extra ideas to the plate. JOSH: Yeah. And usually what we do – we've been doing these things called ideation spreads. Sometimes someone will come to us with a pretty big budget and we'll be like “Hey, instead of having to sign the SOW for this real big thing, give us 10% of it and give us three weeks, and let us do a bunch of sprints where we reconceptualize it and see if we land in a better place.”  Sometimes it's better, particularly if you get a brief that you're like, “This is not going to end well. This is not something we want to be working on for the next six months.” It's better to carve off a little space to redirect it than to get into that death march of implementing something that's just not going to be that great. ROB: Right. Do you ever engage in that competitive sales process where you're competing over the big pie and you take the little pie? Does that happen? JOSH: Absolutely. I would say particularly as we were earning our market position and earning our reputation, we weren't always the safe choice. We were always known for doing the creative thing and for doing something cool and new, but there were a lot of people who had done it a million times. And it was riskier for them to work with us. So that was a great way. We'd come in and do these ideation spreads and say, “Look, you don't have to trust us with this giant thing. Bring us in here and let's see if we can set the vision. You're not even obligated to work with us after that.” ROB: Right, “You own the work, go ahead and take it.” I think every creative firm benefits when they find ways essentially to get paid for discovery instead of trying to do all this guesswork upfront. But there's always the tension between “How much are we spending on this?” versus “How likely are we to get the work?” Nobody wants to be in that tension. So, the 10% strategy there makes a lot of sense. JOSH: Also, I'd much rather do that than do spec on RFPs. You don't know anything about the client and really what they want. You don't really know what the problem set is. So if you're doing spec on an RFP, you're really just shooting in the dark. Whereas if you carve out a little bit of space where you can actually collaborate with a client, you usually come up with better creative; you're actually solving the problem. But then also, you get to build that relationship and the rapport, and that's usually what carries you forward. Or you sit there and you're like, “Okay, there's not great relationship or rapport here.” ROB: You can dodge a bullet. JOSH: Yeah, you can be like, “Okay, you really did want that thing. God love ya, go on with it.” ROB: We talked a little bit about the origin story, about you going around to museums. When did you realize it was a thing and you said, “You know what, this is my job now”? What was the inflection point? JOSH: For a while, Blue Cadet was just my freelance handle. I was living in D.C. because I was still at the Smithsonian and I was picking up odd jobs. It was fun. I enjoyed it. The projects I'd get weren't huge budgets, but I was actually making way more money than I was at the Smithsonian. But I finally got a project – a couple friends and I got this grant to do an interactive documentary, like a Flash-based documentary on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This was something where we came up with the idea, we went to a foundation, and we were like “Hey, can you pay us some money to put this thing together?” The timeline was such, the budget was such that I kind of had to hire a team. We had videographers, we had professional sound people. We were basically following this high school class – it was the only high school class to reopen after Hurricane Katrina. We were down there basically weeks after the hurricane. It was decimated. But when I was on that project – it was called Yearbook 2006 – I was like, oh man, if I bring in other people, it works way better. I was still doing the stuff that was too expensive to outsource, but I outsourced some other things and it ended up being really successful. It became really popular. I was like, okay, I want to start a studio. So that was the first point where I wanted to do a studio. Then that same team, we got another project the year after that for the Pulitzer Center and we ended up winning a News and Documentary Emmy, which was a pretty big deal at the time. We beat Wolf Blitzer or something. That put us on the map, and that snowballed to where we started getting a lot of work, and I was able to start building the team from there. ROB: It seems like something in that documentary space – of all the things you can fractionalize and take some people, do a project, get done with it, it seems like something in that video space, people are kind of used to it. That's the drill; that's what you do. You film something, then you move on to the next thing. JOSH: Yeah. Basically what happened was I was living in D.C. but I was from Philadelphia; I was turning 30. I was like, okay, I'm getting to an age where maybe I'm ready to settle down a little bit. I didn't really want to settle down in D.C. So I moved up to Philly and I made my first hire. It was someone straight out of college. She actually still works for me, 15 years later. ROB: Wow. JOSH: But that was the thing. We were hiring junior people and training them up, and then we grew very linearly, 20% year over year. There were weird inflection points along the way, but yeah, that's how we got to where we are now. ROB: What's a weird inflection point? JOSH: As you're growing a studio, there are always these different points where the wheels get real shaky and the systems that were working fine in this phase don't really work as well in the next phase. There's a point where you have to get really professional about bill pay, about HR, benefits. You just have to start layering in a lot of systems at various points. And those are the points where you start getting more professional and you start having to have an org chart. You can't just have a bunch of super creative people scrambling around all over the place. ROB: How have you digested that change? Is it something that comes well to you? Is there somebody, or many people, maybe a role that's been integral to making the jumps? JOSH: Yeah, my partner Troy. We both worked as new media specialists at the Smithsonian. He was like my sixth hire or something like that at Blue Cadet. He was living in Denver quite happily, and I sort of dragged him across country to move to Philadelphia and start things. But I love Troy. I'm one of these people who can talk a really good game and I can set a vision or get really excited about the idea and what this thing can be. Troy's the kind of guy who can sit down and actually make it happen. He can actually do it. So, he's invaluable. Over the years, we've been very selective. I spend a lot of time recruiting the people that I want into the team. Very few people necessarily applied to Blue Cadet, particularly at the leadership level. I always sought out people that I thought would really fit into the studio and scale out our capabilities. ROB: That's a great opportunity, because those strategic roles are also the ones where you could actually justify bringing a recruiter to, which you can't always do in the services world. But to find those people and recruit them in . . . . JOSH: I never used a recruiter. Where you find the best people is just like here at SXSW, you're meeting people. Or you meet clients. One of the people I recruited to Blue Cadet, who actually left to take over digital at the Obama Library, was client side, and she left midway through the project and everyone was like, “Oh my God, this place is going to fall apart without her. She is so instrumental to the studio.” This was a studio I was working with, and I was like, “That sucks; the project's going to go sideways.” But then I was like, “I'm going to poach her at some point. I'm going to get her on my team.” And she was fantastic. So, I'm always looking for people that I'm like, “Wow, that person's way smarter than me or better that me at these things.” ROB: That's excellent, especially when you know the capabilities you don't quite need yet, or you don't need another person in that capability yet, and you can keep your head on the swivel, keep the mental library going of who's next. It's a fun journey to have that wish list and then fulfill on it. JOSH: Yeah. ROB: So, you're here and you have a session coming up. It is “Trends and Challenges for Experiential Culture.” What are you looking for people to get out of that? JOSH: Obviously, I've been speaking about experience design for a very, very long time. I was talking about how things were getting completely disrupted with physical space pre-pandemic. I was talking about Meow Wolf and Museum of Ice Cream and the changing face of retail and also some of the things that were happening with museums, and this was like 2018-2019. I was like, man, stuff's really going to change. I saw the trends, I saw this stuff happening. And then obviously the pandemic has accelerated everything. Who knows where the chips are going to fall, but one of the things we're seeing is a lot of people wanting to get back into physical space. Places like SXSW are now filling up again. People want to be around each other. But what are the spaces that bring out the best in us? How could those spaces operate to create better connections between people? That's the sort of thing we're really interested in. And then also, how do you discard the old stuff that doesn't work anymore? Honestly, I love museums but I also kind of hate them. Also, I know for my kids, they're not dying to go to the old-fashioned museum and read a bunch of wall labels. They're really interested in culture because they're my children, our children, but they want to consume it differently. And I want to make sure that they're consuming culture in a way that feels good to them, that's enjoyable and interesting to them. ROB: What do you think they're going to want? Where is it headed? JOSH: It's so funny; my kids like Roblox, they like all those things. I've taken them to a million museums. I've taken my son to Epcot and Disney and all the different – sometimes the things they like are the cheesy, colorful, fun Museum of Ice Cream rip-offs. But also, they would eat candy all day if I let them do that, too. So, it's figuring out, okay, what are the things that have a personality, that are fun, that are interesting, that are enjoyable, but also are not just mind-numbing or consumptive? ROB: Right. Even some of the newish stuff – I'm sure you'll see a lot of it around here at SXSW; there's different activations. There's some integration of different assets, even into the little doodles activation over here that's NFTs plus an actual physical space. How do you think about the difference between using a technology for the sake of the technology and using it because it's actually right for the environment? JOSH: I actually really like the doodles space. I thought they did a really nice job. I think part of it is a lot of times I talk to these museums and I'm like, “You should be looking more to that marketing. You should be taking a lot more inspiration from them,” because they move really fast, they put these things together really quick, they're not super, super precious, they don't expect it to be up in 5 years, let alone 10 years, let alone 2 weeks, and they're able to take more risks. Because it's sort of a one-and-done, they don't have to make sure that it feels the same 10 years from now. Obviously, that marketing is a very different business model than a museum, but I think there are things that can be borrowed. And personally, I think even that doodles exhibit – there were a lot of nods to themed entertainment. There was a lot of stenography, there was a lot of sculptural pieces. There were some really nice light applications of technology. I thought it was really successful. I would like to see museums looking more like that. ROB: Got it. I think there's times when we've probably all seen AR for AR's sake, VR for VR's sake. How do you filter “This is a good place for VR, this is not”? Or “It could be done this way but not that one”? JOSH: I used to take a much harder line on this in the past. Honestly, some of these things, you look at some of these AR experiences and you're like, what's the point? It's not doing anything except demonstrating the technology. It's like, okay, if you've never seen AR, awesome. That's really awesome. But if you have seen AR, you don't care. Same with some of these projection experiences. It's like, if you're never been in a giant room filled with Christie projectors, it's really exciting to be at the Van Gogh and see all this stuff. But then you go back and it's the same thing, but with Klimt or Picasso or Monet; it's like, “I've seen it.” So, I think part of it is I'm actually okay with technology for technology's sake where it serves a spectacle, where you've never seen it before. It makes people excited and engaged. I think where it gets old is where it's already been done before. You're not even doing that. You're just being lazy. The thing I always look at, too, is either you've got to really, really be serving that content in a way that's compelling and really getting people into it – and sometimes that is spectacle. Spectacle gets people excited. It gets them interested. But if you fail at the spectacle and then you don't provide the content, it's just a wasted experience. ROB: It seems like you're very adjacent to not only event marketing, but also perhaps even to entertainment, theme park, that kind of thing. How do you decide where you go and where you don't go in those markets, and where you compete and where you choose to stay in your lane? JOSH: It's funny; I used to be very selective about the types of clients I would take on. I was like, “I'm not working with brands. I'm working with museums and nonprofits and higher ed. That's my tribe.” The thing I realized is sometimes your tribe is not aligned to a sector. It's really just a way of being. There are people at Nike that have way, way more in common with me and how I see technology, how I see content, how I see culture than people at some of these museums. Some of the people in these museums are very, very retrograde, and they're like, “No, we need a clean white room with a painting and 7,000 words of text. Bring your seven-year-old in here and they're going to read my dissertation.” I have less in common with them than somebody who's at a brand, whether it's a technology brand or materials brand or someone selling shoes, that wants to tell this story in an interesting way or find something interesting to elevate out of it. ROB: The brands change, too. That's part of it. Once you're in the game for a while, the brands change. The legend of what Nike is has shifted several times at different inflection points. Shoe Dogs, one moment in time. I interned once upon a time at Chick-fil-A's headquarters. Chick-fil-A's museum was a little room with a trophy case and a fake vault, and they've expanded what that experience is. So, I think the brands change too, and who they are and what they need might be different from the thing you used to react to. JOSH: Yeah, 100%. Often it's just who's there and who's championing the brand, who wants to tell that story, and how they want to tell it. The thing is, there's so many projects at Nike that Blue Cadet should have no part in, but the projects we are working with them are very Blue Cadet-like projects. There's a lot of interesting content, stories. We did one for the LeBron James Innovation Center. It's all about how they use data to inform how they work with athletes, and that's really cool. That's really exciting and something that my team is very, very well-positioned to execute on. ROB: Your session also ties into trends a lot. What's next? What's something you think you're going to end up doing soon at Blue Cadet that you haven't done before? JOSH: I've actually been spending a lot of time looking at Web3 and NFTs and things like that. I think beyond the hype, there's something really interesting stuff there. I think there's something very interesting about digital ownership. I think there's something very interesting about bringing things from the physical world in the digital world, bringing things from the digital world into the physical world. I think NFTs help with that. I think there's some really exciting things happening there. Personally, I think it's a really exciting time to be in experience design because frankly, COVID screwed everything up. Everyone's rethinking things. Like, “Do I shake someone's hand? Do I give them a hug? Do I wear a mask here, do I not wear a mask here?” All the social norms, the way we behaved in physical spaces, have changed. So, now's a really interesting time to direct some innovation and say, okay, now that we're rethinking this, let's put some design thinking to it and figure out how to make these spaces better. ROB: Right. Some people shut everything down for two years, some people built nothing for two years, some people rebuilt everything during those two years. Some stuff was pulled forward, some stuff is waiting in the wings. It's very lumpy. JOSH: Yeah, absolutely. I think what'll be really interesting is we don't really know. We've all been in this one state and now we're entering into another, hopefully, and we're not quite sure how the chips will fall. We don't know what the new behaviors are going to be. It'd be really interesting to see, as you revisit the conference that you went to for 10 years or the restaurant you used to go to every week, as you start going back into those things, does it feel the same? Does it still work the same way? Does it still affect you the same way? I don't know. Does it feel great to go back to a movie theater? Maybe, maybe not. ROB: I haven't tried yet. JOSH: Honestly, I was one of those people like “Ah screw it, I don't need it.” Then I took my kids to see the new Spider-Man and I was like, wait a second. This is actually really nice. It was actually quite enjoyable. ROB: It was probably fairly uncrowded too, which helps. [laughs] JOSH: It was pretty uncrowded, yeah. [laughs] ROB: For me, same thing. We have kids, so me not going to the movies is more about me having kids and not going to the movies as much as I did when we were just a couple with time on our hands and it's like “It's Tuesday, what do we do? Let's go see a movie and get home at 11:00. Fine.” Different seasons. JOSH: Yeah. ROB: Are there any sort of behaviors that were adopted experientially during COVID that you think are going to stick? There's interesting things – I think about some escape rooms did versions of escape rooms where they would do it for you over Zoom. And they're still doing it I guess, but I don't know. Are there weird things that people did that you think might stick around? JOSH: I mean, I think remote work is not going anywhere. ROB: You're betting on it. JOSH: Yeah, I'm living in California and my studio is entirely on the East Coast. We started hiring people out of market, which we never did before. We have people who moved into the Hudson River Valley or out in the Poconos, moving away from the city, away from our offices. And it hasn't been affecting the work. So, I think that's going to be really interesting. I think also how we're thinking about the studios themselves – we have this beautiful, beautiful office in Philadelphia and New York with lots of desks, but we're like, do we all need these desks if we're not going to be there every day? Can we optimize this for prototyping spaces? We build a lot of things in physical space, lots of hardware in the office. We need that. That's part of our process. But it's like, do we need all these desks? ROB: Do you find you're still pulling people together to actually get hands on with the experience? You can do a lot of the design in your own place, but there's a point where it still has to get physical and maybe that's a good time to convene the team anyhow to build rapport? JOSH: Yeah, absolutely. And honestly, I love it. It's great to bring people together in physical space. But when there's a reason. Let's bring them in physical space to prototype, but we don't have to bring them into shared space just for another meeting. That's not worth it. [laughs] That stuff can go to Zoom. ROB: Josh, all very interesting stuff. When people want to connect with you and with Blue Cadet, where should they go to find you? JOSH: I'm probably most active on LinkedIn. Just look me up on LinkedIn. I actually spend a lot of time sharing a lot of prototypes. ROB: I was going to say, you probably share some cool stuff. JOSH: I share some really cool stuff. I at one point realized that the Blue Cadet internal Slack where we're just sharing prototypes and process stuff was way more interesting than anything I was sharing on social media, so I was like, I'm just going to share that stuff. The Blue Cadet Slack is way more interesting than any social feed I follow. So, I share the stuff I'm allowed to share off that. ROB: That turns out to be great marketing on LinkedIn, too. Some stuff people won't connect with, some stuff probably goes to the moon, and then people are like, “Who did that?” “Blue Cadet did that.” “Hey, I need that.” I don't know if it's scalable, but it also doesn't have to. I don't know how many days a week you're LinkedIn posting, but it's one or two or three days a week. JOSH: Yeah. The LinkedIn posts I'm putting up are early prototypes. They're super messy. It's a lot of cardboard and projection and things taped together. But usually then there's some really interesting technology in there, and I feel like it's an easier way to see how this actually gets made. ROB: Excellent. Josh, thank you so much for meeting up, for coming on the podcast. JOSH: Absolutely. ROB: Wish you the best on your talk in a couple of days as well. JOSH: Hope you make it out there. It'd be great. ROB: Thanks so much. JOSH: Thanks for having me. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Sales Transformation brings you another exciting episode as Collin Mitchell will talk about targets with none other than the RevOps Hitman himself, Rob Turley. Rob is the President and Co-Founder of White Rabbit Intel, a company that advocates “predictable prospecting”. Rob and his team created the first-ever SMARTech which helps their clients analyze their prospects if they are a fit even before meeting them. Join Our Free Podcast Community HERE!Want to solve a leaky sales funnel? Get Signup for your Free RevenueGrid trial HERE! Want Your Reps Hitting Quota in 2022? Get Your Wingman Free Trial HERE!HIGHLIGHTSRob's professional journeyHow data and buying decisions tie togetherThe plague of high-volume outreachShifting of buying personasData needed to get startedQUOTESRob: “The issue is that a lot of people look at selling as a speculative process, there's no reason for it to be as speculative as it is. It's an assumption, it's an educated guess.”Rob: “You have to get as targeted as possible, we have an issue in the market, a disease going around, It's a plague. It's called high-volume outreach.”Rob: “Instead of contacting 1000 people, why not just have a technology that can find the needles in the haystack, analyze who you've done business with, who you failed to do business with, build a predictive model around that.”Rob: “Over time, businesses change the market changes, your persona shifts, your product might shift to the persona shifts with it, everything's moving, it's a moving target at all times in business.”Rob: “You need to be influential and like myself brutally honest, people either love you, or they hate you.”Learn more about Rob in the link below: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/the-revops-hitmanWebsite:whiterabbitintel.com  (Company Website)podcasts.whiterabbitintel.com  (RSS Feed)platform.whiterabbitintel.com  (SMARTech™ Platform)Connect With Collin on LinkedIn Want to Start, Grow or Monetize Your Podcast? Book a Free Strategy Call HERE! 

Jennifer Brown of Jennifer Brown Consulting based out of New York, NY Jennifer Brown founded her namesake Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion consulting agency 20 years ago. The agency develops top-down DEI strategies and training programs for medium-size to large companies; sets up effective, well-aligned affinity groups within those companies; and promotes inclusive leadership through educational initiatives. Jennifer is a frequent keynote speaker, both virtually and live. She presented Beyond Diversity: Building A More Inclusive World at the 2022 South by Southwest Conference and followed that with a book signing of her third book, Beyond Diversity: 12 Non-Obvious Ways to Build a More Inclusive World, which she co-authored with Rohit Bhargava. Jennifer is the bestselling author of Inclusion: Diversity, The New Workplace & The Will to Change (2017) and How to Be an Inclusive Leader: Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive (2019). The second edition of the 2019 book will be released in October 2022. Jennifer says there was “a huge wake-up call in spring/summer of 2020” after the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent and still-ongoing social movement for cultural change. Jennifer feels that today's workplace is “not built by and for so many of us if we . . . don't fit a certain demographic.” Jennifer explains the importance of this “sea change”: “If people feel welcomed, valued, respected, and heard, and a deep sense of belonging and being treated equitably . . . they do better work . . . and they stay longer.” Jennifer says she is a “member of the LGBTQ+ community” who has “been out for nearly 25 years.” She believes half of her cohorts “are still closeted in the workplace,” but that, finally, people are no longer talking about “why” inclusion is important, but “how” to make it happen. She believes companies will be challenged in setting up equitable workplaces as they rebuild “post-Covid,” particularly with managing blended teams of hybrid (virtual and in-person) employees.  Jennifer warns that managers need to be vigilant in supportinging inclusivity. “Harassment has gone up in the virtual workplace,” she says. Why? “There are no witnesses,” she explains. People are “cut off from information” and don't know their options on how to escalate a complaint and whether they can trust their employer to handle the issue. Jennifer Brown Consulting facilitates the establishment of corporate affinity groups, which are often comprised of people who tend to be “overlooked in the talent pipeline because of bias” in hiring practice, promotion, advancement, and talent reviews.” Even smaller and medium-sized companies are adopting affinity groups to serve as workplace “sources of intelligence about cultural experience,” tap into what is working and what is not, and provide support and “community” to employees who may have, in the past, felt “marginalized.” Jennifer can be reached on Instagram, @JenniferBrownSpeaks; on Twitter, @JenniferBrown, on LinkedIn, and on her agency website at: jenniferbrownconsulting.com, where those interested in DEI information can find the agency's DEI foundations program. ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk. I am joined live at South by Southwest by Jennifer Brown of Jennifer Brown Consulting based out of New York, New York. Welcome to the podcast, Jennifer. JENNIFER: Thank you, Rob. ROB: So good to have you on here. Why don't you start out by telling us about the firm, about Jennifer Brown Consulting? What is your calling card? JENNIFER: The firm I founded 20 years ago. It's a DEI strategy and training company. We work with companies, medium-size and large typically, to help them build their diversity, equity, & inclusion strategy from the top down and help also set up what's called affinity groups and make sure they're effective and well-aligned. We also do a lot of education around inclusive leadership. I have an amazing group of consultants who are, at any given time, working on client projects. And then I do a lot of keynoting – virtual, but now increasingly in person, I'm glad to say . . . as we come out of this into a new variant, I just read yesterday. [laughs] ROB: Last night, yes. JENNIFER: But anyway, I also love writing books. I just co-authored my third book with Rohit Bhargava, Beyond Diversity, and then I have a second edition of How to Be an Inclusive Leader, which was my book from 2019. I have a second edition of that coming out in October of 2022, which I'm really excited about. ROB: Congratulations on the book. Rohit was a guest three years ago, the last time we were recording live at SXSW, and then we all skipped a couple of years because of that COVID thing we were just talking about. As you're engaging with these firms – you mentioned medium and larger firms – at what point are they coming to you these days? What do they know? What are they doing right? What are the blind spots? JENNIFER: There was a huge wake-up call in spring/summer of 2020 on multiple levels. I think the big one for us, obviously, was George Floyd murder and the social movement that occurred and is still occurring. A massive shift in attention and prioritization of the fact that the workplace as it is currently is not built by and for so many of us, if we basically don't fit a certain demographic. Finally – we've been talking about this for many, many years – finally there was attention and resources available. For the last couple of years, our firm has doubled in size and number of companies, and we've been incredibly busy. We were ready for this. This is the conversation we've been having for many years. I'm a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and I've been out for nearly 25 years – I'm dating myself. ROB: Early. JENNIFER: Early, early, when we were still arguing for domestic partner benefits with big companies. Those were the early days of my own activism. Then we grew Jennifer Brown Consulting to be a full-service DEI firm. So, they come to us now and say, “Okay, Jennifer, we get it. We know that it's important. But we don't know how to tackle this, and we don't know how to equip our leaders with the skills and also to awaken their motivation to care about this.” But really, Rob, I'm so excited that it's not a “why” conversation; it's a “how” conversation now. We all are a little bit worried that the urgency is flagging as the world continues to be so chaotic and business priorities shift around, so we're trying to really make sure the burning platform of this remains on fire in people's minds. We know it's on fire, but it's easy to move on and say, “We got this. We're doing enough.” But I can tell you no company is doing enough. ROB: Right. You have two lanes. A lot of companies are going to install somebody with a title in DEI at some level, and then there's actually integrating it into the cadence of the firm. How do you make sure it sticks? How do you keep it from regressing to “business as usual” plus somebody with a title? JENNIFER: I think the way we speak about why this is urgent really matters, and how it can drive business. It drives innovation. Literally, if people feel welcomed, valued, respected, and heard, and a deep sense of belonging and being treated equitably – which means those day-to-day support mechanisms, resources, pay equity, all that good stuff – they do better work. And they stay longer. We're in the midst of a talent crisis. Literally, it is the Great Resignation, and I can tell you from my point of view, it has a lot of reasons, but one of the big reasons is toxic workplaces – workplaces that feel like “I go through my day and I don't see anyone that looks like me. I don't feel trusted or trusting of others. I have one foot out the door for something better.” So, culture can be a differentiator, and belonging can and should be a differentiator to keep great talent. But I can tell you, the workplace needs to be overhauled to be a welcoming place for so many of us. I mean, just LGBT people, half of us are still closeted in the workplace. That is a statistic from 2019. And even in the virtual world, I wonder how it's changed; I don't know. But we are not bringing our full selves to work. And that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of all the identities that aren't bringing their full selves. ROB: For sure. There's part of me that says, what company wouldn't be welcoming in some way? But that's the tip of the spear of the question, I am sure. You mentioned even the structure of the workplace. As we're resetting and coming back and a lot of companies have been virtual, what opportunities to set up an equitable workplace can companies do as they're rebuilding what it means to be in an office from scratch, what their work expectations are from scratch? What are the opportunity points? What can they do today that would've been hard for them to do two, three years ago, and now it's like “No, don't do this again when you come back”? JENNIFER: Well, let's see. So many things. We went to an open office plan for a while. That was the thing. But now data has shown that actually, that's really hard for people to be productive in. Also, the physical office was not a comfortable place. So, virtualizing ourselves actually opened up a sense of safety for a lot of people who found the physical workplace unsafe. I think we have to carry that with us and remember that that is a critical thing to leverage. But then new diversity dimensions are opening up, like who's on site? Who's able to get face time? Who's able to get on somebody's calendar or bump into somebody? There's the haves and have-nots that's opened up. In some companies, the virtual employees are the haves, actually, that are getting the flexible arrangement, and then the people who have to come into the office – but you can actually see it in the reverse, who has access to leadership. If leadership's in the office, that could benefit you. It really depends on the company. I tell managers, we have to up our inclusivity vigilance. When we are managing blended teams, hybrid and in-person, we've got to ensure inclusion constantly and be checking in with people who are virtual because we may not know they are on the bubble in terms of their own engagement and loyalty. And what we don't know can really hurt us, and often when it comes to diversity dimensions, what you don't know can make the difference between keeping that person and having them leave and being surprised. So virtually, we just have to be checking in, asking how people are. The most powerful question is something like “Do you feel included and valued in the way that we're working right now? Is this working for you? Do you feel you can thrive? Do you feel there are barriers? What can I do as your colleague, as your leader, as your manager, to address any barriers that you're experiencing so that you can do your best work? I think asking that often will build the trust and tell us what we need to know so we can architect a better situation for people. ROB: This is the second conversation I've had this week where what you're describing sounds like being a good manager. JENNIFER: Doesn't it? Strange, that. [laughs] ROB: It doesn't sound like anything to do in some ways with particular topics of diversity, equity, inclusion, while at the same time I think what's underpinning there is there's an assumption of commonality that allows people to get by without managing well. Is that fair to say? JENNIFER: Yes, fair to say. Intersectionality speaks to all the different diversity dimensions that live in a human being. And there's multiple things going on. I'm a parent. I identify as queer. I'm caregiving. I'm wrestling with mental health challenges. I'm Latinx. All of those things have an impact on our belonging. In most organizations, there's some angst and some difficulty there because, like I said earlier, workplaces are biased. Period. Any one of those things or a combination of those things may be going on for someone. They may be hearing microaggressions. They may be being harassed virtually. Unfortunately, I hate to say this – harassment has gone up in the virtual workplace. ROB: Wow. JENNIFER: There are no witnesses. Think about this. There's a lack of understanding of how to escalate a complaint and whether you trust your company enough to handle the complaint. When we virtualize employees, they're cut off from information, often, that may have been available and they would've known what sort of avenues exist. I found this harassment data really disturbing, honestly. Anyway, there's a lot of risks. Like I said, as a manager and a leader, to have somebody's identities in mind and be able to anticipate, “What's going on for this person? How can I get them to trust me enough to share with me so that I can help?” – and even if that means suggesting that somebody go to HR, suggesting that somebody seek out the EAP for mental health support. I mean, just connecting the dots is so much of our job these days, and it's been made more difficult when we're out of the loop with each other. That's a dangerous place to be. ROB: Absolutely. You mentioned affinity groups as a key component. What does that look like, building from scratch? How do you get from zero to something there? JENNIFER: It's funny; back in the day, only large companies had affinity groups, and they're like the LGBT Network, the Women's Network, the Black Network, the Asian-American Network, Disabilities, Veterans. In big companies, there's a lot. But since two years ago and everything crescendoing, even the smaller and medium-size companies now have affinity groups, and they understand that these groups are literally sources of intelligence about cultural experience in our workplace – what's going well, what's going wrong, what needs to be supported, resourced, which talent exists. Sometimes people in affinity groups are the ones that are overlooked in the talent pipeline because of bias in our hiring, promotion, advancement, talent reviews. So, affinity groups are really important mechanisms to enable people to find community, especially virtually, to share what's going on and not feel so alone, to strategize about how to be heard in a workplace that is maybe not conscious of its own bias, and then also provide that identity intelligence to the employer to say, “Hey, this community is feeling this now.” For example, Stop Asian Hate wasn't just in 2020. It's actually been increasing and getting worse over this last year and the year before. And yet employers aren't prioritizing it. If it weren't for the affinity groups that are keeping it top of mind and saying, “Hey, this is a problem” – our employees are bringing this into the workplace every day and walking around with this, if they're commuting or in their communities or in their families. People are afraid, and they expect their employer to address it and to know that it's happening and to say, “What can we, the employer, do to support you, to raise awareness, and to make a statement?” Honestly, employers also, by the way, need to be making statements about a variety of social issues right now. Otherwise, silence – look what happened to Disney not saying anything about the Don't Say Gay activities in Florida. Their employees have been so upset and writing letters to the CEO and agitating, and finally the CEO wrote a memo and it just broke yesterday on Twitter. But it took a long time, and it shouldn't take a long time. Companies should have their employees' backs. Period. ROB: And then it's even harder when you do actually say something – the rubric against which it is measured at that point is so much harder. JENNIFER: Oh yeah. There's a lot of issues, granted. But this is the world we live in. Certainly, I hear from leaders, “Jennifer, where does it stop?” I'm like, “This is your new normal. It doesn't stop. But by the way, this is an opportunity to connect with your employees on a deep” – when I feel seen and heard and valued, this is what it means. If my CEO is silent on a harmful bill to me and my community, I am out the door. I can't describe – it's like a visceral thing. Like “I can't work here anymore. This company doesn't see me, doesn't care about what's happening to people that identify like I do.” Employees are finding their voice in a way that I have been waiting for for a really long time. So really, the problem is leadership is really behind. They don't have the competency. They're not able to pivot quickly. They're like, “I can't walk and chew gum at the same time.” I'm like, no, this needs to be your new leadership skill. You have to be able to know, to be scanning your environment all the time and saying “What do I need to make sure our employees know that we're not okay with?” That needs to be the first thing you wake up thinking about every day. ROB: This sounds like it ties into some of the dimensions of the book, so let's go over that direction for a moment. Talk about the book, how it came to be – the book is Beyond Diversity with you and Rohid. How did this happen, and what should we know about it? You had a session here talking about the book. What should people know? JENNIFER: Yeah, we did. It was so great. It came out of a five-day Beyond Diversity Summit, literally, with 200 speakers. Rohid approached me. I was one of those folks part of organizing it, and he's like, “This needs to be a book.” I was like, “Oh no, 200 speakers, hours and hours of footage. How do we boil this down into a book? It's terrifying. My team will never forgive me.” However, we said yes, let's do it. We organized all of this footage into 12 themes, and those are the chapters. They're not identity themes. We could've gone that way. We could've done “This is the chapter on LGBTQ+. This is the chapter on Asian-Americans and AAPI folks.” Instead, we did education, media, workplace, storytelling, government, family. It was so cool to take all of that wisdom from a wide array of diverse storytellers in every way and figure out, where do we tell this story, that story, that story? I loved the challenge of that. I think also, “beyond diversity” to me perhaps means, yes, identity diversity, but let's look at how this plays out in these domains of life that really touch our lives every single day. We can all relate to education. We can all relate to what's happening in media. I hope the book reaches people who have dismissed this topic maybe in the past, but they pick it up and they're like, “Oh, this book makes sense to me. This is relevant to my life holistically.” And it's such a positive book. It's not a “shame and blame” book. It is full of celebrations of where innovation is occurring and how exciting it is and how it's going to better our world. I think it's a really different kind of book, and I hope it finds all kinds of audiences. I think it should be in curriculum in schools. Professors should be assigning it. My parents, in their eighties, tell me it's the best book I've ever written. They love it. They're reading it and they're able to understand it. ROB: It is very, very approachable in the structure. It's just made so that you can come in, engage with it at whatever depth you want to – not that you want to treat it like a dictionary and shop by topic, or an encyclopedia, but there is that ability. There's skimmability. There's summary. But that facilitates approaching it easily, but also the education context. You open it up, and it's credible – this book was made by people who were making a business book, not just like “my opinion and here you go.” It wasn't a memoir. JENNIFER: Yes, exactly. We actually really intentionally decentered ourselves. Even though we were writing the book, we gathered this big writing team also. So all of their hands are on the writing. And then we hired also inclusivity readers, otherwise known as sensitivity readers, because Rohit and I and the other writers knew we would still not perceive the correct language, for example. They went through the book and gave us tons of feedback. It was just a wonderful learning experience. But the book literally is all about different storytellers – unusual, unexpected, nonobvious storytellers. I hear myself talk all day, but I want their voice to be out there, and I think we were both in service of that. ROB: It is excellent. You get in deep, and then there's the contributor list – obviously voluminous, for sure. JENNIFER: Yes. ROB: Jennifer, let's rewind a little bit. Let's talk about where Jennifer Brown Consulting came from. What made you decide that you should not have a job with somebody else and you should build something, and who knows where it goes? Especially with the past couple of years with that growth now. But where did it start? JENNIFER: It started because being in the LGBTQ+ community in my early days, really way back, I was an opera singer. ROB: Wow. JENNIFER: I came to New York to make it, and then my voice kept getting injured and I had to get vocal surgery several times to repair it, but it would never – I realized my instrument just wouldn't ever do what it needed to do, and I would have to reinvent. I found my way to – I like to think of it now as a different stage, literally. I'm a keynoter now. I'm able to use my love of the stage – which I've been on stage since I was five; I grew up in a really musical family, and we are like the Von Trapp Family Singers. [laughs] ROB: Yeah, it came to my mind as soon as you said it. [laughs] JENNIFER: I was that kid. So I seek the stage. I love it. I crave it. I enjoy it. I'm comfortable on it. I think it's the best medium for me. Anyway, though, as a closeted person who was trying to find my voice, I found in those early days all of these amazing companies in New York – IBM, Deloitte, Proctor and Gamble – I didn't even know this world existed, but it was the world of corporations that were leading-edge in terms of LGBTQ equality. They were all starting to vie for us as talent and then also trying to vie for us as customers. I had a front seat years ago on those early battles for domestic partner benefits, for adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the non-discrimination policies and the language of the company. Their statements used to not include that. I hope people are hearing this and being like, “Wow, I've always taken that for granted, and I didn't know there was a time that wasn't there.” But I can tell you, there was a time. And those were really exciting days. I feel like I cut my teeth on – the way that LGBTQ employees shifted companies was super powerful for me to see and be a part of because I think it clicked that I could be a voice for change, and that change would actually happen in this massive entity with just my voice, or just the voice of a community. We were very strategic in the way we approached it. We argued the case around talent retention and recruitment. We argued the business case for customers. It trained me to think about how large institutions change and why they change, and because of what, and how to be an irritant in the system but to be strategic and grounded in their “care abouts” where it's a win-win. That is something I've carried with me as we built Jennifer Brown Consulting, and I would subsequently leave corporate America. I was an employee, like you say, and I was like, “This is not creative enough for me. I don't have enough agency. I can't have a boss. I have to start my own firm.” Very quickly, when I put my shingle out – I'm kind of a natural marketer – it became much bigger than I could manage. I started to hire people. I started to send people in instead of me and started to scale my company. In fact, one of my first hires was a COO, and I really dug deep to pay somebody six figures to build my entire backend because I knew – I was like, I don't know how to do this. And I don't want to. I need to be out there, doing what I do best in my zone of genius, which was evangelizing for the idea of the firm and also putting forth not just me, but all these talented consultants that I was able to attract and send in on our behalf to the clients that I had procured. It worked really well. I always felt it was important to work on the business, not in the business. So from the very beginning days, I was like, how does this scale? And then how do I find my way into my best role? And I'm there now. ROB: How many people did you have when you hired your COO, and were they somebody that had done that job before? JENNIFER: Like three people. And yes, they had scaled my friend's firm, a marketing agency. They had allowed her and enabled her to focus on the creative. Founders are often not the backend people. We're the salespeople. We get the attention. We know how to do that. So, he had done that, and I took the plunge and said, “Please, get everybody paid on time. Do job descriptions. Help me figure out who's my first, second, and third hire. Who should that be? Help me run my finances responsibility. Get us a bookkeeper and do QuickBooks and set up…” – whatever, there's just so much you have to think about. I never regretted it. Subsequently, I've gone through four or five COOs over 20 years. ROB: But the role is necessary. JENNIFER: Yep, and I really recommend it. If you think you've got a tiger by the tail, like I thought I did – and I had no idea what that really would feel like until 2020 – but up until that time, I was evangelizing this idea that belonging is important for all of these dimensions. Better products, better services, better customer relationships, better design. More retention. Losing people is so expensive for companies, and they don't see it as that. It's sort of this invisible cost of attrition. I mean, now they know. But I think it's been happening for years because many of us have been bailing out and becoming entrepreneurs because we literally were like, “I can't stand another day here.” Anyway, it's a big wakeup call and I'm here for it. ROB: Absolutely. I hear you on the COO side. Our sixth employee was an operations role, and she's moved up to COO. It was terrifying. I started off thinking I wanted just a junior project manager / order-taker / “do stuff for me,” and then I was persuaded by some advisors to spend the money. But it was terrifying. JENNIFER: How's she doing and feeling? ROB: She's moved up. It's great. It's a relief because I'm out here talking to people, and things still happen back home on the home front. JENNIFER: I want to share – maybe this will be interesting for your audience – my name is on the name of the consulting business, right? It's Jennifer Brown Consulting. We refer to ourselves as JBC. But we have transcended that question I always get, which is “Don't people expect you?” They don't, actually. They know about me, but they don't expect me to be on the calls. We've scaled ourselves to such a level that the team is completely empowered and completely the star of the show, and I'm not involved unless there's a keynote that's needed and wanted or an executive session. I'm off writing the books that hopefully draw attention to us. It's just an interesting thing I know founders wrestle with and thought leader-driven brands. It's this interesting question that always comes up. But I think we've done it really well. I think the secret is it's always been my plan and it's always been my expectation. I have said very clearly, it's not about me. I'm not even the most practiced expert in my company, and I never have been. My consultants are incredible, and they will solve problems differently than I will in any client engagement. They are bringing their own 30 years of looking at these things, and they have different identities than I do, and they have that lived experience that they can bring. So, it's worked really well, and it's enabled me to pull out of the day to day and speak and write, which I do think is what I have been, all these years, preparing to do. ROB: Was it easier or harder, those first couple of engagements when you were tagging someone else in? JENNIFER: I remember. If I'm on the phone, if I'm involved, how can somebody feel that they're in charge of the gig? The client is always going to be looking to me as the authority, and I don't want to be looked at as the authority. I had to be really careful in the early days of this transition of what I was a part of – that they even met me. I minimized that. [laughs] I was like, “Nope, you don't need to talk to me. Thanks for the inquiry. I'm introducing you right away to my team. They will take care of you.” We still actually do this because stuff still finds its way to me. But we're very strict, and we have protocols that we follow. I never break those because it's super important for me that my team can take care of whatever you need. I'm almost like a consultant now. The team is in charge and knows what to bring me and when that's needed. Also, for me and my wants and needs, I don't want to be in the day-to-day client work anymore, and I haven't wanted to be for many years. That's not what brings me fulfillment. So, I think for founders, commit to and dig deep to seek – know what you don't want to do, but what you want your firm to still do. That's so important. Just pay attention to that and then dig deep financially and wherever else you have to dig to staff around the work you want the group to do as a delivery but is not work you directly want to be involved in. And then make sure you're not sending mixed messages and that you're truly empowering the people you've hired to go and be brilliant. ROB: I hear you talking about handing over two separate sets of responsibilities at least, which are doubly nerve-wracking. You're talking about handing over the delivery of the work, but you're also talking about handing over the selling of the work. JENNIFER: Yeah. We're interesting because our folks don't do business development. I have been in the space for so long that our amazing marketing team who helps me get the word out – we provide so much value. We have so many opportunities to read our thought leadership, join our calls, be a part of our JBC community, that we get a lot of inbound. One of the things I've learned is you cannot force people to be salespeople if that is not what they do. I understood my role very early on. I'm here to build the house that people can live in and make sure the bills are paid and whatever, taking care of the container and making sure there's enough opportunity coming in for people to focus on being the subject matter expert and delivering the work and taking care of the relationship. We have a sales team, but they field a lot. They really more operate as “Now we have an opportunity; what is the scope? What is the statement of work? How do we price it? Who do we put on it? What's the team going to be that delivers it?” That is what happens after we receive an interest or a lead. It was the way I got around sales, honestly, because the only kind of sales I'm really comfortable with is this back-door way of putting myself in conversations, adding value, moderating panels endlessly – which is what I did for years, just going to conferences and being in the room, speaking up and offering to be helpful. And over time, now it's like, “We've wanted to work with you and your team for years. We finally have the budget!” But years and years and years of people watching us grow, and now it's amazing to get these calls from people that saw me speak 10 years ago or were in the room.  ROB: You can't be transactional about that. That's playing the long game. JENNIFER: It's reputation, it's trust, and it's generosity. We've been so, so generous. That's my MO. I see myself as part of the field. I think of it as we are a field of practitioners, and even if we're competitors, we're not. We all stay in touch with each other. When we hang out, other heads of firms, it's like this amazing, really rich conversation because it's a moment. This is purpose work. And people will find the firms that they feel the most comfort with for what they need. But honestly, it's co-opetition. I've heard that word, and I think that really speaks to that, at the end of the day, we're part of a movement and advocacy and whoever does the work, we deeply care that the work is done. ROB: Absolutely. I can see clearly that you deeply care and you have a team that does. Jennifer, when people want to find you and JBC, where should they go to find you? JENNIFER: Thanks for asking. Amazon has all my books, and then on Instagram, I'm @JenniferBrownSpeaks. I'm on LinkedIn. Twitter, I'm @JenniferBrown. Yes, I was on Twitter many, many, many years ago. ROB: Well played. JENNIFER: Well played. [laughs] And then jenniferbrownconsulting.com is our website. I just want to say if you're a new practitioner or an aspiring DEI professional, you should really check out our online courses. We're building our foundations program and rolling that out. It's just a wonderful six-week “get yourself grounded and work on your personal diversity story.” ROB: That even scales down to some people who maybe aren't midmarket enough to pay for you. Excellent. JENNIFER: Exactly. You understand. ROB: I do understand. JENNIFER: Thank you. ROB: Jennifer, thank you so much for meeting up and coming on the podcast and helping us learn well in your expertise. JENNIFER: It's a pleasure. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

HIGHLIGHTSDeveloping the medical image analysis toolHow Simon and his co-founders started the companyDealing with the business side of the companyRebranding to Hero ImagingDeveloping global business relationshipsWhat is Simon's Superpower?QUOTESSimon: “Our main product is something that's basically organically developed in a scientific setting. This is just a bunch of functions that we've coded as a group for specific tasks. But along the line, we've sort of started just thinking a bit further.”Simon: “When you move from having a prototype, into actually turning it into a business, just having the product isn't enough. You still have so much work to do.”Rob: “Most times we shouldn't be looking for validation, we should be looking for opposition, right? Because it's within those opposition when people disagree or have opposition to it. It means they're asking questions.”Simon: “I want everyone involved in customer relationships as well. I mean, we have a lot of talent in the company. So it just makes sense that I want them to be visible in that.”Rob: “You have to be adaptable, and you have to listen to the market and be okay with making changes and taking some big risks.”Simon: “The name Hero Imaging hints at the fact that there's a lot of heroes out there working with science.”Simon: “I am usually very good at systematic thinking. I'm rarely a specialist in any context, but I do have a knack for piecing a lot of information together to find a way forward.”Connect with Simon through the links belowLinkedin Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-lindgren-76243095/Linkedin Company: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hero-imaging/Email: simon@heroimaging.comWebsite: www.heroimaging.comTwitter: HeroImagingDon't forget to subscribe and leave a review.Connect with Rob:www.beacons.page/robnapoliwww.linkedin.com/in/robnapIG: @robnapoli.riseupSpecial offer for #BearNation listeners who are interested in trying Brilliantly Warm, use this 10% off discount code WELCOME10.We have teamed up with Phin, a social impact marketing firm, to give back for each episode. To learn more, visit: https://app.phinforgood.com.

Shep Ogden, CEO and Co-founder, Offbeat Media Group (Atlanta, GA) Shep Ogden is CEO and Co-founder of Offbeat Media Group, an agency that helps “some of the biggest brands in the world figure out how to use TikTok, Web3, and meme marketing to reach Gen Z customers. Originally, the college friends who started the agency owned and operated an Instagram account, Humor, which drew four million followers . . . and a lot of interest from brands that wanted to partner with the account. The agency moved from working with memes to working with influencers, and from there, to developing virtual influencers. Today, the agency's clients are typically the 10% of businesses that “are constantly looking for that new thing.” When the partners realized the Humor account did not have an associated “face,” they decided to build one virtually. For the past few years, Offbeat has been working to establish “virtual influencers” to serve as identities behind “faceless” accounts. Virtual influencer development is what the agency is best known for today “and its clients are typically the 10% of businesses that “are constantly looking for that new thing.”  Shep says that today's photorealistic virtual influencers “don't look 100% real yet” and the technology to perfect them is extremely expensive. The other end of the spectrum, cartoony caricatures, does not work as well as stylized animated characters that “are not meant to trick you,” but to serve as characters “to tell a story” using “humanized responses and emotions.” The first of seven stylized virtual influencers the agency is creating for Nexus, named “Zero,” launched on Twitter in February and has drawn the interest of major investors. The agency's content studio creates a constant stream of content on the internet (mostly on places like TikTok and Snapchat) with close to a dozen shows that reach hundreds of millions of people monthly. By building virtual influencers and developing an NFT (nonfungible token) project for themselves, then iterating, testing, and innovating to improve their “product,” the agency demonstrates that it “gets” the new technology. The shows are monetized when platform partners direct ads their known audiences and share the revenues with Offbeat. The agency plans to sell NFTs to crowdsource virtual influencers' story development, help “build community,” and further monetize the agency's work. Shep talked about the intersection of the virtual influencer industry, Web3, digital ownership, and NFTs at the 2022 South by Southwest Conference. After his presentation, “The Future of Influence Doesn't Involve Humans,” he brought Nexus's Zero up on stage, on screen, to converse, unscripted, with entrepreneur Mark Cuban. Shep says the goals for his presentation were to: introduce the virtual influencer industry, establish Web3 for the audience, discuss how these two intersect, explain the agency's work and the thought behind the Nexus universe growing around Zero, and show the stuff in action. Shep can be found on LinkedIn as Shep Ogden. Offbeat Media Group is also on LinkedIn. The Offbeat-owned website, VirtualHumans.org, serves as the industry-leading website on virtual influencers. For those interested in the development of Zero, follow @ZeroFromNexus on Twitter.  Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm joined today live at South by Southwest, interactive, by Shep Ogden, CEO and Co-founder of Offbeat Media Group based in Atlanta, Georgia. Welcome to the podcast, Shep. SHEP: Awesome, Rob. Thanks so much for having me. I'm having a blast. ROB: It's good to have you here. It's always fun to have these people we know in Atlanta – we know each other, but we're in Austin and getting together to talk. It's all well, good, and fun, but why don't you start off by telling us about Offbeat Media Group and what is your superpower? What's your calling card? SHEP: Our superpower has changed over the last few years. It's been a really fun experience. I'd like to back up and give you the quick origin story. We started this business while we were in college. We owned and operated an account called Humor on Instagram with about four million followers. It was a really large meme and viral community, basically. It was something that we started for fun and then it turned into something that brands really wanted to partner with us on. The next thing you know, we're helping some of the biggest brands in the world figure out how to reach Gen Z and how to do meme marketing and how to tap into an account like Humor, but also hundreds of others and then thousands of others. That led to us working with a ton of influencers, moving from just meme accounts to influencers, which then led to this whole new crazy idea, which I think is our superpower, of virtual influencers – taking this concept of an account like Humor that has millions of followers but doesn't have a face attached to it and thinking about that, but doing it with a virtual face. Building an account, building a personality, building something that someone wants to follow, but giving an identity behind it – that's the idea of a virtual influencer, and we've been doing that for the last few years. It's definitely what we're known for most now. ROB: It might sound a little bit out there to the audience; is this an influencer who is obviously not real? Or do they appear real? How does that happen? SHEP: That's a great question. Sometimes it's both. There's photorealistic virtual influencers that look pretty real. They don't look 100% real yet. There are ways to make it look 100% real, but it's very, very expensive. What we like to do, and what we've seen work much, much better with the audience across the board is more of a stylized animated character. We recently launched Zero for Nexus on Twitter, who you saw, I know. He's a stylized character. While he has very humanlike responses and emotions, and when he talks to people you get that human feeling from him, you also know instantly that he's not meant to be real. He's not meant to trick you. He's just here as a character to tell a story. I think that's what works really well in this space. ROB: And it sort of helps you get past the uncanny valley problem when they look stylized versus real. How do you go about thinking about who this character is, though? I suppose every influencer to an extent has to decide who their persona is, but you're writing a script from nothing. Or is it rooted in something real? SHEP: That's a great question. With Zero, it's not rooted really in anything real, but the way we counteract that and think about that is we're including the community. A real influencer has a real backstory and has a real life, and you can't really change their backstory, change their life. They are who they are. But with a virtual influencer, we're writing lore for Zero. Who is Zero? What's his background? But we're including the community that follows him now. The thousands of people following him and engaging with his content are helping us make this decision. We can do a top-level, “Hey, is it A, B, or C? What do you like better?” and then someone on our team will go deep into that concept and bring it to life when our community says, “We really like this direction.” We crowdsource it. We crowdsource the storytelling of these type of characters, which I think also gives the fans more satisfaction seeing them brought to life. ROB: You mentioned hundreds and thousands of these accounts before on more of the Humor and accounts like that, the non-influencer side. How many influencers are you running? How many do you want to run? SHEP: Virtual influencers? ROB: Yep. SHEP: Right now, we're running one. We launched in February, Zero. We did a lot of tests over the last few years of different types, like we talked about photorealistic, we talked about some more cartoony, but stylized is what we landed on. We built some really cool tech over the last 12 months that allows us to power these influencers in real time where you could have a conversation with them on video, and there's no animator needed. It's all happening from our studio in Atlanta. So, we have Zero from Nexus and that's our main one right now. Zero is part of the Nexus universe. Our approach towards an entertainment brand. We plan on fully decentralizing. I mentioned our community, community involvement, community governance, and helping us make decisions. We actually do plan on giving NFTs to the community, one day possibly a token where people can have ownership as well as governance of this overarching community. Over the next 18 months in this entertainment brand, we plan on launching six more. So, there'll be seven different virtual influencers or virtual creators within it that are engaging with each other, interacting with each other, and then telling a story is the biggest thing. ROB: When you talk about a universe like this, you talk about an entertainment brand, what would be a parallel of something that's already established that people might think about? Is this like a Fortnite ecosystem? Is this like a Roblox? What level does that brand rise to? Or is it like a sub-brand within Disney and you might have multiple of these universes? SHEP: That. That's spot on, that last one. The way we look at it is Offbeat Media Group as a company, we do have different arms for our business. We talked a bit about helping brands figure out TikTok and Web3 and memes. That's our agency. We have a content studio that we haven't talked a ton about, but we create a ton of content across the internet. We have nearly a dozen shows across the internet that reach hundreds of millions of people every month. But with the Nexus universe, we built really cool tech to power that. That's our first jump into building out this entertainment brand. We think about that as something like the Marvel Universe. That would be someone we really look up to. We can tell a story for decades to come and we can include the audience in helping us make some of the bigger decisions within that story. But what's really unique about it is because we have this tech that allows people to interact with our characters in real time on a Zoom call or on Twitch, they can do that with these characters. If you think about Marvel Universe and Captain America or Thor or someone like that, you're not going to get content from Thor, but once every two years, once they release a movie. He's not on social media. He's not on Twitch. You can't hop on a podcast with him. Maybe the actor, but not actually Thor, the character, because that would cost a ton of money for Marvel Universe to have Thor always on. So that's our concept. We can tell the story, a cinematic story, just as you would see with something like that, but you can also get day-to-day interaction with our characters. ROB: You mentioned the agency off to the side; I know a lot of your vision is pulling forward on what you're doing with this universe, but I think it might be easy for someone listening to actually underestimate that you have a substantive business. You've built a real deal agency and business underneath all of this. Someone might wonder, you're building this science experiment; how do you pay the bills? What's the day-to-day of what makes things operate well that allows you to also invest in the future? SHEP: That's a great question. You're spot on. Our agency does really well. It's growing. We have an awesome general manager, Michael Heaven, who has really taken charge and leadership of it. He came from one of the fastest-growing agencies of the last decade, was employee #7 at Social Chain, went to about 700, and then left and came and joined us after opening quite a few offices for them. The way we look at it is – I'll say first off, I'm in one of the few roles where being a 26-year-old CEO is a positive. People come to us and say, “Yeah, this guy probably gets it. He probably understands memes. He probably understands TikTok and is pretty much a pro.” Now, over the last couple years, we've been doing virtual influencers and we've been looking at NFTs and whatnot. Same thing there. People are like, “Okay, they probably get it. They're a pretty young and innovative team.” But then we're also showcasing to people that we do get it. We're building virtual influencers for ourselves. We're building an NFT project for ourselves. We're creating content nonstop on the internet, like I mentioned earlier, with the content studio. Both of those fuel interest in what we're doing. We're not your typical agency that just does services for others; we're iterating, we're testing, we're innovating every single day, like “How do we do this better for ourselves?” Then once we build that playbook for ourselves, we have a team that's ready to take that playbook and do it for brands. So that's why we have both of these. In the day-to-day, we're innovating on content that we can do internally. Once we find something's working, we ship it over to the agency and we're like, “Hey, no one else is doing this yet, but we just had it work really, really well for us. Let's roll this out.” ROB: How much of the media that you produce ends up being something that you can integrate a client/a brand into versus how much of it is a proof of capability that serves as marketing? Do you bring the brands into some of these, your Humor channels, and some of that? Or is it all “We saw that you could do this, now please do this for us but under our umbrella”? SHEP: It depends on the asset. With Humor, on Instagram, the one with about four million followers, we integrate brands into that all the time. We create memes, we partner with comedians, we partner with viral influencers, and we can take their branded content or we can make a branded meme and integrate it into this community really, really easily. With the shows – I mentioned we have about a dozen shows – most of those are on places like TikTok and Snapchat. We don't integrate brands into those. The way that works is we are partnered with the platform, so we're making money from programmatic advertising. When someone's watching our show, Snapchat knows the audience watching the show. They're running ads, and then we have a rev share deal with them. So, we don't have to go sell ads for that stuff. We're not really trying to turn into a production company for brands. Most of the stuff we're producing is either lightweight or partnered with an influencer. And then on the virtual influencer front, first and foremost, we're building a community. We expect that community to be a part of what we're doing. We plan on selling them NFTs. We plan on giving them governance of what we're building. We can monetize it through content. But with Zero and the virtual influencers, that is a perfect branded integration play, too. We've done a great job with his lore, where he's got a portal in his universe that he can send things through one day, but things can already be sent to him. For example, Samsung sent him their new most recent phone, and it's now his new most favorite thing. He's constantly hopping on a selfie video, and it's always with a Samsung. That's a way that we split how we think about branded versus not. ROB: How did they find you? Or how did you find them? This is an experiment for a brand. SHEP: Yeah. I was talking to somebody yesterday and they talked about how brands are typically in a 70%, 20%, 10% kind of mindset where that 10% is the ones that are constantly looking for that new thing. We usually work with those 10%. We own and operate a website called VirtualHumans.org. It is the industry-leading website about all things virtual influencers. There's nothing else out there like it. Three years ago, two and a half years ago, when we got really excited about this space, we saw that everyone was writing about it from a journalist standpoint, but there was nowhere to actually learn about the industry. There was always the same one, two, three virtual influencers mentioned, yet here we are finding 50, finding 60. It's like, why can't I find anywhere to actually learn about this industry? How are the players in it? What are they doing? How are they doing it? So, we build that website for the industry, and that has connected us with major investors, major brands, major partners, every team in the space. Anyone interested in the space typically comes to us, inbound, wanting to network. ROB: There's a recurring theme here. We see you continue to build a platform that proves what you're able to do, that people want to be a part of, whether that's on some of the meme accounts, whether that's on Virtual Humans, now with Zero. Where did that disposition towards building content platforms come from? You guys started when you were in school. Were you in film? Were you in some sort of creative endeavor? Was it just a natural, organic “this is where social is now” and who you are demographically? SHEP: I think it was fun for all of us. Bailey, Christopher, and myself are the main three day-to-day partners. We also have Kevin Planovosky, who's an advisor of ours and an early partner. All of us went to the University of Georgia. But specifically, Bailey, Christopher, and I all had our own Instagram accounts that weren't ourselves. Christopher ran a social media app for a while that had hundreds of thousands of users, and then when that ended up not working out, he pivoted to social media accounts and had tens of thousands of followers. I had this idea that you could – I owned a lot of states on Instagram, like Alabama, West Virginia, Iowa, South Carolina, and then cities and some countries, even. People just started following them, and it gave me authority because I owned the state username. It was almost as if I was the state. So, it gave me a lot of authority. I just thought it was really cool and I was learning really quickly how to gain tens and then hundreds of thousands of followers, and then met Bailey, who was doing the same thing. He was making memes. He was just posting memes and making memes. We were like, man, we think we could make money doing this, like real money. That's when we all partnered up with some experiments, and the next you know, it actually turned into a real business. Something that started as something cool to us. ROB: It's lightning in a bottle with some people. Kevin's a former guest on the podcast as well. Recorded that one live and in person at the Vert Office. That was pretty fun. Did any or all of you come from any entrepreneurial background? Was there a seed planted early for you? SHEP: Yeah, great question. Bailey has such a unique story. I wish he was here to tell it. Really, his origin story was he wanted to get a truck when he was 16 and he wanted a nice one, and his parents told him they'd pay for half of it. But if he wanted a nice one, he was going to have to figure out how to make the other half. He was 14-15 years old with no real money, and he started flipping cards or flipping sunglasses or something on eBay, and then heard about this guy in high school making real money, thousands of dollars, with Twitter accounts. So, he went and used all of his money from selling sunglasses and flipping other items to buy a couple really big Twitter accounts and start monetizing that. Next thing you know – he didn't realize he was becoming an entrepreneur, but he did. It just snowballed from when he was 14 years old up to moving into memes and all across the board. So, he had a really cool story. I think Christopher found himself in a somewhat similar boat, really just wanting to build something special. And then my background is my family was a family of small-town entrepreneurs. My dad is probably the biggest hustler I know. I grew up and we owned small rentals, a car wash, a little shop, all the kinds of things like that in a small town of 10,000 people. I loved talking about business with him, and I'm 7-8 years old. I'm like, “How'd work go today?” and I'm asking him all about it. I think that set my foundation really, really strong. I knew I didn't have to go and work for The Man. That's how I learned it from my dad. He gave me a story where he went and worked for a year or two at a factory, basically, and his dad, who was also an entrepreneur, told him, “You're wasting your time.” Which I don't think is necessarily a fair characterization, but he left and he went and started his own business and he was much better off for that. So that really inspired me. I always knew that I could do that as well, like it was a possibility. I got to see that firsthand as a possibility. And then I studied entrepreneurship nonstop for most of my high school and college career and then jumped in. ROB: It's three very different paths, and of course, Bailey's reminds me – quite often, the entrepreneurs are the folks that were flipping candy or sunglasses or you name it in high school, and they end up starting something later. I would be remiss if we didn't talk about the session that you've been here at SXSW to present. Did it yesterday, had a special guest up on stage with you. The session was “The Future of Influence Doesn't Involve Humans.” What should people who weren't there know about it? SHEP: I'll say first off, I think we chose a little clickbait-y title to get people in there. Yes, while we were showing a virtual human, which technically isn't a real human, there was a massive team working on that of all humans. So yeah, we had Mark Cuban join us. It was a really great experience. We got to really talk about the virtual influencer industry, talk about this new world of Web3 and digital ownership and NFTs and how this stuff's going to intersect and tie into virtual influencers and how we think about using that ideology. Web3 ideology is a tool to let this community actually have ownership and governance of the virtual influencers we're building. And then after we explained what this stuff was – we gave a quick definition of a virtual influencer, but it is a first-person identity built on the internet for the sake of influence. Could be for a friend, could be for yourself, could be an artist, whatever it is, but it is a first-person computer-generated character that thinks and acts as if they're their own person. That's a virtual influencer. Once we got through that, we've got to actually bring Zero up on stage, onscreen, and have him start talking to Mark Cuban and talking to us and engaging with the audience. That was I think one of the coolest experiences we've had as a company so far because so much of what we've been working on, like this idea that you can build an influencer that can engage with the world, was shown yesterday. I think the most unique thing about it was that nothing was pre-scripted. For anyone listening, typically to do what we did yesterday, to have a fully animated character engaging with someone and actually have it look real, you have a team of animators that are doing it in postproduction. They're keyframe animating this stuff. But all of our stuff, all the tools that we've built, do all of it in real time. So yes, we have someone to motion capture, but that output looks crystal clear. ROB: Yeah, it was crisp. It worked. The technology worked. I was hoping you didn't have to reboot Zero at any point. But I think had some doubts when you started doing the session, and when you're interacting over Zoom with this character. I think people still felt like it might have been scripted, but you shared with me you didn't even know what he was going to say and how he was going to introduce himself. Little worrisome even there, little fake robot voice just to creep everybody out. SHEP: Yeah, he came in – Zero's on Twitter as @ZeroFromNexus and everyone keeps calling him an AI. So sometimes when he joins in on a Zoom, he loves messing with everyone and pretending to be a robot, and then he says, “I'm just kidding!” and he starts talking to you like a normal person. I think the crowd loved that. But yeah, we planned a lot of the conversation prior that we'd be having with Mark and talking about the industry, and then we planned to have Zero give us a tour of his bunker, but that was all free-flowing conversation. There was nothing scripted. I think even Mark was like, “How much of this is preplanned?” It's like, zero. He starts asking Zero questions, and Zero's just responding off the cuff. He just had all of it off the top of his head. ROB: It sounds a little bit like improv, really. You know the beats maybe that you might go through in a given skit. You might've talked some topics, you might've done some practice, but you didn't practice what you were going to say; you just know the plot points you're going to follow. SHEP: Exactly. The way we typically plan conversations like that – if we're giving a presentation, that's one thing; we'll know almost to a ‘T' what we're going to say. Christopher, who was part of the SXSW pitch yesterday for us, knew exactly what he was going to say. For something like this, we had high-level goals. We had talking points under each goal, but goal #1, establish the virtual influencer industry to the audience. Goal #2, establish Web3 to the audience. And then goal #3, start telling them how these two intersect; goal #4, start talking about how we're doing that and how we think about it with the Nexus universe we're building with Zero. And then goal #5, actually show the stuff in action. So, we had high-level, “Cool, we've got an hour; we're going to show this stuff.” Mark Cuban is an investor of ours, and he has a really impressive knowledge of exactly what we're doing, so he was able to go off and riff on it with this as well. ROB: Yeah, he probably gives ideas from the stage sometimes where someone's taking a note and being like, “Let's put that in the mix too.” SHEP: Definitely. ROB: While this entire technical demo was going on – we're trying to picture what's going on behind the scenes – you have a whole studio set up in Atlanta that you've alluded to. I'm trying to draw metaphors. Actually, is there a way people can see the session yesterday or something like it, some reasonable recording of something like that to get a taste? Where can they go see something like that to start to understand what the experience is like? SHEP: We're going to be on Twitch soon with Zero from Nexus. But right now, Twitter. If you look up @ZeroFromNexus, spelled how it sounds –  ROB: With a ‘Z,' not with an ‘X' if you're feeling strange or fancy. SHEP: Right. You can see all of his content that he posts right now. And all of his stuff is done in real time. Because it's posted on Twitter, we do have an editor that can cut pieces off and whatnot, but the actual content production takes as long as that clip takes. We're able to move cameras around in real time. We click a button, the camera's in a different spot. We're able to teleport him around. We're able to move him all around the bunker. He lives in a bunker. [laughs] ROB: For now. SHEP: Yeah, for now. But we're able to do all of that in real time. I think his Twitter is probably the best case to see that right now. ROB: Who all is involved today? Is there a voice actor? Is there a body actor? Are they the same person? Virtual cameraman? Is somebody pushing magic buttons for teleporting? Who's involved in making a Zero moment right now? SHEP: There's a voice actor that's also the motion capture artist. And then we have our head of content, who's also helping go deep in the content we're producing. We have our tech director, which is typically the one processing those buttons like, “Cool, we're about to teleport, we're about to get a new camera scene.” So yeah, it's a pretty lean team of about three fully focused on character, and then we have a couple more in the studio, typically, that are supporting and working on things. To have one of these characters up and running, though, it takes two to three people. ROB: It's amazingly in real time. I could almost picture different places – I imagine a lot of people would want to use this – you could imagine having an Instagram live with Gollum from Lord of the Rings. You could do that, right? Maybe not on the rendering technology right now; maybe that level of realism isn't quite real time. But it's within reach. You can get there from here. SHEP: Yeah, we could. Right now, even. It all comes down to – the system we've built can render at that high level. Photorealistic humans isn't there, but something like a very high-end character rendered in real time, absolutely. You break that uncanniness because it's not a human. Once it's a human, that stuff gets hard. But yeah, that's spot on. Gollum we could bring to life. Instagram Live is kind of complicated because you have to do it from a phone, but you could bring it alive on Twitch. You bring it alive on anything from a computer that can do live. We could have a very high-end character engaging and talking to you. Maybe giving his backstory or going deeper into the lore of Lord of the Rings, in the Gollum example. Going deeper into that lore and almost giving you his personal experience. That's definitely possible with this technology. ROB: That's fascinating. I do want to see it, but I also want to pull forward to where you're thinking some of this stuff goes in terms of the Web3 technology. I think some of it was alluded to during the session yesterday, this idea of even potentially establishing a DAO, these digital autonomous organizations, around a character or even parts of the universe governance to make decisions. How wide of decisions do you think you'll let people make for these characters and this universe? SHEP: That's a really interesting question. We think about this a lot, because there's been nothing out there long enough to really see what the right answer is. The way we're thinking about it is at Offbeat, we're the creative lead. We went down the rabbit hole of like “What if we gave full control to the community out the gate?”, but there's a lot of examples where that hasn't necessarily been the best thing for the long term of the IP. Lots of times the community will do what's coolest or funniest or whatever it is right now, today, and then they might saturate the brand or make the wrong decision for the brand in the long term. So, the way we view it is we have a really, really creative team, and we can come up with concepts before we completely flesh them out and build them out. Then we can include the audience on helping us make decisions. This is where it starts. We want the audience to make sure that they're included in all the decisions we're making about the universe we're building. They'll have to own an NFT for the community to actually have that governance and help us make those decisions. But in the future, it could move to be full DAO-driven, where maybe we have a creative council at the top of the DAO that almost has a final say-so, but everyone on that council is voted for by the DAO and then they're making all the decisions, where maybe 51% can vote and say “Okay, great, this is Zero's new background. This is the content we're producing this month. This is the next character we're launching. This is what they look like.” Right now, it's going to be very – what's that “Bandersnatch” off of Netflix? It was like “choose your own adventure.” ROB: Yeah, that was a Black Mirror offshoot. SHEP: Yeah. I don't like referring to us as Black Mirror, now that I think about it. [laughs] But it is very “choose your own adventure” right now. They're part of the adventure we're building. But in the future, it might be “build your own adventure from scratch.” Like, “Here, community, what do you want from scratch?” It's definitely possible. ROB: Right. There's different variations. There's an idea where you could have the contract govern what kind of decisions can be made and all sorts of different directions like that. Interestingly, I think there's a long-term alignment. I guess an absolutist might say, “Give us full control,” but there's an alignment where, I assume, when you're thinking about these tokens, they're going to be re-sellable. You're going to get a slice of every transaction when it's resold. So your interest is still to align to an audience that wants to own and increase the value. SHEP: Yeah, spot on. The one thing I'll say is a lot of people that own these might not be IP experts. I have been chatting with a lot of IP experts that are from the world of Disney, from the world of Marvel, from the world of Star Wars, that helped build these brands and manage this decade-long or multi-decade-long IP and how they think about expanding and monetizing it. They're worried about some of these brands. I own a Mutant Ape from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, which is a big NFT community. We were talking about that because every single person that owns a Mutant or a Bored Ape owns the full IP rights to do whatever they want with it. So now there are so many companies and so many individuals creating content with that IP. It's just going to be really interesting over the next seven years. Does that saturate it? Does it keep that pristine, exclusive feel if everyone's creating content around it with totally different narratives that have nothing to do with each other? Or does it just become almost like an avatar? Which is still cool and still valuable, but it might not become an entertainment brand. Pirates of the Caribbean is a great example. It was Disney's biggest hit for about a decade. Now it's nothing. They're not producing anything new. It was their biggest hit and every couple of the years, new Pirates of the Caribbean something, over and over and over and over, and it got saturated really quickly. That's what we're really cautious of. As we think about building a lot of these characters with similar style for our universe, we want to include the community in it, but if everyone could do exactly what we were doing, then it would be everywhere and it might be too saturated and people would find it less cool. ROB: Do you see a case to be able to turn an Ape into a model in the Nexus universe? Do you see that possibility of “Verify your NFT, we'll spin up a model, you dial the knobs on how it moves, how it talks”? SHEP: Probably not for the Nexus universe, but the tech's there. We might bring a Bored Ape into the Nexus universe that's interacting, but I don't think it'll be just for anyone to join us. We're looking at building out our own avatars for the Nexus universe that have our own aesthetic. So not only do you own an NFT that helps give you governance, but then also you're following these characters like Zero, and you're engaging with these characters, and now we're saying, “Hey, here's an avatar that has similar aesthetics that you can own and control.” We could include them in our overarching lore, or in their day-to-day, they could use this as their own avatar, their own V-tuber. They could join in a Zoom call and instead of being themselves, they're their avatar. That's what we're looking at. ROB: Very interesting. Definitely plenty to watch in this area. Shep, when people want to keep an eye on what you all are doing, obviously they could follow thousands of Instagram accounts, but where should they go for the center of gravity – for Offbeat, maybe for Virtual Humans? Where are the coordinates? SHEP: I'll say three areas. And like you said, it seems to change, but add myself on LinkedIn, Shep Ogden. I post a lot about what we're doing on LinkedIn. Or Offbeat's LinkedIn is another good source that really talks about it. VirtualHumans.org is not necessarily always about us; it's actually usually not about us, but it's about the industry as a whole. So, people really curious about the industry should be on the news later, they should be following the website. Third, if you're really curious about how we're bringing Zero to life, @ZeroFromNexus on Twitter is definitely the place to be.  ROB: Fantastic and fascinating. Thank you for narrating us through the intersection of the future, but grounded in stuff that's valuable right now. I think that's a really fascinating place to live in this Web3 world where some stuff feels kind of out there, and you're bringing it to reality and making a real business of it. Congratulations on everything. We'll keep an eye on it. SHEP: Thanks so much, Rob. ROB: Enjoy. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Minal Bopaiah, Founder and Principal Consultant, Brevity & Wit (Silver Spring, MD) Minal Bopaiah is Founder and Principal Consultant at Brevity & Wit, a strategy and design firm dedicated to “designing a more equitable world.” The original focus of Minal's agency was on graphic design. Today, the agency provides full-scale, full-service, human-centered graphic design; strategic marketing and communications; and the application of behavioral change science and organizational development to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. Typical clients are mid-size companies of 200 to 3,000 employees, but Brevity & Wit has also engaged with public media work, non-profits, and tech and government agencies. At South by Southwest 2022, Minal presented “All About Equity: Future-Proof Your Organization” with the intention of moving people to ask for observable behaviors that support diversity, equity, and inclusion (which Minal refers to as “DEI work”). Accessibility is another issue, addressed as needed. Minal is the author of Equity: How to Design Organizations Where Everyone Thrives, which, as of the date of this publication, has excellent reviews and 100% FIVE STAR RATINGS on Amazon. In this interview, Minal explores equity issues. She says, “Time is our most finite resource. We all only get 24 hours in a day, 168 in a week.” The system is designed for people who “don't have any caretaking responsibilities.” Most women have about 20 hours of unpaid labor at home,” and a “culture of overwork” is the reason women are less frequently in leadership positions.  When Minal recruits consultants, she strives to disrupt this system by making it “possible for them to earn what they need to live in 20 billable hours a week.” Instead of paying 30% of billable hours to consultants, the agency pays from 60% to 80%. Minal says, “The margins are small,” but, “the point of Brevity & Wit is to get money in the pockets of people of color and people from marginalized identity.” She believes this model is more trust-based, transparent, and partnership-focused than the traditional employment model, where employers “own” employees. Transforming organizations starts with a “power analysis” and an assessment of leadership engagement. Understanding how organizations work, how power works in organizations, and organizational life cycles is critical to restructuring workplaces to be more inclusive and equitable.  Minal is available on her agency's website at brevityandwit.com and as Minal Bopaiah on internet platforms. Her book, Equity: How to Design Organizations Where Everyone Thrives can be found in major bookstores, at theequitybook.com, and on Amazon.  Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am live at South by Southwest 2022 – yes, conferences are a thing again – and I am joined today by Minal Bopaiah, Founder and Principal Consultant at Brevity & Wit based in Silver Spring, Maryland. Welcome to the podcast, Minal. MINAL: Thank you, Rob. Thank you for having me. ROB: It's a pleasure to meet you here. We are live in the middle of the Four Seasons in Austin, so we have a lively crowd around us. But that kind of adds to the festivity; we can prove we're actually somewhere in person. Minal, you are here speaking this week, which is extra exciting, but why don't you start off and give us the picture of Brevity & Wit? What is the organization, what is your calling card?  MINAL: Sure, I'd be happy to. Brevity & Wit is a strategy and design firm dedicated to designing a more equitable world. We do that through a number of services, from full-scale, full-service graphic design to strategic marketing and communications to organization design. That's the more intensive DEI work – DEI meaning diversity, equity, and inclusion. We also add accessibility at points. We have a really unique approach that combines human-centered design, behavior change science, and organizational development. So really understanding how organizations work, how power works in organizations, the life cycle of an organization, and then working to make sure that we can transform those organizations into more equitable and inclusive workplaces. ROB: If there's a typical client, is there a typical size, scale, industry? Who knocks on your door? MINAL: Right now our typical client is medium-sized companies, so about 200 to maybe 3,000 employees. We do a lot of work in public media, but we also work with nonprofits. We've worked with tech agencies. We're starting to work with some government agencies. It can really vary in terms of the industry. ROB: Some of the organizations this size are going to be growing, but a lot of them seem like they might be a little bit more mature and established, at which point, if there's work to do, there's probably a lot of work to do. And whereas they might have come to you at one point just to say “Help us with this messaging we're trying to get out in a certain area,” when you really get to organizational design, you're saying “How do you be the message you're trying to put out there and not just buy it sometimes?” What does that look like when you're coming into an established organization? MINAL: The first thing if we're really talking about organization design is being able to identify power, like do a power analysis. What we find is in organizations you really have to start with leadership. If leadership is not engaged and fully bought in, it doesn't work. What often happens – in the post-George Floyd world, a lot of people started doing all-staff trainings. Those are usually counterproductive because it's very easy for staff to get on board with the principles of DEI, but leadership needs a hot minute. They're like, “Wait a minute, if this is how we're supposed to be, how do we do accountability? How do we do performance management? You're saying that everything I've been taught is not right; how do I unlearn that and learn new behaviors?” So, they need a minute to catch up. If you don't do that, what happens is staff is fully on board with an all-staff, and then you find out that they feel that the leadership is not living up to their end, and they think it's a bait and switch. So, we want to really start with leadership, especially when we're working with seasoned organizations that have an established culture. ROB: Sure. Especially because even if someone's onboard, when you talk about accountability, when you talk about performance management, your low and middle managers are taking their cues from the organization as a whole anyhow. If they need to do something different, they don't have the tools to do it. What needs to change? What are people not aware of when it comes to those topics – accountability, performance management, and so on? MINAL: There's a whole thing. There's everything from how to run an inclusive meeting – which is not that hard; it just means you need to spend 10 minutes prepping, understand what the purpose of the meeting is, make room for everybody to look at the agenda, make room for everybody to talk and reflect and contribute, and then be clear about action items. ROB: That just sounds like a good meeting. MINAL: Yeah, right? If everybody just did that, workplaces would improve. So, it can be something as basic as that to understanding how we embed this in performance management and tie salary and bonuses to it. And it depends where we're working. Really, the first part is to understand the problem we're solving for. There are a lot of initials in DEI. Diversity, equity, and inclusion. Do you have a diversity problem where you need to recruit more diverse talent? Do you have an inclusion problem where you're able to get people with different backgrounds through the door, but they don't stick because they don't feel included or feel they don't belong? Or do you have an equity problem where maybe you're able to get a lot of diverse talent and they stick, but you look at your proper management and it all looks the same? So, there's no real pathway for promotion for people who have different strengths. ROB: Right. Even to break that down, I feel like we might need to start every conversation there because people don't know the problem they're trying to solve, and they think they're trying to solve a problem that starts with appointing a person to watch over it. And maybe it's good to have someone who thinks more deeply about it. I guess that's an interesting question. Are organizations better served having an officer who is looking at DEI, or is that a copout sometimes? MINAL: It depends how you're doing it. One, it's always great to have somebody held accountable for a business function. But if you don't give that person a budget or the power to do what they need to do, then it's – sorry, I'm not supposed to curse. I'm going to stop. This is hard for a New Yorker like me to not swear. [laughs] But it's not a real job, then, right? If you don't have any resources behind it. It's fine if you want to have somebody who is manning the shop, so to speak, but you really want some heft behind it, and that heft is going to come from the CEO. ROB: Absolutely. This kind of thing has to start there. I had a little debate – we had a little book club and we were reading this book about engineering leadership. Someone made the assumption that the author was a guy, and it was not. I joked with our COO – I'm kind of telling on my team, and I probably shouldn't do that on a podcast. MINAL: No. [laughs] ROB: But these folks mean well; we didn't bash anybody over the head about it, but I kind of riffed with her. I joked and I said, “Camille? Is that a guy?” [laughs] We kind of laughed about it, and I think the point was made. I asked our COO, “Would you rather I said it or you said it?” She's like, “I saw your eyes light up, so I knew you were going to talk about.” I just felt like it helps to come from the top, and maybe even to not put – I mean, anybody can say it, but to not put her in the position of having to be the one that said it felt helpful, is all I can say. MINAL: Yeah. Really, when we say it needs to start with the top, what we mean is that the CEO or the head of the company has to be fully bought-in. But the skills to do the work should be distributed across the company. Because we're on a podcast, just looking at you, when a white guy says something like that, the messenger matters in these messages. It means a lot. That's like an act of true allyship, when somebody who doesn't have any skin in the game is willing to say, “No, I'm going to put some skin in the game for this because it matters.” As opposed to if I were to say that, it might look like I'm taking it personally. ROB: Right. MINAL: Which doesn't mean that I shouldn't be able to, but… ROB: Yeah, the inference from that is a topic all unto itself, but you have to deal with that any time you're making a comment, so it's a big deal. MINAL: That's sort of the politics of work, right? The messenger matters. And this is why we say that talking about identity matters, because if I'm in a leadership position, how people perceive me affects how I lead. So, if I'm not aware of my identity and not aware of the unconscious biases people might have based on my identity, I won't be able to subvert those unconscious biases. I don't talk about it because I think we should reinforce biases; I talk about it because the more you're aware of how people may be perceiving you, the more power you have and the more choice you have in how to play that situation to be effective. ROB: That makes sense. Let's look back at Brevity & Wit. Where did this firm come from? What made you decide that this needed to exist, that you were going to start it? How did it come to pass? MINAL: I had the name for many, many years, and I think I always wanted to start it. I think I'm naturally – my father really encouraged me to have an original mind. That makes me a bad employee, I think, in a lot of ways. [laughs] It's good to be a founder if you have an original mind, and you are a bad entry-level employee if you have an original mind. ROB: The unemployable factor, yes. MINAL: Yeah. So, I think that was part of it. But honestly, I couldn't start it for a number of years because I was single. I was living in New York and then Boston and D.C., because if you're single, first of all, living in a city helps. Secondly, if you're a person of color, being able to get access to the sort of foods or culture that I would feel are home for me only happens in cities. Being single in those environments, the cost of living really impeded my ability to start it. We don't have any VC funding. It was totally scrappy and just me starting it. But what changed is that I got married, and when I got married, I was able to get on my husband's health insurance, and there was a second income. It wasn't much – my husband's a firefighter and paramedic; he's never made that much money. He's not independently wealthy or anything. But it was the three-month buffer I needed to go from zero to being in the black and being able to support myself. That was impossible when I was single. ROB: Wow. So that became that moment. Was the focus always in this direction from the start? What was the founding thesis of the firm, and what were some evolution steps along the way? MINAL: The focus originally was on graphic design and communications, but then my last job before I started it was doing marketing for a DEI firm called Cook Ross, which is a pretty big firm. That's where I met my mentor, Johnnetta Cole, who wrote the foreword for my book. Dr. Cole is just a luminary in the DEI space. She and I have been working on a book. Basically, I just sat at her feet for like a year and a half and wrote everything she told me to write and asked every question I had and learned everything I could about DEI. She was really eager for me to move into the field more intentionally and more directly. I was already sort of doing it in the design and marketing and comms arena, like how you do those jobs with a DEI lens, but through that apprenticeship underneath her, I was able to move into this more directly. ROB: That's excellent. You've been able to grow it, build it. Have you found it natural to recruit additional people into the firm? The right people know your focus when you meet them? Is it pretty natural?  MINAL: Yes and no. It's really interesting because what I think I'm good at is I can spot talent. But we are very scrappy. We have a very interesting structure. Everybody's a 1099 right now because I didn't know how to make it work. But the point of Brevity & Wit is to get money in the pockets of people of color and people from marginalized identity. While most firms might give 30% of the billable rate to the consultant, we give anywhere from 60% to 80%, so our margins are small. Our ability to salary is poor. But what that means is that people who might already be seasoned and be able to consult will get a lot more, and I'm handling marketing and business development. But what that also means is that I have a high tolerance for risk in entrepreneurship; a lot of other people who I think are exceptional talent do not. The diversity angle for me is having those conversations to help them understand a different model, understanding they'll never be as comfortable as I am in terms of risk, but I can get them to a point that there's so much trust that they can enter into this. But it has been sometimes a long courtship to get people to join us who I know would be good, and I know they would love it, if they could just allow themselves to imagine a world where they're not relying on a salary and then getting squeezed out in terms of productivity. One of the problems right now in our world is that – I'm going to say something heavy. Just stick with me. ROB: I'm here. MINAL: The legacy of slavery in our workplaces is this idea that companies think that if they pay somebody a salary, they own them. ROB: Right. MINAL: A more integrity-filled way of looking at it would be to say if you pay somebody a salary, you are renting their time and talent for 40 hours a week, no more, no less. I don't care what level they are, whether they're exempt or non-exempt. The reason I say that is because time is our most finite resource. We all only get 24 hours in a day, 168 in a week. Most women have about 20 hours of unpaid labor at home that they don't get paid for. There's a Harvard Business Review study of why women aren't in leadership, and the reason is the culture of overwork. Because only men who either don't have any caretaking responsibilities or have wives who take care of that – or if they're gay and they have a partner that takes care of it – can overwork. The whole system is designed for them. So. when I'm recruiting people, I'm trying to say, “Listen, that's the system we're trying to disrupt.” So not only do we give our people 60% to 80%, we also try to make it possible for them to earn what they need to live in 20 billable hours a week. ROB: Wow. Do some people just choose 20 with you? MINAL: Yeah. ROB: Does anybody choose more than 40? Is that something somebody can choose with you? MINAL: They could. They might be working with other agencies as well, so they might be doing that. I don't encourage that, and that's also why we pay a higher rate. I was like, if we're going to cap this at 20, then you need to make 60% to 80% in order to make what you live. Then the assumption is that there's maybe 5 to 10 hours a week of stuff you can't charge clients for, and then if you decide to be a community member, you're also going to give back to the Brevity & Wit community a ratio of like 1:5. So for every 5 billable hours, you would give an hour back to the community or something like that. That's like a 35-hour week right there. There's a substantial amount of work, but that was the equation that needed to shift in my head if we really wanted to run an equitable startup. ROB: Right. In that case, there's no ownership vibe when everybody's on that – it's freely engaged on both sides. MINAL: Yeah, it's a partnership model. It's very transparent, it's very trust-based. It is very much like “You win when I win, I win when you win.” ROB: You mentioned the book; I do want to go there. A book is a labor and a labor of love, and your book is Equity: How to Design Organizations Where Everyone Thrives. I'm sure the book is aligned to who you are and what we're talking about in a large way, but tell us about the book and the path of that story. MINAL: The book started actually because of my husband. This guy that I married to start my business is a firefighter and paramedic, which we joke is the opposite of what I do. If you could imagine the opposite. [laughs] ROB: You're both helping people. Just the skillset is very different. MINAL: Yeah. I come home with my ideas for DEI and he's like, “That won't work with my people.” He told me this story once of a conference where these three firefighter captains went to a diversity conference out of state, and the facilitator used the word “LGBTQ.” One of the captains was like, “What does ‘Q' stand for?” The facilitator said, “Queer.” The captain was like, “Are you kidding me? I literally got called onto the carpet at the firehouse for using that word with somebody.” I'm sure the facilitator explained how queer had been reclaimed by the LGBTQ community. Fell on deaf ears. This captain returned from a three-day conference on diversity and inclusion and his takeaway to the firehouse was “Guys, we can say ‘queer' again.” [laughs] ROB: Oh no. [laughs] MINAL: Like, no! I always laugh at that story because, one, I can empathize with the firefighter captain because the world is shifting goalposts while he's literally putting out fires. [laughs] He's like, “What are you talking about?” And then I also laugh because I fear for DEI professionals like myself because I'm like, is this what people are taking away from our three-hour workshops? That's their takeaway? So, I was like, how do we make this more pragmatic and practical? The book was really born of that. How do we take this out of academic jargon? How do we take this out of theory and operationalize it and make it as pragmatic and practical as possible? ROB: I would imagine, then, there's layers to it. You could probably iterate through this topic five different times with an organization and get a little bit better each time. MINAL: Yeah. ROB: And then you're here; you're speaking at South by Southwest. You've spoken today. You're on a panel discussion, is that right? MINAL: No, it was just me. Solo. ROB: You mentioned a panel earlier, so I thought that was the deal. All you. So, the session: “All About Equity: Future-Proof Your Organization.” What do you hope people took away from that other than words they can use in their workplace or not? MINAL: I hope that people took away that we really need to move to asking for observable behaviors. This cannot stay in the realm of theory and trying to motivate people to just do better. We need to get clear about what our asks are in companies, and in doing that we create a new culture. We've got to be willing to question everything we've been taught and then be like, how would we do this in a way that actually is fair to everyone? ROB: What does that look like in practice? Is this going to a KPI process? Are we measuring these things? What does it look like? MINAL: I have a consultant who loves KPIs. You would love her. She loves KPIs. I think eventually it becomes measurable, but I think it's very, very concrete. If we were to go back to that firefighter example, the ask is not “Let's sit and have a one-hour conversation about gender fluidity.” I mean, I'm down for that. I'll do that right now over wine. My husband will not, even though he did all the housework and ran all the errands while I wrote the book. So, what am I arguing with him, right? But if you say to a bunch of firefighters, “Listen, the standard of professionalism is that when you're out treating a patient, you need to ask what their pronouns are and you need to use whatever they say” – that's an inarguable, observable behavior that you can see and track, and because you've made it departmental policy, you get social reinforcement. That's what I'm saying. It's got to move away from “Do you understand all these terms?” to “What is it you want me to do?” The reason I say that is because right now, DEI is a little bit, in my opinion, of implying that you almost have to be a medical doctor in order to be a healthy individual. The level of knowledge that's needed is at an academic level that doesn't include everybody. So how do we make this a healthy behavior that people can engage in, even if they haven't gone to graduate school? ROB: Right, and you're equipping people with clarity of expectation. People need that in a job anyhow. You can't say “Do better,” but you can coach, counsel, and hold accountable on “Did you or did you not do this?” There's eventual conversations. You can get the conversations around organizational fit around those expectations, and that rolls right back into what we were talking about with the meeting structure. It's setting a standard, holding it. That is effective management, and the organization chooses what those behaviors are. You're giving people some ideas of what those can actually be that are the next step. MINAL: Exactly. See, you get it. ROB: I get it. I need to get more. This is, of course, the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. A lot of our listeners, a lot of our guests are people who run creative organizations. Something I would observe from where I sit is that there are let's say stereotypes within different roles. An organization might achieve some overall appearance of diversity while each department – let's say the account team, a bunch of guys are developers, a bunch of account people are women, a lot of the people who actually handle doing what they say they're going to do can be women. How should an organization think about not just being inclusive as a whole and equitable and diverse as a whole, but within those little sub-areas where it's easy to be very homogeneous, how do people think about behaviors and actions they could do in those areas to get to a better place? MINAL: One, it's important to be mindful of your size. The very big organizations – DEI started in the Fortune 500s. When you have 50,000 employees, you can make the case that every department should be diverse amongst all of these lines because they're big enough departments. If you're a company of 200 and you have a team of five developers, this becomes a more difficult equation. Then it may not be about getting the exact percentages right, but it is looking at the process to get in the door, first of all. Is that even equitable? There's lots of research that shows that having an ethnic-sounding name like mine doesn't lead to a callback. But if I were to change my name and have exactly the same résumé, I would get more callbacks. There's those things. Then it's also looking at the culture and training the team in terms of “Do you know how to be inclusive of people who are different? Do you know what that means? It might take more time to build trust, and you might have to do it more intentionally.” And then it's also looking at doing very targeted recruitment, because often in a lot of these fields that you mention, like web development, accounting, so on and so forth, there are groups that are trying to get people who have historically been left out of these professions in the door. If a company forms partnerships with those groups, then when they have a job posting, they can reach out with those groups. But it needs to be not just transactional, where you're trying to get something; you've got to give, too. ROB: It sounds like the organizations that are the best at that are also going to be holding a high trust with who they're presenting as a candidate. Not just can they be recruited – can they be retained, can they grow in their role and within the organization? They're going to want to know the receipts on that, not just “Will you hire this person because you need somebody right now?” MINAL: The thing that people from marginalized identities hate being is a token, or your PR cover. And don't think we can't sniff that out within five seconds. It amazes me how much people try. I was like, we have this figured out. [laughs]  ROB: “This is awkward. I'll tell you what I see here.” MINAL: Yeah. ROB: Makes sense. [laughs] Well, what's coming up? You mentioned another book. MINAL: Yes, I'm working on a book with my mentor, Johnnetta Cole, that is still in development. And then Brevity & Wit is doing some amazing, amazing things. We are working with public media. We're going to be at the Public Media Marketing and Development Conference in Chicago in July. And our team – we have such phenomenal people. We are doing an online workshop on April 14th, and you can go to bitly.com/brevityandwit if you want to sign up. It is on digital blackface and racism in emojis. ROB: Okay. MINAL: So, if you're a marketer and you're using emojis or you're a social media marketer and you're responding with – is it “JIFs” or “GIFs”? I never know. ROB: Depends on who you ask. MINAL: If you're using that stuff, there is a digital blackface that is emerging in our culture that people need to be made aware of and be able to observe and be able to make different choices. Our creative director is leading a workshop on that. ROB: You're going to help people read the room on their emojis. There's probably 10 different ways to do that wrong. I'm glad we don't do this, because thinking about how to do that right is kind of terrifying to me. Whether you're using the Simpsons yellow emoji or whether you're very pale or very not pale. MINAL: That is one of the slides, the Simpson yellow. [laughs] ROB: It's funny we started there; it's funny that it's still there. MINAL: Yeah, because everybody's like, “Oh, it's neutral.” I was like, then why is a poo brown? It's not neutral. It's code for white. ROB: I think about it even when I'm choosing my Slack emoji and my default skin tone. I'm like, am I choosing the right one? Can I just get a camera to color match me so I can not . . . MINAL: And Acacia is going to lead people through that, like how do you become more observant of that? And we're not saying you can't use something like an emoji that's a different color, or more accurately a JIF/GIF or whatever we call it. But it's being more mindful of “What is the context in which I'm using this?” Is it in any way mimicking the blackface minstrelsy that we used to see? ROB: If it's here to entertain us, it's not respectful.  MINAL: Yeah, if it's dehumanizing in any way. ROB: Absolutely. Wow. Minal, it's a lot of think about. Is there anything you wish I would've asked you that I didn't get to in this conversation? MINAL: Oh wow. I could talk about this stuff all day. I can't think of anything off the top of my head. It's a pleasure to talk to somebody who has such a genuine and authentic interest in this work. ROB: Yeah. Hopefully someone can ask some more questions from this. In the show notes, we'll get that bitly link to what you've got coming up. I think we can get that out in time. That'll be an exciting next step for people. I would encourage folks to check out the book and check out Brevity & Wit. Where should people find you when they want to connect with you? MINAL: Brevity & Wit is brevityandwit.com. The book is available in all major bookstores. You can also go to theequitybook.com. And I am the only Minal Bopaiah on the internet. [laughs] ROB: That's wonderful. MINAL: Take a gander at spelling my name and you'll probably land up on me. [laughs] ROB: That's good. I can't even claim to be the only Rob Kischuk on the internet. You've got the Google result of one? MINAL: Yeah. ROB: That is excellent. Grateful you could join us. Minal Bopaiah, Brevity & Wit, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I hope people continue to check you out and learn and engage and get better, but in measurable and specific and direct ways, and not this idealism. It's both. MINAL: Practical idealism. ROB: Appreciate it. Thank you so much. MINAL: Thank you, Rob. Thank you so much. ROB: Be well. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

HIGHLIGHTSStarting up with ParkuppFrom Parkupp to TroobChallenges in starting TroobPalesa's goals for TroobPalesa's journey in New YorkPalesa's advice to entrepreneursQUOTESPalesa: “Sometimes you build something and you don't always know how it's gonna work out. You could have like, your end goal, that this is how I wanted to be or whatever the case may be, but it's important to be flexible, because along the way, you know, things change. Your interests have changed as well. Yeah. So you can't really be married to the original idea. So it's very important to be flexible.”Palesa: “It doesn't have to be like endless or unlimited, or whatever they can be, sometimes you can just build something, and that was your purpose, and then the next person comes in and takes it to wherever it needs to go. And as an entrepreneur, you need to understand that.”Rob: “You need to engage first with the people that you want to talk to, so that they can engage back with you and become that ability to see what you're building.”Rob: “Building a network and having access to a network takes time. Because if everyone just opened up their network, they get taken advantage of. So you have to prove why you're worthy. What you can do in exchange for value.”Rob: “In an age of everyone having strong opinions, finding commonality is a great way to build rapport.”Palesa: “My advice is to have no final form. I don't believe that when you arrive at a destination, you get to a point where you've done everything. It's just about continuously learning, seeking out new experiences and exploring.”Connect with Palesa through the links belowLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/palesa-moloi-39604b146/Website: http://www.troob.spaces/Instagram: @troob.spacesTwitter: @troob.spacesDon't forget to subscribe and leave a review.Connect with Rob:www.beacons.page/robnapoliwww.linkedin.com/in/robnapIG: @robnapoli.riseupSpecial offer for #BearNation listeners who are interested in trying Brilliantly Warm, use this 10% off discount code WELCOME10.We have teamed up with Phin, a social impact marketing firm, to give back for each episode. To learn more, visit: https://app.phinforgood.com.

Annie Scranton, Founder and President, Pace PR (New York, NY)   Annie Scranton is Founder and President at Pace PR, a media relations shop that partners with its clients to discern and achieve goals through getting its clients “featured in the media.” Annie believes that traditional media (television) is still strong and its real-time immediacy “brings credibility to a person or a brand” in a way that “holds a lot of meaning and is different from a newspaper article or a digital article or a podcast.” Pace PR works with a wide variety of clientele, but its three “pillars” are business (B2B, tech startups, corporate clients, climate sustainability initiatives), lifestyle (nutritionists, authors, fitness instructors, products, and brands), and thought leadership (political pundits, financial analysts, attorneys).  Annie says her firm selects clients they find interesting and exciting . . . ones that will interest the media and have something “meaningful to say.” Clients need to “have a presence and be compelling,” to be able to explain their thoughts in a way that audiences can understand, and to provide “takeaways” for viewers. The agency “preps” clients by providing media training. In pitching, timing is important . . . media is more interested in working with clients who can speak to current relevant issues. Credentials are also important. “Did the client work in the industry under discussion? What was their exact area of expertise? How did they touch the current topic that (the agency is) pitching them on?” Get to the point as quickly as possible and clearly state the payoff so producers can easily formulate the case for doing the story. Annie says producers get hundreds of pitches in their inbox and delete 99% of them. In this podcast, Annie provides some basic interview tips. “First,” she says, “Do no harm.” Answer the questions the interviewer asks in a way that is “as concise and clear as possible.” Annie says it takes a certain level of skill to be able to bring in your own message in a way that is “natural and organic” and not too “transactional.” If it's not going to “flow,” Annie advises holding back and waiting for the next time, giving a great interview, and “playing the longer game,” knowing that, if they like you, they'll invite you back. in 2021, after 11 years in business, Pace PR brought in a consultant to finally put some structure in place: “an operating plan, an organizational chart, and a lot of other tools.” Result? More growth and a better workflow.  Annie can be reached on her agency's website, pacepublicrelations.com or on Twitter @anniescranton. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Annie Scranton, Founder and President at Pace PR, based in New York, New York. Welcome to the podcast, Annie. ANNIE: Thanks for having me. ROB: Excellent to have you here. Please start us off with a rundown of Pace PR. What is the firm's superpower? ANNIE: Our superpower is getting our clients on TV and featured in the media. There's a lot more that we do, obviously, and that goes into it, but at our core, Pace Public Relations is a media relations shop. We partner with our clients to figure out what their goals are, and then we help them achieve those goals by securing really meaningful, great placements in the media. ROB: I'm sure a lot of people really want that. What does a typical client look like for you? Is there a particular stage of firm, size of firm, industry? You name it. ANNIE: We're pretty wide-ranging and generalist and agnostic when it comes to the industry that our clients are in, but we do have three main divisions. We have B2B division, where we have everything from tech startups to corporate clients to climate sustainability initiatives and projects; we have a robust lifestyle division, so we have nutritionists, authors, fitness instructors, and products and brands; and then our third division is thought leadership. That's a lot of our political pundits and financial analysts, attorneys, folks that really have a vested interest in opining on cable news about whatever the topic du jour may be. ROB: Some of these are some pretty big placements, I would imagine. In client selection, how much of it is people who are interesting innately, how much of it is preparing them, and how much of it is just finding the area where they're more interesting? ANNIE: I think there's got to be an innate interest at least somewhat. It doesn't have to be a passion project or something that I personally necessarily follow, but I have to feel interested and excited when I'm talking to a prospective client because without feeling excited and having that interest, it's not going to come off as genuine when we're pitching to the media. So definitely vested interest is important. But also, we have to make sure that we feel like the media is going to be interested as well. It could be the most interesting thing ever, but if it doesn't fit into the news cycle or, as you were saying, maybe they haven't secured funding and they're super, super small . . . timing is important. We want to make sure that when we're talking about that sort of preparation, our clients are coming to us with an already established presence and a lot going on themselves where we can feel comfortable and confident that we're pitching a product or an organization or a CEO or a company that has something meaningful to say. And then we do a lot of work with our clients to get them prepped and media-ready by doing media training as well. ROB: That's a whole topic we could go down right there on the media training side. I'm recalling some conversations I've had on the topic. But let's pull in for a moment on what makes people interesting. How do you think about understanding and figuring out – obviously, there can be some subjectiveness to “This person is interesting,” but how do you think of scaling up the idea of “Is this person interesting and who are they interesting to in the media world?” ANNIE: I think interesting is a little bit individualistic, but for me, doing a lot of TV bookings for our clients, they have to certainly have a presence and be compelling just in the tonality of their voice, and be able to explain what they're saying in a way that's going to be digestible and make sense and have some takeaways for the viewer at home. Something that's really important is to make sure they have the goods to back it up. Did they work specifically in the industry that they are discussing? What was their exact area of expertise? How did they touch the current topic that we're pitching them on? Then we put our pitches together where we are highlighting our client's expertise so that way, when a producer is looking at it, they say, “Oh okay, this guest would be really great to have on air because of this specific background that they have.” ROB: Media training is such a deep and interesting topic. I've had a couple of times where, for whatever reason, I ended up on CNBC and I had to phone a friend and figure out what the heck I was going to do with this and how to do it well. There's an interesting balance. Depending on who you listen to, some people are going to talk about knowing what you want to say, and then sometimes you can very clearly tell when someone is on television and they're trying a little bit too hard to touch on their three talking points or something like that. How do you think about striking the right balance of being prepared and knowing your message, but then delivering it in a way that isn't forced, inauthentic, or just tone-deaf? ANNIE: In my opinion, I think first do no harm. What I mean by that is if you are fortunate enough to get booked on CNBC or a major TV network, answer the questions that are asked of you. I think weaving in your own specific messaging point is a skillset. It's something that may take time for some to be able to do where it feels really natural and organic. But if it doesn't flow off your tongue in a really germane and relevant way, my advice would be to wait for the next time you're on air, because first and foremost you want to develop a relationship with that producer, with that anchor, with that network. If you are too transactional on the first interview, they're going to see right through that and you're never going to get invited back on. So in my opinion, it's better to really give them a great interview and realize that there's a long game here. It's not just for a one-off interview. ROB: That's so important to remember. I think it can feel like you're playing in the Super Bowl or something when you get that TV placement, and you feel like you have to win it all at once. You make a great point; so much of business is the long game, and I think it's illuminating to people that media is not different in that regard, and you really can do this a lot if you serve the audience well and make the host's job easy. ANNIE: You totally can. I think it's also on the publicist or on your comms team to strike that balance for you. It's very rare that you're going to look up and see what would in effect be a commercial for a company or a product or a brand. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the CEO or the founder is talking about a news story that is relatable within their industry, within their area of expertise. But a publicist should be able to ask the producer, “Hey, at the end of the segment, can we have one question where we ask about the initiative that my client is offering?” or something along those lines. Generally speaking, they'll play ball with you – and if they don't, that's when the publicist needs to go back to the client and say, “Listen, I really advise that you do this interview because it will lead to other opportunities in the future.” ROB: You certainly speak with a lot of expertise, so let's uncover some of the background here. What led to you starting Pace PR in the first place? What's the origin story? ANNIE: I was 28 and working at CNBC for Donny Deutsch's show, and it got cancelled. I found myself suddenly without a job because everyone on the show got laid off. So I sent an email to everyone in my orbit and said, “I lost my job today and I need a job. If you hear of anything, let me know.” I got an email back that really changed the course of my life forever; it was from a publicist who I had worked closely with and developed a relationship with booking his clients on Donny's show. He emailed me and said, “I don't think you have any formal PR training, but I have a client. He's a broker. He just wrote a book on the market. If you know anybody on any show at CNBC that would have him on, I'll pay you $500 bucks.” I sent it to my friend who was working on the one o'clock hour and she's like, “Oh, he looks great. Can he come on tomorrow?” And that was my lightbulb moment. That's what spurred everything to happen. ROB: For sure. I of course skimmed through your LinkedIn before we hopped on here, and you can see the DNA of some of your career, and probably number one, I would imagine part of your eye for talent comes from being on the other side. Do you feel that the people you're booking with know that you have that background? Or is it more evident to them by how you probably approach the entire process with an empathy for their job and what they're looking for? ANNIE: A lot of them do, because a lot of them I'm still friends with or have a relationship with. But I do think the way I construct my pitches, the way my staff does by me teaching them, is to really cut right to it, for lack of a better phrase. Producers are getting pitched hundreds of pitches every single day. Every single day, they're getting hundreds of pitches to their inbox, and they delete 99% of them. So, it's really important to reference what is happening in the news today. You don't need a long preamble; you don't need to say, “Biden's Build Back Better plan, which was supposed to encompass X, Y, and Z…” No, just say “Biden's plan got shot down. If you want commentary on if it's going to resurrect itself or where they go from here, here is the expert. Here is what they say. Here's why you should book them.” Just make it as concise and clear as possible. I think if you do that, it's evident that you have an understanding of how TV news works. ROB: You make it sound so easy – and of course, I couldn't come up with that pitch very quickly at all. But that's why you are the professional. It's worth highlighting – I feel like it's pretty common to see a lone gun solo artist or a superman or superwoman with a couple of assistants, but you have managed to scale up the firm a little bit more. Not everybody has your experience booking; not everybody has that network. How have you gone about equipping new waves of your team to grow and scale and replicate an experience that – maybe you're able to hire a bunch of people who used to book for shows, but I imagine that's not everyone on your team. ANNIE: No, definitely not. A couple people, but not everyone. In early days, certainly pre-pandemic, I had a very small office for a number of years, and my more junior team members would sit right next to me and I would try as much as I could to use opportunities as teaching moments, as I'm putting together a pitch. I also was very much a part of the editing process and trying to have them understand how to get right to the point as quickly as possible while also clearly stating the payoff. Why should the person on the receiving end care about what you're sending? That's not easy to learn because most people, I think, think of good writing as long writing and having a lot of flowery explanations. But when you're pitching for TV, it's really different than that. Now we're at a stage of the company where we can invest in our staff in other ways, through writing courses or webinars or seminars that they may want to attend. But we just try to have a lot of visibility in terms of our pitch writing just so that the junior staff can see how we're doing it and then learn from that experience. ROB: I see. I can certainly see some proximity, some room for coaching, probably some roleplay, even, in there. Have you ever had younger staff write some pitches and have someone respond in more of a roleplay mode? Is that common? ANNIE: I guess I do that when I'm editing and writing back to them, because oftentimes I will say, “What are you trying to sell me on here?” Sometimes we have complex, complicated clients, and it can be really hard to say succinctly in the approximation of 20 seconds what point it is you're trying to get across. So yes, because when we used to work together in a small office, I would say, “Hey, Natalie, why should the producer care about this?” or “Hey, why should the viewer at home really care about this topic or this idea?” I think just making it as real as possible was helpful in those ways. So I guess so. I guess roleplaying in that way. ROB: It's interesting because there's a direction – as I was saying with the talking points – there's a point to where I think some coaching makes you sound really overly robotic, and it's almost like there's the other side of the mountain where you're talking about getting more concise, more human, more to the point. Maybe there's some New York in there, but there's a lot of media in New York, so I'm sure a lot of media talk is “Get to the point. We're busy here. We are inundated with pitches.” ANNIE: Yeah. You'll see even, if you start developing relationships with specific producers, a lot of times producers will email me one sentence. They're not worrying about capitalization and punctuation. If you work in cable news, you're producing every single day. It's a talking art, it's not a written art. Most of the times, the way they're communicating with the executive producer or the senior producer where they're pitching a story or they're pitching a guest is when they're having their meetings, so they're actually verbalizing the pitch and the guest they're getting. So they need to be able to take from the written pitch and use that language to formulate in words how they're making their case for why they should book this guest or why they should do this story. It's something that people may not have a knowledge base on if you haven't worked in TV, but that is how it works. ROB: It's such an interesting look behind the curtain. Annie, when you think about the journey so far in building Pace PR, what have you learned lesson-wise that you might wish to go back and tell yourself to do a little differently, or things you're doing differently now? ANNIE: This past year, in 2021, we started working with a consultant for the first time in 11 years of business, who helped me develop an operating plan and an organizational chart and a lot of other tools. We sort of joke around saying that we grew up this year at Pace PR. We could've done that earlier, for sure. I think I held on to that startup scrappy mentality for a little too long. It didn't hurt us, but I think it impeded our growth, because since we've invested in some of this work, we've all noticed not only more growth, but also I think an ease within the workflow in the company. So. I would say to think even bigger earlier on than I was. I mean, on the one hand, I've always grown slowly and methodically. Most startups, the reason they fail the first year is because they spend too much money, they grow too quickly. So there definitely is that balance. But I think I would've put on my business hat a little bit sooner in the duration of the company. ROB: Yeah. Did you start the firm by yourself? ANNIE: I did. I started it by myself and kind of just asked for help. I knew an attorney who I used to book on TV, so he incorporated the company. I asked a friend, “Do you have an accountant?” and they introduced me to my current accountant. A lot of it was trial by fire, and when I started it was just me, so obviously I didn't have to worry about staff and a million other things. I could take risks and do things a little bit haphazardly and it was okay. ROB: Right. Some people have that partner, that co-founder, someone who comes in operationally minded, and sometimes, as you've done, you get by on the strength of your strengths. I think it was probably a year and a half ago I hired a coach to come in and help me figure out some of these things, and it felt too early. I thought, “This is a big investment; should I really be spending this money?” But I haven't talked to a lot of people who hired a credible consultant or coach and regretted it. ANNIE: Yeah. At least where we are in the business, it just got me thinking differently. When you live and breathe your business and you started it and it's your baby, it's very hard to see the forest through the trees. It's like you only know one way of doing things. So when you get that outside perspective, at least for me, it has been illuminating. I do think the timing is important, but it's never too soon to at least start thinking about that and thinking about what the future will hold and how to scale and how you might see a growth path forward. ROB: What are some of the scale points that may have gotten in the way? ANNIE: Staffing has always been – not an issue, but it's something that's so critical to a small business. And I think time management, meaning all of us, from myself all the way on down, are very involved in the client work, in the client-facing aspect and the media pitching aspect, so it doesn't leave a lot of time or room to think about the business and growing and scaling the business. It's something that I've been fortunate (knock wood) where year over year, the company has grown. It's not to say I haven't put time and energy into thinking about how to grow; I have. But I have not ever been systematic and really intentional about it until this past year. I will say it's still not easy to carve out time in your day when you really don't have it, but I've been doing whatever I can to make the room and the space for that because it's really important. ROB: It's one level to think about the simple tasks that you can delegate, the lawyers, the bookkeepers, that sort of thing, but it's another thing entirely to really think about working on the business, on equipping things for growth. It's a different mindset, so I certainly appreciate that. ANNIE: Yeah, and if you don't have training in it or you didn't go to business school – I had never read a business book. It's hard to know what some processes can be or ways in which to scale. You may be somebody who has a ton of ideas, but then it's really challenging to put those ideas into practice. Somebody gave me the advice that as the owner of a company or someone in leadership, you should spend your time doing the things that only you can do, the things that you're really good at. I didn't excel at figuring out how to take my ideas and then implement them into different growth / revenue streams, but hiring and working with this consultant has absolutely been helpful in that way. I would recommend it to anyone. ROB: That's great to hear and great to understand. One of the ways I believe that you have chosen to scale the business is with different offices, different cities. How did you think about the right time and the right way to do that? That seems like a big step. ANNIE: Yeah. Some of it was a situation where someone wanted to move and came to me and said, “What do you think if we opened up an office in D.C. or LA?”, etc. Certainly, in this period of remote work, that's a lot easier. I think maybe a lot of businesses are having different office locations because people are living and working in different areas. But I would say for us, just thinking about the pillars of our company, which is business, lifestyle, and thought leadership, politics is a big part of that thought leadership – so having a presence in D.C. is important. It's important to get out there for meeting media and it's important for attending events that are going to be useful for new client acquisition or for strengthening relationships with the media. And then we have a member of our team out in LA, and that's really the hub of where a lot of lifestyle business is done. I think it's also important to have somebody there to have their finger on the pulse of what the trends are, what people are talking about – especially in that lifestyle space. That is important when you're having conversations with prospective clients, to say, “Oh yeah, I have heard of this.” When you have that intimate knowledge, it gives you that leg up when you're vying for the business. ROB: As soon as you said D.C. and LA. I was thinking about your pillars. It sprang immediately to mind with lifestyle, with thought leadership, absolutely. It does feel like it can be a little bit of chicken and egg in that case, though, right? How do you decide, is the thought leadership pulling you to D.C., or is it a bet based on what you're seeing? It seems like there's a bit of a risk and sequencing challenge there. Did it feel like a risk going into those markets, or did you feel like you had the evidence that made it inevitable? ANNIE: I think it's always a risk, because who knows how things are going to turn out? But like when you're saying the chicken or the egg, I feel like that is the perpetual mind state that I'm in. Less so with opening an office, because there are ways to do that where you don't have to have a ton of overhead to do that. So low risk on the financial side. But where I still see myself in that kind of scenario is thinking about hiring. We try to be prudent and hire when we have more clients that require more staffing to service those clients, but in PR, despite the fact that we have very longstanding and great client retention, it still is cyclical. We have a lot of clients that come to us on a project basis, or at the end of their first contract, they may need to shift funds to another area of their marketing budget. So it is a little bit always of that balancing act. All I can say is doing this for nearly 12 years, I think there's that bit of intuition, which is what I've come to rely on. ROB: Absolutely. Annie, as you're looking ahead for the future of Pace PR, for the future of the particular industry that you're in, what are you excited about? What's changing, what's not changing? ANNIE: I am excited about all of the many different media properties that are popping up or that are becoming more robust. I have CNN on in my office and they're promoting CNN Plus. In instances like that, for publicists, it's exciting because there's going to be so many more opportunities for clients to get them exposure. Somewhat challenging to keep up on it all, but it's a good challenge to have and I'm excited about that. However, the cornerstone of our business is traditional media, and a lot of people out there will say traditional media is dead, TV news is not going to hold the same weight as it once did. I disagree with that. I think at least in our lifetime, TV is still going to be a really important medium. Even amongst the younger generations, people, especially in big moments, want to turn on the TV. They want to see in real time what is happening. And even if they don't, getting those clips from a CNN or a CNBC legitimizes and brings credibility to a person or a brand in a way that I think is very different and holds a lot of meaning and is different from a newspaper article or a digital article or a podcast or something like that. ROB: How do you read when a media outlet starts to turn the corner? Because I distinctly recall I would start seeing these random video clips showing up in my Twitter feed of business news, and I'd sit here and say, “What in the heck is Cheddar?” And all of a sudden Cheddar's on my TV. It has crossed a little bit from being an upstart to also kind of a traditional outlet. How do you feel out – and maybe it is intuition – when things start to cross the boundary? ANNIE: I think it's a question that's kind of impossible to have an exact answer to because it's a bit of a science, but I would say for us, something as simple as in the early days, when we would email a client with a request to appear on Cheddar TV, they would always say “What's Cheddar?” And now, we don't get that question anymore. How does that happen? Probably by a million little things happening all at once and over a sustained period of time. But for me, it's less about maybe the name recognition, but what's really important is that the quality of the reporting and the interviews is very high from the early days. Cheddar always did great interviews, very professional all the way around and really well thought out. My clients always left feeling happy and like it was a good investment of their time, because even if they didn't have a ton of eyeballs watching that segment at that exact moment, as I said, having that clip and having it be well-produced and it looked good and it was a well thought out interview – that helps them in their own marketing materials to share that clip or to put it on their website or put it on their social media. ROB: Makes sense. There is some wizardry to it still. I appreciate it. That's why we need you. That's why you're there. Annie, when people want to find you and find Pace PR, how should they find and connect with you? ANNIE: I would love to hear from anyone listening. You can go to our website, pacepublicrelations.com. Or you can find me on Twitter @anniescranton. Shoot me a message and I'd love to connect. ROB: Sounds great. Annie, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing from your deep expertise in this media world. ANNIE: I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. ROB: Thank you very much. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Robin Blanchette, CEO and Founder, Norton Creative (Houston, TX)   Robin Blanchette is CEO and Founder at Norton Creative, an agency focused “narrow and deep” on restaurant and hospitality branding. Their primary client base includes multi-unit operators, mid-size and larger chains, and franchises. They also work with independents . . . but never with conflicting brands or direct competitors in the same time frame.  Over the eight years of its existence, the agency has worked with over 150 different restaurant brands, developing strategies, doing creative work, finding whitespace, differentiating positions, and designing brand standards that allow room for franchisees to “own their businesses” while maintaining what Robin calls “brand purity.” Clients have included Buffalo Wild Wings, TGIFridays, Bob Evans Farms, Mellow Mushroom, Friendly's, Fuddruckers, Sonic, and Luby's . . . . Robin started her career on the client side and said that the agencies she worked with “didn't get it.” She makes sure that the creative her agency produces not only works on the marketing side . . . but addresses questions such as: “What is your business problem you're trying to solve?” “What is your objective?” and translates the creative solution into business results in terms of sales, traffic, and profitability.  Norton Creatives architecture and interiors team helps develop brand architectures that will be scalable to two or more locations so that a single site operation can seamlessly “grow.” When the creative team designs menus, the layout is engineered for profitability. The firm also provides carry-out packaging design and merchandising services, which have increased in importance during the pandemic. In this interview, Robin talks about the challenges restaurants face . . . and what successful restaurants have done to succeed over the past couple of years. She reminds us that restaurants have very tight margins and notes that the number of restaurants in the US is down 100,000 from pre-pandemic days. Those that have succeeded are those that are willing to do “whatever it takes.” In particular, Robin says many have developed new ways to deliver to their customers, reduced the number of selections on their menus, and gotten more efficient in their operations.  Robin can be reached on her agency's website at https://norton-creative.com/, on LinkedIn, and on Instagram. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Robin Blanchette, CEO, and Founder at Norton Creative based in Houston, Texas. Welcome to the podcast, Robin. ROBIN: Thank you for having me, Rob. This is great. ROB: Great to have you here. Why don't you give us a focus in on the superpowers of Norton Creative? I think you have a pretty distinctive story for us. ROBIN: Absolutely. We say we go narrow and deep. We're focused really only on the restaurant and hospitality industries. We do creative work, find whitespace, differentiating positions, ways to bring the brand to life in this industry. We're experts in hospitality. To be honest, I just have to say that this industry versus any other industry is really one of service, and that's what we love about it. It's really about the people. I mean, you could see through the pandemic, the restaurant owners/operators, independent chains, they all rolled up their sleeves. They're completely open and humbled to be in an environment to serve people, and that's what we do at Norton. That's why we focus solely on this industry. ROB: It's fascinating. I've known some very small agencies that try to focus in on very mom n' pop restaurants. You see really small clients – and sometimes they have bigger restaurants, too. Where is your sweet spot? Are you working with local, single location? Are you looking mostly at multi-location or franchise or chain? How does that fit your mix? ROBIN: We really are in both, but I will say our primary client is multi-unit operators, mid-size and larger chains. We do independents. We have an architecture and interiors team, so anything the guest really sees from a restaurant perspective is what we focus on. Architecture and interiors, we do large chains, but we also do a lot of independents. Chefs that have been maybe working for a brand and then they want to create their own brand. We've got a client that wanted to start a cookie shop, and we created a cookie shop. She's got one location; she started as a virtual brand and she was like, “Now I want to open an actual, four-walls place.” So, most of our clients are large chains and mid-size chains, but I will say we're a creative group of people, and if you know creative design type folks, they want some really unique and independent stuff to do. So we like to balance it out for them, for the team, because they like to do unique, niche-y kind of stuff too. You know what I mean? ROB: Absolutely. To that point a little bit, when you're talking about a restaurant that is investing in architecture and design, it's still somebody thinking a little bit bigger than someone who took over a lease, someone else moved out, they're moving in, they want to sell their mom's favorite sandwich. I mean, maybe there's a good place for it, but I hear you talking about investing in a brand architecture that might be able to scale out two more locations, even if someone's starting with one. ROBIN: Absolutely. I think right now, too, certainly during the pandemic and what we're thinking of as post-pandemic – let's put out the positive vibes there that this is post-pandemic – there's a lot of folks that are looking to take their one-unit, two-unit, three-unit and franchise. There's a lot of franchise development agreements happening right now. We work with a regional chain out of Houston called Shipley Do-Nuts, and if you're a Texan, you know very well what that brand's all about because you're born and raised with it. But they're franchising rapidly across the country. To be able to get brand standards and get your box right, get things lined up so a potential franchisee, or even a potential buyer for that matter, can look at it and go, “Yeah, I can expand this, it's obvious” – Wahlburgers is one of our clients based out of Austin, and they're doing the same thing. It's like, let's create a brand position, a story of your standards so that we can now execute this in multiple ways across the world and across the U.S. ROB: Franchisees seem like a particular challenge. A lot of times you'll see some really well-run restaurants, even gas stations, tend to not be franchised. So how do you think about the design of the brand, the design of the collateral in a way that is easier for a franchisee to succeed? That seems like quite a challenge. ROBIN: I think some of it has to do with development agreements and how the franchisor decides to set up the boundaries and rules and how they also might hold franchisees accountable for those. From a franchisee perspective, there does have to be space – I worked for Applebee's corporate for many years, and we had an incredible group of franchisees and business owners that owned lots of different chains, lots of different restaurants, and we would have local walls that they could interchange their own local flair, if you will. So, there are ways for franchisees to make it their own, but you're buying the sign and paying royalties towards that brand. For us, when we create pieces or brand standards, there has to be some sort of give and take there for a franchisee. It's their business, it's their livelihood, it's their company. My philosophy is around brand purity. I believe that individual brands should take up their own space – not that nobody has a competitor, but in terms of creating a brand from scratch or even trying to differentiate one – look, there's lots of wing places in this world, but Buffalo Wild Wings are the only people that do it their way. They're the only one that focuses on a gathering place for sports and the best wings, or whatever. So I think about it as brand purity, and franchisees think of it that way too. That's why they're buying in. ROB: Yeah, Buffalo Wild Wings you mentioned is a client of yours, I believe. ROBIN: Yeah. ROB: It is a fascinating thing; there's kind of a hole in the market to an extent. You say, what is the national sports bar chain that is actually going to deliver on something you expect to receive from it? It's not quite there. We have a couple local chains; some of them die, some of them come, some of them go. And then there is the big yellow and black sign that you can see from the highway. I think it's interesting to turn a corner here and talk about the origin story of Norton Creative. You mentioned your own background on the brand side. I think it's very credible. What led you to move from the corporate side and the brand side and take some risks by starting your own shop? ROBIN: It's very scary. [laughs] I'll say that. It was a very scary proposition. I joke when people are starting their own restaurant brands or whatever; I'm like, I was googling how to start a company. I'm not going to lie about that. That's the God's honest truth. “What forms do I need to fill out?” or whatever. But the impetus for it was – if you've spent any time at all on the client side – I hired all the big agencies and many small agencies. I've gone through the formal pitch processes that take months and I've hired somebody out of the blue. I've been on that side primarily. So I really knew what was missing, I think. That was part of it. Gosh, I had great agencies and really talented creative people, and certainly all the major consulting companies, too, come in, like the big decks from the Big Three or whatever. What's missing is I could never find anybody that could solve my creative conundrum out of the gate. They didn't really get it on the agency side. Now that I'm on the other side, we work really hard to get it, like “What is your business problem you're trying to solve?” Not just your marketing problem, not just your creative problem, but what's your objective? We come back to that every time. And every agency I ever had would bring beautiful work, but it didn't actually go to work. I hear other people say that all the time, like “Our creative works,” but ours really is about sales, traffic, and profitability. It's even hard to train creatives a lot of times in that, but think about it; when we're doing a menu design, we do not do menu design without engineering, which is profitability work. Where do the items go? Where does the eye go for the guest? Where's the heat of the person? We do all of the backend stuff on that because I don't want to design a menu, roll it out, and then your best-in-the-world item fails because we've shoved it someplace. That's a long way of answering your question in that we really understand, I really understood, what was missing. We have a tendency to say things like, look, I am not going to give you a 100-page deck to answer a very short question of “What are we best in the world at?” Let's write a paragraph. It's born out of some sort of truth, right? If we're going to have to explain this to the guest for two hours, it's never going to work. What is it in its most simple form? What's your brand about? I think what has made a difference – we've been around eight years now. Somebody told me when I first started Norton, “It's like owning a boat. The best day is the day you get it and the day you sell it.” [laughs] The in between is all the work. It's just hard work. And that's where we are now. We're in the middle of the work. And it was born out of “We get you because we've been there. We understand.” ROB: You have a very deep experience in the industry. How do you go about taking somebody who may be very talented, and they may have even delivered a very good quality of work across a range of industries – how do you bring them into the restaurant world? How do you build that into culture, build that into training, build that into process? ROBIN: First of all, we've all eaten at restaurants, so it's not a stretch to be like, “Do you know what it's like to be a restaurant guest and read a menu?” That's the first point of contact for the most part. So that's not a hard hurdle to overcome. It's not like I'm teaching somebody about the pipeline across Alaska or something. It's not something hard to teach. People get it, and they get the restaurant experience. In terms of the underneath of it all, some of it's just teaching and getting in there, being thrown in and saying, “Look, here's how we engineer our menu. Here's how we build a box to make the customer journey be the best. Here's how we create stories.” Some of it is just teaching, and we really do like to hire more junior folks and train them into the industry. Again, I'm really focused on our leaders. In the restaurant industry, we talk about “train the trainer.” We train the trainer a lot here, and we use a lot of the way that restaurant operators train somebody who is a 16-year-old host and how they greet the guests and how a server might greet somebody, how a kitchen might move quickly but still provide quality food. We use those same fundamentals for what we do every day. I don't want a piece of work that goes out that is not the best it can be. We've got expo. If you've ever worked in a restaurant, you know what expo is. You're checking the plate before it goes to the guest. So, we have folks in place that get it, and we also hire a lot of people who've been on the other side. There used to be a thing where it was like in-house creatives are maybe not that great. They haven't worked across a variety of industries of whatever. But in-house creatives on the restaurant side get it. They know they've got to turn it quick. There's somebody standing over their shoulder saying “Make that blue, make that purple” or whatever. They understand the language, too. So, we hire people like that as well. ROB: Got it. You mentioned packaging; are you also even in packaging design and takeout? Has that been part of your world for the past couple of years especially? ROBIN: Oh my gosh, yes, and long before that, you can imagine. One of the very first projects that I worked on when I was at Applebee's was creating Carside To Go. You might remember it back in the late '90s, when that all started for some of the bigger casual dining chains. All the pitfalls that go into that are the same ones we have today, which is like the guest doesn't want to get out of their car, and how are we going to be of service to them? So yeah, we do full to-go packaging. Again, it's built out of the brand. With Buffalo Wild Wings, we're super flexible. They have a lead creative agency, which is the Martin Agency, which we're huge fans of – huge fans – and we do all of the menu and merchandising work for them. So we all work together. When it comes to things like packaging, we're working on packaging along with other folks, many times, working with operations, working cross-functionally with either other agencies or also working within the organization cross-functionally. Lots of different teams. We're not just working with the marketing teams; we're working with the development teams and real estate teams, things like that. ROB: Right. A challenge that strikes me – I think this is a challenge brand side as well – when you talk about something like package design, that's kind of an intermittent need. Same thing with internal architecture. Some people – maybe you'll tell me differently – don't tweak their menu that often. So how do you juggle having these capabilities that are not a persistent need, but it's a recurring one? It's kind of that challenging “usually but not always” need. How do you juggle some of those specialties? ROBIN: First of all, the way we're set up, we certainly have retained clients that we work on stuff every single day. We're in and out all year long, and those are transformational partnerships where we are in it. Everything they need, they call us. And then we also do a lot of project work. When somebody has a need – when Smoothie King needs menu design and engineering work and profitability work, or Red Lobster – we just finished doing some work for Red Lobster – they will call us and say, “We need this work. We're not ready yet” – especially right now in the middle of the pandemic, the government shut down our industry, in effect, in 2020. What's happening right now in the industry is we have lots of folks that are calling and saying, “Hey, look, I'm not ready yet for the full package of services because I just can't. We had 50 people in our marketing department; now we have three. We can't do it yet, but hey, can you do this for us right now? Can you build this campaign? Can you do this for the next six months?” or whatever. And of course we can. Again, we're of service. We'd like the transformational partnership because obviously – and you understand – when you have those retained relationships, you can really add more value long term, and certainly it helps from a resourcing perspective internally and the P&L. But from just how we can handle the intermittent needs, we do. We just say yes. ROB: What are you seeing when it comes to – some places have probably reopened pretty well, but some places have probably reopened hoping that they're going to be able to keep doing exactly what they did before. What are you seeing change in the actual function of restaurants, the marketing, the design? There's obviously this mobile and pickup version of things, but are people going to be able to relaunch these big box, large format restaurants with crowds? How are they having to adapt their space for the new reality? ROBIN: Fortunately and unfortunately, we've got hundreds of thousands fewer restaurants than we did before the pandemic. You'll have to check me on the number, but I think it's 100,000 fewer restaurants in the United States from before the pandemic. For the restaurants remaining, the ones that fought, rolled up their sleeves, did their best to try to survive – PPP and ERC and all the ways in which – those chains are I would say healthier than ever. They reduced menu skus in terms of number of items, because menus were getting really big. It's hard to delete stuff because you're like, “Ah, I have that one guest that likes that item.” It's like, well, let's figure it out. So, menus got smaller. Restaurants had to be much more efficient in terms of how they were utilizing their supply chain. Obviously there are labor issues and all of these things. I would say from my purview, restaurants are more efficient than they were before, and there's people hungry for eating out. They're hungry for entertainment. My husband went to a car show/boat show thing this weekend and he's like, “It was like a mob scene.” People are like, “We'll take whatever, just to walk around and find something to do.” But people are back in restaurants again, and they're saying, “We want that.” In terms of the large chains, I think it's gotten some guests back. People are spending maybe a little less money. They're saying, “Maybe I was eating at the high-end fine dining before; now, you know what? I'm good. I would love to eat at TGI Friday's. I miss my potato skins.” ROB: It certainly makes sense. I've seen all over the map – one of our favorite pre-pandemic places, I think they still don't know what they want to be post-COVID. Their dining room is in a state of disarray, and they're like, “You can take your food and sit outside and eat it if you want, but we don't even know what to do with our dining room.” They used to have an ice cream scooper, and they just dumped it. I don't know if they know what they want to be when they're done. But you see these brand transformations where their delivery was actually really, really good. And I've never seen them do free delivery, and they really nailed it. I've been surprised by what it can be. We're in Atlanta; you're in Houston. These are larger footprints. This is not New York City where you go pick up something around the corner or some guy walks something up to your door. 10 minutes is 5 miles. ROBIN: Right. Add traffic. But I will say the restaurants that are killing it right now are the ones that were like, “We're going to do whatever it takes. We're going to figure this out. What do people need? What am I going to do?” There was a whole period of time with lots of phone calls around self-delivery versus the third-party delivery folks. The third-party delivery folks were taking most of the margin in restaurants, and margins are very lean. I don't know what the general public thinks, but I will say that restaurants are not just printing money out there. It's a hard business. It's hard work, and the people are caring and of service. They want to provide the way in which – like my local restaurant, like what you're talking about, did everything they possibly could do. I'm like, I can't believe this bag of food showed up at my front door hot in five minutes. This is crazy. Way to go, guys. But yeah, lots of weird things that happen, but it was really born out of the grit of the industry. Think about things like virtual brands that are working out of kitchens. People are taking those down day parts and they're using them to try to make profit to keep those teams going. They're paying people by day. I think the biggest thing, Rob, that I was just thinking about is some of it – the brands that are the big chains that really have the dollars to be able to invest in technology – and I know you guys operate in this space – you can see the difference, the folks that have made the shift to these really turnkey technology platforms and point of sale platforms. The ones that can't do it, I think they're struggling more. ROB: Yeah. It's still definitely shifting. One of your friends, the Buffalo Wild Wings folks – I went to online order the other day and they said, “Do you want to order from our kitchen?” It's only pickup and delivery. It's not even a ghost kitchen. They're putting it front and center to people and saying, “Look, we're here too. This is a pickup spot and it's a place that's closer to you when you want delivery.” I don't know – maybe you helped them architect that. But it was evident to me, “Wait, this is closer to me. They'll probably get me my food faster and warmer.” We're just down the road from our friends at Chick-fil-A's headquarters, and what they're doing with their drive-thrus is herculean. Whereas I'll go to Burger King and their drive-thru is closed or it's taking half an hour. I go to Chick-fil-A, they're cranking through 50 cars in 5 minutes, and I don't even know – ROBIN: If I could pick up my prescriptions from Chick-fil-A, I would. [laughs] They are gold standard, man. Gold standard. You're absolutely right. Their speed of service – but they figured it out. That's what I'm saying. Just think about it. You've got all this dead space, and you've got cooks in the kitchen, and you have this time. If you're Friday's or Applebee's or Chili's, there's a dead time where nobody's eating. What are you going to do with that? Let's be more efficient. Let's figure out how to be of service more. I appreciate that. ROB: It is that commitment. I'm sure you've done this as a firm; it's that commitment to figuring it out. We had a local megachurch here that, in April of 2020, said, “We are closed through the end of the year.” The clarity of vision involved in that – you're telling everyone, “We're going to figure it out. We're not waiting around. We're not waiting for this thing to be over. We're going to lean straight into it and do what it takes to get through and emerge on the other side who we need to be, with whatever changed.” ROBIN: I saw that with restaurants, too. ROB: Robin, as you reflect on the growth of the firm so far, what are some lessons you've learned that you would want to go back and tell yourself as you're heading out of the brand world and the brand side and you're going to build your own firm to serve them? What would you tell yourself? Lessons learned. ROBIN: Oh man, lessons learned. Oh gosh. I've got to say this out loud? I would have been more confident about my own abilities and the abilities of our team from the get-go. And when I say that, we always did great work from the beginning, and always had really big clients from the beginning. What is it, the cobbler's kids have no shoes? [laughs] We did not market ourselves. We didn't talk about the great things we did. We said, “We're not ego-driven, we're not about awards,” all the things we would say. “We're not about getting awards. We just do the good work, we're super humble, we're scrappy, we fly under the radar.” Those are all the things that we'd say about ourselves, but at the same time, the humility in it is totally our personality. That's just how we are. But we should be standing up and saying, “Oh my gosh, look at our great work. We are so proud of it.” You can say that and still be humble about what you do and not have this big fat ego about things. I would say I would've done that earlier. Coming out of the pandemic, we started doing that. We're like, oh my gosh, we've touched over 150 different restaurant brands in eight years. There's no agency that can say that. We've touched so many of them and loved them, to be honest, and built real, meaningful relationships with people that we care and cherish. I wish we would've waved our Norton flag from the beginning. Better late than never, but now's the time for us to say, we're proud of what we do. We're proud of our industry. We think they're amazing people. I'm telling you, even going back to the conferences, the restaurant and hospitality focused, the keynote speakers – it's all changed. People are like, “We're so grateful for our teams. They're leading from a place of optimism and hope and empathy” – things that I didn't really hear 20 years ago. It was all about the almighty dollar. Now we're all very Simon Sinek, Adam Grant, hope and optimism focused. I think it's what we've been through. That's what I'd tell myself. ROB: It's an interesting journey there. One challenge I can imagine is the perception of conflict and conflicting clients. These people have chicken, these people have pizza, those people have chicken, those people have pizza, they have sandwiches. How do you address the challenge of conflict, both the actual concerns of it as well as the perception? I think that's a common thing to many people, but maybe especially in the low-margin restaurant world. ROBIN: I think the perception is changing in the agency world a little bit. I certainly, when I hired McCann back in the day for their amazing TV and creative work – love those people – that was a really important thing to me that we made sure there was no creative conflicts in their agency. I did think that at the time as a client and as a CMO. I did think, “Do I really care about that?” [laughs] I really just want the best creative minds, and surely they're not taking work from one team and giving it to another. And that really is true. They're not doing that. At least in my view, no agency is doing that. We certainly don't do it. We do conflicting work sometimes, but for the most part all of our retained clients, there's no conflict. And we try to keep it that way. Any sort of transformational partnership that I think of, long-term relationship – like Fogo de Chao is one of our big clients who we love. They're amazing. Look at them for leadership in the restaurant industry. They're just amazing. We're not going to take on another Brazilian steakhouse, for instance. We're just not going to do that. We're very focused on what we can try to solve for them. So, the retained relationships, we keep that very, very clean. In terms of the project work, it comes in and out anyway. We would rethink that, probably, if they were going to become a long-term partner. But we're pretty careful about that. We're never working on conflicting brands or direct competitors at the same time, ever. That's a hard no. ROB: Yeah, I can certainly see how Brazilian steakhouse is a niche; it's hard to define – perhaps you can, but it's hard to define separate experiences in that world. It also strikes me that that's a place where hospitality has really lived at a chain level for a long time. The real hospitality in the hospitality industry can be missing quite often. What I see across a lot of your brands that you work with is I don't necessarily even think about them on a list. I think about them as the place that you go to that is – you mentioned Applebee's, but then you mentioned something like Fogo de Chao, you mentioned something like Macaroni Grill. It's not the fifth version of that thing; it's almost the only version of what it is, and what I think of when I go there. It sounds like that's what you're aiming for – helping them be the only thing of their kind. A Buffalo Wild Wings is the experience that it is, and it's not one of your top five chicken wings sports bar places. ROBIN: Right. I think that's important for any brand, including Norton. That's why we say narrow and deep. Be who you are. Be comfortable in your own skin. We play the “what if?” game a lot. This brand's known for potato skins; what if they did this? You know, in this service business, now that I'm on the outside of it, the idea really is to provide what we in Texas and Louisiana call “lagniappe,” which is the added value, the special thing, the thing that maybe nobody has thought of to be helpful. How are we going to present menus that's something that's different than everyone else, or whatever. For all of the brands that we work on, what are they best in the world at? That comes down to something as simple as what's on their menu. What are they best in the world at? Even if it's not a profitable item, what can they be known for? All of us as people and as brands deserve that. You've heard that term, probably, and used it in your lifetime, about “death by a thousand cuts.” I think there are so many brands that you get different leadership teams that come in, different people, everybody's got a new idea, and then you get off task. Next thing you know, you don't even recognize your own brand. So, we work on that. ROB: Really, really fascinating firm, fascinating work. Great progress, Robin. Obviously, you're working with household names, and ones that have pushed through the pandemic. When people want to connect with you, Robin, and want to connect with Norton, where should they go to find you? ROBIN: Obviously, our website is an easy way. Certainly LinkedIn. We're Norton Creative. I always say you can call me. You can reach out to me in any form or fashion. It's all out there. We certainly have a marketing director, Jesse Dickerson, who is managing all of the day-to-day business development and activities. Now we aren't the cobbler's kid who has no shoes; we are trying to do a little bit better at talking about what we do. So certainly website and Instagram, LinkedIn. We're all out there. ROB: Wonderful. Robin, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing. We are glad to hear your story and your expertise. Thank you so much. ROBIN: Thank you. ROB: Be well. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Erica Salm Rench, Chief Operating Officer, Rasa.io (New Orleans, LA)   Erica Salm Rench is Chief Operating Officer at Rasa.io, a company that supports marketers, business owners, and large associations by applying AI to generate automated, smart, personalized email newsletters. Rasa's mission? T0 better inform the world through relevant content. Clients import their subscribers. Rasa plugs in subscribers' super-relevant content – their own blogs, their own LinkedIn company page, their Facebook page, their Twitter profile – plus relevant external sources. From this rich pool of content, Rasa automatically selects which stories go to which subscribers . . . and refines that selection process as the system learns more about the individual subscribers. Articles are first selected from sources a client trusts for content, then filtered by trusted keyword and topic. Through an editorial review window, the client can scan the engine-selected articles and deselect those that s/he does not want the AI to “potentially select for one of (its) subscribers.” Using much of publishers' original metadata/article descriptions eliminates the need to rewrite introductory material or reformat content, saving time and a lot of headaches. From the Rasa dashboard, a client can see in aggregate its audiences' interests . . . across any period of time and range of articles and then drill down to see the click-responses of an individual. Rasa provides a way for clients to pull those insights into their own corporate systems. A couple of years ago, Rasa launched a self-service model that allows companies to try the platform and “DIY the newsletter themselves.” In addition to large and small companies, Rasa works with largescale association organizations that often rely on events as important revenue streams. These need focused personalized email communications to optimize member engagement. Erica can be reached on her company's website at https://rasa.io/ or by sending an email to hello@rasa.io or erica@rasa.io Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Erica Salm Rench, Chief Operating Officer at Rasa.io based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Welcome to the podcast, Erica. ERICA: Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. ROB: It's excellent to have you here. Why don't you give us a glimpse into the superpowers of Rasa.io? What do you all do?  ERICA: Sure thing. At Rasa.io, we do AI for smart email newsletter generation. In the same way that, for better or worse, your social media feeds know what content to recommend to you based on your prior engagement, we recommend relevant stories to you in your emails. We work with organizations large and small – anyone who needs a newsletter, which is pretty much anyone. They import their subscribers, start to plug in content sources that are super relevant to your subscribers – their own blogs, their own LinkedIn company page, their Facebook page, their Twitter profile. They plug all those things in along with some relevant external sources – maybe Harvard Business Review produces great business content that's relevant to their space. That content starts flowing in, forms a rich content pool, and then from there we automatically choose which stories go to which subscribers and we get smarter as we learn more about those subscribers. It's not only personalized, really engaging content, a great way to engage with the organization's brand, but it's also automated, so it saves people a ton of time on the newsletter process. Newsletters can be a really unsexy task, so it makes that unsexy task a lot faster. [laughs] ROB: I'm sure this exists on an entire spectrum. A lot of AI type work reminds me of self-driving cars and that sort of thing. There's sort of a ramp-up of trust. First of all, getting somewhere is a lot of work. Writing a newsletter is a lot of work, to the point where people don't want to do it. You might not walk somewhere that you drive, but you might not trust the self-driving car to get you all the way there. What is this on-ramp for a marketer or maybe a business owner to grow with trust in this system that's going to send I-don't-know-what to my customers? What's it going to say to them? How do you build trust, and what's that ramp look like? ERICA: That is such a great question, and we get it a lot. AI is one of those things that you get out of it what you put into it. It's the same with newsletters. It's the same with a chatbot. The chatbot is only going to be as good as the training that's put into it, and it's the same with newsletters. Essentially, the first level of trusting that the newsletter is going to be great is the fact that you get to put in your own sources. The AI is not going to go out and do a Google search query to find articles. It's going to first draw from sources that you've said, “These sources produce content trusted to this space.” So that's one thing. Furthermore, you can take each of those sources and filter them down by trusted keyword and topic. To use the HBR example again, you might say, “I really like Harvard Business Review as a source, but only if HBR hits on the topic of marketing,” for example. From there, we're pulling in the most relevant articles from your relevant sources. After that point, you also can include an editorial review window where you can just scan the articles that have come in from the engine and deselect anything that you don't want the AI to potentially select for one of your subscribers. So, there are lots of levels of control. The AI is selecting stories, but only from the list of stories that you've said, “These are okay for my subscribers.” ROB: I see. At times am I picking the articles? Or have I done that just by picking the keywords and everything else? Can I mess with the newsletter before I send it just to make sure I like the articles that are in there? ERICA: Absolutely, and most people do. Maybe you have 50 articles coming in from your preapproved sources; you might deselect a few of those that aren't perfectly on brand. Or some people do reverse-engineer it and say, “These are 50 great articles, but I'm going to choose the 5 that I want everyone to get.” So, you can override the AI in that way. We don't recommend it, but you certainly can use the system to your benefit because the curation aspect of our system is also really powerful. ROB: Got it. Talk to me about the copy a little bit. What goes into the newsletter to describe the articles? If I'm fearing the Terminator and the machines taking over the world –  ERICA: [laughs] Killer robots, right? ROB: Yeah, I'm afraid of the article summaries too, and the headlines. How does that part get decided? What's going to show up in the newsletter, what's going to get clipped, what's going to be linked out afterwards, that sort of thing? ERICA: That's another great question. We look to the publisher. We're going to take in the publisher's metadata or their published description of the article. In a lot of cases, that is a rich description that the blog publisher writes themselves, or sometimes by default it might be the first couple sentences of that blog. It's going to be the publisher's title that they assign, and it's going to be the publisher's primary image that comes along with that blog. We're going to pull in all of that great data, and, obviously, the publisher is going to want their article to look great, so we're pulling from data that is really carefully thought of. And you can make tweaks to that if you want. You can impact the description of the article and have it be your own commentary on the article if you want, but you certainly don't have to. So, it eliminates a lot of the newsletter production time that goes into rewriting article descriptions and resizing images and redoing a lot of the data that already can be done for you. ROB: Not that we want to play around with the product all day, but I kind of do – when we get into the user, the recipient, clicking on the article, do we know what they clicked on? Do we even get a sense of how much they read it? Are we launching the article in a way where we can track what they do with it? ERICA: To a certain extent you can do that within the dashboard, and then we also have an open API and several integrations that allow you to draw those insights into your own systems. What we're doing with each article when it comes into the system is using natural language processing to “read” it and conceptualize it and say, “Okay, this Harvard Business Review article is about marketing and SEO and brand management.” So then when Erica or Rob engages with that article, we know that Erica and Rob are interested in those topics. From there, in the Rasa dashboard, you can see on the aggregate what your audience is interested in across many, many, many different articles, across whatever time period you want. Then if you want those insights on the individuals, you can look up the individual and see what they're clicking on. But if you want to say bring those insights into your own CRM, you could fire off a campaign based on everyone who's interested in marketing. ROB: Got it. Let's get into the origin story a little bit. How did you come to be involved in Rasa, and where did the platform come from? ERICA: There's definitely a story around that. When I was in business school about 10 years ago – I can't believe it's been that long – Amith Nagarajan, who is the Chairman of Rasa, came to speak to one of my business school classes, but about his former company. So, I actually had engaged with him and talked to him about working for his former company called Aptify, a really popular association management system among many, many huge, largescale associations out there. I still had school to do; I had another job that I had to finish out. So that opportunity didn't quite work out and the timing wasn't great, but then about four or five years later, he was spinning up this exciting Rasa opportunity, and he engaged me and talked to me about the potential of getting involved in email. For me, I was actually working at a digital agency at the time. I worked in a kind of agency that probably a lot of your listeners are working at, where we did everything online – SEO, front- and backend web dev, paid online ads. We did everything online. But the one thing that we didn't touch was email because email is so hard to do in a quality way and at scale. That's why I thought to myself, “Oh, this Rasa.io thing, there's some meat to this, because if you can do email at scale and personalize it without a ton of effort, there aren't many people doing that.” ROB: What role did you come into the business in, and what does the journey up to COO look like? ERICA: I came in in more of a customer success and marketing capacity, and then as we grew, I really focused in on that customer success and helping our enterprise-scale customers succeed. We put in a lot of time in those campaigns. Something that's interesting about AI tools is that, like you mentioned earlier, you really get out of them what you put in. We wanted our early customers to do exceptionally well, and I worked with my team on that. As we grew the business, I evolved eventually into more of a business development role, and then more recently even more of a leadership role, and that's what brought me to COO. ROB: As you're unlocking the COO role, what are you learning about the business and how to make it function well that might've been harder to see from elsewhere in the organization? ERICA: Oh gosh, that's such a great question. In my prior marketing agency role, I worked much closer with the developers. When I first started at Rasa, I didn't work as closely with the developers and the engineers, and now, in this evolution to COO, I'm working again closely with developers and engineers, which has been really great. It's allowed me to connect the dots – when I'm talking to a prospect or when I'm supporting one of my team members talking to a prospect who's interested in the tool, there's more of now, in my head, a direct connection with “Oh, let's go talk to these folks who can directly impact the development of the product.” Being able to more easily connect those dots for me has been great. And then of course all the financial stuff. It's what I went to school for, so now I'm doing the nitty-gritty of the numbers. [laughs] ROB: Sure. To pull on a little bit of a thread, since you are a product company, a lot of our guests are certainly on the services side; they talk about the pride of bootstrapping. That's mostly the option you have as a services company. It's not like a lot of agencies are – there's some interesting stuff going on in funding and acquisitions, but mostly not the case. How are you and Rasa.io thinking about funding growth in the business? Do you have investors? Will you have more investors? How does that look? ERICA: We are privately funded. We had the resources we needed to get off the ground, and now an exciting engine for growth is a self-service model that we launched a couple of years back which allows folks to come in, try the platform, DIY the newsletter themselves. So that's another revenue stream for us, and then we also have the largescale association organizations that we work. The revenue from those has really fueled our growth as well. ROB: That's such an interesting market, those associations. I'm sure they've all needed email; now they just might not have as many events to talk about as they used to. ERICA: Yeah. If you're familiar at all with the space, you know that the events for associations are really important revenue streams, so they've had to look to outside tools, to digital tools like email, like personalized Rasa.io emails, to make sure that member engagement is still optimized. ROB: What are you seeing from that vantage point? I know I certainly greatly valued our local marketing association, some of those meetings, some of those speakers, some of those conferences. They seem to be coming back slower than almost anything else out there. What are you seeing from your vantage point in when these associations are firing up? How many of them are doing events, how many of them are not doing events? What's the trendline looking like? ERICA: That's a great question. The majority of the organizations that we work with who did virtual events in 2020 are now either doing hybrid or entirely in-person events for late 2021 and now 2022. Obviously, with the ascent of first Delta, then Omicron, there was a lot of uncertainty, so I think that's why people still hung on to the dual virtual and in-person. We did also see that doing both is really hard. It's like running two entirely separate conferences at the same time. I think the evolution is slowly but surely back to in-person events for folks that those were important revenue streams and tools for member engagement. ROB: It's been interesting. I'm in a dues-based membership organization where I think they feel the pressure to keep some sort of event going to drive value for members. They were doing hybrid for a while, and then they stopped. We have a distributed team, so some of my distributed team wasn't getting their content anymore. I asked them why they killed the virtual option and they said that people were not showing up in person at all, and they were just coming in – if it was a two-hour event, they'd pop in for 30 minutes and disappear. So, it's interesting seeing some of the hybrid stuff go further back than I ever thought it would, and go away in some cases where I thought we would continue to have an online option. ERICA: Right. Yeah, they're not just making their revenue from people paying fees to come join a conference, but they're also making a lot of money from people like myself and other vendors who are interested in working with their members. Doing that virtually is much harder than having vendors come in person and share their services and have a booth. So yeah, I think there's a lot of reason to eventually migrate back to in-person for the big associations. ROB: Erica, with some time on the product side, with some time on the agency side, now with an ever-rising level of responsibility, if you were to go back into the agency world, what are some tools and some lessons that you would bring to bear in running a services organization, knowing what you know now? ERICA: Oh gosh, that is such a good question. This is going to sound – this is very biased, but I would include something like a Rasa newsletter in all of our online packages because there just wasn't a tool to do email well back in the day when we were developing our packages for clients. I would also have wanted to be one of the earlier adopters of lots of those integration connectors. We use Zapier at Rasa. There was just a lot we did – we processized things really well at my agency, but I think that if we knew more about Zapier earlier on, or an Integrate leader or all those awesome connecting tools, our processes would have been so much tighter than they even were. So yeah, I think that would've been a major game-changer for us too. ROB: Do you think that's been more a matter of timing, or was some of that also being in more of a product mindset and maybe more of the team is more technical in a software company versus an agency? ERICA: That's a good question. I think it was both. I think it was a matter of timing because we developed a lot of our processes before tools like that were more mainstream. And I think you make a good point; even though we did have a bunch of developers on the team and we did have a bunch of technical analysts and technical SEO folks, we did still have a lot of content and graphic design and creatives who might not have been as comfortable with the integrator tools. But I think once those integrations are set up, then it becomes looped. Then anyone can use them. ROB: Talent is always hard – you've mentioned working with developers in both roles. Competition for developer talent may be among the hardest of jobs to find people for, to keep people for. How do you think about creating an environment and a pattern of success for talent in general and software developers specifically? Because I have been one, and we're a bit of a different breed. ERICA: It's so hard. We try to be really purpose-focused at Rasa. We try to really focus on our greater mission of better informing the world through relevant content. When people are rallied around that, it becomes much more exciting than getting emails out the door. So, we try to align our values to that greater purpose. We try to align a lot of the decisions we make to that greater purpose. It allows everyone a really good framework with which to make big decisions. I think that's definitely helped at Rasa. We have a really good average employee tenure. ROB: Very interesting. Email has been such an interesting channel over time. I think it falls in and out of fashion almost seasonally like the color white. It's really something. Where do you think we are in the ebb and flow of email? What do you think it is that keeps us coming back to email? ERICA: Oh, that's such a good question. Email is not the fancy new car. It is not the Tesla of the digital marketing world by any means. But time and time again, it shows up as one of the top channels for encouraging transactions, for driving people to a website. Landing in people's inboxes is a completely separate conversation, but your chances of landing in someone's primary inbox as an email versus catching a glimpse of their eyes on a social media channel when you're not doing paid is still much greater. For better or worse, people are glued to their inboxes. They wake up with their email, they go to bed with their email. We know that from the data. So even though it's a dinosaur, it still is effective. [laughs] ROB: It's a really helpful dinosaur. ERICA: It's a helpful dinosaur, yes. ROB: You probably think almost equal parts about artificial intelligence and email. Those are two very interesting things to pair together. Where do you see this kind of technology expanding? You've got this Rasa core of applying AI content to email, but where does it start to go next? What's coming up? ERICA: I don't know so much if it's next or just the way I've seen AI influence marketers' lives. Even if it's not the predictive piece of it – that's not as tangible in terms of making people's lives better – the automation that's inherent in AI has made so many marketers' lives better. Of course, there's the Rasa tool, but then in terms of social media tools, back in the day we used Hootsuite to schedule our posts, but now there are so many intelligent social tools out there that recycle posts and also generate the snippet to social media. That's just a little bit smarter than what I was doing five years ago. And then there are tools like MarketMuse that do really great semantic optimization. Back in the day, SEO was a lot of keyword stuffing, and now there are tools out there that help you intelligently write content so that the search engines will identify it as authoritative, trustworthy, you look like the expert. It's making things a little bit smarter. Nothing I've noticed has blown away the marketing world yet, but it's these incremental adjustments that AI has helped with that have made things faster and smarter. ROB: I'm so glad you mentioned MarketMuse. It was on the tip of my brain, and Aki from MarketMuse is a previous guest on the podcast. He came in to talk about it. ERICA: Cool. I just did a webinar with Jeff Coyle over there. ROB: I met Jeff first, actually. Jeff was the person people pointed me to, and then that led us to also having Aki on the podcast. ERICA: Awesome. ROB: I'm glad we closed the loop on that. Number one, I couldn't remember it; number two, if they were your mortal enemy, I didn't want to bring it up, perhaps. [laughs] ERICA: Oh, no, not at all. We have an awesome tech exchange with them. We use their tool for our content and they use our tool for their newsletter. ROB: Definitely have used their tool as well. You mentioned some tools to bubble up and bounce social content. Is there anything that's most effective for you in that mindset? Any tools you'd recommend? ERICA: Yeah. We use MeetEdgar, we use MarketMuse. Oh, I don't know how much AI they're using, but we use SEMrush too, for just looking at general search volume, keyword ranking. For anyone who hasn't really done a lot of SEO or diving into the SEO world, I love SEMrush. It's a great place to start with your keyword strategy. Other tools – oh, for you, I'm actually curious if you've heard of – there's an AI tool that's on the tip of my tongue, but it's for audio. They ingest your audio, they read the file, and then you can type edits. What is it called? It's totally escaping me right now. ROB: I do think I have seen that. I do not recall off the top of my head. We keep an eye on it. We put transcripts of every episode on the page with our episodes, but we actually looked at a bunch of AI tools for it, and when we first started, the quality just wasn't there. ERICA: It wasn't there yet. Got it. ROB: I haven't reevaluated that recently; we have a phenomenal transcriber who hopefully will hear this. I don't talk to her enough, but I hope she'll be encouraged, because she's just remarkable. Hopefully, she'll be encouraged here, but we have a great human who transcribes. ERICA: A great human. That's so good. ROB: And some things are really, really hard for AI – something like Rasa.io, the computer might not transcribe correctly, or something like MarketMuse. And then you get into SEMrush and you just totally blow their minds. They just don't know what to do. But it's all getting better. It's going to get there. ERICA: It's getting better, right. It's nothing like blowing people out of the water yet. I thought of the name of it. It's called Descript. Have you heard of it? ROB: Yeah, that's right. The letter “D,” is that right? ERICA: Yep. So, you have the same experience; there are a lot of tools out there that might not be complete game-changers yet, but just making people's lives a little bit easier right now. And soon I'm sure there will be game-changers. ROB: Absolutely. Erica, when people want to get in touch with you and with Rasa.io, where should they go? Although I think I tipped your hand on the second part. ERICA: You can feel free to reach out to hello@rasa.io. You're welcome to email me directly; I'm just erica@rasa.io. I'm always happy to answer people's questions or direct them to folks that can do a better job than I can. [laughs] ROB: This is great, Erica. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for helping us understand this topic. ERICA: Sure thing. ROB: We've got to keep on figuring it out, and you're helping us. Congratulations on all that you all are doing at Rasa. I wish you the best. ERICA: Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate the time. ROB: All right, be well. Thank you. Bye. ERICA: Thank you. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Erik Jensen (Salt Lake City, UT), Co-Owner and Chief Strategy Officer, Predictive ROI (La Crosse, WI)   Erik Jensen is Co-Owner and Chief Strategy Officer at Predictive ROI, a remote-first firm that helps “agencies, coaches, and consultants plant their flags of authority and monetize that position.” In this interview, Erik addresses the difficulties service businesses may encounter in developing a “position of thought leadership”:  Poor discovery and development processes. Failure to treat themselves as a client. Failure to understand “what it means to plant their flag.”  When agencies try to be everything to everyone, their messages will be inconsistent and unfocused. True thought leaders do not have messages that lack clarity and strength.  Erik emphasizes that it is dangerous for an agency to assume it knows why a particular potential client approaches the agency for help. Customers may come because: They know you, don't understand their problem, and are looking for a safe sounding board. A client gave them a referral – but the client may be sending “bad fits.” They saw your marketing efforts/work and have “nothing better to do” than to ask to see if you can solve their problem. Saying “yes” to work that is not in your sweet spot often means the work will take more effort and fail to be profitable. That's why, Erik says, it is important for agencies “niche down” to a well-defined target market . . . and to niche down fast. There are a number of ways to find this “ideal” market . . . SWOT analysis, an addressable audience audit, an assessment of past client successes and profitability . . . but Erik recommends asking three questions: What's your superpower? What are you really good at? What do you love to do?  Who do you love to do that work for, and why do you care about serving that audience?   Will you be able to make a great case study off of that client? You want the opportunity to do great work that you can leverage into future work.  If an agency serves multiple industries, Erik says, they're like the legs of a stool . . . not stable and not comfortable. He provides a solution: “Find a common problem that all of those industries share that you're really good at solving. That's the top of the stool.” Erik believes the case study question is pivotal in supporting agency success and that it facilitates agency growth by: Filtering and focusing business development efforts at the very beginning so that you only take on those clients for whom you expect your efforts will provide excellent results.  Forcing you to document your work to build a “body of evidence.” Providing social proof from past clients that says, “We're great, and we don't have to say it about ourselves. Here's what other people say about us.” Erik also provides a detailed overview of how to effectively bring on a business partner. Predictive ROI offers a free book on niching down, leveraging authority into a monetization stream, building great content, and clarifying purpose at predictiveroi.com/free-book. Erik can be found on LinkedIn, Facebook, and his agency's website at: predictiveroi.com. He invites people to join the agency's free weekly Q&A sessions, where 10 minutes of teaching are followed by an open-forum business problem discussion.  Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm joined today by Erik Jensen, Co-Owner and Chief Strategy Officer at Predictive ROI, a remote-first firm – but he's based in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Welcome to the podcast, Erik. ERIK: Hey, Rob. Thanks for having me on the show. Actually, the agency is based in La Crosse. I am way over in Salt Lake City, Utah. So, we've got folks all over the place, which is actually kind of fun. For anybody that does or runs a remote company, you know what I'm talking about. For people that don't, that maybe gives them heart palpitations. But it works well for our team. ROB: That's pretty great. I'm sure they would like to come visit you. We did a family road trip out to Salt Lake City and back in summer of 2020. ERIK: There you go. ROB: We had some fun. We saw the great outdoors as a family but spent the better part of a month on the other side over in Midway. ERIK: Oh, fantastic. ROB: Love the area. ERIK: Yeah, there's some really cool things. I'm actually a native of Minnesota, so I'm a Minnesota boy, and I spent a lot of time living in Wisconsin as well, where I met my business partner, Steven. But yeah, it's been awesome moving out this direction and seeing all of the amazing things. It's just crazy. There's state and national parks everywhere. You throw a rock and you hit one. ROB: Yeah. But there's no humidity to be found. ERIK: No, which is amazing again. I think I still brag about the fact that there are no mosquitoes here to all of my friends and family that still live back in the Midwest. ROB: [laughs] You're not making any friends there, but we'll make some friends real soon. Erik, when you think about Predictive ROI, how would you hone in on the superpower of the firm? Where's the strength of the business? ERIK: We help agencies, coaches, and consultants plant their flags of authority and monetize that position. That's what we do. ROB: Dig into that a little bit. Tell us some more. ERIK: What happens most of the time when someone attempts to go through that process of developing a position of thought leadership, they have really poor processes in place. Everything takes a lot more effort, a lot more time, and a lot more energy. They struggle sometimes with the cobbler's kids, so they don't actually do their own stuff. They don't treat themselves as a client in a lot of ways. And for many of them, they don't really understand what it means to plant their flag. They kind of throw spaghetti at the wall and hope that something sticks, and what ends up happening is they try to be everything to everybody, which leads to a really inconsistent message, and not a great way to be seen as a thought leader or to hold that position. ROB: You've certainly planted your flag, so that's a good starting point. That's the opposite of the cobbler's children. That's good. ERIK: This is true. We put a lot of effort into our own stuff or try to – although I'm not going to say we don't struggle with that too, just like everybody else. ROB: That's right. Sometimes you do need that voice outside of yourself to really help discover that journey. Help crystallize this picture for us, apart from yourself, apart from Predictive ROI; what does this look like? Maybe there's a good example of a firm that you've worked with, what they found their authority was, and what it looks like to project that out into the market. ERIK: I'm going to use Agency Management Institute as an example because that's a pertinent example for anybody within the agency space. Agency Management Institute is run by a fellow named Drew McLellan. Drew has done a phenomenal job of staking his claim within that agency space to be a guide, to be helpful. His stance, his flag, is that most agency owners are accidental business owners. They were really good practitioners; they eventually got asked to do some work, and they're like, “Yeah, I could do that.” And then they got asked a little bit more because they did a really good job, because they're good at what they do, and before long they go, “You know what? I can totally do this. I can run my own agency.” So, they put out a shingle, and they don't realize that being a practitioner and being a business owner is different. ROB: Sure, and there are plenty of scaling hazards along that way. But along with that, I think, coming from an individual practitioner perspective, you know that people ask you to do something; you don't always know why. Often, it's because they know you and they know what you do, and they know what they want out of that. How do you start to turn the ship and help someone who just stumbled into this business to realize – I think there's an element of why the customer is coming to you that is necessary to figure out where to find more of them. How do you start to flip that conversation? ERIK: Customers can come to you for a variety of reasons, and it's dangerous to make assumptions about why they're there. A customer might come to you because they know you, and they don't really know the problem they're dealing with. So, you're a safe place to be able to talk to them and guide them on where they may need some help or some advice or some work done. The other possibility is that you're getting them from referral sources because you've done a really good job. Again, depending on if you've actually planted your flag or niched down, the story that's being told might be vastly different. For instance, we get asked all the time, “Hey, do you know somebody that does this?” Yeah, we do. But we only recommend people that have been really clear that that is the problem they solve. But oftentimes people will get recommended just in the general sense of, “Oh, you're struggling with that? I work with this marketing agency and they might do something like that. How about I introduce you?” What we've done is made it so that our referrals are uncertain about what we do, so they might be sending us bad fits, and they may not realize it. They may think they're doing us a favor. The other option is that someone comes into our ecosystem because of our own marketing efforts or because they've heard of us somehow through sales efforts, etc., and they have a problem and they want someone to solve it, and they've got nothing better to do than to ask. Why would they not ask? The challenge comes in when we say yes to all of those things. When we say yes to all of those things, we've made the decision to take on work that is likely not our sweet spot. We've decided to take on work that is probably not going to be profitable, and we've decided to take on work that is going to take more effort than if we were to stay in our sweet spot. ROB: What does the journey look like? Sometimes we intuitively know our sweet spot, and if somebody says it back to us eventually, it'll sound right. But sometimes we don't know how to say it. How do you help people uncover what they should tell someone else their sweet spot is that's actually going to make sense, going to fit, going to be the right engagement, going to be profitable, going to be the business that they can actually build and scale? ERIK: There's a lot of different ways to go about this. There's one that I prefer. When it comes to finding a niche or a target market, there are lots of folks who will do a SWOT analysis. They're going to do an addressable audience audit. They're going to go and look at past clients and see what it is they've done really well. They're going to see which clients are profitable and all that. I love those. Those are great opportunities to be able to educate yourself. The problem I see most often is that at the end of getting all that information gathered, someone is still sitting there going, “I could go 18 different directions. I could still serve all these different audiences in all these different ways with all these different pain points.” Yes, you should do that information gathering, but I would recommend asking a couple of questions instead. Number one is: What's your superpower? What are you really good at? What do you love to do? Number two is: Who do you love to do that work for, that you actually care about doing that work for? That's your “why” in many instances. I was going to use a more adult term for how to look at it, but I want to make sure that this remains friendly for everybody. [laughs] Anyway, I would approach: What am I really awesome at? Who, and why do I care about serving that particular audience? Then the third question which I think is really important is: Am I going to be able to make a great case study off of that client? If the answer is no, then you're probably not going to be doing great work and you're not going to be able to leverage that work into future work. It should act as a really great filter of “Can I make a case study from this client?” If you can do that, for most people, that clarifies a lot of where their niche and where their flag needs to be. There are some other analogies which I can also recommend. One is if you serve multiple industries, each one of those industries is like the leg of a stool. But it doesn't have a top, so sitting on that stool is going to be pretty uncomfortable. Really what you have is a series of sticks. What you want to do if you serve multiple industries is find a common problem that all of those industries share that you're really good at solving. That's the top of the stool. That's what you actually sit on. If you have one and not the other, it doesn't really serve you to be able to narrow down who it is you're serving and how it is that you're serving them. ROB: That case study question – is that more important simply as a mirror that you hold up and look at? Or do you have a held belief that case studies are a key part of growth? I think that would be my question off of that. ERIK: I do think case studies have a really interesting position in an agency's growth. One, they put a filter on your biz dev efforts at the very beginning so that you're not saying yes to everybody. Because if you don't believe that you can do great work for them, you're not going to take them on. That already changes most agencies in a pretty significant way. The second piece is it forces you to be documenting your work in a meaningful way to be able to tell a story. That's useful both externally, which I'll get to in the third point, but it's also really useful when you're talking to your client to be able to say, “This is the work that we did; here is the evidence for that work.” Which is, again, uncommon for a lot of agencies to want to have that conversation, that are excited about having that conversation because they're prepared for that conversation. The third piece is, what better way to be able to present the sort of things that you do than to be able to use social proof from others to say, “We're great, and we don't have to say it about ourselves. Here's what other people say about us.” ROB: That definitely makes sense. Erik, if we rewind the clock a little bit, how did you get here? How did you end up being the co-owner of Predictive ROI? What led you into the business? What led it to grow? What's the journey here? ERIK: I had an unusual upbringing. I won't dive into all of that stuff, but I was fortunate enough to be around a lot of business owners throughout most of my life. My family own their own business; my brother and I started our own businesses fairly young. We had several of those. I was really fortunate to run across excellent mentors at the right time in my life, and I had the tremendous fortune in finding the right business partner. For anybody that has worked alongside a business partner, it's a really important relationship to get right. If you don't get it right, I cannot imagine how much stress and frustration that would cause on a daily basis. So, I was really lucky. I actually met my business partner, Steven – I was going to school at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse; he was working in small business development at the time, helping with businesses and their business plans. I had a question about a business plan that a friend and I were doing through Duke University, and he helped me do that. But he did it in a way that really impressed me. He actually sat me down with potential investors. He tapped his relationships in order to be able to say, “Hey, here's a student who really needs help. I'd like to get him in front of the right people to be able to give him the right feedback.” From that day forward, I was really impressed with what I saw from him, as far as his ability to step above and beyond for those who he was helping. And he was apparently impressed with the way that I handled everything as well. He likes to tell this story; he went back and later talked to his wife that day and said, “I don't know when, I don't know how, but Erik and I are going to do something together.” Fast forward a couple years, and he had just started to get Predictive off the ground. He gave me a call and he asked me if I wanted to be a part of it. He and I had some good conversations. I specifically asked him to start off as an intern within the agency and to grow with it, and we developed a five-year path for me moving forward that led to ownership, and the metrics that I needed to hit, and the criteria and the milestones that needed to be met. So that was the journey. It's been closing on 12 years now. ROB: Wow. That's a lot of trust to put in someone else, to say you're going to start it together, but to start from a position of non-ownership and have to earn it. I guess you'd had a chance to get to know him a little bit, because if you didn't know somebody, there's a lot of ways to get messed over that way. ERIK: Yeah. I wouldn't suggest that it's the only path forward for people to consider. [laughs] But I do think for anybody that currently owns a company and is looking to bring on someone to step into an ownership position, that's risky on their part too. So there has to be skin in the game on both sides, and depending on how you want to structure that – it's completely up to you. There's great advice on that from a lot of folks. I wouldn't consider myself to be the best person to ask about that. But I would say there is a critical factor in that both parties need to have skin in the game on it. If they don't, it's easy to go, “I want to be an owner!” and not really understand what that means, not really understand the impact. There's been times when Steven and I have made the decision not to pay ourselves and make sure the team gets paid. ROB: That's part of the owner's job. That's not the attractive part of it. ERIK: But if you have someone that doesn't understand that and hasn't been part of the agency in a meaningful way long enough to know that that is part of owning it, when that decision comes, they're going to rebel against that pretty hard. ROB: Yeah, they're not going to be thinking like an owner in that moment. It is very notable. I'm sure that Steven had plenty of choices of people he could have – he was seeing a lot of people in their businesses, so it's a very special position that you hold. You also highlight it's an interesting thing about services businesses apart from others, where you have this progressive path to ownership. You have your startup world where there's vesting of equity over time, it caps – it's very different from the way that people can grow into a partner role. Do you have any insight? What is it that's special about services – even law firms, consulting firms? What changes in that world that makes it make sense to tip over and grant partnership? Because that's not always the case in let's say an air conditioning firm that scales or something like that. ERIK: Yeah, absolutely. Anything to do with the service industry is all about relationships. Now, that's true to a certain extent in all businesses, but more so. When we think about agencies, agencies live and die on their relationships, whether that is the relationships they have with their team, the relationships they have with vendors and partners to be able to provide certain products or services, the relationships they have with their referral sources or the ponds they fish in as far as where they get their business, or the relationships they have with their current clients. In order to be able to tell the difference, we have a couple of factors that we consider. We've talked about this pretty extensively, just because of obviously the journey towards ownership for me years ago, and obviously the journey since, because we do get asked about what that looks like from other agency owners who are considering that path. One thing is you absolutely have to treat the person as an owner from the very beginning. They may not have the opportunity to leverage all of that power, but they need to be treated as an owner from the beginning. That includes things like transparency about finances. That includes how to have difficult conversations. That includes being there when strategic decisions are being made, etc. I think a lot of people shy away from that and they want to hide so much of the business from a potential partner for a really, really long time. Then all of a sudden they're like, “And boom, now you're an owner! Look in the closet, here's all the other scary things you never knew about.” That's not a great way to set someone up for success. So, I think that's one thing to keep in mind. A second thing to keep in mind is that when we think about bringing someone on for a partner, we need to really make sure that the values are in line with who we are. Eventually someone is going to be making decisions for the team, for your clients, for your products, for your services, and your job as an owner is to multiply yourself as best as you can. But it's not just multiplying of tasks. You're moving up in tasks; you're not trying to multiply those tasks. You're trying to hand off other tasks, but you want those tasks to be done in a meaningful way that aligns with how you want the business to be conducted. So doing values checks along the way – hugely, hugely important, and making sure that everyone is in alignment on that. ROB: Right. Those values, much like the value proposition of the firm, it's far preferable to drive those from authenticity rather than something aspirational. You talked about looking for a market position and expertise, but really, I think quite often people have something far better within them. It's about finding it. ERIK: Yeah. Another thing that I think is useful for that is – we're big proponents of five-year career paths. When someone comes on, we develop five-year career paths with them so that they know what the journey looks like. There's nothing more frustrating for an ‘A' player in an organization than not knowing what moving forward looks like. That's a good way for agencies to lose their ‘A' players. Finally, we have different levels of decision-making. We actually structure the decision-making process. We have Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 decisions. Level 1 is “I've made the decision. I'm letting you all know.” Level 2 is “I want input, but I will be making the decision ultimately,” and Level 3 is “This is a group decision.” Starting off the conversations with the right tone and saying, “Hey, I want to let you know this is a Level 1,” or “This is a Level 2,” or “This is going to be a Level 3 decision” sets the tone for what others should expect from an outcome. That can help prevent a lot of frustration, too, if they're really invested in that outcome. If this is a Level 1 decision, they don't emotionally invest that same way. They go, “Okay, good. Level 1 decision. It's been made. I just need to be able to take it in.” ROB: Yeah, versus someone thinking that it's a group decision and it's an owner decision, and just the loss of morale, the loss of investment, a little bit of loss of trust. Certainly challenging. Sounds like some good lessons there. When you reflect on the Predictive ROI journey, what are some other key learning points / lessons you have that you would extract from the business and that you still think about, maybe? ERIK: You got like six hours? Because we could go a long time. [laughs] I think if there was one overarching lesson that I would really recommend or that we keep front and center all the time, it's niche faster and deeper. That's it. The faster and the deeper you niche, it makes every other decision in the company easier. No better way to put it. ROB: There's a clarity and consistency to your message. One of the things that you shared when we were scheduling this was about a book that might be interesting to our audience. Talk about that. I think it's very aligned with what we've been talking about. ERIK: I appreciate you bringing that up. For us, one of the things we talk about is peanut butter & jelly relationships. It's this idea that you've got to have the right relationships and keep your audience at the center. Business is hard. It requires a lot of sacrifice for those who go down this path. The right relationships, teachers, and resources make a world of difference. If it's you against the world, that really sucks. [laughs] It isn't even against the world. You just have to look for those who will help without strings attached. When you were talking about the book, we talk about authority positioning, we talk about niching down, and we talk about all of this coming from a position of being helpful. We try to demonstrate that concept in a concrete way with our audience to teach what we mean. We're happy to do that with yours, too. Anybody who wants a copy of our book, it's Sell With Authority. Free of change, you can get one. There's no weird shipping costs, there's no quick pitch when you get it. It's just a free paperback copy of the book. And we mean it. We actually spent hundreds of dollars recently to get a copy to a participant in our free weekly Q&As because that participant lives in South Africa. That's a whole other story. [laughs] But if you're on this journey to being an authority, we truly want you to succeed because the world needs more meaningful content and thought leadership and a whole lot less noise. So, for anybody that does want that, that's at predictiveroi.com/free-book. Pretty simple. Happy to send it to anybody that wants it. If you're struggling with niching down, if you're struggling with how to really leverage authority and turn it into a monetization stream, if you're struggling with your content, feeling like “I know we're supposed to do it but I don't know why” – it dives into all of that, and we reference it all the time. It's pretty good use.  ROB: That's excellent. I love the no strings attached part. We will get that into the show notes for sure. I think there's probably an inception layer here. Is a book a way that you would, for many clients, potentially recommend establishing that authority and that positioning? That seems like it's one of the tools in the toolkit for sure. What are some of the core pillars? ERIK: A book is what we would consider to be a tactic. It's definitely not a strategy. When we think about authority positioning, there are a couple things to keep in mind: your expertise, your point of view, and why you care. We talked about that a little bit earlier. All of that drives into this idea of niching down and planting your flag. From there, what we recommend is coming up with a core promise, like “We promise to do this. As a company, we promise to give you a return on investment.” That's our core promise. If somebody's working with us, that's our core promise. Everything that we do is driven by that core promise. Then we look at the three levers that have to be pulled time and time again for someone to be able to achieve that core promise. Those are the strategies that you're aiming for from a content standpoint. Everything needs to lead up into those three things. For us, we know that you've got to grow your audience, you've got to nurture your leads, and you have to be able to sell. If you've got those three things down, you're going to be running a really nice profitable business. If you forget any of those, you're not going to be running a business. [laughs] So we dive into those a little bit more. But when it comes to how to do some of this, a book is generally the product of having done a lot of that work already. Rob, let's put yourself in this position. If you wanted to, you could take all of the interviews that you've done, you could find a common theme because you're controlling the theme of these podcast interviews, because you had a clear goal in mind of what this podcast was going to deliver. This podcast is what we consider to be cornerstone content. It is regular; it is meaty enough to be sliced and diced; and it's not a one-trick pony, meaning if you wanted to – let's say iTunes closed down, no more podcasts. It's still on Spotify, it's still on Libsyn, all those other places. So, you could take your cornerstone content, which you had a strategy behind in order to create, you had a goal with it – what would it look like if you took 30 of those interviews and turned them into a book? By the way, somebody literally just did that. ROB: Yeah, our writer for our episode summaries regularly campaigns to do this very thing. ERIK: In fact, one of our books, Profitable Podcasting, half of it was written from podcast interviews and episodes. We wrote half a book without having to write half a book. That's the difference between when we think about the content that we put forward in order to help us plant a flag. Every time you put forward a piece of content, whether that is social media, email, blog post, book, podcast episode, video series, research series, case study, eBook, streaming – the list goes on and on and on. Every time you do that, you're taking a hammer and you're either pounding that flag deeper into the dirt of where you are, or you're flailing that hammer around somewhere in the air. It's your choice on how much of your effort you want to waste and how much of your effort you want to put towards your position of authority. ROB: There's a lot to think about there. That's good. Erik, thank you for that. Thank you for the book link. Again, that'll be in the notes. When people want to find and connect with you, Erik, and with Predictive ROI, where should they go to find you? ERIK: You can obviously connect with us through all the usual social media suspects, like LinkedIn and Facebook. Honestly, though, if you actually want to get to know us, go to our website, predictiveroi.com, and join our free weekly Q&A. Literally, it's a group of awesome people and business owners that get together; we do 10 minutes of teaching, and then it opens the floor, everybody asks questions about whatever they need to, to solve business problems. Again, our audience is agency coaches and consultants, so you're going to be surrounded by agencies, coaches, and consultants. I really like that because it's a great low-key way to get to know who people are without any sort of commitment or anything along those lines. And it's a cool way to learn something at the same time. So that's what I'd recommend. ROB: We find the weekly thing through your website, sign up, show up, open Q&A. ERIK: Yep. ROB: Excellent. Thank you, Erik, for coming on the podcast and sharing your expertise and where you have planted your flag. We are very grateful for it. ERIK: Absolutely. Hopefully, this was helpful. Rob, if there's anything else that I can provide afterwards, just let me know. If anybody's got any questions, happy to help. This was fun. ROB: Much appreciated. Thank you. Take care. ERIK: You too. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Donna Loughlin, is President and Founder at LMGPR, a public relations agency that works with “emerging market players and visionaries” to help them build out their Leadership (the “L” in the agency's name), Momentum, and Growth. Key to this effort is researching the client's “story” and the drivers for the client founding the business. The client/agency relationship typically takes a minimum of a year to launch and continues, in some cases, for up to 8 years until the client goes through its IPO. Media relations initiatives include earned content – “talking to the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg and trade publications” – and/or “creating original content” (such things as whitepapers and podcasts). Donna began her career as a journalist, working with Reuters, BBC, and Washington Post, and migrated into doing PR inside technology companies going through IPOs during the dot-com bubble. Donna, in her role as a “corporate person,” deflected phone calls from investors in other companies who were seeking her help by referring them to her friends . . . until the day she realized that she had sent away “$1.8 million in revenue.” It was time to start her own agency. Initially, she worked out of her home and consulted with smaller, venture-backed companies and VC firms directly to launch these new companies before they had any marketing, or even, in some cases, a product. Within 90 days, she found she needed to add media and PR talent. She searched online and built a network of independent consultants, working mothers taking time off to have children, who became another (internal) iteration of LMGPR – “Loving Mothers, Good PR,” and then brought on people as employees. Today's clients are widely varied in their needs. They may want to raise funds to start manufacturing a new product, bring a product to market, prepare for a SPAC or an IPO – or be looking to be acquired (as an exit strategy).  In this interview, Donna explains the discovery process the agency uses to find a client's authentic story, exploring such things as: What is the company product and strategy?  What is the genesis and the genius behind the product?  What are the six components of success? Are you relevant?  Are you bold and fearless? (If you're not, what can you capitalize or own that would make you stand out?)  Do you think out of the box? Do you listen to the market?  Are you a disruptor or are you changing an entire category?) Donna has found that the founder's passion is often still in a company's narrative for early- to mid-stage companies but the purpose of the product or solution may be missing. Hence: Why did you bring the product to market in the first place? Donna mentors college students and younger associates in her agency. She emphasizes the importance of maintaining a strong network throughout a career. She can be reached on LinkedIn under Donna Loughlin, by email at donna@lmgpr.com. Her podcast, Before It Happened (https://www.beforeithappened.com/), focuses on visionaries and the future they imagine. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Donna Loughlin, President and Founder at LMGPR based in San Jose, California. Welcome to the podcast, Donna. DONNA: Thank you so much for having me on the show. ROB: It's great to have you here. Why don't you give us an introduction to LMGPR and the firm's superpowers? DONNA: Absolutely. First of all, LMGPR stands for Leadership, Momentum, and Growth, and that's exactly what we do. I think that's our superpower: we work with emerging market players and visionaries and we help them build their leadership and their momentum and their growth. That obviously doesn't happen overnight; our relationships with our clients typically are a minimum of a year to launch and then going into, in some relationships, 7 to 8 years till they go through their IPO. ROB: Got it. You are focused in, obviously, a key technology hub. People are starting sometimes from nothing, and they may not even know how to think or speak – I'm assuming “leadership” is largely a marketing leadership/ thought leadership perspective. Is that where people are coming from? DONNA: It's a combination of things. Obviously, curating the authentic story of the visionary and the founders is a key component, but also really dialing back and looking at why they even began to want to bring a product or a service to market – those epiphany moments where they decided, “I need to solve this problem, I need to bring this market, and I am the chosen one. I'm going to be the one that's going to trade in the dog for a cat and put all my chips on the table and make it happen.” Oftentimes those conversations start on napkins before they even make it to a whiteboard, or over a quick cup of coffee or my favorite sparkling beverage, Topo Chico. That's about as raw as it can get. ROB: Got it. For some people, I think starting a firm can almost be more instinctive. How do you take someone who might not even be able to tell you why they started the firm and get to the core truth of where this impetus for the business came from and decode that in an authentic way? DONNA: It was actually almost a happy accident. I was a journalist before I became a professional public relations agent, so to speak. I was with Reuters and BBC, and I also did internships with the Washington Post. So, I had really deep editorial, journalistic roots that migrated into working with technology companies and working inside and doing a number of IPOs and very fast-paced IPOs during the dot-com bubble. All that experience formed into this factor that started bringing me into more firsthand discussions with the backers, the investors themselves, the angel investors, the venture capital investors, which is huge in the tech sector. So, I started getting a lot of phone calls from them asking for help when I had a full-time corporate job, and I kept referring the business to friends. Then I realized one day, wow, I just referred X amount of business – I think I calculated it was something like $1.8 million in revenue that I could've put on my own plate. And I was referring it to people because I was a corporate person. So, I stood back and thought, you know what? I actually think I have the makings for an agency. And that's exactly how it happened. I started working and consulting with the venture-backed smaller companies and going in-house and working with the VC firms firsthand to get the companies airborne before they had marketing, before they had, in some cases, a product. ROB: Got it. For someone who's maybe not as deep in the tech industry, how would you explain what a typical client looks like? What's a particular client that you could maybe drill a little bit into their own narrative and their journey to market? DONNA: First of all, there's no one-size-fits all. There's no typical client. Each client is a very specific need. Sometimes clients come to us because they need to bring a product to market; other times, they need to raise funding because they have a product, but now they need to go to manufacturing. Others, they're looking for an acquisition as an exit strategy, and others are getting ready for a SPAC or an IPO. So there's no one-size-fits-all, as I mentioned. But the process is the same. We like to take them through what I call a discovery process of looking for their authentic story. What is the company product and strategy? What is the genesis and the genius behind the product? And then being able to craft a story, looking at what I call six components of success, which are: Are you relevant? Are you bold and fearless? If you're not, what can you capitalize or own that would make you stand out? Thinking out of the box, listening to the market. Are you a disruptor or are you changing an entire category? Then as you mature and grow, it's being agile and also gaining speed. Once a company comes to market – I just came back from CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, last week, and it was really interesting to see what was hot. Every year, analysts forecast what's going to be hot. A lot of the companies that launched this year were virtual. They didn't go to the show itself. These are mega companies, big companies that are public-facing – transportation, robotics, and consumer electronics companies. They didn't show. But what did show well were the smaller companies that were a little more nimble and a little more scrappy in some ways and didn't necessarily have the big funding. They introduced products to market. So, you can still go to venues like that and see a little bit of a science fair. That's something I particularly am always intrigued with when it comes to the tech sector. There's always a little bit of a science fair, whether it's in Silicon Valley or it's in Atlanta or it's in Carolina or it's in Washington State. We have all these different belts of technology – Colorado, around the world, Portugal, parts of the UK, and even parts of Los Angeles have these gulches, so to speak, of innovation and technology. I think we're really lucky that we constantly have this cycle of newness in the industry. ROB: Absolutely. I heard a lot from CES this year where even some major exhibitors didn't show up at the last minute. You walk into a main hall, there's supposed to be a big booth and there's just like a QR code of what would have been there at the booth. It really seemed like a different experience, and maybe some embryonic companies whose stories were quite early. When you see someone who's maybe not as polished and hasn't been through your process, what are they missing from their story? What's a common founder error when they're thinking about communicating to market? DONNA: I think the one great thing about early-stage companies particularly, and even as they evolve and become more mature and ultimately public, is the founder's passion typically is still in the narrative and in the soul of the company. I think the part that oftentimes people miss is the purpose of the product or the solution. Why did you bring it to market in the first place? If you think of something as common as a paperclip, a paperclip is a pretty low-tech product, but it actually adds a lot of functionality. I can clip it, I can clip papers, I can use it to fix my iPhone, I can use it to pick something out of my teeth, I can use it to also do basic IT to my computer. Pretty low-tech. But I think one thing about a paperclip – and I'm dumbing this down to literally a flea and a tick – is that a paperclip still has a purpose. I think companies oftentimes lose sight of what their purpose is. What is that authentic component that you're trying to get a consumer or business to adapt or adopt? I think as companies get bigger, sometimes they lose track of that. You've got to keep a pulse on what customers want. You've got to keep a pulse on, if you're in a reseller channel, what does the channel need? What do the consumers want and what can your partners advocate as well? ROB: It is always a challenge to keep the spotlight off of yourself and to, as many would say, make the customer the hero. It can be challenging to remember sometimes, especially when things thrive a little bit. You have given us, Donna, some of your origin story and how you went from some of these news outlets and reporting to seeing an opportunity that was crossing your plate regularly. When did it become evident that this was going to move from single-player mode at first to multiplayer mode and you had to start thinking about maybe not doing everything, maybe training other people to do things that you felt like you'd been the best at over time? DONNA: Your best IP is your talent, right? Going from literally working from my coffee table and my kitchen table and whatever table in the house I wanted to work from as an independent consultant – it happened pretty quickly. Within the first 90 days, it was clear that I needed to find some other media and PR talent. So, I went online and found some great stay-at-home working moms who had taken time off from having children, and I created a great network of independent consultants. The working name for LMGPR internally was “Loving Mothers, Good PR,” because I had these amazing women that were working for me, and they had small children, and some of them are still with me to this day. Their kids are in high school now, and off to college. Quickly I went from an individual to a network of independents to employees, and when I hit that employee mark that first year, that was a scary milestone move. It was like having more children. I was then responsible for the caretaking and the creation and the mentoring of their careers and their finance and really being instrumental in that. I think that was a big business step for me. At the point when I made that migration, I think we had about 10 clients, and those were 10 retainer clients. I myself, the same year that I started the business, adopted two kids from Russia. So, I not only had an infant startup at home, I was managing and working directly with a lot of infant companies and taking them to market. I don't recommend anyone do that, but I'm a multitasker, so it seemed to allow me to thrive and focus. It was like the AM/PM type of scenario. As we've grown, we just celebrated a 20-year anniversary. I look back at the portfolio of companies that we worked with in the market – I'll take security as an example. Cybersecurity was huge when I first started my business. Now we have security and artificial intelligence and the security of intelligence and blockchain and the need for security in blockchain, and then we have all the different nuances of security that's built into the cars and the robots and all the IoT objects we have in our home. Watching the security world mature has been really interesting because all these products once upon a time were a la carte, and now we have all this integration. ROB: There is so much going on in cybersecurity. I looked on your roster of clients; I recognize one of our Atlanta favorites with Bastille, so congratulations on working with them. Some would look at your timing – and congratulations on 20 years, by the way – and argue that you might have started the firm at perhaps one of the worst times to start a marketing firm in Silicon Valley. DONNA: Absolutely did. [laughs] ROB: What made that not the case for you? People who weren't around or don't remember, I was working for a venture-funded startup in 2000 and 2001, and going into 2002, we had three rounds of layoffs. We cut the firm size down by two-thirds; eventually had to compromise on a sale to an EMEA firm that bought this company. With that retraction in tech at that time, what made it work? Because there weren't as many clients as there were two years before that. DONNA: What made it work was a lot of the bigger national agencies – and I have respect for the big ones like the Bursons and the Edelmans, and I've actually done work for them in the past – were closing up their regional offices in the Silicon Valley to San Francisco, and there were a lot of boutique agencies. So, my competition had shrunk. In terms of working with emerging market companies, their retainer rates were typically around $10,000, but in some cases there were maybe projects that were three month stints for $15k. Their budgets weren't quite as big, but if you did the calculations and you brought in thirsty clients and you were hungry enough to make a difference, you could build a business. And I wasn't the only one at that time; there were other advertising, marketing, and branding firms that also had the opportunity to pick up the slack, so to speak. Because the venture capital firms were a big funnel for me, I was getting venture-backed companies that had gone from scrappy to a little more of what I call the happy mode. They were probably six months to a year from bringing products to market. I think that was really a sweet spot, because you're absolutely right; the market was not – I personally know a lot of people who lost jobs and were moving out of the Valley and cashing out of their houses. And you know what happened in the housing market; it was just nuts. But I think it was using my own philosophy of being bold and fearless, and I never looked back. I think the only time you really want to use the rearview mirror is when you're driving, and I clearly was not going to look back. I could go work in another corporate job and cycle through that and do some great things but having the variety and being able to choose exactly the innovations and the technologies – you mentioned Bastille; recently FireEye was acquired by McAfee, and I worked with that company for their first five years, taking them from literally 3 and then 5 and then 10 all the way up to 1,000 employees. So, I'm known for being able to scale and grow the business, but also scale and grow with that business. ROB: That seems like a theme that would carry across from the venture side to the startups they work with. It's a very interesting customer acquisition channel. It makes sense. I think some of the venture firms would project into the market that they are increasing the array of services they can provide. They may purport to have a PR arm. How much of that is a trend? How much of that is still smoke and mirrors, where they may still be cobbling together services underneath the umbrella of the firm, so they provide it, but it's partnering with people who are focused practitioners? What's that mix look like? DONNA: I pride myself in that we do one thing and we do one thing only, and that is media relations. I don't do social media. I don't do product marketing. There's a whole list of things that we don't do. But there's a lot of great people in the marketplace that can do brand positioning, meaning the physical. I feel like our core strength is the written and spoken word and taking that and turning it into the narrative that then helps churn the media, whether it be earned content, owned content, or digital content. At one point we did have a social media team, and nobody really wanted to pay for it. I can't give away those services for free. Social media for a period of time was considered to be something really inexpensive that you could offshore, and there were a lot of offshore services. So, you were competing not necessarily with other agencies, but you were competing with this offshore – Fiverr and those types of services. You can't compete with that. The margins are too low. That's when I realized, let's do what we do best and what we're known for, which is creating the leadership, momentum, and growth editorial content, whether it's the earned content – talking to the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg and the trade publications – or it's creating original content such as whitepapers or podcasts or those types of things. That I feel is the most valuable for our clients. ROB: You mentioned upfront a couple of things. One, you mentioned the duration of a client engagement being on the longer side, and then you also mentioned retainers. It seems like that's potentially a very instrumental tool in thinking about how to grow the firm. You mentioned having 10 retainer clients and how that potentially would embolden you to be able to bring on an employee because there's a little bit more certainty than a bunch of little projects. How, though, should a client think about the value of PR over time? I think a lot of times people get that splashy placement, that earned placement, and they don't know whether money's going to fall from the sky or whether it's just going to shore up a conversation that we're already having. How do they think about value? DONNA: That's a great question. I do think engagement is so important in building your relationship with a client, and it's not about a transaction. It's about people, and it's about ensuring that the people in the room, whether it's the C-suite, you have your core executive team, you have your engineering team, your sales team – all these different operational groups within the company might need PR for different reasons. I think the best clients are the ones that we're working with in all aspects. Some companies are larger corporations, so we might just do PR for a division versus the whole corporation. But bringing value starts with having realistic and authentic conversations and being transparent and being open, being able to really understand the company going into 2022, knowing exactly their top three business objectives, their revenue goals, their client goals, their tech and innovation competitive challenges that they're seeing in the sales funnel. And to be able to look at PR not as a tool but as a strategic weapon that's going to allow them to meet those goals, but also to be able to drive revenue. At the end of the day, if my clients cannot bring in revenue – and I know each one of my clients has brought in revenue from very specific articles. Not every article is going to bring revenue, but the culmination over time of articles – we just did a poll this morning for a client; last year we had more than 1,200 articles that came out on a company that nobody heard of two years ago. Of those 1,200 articles, I'd say maybe 500 are really hallmark, feature-type articles. But the fact that we saturated the conversation within their market space, which is an electric motorcycle or transportation company, is a testament to being relentless. So, showing value every day, constantly thinking – I always think the same way I did when I was an intern or when I was an editorial assistant: How hungry are you? Every day, I wake up hungry and thirsty, wanting to get results. I still squeal when I get an article in Forbes or Bloomberg or Wall Street Journals or the cover of Road & Track. That personally is the integrity of what it is that I was hired to do. So it's showing that enthusiasm, showing that constant insightfulness of “How do we go faster? How do we go harder? How do we charge?” Not charge our client more but charge forward ahead to get results. ROB: You mentioned in the trajectory of clients, leadership, momentum, growth – I wonder a little bit, because almost all of your clients are at some point new to market and then hopefully catering to different personas as they grow, does that align in some way with the customer adoption / technology adoption cycle of early adopters versus where somebody is in the maturity of a market? Does that affect what the messaging is along that LMG and where you place the message? DONNA: That's interesting. Let's look at the electric vehicle (EV) market as an example. The first electric vehicle company I worked with was 10 years ago. Tesla wasn't shipping 10 years ago. I've been in that space for a while, so I think I have a vantage point of having access to the early market analysts and the early channel players that were selling EV products and really being able to understand that particular category. I fly. One of the things I love about flying is that I have a multitude of things that I need to make sure I'm in tune with when I'm flying. When I fly on commercial airlines, I can sit back and relax. But my name's on the door, so at the end of the day, if I'm not in control of my plane with my client and being able to understand all the instrumentation and all the landing gear that I need to – because at any moment, things can change. When I talk about being agile, it's like all of a sudden one of your customers came out with a product and they blindsided you, or you have a competitor that bought your #2 and #3 competitor and all of a sudden they're like Goliath. Stock market crashes. COVID happens. All these things happen. I think being calm and preventative – I don't like the word “crisis communications”; I like preventative conversations so that you can actually defuse things very easily and stealthily, before maybe even the client sees it happening. ROB: Got it. Certainly there's a nuance to it. As you reflect, Donna, on your journey with LMGPR, what are some lessons you have learned that you wish you could go back and tell yourself? DONNA: Maybe more sleep. [laughs] Ariana Huffington came out with a book about sleep not too long ago and I've yet to read it, but I thought that's pretty amazing. Here's this woman who's a real powerhouse and she's like, “Sleep is sacred.” I think the second thing I wish I'd kept tabs on – this is pre-LinkedIn – is keeping the power of the network and keeping in contact and networking with people throughout your entire career. I always tell the younger team members that I'm mentoring – not just through my agency, but I also mentor through a couple universities and I sit on a board at a university – that the power of the network is so invaluable. You never know exactly when you're going to tap in on something. I just got a text and the same person really wanted to talk to me. Text, and he Slacked me and LinkedIn me. It was like three different trifecta levels. Like, who is this man and why is he trying to get a hold of me? Well, we had worked together a good 20 years ago, back when I was a reporter, and he's transitioning into my career. He knew that because I was part of the digital boom and I was part of the networking boom and I was part of the security boom and all these other booms, I might know somebody who could be of service to him. He didn't expect that I was still in the industry; he thought I'd retired by now. I'm like, why would I retire? So, I think the power of that network and keeping connected with everybody in your career cycle is important. And I think the other thing is I've learned a lot from so many great people, mentors that I had access to, but I think taking time to mentor more is something – I mentor every day, but I recently got on the board for University of California Santa Barbara, working as a board member and mentoring women that are pursuing careers in STEM. I think STEM has become a commonplace term now, but we took so much of the STEM out of the classroom, and now we're fortifying. It's like with food. You take everything out and now you're putting it back in. I think that's an area where I personally would've taken more computer science or more math. I took all those core things, but I didn't pursue a career specifically in STEM. But I work with so many amazing people that are gifted in STEM. I feel like I'm street smart, and I think I would've loved to have taken some more of those classes when I was at UC Berkeley. ROB: That makes so much sense. STEM has certainly come into so many areas of our lives where it was not previously present. We rewind to the beginning of the firm, and not everybody bought a computer. Sometimes they asked an expert what to buy. Now people just walk into Best Buy and pick a computer. They require so much more knowledge, and you can speak to different needs rather than just “It's a computer.” There's features that people care about. DONNA: Do you remember – those listening might not remember at all, but you would go to Tandy RadioShack or some other component place and you'd buy all the pieces and you'd make a computer. The idea of walking into a big box store and buying a computer, needless to say under $500, just didn't exist. When I first started, I had a word processor, and then I had the first Apple – I'm dating myself here for sure, but I had an Apple Lisa. That was my first computer. ROB: Nice. Wow. DONNA: And nobody knew how to use it. They said, “Kid, you're the youngest one here. Learn how to use it.” ROB: I definitely built some computers from parts and everybody looked at me like I was a little bit crazy. But it wasn't crazier than what they wanted to charge me for it at the store. DONNA: It's amazing. You still have that computer? ROB: Oh, no, that was a while back. But golly, there was a GTE Data Services location in Tampa, Florida that ran a Boy Scout Explorers Club where we were stripping down, tearing apart 8086 desktop computers down to the case, what's the video card, what's the RAM – we knew all that stuff. It was a different time, but maybe we could all learn from it. Donna, when people want to get in touch with you and with LMGPR, how should they find and connect with you? DONNA: There's a couple places. LinkedIn I think is the best, under Donna Loughlin. And then you'll see LMGPR there. My email is donna@lmgpr.com, and I don't mind receiving emails from students and professionals both. I've talked about mentoring; I'm here to mentor the next generation in this industry. And then my podcast, Before It Happened, is also a great place to check out, which is a podcast that's focused on visionaries and the future they imagine. And there's obviously a lot of tech and innovation in that podcast. ROB: We will certainly get that podcast into the show notes for people to have a look and encourage everyone to subscribe. Donna, thank you for coming on the show and sharing from your wisdom and experience in the industry. It's definitely appreciated. DONNA: Absolutely. Thank you so much. Hopefully I'll see you when I come out to Atlanta. ROB: Sounds good. Be well. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

HIGHLIGHTSHoning entrepreneurship skills and saying yes to everythingBirth of the Bear Necessities of Entrepreneurship podcastDealing with imposter syndrome Writing and publishing The Social SoulInternal vs External MotivationQUOTESRob: “As listeners, whether we're entrepreneurships ourselves, or just entrepreneurial minded, and many listeners don't even wanna be an entrepreneur themselves but there's lessons they can learn from entrepreneurs they can take to their daily lives and allow them to scale and grow and build.”Rob: “I think for a lot of us as we look at 2022, we've come off a long last couple years. A lot of things have happened to our world that have shaken us to our core and changed the way we foundationally and fundamentally do business and look at business and everything.”Rob: “You can't start with why until you know where you are. Start with where you are and understand what got you to where you are today. What are those things, what are those lessons that you're passionate about. What are those things that you want.That is where the why is driven from, especially from my personal perspective.”Rob: “Outside motivation should spark your internal fire. But your internal fire is the only thing that's gonna carry you through. It's easy to make excuses. It's easy for something not to go  right because oh I forgot this, or the weather, or that, or this. And that's why we need to drive internally and overcome.” Rob: “Understand what that internal fire and motivation is and find how to build that and take that to the next level. Because only you are gonna do that to get there.”Podcast Suggestions From Rob:Today is the Future - Livi ReddenSuccess Fundamentals - Kris Sykes and Brian GoldstackNo BS Sales School - Walker McKayThe Other Side Of Sales - Ashleigh EarlySquare Stories - Brian BurkhartGenius Leadership - Anna LiebelLead Sell Grow - Eric Konovalov and Harry SpaightSales Transformation - Collin MitchellRevenue Real Hotline - Amy Hvrecheck Purpose Driven Entrepreneur - Timmy BauerBusiness and Bourbon - Ronnell RichardsDon't forget to subscribe and leave a review.Connect with Rob:www.beacons.page/robnapoliwww.linkedin.com/in/robnapIG: @rise_up.robnapWe have teamed up with Phin, a social impact marketing firm, to give back for each episode. To learn more, visit: https://app.phinforgood.com.

Chad talks to Rob Hirschfeld, the Founder and CEO of RackN, which develops software to help automate data centers, which they call Digital Rebar. RackN is focused on helping customers automate infrastructure. They focus on customer autonomy and self-management, and that's why they're a software company, not a services or as-a-service platform company. Digital Rebar is a platform that helps connect all of the different pieces and tools that people use to manage infrastructure into infrastructure pipelines through the seamless multi-component automation across all of the different pieces and parts that have to be run to bring up infrastructure. RackN's Website (https://rackn.com/); Digial Rebar (https://rackn.com/rebar/) Follow Rob on Twitter (https://twitter.com/zehicle) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhirschfeld/). Visit his website at robhirschfeld.com (https://robhirschfeld.com/). Follow RackN on Twitter (https://twitter.com/rackngo), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/rackn/), or YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr3bBtP-pMsDQ5c0IDjt_LQ). Follow thoughtbot on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot), or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Rob Hirschfeld, Founder, and CEO of RackN, which develops software to help automate data centers, which they call Digital Rebar. Rob, welcome to the show ROB: Chad, it is a pleasure to be here. Looking forward to the conversation. CHAD: Why don't we start with a little bit more information about what RackN and the Digital Rebar platform actually is. ROB: I would be happy to. RackN is focused on helping customers automate infrastructure. And for us, it's really important that the customers are doing the automation. We're very focused on customer autonomy and self-management. It's why we're a software company, not a services or as a service platform company. But fundamentally, what Digital Rebar does is it is the platform that helps connect all of the different pieces and tools that people use to manage infrastructure into infrastructure pipelines through the seamless multi-component automation across all of the different pieces and parts that have to be run to bring up infrastructure. And we were talking data centers do a lot of on-premises all the way from the bare metal up. But multi-cloud, you name it, we're doing infrastructure at that level. CHAD: So, how agnostic to the actual bare metal are you? ROB: We're very agnostic to the bare metal. The way we look at it is data centers are heterogeneous, diverse places. And that the thing that sometimes blocks companies from being innovative is when they decide, oh, we're going to use this one vendor for this one platform. And that keeps them actually from moving forward. So when we look at data centers, the heterogeneity and sometimes the complexity of that environment is a feature. It's not a bug from that perspective. And so it's always been important to us to be multi-vendor, to do things in a vendor-neutral way to accommodate the quirks and the differences between...and it's not just vendors; it's actually user choice. A lot of companies have a multi-vendor problem (I'm air quoting) that is actually a multi-team problem where teams have chosen to make different choices. TerraForm has no conformance standard built into it. [laughs] And so you might have everybody in your company using TerraForm and Ansible happily but all differently. And that's the problem that we walk into when we walk into a data center challenge. And you can't sweep that under the rug. So we embraced it. CHAD: What kind of companies are your primary customers? ROB: We're very wide-ranging, from the top banks use us and deploy us, telcos, service providers, very large scale service providers use us under the covers, media companies. It really runs the gamut because it's fundamentally for us just about infrastructure. And our largest customers are racing to be the first to deploy. And it's multi-site, but 20,000 machines that they're managing under our Digital Rebar management system. CHAD: It's easy, I think, depending on where you sit and your experiences. The cloud providers today can overshadow the idea that there are even people who still have their own data centers or rent a portion of a data center. In today's ecosystem, what are some of the factors that cause someone to do that who isn't an infrastructure provider themselves? ROB: You know the funny thing about these cloud stories (And we're talking just the day after Amazon had a day-long outage.) is that even the cloud providers don't have you give up operation. You're still responsible for the ops. And for our customers, it's not like they can all just use Lambdas and API gateways. At the end of the day, they're actually doing multi-site distributed operations. And they have these estates that are actually it's more about how do I control distributed infrastructure as much as it is about repatriating. Now, we do a lot to help people repatriate. And they do that because they want more control. Cost savings is a significant component with this. You get into the 1000s of machines, and that's a big deal. Even at hundreds of machines, you can save a lot of money compared to what you get in cloud. And I think people get confused with it being an or choice. It really is an and choice. Our best customers are incredibly savvy cloud users. They want that dynamic, resilient very API-driven environment. And they're looking to bring that throughout the organization. And so those are the ones that get excited when they see what we've done because we spend a lot of time doing infrastructure as code and API-driven infrastructure. That's really what they want. CHAD: Cool. So, how long have you been working on RackN? When did you found it? ROB: [laughs] Oh my goodness. So RackN is seven years old. Digital Rebar, we consider it to be at its fourth generation, but those numbers actually count back before that. They go back to 2009. The founding team was actually at Dell together in the OpenStack heyday and even before the OpenStack heyday. And we were trying to ship clouds from the Dell Factory. And what we found was that every customer had this bespoke data center we've already talked about. And we couldn't write automation that would work customer to customer to customer. And it was driving us nuts. We're a software team, not a hardware team inside of Dell. And the idea that if I fixed something in the delivery or in their data center, and couldn't go back to their data center because it was different than what the next customer needed and the next customer needed, we knew that we would never have a community. It's very much about this community and reuse pattern. There's an interesting story that I picked up from SREcon actually where they were talking about the early days of boilers. This is going back a few centuries ago. But when they first started putting boilers into homes and buildings, there was no pattern, there was no standard. And everybody would basically hire a plumber or a heating architect. Heating architect was a thing. But you'd build a boiler and every one was custom, and every one was different. And no surprise, they blew up a lot, and they caused fires. And buildings were incredibly unsafe because they were working on high-pressure systems with no pattern. And it took regulation and laws and standards. And now nobody even thinks about it. You just take standard parts, and you connect them together in standard ways. And that creates actually a much more innovative system. You wouldn't want every house to be wired uniquely either. And so when we look at the state of automation today, we see it as this pre-industrial pre-standardization process and that companies are actually harmed and harming themselves because they don't have standards, and patterns, and practices that they can just roll and know they work. And so that philosophy started way back in 2009 with the first generation which was called Crowbar. Some of your audience might even remember this from the OpenStack days. It was the first OpenStack installer built around Chef. And it had all sorts of challenges in it, but it showed us the way. And then we iterated up to where Digital Rebar is today. Really fully infrastructure as code, building infrastructure pipelines, and a lot of philosophical pieces we've learned along the way. CHAD: So you were at Dell working on this thing. How did you decide to leave Dell and start something new? ROB: Dell helped me with that decision. [laughs] So the challenge of being a software person inside of Dell especially at the time, Crowbar was open-source which did make it easier for us to say, "Hey, we want to part ways but keep the IP." And the funny thing is there's not a scrap of Crowbar in Digital Rebar except one or two naming conventions that we pulled forward and the nod of the name, that Rebar is a nod to Crowbar. But what happened was Dell when it went private, really did actually double down on the hardware and the more enterprise packaged things. They didn't want to invest in DevOps and that conversation that you need to have with your customers on how they operate, the infrastructure you sold them. And that made Dell not a very good place for me and the team. And so we left Dell, looked at the opportunity to take what we'd been building with Crowbar and then make it into a product. That's been a long journey. CHAD: Now, did you bootstrap, or did you take investment? ROB: We took [laughs] a little bit of investment. We raised some seed funding. Certainly not what was in hindsight was going to be sufficient for us to do it. But we thought at the time that we had something that was much more product-ready for customers than it was. CHAD: And what was the challenge that you found? What was the surprise there that it wasn't as ready as you thought? ROB: So what we've learned in our space specifically...and there are some things that I think apply to everybody, and there are some things that you might be able to throw on the floor and ignore. I was a big fan of Minimum Viable Product. And it turned out that the MVP strategy was not at all workable with customers in data centers. Our product is for people running production data centers. And nobody's going to put in software to run a data center that is MVP. It has to be resilient. It has to be robust. It has to be simple enough that they can understand it and solve some core problems, which is still sort of an MVP idea. But it can't be oops. [laughs] You can't have a lot of oops moments when you're dealing with enterprise infrastructure automation software. It has to work. And importantly, and as a design note, this has been a lesson for us. If it does break, it has to break in very transparent, obvious ways. And I can't emphasize that enough. There's so much that when we build it, we come back and like, was it obvious that it broke? Is it obvious that it broke in a way that you can fix? CHAD: And it's part of the culture too to do detailed post mortems with explanations and be as transparent as possible or at least find the root cause so that you can address it. That's part of the culture of the space too, right? ROB: You'd like to hope so. [laughs] CHAD: Okay. [laughs] In my experience, that's the culture of the space. ROB: You're looking more at a developer experience. But even with a developer, you've got to be in a post mortem or something. And it's like everybody's pointing to the person to the left and the right sort of by human nature. You don't walk into that room assuming that it was your fault, and you should, but that's not how it usually is approached. And what we find in the ops space, and I would tell people to work around this pattern if they can, is that if you're the thing doing the automation, you're always the first cause of the problem. So we run into situations where we're doing a configuration, and we find a vendor bug or a glitch or there's something, and we found it. It's our problem whether we were the cause or not. And that's super hard. I think that people on every side of any type of issue need to look through and figure out what the...the blameless post mortem is a really important piece in all this. At the end of the day, it's always a human system that made a mistake or has something like that. But it's not as simple as the thing that told you the bad news that the messenger was at fault. And there's a system design element to that. That's what we're talking about here is that when you're exposing errors or when something's not behaving the way you expect, our philosophy is to stop. And we've had some very contentious arguments with customers who were like, "Just retry until it fixes itself," or vendors who were like, "Yeah, if you retry that thing three times, [laughs] then it'll magically go away." And we're like, that's not good behavior. Fix the problem. It actually took us years to put a retry element into the tasks so that you can say, yeah, this does need three retries. Just go do it. We've resisted for a long time for this reason. CHAD: So you head out into the market. And did you get initial customers, or was there so much resistance to the product that you had that you struggled to get even first customers? ROB: We had first customers. We had a nice body of code. The problem is actually pretty well understood even by our customers. And so it wasn't hard for them to get a trial going. So we actually had a very profitable customer doing...it was in object storage, public object storage space. And they were installing us. They wanted to move us into all their data centers. But for it to work, we ended up having an engineer who basically did consulting and worked with them for the better part of six months and built a whole bunch of stuff, got it working. They could plug in servers, and everything would set itself up. And they could hit a button and reset all the servers, and they would talk to the switches. It was an amazing amount of automation. But, and this happens a lot, the person we'd been working with was an SRE. And when they went to turn it over to the admins in the ops team, they said, [laughs] "We can't operate. There's too much going on, too complex." And we'd actually recognized...and this is a really serious challenge. It's a challenge now that we're almost five years into the generation that came after that experience. And we recognized there was a problem. And that this wasn't going to create that repeatable experience that we were looking for if it took that much. At the same time, we had been building what is now Digital Rebar in this generation that was a single Golang binary. All the services were bundled into the system. So it listened on different ports but provide all the services, very easy to install, really, really simple. We literally stripped everything back to the basics and restarted. And we had this experience where we sat down with a customer who had...I'm going to take a second and tell the story because this is such a compelling story from a product experience. So we took our first product. We were in a bake-off with another bare metal focus provisioning at the time. And they were in a lab, and they set our stuff up. And they turned it on, and they provisioned. And they set up the competitor, and they turned it on and provisioned. And both products worked. Our product took 20 minutes to go through the cycle and the competitor took 3. And the customer came back and said, "I can't use this. I like your product better. It has more controls with all this stuff." But it took 20 minutes instead of 3. We actually logged into the system, looked at it and we were like, "Well, that's because it recognized that your BIOS was out of date, patched your BIOS, updated the system, checked that it was right, and then rebooted the systems and then continued on its way because it recognized your systems were outdated automatically. And he said, "I didn't want it to do that. I needed it to boot as quickly as possible." And literally, [laughs] we were in the middle of a team retreat. So it's like, the CTO is literally excusing himself on the table to talk to the guy to make this stuff, try and make it right. And he's like, "Well, we've got this new thing. Why don't you install this, what's now Digital Rebar, on the system and repeat the experiment?" And he did and Digital Rebar was even faster than the competitor. And it did exactly just install, booted, and was done. And he came back to the table, and it took 15 minutes to have the whole conversation to make everything work. It was that much of a simpler design. And he sat down and told the story. And I was in the middle of it. I'm just like, "We're going to have to pivot and put everything into the new version," which is what we did. And we just ripped out the complexity. And then over the last couple of years now, we've built the complexity back into the system to do all those additional but much more customer-driven from that perspective. CHAD: How did you make sure that as you were changing your focus, putting all of your energy into the new version that you [laughs] didn't introduce too much risk in that process or didn't take too long? ROB: [laughs] We did take too long and introduced too much risk, and we did run out of money. [laughs] All those things happened. This was a very difficult decision. We thought we could get it done much faster. The challenge of the simpler product was that it was too simple to be enough in customers' data centers. And so yeah, we almost went out of business in the middle of all this cycle. We had a time where RackN went back down to just the two founders. And at this point, we'd gotten far enough with the product that we knew it was the right thing. And we'd also embedded a degree...with the way we do the UX, we have this split. The UX runs on a hosted system. It doesn't have to but by default, it does. And then we have the back end. So we were very careful about how we collected metrics because you really need to know who's downloading and using your products. And we had enough data from that to realize that we had some very committed early users and early customers, just huge brand names that were playing around. So we knew that we'd gotten this mix right, that we were solving a problem in a unique way. But it was going to take time because big companies don't make decisions quickly. We have a joke. We call it the reorg half-life problem. So the half-life of a reorg in any of our customers is about nine months. And either you're successful inside of that reorg half-life, or you have to be resilient across this reorg half. And so initially, it was taking more than nine months. We had to be able to get the product in play. And once we did, we had some customers who came in with very big checks and let us come back and basically build back up. And we've been adding some really nice names into our customer roster. Unfortunately, it's all private. I can tell you their industries and their scale, but I can't name them. But that engagement helped drive us towards the feature set and the capabilities and building things up along that process. But it was frustrating. And some of them, especially at the time we were open-source, were very happy to say, "No, we are a super big brand name. We don't pay for software." I'm like, "Most profitable, highest valued companies in the world you don't want to pay for this operational software?" And they're like, "No, we don't have to." And that didn't sit very well with us. Very hard, as a starting startup, it was hard. CHAD: At the time, everything you were doing was open source. ROB: So in the Digital Rebar era, we were trying to do Open Core. Digital Rebar itself was open. And then we were trying to hold back the BIOS patches, integrate enterprise single sign-on. So there was a degree of integration pieces that we held back as RackN and then left the core open. So you could use Digital Rebar and run it, which we had actually had a lot of success with people downloading, installing, and running Digital Rebar, not as much success in getting them to pay us for that privilege. CHAD: So, how did you adjust to that reality? ROB: We inverted the license. After we landed a couple of big banks and we had several others and some hyperscalers too who were like, "This is really good software. We love it. We're embedding it in our service, but we're not going to pay you." And then they would show up with bugs and complaints and issues and all sorts of stuff still. And what happened is we started seeing them replicating the closed pieces. The APIs were open. We actually looked at it and listening to our communities, they wanted to see what was in the closed pieces. That was actually operationally important for them to understand how that stuff worked. They never contributed or asked to see anything in the core. And, there's an important and here, and they needed performance improvements in the core that were radically different. So the original open-source stuff went to maybe 500 machines, and then it started to cap out. And we were like, all right, we're going to have to really rewrite the data store mechanisms that go with this. And the team looked at each other and were like, "We're not going to open source that. That's really complex and challenging IP." And so we said the right model for us is going to be to make the core closed and then allow our community and users to see all the things that they are actually using to interact with their environment. And it ends up being a little bit of a filter. There are people who only use open-source software. But those companies also don't necessarily want to pay. When I was an open-source evangelist, this was always a problem. You're pounding on the table saying, "If you're using open-source software, you need to understand who to pay for that service, that software that you're getting. If you're not paying for it, that software is going to go away." In a lot of cases, we're a walking example of that. And it's funny, more of the codebase is open today than it was then. [chuckles] But the challenge is that it's really an open ecosystem now because none of that software is particularly useful without the core to run it and glue everything together. CHAD: Was that a difficult decision to make? Was it controversial? ROB: Incredibly difficult. It was something I spent a lot of time agonizing about. My CTO is much clear-eyed on this. From his perspective, he and the other engineers are blood, sweat, and tears putting this in. And it was very frustrating for them to see it running people's production data centers who told us, and this is I think the key, who just said to us, "You know, we're not going to pay money for that." And so for them, it was very clear-eyed it's their work, their sweat equity, very gut feeling for that. For me, I watched communities with open-source routes, you know, the Kubernetes community. I was in OpenStack. I was on the board for that. And there is definitely a lift that you get from having free software and not having the strings. And I also like the idea that from a support perspective, if you're using open-source software, you could conceivably not care for the vendor that went away. You could find another life for it. But years have gone by and that's not actually a truism that when you are using open-source software if you're getting it from a vendor, you're not necessarily protected from that vendor making decisions for you. CentOS is a great...the whole we're about to hit the CentOS deadlines, which is the Streams, and you can't get other versions. And we now have three versions of CentOS, at least three versions of CentOS with Rocky, and Alma, and CentOs Streams. Those are very challenging decisions for people running enterprise data centers, not that simple. And nobody in our communities is running charity data centers. There's no goodwill charity. I'm running a data center out of the goodness of my heart. [laughs] They are all production systems, enterprise. They're doing real production work. And that's a commercial engagement. It's not a feel-good thing. CHAD: So what did you do in your decision-making process? What pushed you, or what did you come to terms with in order to make that change? ROB: I had to admit I was wrong. [laughter] I had to think back on statements I'd made and the enthusiasm that I'd had and give up some really hard beliefs. Being a CEO or a founder is the same process. So I wish I could say this was the only time [laughs] I had to question, you know, hard-made assumptions, or some core beliefs in what I thought. I've had to get really good at questioning when am I projecting this is the way I want the world to be therefore it will be? That's a CEO skill set and a founder skill set...and when that projection is having you on thin ice. And so you constantly have to make that balance. And this was one of those ones where I'm like, all right, let's do it. And I still wake up some mornings and look at people who are open source only and see how much press they get or how easy it is for them to get mentions and things like that. And I'm like, ah, God, that'd be great. It feels like it's much harder for us because we're commercial to get the amplification. There are conferences that will amplify open-source TerraForm, great example. It gets tons of amplification for being a single vendor project that's really tightly controlled by HashiCorp. But nobody is afraid to go talk about TerraForm and mention TerraForm and do all this stuff, the amazing use of open source by that company. But they could turn it and twist it, and they could change it. It's not a guarantee by any stretch of the imagination. CHAD: Well, one of the things that I've come to terms with, and maybe this is a very positive way of looking at it, instead of that you were wrong, [laughter] is to realize that well, you weren't necessarily wrong. It got you to where you were at that point. But maybe in order to go to the next level, you need to do something different. And that's how I come to terms with some things where I need to change my thinking. ROB: [laughs] I like that. It's good. Sometimes you can look back and be like, yeah, that wasn't the right thing and just own it. But yeah, it does help you to know the path. Part of the reason why I love talking about it with you like this is it's not just Rob was wrong; we're actually walking the path through that decision. And it's easy to imagine us sitting in...we're in a tiny, little shared office listening to calls where...I'll tell you this as a story to make it incredibly concrete because it's exactly how this happened. We were on a call. Everybody was in the room. And we were talking to a major bank saying, "We love your software." We're like, "Great, we're looking forward to working with you," all this stuff. And they're like, "Yeah, we need you to show us how you built this plugin because we want to write our own version of it." CHAD: [chuckles] ROB: We're like, "If you did that, you wouldn't need to buy our software." And they're like, "That's right. We're not going to buy your software." CHAD: Exactly. [laughs] ROB: And we're like, "Well, we won't show you how to use it. Then we won't show you how to do that." And they're like, "Well, okay. We'll figure it out ourselves." And so I'm the cheerful, sunny, positive, sort of managing the call, and I'm not just yelling at them. My CTO is sitting next to me literally tearing his hair. This was literally a tearing his hair out moment. And we hung up the call, and we went on a walk around the neighborhood. And he was just like, "What more do you need to hear for you to understand?" And so it's moments like that. But instead of being like, no, you're wrong, we got to do it this way, I was ready to say, "Okay, what do you think we can do? How do we think we can do it?" And then he left me with a big pile of PR messaging to explain what we're doing, conversations like this. Two years ago when we made this change, almost three, I felt like I was being handed a really hard challenge. As it turns out, it hasn't been as big a deal. The market has changed about how they perceive open source. And for enterprise customers, they're like, "All right, how do we deal with the licensing for this stuff?" And we're like, "You just buy it from us." And they're like, "That's it?" And I'm like, "Yes." And you guarantee every..." "Yes." They're like, "Oh. Well, that's pretty straightforward. I don't have to worry about..." We could go way down an open-source rabbit hole and the consulting pieces and who owns the IP, and I used to deal with all that stuff. Now it's very straightforward. [laughs] Like, "You want to buy and use the software to run your data center?" "Yes, I do." "Great." CHAD: Well, I think this is generally applicable even beyond your specific product but to products in general. It's like, when you're not talking to people who are good customers or who are even going to be your customers who are going to pay for what you want, you can spend a lot of time and energy trying to please them. But you're not going to be successful because they're not going to be your customers no matter what you do. ROB: And that ends up being a bit of a filter with the open-source pieces is that there are customers who were dyed in the wool open source. And this used to be more true actually as the markets moved a lot. We ended up just not talking to many. But they do, they want a lot. They definitely would ask for features or things and additions and help, things like that. And it's hard to say no. Especially as a startup founder, you want to say yes a lot. We try to not say yes to things that we don't...and this puts us at a disadvantage I feel like from a marketing perspective. If we don't do something, we tend to say we don't do it, or we could do it, but it would take whatever. I wish more people in the tech space were as disciplined about this does work, this doesn't work, this is a feature. This is something we're working on. It's not how tech marketing typically works sadly. That's why we focus on self-trials so people can use the product. Mid-roll Ad I wanted to tell you all about something I've been working on quietly for the past year or so, and that's AgencyU. AgencyU is a membership-based program where I work one-on-one with a small group of agency founders and leaders toward their business goals. We do one-on-one coaching sessions and also monthly group meetings. We start with goal setting, advice, and problem-solving based on my experiences over the last 18 years of running thoughtbot. As we progress as a group, we all get to know each other more. And many of the AgencyU members are now working on client projects together and even referring work to each other. Whether you're struggling to grow an agency, taking it to the next level and having growing pains, or a solo founder who just needs someone to talk to, in my 18 years of leading and growing thoughtbot, I've seen and learned from a lot of different situations, and I'd be happy to work with you. Learn more and sign up today at thoughtbot.com/agencyu. That's A-G-E-N-C-Y, the letter U. CHAD: So you have the core and then you have the ecosystem. And you also mentioned earlier that it is an actual software package that people are buying and installing in their data center. But then you have the UI which is in the cloud and what's in the data center is reporting up to that. ROB: Well, this is where I'm going to get very technical [laughs] so hang on for a second. We actually use a cross-domain approach. So the way this works...and our UX is written in React. And everything's...boy, there's like three or four things I have to say all at once. So forgive me as I circle. Everything we do at Digital Rebar is API-first, really API only, so the Golang service with an API, which is amazing. It's the right way to do software. So for our UX, it is a React application that can talk to that what we call an endpoint, that Digital Rebar endpoint. And so the UX is designed to talk directly to the Digital Rebar endpoint, and all of the information that it gets comes from that Digital Rebar endpoint. We do not have to relay it. Like, you have to be inside that network to get access to that endpoint. And the UX just talks to it. CHAD: Okay. And so the UX is just being served from your centralized servers, but you're just delivering the React for the JavaScript app. And that is talking to the local APIs. ROB: Right. And so we do use that browser as a bridge. And so when you want to download new content packs...so Digital Rebar is a platform. So you have to download content and automation and pieces into it. The browser is actually your bridge to do that. So the browser can connect to our catalog, pull down our catalog, and then send things into that browser. So it's super handy for that. But yeah, it's fundamentally...it's all behind your firewall software except...and this is where people get confused because you're downloading it from rackn.io. That download or the URL on the browser looks like it's a RackN URL even though all the traffic is network local. CHAD: Do your customers tend to stay up to date? Are they updating to the latest version right away all the time? ROB: [laughs] No, of course not. CHAD: I figured that was the answer. ROB: And we maintain patches on old versions and things like that. I wish they were a little faster. I'm not always sad that they're...I'm actually very glad when we do a release like we did yesterday...And in that release, I don't expect any of our production customers to go patch everything. So in a SaaS, you might actually have to deal with the fact that you've got...and we're back to our heterogeneity story. And this is why it's important that we don't do this. If we were to push that, if we didn't handle every situation for every customer exactly right, there would be chaos. And it would all come back to our team. The way we do it means that we don't have to deal with that. Customers are in control of when they upgrade and when they migrate, except in the UX case. CHAD: So how do you manage that if someone goes to the UI and their local thing is an old version? Are you detecting that and doing things differently? ROB: Yes, one of the decisions we made that I'm really happy with is we embedded feature flags into the API. When you log in, it will pull back. We know what the versions are. But versions are really problematic as a way to determine what's in software, not what's not in software. So instead, we get an array back that has feature flags as we add features into the core. And we've been doing this for years. And it's an amazingly productive process. And so what the UX does is as we add new things into the UX, it will look for those feature flags. And if the feature flag isn't there, it will show you a message that says, "This feature is not available for your endpoint," or show you the thing appropriate without that. And so the UX has gone through years of this process. And so there are literally just places where the UX changes behavior based on what you've installed on your system. And remember, our customers it's multi-site. So our customers do have multiple versions of Digital Rebar installed across there. So this behavior is really important also for them to be able to do it. And it goes back to LaunchDarkly. I was talking to Edith back in the early days of LaunchDarkly and feature flags, and I got really excited about that. And that's why we embedded it into the product. Everybody should do it. It's amazing. CHAD: One of the previous episodes a few ago was with actually the thoughtbot CTO, Joe Ferris. And we're on a project together where it's a different way of working but especially when you need it... so much of what I had done previously was versioned APIs. Maybe that works at a certain scale. But you get to a certain scale of software and way of working and wanting to do continuous deployment and continually update features and all that stuff. And it's a really good way of working when instead you are communicating on the level of feature availability. ROB: And from an ops person's perspective, and this was true with OpenStack, they were adding feature flags down at the metadata for the...it was incredible. They went deep into the versioned API hellscape. It's the only way I can describe it [laughs] because we don't do that. But the thing that that does not help you with is a lot of times the changes that you're looking at from an API perspective are behavior changes, not API changes. Our API over years now has been additive. And as long as you're okay with new objects showing up, new fields showing up in an object, you could go back to four-year-old software, talk to our API, and it would still work just fine. So all your integrations are going to be good, but the behavior might change. And that's what people don't...they're like, oh, I can make my API version, and everything's good. But the behavior that you're putting behind the scenes might be different. You need a way to express that even more than the APIs in my opinion. CHAD: I do think you really see that when you...if you're just building a monolithic web app, it's harder to see. But once you separate your UI from your back end...and where I first hit this was with mobile applications. The problem becomes more obvious to you as a developer I think. ROB: Yes. CHAD: Because you have some people out there who are actually running different versions of your UI too. So your back end is the same for everybody but your UI is different. ROB: [laughs] CHAD: And so you need a back end that can respond to different clients. And a better way to do that rather than versioning your API is to have the clients tell you what they're capable of while they're making the requests and to respond differently. It's much more of a flexible way. ROB: We do track what UX. We have customers who don't want to use that. They don't even want us changing the UX...or actually normal enterprise. And so they will run...the nice thing about a React app is you can just run it. The Digital Rebar can host its UX, and that's perfectly reasonable. We have customers who do that. But every core adds more operational complexity. And then if they don't patch the UX, they can fall behind or not get features. So we see that it's...you're describing a real, you know, the more information you're exchanging between the clients and the servers, the better for you to track what's really going on. CHAD: And I think overall once you can get a little...in my experience, especially people who haven't worked that way, joining the team, it can take a little bit for them to get comfortable with that approach and the flexibility you need to be building into your system. But once people are comfortable with it and the team is comfortable, it really starts to hum. In my experience, a lot of what we've advocated for in terms of the way software should be built and deployed and that kind of thing is it actually makes it so that you can leave that even easier. And you can really be agile because you can roll things out in a very agile way. ROB: So are you thinking like an actual rolling deployment where the deployed software has multiple versions coming through? CHAD: Yep. And you can also have different users seeing different things at different times as well. You can say, "We're going to be doing continual deployment and have code continually deployed." But that doesn't mean that it's part of the release yet, that it's available to users to use. ROB: Yeah, that ability to split and feature flag is a huge deal. CHAD: Yeah. What I'm trying to figure out is does this apply to every project even the small like, this just changes the way you should build software? Or is there a time in a product to start introducing that thing? ROB: I am a big fan of doing it first and fast. There are decisions that we made early that have proven out really well. Feature flags is one of them. We started right away knowing that this would be an important thing for us to do. And same thing with tracking dependencies and being able to say, "I need..." actually, it's helpful because you can write automation that says, "I need this feature in the product." This flag and the product it's not just a version thing. That makes the automation a little bit more portable, easier to maintain. The other thing we did that I really like is all of our objects have documentation embedded in them. So as I write a parameter or an ask or really anything in the system, everything has a documentation field. And so I can write the documentation for that component right there. And then we modified our build scripts so that they will pull in all of that documentation and create an aggregated view. And so the ability to do just-in-time documentation is very, very high. And so I'm a huge fan of that. Because then you have the burden of like, oh, I need to go back and write up a whole bunch of documentation really lessened when you can be like, okay, for this parameter, I can explain its behavior, or I can tell you what it does and know that it's going to show up as part of a documentation set that explains it. That's been something I've been a big fan of in what we build. And not everybody [laughs] is as much a fan. And you can see people writing stuff without particularly crisp documentation behind it. But at least we can go back and add that documentation or lessons learned or things like that. And it's been hugely helpful to have a place to do that. From a design perspective, one other thing I would say that we did that...and you can imagine the conversation. I have a UX usability focus. I'm out selling the product. So for me, it's how does it demo? How does it show? What's that first experience like? And so for me having icons and colors in the UX, in the experience is really important. Because there's a lot of semantic meaning that people get just looking down a list of icons and seeing that they are different colors and different shapes. But from the CTO's perspective, that's window dressing. Who cares? It doesn't have functional purpose. And we're both right. There's a lot of times when to me, both people can be right. So we added that as a metafield into all of our objects. And so we have the functional part of the definition of the API. And then we have these metaobjects that you can add in or meta definitions that you can add in behind the scenes to drive icons and colors. But sometimes UX rendering hints and things like that that from an API perspective, you're like, I don't care, not really an API thing. But from a do I show...this is sensitive information. Do I turn it into a password field? Or should this have a clipboard so I can clipboard icon it, or should I render it in this type of viewer or a plain text viewer? And all that stuff we have a place for. CHAD: And so it's actually being delivered by the API that's saying that. ROB: Correct. CHAD: That's cool. ROB: It's been very helpful. You can imagine the type of stuff we have, and it's easy to influence UX behaviors without asking for UI change. CHAD: Now, are these GraphQL APIs? ROB: No. We looked at doing that. That's probably a whole nother...I might get our CTO on the line for that. CHAD: [laughs] It's a whole nother episode for that. ROB: But we could do that. But we made some decisions that it wasn't going to provide a lot of lift for us in navigation at the moment. It's funny, there's stuff that we think is a really cool idea, but we've learned not to jump on them without having really specific customer use cases or validations. CHAD: Well, like you said, you've got to say no. You've got to make decisions about what is important, and what isn't important now, and what you'll get to later, and that requires discipline. ROB: This may be a way to bring it full circle. If you go back to the stories of every customer having a unique data center, there's this heterogeneity and multi-vendor pieces that are really important. The unicycle we have to ride for this is we want our customers to have standard operating processes, standard infrastructure pipelines for this and use those and follow that process. Because we know if they do, then they'll keep improving as we improve the pipelines. And they're all unique. So there has to be a way in those infrastructure pipelines to do extensions that allow somebody to say, "I need to make this call here in the middle of this pipeline." And we have ways to do that address those needs. The challenge becomes providing enough opinionated like, this is how you should do things. And it's okay if you have to extend it or change it a little bit or tweak it without it just becoming an open-ended tool where people show up and they're like, "Oh, yeah, I get how to build something." And we have people do this, but they run out of gas in the long journey. They end up writing bespoke workflows. They write their own pipelines; they do their own integrations. And for them, it's very hard to support them. It's very hard to upgrade them. It's very hard for them to survive the reorg, your nine-month reorg windows. And so yeah, there's a balance between go do whatever you want, which you have to enable and do it our way because these processes are going to let your teams collaborate, let you reuse software. And we've actually over time been erring more and more on the side of you really need to do it the way we want you to do; reinforce the infrastructure as code processes. And this is the key, right? I mean, you're coming from a development mindset. You want your tooling to reinforce good behavior, CICD, infrastructure as code, all these things. You need those to be easier to do [laughs] than writing it yourself. And over time, we've been progressing more and more towards the let's make it easier to do it within the opinionated way that we have and less easy to do it within the Wild West pattern. CHAD: Cool. Well, I think with that, we'll start to wrap up. So if people want to find out more, where are some places that they could do that or get in touch with you? ROB: The simplest thing is of course rackn.com is the website. We encourage people to just, if this is interesting, download and try the software. If they have a cloud account, it's super easy to play with it, all things RackN through that. I am very active on Twitter under the handle @zehicle Z-E-H-I-C-L-E. And I'm happy to have conversations around these topics and data center and operations and even the future of cloud and edge computing. So please look me up. I'm excited to have conversations like that. CHAD: Awesome. And you can subscribe to the show and find notes and transcripts for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on Twitter @cpytel. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening and see you next time. Announcer: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.

Episode SummaryHarry welcomes to the show app developer, freelancer and podcaster, Rob Joseph. Rob is the host of the Coffee & Coding podcast, a show that provides interviews & insights with experienced developer's across all aspects of App Development, including topics ranging from Flutter, Cyber Security, Freelancing, Android & iOS. In this episode, Harry and Rob discuss Rob's background in coding and the inspiration to launch his own podcast. They talk about the freedom that comes with freelancing and how it differs from running your own business. Finally, Rob shares his process for curating meaningful interview questions and his decision to launch a podcast about podcasting.  Episode SponsorsFocusrite –http://pjnk.es/focusrite ( http://pjnk.es/focusrite) FullCast –https://fullcast.co/ ( https://fullcast.co/) Key Takeaways06:17 – Harry and Rob talk about Rob's background in coding and the freedom that comes with freelancing  19:18 – The distinction between freelancing and starting your own business  24:29 – Why app design?  30:22 – The inspiration behind the Coffee & Coding podcast and Rob's first guest  34:13 – Rob's interview process and his growth as a podcast host  46:22 – The decision to launch a podcast about podcasting  54:51 – Something Rob has changed his mind about recently and the most misunderstood thing about him  58:24 – Harry thanks Rob for joining the show and let's listeners know where they can connect with him  Tweetable Quotes“The biggest thing [about freelancing] comes down to trust. And I think if you have an objective way to measure the goal that you want, then really the in-between doesn't matter.” (15:14) (Rob)  “The biggest thing that drove me into app developing was actually two things. One, I read an article on Life Hacker that said this is our perfect to do list app. So, in my young brain I'm thinking, ‘Right, if I build this app, that's the million dollar idea.' I started to kinda learn app development from there. I didn't really make a dent, but what it taught me was that I could do some of it.” (25:09) (Rob) “I approached it [Coffee & Coding] pretty much the same way that I approach my apps, which is that I build stuff that I want. So I really wanted to listen to a show that was about app development but it wasn't technical.” (30:39) (Rob) “You want to get the best conversation from them. You want to get the best content for your guest. Personally, I want to have a great conversation. So, why would I ask you questions that I know the answer to?” (44:33) (Rob) Resources MentionedFullCast Website –https://fullcast.co/ ( https://fullcast.co/) Podcast Junkies Junkies Facebook Group –https://www.facebook.com/groups/podcastjunkiesjunkies/ ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/podcastjunkiesjunkies/) Link to Podfest Expo Virtual Summit –https://podfestexpo.com/ ( https://podfestexpo.com/) Link to Follow Up Then – https://www.followupthen.com/ (https://www.followupthen.com/)  Rob's LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/therobj/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/therobj/)  Rob's Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lowcarbrob/ (https://www.instagram.com/lowcarbrob/)  Rob's Twitter – https://twitter.com/LowCarbRob (https://twitter.com/LowCarbRob)  Rob's Podcasts:  Coffee & Coding – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coffee-coding-the-app-developer-podcast/id1516149785 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coffee-coding-the-app-developer-podcast/id1516149785)  Inside the Podcast Studio – https://insidethepod.co/ (https://insidethepod.co/)  Link to ‘Make Noise' – https://www.amazon.com/Make-Noise-Creators-Podcasting-Storytelling/dp/1523504552/ref=asc_df_1523504552?tag=bingshoppinga-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=80401880071863&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4584001425728657&psc=1...

How to turn your passion for visiting yard sales and thrift stores into a profitable side hustle. - FREE WORKSHOPWhat's up, guys? Today, we have the honor of introducing and interviewing Adam Smith, who has just recently within the last year jumped into flipping, but he's made some, sweet flips and he's made some awesome progress towards this reselling a side hustle, or profession, whatever you want to call it. So we're very honored, very glad to have Adam to the show. Adam, welcome. Thank you so much for jumping on here.Adam: Oh, thank you, Rob and Melissa. It's great to be [00:01:00] here.Melissa: Awesome. Thanks so much for being here. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Give us a little background of you.Adam: Well, sure. I'm 41 years old. I have two young children, and two and four months, and I work a boring corporate job.And about a year ago, I, got into flipping, with the help of my mother who's been selling on eBay for years and years as a hobby and having fun. And she came and visited, for the holidays and we've said, well, let's sell some of this stuff around the house. And that's how I kinda got going, just selling stuff around the house.And, I had so much fun with it that I said, well, I'm going to start going to the thrift store. And I started selling stuff from the thrift store. And then, you know, I like to research stuff and I started a, what the heck is this reselling stuff? What the heck is flipping? And then that's how I found you guys and your videos on YouTube.And then that's really where it [00:02:00] launched, there. You know, a couple months after I started with my mom, I had found you guys. And I said, wow, we can really, I can really make some extra money at this. And this is really super fun. So that's probably more than you wanted in introducing myself, but...Rob: No, that was great. That's exactly what we want. We want your backstory, what you're doing, kind of how you found this career, this side hustle, whatever it is for everybody. So no, that's great. And you said one thing that throws a wrench into anybody's flipping business. You have young kids, you have a full-time job and you're still out there and you're doing amazing at flipping.So, yeah, that's awesome. Very, very exciting that, that is part of your journey and that's where you're at right now. So, yeah. Awesome. Awesome.Melissa: The kids take a lot of time. We know, very well, how much they take from your time, and we love it obviously, but it there's a lot less time left in the day to do anything else. So.Rob: The other thing I liked about what you said is you started from the stuff that's in your house. And a lot of people they find out about flipping and they think they have to go out and invest all this money, and then they have to have [00:03:00] all this inventory that they're not sure if it's going to sell, but you started with stuff that you had. That's kind of the way we teach people as well, stuff that you have sitting around the house, that you're not using anymore and start selling it, learn how to do the flipping and then you can actually expand and get bigger and go buy stuff that, you know, that's going to sell. So, yeah. That's awesome that that's how you started, for sure.Adam: Yeah, like I...Melissa: Go ahead. Sorry.Adam: Yeah, just having, you know, when I started, we had one, our first child, who was about two. And so I had quite a bit of extra time still, compared to what I have now. Now we have a four-month-old baby around the house, so it's really put a crunch on the amount of time, free time that I have to go out, you know, yard saling or thrifting, or just, you know, searching on Facebook marketplace for items. But I'll say it, it's still, I think the max I put in on a weekly basis would be 10, you know, 15 hours at the most. And I'm able to squeeze that in, you [00:04:00] know, after everyone's in bed, I'll, you know, do some listing of items or packaging up of items and stuff at night.So I, and I still get to bed at a reasonable hour. And then of course the kids have me up at 5:00 or 6:00 AM or something. So yeah, I think my sales in the first month, half of the year, we're really, really strong before baby came in June. And then it really tanked from June, July, and August. I really didn't have a lot of time cause baby was so young.But now that we've kind of settled into a routine and I can have that time at night and a little bit in the early morning to do flipping stuff, I'm right back to where I was in the beginning part of the year.Melissa: Awesome. So when you, you're saying around 10 to 15 hours, when you're on your kind of normal schedule, so what is that usually average a month when you're on the normal schedule?Rob: Income wise, that, that brings up a great point because a lot of people want to know if I can throw an extra 5 hours, 10 hours at this business, what can I expect? And you're like you said, you're [00:05:00] a new flipper within the last 12 months you've been actually doing this. So, kind of give us some numbers, you know, maybe averages, that you've been able to do on the selling side of it.Adam: Yeah, my average sales per month are around I think between $5,000 and $7,000 a month, I would say.Rob: That's awesome. I love it.Adam: Some months are better than like I said, June, July, August was a little, a little slow just because I didn't have a lot of time to list and, and stay on top of it. But I have, I have no doubt that if I, if I went full time at this, I could completely replace my corporate income and more. So like, this is my first year.I think I will end up around $70,000 to $80,000 in total sales and that's with just starting slow too. Cause I didn't find you guys until January or February of this year and that's when things really took off.Rob: Dude, you're you're, you're blowing my mind and I have so many questions [00:06:00] right now about just this $5,000 to $7,000 a month. The next question is kind of what's your niche? What, how are you getting to that's a substantial amount of money for a side hustle. What exactly are you doing? Like, what is your niche that you're doing to get to move the mountain on that? To make that money?Adam: I would say the two categories I do the most are appliances, you know, cooking cooktops, ranges, and then Sleep Number beds is probably the, the second category where I do really, really well. And what I've kind of moved into now, especially after, baby came in June is it's been harder to move larger items like ranges and stuff like that. So I started parting out cooktops and ranges and stuff that, cause it's so much easier to ship, you know, a small switch or a burner, and the money, the return is really good on those. Cause you can [00:07:00] often pick up a little bit older appliances that all the components still work, but you know, they're not the newest model or whatever, all the switches and valves and stuff like that still work on them.And I just part them out in the garage at night and then I list all those items and I sell them for a really good profit, you know, so I can take a range that I pick up for free or for less than a hundred dollars and, you know, flip it and make $500 to a thousand dollars on the parts off that range. So that's where I'm really kind of niching down into right now is, is, is the parting out appliances.Melissa: That's funny. We actually just went to dinner with one of our other course members the other day, and she brought up a point. She had a cooktop and it was or a range, I don't know if it... was it a range? She got it and it was missing one knob. She's like, it's fine. I'll go. I'll just purchase the knob. And she went to go purchase the knob and it was $300.Rob: $300.Melissa: And I think that's what she paid for the whole thing. And she's like, all right, well now, but then she ended up selling the [00:08:00] other three knobs for $300 or $400 each. So she was like, she just parted it out. It's like that. There you go.Rob: And I want to call attention to this. This is a great point. Some of you guys that do know Melissa and I, we do large items and it sounds like Adam does some larger items too, but he's also found a niche where he can part out items, sell smaller items and still make great, great money at it. So, yeah, that that's really, really an awesome point.Melissa: Sky's the limit.Rob: It is. You do not have to do super large items. And that's the big thing Melissa and I found with what we do, it's less time than selling tons and tons of small items. But if you're getting into these smaller items that have a higher profits on them, because...Melissa: Your knob is worth $300.Rob: Exactly. Adam's probably talking about appliances there, you know, maybe anywhere from 5 to 10 years old and people have one thing goes bad on it and Adam's got the replacement for it for a good price underneath what it would be for a retail price, if they had to go and order it from Whirlpool.Melissa: And half the time you can't find them anymore because they're older.Rob: Exactly. Exactly. So that's a great, great piece of advice, Adam. I love that, that you're actually thinking [00:09:00] outside the box and you're making some great money on smaller items, but higher profit, smaller items. So that's awesome. Great tip.Adam: Yeah, it's kind of enabled me to, to also limit the amount of time you spend listing and cleaning up some of those older items. And so now with the appliances, if I'm going to sell it and flip the larger cooktop or a full range, I pretty much will, I want to make sure they're in good condition when I buy them. So I still go for that, whatever profit I want to make, you know, 10 times profit is kind of what I look for, based on your advice.But if it's going to take me five or six hours to clean up that older thing, it's, it's just, doesn't become worth it. So I'll just part it out, it's easier to just tear it down. I can do that in an hour. I can tear down range an hour and, you know, to spend less time on it. I don't know if that makes sense.Rob: It does. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Categorize it and take it that tear down. There's only so many pieces to these, these appliances that you're working with. You, you know, you have wires, you have boards, you [00:10:00] have knobs. So there's only so many pieces that are really worth the money to flip. And it's another point to it that you didn't even say you, once you do it, you tear it down.You can get rid of the big components. You're not even storing that stuff. You take it to the scrap yard. You throw it away, whatever you do. So it is a lot easier in some aspects to do that. So, yeah. That's awesome. I love how your brain's thinking and working this whole, this whole process out. Cause you're doing yeah, you're doing amazing. So I'm super excited.Melissa: That's funny.Adam: That's another fortunate thing is my local community has a waste diversion center where I can recycle all the other components for free. I just dropped them off, you know, all the big metal components. So that's, that's worked out really well.Rob: I love it. I love it. That is that's amazing.Melissa: So if you have to reflect all the way back for this last year, I think it's awesome that you've only been at it for a year. What would you say are a couple of things that have contributed to your finding success, maybe like habits?Rob: Great question.Adam: That's a good question. I think [00:11:00] just kind of the discipline of, of even though when you're tired and, and, and don't want to go out to the garage and tear down a range or whatever, just making sure I, you know, you set goals of, I want to list one item per day. That's one thing the group has been really helpful with holding me accountable. We have a lot of challenges in the group, you know, we have the 30-day listing challenge, so that sticks in my head. I'm like, well, I got it. I don't want it, but okay. I gotta go out and do that cause I want to be able to post in the group that I made my listing for the day. Staying positive too, because there are challenges that have come up this year where, you know, for example, I had someone return a thousand dollar cooktop.They returned a different one than I had sent them. And, you know, they had, you know, it was a big scam. They were trying to, you know, it was fraudulent of course. And that was really stressful because it was, you know, I had paid the shipping. I had had to pay for them to ship it back to me cause I, [00:12:00] and so there was a lot of money on the line.So working through that, staying positive, knowing that everything can be kind of figured out and like it'll work out, in the right way in the end. That's not really a habit though. You can take that part out.Rob: But it's good. No, no, no, I like that. That's good. That's honest. We're working through a return right now, and that's one of the things that people, it does happen. There's bad parts to business. There are, there are bad parts that you do not want to deal with. And we're doing the same thing right now and you have to figure out the best way to do it, the best way to do it ,the best way to work it. And then you learn from every single situation.So even that return that you did, I guarantee you learn some stuff out of that return that you're not going to do the next time around. You're going to do it differently. So sometimes, I mean, we call it. It's not our coined phrase, but stupid tax to where you maybe acted quick out of something or you did something you learn from that, and I do the same thing every time I have something like this happens and you learn for the next [00:13:00] situation, how to handle it better.Melissa: To know is that those things they don't happen very often. Unfortunately, that's what keeps people from doing a reselling side hustle, because they'll think, oh, I don't want you know, to lose money on returns, but like that's the first return we've had in a year and a half.Rob: Yeah.Melissa: You're going to have that part of business in any business you do.Rob: And I'm sure you're the same way as a $1,000 cooktop, if you're making $5,000 $7,000 a month, you're not dealing with these all the time.Same with us. We've made probably $150,000 and ours was the same thing. A thousand dollars. A $1,300 that we're dealing with. And we'll come out okay with ours because I'll have insurance claim on it because it was damaged. But at the same time, it's just a little bit of red tape that you have to go through.So, I think that's great advice for people listening. This is not all hunky-dory. You still will have to work in there's some, some situations that will come up. It's how you shine through those situations and how you learn from them.Adam: Yes. Yeah. I would agree with that. That maybe the discipline or the habit there is just treating each situation as a, as a learning. You know, really, [00:14:00] since I'm in my first year, It's really, I've done a lot of stuff like that, where I'm going to just going to try this because I want to learn what it's like. You know, I want to learn how to do this. I obviously, I didn't try to do a return or a, a scam, but,Rob: You learn how to handle it though. You learned that it is, that stuff happens. Not that often. Trust me. I've never had,Melissa: I've never heard that with that big of a cooktop.Rob: No.Adam: It was a pretty gutsy move by them to return a completely different, it was the same model. Thankfully, I, I had taken pictures of the serial number and those were in the posting and, you know, we had to go, I had to go through the whole thing of filing a police report and all of that.And eBay did refund me. I did, I do think the buyer did probably, he got refunded automatically, you know, when, when he returned the thing. So, I don't know if he got flagged in the eBay system or not, and taken out, but they did refund me as well after I filed the police report and gave them the evidence. It all worked out in the end, you know, it was, you know.Rob: And that's, [00:15:00] that's a good lesson. It's a good lesson. You might've done a couple of things different than you did, but you had the proof that it was a different cooktop that he returned. You filed a police report, you got to the end of it. And you got your money back on the situation, on the, on the sale. Trust me, it's a headache, but everything is a learning experience. So like I said, you probably would do a couple things different or you probably know next time it happens.Melissa: But he had the pictures that was a big part of it.Rob: Exactly, it's huge to be able to have that. So, no, I, I kudos to you. I think that's awesome.And you're in your first year. A lot of people will roll over when something like this happens and go, oh, I'm outta here. I'm not flipping anymore. I can't do it when this is the result. And, it doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen sometimes. You have to be able to roll with the punches.You have to learn from it and you have to move forward. So, that's awesome that that's, that's your mindset and that's where you're at right now. I, yeah, I applaud you for sure.Adam: Yeah. I did feel that way that week, you know, I had several returns that we could, another damaged cooktop and it was, it was pretty low point and it was thanks to the group too, you know, Stacy,I don't know if I can [00:16:00] say her name on this public... Stacy really helped me through both of those events. And if it weren't for the group, I think, you know, I really would have considered like, maybe this isn't for me, but yeah, she really supported me a lot of time on Facebook messenger. Like, this is how you do that.This is, you know, this is what you should do, a lot of great advice. So, I'm Immensely grateful for not only Stacy but the whole group too on getting through stuff like that.Rob: Good, andMelissa: something to say about having a like mind, like just encouraging people to do it at the same time. So when you do something like that, or have something like that happen, then you do have people alongside of you and you can figure it out.Rob: And some of you guys not know the group he's talking about. We actually have Flipper University. We have a core members, a members group Flipping For Profit, that everybody who goes through our university, we have a free members only group, and that's what he's talking about. We have close to a thousand people in there. Like-minded people that do exactly this, [00:17:00] they're flippers. So it's really, really cool just to be able to interact and I'm sure there's other groups out there like this, guys. Well, ours, isn't the only one, but get involved in one, if you can. That's, that's one of those things is being around like-minded people who can help you. You know, we have all different stages in our group, people that are just starting, and then professional flippers, like us, that are doing it full time. So you have great advice from everybody, which is awesome.Melissa: Yeah, so let us know what is one of your more memorable flips aside from maybe that cooktop?Adam: Let me see. More memorable flips. I think you guys have asked me this question before, too. I don't know that this is a great one for me, because everything seems so boring. You know, it's all like,Rob: Yeah, maybe a high profit, one of your highest profit flips. That, I mean, that's what sticks out to me when I think about stuff.Adam: Well, I think you guys both know about this one, but, one of, one of a more recent one that was really fun is I picked up a cooktop for a hundred dollars on a [00:18:00] Sunday afternoon. And it was in great shape, hardly had any use. I, I brought it home, wiped it down, took my 12 photos, posted it on eBay. It sold the next morning for $1,300. I shipped it out like two days later. So like turning around $1,200. Well, it wasn't all $1,200 profit, but turning that around, within like a couple of days, it was pretty amazing. That was one of my fastest flips I've ever seen.Rob: I love it. That is a great one. And it is memorable that when you make those flips, yeah. You're, you're proud of yourself. I mean, you found a good deal you got it on, you gave somebody else a really good deal for the cooktop. So, no, that's awesome. I love it. And yeah, cooktops, are they're a lot of fun you, if you know what you're doing, and you find those right cooktops to flip, you can make some serious, serious money as Adam's showing us right now, for sure.Melissa: If you had to have, like, if you wanted to give a tip or two, like for somebody just getting started in this, like what would be like one thing that you maybe wish you would've known when you first started that like, [00:19:00] okay that you would give to somebody?Adam: A good tip, I think it just, you know, find the reseller community online, whether that be Flipper University and the group that we're in or whatever it is. There's so many resources out there available for free to get you going. That would be my first bit of advice, beyond the standard of, you know, start with stuff that's in your house and that will help you learn the process of eBay or whatever platform you're using to sell on. And it's low, really low risk. And then, but finding that online community of support. It is priceless. It's gonna, they're going to help you through everything from listing to shipping, to dealing with difficult customers or difficult returns and, all of that stuff. So, that would be my, if someone's serious about it and really wants to do it, it's find the community.Melissa: Awesome.Rob: That is great advice because it is, it's not, you're not doing this alone. And you've learned that. When you have people around you who are there to [00:20:00] build you up, when you're having that bad day of, hey I had a return or even a bad week of I had a couple returns and I'm trying to figure out what's the best, what's the next step in these returns, you have those people around you that are building you up and helping you stay focused and work through these situations. So you get past them, you get through them and then you just can keep going on. So a community is a huge thing and that's really cool that you've seen that.Because it does, it helps a ton in this business, if you have the like-minded people around you. For sure. So a great, great tip. Great advice for sure.Melissa: I'm not sure if we asked this though, before, what are your major platforms that you're selling on?Adam: Pretty much, I would say 90% on eBay. I do sell a little locally off of Facebook Marketplace so or OfferUp, and that's mostly items I don't want to ship, or it's just easier to flip locally. So yeah, 90, 90%, 95% on eBay.Melissa: Yeah. That's about ours, same.Rob: Awesome, same as us. Yeah. eBay's our main go just because of the people that it reaches, that's it. And then local. So awesome. Well, [00:21:00] Adam, thank you so much for jumping on here and giving us all this great information. You are, you know, you are, you're a year into it, but you have so much wisdom and knowledge in that year.I'm super excited to watch your, your journey unfold, and all the flips that you're gonna make in the next year. So. Congratulations. Thank you so much for, just giving, everybody, some great, great tips and some great advice on how to, how to further their reselling business. So thank you, thank you.Melissa: Thank you.Adam: Thanks Rob and Melissa. It was great to be on. Thanks for all you've done for me too.Rob: Of course, of course. All right. Have a great day, Adam. Thank you so much.Yup. Thanks guys. Bye.

Adam McChesney, Owner, and Partner at St. Louis, Missouri franchise of Hite Digital, a service digital marketing agency with 15 locations. Adam's agency provides logo design, branding services, website design, search engine optimization, paid advertising, and recently launched Hite CRM, a technology-based software based on GoHighLevel's white-labeled CRM.  The goal? “To create an ecosystem that . . . helps us generate more business for them, . . . turn(s) those leads into customers, and then turn(s) those customers into walking billboards for our clients.” He wants to “turn a client's business into “a scalable model” that helps them reach their goals and helps them get more out of what they put in.” Adam says over 75% of his clients are in a home-service or contracting-type industry. Before Hite, Adam sold medical devices for around five years. When Covid hit, he decided he wanted to get into marketing. His background in prospecting, sales, and growing business gave him the skills he needed to get clients. He studied up on website building, ranking, and paid ad production so he could do the work.  He started his agency in July of 2020 and grew it “from basically nothing up to 30 or 40 clients,” but then came the problems. A lot of issues – fulfillment, account management, and scaling – were breaking the agency and its business. Adam started looking for ways to outsource. After he became “official” with Hite in June of this year, he doubled his agency's monthly revenue in 90 days . . . jumping from $30K to $60k a month. Hite Digital at the corporate level handles processes, systems, fulfillment, and some of the prospecting and administration services, leaving Adam with the time and energy to focus on prospecting, selling, growing, and scaling his business. Daily franchise calls with other franchise owners cover different business topics – each week starts with sales, then progresses through mindset, general operations, product, and on Friday, family-oriented personal sharing – providing a rich source of franchise “lessons learned,” but, more importantly, supportive relationships. The franchise has allowed him to leverage the resources and abilities of about 150 full-time team members and 15 distinct locations, and do work at a scale that a small, independent agency could not. Adam feels the franchise certifications, high-profile sponsorships, and publicity have increased his “validity” . . . he no longer has to sell himself as an individual product. With Hite corporate providing the processes and systems (“Sales are not going to outperform and out-scale bad processes and systems,” Adam warns), he now has the time to be “hyper-focused on what's going to take this agency and continue to grow.” He then concludes, “The things that are happening behind the scenes – strategy, everything like that – have continued to stay the same One key to finding quality clients? Adam is in a number of mastermind groups where he meets with business owners from all over the country on a regular basis. Many of the people in his mastermind groups are his clients or become his clients . . . and those people refer new clients to him, as well. Adam feels personal branding contributes to his ability to get and retain clients, because people know, like, and trust him based on the relationship created before they even consider a partnership. Adam is available on Instagram: @adamlmcchesney or on his agency's website at: hitedigital.com/st-louis Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm joined today by Adam McChesney, Owner and Partner at Hite Digital St. Louis, obviously in St. Louis, Missouri. Welcome to the podcast, Adam. ADAM: Yeah, Rob. Thanks for having me on. Super excited to be here today. Appreciate you having me here today. ROB: Excellent to have you on the podcast. Why don't you start off by telling us about Hite Digital St. Louis? Tell us what you all are doing, what's exciting there, what clients seek out. ADAM: Yeah, absolutely. Hite Digital St. Louis is a franchise operation of Hite Digital. Hite Digital has 15 locations as of this recording today, and I'm lucky enough to be the owner/partner here in St. Louis, Missouri. We're a full-service digital marketing agency. We do everything from logo and branding, website design, search engine optimization, paid advertising, and we've recently launched our own CRM as well. We do things a little bit differently over at Hite. Some really cool things that we have in the works. But we are a franchise model, so we leverage the resources and the abilities of about 150 full-time team members and 15 different locations. It has allowed us to do a lot of things at scale that, if you were basically your own little hyper-agency like I was before merging with Hite, you just couldn't do. Some really exciting things we have going on. ROB: It's a really interesting model, and I think it's one we really haven't encountered before on this podcast. How did you become aware of Hite, and how did you get drawn in? I'm sure that's a process; I'm sure there's some aspirations of what you can build on your own, what you can build together. It's probably a journey. ADAM: Absolutely. It's definitely been a journey. I've been an agency owner full-time now since July of 2020. Quick backstory on me: I was in the medical device sales field for about five years. Worked my way up through multiple companies and was pretty successful, but right as COVID was going on, I realized I didn't know if this was necessarily for me. I'd always wanted to take marketing full-time to see what I could do, helping local businesses – especially during such a unique time that we were seeing with the pandemic. So, in July of 2020, I left. My background, my strengths are really in prospecting and sales and growing business, so I never really had any issues finding people that were interested in allowing me to do their marketing and advertising. And then I was taught through courses and programs and a lot of self-teaching how to build a website, rank a website, do all the paid ads. So, I could sell and then I could also do it, which was nice, but it also brought its own set of problems for fulfillment and account management and scaling. As I took my agency from basically nothing up to 30 or 40 clients, I had a lot of issues that were breaking the agency and the business as a whole. I started looking into ways to outsource. Hite Digital was one of those ways that I was looking. Hite Digital in the past had been a white label fulfillment company for agencies that obviously didn't want to do the work internally. So, transitioning over to this franchise model – I had heard about it; never heard anything like it. I thought, “Wow, this is way too good to be true.” They handle the processes and the systems, they handle the fulfillment, they handle some prospecting and admin stuff. For me, it was a perfect storm where I was at in my agency to be able to continue and focus on what I wanted to do, which is prospect and sell and grow a business. ROB: It's really fascinating. It sounds like the whole delivery aspect of the business is something you don't really have to worry about on a day-to-day basis. ADAM: That's correct. ROB: But then with that also comes – you still do have to sell something that is aligned to what Hite can deliver as an organization. How do you think about the alignment between what you're selling and what's being delivered? ADAM: Luckily, I had a taste of what Hite was able to do before I came on as a franchise. I knew a couple other people that were already franchisees of Hite, I had seen it from a white label standpoint, and most of what I'm selling today was also what I had previously sold and also done myself. So, for me, it wasn't much of a transition. The biggest transition for me was to get out of a lot of the mundane tasks of the day to day. So, managing the accounts, managing the projects, building a website myself – all the things that in theory were good for me in the beginning to get access to knowing how to do it and be able to better sell what I was selling, but it got me very focused on the things that weren't going to grow and scale a business. ROB: What kind of territory do you have, then? Is it St. Louis in fact, and someone else might come in and do Kansas City or Nashville? You've got about 100 miles? What's your range? ADAM: Basically, right now I'm the only one in Missouri. I can't remember the specifics on the range. I want to say it's about 120 miles that I can remember. For example, in the state of Texas we have four franchisees down there. We don't really necessarily have a boundary of where we can do business, being digital marketing. There's not any caps on anything like that. But I want to say it's about 120 miles in terms of where another franchise would be opening. ROB: Got it. It reminds me – the NBA operates kind of like that too, and they seem to be doing all right for everyone there. [laughs] When it comes to prospecting, you almost get to go out and prospect a bit more unencumbered with the day to day of the operations, which is fascinating. Quite often in the medical sales field, it's I think a little bit similar. How do you think about which kinds of clients you're working with locally? ADAM: Where I really got my start was online networking. I'm in a variety of different masterminds where likeminded people are coming together. I'm meeting business owners all the time, and whether I'm working with people within those masterminds as clients of mine or they're referring people to me, most of my clients were all over the country. This has now given me an aspect to start doing some cool things locally in terms of networking, getting my name out there from a standpoint that actually means something. When I am the product, the service, and everything, and I'm telling people, “Hey, this is what I've got,” no one really understands that. Now I can send them over to Hite Digital, show them all the team members that we have, all the certifications, all the sponsorships, all the stuff that has been written about Hite Digital throughout the publications. It has a lot more validity. So, I'm more proud to be able to go and show that and do that, and it's given me access and more time to be able to do it. Personal branding is such a big aspect of where I've been able to get clients, keep clients and retain clients, because people know, like, and trust me based on the relationship that we've already created before even coming into a partnership together. ROB: Where does that lead you? Are there particular verticals or sizes of companies? Is there a typical client right now in St. Louis for you? ADAM: Most of the clients I have are in the home service or contracting space. That's really where I got my start and where I'm heavily involved from a client standpoint. But transitioning over to Hite, we've been able to work with clients of all shapes and sizes and a variety of different industries. Even started getting into the ecommerce space, which I had never been into before. There's really not a cap, but if I had to say, majority of my clients, 75% and above right now are all in a home service or contracting type industry. ROB: Got it. That certainly makes sense from a services perspective, whether you're talking about SEO, whether you're talking about paid search. All of those kinds of things, you need a certain kind of website; you need to be distributed certain places. You can definitely see how there's a lot of them, and you're prospecting probably looks a little bit similar on that side too, going to the medical. There's lists of these people. You can find them, you can build trust with them, and keep on going. Does that transfer? ADAM: Exactly. That absolutely does. ROB: You mentioned the CRM product, then. Is that a Hite central offering? What does that look like? ADAM: Yes. We partnered with GoHighLevel to create a technology-based software of their white label CRM. It's called Hite CRM. We launched it probably about two months ago right now. We've started to have some people adopt it. But essentially, we want to create an ecosystem that not only helps us generate more business for them, but able to obviously turn those leads into customers, and then turn those customers into walking billboards for our clients. The strategic part about what we do isn't just getting them more lead flow or more calls; it's how we turn your business into a scalable model that helps you reach your goals and helps you get out more of what you put in. ROB: That part makes sense. I do wonder – and this is always a little bit of a tricky art between that transition from sales to delivery in terms of relationship. You mentioned relationship, you mentioned retention. How do you think about the ownership of the relationship when a client goes from sales in your office to delivery, which is across the world, and certainly has to be at a level of quality – but it seems like the boundary of who owns the account is a little bit trickier than maybe if you had everything in-house. ADAM: Absolutely. Technically, we still obviously have it in-house. My account managers that I have are full-time. They just work with my clients. We have created the relationship and created that on a very high level. People obviously do business with me because they know, like, and trust me, and then I transition to not necessarily completely step away from the account, but “Hey, here is Kevin or Moe that's going to be able to take care of you on a daily basis.” The problem in agencies, as you grow and scale, and the issue I was having, is I was lucky if I was able to hop on a call with a client that was paying me a good amount of money once per month. In that, I wanted to make sure that the customer service was to a tier above where I had it and that we were still getting the results, that we were getting the correct reporting, that we were building efficiencies around how we do things for our clients. The aspect of the touching of each account and to the effectiveness we've been able to do it has completely gone through the roof in the transition. Obviously, that comes with me stepping back and delegating and putting processes and systems in place so I'm not the face of the day-to-day communication. But at the end of the day, the things that are happening behind the scenes – strategy, everything like that – has continued to stay the same. ROB: What does it look like? What's maybe the most extreme example of what it looks like to scale a city as a Hite franchisee? What's the limit? There's almost an unlimited amount of business. ADAM: Yeah, there's unlimited amount of business. Ideally, I think in the future we create physical offices, we have all these different things. Being able to work remote and pretty much anywhere in the world, I think there's a ton of opportunity just with one location. Just to give you an idea, I came into Hite officially June of this year, and by stepping away from the account management, by stepping away from the fulfillment and the admin tasks, I've been able to double my agency in 90 days. We went from about $30k a month to over $60k a month. And really all that is attributed to me being able to step away and not have to worry about “When's this project going to be due?” or “How am I going to figure out how to get all of these reports out to these clients and then hop on calls with them, and then hopefully for 30 minutes to an hour a day focus on my personal brand and also prospecting?” Those things tend to go in the backseat when you have to figure out the projects and the account management. For me, I've been able to be very hyper-focused on what's going to take this agency and continue to grow. ROB: A lot less fires to fight, for sure. A flipside of that, I would think, is maybe having fewer people around you when it comes to having a table of different opinions to help challenge the business, to move it forward, to think of what's next. How do you think about finding peer support and things to drive you forward in that way? ADAM: Luckily, the support system with the franchise model at Hite is absolutely phenomenal. We have a daily franchise call. Each day of the week is a particular sector or topic of the business. Today was sales, getting the week started off right. Tomorrow is mindset. Then we have general operations, product, and then family-oriented personalized stuff. So, we talk together on a consistent basis, even though we are completely on opposite ends of the country or the world or wherever we're talking. I think by having all of this communication and collaboration in the last 90 days, what's also taken me is I'm finding new ways to put different twists on my business based off of what all these agency owners are doing, because we're all in it together. If someone is finding success in a certain area, we're going to share it with the team because we want to grow and scale at its height. If you were to just have a daily call with 15 agency owners, I don't know how many people are going to start sharing their secrets every single day of the week to help you grow. You might get one or two things. But we're able to do this thing at scale and really help a ton of clients, a ton of people, and do it on a consistent basis. So that's been a really cool part. ROB: Right. From a geography perspective, there's no competition. You can be fully transparent. Someone can tell you exactly one account they're having a hard time with, they're weak, they're dying, the client's at risk, and you can't go steal that client. There's nothing you can do. That's their client, and they need the help to succeed, and you can learn from it. ADAM: Yeah, it's been phenomenal. To also give you an idea, we have one of our owner/partners who's in Nashville, and he's a real estate investor himself. He got into the space for being a real estate investor, to try to grow and scale his wholesaling company. He's jumped on calls with me to talk real estate with potential clients that he's never going to see anything from. No one's ever going to take time out of their day to do that if you're not a part of something like we have going on at Hite. ROB: One thing that seems like it would be tricky – and I'm sure they've solved it – how do you handle the question of product offerings and pricing? Because it seems like there's a lot of room for transparency there. There's a lot of room for you to try to mark up a service 10 times the rack rate. There's room for Hite to mark up a service 10% and tell you to just deal with it. How does that balance work from the pricing as it flows through to a client? ADAM: We have our fulfillment costs of what we pay per project or per service offering, what have you, and then we have “Hey, here's what we recommend selling it for.” You can sell it for what you want. If you want to package something together, if you want to offer X, Y, and Z free for 90 days or at a percentage off, you have the complete ability to do that. Clients are never really getting access to what our cost is on anything, so you then can go and say, “Hey, here's what I want to do in my business to be able to get to XYZ goal, and I'm going to reverse-engineer back knowing your costs.” So yeah, we haven't had any issues with it thus far. ROB: It's an interesting thing. It also allows you to be entrepreneurial because you can assess the market conditions locally, the competitive situation. It all makes sense. It still feels like selling, sounds like. ADAM: Yeah, it does. The huge thing for us is we've been able to get access to opportunities that we would've never gotten access to if we were just our little agency here in St. Louis. We were the VIP sponsor out at Traffic & Conversion. We got a ton of exposure there. We're a sponsor on Dave Ramsey's podcast. There's a lot of things you can now do when you have 15 locations that are all pooling things together. We have an opportunity generation department that helps out with our prospecting and even sets appointments for us. There's a lot of really cool things you're able to do when doing it at scale. ROB: Absolutely. That did ring a bell, actually. I have listened on the EntreLeadership Podcast. I have heard Hite Digital. It did ring a bell, and part of me wondered how much that sponsorship cost. I don't expect you to know that, but… [laughs] ADAM: I don't know it. [laughs] ROB: It's probably something you wouldn't do on your own. ADAM: Yes, exactly. ROB: Very good. Adam, you've done your own agency, you've chopped the delivery part off now and freed yourself to focus on some strengths; what are some lessons you've learned on your journey leading the agency that you might go back and tell yourself if you could rewind the clock and try to play Back to the Future and tell yourself what you ought to have known? ADAM: There's a variety of different things. It's only been 15 months of doing this full-time, and I've had a lot of success, but I've made a lot of mistakes, so the list could be very long. But I think the biggest thing for me, being a sales rep in my past, is sales are not going to outperform and out-scale bad processes and systems. When I first started running this full-time, I leave medical device, I leave a very lucrative industry, benefits, security, all those different things, and the shiny object is “Just go get sales. Take whatever product or service you can get in here and start selling it. Get people in the door.” Which was fine to an extent, but then my weakness – and why it's been such a great transition into Hite – is the processes and the systems. It's the organization. It's the fulfillment aspect. Trying to outsell bad processes and systems is never going to be the answer, and I think so many agency owners experience those problems where they're just focused on the shiny object, which is that next deal or that next month's worth of retainers, when not focusing on a process or system could set you back next month, 90 days, 6 months from now, and keep you from scaling to grow your business.  ROB: Sure. A lot of the processes are handled for you. How do you think about the processes that are not handled for you? How do you think about keeping consistency? Is there a playbook you're pulling from Hite? Is there a playbook you're writing yourself? How do you keep those account managers locked and loaded? How do you think about the next zero on the size of the business? ADAM: There's definitely a playbook and framework from Hite, but with how we do our business – to give you an idea, not everyone is going to have an account manager based on where they're at in their franchise. I happen to have two of them due to the size of our franchise. There's different dynamics that are coming in. I'm doing things a little bit differently than someone else is doing them based on our comfortability and based on where we're at with our clients and what projects we have going on. I'm managing it and learning new things each day, because I've really never managed people in a full-time aspect, especially in the account manager role, and I've also never been just an account manager. So, there's a variety of different factors that are going on. The next level in my agency is to bring in an integrator type person with digital marketing experience that really knows how to grow and scale an account management team, eventually a sales team. That way, I can really focus on what I'm doing best, which is at the top, strategizing, growing, and scaling the franchise itself, and not in the day to day still when it comes to managing people and the operations aspect. ROB: That lets you focus also on bringing in a very interesting sort of integrator, because you're not talking about a full-scale ops and delivery integrator. You can think about it as a different sort of organization, probably bring a more specialized integrator into that role. ADAM: A specialized integrator, one that's done SOPs, one that's done the product and the service aspect of what you do, and that likes doing it. Because at the end of the day, I think a lot of people are put in positions or pivoted to be an integrator when really they could be a visionary type of person or someone that doesn't like “I'm going to check the boxes and do all these different things.” My mind races at 1,000 miles per hour, and I need someone to help reel that in, and when we do have a good idea or a new process and system that could take the business to the next level, have someone that can run and put it into place and actually make it work. ROB: Absolutely. You've mentioned there's different scales of these franchises; there's one-man/one-woman shows. You've got a couple people around you. With the visibility that you have, what's the biggest you've seen a franchise get so far, and what does it look like from a work structure? ADAM: The franchise model is actually not even a year old. It's super new. We have people that have come in with agencies of all sizes, and then also people that are brand new to running their own agency, which I think is really cool. I think on the spectrum of where things are at, our average agency – we just saw the numbers today – is doing almost $30,000 a month. That's between all the agencies that are out there. Our agency here in St. Louis is definitely the largest in terms of I have two full-time people. I think everyone else pretty much at least has another full-time person or is working towards that. From a monetary standpoint, those things are going to be on every which end of the spectrum. But the average is right around $30,000, which is pretty healthy for 15 and only being a year old. ROB: Yeah, and you're setting the pace then a little bit, creating what this looks like. I wondered up front what it looked like perhaps from a pride perspective, because you start your own business and then you're merging, you're rebranding. But it almost sounds like a way to think about it is it's a way of making a bet and investing in growth. You're saying, “I think if I take this path instead of another one, I'm going to rebrand, I'm going to gain this halo over me” – and I guess some podcast ads, and this conference, plenty of other lead routes. But sometimes a merger is an ego battle, and it sounds like this is a little bit more of an investment strategy. ADAM: Yeah. It was a concern for me, to be honest. I was a lot more concerned with the way that I thought it was going to go versus how it actually did. For me, it wasn't so much the ego, but it was that I was the product, the service, and the everything. Basically, taking feedback and taking how the customers at the time and eventual customers took it, I took all that stuff personally. Some was good, some was not so good, and there were areas of opportunity. But for me, it was more so we each have our own commitment at Hite, and we're committed to so many different things of helping people, empowering people. I am the commitment to live a more whole, well-rounded life. If I want to do that, the way I do that is by impacting as many people as possible. I can only impact so many people if I'm doing everything, and I don't have the support, I don't have what I have now at Hite. Now, in 90 days, I've already grown the business double to what it was already at before, which was helping a lot of people. It's really cool to see even what we'll have at the end of the year and then this time next year. We're able to fulfill our commitments at a higher level, and in the process of that we're obviously going to lose clients that maybe we wouldn't have lost if I stayed and did my little agency. But we have to look at the bigger picture. I have to look at the bigger picture and what's best for me, my family, my agency, and everything else that's included. ROB: For sure. When you're looking ahead, Adam, at the next year, if we were to catch up a year from now, what's going to be new from the Hite Digital fulfillment mothership, and what will be different in St. Louis? What should we be looking forward to? ADAM: I alluded to earlier, over the next three to six months, I really want to bring in an operations integrator type manager to help take this business and plug up the holes that are here. What I think that allows us to do is to grow our team here in St. Louis – adding that person that would be local here in St. Louis, potentially adding some sales managers, more account managers. But getting very strategic on the partnerships and the things we're doing, investing in relationships, investing in masterminds to make sure that we're impacting not only as many people as we possibly can, but the right people, the right clients to come in here. The more people we're able to work with on a consistent basis, it's really going to help everyone win. I think in terms of Hite, we have ambitions of taking it from 15 franchises – I don't know what the end goal looks like in terms of a specific number of franchisees, but I think the people we're bringing in are all quality. They fit the bill of what makes Hite, Hite. And the best part is we're attracting all of these people. We're bringing in agency owners that we're connected to in our market, we're in other masterminds together. There's just a uniqueness to what we're doing. I think that continues on over the next couple months and throughout the years. ROB: Excellent. Adam, when people want to find and connect with you and Hite Digital St. Louis, where should they go to find you? ADAM: The easiest place is going to be my Instagram account. That's @adamlmcchesney. That's where I'm probably the most active in terms of messaging back and forth with people. You can also go to hitedigital.com/st-louis and find our information there in terms of what we offer and everything we have going on here at Hite Digital St. Louis. ROB: Excellent. Adam, thank you for coming on. This really does uncover a model we haven't talked about a lot on this podcast. It's a different path. It's clear it's working for you, it's exciting, and I think we're going to hear more about it. Thanks for coming on and sharing your experience, sharing your vision and leadership thus far, and we can't wait to see where it all goes. ADAM: Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to be on. Super excited for the future. ROB: Thanks so much, Adam. Take care. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Sara Helmy is CEO at Tribu (tribe in Latin), a 20-employee digital marketing and branding agency that prides itself on “building tribes for the brands that we serve.” Sara, with a passion for SEO, started the agency ten years ago with about $6,000, no outside funding, no debt . . . and for the first three years, doubled-down, boot-strapped, added things over time, and eventually morphed the agency into a branding powerhouse with close to $3 million in service revenue this year. Tribu serves a diverse group of clients . . . facilitating government-supported projects (like San Antonio's 300-year anniversary celebration), B2C (Devils River Whiskey), B2B, and healthcare . . . but most clients have one thing in common: They have high, ambitious growth goals . . . and they want to be disruptive in some sense. Tribu's view of “brand” is far broader than having a logo and a website. Sara includes in “brand” the assets a company creates and deploys, the nurturing, the daily “rock pounding,” the tribe growing, the follower building, and the activities compelling potential customers to sign up for email lists. Branding efforts may be for a brand that never existed before or for existing brands that are looking to “reinvent themselves.”  Sara says that branding (and rebranding) are more about identifying and extracting value that is already there, something unique that will resonate with customers, rather than in creating something new that didn't exist before. The invention part comes in creating a new way to communicate that message. When the agency works with a new brand, there is more freedom . . . but, without an existing customer base, Sara says, “You're a little bit more blind.” A brand may think it knows itself, but often, Tribu has to collect data from potential customers and focus groups to show companies how they are “seen.” Sara says “95% of good businesses are going to choose to honor their customers.” When a company already has an existing customer base, rebranding may be easier because customers will tell you who you are . . . but it is also harder because, if the business direction changes substantially, you risk alienating existing customers who got you to where you are.  In this interview, Sara offers two important business tips:  Invest in “A” players, because they are the ones who will solve your problems, help navigate, and help your agency grow. Plan, nurture, and control your culture . . . the health of your finances will often match the health of your agency culture. Sara can be reached on her agency's website at: Wearetribu.com – and from the beginning to this day, the onsite contact form goes straight to her personal mailbox! Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Sara Helmy, CEO at Tribu based in San Antonio, Texas. Welcome to the podcast, Sara. SARA: Thank you for having me, Rob. I'm excited to be here. ROB: It's excellent to have you here. Why don't you start off by introducing us to Tribu? What should we know? What is your specialty? SARA: Tribu means “tribe” in Latin. We pride ourselves on building tribes for the brands that we serve. More literally, I guess you could consider us a digital marketing and branding agency. We've been around since 2011, so this year will be our 10th year in November. We're very excited about that. In general, that's Tribu. We're a tribe of 20 people today. When we started, we started with about $6,000. No outside funding, no debt. Just doing really good work and climbing ladders. We're still a small agency. We'll do probably about $3 million in service revenue this year with our tribe. (That's what we call our team of 20.) But in 10 years, no outside funding, no debt. That's just been organic growth by serving a whole bunch of partners we're really thrilled and excited to have every day. ROB: Congratulations on 10 years, on $3 million, on 20 people. I'm sure there's days when that feels like a lot of responsibility. Dig a little deeper with the brands you serve. Is there a typical example you can give us of who you work with, what the scope of the engagement or the range perhaps can look like? SARA: Absolutely. We're actually a little bit everywhere when it comes to industry. We don't have a particular industry niche. But most everybody that we work with has really high and ambitious growth goals, and they want to be disruptive in some sense. So far, for us at times that's spanned government – it's a lot of B2C, B2B, healthcare. We're literally everywhere. What they have in common is they've got some project or some initiative that they consider disruptive and they really want to grow it fast. More specific examples. Devils River Whiskey was one that we worked with for very many years. Travis Park, which is one of the oldest municipal parks in the United States, was one that we rebranded and revamped. When San Antonio turned 300 years old, we helped them put on that celebration. Then we'll also serve the plastic surgeon who's got really high ambitious goals, or we'll partner up with a private equity who buys companies and turns them around and plug in as their marketing partner. So we're a little bit everywhere in that sense, but what they all have in common is they want to disrupt and they want to grow very fast. ROB: It seems like that branding component of what you do – I think a trick with branding agencies can often be the “What next?” I did the brand and then the engagement falls off. It sounds like you have this pairing of people who are using the rebrand as a jumping-off point to get more aggressive overall. SARA: Yes, I would say that's pretty accurate. It's either a ground-up brand that hasn't existed before, or there's a big rebrand initiative in there somewhere. One of the things we deal with all the time is that your brand is so much more than a logo and a website. Those are assets that you created, that you smartly deployed, but brands aren't created just when you create those things. They're created through nurturing, through pounding the rock every single day, growing a tribe, amassing a following, giving people a compelling reason to sign up for an email list. When we say brand building, we mean so much more down the line than just getting a new website or designing a logo. ROB: Sure. Brand is also partly who you actually are. It's who you actually are when you are out in the market. How do you take a client who is looking to rebrand and get past who they think they are or who they think they should be and get to who they actually can be and break through with that? SARA: I love that question. I think a lot of people think when you're rebranding or something, you're creating something new. In actuality, you're extracting, with a very good strategic understanding, what's compelling that lives there. A lot of times, a partner or business will come in and tell you all about their brand, all about what they do, all about their history. I think what we're doing is inventing the way that's communicated, but it's so much more than inventing things to invent things. You're extracting something that's there. Typically there's a differentiator. There's something unique about them, and it's just hidden. When we enter a rebrand, or when we decide we're going to brand something from the ground up for somebody, we're extracting more than we are inventing what's valuable there. What is there that would truly resonate with a tribe or an audience? Who is that audience, and where's the match? So it's more extracting. It's more strategic identifying of those things, and then you build a brand around that – the more traditional, well-known aspects of it, like what it looks like, the tone of voice, the colors and the typography, and our strategy for getting in front of this tribe, or what most people refer to as target audiences. ROB: Is there an aspect of that that is easier when there's also an existing customer base? Because in some cases then the customers actually tell you who you are. SARA: Yeah, it's easier and harder when there's an existing customer base, I think. Easier in the sense that you've got the best resource ever. You've got customers, and exactly what you said, you can ask them and they'll tell you. Harder in the sense that if the business's goals are to substantially change, you have to consider the existing customer. You can't just 180. You've got to love the people that got you where you are. So preserving equity and being mindful in how you do that sometimes makes those circumstances more complex than when you're starting something at the ground floor and you have a little bit more freedom to work with. But also, you're a little bit more blind because there's not a customer base that you can tap into at that point. ROB: How do you help someone when they have this conception of themselves and there's a better dimension of themselves that they actually need to be highlighting, because they really can't inhabit the brand of what they think they are? SARA: I think you show them. That's one of the most beautiful parts of the digital marketing world and living in the technology we live today. There's a way to show them. There's data, where maybe previously marketers had to fly a little bit more blind. It's super easy these days to ask a question and get a response. You don't necessarily have to always have a 10- or 15-person, immaculately sourced focus group, conducted very formally. So in that situation, you show them, and at that point you let the business decide. I think 95% of good businesses are going to choose to honor their customers. ROB: I get it. You mentioned 10 years ago, $6,000 to start; what led up to that moment, though? What led you to say, “I have this $6,000” – maybe you saved it up, maybe you didn't – “and I'm going to put it on the line to make Tribu happen”? What did that look like? SARA: What a bootstrap startup, right? I was young. I was 22 years old at the time. My father had passed away, unfortunately, probably two years before that. So I had learned life is short, and I was a little bit less scared of entrepreneurship failure potential as a result. Also, when you're young, it's easier to get something off the ground when you consider that you don't have a mortgage to worry about or a family to feed at that point. I happened to be working in SEO, and I absolutely love SEO. That's the service in this world where I got my start. I was fortunate to, at such a young age, be an operations manager for an SEO division inside of an agency. The entrepreneurial itch, the combination of losing my dad and realizing that life is short, finding an industry that I absolutely loved, a field of study I was completely passionate about – it collided. Also, because I was young, I just didn't really have that much money. Hello. [laughs] So $6,000 was what I could put in. I was fortunate enough that I had a little bit of a measly extra that I could live off for that first year, really. So it had to work within that year, at least enough to get me to the next year. That was pretty much the backstory of how Tribu started. ROB: When you're bootstrapped, it's a little bit harder to decide those moments when you're going to actually – you make decisions to invest in the business sometimes, especially in the services thing, no investors. You can take the money out or you can double down on certain aspects of the business. What were some of those bets you made early to invest in particular aspects of the business that were maybe some key decisions? SARA: In hindsight – I don't know that I was doing this then; it just seemed like what you had to do when you're bootstrapped. But I think we doubled down a zillion times. I paid our staff before I ever paid myself. There were several years in Tribu's early start that I would pull enough out in terms of – I didn't get a salary. I would distribute enough that I could eat a meal if I needed to. In the meantime, there were graphic designers who were employed and we were doubling down in the sense that the money was going to that. We doubled down when we purchased our own building, probably about four or five years in. I hope I didn't fail to answer your question, Rob, and go roundabout, but I think there was a series of doing nothing but doubling down in those first three years, probably, of Tribu's life. ROB: Sure. There's an extent to which every hire is an investment into the business. Some make you choke on payroll a little bit harder than others, when you're like, “We're going to hire somebody who makes what?” Then you have to say, “Yeah, I guess we're going to do that.” SARA: [laughs] Yep. ROB: How do you make the jump, or connect the dots, then, between SEO and brand? I might see a shadow of it, but it's not a common conversation, right? Most folks in SEO don't get really excited about rebranding, except for what keywords they're going to target. How did you get there? SARA: I love that question. Honestly, I think when you get really, really deep into SEO and you start trying to guess the algorithm and what Google's up to and what it's going to change towards and what's going to be their next move – the deeper you go, the more you find that the algorithm – my theory is that it's going to go towards what is genuinely, authentically inspiring to another human being. That's what we want to show in our result when someone enters in a query. And that's what led me to, okay, brand really, really matters from SEO, if that makes sense. I think that's where the connection was made. I also think good SEO strategies, good organics, really focus on – even though it's not stereotypical in an SEO's mind, engagement rate really matters. What's your popularity? That's a very big one in terms of SEO. In order to get there, sure, you can do all these little tips and tricks and technical hacks, and it's really good to know them, but in order to get there you've got to have some substance. You've got to have a good brand. That's where the interest came from. I also think previously, I was very rebellious when I was young. [laughs] I did not know that I was going to necessarily love a subject of any sort in school, but I absolutely loved creativity. I know this is marketing, but business and entrepreneurship is a very good way for a rebel to be a productive person to society. So you take that and you combine that with creativity and this fortunate thing that I landed in SEO, honestly, and it all hodgepodged, and that's how we went from SEO to brand. ROB: The connection's definitely there. There's all of the parlor tricks, and then there's the conviction that eventually what Google's going to keep doing is optimizing for giving people what they want. If that aligns to who you are – the essence of the brand is who you are, and the essence of SEO is what people want, and you put those together. It ties, but it's not often in the same conversation. I haven't heard it very much. It's fascinating coming through who you are. SARA: It makes it an interesting combination for Tribu, honestly. It's a cool combination for our partners to enjoy. There's that very technical, astute digital marketing aspect and strategy, but there's also that very award-winning, strong creativity coming out of Tribu. I feel like a lot of times when partners or customers in the marketplace hire agencies – not every agency puts them in this, but a lot of agencies put you into making a choice. Like, “I can hire really good strategy, really good technical stuff, or I can hire really creative stuff, but I don't know that the message is ever going to completely go as far as it could go.” We're not the only agency that does this, but we do pride ourselves on it at Tribu. We try really hard to be the agency where you don't have to compromise between creativity and strategy and the digital, technical stuff that helps brands really grow. ROB: Absolutely, for sure. It's very self-aware, and I think it's important for entrepreneurs to keep in mind their rebellious streaks. I went through a profile of one sort or another this past week, and basically, I scored ultimately on this axis where it's like “If somebody tells you to do something, you're probably going to do the opposite.” Another entrepreneur who was in that conversation – I think a lot of us, especially in the services world, have this acquisition fantasy that someone's going to show up someday and drop a big pile of cash on the front door and acquire your business. But most of the time, that actually ends up looking like an earnout. So someone I know who's in the middle of that had this rebellious streak, the want-to-be-the-lead-horse streak, and this particular analysis – they didn't know anything about what the person's experience was, but it said, “Something in your life is out of alignment here. At work, you are not being that lead horse that you usually are.” It was because they had a boss. Have you ever contemplated this sort of agency acquisition fantasy that some of us have? Or maybe you just realized that wouldn't go well? How do you think about it? SARA: I don't know. I hope I'm self-aware in that regard. What you just explained, I am so guilty of, which is like as soon as you add the boss on top of me, I'm a miserable person, even if the boss didn't tell me anything. [laughs] But yeah, in terms of Tribu's future, I don't know, maybe one day there will be an exit. I'm not ever going to say never. But we're not working towards that right now. That's not our strategy. That's not where our eyes are at. We're still at that phase in business where we're realizing our own best and obsessed enough with figuring that out for ourselves and especially for the people we serve. I think knowing about exit strategy, even not wanting to right now, is valuable in the sense that what you have to do to prepare for an exit makes you a better business. It makes you cleaner on financials. It makes you put together core processes that help everybody get more aligned. So we like to know about exits, and sure, we think about them sometimes because it makes you a better business, but we're not coming at it from the perspective of hoping for an exit. That's not in the plans right now. ROB: That's so key, and people don't realize it when they start to look at the checklists of especially what makes a services firm worth more than like 1x revenue on an earnout. It's all of those things. How well does this thing operate without you? How are the processes? How are the renewals? It's all of these things. Do you have a particular set of tools you have found work really well for you to store and maintain and update processes in a way that everybody knows where to look? Do you have anything that's working? SARA: We struggled with that for a couple of years when we started. Where we landed was Asana, which is our project management system. It's also where we store all of our core processes so that if you're working at Tribu, the program that everybody, regardless of your position, is working in is also the place where you can find all the core processes. That's pretty much what we landed on in terms of tools for that. We at one point had one-sheeters on everything we could think of in Google Drive, and then everybody would forget what one-sheeters existed. I don't know if that was too literal of an answer, or if that's what you meant by systems, but literally we decided to store them all in Asana. ROB: That's right. It's interesting at two levels. There's one that is the lesson that there is one place and that's where you go. You don't have to say, “Is this in Drive or in Gmail or in Dropbox?”, all the way down the line. I think it helps you realize why there's so many of these systems out there, but also why people switch. People switch when they can't find a way to invest enough in their PM tool to make it the source of truth. SARA: Yeah, honestly, in marketing, that's one of the things that's happening in general. There's so many tools out there, so many things you can use. I think in marketing in general, that's one of the things that makes it more fun – I like change – but it makes it harder to play. I mean, how much momentum and how deep can you get if you're changing the tool you're using every four months? We just made the decision that we don't need it to be the most perfect thing, but we need it to be a stable thing. We need it to be a constant thing. We need it to be a thing that maybe doesn't have every feature that we want, but is going to do the job really well. ROB: But commit to it. SARA: Yes. ROB: Sara, when you rewind this journey, these 10 years so far, what are some lessons you've learned that you might wish you could go back and tell yourself to do a little bit differently, if you were intercepting yourself in that moment of the business? SARA: Oh God, so many. I think we're a great business today, but we're definitely not perfect and we have our moments in history where we look back and go, “Uh, we should've thought about that one a little bit more.” I think the biggest takeaway is ‘A' players. Nothing replaces ‘A' players, whatever ‘A' players is to your agency. There were times where I think we compromised out of desperation. We grew too fast, like “We need to fill this role – someone get a body in there.” But we've I think learned the hard way that you never compromise on ‘A' players. You figure out whatever you have to figure out, but get the ‘A' players in because they're going to solve the problems. You get them in, you take care of them, and you trust them. They're going to solve the problems. They're going to help navigate. They're going to help grow. That was a big lesson learned for us, painfully at times, as we were getting to where we are today. Another lesson that I think goes along with that is – and it's the most stereotypical thing; you hear it all the time – but culture. Culture is the thing that has to be managed and taken care of and nurtured and planned and intentional and worked at. Don't just let it be a thing that roams free and gets away from you. Controlling that is so important. I've seen times in these short 10 years where I wasn't very proud of the culture we had at that moment in time, and I've seen times where I'm like, oh my God, how can I clone this cultural moment? You can basically put those times alongside our financials, and they match. [laughs] The good times, the finances look good; the times that culture's not so great, the finances don't look so great. So ‘A' players and culture. Those are things I would've – it's 20/20 hindsight, always, but I would've put more importance on those things earlier if I could go back in time. ROB: That's another area where I think we get tempted to fake it, on culture. You feel like you need to make up some values or something like that. But it doesn't work until it's real, and you can't keep the ‘A' players until that part's real also. A question that comes to mind right where we are right now, October 2021 – I'm sure you spent at least some, if not a lot, of last year working apart where maybe you were accustomed to working together. How do you think about spreading, driving, reinforcing culture when you're not in the same place, and maybe the patterns that helped form it before aren't available? SARA: How do I answer that? There's so much to say there. That's such a great question. That was actually something that in some ways we did so excellent last year, and in some ways we did so poorly. It was such a year of learning. One of the things I think we did excellent in terms of “How did we do that and retain it?” was just surprises. When you're inside an office, operating in a good culture, there are pleasant surprises that happen in your day that you don't necessarily think about because that's just your day. That's just every day. So being intentional about creating those surprises when we were all apart from each other, whether that was mailing everybody a cookie kit or something that they didn't know was going to come, but they can do with their kids and send pictures and create conversation about that maybe had nothing to do with work, but to make up for that passing hallway conversation that you miss out on – those are things I look at last year and I'm like, that was pretty cool that we did that. Patting ourselves on the back, that was smart. There are other things that I look at that we did last year as we were learning to navigate remote where, now that we've been doing it longer, I'm like, we should've done that better. Like making time to say, “How are you?”, not “How's this project?” And then also – and this one surprised me – I think most executives were worried about productivity drops. We had a productivity skyrocket. People could not turn it off. So something that I didn't learn, because I was actually expecting in part an opposite result, but we had to help our team turn it off. That was a surprise to us and something I think we would've done better, or do better now, honestly. When you've got Slack going and everybody's remote, it's so easy for someone to send you a Slack message at 8:30, 9:00, and it's totally fine to let that wait till the next morning, but you just don't want to do that to your peer, your coworker, your friend. And then eventually it just never stopped. So that was a surprise to us. ROB: Definitely, my own habit, I'm a sloppy Slacker. I tell everybody involved with me, look, if I don't send you this Slack message right now, I'm going to forget this thing, and it's important, but you should not respond to it if it's the weekend, if it's the evening. SARA: Of course you can read it, right? [laughs] ROB: You should just hold it right there, and when you get to work on Monday or in the morning, pay attention then. Please do not – unless I tell you “Do this now,” which just doesn't happen – because if something's on fire, they're already responding to it. They understand urgency. That false urgency is potentially pretty dangerous. Sara, when you think about what's coming up for Tribu and the kind of work that you all do, what are you excited about? What's next? SARA: Again, bootstrapped, organic growth. We've had to add things over time. We recently this year formally added videography and production in-house. We were collaborating with an awesome group of freelancers and many people before to fill those needs. I'm very excited about having that in-house. It makes everything else we're already offering much more powerful. And then in general, the industry, what's coming up that I'm super excited about – and I think all of us at Tribu are – things like TikTok. Not necessarily that there's a new social media platform. It's more so the format change that a platform like TikTok is driving – that informal, very human, fun, relatable, just people being goofy. That type of content. That's just so exciting that brands are going to get to play in that space. As the world's moved – we talked about it when we were talking about SEO – whatever's really core and authentic to a human's heart, to those tribes, seems to be the good business move in terms of brand building as well. So to see that that's an opportunity for brands to have more fun and be lighthearted and participate in those types of conversations, to show more of their human side because of platforms like TikTok and the formats they're encouraging, that I'm very excited about. I think we all are at Tribu. ROB: It's a great point. It's almost like TikTok broke all of us, in a way, because you could kind of pretend that every channel was the same if you really were committed to it, and it just breaks the narrative. I think it helps you be who you need to be on Twitter versus LinkedIn versus Facebook. It fractures everything by making more than one message. I think it helps people get channel-specific, even if they're not even touching TikTok, because sometimes it might not make sense. Maybe it always makes sense if you can figure it out. I don't know. SARA: If you're on alcohol, they don't let you play on it right now. So sometimes even if it did make sense, it's not an option yet. [laughs] But yeah, for sure. You said it so spot-on. TikTok really is breaking that format, and it's going to inspire a lot of channel specificity in marketing, which we're excited about. ROB: Especially with that video capability. Sara, when people want to find you and Tribu, where should they go to connect with you? SARA: Oh, thank you. Wearetribu.com. A little fun secret is that as we've scaled, the one thing I refuse to change is that that contact form goes straight to my inbox. So if ever anybody wants to send in a message, I'd love to hear from anybody. ROB: Fantastic. We'll get the site dialed into the show notes as well. Sara, congratulations on everything so far. Looking forward to what comes next as well. Thanks for coming on and sharing with us. SARA: Thanks for having me. ROB: You bet. Be well. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Leeann Leahy is CEO at VIA, a full-service advertising agency/communications company and winner of AdAge's 2019 Small Agency of the year. Via‘s 100 or so employees work their creative magic to unleash growth for such name brands as Arm & Hammer, Unilever (ice cream novelties Klondike, Good Humor, Popsicle), Perdue Chicken, and CarGurus. The agency has a few clients in Maine . . . a lot more nationally . . . and even some that are global.  Leeann says the agency makes small budgets work “much bigger and harder than they should” and runs on a critical balance of head and heart. In this interview, Leeann outlines the agency's 5 responsive principles: “be curious,” “think like the audience,” “be on time,” “be on budget,” and “create respect,” and 5 artistic principles: “figure it out,” “find the magic,” “believe,” “do work that makes you proud,” and “honor the process.” It's a formula that succeeds . . . as evidenced by the agency's 28 years in the business.  In this interview, Leeann talks about VIA's strategy for building two-way brand/consumer conversations and the magic of the “Aha! Moment,” when the mind jumps from “facts” to understanding. The process? Dig deep with clients to get beyond the facts and gain meaningful insights;  Understand who a brand's customers are, their experience with the brand, and their “journey  Analyze insights to reveal and unlock a pathway to connect consumers with the brand Bring real emotion to the table  Present the brand in a way that's useful, practical, and meaningful at a personal level . . . and not just talking at the customer. Leeann says, “It's not just selling attributes, but selling utility and meaningfulness and relevancy.” Six years ago, in order to streamline operations, the agency eliminated departmental siloes and set up interdisciplinary pods which are led by four equal partners:  A client strategy lead (who elicits from the client what is to be done and why),  A planning lead (who aligns work with client needs, market trends/ opportunities, and strategies),  A creative lead (who invents new products, generates advertising promotion, or “produces the show”), and  A project management lead (who oversees resourcing, time management, budgets, and scopes – how the work is done and when).  Then, three years ago, the agency established VIAlocity, a remote pool of diverse (culturally, ethnically, life-stage-wise, and ability-wise) freelance consultants (who may or may not be in advertising). These journalists, painters, photographers, or stay-at-home moms, who are kept on retainer, can be tapped for projects for an additional fee to collaborate on VIA's offerings. The program recently expanded to include some full-time remote workers. Leeann can be found on her agency's website at: https://theviaagency.com/. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm joined today by Leeann Leahy, CEO at VIA based in Portland, Maine. Welcome to the podcast, Leeann. LEEANN: Hi. Thank you for having me. ROB: Excellent to have you here. Why don't you kick us off by telling us about VIA and what the agency's superpowers are? LEEANN: VIA is a magical place that operates out of Portland, Maine. We are a full-service advertising agency, although advertising is a narrow term. We're really a communications company that helps unleash the growth potential of our clients' brands. We're about 100 people. I say we operate from Portland, Maine because that's where we're headquartered, but our clients actually are all over the country and indeed the globe. I used to say we don't have any clients in Maine, but we do work with a couple now. We're on a quest to bring the fun back into our industry. I think our superpower is that we believe in magic. We believe in the power of magic. We have 10 principles, and they range from “be curious,” “think like the audience,” “be on time,” “be on budget,” and “create respect,” which are the responsive ones, to “figure it out,” “find the magic,” “believe,” “do work that makes you proud,” which are the artistic ones. There's a really great balance between the head and the heart in those principles. The heart side of it I think is our superpower because we do believe in magic. We believe that it can be found if you have a smart enough strategy, or indeed, the strategy itself could be magic if you can dig deep enough and find some insights that are revealing and unlocking a pathway to connect a consumer and a brand. We believe that creatively, the choices you make and the craft you construct and the way you engage consumers – there's a lot of magic in that. And we believe all of this works to grow brands. We've seen it over and over again. I guess the last thing I would say is in our own culture, we believe that joy and happiness and fearlessness lead to better creative work. That's not just in the creative department; that's across the whole agency. So we find the magic and we believe it's possible. That's our superpower. I think it sets us apart from other agencies, because as I said, we're having fun where very few are. ROB: Right, a little bit of magic, a little bit of joy, and just this pervasive sense of optimism over pure execution. The head and the heart, as you said. Pull us a little deeper and give us a picture. A typical client is not in Maine, apparently, for the most part, but what does a common client look like for you all? What size, what stage, what type of brand? LEEANN: It really ranges. We've worked with Perdue Farms chicken for the last 10 years, and we're their agency of record and the lead of their integrated agency team. We set all the strategy for them. We help them understand their brand portfolio, architecture. We dig deep on consumer insights. We help them manage their branded versus private label conundrum that they're in in the marketplace. We create all the communications, whether it's broadcast-based or digital. We generate lots of social assets. And then we work with all of their other agencies – shopper, marketing, promotional, etc. – to make sure everyone's operating off the same strategy. That's one kind of relationship. Another one is we work with the ice cream novelties portfolio of North America for Unilever, so Klondike, Good Humor, Popsicle. In that instance, we're really unleashing a lot of work the client has done strategically and we're setting it free creatively. We come back with creative solutions that take what are sometimes considered small budgets competitively, and we make them work much bigger and harder than they should. They punch above their weight. We work with Church & Dwight. Arm & Hammer is one of our clients. They exist, believe it or not, in about 17 categories in the grocery store. You think of it as baking soda, but actually it's everything from baking soda to laundry detergent to kitty litter to toothpaste to deodorant to licensing agreements with Hefty and other garbage bags and things like that. It is a really wide range. For them, again, we're thinking through everything, from the customer experience on those brands and where we can hit touchpoints to creating the advertising itself to putting it in the market to doing the analytics. So we really have varied relationships with our different clients, and that's what I think keeps it fun for us. I've always loved being in advertising and on the agency side because we go deep, deep, deep on very different categories. I can be talking about baking soda for hours one day, and the next day I'm talking about people buying cars online with CarGurus, or I'm talking about modern commerce with another client, or I'm talking about financial services. We really run the gamut. Check into financial services. You can't get bored. ROB: You're talking about digging into that customer experience, and it seems like that's where some of the magic can come from. When you're talking about novelty ice cream, you're not selling features. For a lot of people, you are thinking through to an experience, an emotional attachment, a different season in their life, even, perhaps. You just can't get there if you're sitting up in an ivory tower, thinking creatively by yourself. LEEANN: Absolutely. We do a lot of deep digging and consumer research and ethnographies and anthropological digging into our consumers and our prospects, and we try to talk about them as if they're family members or friends. We don't describe targets as 18- to 24-year-old white men who play these following sports and believe these five things. That's not going to help us. We really need to think of them as maybe people who seriously don't take life that seriously. That would be a way you want to talk about the target. We try to get to the mindset, because that's where the magic happens. It's not that there's not a lot of rigor to get to that mindset; there is. But there's a difference between a fact and an insight, and too often, I think people confuse them, or companies confuse them. They do the research, they get the answers, they have a bunch of facts, and then they say, “This is what we need to talk to.” Facts are important, but they are really just stimulus from which you can find and articulate the insight, because the insight has to be much deeper and more meaningful. The way I like to think about it, you know you have an insight when somebody says it when you're describing a consumer or their mindset or their need state or something, and you go, “Oh my God, that is so smart and also so completely obvious.” It's like, “Why didn't I see that before?” That to me is an insight. I think we spend a lot of time differentiating between facts and insights, and that helps us to get to a richer understanding of who we're talking to. Once you have that richer understanding, you can create work that really hits that nerve dead-on. And when it hits that nerve, it becomes an engaging two-way conversation because now you've filled into my life as a brand in a way that's useful, practical, and meaningful to me, not just talking at me. ROB: That's really grounded, really human. Leeann, if we rewind a little bit, talk about the origin story of VIA. How did the agency come to be in the first place? LEEANN: The agency was founded 28 years ago by John Coleman and a couple of other founders and partners. Specifically, John Coleman and Rich Rico were working at a big software company together. Rich was in charge of the design of marketing materials and John was a salesman. As any good salesman does in an internal marketing organization, they call up and complain about the materials they're given and have rich conversations about how they can be better, which I'm sure came very, very happily across the phone lines. [laughs] But the two struck up a relationship where they really could trust each other and rely on each other and understand how they could make materials even to sell these multimillion dollar programs in a more meaningful way. It was, again, by digging into those insights and being different strategically and not just selling attributes, but selling utility and meaningfulness and relevancy. The two of them spun out and started with one division of that company, which was called ABB. By the end of that year, they had 12 divisions of ABB as clients. So the agency was born doing B2B work to support sales teams. Over the years, it evolved many, many times. We have a saying at VIA: Born in 1993, reborn every year since. Because John was an engineer by education, they were very at the forefront of the digital era and did a lot of big technology website strategy as the internet emerged in the late '90s, early 2000s. Then pivoted again after the dot-com bust of the early 2000s. Pivoted again to do a lot of design and corporate work, really built on the strategic consultancy background they had. They were doing really deep strategic projects for clients, and then also design components and nomenclature and visual vocabularies for clients. All sorts of things. Then evolved again to be more focused on some B2C, direct-to-consumer work, but on a more regional basis, and then evolved again to be nationally recognized, national brands targeting primarily towards consumers. Now, I would say we're the best of all of those bits because we understand the digital landscape in a way that many don't, which is why we work with Chick-fil-A as their social and digital AOR. We understand big business and complications, which is why we work with some B2B clients and we take very, very complicated stories and make them very simple and digestible and important, and why we have these very, very powerful consumer brands like a Perdue or a Popsicle or Golden Corral. These are clients that have real meaning and bring real emotion to the table with consumers. We get to do all of those things every day, and that's, as I say, the best bits of all parts of our history. ROB: It's quite a path to navigate, too, because a lot of people crashed on the rocks. They got fat and happy from the late '90s, the era of the million-dollar website. I'm sure some things were almost like shooting fish in a barrel for people who were digitally savvy. We kind of went through that again with social for a season, where people were splashing similar budgets. But it's kind of matured in. It doesn't feel like there's as much of that splash, and now it has to be substance. Go ahead, it sounds like you've got something to drop in. LEEANN: I agree with you. I think what people were doing was saying, “Ooh, I have to be on social because that's where my consumer is” – again, a fact but not necessarily an insight. Just because they're there, doesn't mean you have to be there. They would just create content and, as we say, “spray and pray.” Just throw it out on the social channels and figure, “Oh, that's good. People will want to engage with me.” And that busted. I think what we're seeing is now the brands that are most successful in the social sphere are the ones who are understanding their place in the conversation and maintaining that place in the consumer's heart and mind and being respectful of the conversation they're entering, but also offering and being additive to it. Maybe it's utilitarian. Maybe it's something that is a little bit of shared brand custody, as we call it, when you want the consumer to take ownership of some of the brand elements. I think it requires deep strategy and a lot of thoughtfulness. It's not just, “I had a television ad and I made a shorter version of it and threw it all over Facebook and Instagram,” because that's not how those platforms work. ROB: Let's look at the intersection of VIA and its origin story with you. How did you come into the business and then end up in such a position of ultimate trust? What did that journey look like? LEEANN: I started in the business as a planner, at the time called an account planner. In my days as a planner, I was an account planner, a brand planner, a strategic planner. I wore every single version of that title. But I grew up in this world of consumer insights and understanding that the agency role could be to be the conscience or the therapist, really, between the consumer and the brand – connecting and listening to both and connecting the dots: being the conscience of the brand so they didn't overstep, and being the conscience of the consumer so they didn't turn away or block out the brand. So I grew up in planning. I was Chief Strategy Officer on a global level at an agency, and then at a more local level at an agency, I worked on blue chip brands like JPMorgan Chase, the NFL, AT&T, and Johnson & Johnson, all those good things. Then I transitioned in about 2012 to general agency management. That was because I had a relationship with someone who ran an agency called Translation in New York, and he was looking to make it go from just a project-based consultancy to a full-service agency. He and I had a friendship and relationship and really respected one another's intellects and points of view on how to turn brands on. So I joined him and I was there for a couple of years. The agency was exploding. We were doing great things. But in that time, I actually met John Coleman, our founder, and we had a lunch that struck me because we shared a lot of the same values. We talked a lot about what the business could be and what we wanted it to be and the kind of work we wanted to do. Honestly, again, it goes back to we find magic and we believe, and that's that optimism. We felt like we could do work that would not only move people, but maybe even leave the world a better place. We had a great talk, a couple hours, and we walked away friends. It occurred to me after that conversation that I was laughing a lot, and I realized – thanks to my husband actually pointing it out – that in my role as president of that other agency, I was having a lot of success, but I wasn't really having any fun. I went into this business because I thought it would be fun and magical and creative, and that was the part that was being stifled. Over the course of like six months, John and I became friends; he offered me the opportunity to come up to Maine. I was like, “I can't believe we're moving from New York.” I was born and raised in the New York area. But we moved ourselves to Maine, and I have not looked back once. I absolutely love it, and we do feel like we tend to put people before profits. We tend to have a lot of fun. We enjoy each other. John has since stepped out of the day-to-day of the business, but the management team and the associates – everybody here, really – we strive to create an environment where people enjoy each other because it creates a baseline of collaboration and inspiration that leads us to better work. Kind of a roundabout answer to your question, but I started out on the insight side. I've always really been invested in the creative aspect of what we do. I think the culture in which we do that really feeds the creative, so VIA gives an opportunity to do all of those things: really, really smart strategic consultancy background, really important focus on culture, and now we've also brought in a Chief Creative Officer who has fabulous expertise in crafting. His name's Bobby Hershfield, and he's amazing at crafting ideas so that the way they're presented and put out into the world really engages the consumer in a very intimate way. ROB: What a journey. You've mentioned a couple of times this AOR, agency of record designation. You've probably seen that phrase change meaning a few times. What does it mean now versus what it used to mean, and how should ambitious agencies that are chasing that designation think about it? LEEANN: There was a time when all we wanted was to be AOR. We couldn't be bothered with projects. Not VIA “we”; I mean “we,” the industry. We kind of shunned the idea that we could pop in and be experts on a project, or consultants. I think that's not true anymore. There are lots of amazing, interesting projects out there that you can work with really interesting partner agencies on, and partner clients. We do a combination of AOR and project work. But I think when you are AOR, it is a lot more than just “we set the campaign and everybody else executes it.” That is not what it is at all. I think it really is about understanding deeply the business that the client has, how it sits within the competitive marketplace, what their operational realities are, what the political realities are, how that business can grow, identifying that growth opportunity, and then unleashing creative to optimize it and to really go out and get that growth. That means thinking through everything, understanding the consumer experience and the customer journey and where the brand can plug into it and where it shouldn't, and then concepting ideas that go through that journey with the customer. That means way more than “I'm making an advertising campaign around a single idea and then everyone's executing it.” Now it's “I'm understanding the business. I'm understanding the consumer. I'm bringing those two together in a thoughtful way, and I'm going to create an idea that hits at different points in different ways so that the effect is not redundant, but it is in fact cumulative. ROB: That would seem probably more channel-specific, which is why some of the AOR designations have gone more channel, do you think? LEEANN: Yeah, possibly. But I think it's also because we're in a business now where we're competing not just with other people who do the same thing we're doing, but we're competing with agencies that do different things than we do. You might have a client who goes, “I have a traditional agency of record and then I have a digital agency of record.” But in fact, that's just false silos. If you have somebody who truly understands your business, they're thinking of it as how the consumer is experiencing this, not just what channel it's going to be on. The channels are very secondary to the story you're trying to tell and how you want the consumer to experience that story. ROB: Right. The brand still has to live somewhere. You can't just have a bunch of fractured brands. LEEANN: Yeah, exactly. ROB: Leeann, as you reflect on your time in leading VIA, and even before that maybe, in the industry, what are some things you've learned along the way that you might do a little bit differently if you were going back and giving yourself some advice? LEEANN: I kind of had a feeling a long time ago, well before I was even in a managerial role in an agency at large – I was in a managerial role in my discipline of planning, but not at the agency at large, and as a planner, I didn't have to know the business of our business. That's one piece of advice. I don't care what level you are or what discipline you are; you should understand how this industry makes money. I got away with living in la-la land as a planner for a good portion of my career, not really ever even understanding how we billed clients. You can get bogged down by it, but I think it's also important to understand. There's a balance. But I had this intuitive sense that there was a lot of waste in agencies. A lot of wasted hours, a lot of wasted discussion, a lot of wasted time, and we weren't getting to the meat. We were passing a baton around the agency in the hopes that somebody would stop and hold the baton and be like, “Okay, now I'm going to work on this.” I refer to it as the “See below” email. You may have gotten one of these from someone once upon a time. I consider these evil. Someone gets an email from someone else requesting something, and they just pass it along to someone who works with them and say, “See below” – which they might as well have said, “I didn't bother to read this. I'm making it your problem.” The person under them very often sends it to a person under them, and it just continues from there. That's what I mean by passing the baton and not really stopping and thinking. About six years ago at VIA, we got rid of all of the department silos within the agency and got rid of the gatekeeper mentality that perpetuated that baton passing. We rebuilt the agency from the bottom up to be much more agile, to be much more collaborative, and to have much more fun together. We created these interdisciplinary pods that work around clients, and each pod is led by four equal partners and leaders. There's a client strategy lead who's responsible for understanding what's being asked of us and, more importantly, why. There's a planning lead who helps us to honor insights and market trends and opportunities to have a strategic pathway. So they're responsible for the way. We have a creative lead who's responsible for the “wow,” whatever that means, whether it's inventing a new product or doing an advertisement or producing a show. It's all under the “wow.” Then we have the project management lead, who's responsible for the how and the when, which is really about resourcing, time management, budgets, scopes, all of that. When we put them all on equal footing, something really wonderful happened. They started acting like real partners. They started understanding that they were mutually accountable for this client's growth and that they were all part of the same sentence. Longer than a sentence; it would be a run-on. But you get what I'm saying. [laughs] You couldn't just have a client call one of them and ask a question and necessarily get the “Yes, you can have that Tuesday at 3:00,” because they're not responsible for that. They have to go, “Wait, are you asking the right question? Why are you asking that? Let's think about that strategically. Let's see if there's a different creative response. And oh, by the way, I have to go check with somebody else to see how our resources go.” It became honestly faster, which is sort of counterintuitive, but it's faster to get things done. It's inherently more collaborative. And as a result of it being more collaborative, everybody feels included and they can see their fingerprints on the work, and that makes it more fun. I would've done that a lot sooner. I kind of had that specced out in my brain I want to say almost 20 years ago, and we wrote it up and then I didn't do anything with it. It took a long time, but six years ago we did it, and it has helped shape our agency. It's helped get to better work. It gets to better insights. We have deeper client relationships. As I said, we have a happier populace all around because everyone feels included. And frankly, as everyone else is complaining that procurement is out there squeezing the profitability out of agencies, I feel like we regained our ability to be profitable because we eliminated the fat. So I would've done that sooner. ROB: Certainly less layers. Some of that seems to also come along with the evolution of communication channels that are available. Maybe this is more relevant to – it sounds like your org is largely in Portland, even if your clients are elsewhere. But even on distributed teams, you almost get stuck in the “See below” thing; when your choices are “Am I going to call someone, am I going to text them, or am I going to email them?”, you fall into email. But now we have some tighter lines on messaging. People will hop in a quick chat now, even online, even on a Zoom or a Slack group chat. LEEANN: Absolutely. Listen, dispersed teams are the reality of the future. We at VIA do believe that we are better when we are together in person as much as possible, so we really do try to do that, and we're being very thoughtful about how to do that safely. We did go back to the office in July. But we also really appreciate that some people have certain tasks or certain roles that are just more productive when they're working as individuals and remotely. So we have a hybrid model, and it really boils down to what task you have and what role you're playing on a given day. But you're right. We've retrained everyone, because now I know I have to consider others as thoughts pop into my head. I can't just sit there and do my own work. Even if I am remote, I've got to reach out to my partners. So I'm going to jump on Slack, I'm going to jump on Zoom, I'm going to pick up the phone, I'm going to even shoot them a text. But the conversation is much more free-flowing, and I think it gets to better solutions. Then to your other point, the channels that are available to us are changing so much. We took that model that we used at the top of every piece of business and we then applied it in the creative department. Like, why do we always just have our directors and copywriters concepting? That doesn't make sense. Maybe there's a product design person or maybe a technologist or a promotional person who should be in those concepting phases. So we actually work in creative roundtables where it's not just a two-person team; we assemble the right team for each assignment and we draw from all different areas of expertise, and it's the same kind of collaboration. You're all mutually responsible for the concept, so whatever concept we have is born able to fit all those different places. ROB: There's a lot to pull on there as well, but I want to be mindful of our time here. What is coming up, Leeann? What's coming up for VIA and the industry as a whole that you're excited about? LEEANN: I think it's a great time to be in advertising, honestly. I'm excited that our competitive set changes every day. I'm excited that sometimes we're competing with media companies and other times with creative boutiques and other times with consultants. I think that's really interesting. I'm excited that the smartest and best agencies can get deeper in with the C-suite and not just the marketing department or the CMO. I'm excited for how we utilize remote workforces and invite more diverse populations into our agencies and into our industry as a result of that opportunity, because we can reach further afield. I think that fundamentally changes the experiences and thoughts that come to the table. Of course, if you want to really have a great brainstorm and great creative, bring together two completely disparate things and throw them into a room and see what explodes out of it. People who are together, people who are dispersed, people of different backgrounds, people at different life stages – it's all an opportunity for us to think more broadly. And because clients are starting to see that they need more partners in helping them think – even in-house agencies. I don't see that as a threat. I see that as an opportunity, because we can get in there and help them think through things strategically and stop them from navel-gazing, but also leverage them for their expertise that we don't have from being in the four walls. So I think the most exciting thing is how our competitive sets are changing and how that opens up creative opportunities for us. And in order to get there, I think we need to – well, I know, and we all know, but we're actively working to diversify our workforce so we can come to the table with different ideas that catapult businesses forward. ROB: That's a whole other area where distributed helps tremendously. LEEANN: It definitely does. ROB: Different circumstances, different places. You can tap a lot broader pool of people to come together. LEEANN: Yeah, we have a program called VIAlocity that we started three years ago, before COVID, if there was a before COVID. [laughs] We hired talent from all over the world who were different from us, whether they were different culturally, ethnically, life stage-wise, ability-wise. We hired them into this collective and put them on a retainer. They were mostly freelancers who worked in different fields all around, or people who weren't traditionally in advertising. They were journalists or painters or photographers or stay-at-home moms. We put them in this collective so that we could tap into them. The retainer bought us the right to have them engaged in our email system and assigned to a pod so they knew what was going on, and then when we activate them on a project, we pay them a project fee on top of that. They're able to work for other people as well, but it gave us access to a much bigger pool. And that was fully remote, with the idea that we asked VIAlocity participants to be in Maine five days out of each quarter. They didn't have to be five consecutive days, but five days, just so that we could get that chemistry and get to know each other. Now, post-COVID, we've actually expanded VIAlocity to not just be our fractional workers who are on retainer and get project fees, but we have a couple of full-time remote workers who are part of VIAlocity also. If you're full-time remote, you have to be at the headquarters for 10 days out of each quarter. Obviously, the health situation, dependent on that. But so far, so good. ROB: Assuming they can get back into their home country. We have a guy who's out of country and he hasn't been able to come see us because he's not sure he can get back in. He's a U.S. citizen living elsewhere. It makes it interesting. But I think we're getting closer, is what I can say. LEEANN: I think so. We're getting better at working together in different ways, and that's great. I still think there's nothing like a good old-fashioned collaboration when you're in person because you just can't interrupt each other or build on each other's ideas on Zoom the way you can naturally in a room. The energy's just not there the way it is physically. But if you can combine the best of the physical togetherness with the best of the remote work and what it gives you, then there's magic to be found. ROB: Magic. Right back where we started with the magic. Magic here at VIA. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Leeann. LEEANN: My pleasure. Thank you for having me. ROB: And for sharing your experience, your wisdom. You've got it very well-formed and very well-communicated. Glad to have you. LEEANN: Thank you. Sometimes I just nerd out on it, though, so that's a little weird too. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] All good. Wonderful, Leeann. Be well. Bye. LEEANN: Great. Thank you, Rob. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Matthew Berman is President/ co-founder of Emerald Digital, a full-service data- and creative-driven digital marketing/ public relations agency that specializes in generating quantifiable leads and sales by: Mapping and generating consumer-journey-stage-specific touchpoints across multiple digital channels,  Developing and delivering personalized, consumer-journey-stage-specific content.  Typical clients are B2C premium consumer goods providers, B2B clients, and professional services (legal, healthcare, and some financial companies). Matthew talks about journey stages as being three funnels: awareness, consideration, and purchase. Awareness involves highlighting a consumer's major” pain points, introducing the client, and clearly presenting the client's unique benefits. At the purchase stage, where the user is already familiar with the client and trust and authority have been established, the message can be “a little more aggressive.”  The client, its product, and its target market determine the mix of content, platform, audience, and messaging needed to best address the target audience at each particular stage. Although the agency's focus is digital, Matthew says it will get into whatever space their target market is in. Matthew cites the example of a pet brand client with “two audiences.” When communicating with “the general public (traditional consumer channels), the focus is on digital with some print media, and media buying. For the industry-specific retail buyers (industry trades), the media mix is more traditional.  It has been difficult in the past to track billboard impact (except perhaps by sending viewers through distinct contact options). Today, companies can purchase digital space for times when prospective customers will be passing by that billboard, change up the message more frequently to keep it “fresh” or to meet the client's changing needs and goals (to increase business, build brand, hire new employees), or try to ping passing cell phones to track “views.” Matthew started his career in music production, selling songs through NYC ad agencies to support large brands' digital content. He partnered with a creative director contact to create Chunnel TV, a video curation and production platform. Funding for that evaporated with the Great Recession and Matthew moved to a traditional marketing agency in New Orleans to work on social and ambassador programs.  A few years later, he started Ember Networks, which provided other agencies with white-label social, web, and SEO support, and often consulted and collaborated with a close friend who owned Herald PR in New York City. On a joint project in the Turks and Caicos, they realized their teams were already integrated and that they would be able to tackle larger projects and work smarter if they combined the two companies. Ember Networks and Herald PR became Emerald Digital. When COVID hit, both locations shut down. Growth was exploding – the company probably tripled last year. Finding, hiring, and integrating new employees into the team was a challenge when everyone was remote. Processes needed to be thoroughly documented, mapped, and assessed; SOPs written, organized, posted, and automated; and communications tools updated and unified. In this interview, Matthew explains how a key tool of the agency's operationalization, a program called ClickUp, has allowed them to aggregate all their documents, automate processes, streamline reporting, and handle client communication.  Matthew is excited about how, today, his clients can tell never-ending stories and have ongoing narratives broken into digestible pieces across multiple platforms and multiple touchpoints and, even more so, how technological advances, AR, VR, AI will impact storytelling in the not-so-distant future. He can be reached on his agency's website at: https://emerald.digital Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm joined today by Matthew Berman, who is President and Partner at Emerald Digital with offices in New York, New York and New Orleans, Louisiana. Welcome to the podcast, Matthew. MATTHEW: Thank you so much for having me, Rob. ROB: Fantastic to have you here. Why don't you start by introducing Emerald Digital and what it is that you all are excellent in doing for your clients? MATTHEW: Absolutely. I am the president and a co-founder of Emerald Digital. We are a full-service digital marketing and public relations agency. Our superpower is we are exceptional at generating quantifiable leads and sales. We do this by mapping out and generating consumer touchpoints across multiple digital channels, and we strive to engineer these consumer touchpoints by the stage which the consumer journey and the user is actually in. If they're at the awareness stage, we have different content pieces generated just for them and personalized just for them. If they're at the consideration stage, we do the same thing. ROB: You've kind of teased it; give us all the stages as you all think about it. MATTHEW: Sure. At a very general level, let's think about awareness, let's think about consideration, and let's think about purchase. We can break them down into those three major funnels. We try to identify, based on the client that we have, what mix of content, what mix of platform, what mix of audience, and what mix of message we need to best speak to our audience at that particular stage. If we're just trying to generate awareness, we want to highlight what their major pain points are. We want to introduce who our client is, and we want to distill our message such that it can focus on the unique benefits that our client offers in an easy-to-understand way for our target market. If it's at the purchase stage, we would generally have communicated with that particular user several times by now, so we've built up trust, we've built up authority. Our messaging is going to be a little more aggressive. ROB: Give us a picture here. Dive down a little bit. Are there typical clients for you? Particular industry, particular size? What's the wheelhouse? MATTHEW: I think in general, we see two different kinds, although it certainly extends beyond that. But the two different kinds that we have are a B2C company, generally consumer goods, with a product or service that might be a little more premium, a little more expensive, whether that be a luxury hotel or a private jet or a luxury villa or a more expensive food item. So we see that. On the other side, we handle a lot of B2B clients and professional services. We deal very frequently in the legal and healthcare and sometimes the financial space. ROB: I can't let it just sit there – I need to know more about expensive food items. MATTHEW: One of the examples is we're working with one of the most premium hotdog manufacturers and sellers in the United States. You would normally think about a hotdog as just a few bucks, and the ingredients that would go into that are maybe not the ingredients you would want to eat. We're working with this great brand where all of their ingredients are ultra-premium. It tastes amazing. It might cost a few dollars more than your typical hotdog, but we have to break down, where would this product be sold? Who would it be sold to? What type of benefits would a prospective buyer be looking for? That might be health, that might be ease of making it, things like that. But they do taste great. [laughs] I always love working with our consumer brands, especially in the food and drink business, because one of the benefits that we get is we get to try the product. I've probably worked with 50 alcohol brands or something by now, and that's always fun because you have to try it out. You have to make recipes, you have to shoot the product. You get to meet fascinating people all over the country. ROB: That might help with recruiting too. MATTHEW: [laughs] It's always a fun gig. ROB: You're like, “Hey, come here. Here's who we work with.” That makes sense, especially on the premium food side. There's a trend here that is fascinating. You're talking about educating people around considered purchases, but it is interesting how it spans across consumer versus the business side. The awareness, the consideration, the purchase, that's all there. You're not very much into the transactional world. You have digital in your name, but I would imagine you also – how do you think about traditional media as part of the media mix when you're talking about these long-term considered purchases? MATTHEW: Oh, without a doubt. Our expertise is certainly in the digital world, and that's where my background comes from. But I think as our business grows and as we take on more mature clients, we very much had to get into the space where it's also billboard, it's also print. It really matters where our target market is. I'm not going to only focus on a digital solution if my client's market isn't active there. We're working with a pet brand now, and we have two audiences that we need to communicate with. We need to communicate with the general public; those would be our more traditional consumer channels, and for us, we definitely highlight on the digital side there. But we can also focus on print media. We can focus on traditional news, media buying, things like that. But then there's this other audience, which is very industry-specific. Those are your retail buyers, your industry trades. Things like that, we might go with a more traditional mix than a more digital mix. But I've been a big proponent of this digital revolution for many years. It's sort of mirroring what my own personal habits were. I'm 34 now, so I've seen – I'm at that age where when I was younger, it was only traditional, and I've seen more and more brands moving to the digital space. If the last few years have taught us anything, we went from where you had to sell clients on the concept of digital 10-15 years ago, but now they all understand that that's where they need to be. They just need to know exactly what they have to do and what exactly they should be doing. ROB: It probably gives you a pretty good advantage. A lot of traditional media is digitizing in the buying, whether you're talking about billboards, out of home, whether you're talking about TV and you have the OTT stuff. That becomes an increasingly digital buy, I think. You might know better. MATTHEW: You're absolutely right. We were hesitant to recommend things like traditional billboards to our clients in the past. We're this interesting marriage of being data-driven but also creative-driven. If we couldn't get the right data for why we were buying something or why a client should be there, it was hard for me to make that recommendation. I might say, let's conduct some hopefully siloed experiment where if we buy this particular billboard without digital capabilities, let's see if we can see any noticeable lift in sales or phone calls. We can have a tracking number. We can send them to a unique URL that's on the billboard. But if it was hard for us to measure, it was hard for us to manage. With billboards now, especially in the digital space, there are Bluetooth – I'm not sure what the phrase is, but there's this Bluetooth tracking on it so it can try to ping all the phones driving by to give us some information on that. We can also purchase particular space if we only want it between 12:00 and 2:00 and 4:00 and 6:00 when people are driving back and forth. It just gives us more options than a general “This billboard is on the corner of X & X.” ROB: I'm just curious, because I've seen things on billboards that I would never have expected would have the correct ROI for the cost. What is the cost and entry point to get into a digital billboard placement? I see restaurants hiring for chefs and I'm like, man, how does that ever ROI? Or maybe they're thinking more about awareness. It seems like it doesn't add up to me, but how does that work? MATTHEW: There is such a variation in what these prices are. It's tough to give you an exact number. I would think there might be a branding component there. We bought a billboard for a client a few weeks back, and we were looking at rural markets versus urban markets, how many people. The urban billboard, I think we were looking at something like $15-$20K a month versus the rural one was maybe $800 or $1,000 or something. ROB: Wow. MATTHEW: So there's a wide variation of what those costs should be. With a message like “We need to hire someone,” that's not the message you would expect. [laughs] I'm not tracking that; I don't know what their ROI is. It's possible they just really needed workers. But it's also possible they're thinking about it from a brand place. ROB: Right, I get that. It's like, “Hey, we're a restaurant, we're here.” Even maybe an opportunity afforded by digital is you get to shift up the creative more often, sometimes saying you're hiring and sometimes talking about your fish and chips. MATTHEW: That's exactly it. ROB: Rotating the message. MATTHEW: Yes. Frequency – we have to heavily consider that, because you don't want to give the same individual the same message 10 times in a row. It will fall flat. It may also be that that particular restaurant purchased a set amount of billboard space, and they were committed to that for X amount of months, and it came to be that they were already busy, or perhaps COVID changed things for them, and they decided, with the digital billboard, “Let's allocate 15% of that space to hiring. We've already accomplished some of the goals we intended to here, and the money has already been spent, so let's use it for something that can affect us right now.” ROB: Matthew, let's rewind the clock here a little bit. Talk us through the origin story of Emerald Digital. Where did this business come from? What led you to start it? What were you leaving behind? All of that. MATTHEW: Let me give you a little run-through here. I got into this marketing world – I've been a musician for over 25 years, and in my late teens I was heavily into music production. I started selling songs to Heineken, Hennessey, and some other large brands for the digital content they were at that time producing. I was able to do this through some ad agency contacts in New York City, which ultimately led me to partnering with one of the creative directors there, and we created a video curation and production platform called Chunnel TV. After the Great Recession hit, we were unable to raise any more money for that, and I moved to a traditional market agency in New Orleans, where I was heavily involved in social and ambassador programs. A few years later, I decided to start my own firm. This is I think where the story of Emerald begins. At that point, I started a firm called Ember Networks. We focused heavily on social, web, and SEO. A lot of the time, there were other agencies that were hiring us. They would say they were able to do XYZ, but they either didn't have the bandwidth or the ability to, so they white-labeled out. More and more over time, I began working with a firm called Herald PR, which is owned by one of my dear friends. He was in New York City. He was my college roommate, so we were always bouncing ideas off of each other. As an agency owner, it's always helpful to have that bouncing-off point. “How are you doing this? How are you doing that?” So we started working together more and more on escalating projects. After a few years, we had a client who was a villa in the Turks and Caicos. Villa Bella Vita. It's absolutely gorgeous. We went down there, we were shooting drones and doing pictures, and we had brought some of our other clients down. We said, “Why are we doing this separately? Our teams are already integrated. They're already working together. We're able to take on larger projects together and work smarter than we are alone, so let's create a joint venture.” So Emerald is a joint venture between Ember and Herald PR. And you get to work with your friends. ROB: And hopefully you get to go back down to that villa every now and again. MATTHEW: Yes, we do, actually. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] That's good, to revisit the origin a little bit in that way, for sure. MATTHEW: Yeah. That's one of the benefits of working a little bit in the luxury space. You get to look at some of these beautiful places. ROB: As we follow the narrative of Emerald Digital, that's a good starting point. What have been some key inflection points, some times in the business where the difficulty level ramped up a little bit? MATTHEW: Well, an obvious one I think would be last year. I think everyone was under similar stress. We had to shut down both of our offices, but at the same time, we were growing at a tremendous pace. We were hiring, hiring, hiring. I think our team tripled or something last year. We were trying to identify people, work with them, merge them into our team, and inculcate them on the business without being in the same physical space. So I would say that was particularly challenging. That very much led us to hyper-focusing on the documentation of our processes and making sure that we had the right communication tools in place to try to break down these physical barriers that we have now, because we have people all over the country now. While our team was mainly focused in New Orleans and New York, during the last year we've had people want to move out of Manhattan; we've had people trying to move a little closer to the middle of the country, whether that's the Midwest, Michigan, and we've had a certain amount of team members moving to Florida. So how do we collaborate? How do we communicate? How are we working efficiently in this environment where we're all separated? That was a pretty major challenge. But it really led us to hyper-focusing on what these processes were and then implementing a toolset that was able to mold our workflow so that we weren't looking at “This thing is on Dropbox and this thing is on Drive and this guy communicates on Zoom and this person communicates on Slack.” It was looking at all of the different things we were doing across two offices, and now we're trying to operationalize this entire business. ROB: That's a really interesting thread to pull on. What are some of those key tools, practices? What makes distributed work for Emerald? MATTHEW: The first thing was we had to write all of these SOPs. First it was, what are the different stages in the work that we have to do, whether it's account service, biz dev, sales, the content creation process – everything from the brainstorm to the client revision to the scheduling to the ad buying? It was mapping out each of these different things we do. I think one of the first things was we wrote this book. I think we had 91 individual SOPs. And it didn't at that point cover everything. So it was like, all right, we have all of these SOPs. No one's going to read 91 separate things, so we need to put them in a single place that everyone can see at all times, and we have to add video. We added GIFs. We unified all of the documents. We had that all in a drive. But then in the last few months, we moved over to a program called ClickUp. It's been fantastic. We're very happy to have moved over because we can aggregate all of our docs. We implemented all of our different processes into the actual software, so we were able to automate a lot of different things. We were able to streamline a lot of our reporting as well and a lot of our client communication. If there was a particular deliverable we had, we were able to have that automatically pull up. So if we have a social client that needs XYZ, when that job is created, it will pull in the SOPs that we have made and automatically pull in some of our primary documentation so that the employee doesn't need to go looking for it or even realize they have to pull that up. It'll just have it right there.  ROB: Sure, and then nobody has to ask where something is, right? They can go look for it, actually, which is helpful. MATTHEW: Yes. Not only be able to look for it, but to remind them that it's there. I think that first month when everyone was working from home, it was, “Where is this thing? Where is that thing? Which folder?” It was a big organizational task. Not only to have it where it's all in a place that the person can find, but it's to create automated reminders and touchpoints on our end so that we don't even have to find it. It's right there. “Hey, by the way, since you're making a social media post, here's a few things that might help you out. Here's previous creative. Here's file assets. Here's a step-by-step on how to do this. Here's a video. And if you need help, here's a simple form that you can fill out right there, and that form will automatically be sent to your superior, our management team, or even our leadership.” ROB: Has it been difficult for everyone to make that transition? It seems like that's a cultural shift, and with that comes the privilege of being able to be distributed, of being able to move to Florida whenever you want. But has that been a tough transition across the team in some cases? MATTHEW: I want to point out that I'm so happy with the way our team has adapted. Everyone has done a tremendous job, to the point where I think in many cases we're more efficient now than we even were before. But I think on a personal level, for many people, with that shift in not going to the office and being in the same house with all of your kids who can't go to school for months at a time, or for even the new hires, there's certainly difficulty there. Or we have employees who have older parents. So there's certainly difficulties. But I think on a professional level, our team has adapted to it tremendously. ROB: That's good news. It's a tricky transition. Now, as you're spread apart, how are you thinking about in person? Is there a cadence of getting together, or is it off the table for now? MATTHEW: That's a great question. With your previous question, you asked what some of the challenges are, and I think one of the biggest ones, especially for me and our creative team, is there are these great ideas that happen off the cuff around the water cooler, and you can sit around a whiteboard in the same physical space and be like, “Wouldn't it be cool if we did XYZ?” There is absolutely something to being in the same physical space. I don't want to discount that. Where I believe we will be moving to as things open up is a more flex time model, where you can come into the office two or three times a week and then you can work from home the rest of the time. If you're not in a location where one of the offices is, then obviously you cannot come in. But wherever possible, I think we're going to identify physical opportunities for everyone to get together, whether that's once a quarter or – we're not sure exactly what that frequency is. But we have several different cadences now for our team to brainstorm, to basically connect. We have an all hands meeting every Monday, every Friday, and then each of our separate teams meets every single morning. “What are we doing today? What are our goals? How did yesterday go?” Those are our primary touchpoints. Most of us are in communication with each other throughout the day anyway, but it's still good to get everyone on those face-to-faces. On a digital face-to-face, I should say. ROB: [laughs] Absolutely. Matthew, as you think back on the journey so far, what are maybe some lessons you have learned that you would tell yourself to do a little bit differently if you were starting from scratch? MATTHEW: I think to document these processes is something I would've done much, much sooner. It would've helped us scale a lot faster, and I think a lot more efficiently. So certainly that. And it would have allowed us to train and hire people in a much easier manner, and I think for us to even identify what some of our own roadblocks were and to have a better understanding of what repeatable processes we have and where we can identify pain points and how we can grow those. And certainly another one for myself – for many years, I wanted to see every creative and had to approve it. It was almost like all roads went through me. That's a tough thing to let go of, but as a business owner, you have to. You have to trust the people that you're hiring to make the decisions that you hired them to do, and only to come to you when they need you, or for you to bring them that strategic vision or directive. But give them enough room to do their job properly. So I would say, “Chill out, Matt. Let go.” [laughs] Bring on the smartest people that you possibly can. That's a really major part. You as the business owner want to be the dumbest person in the entire room. Your job is to hire the smartest people for the best job that you can find, and hire them no matter what it takes so that you can trust them to do what they do well. ROB: How do you time that transition? Because clearly, you start the thing from zero and you're going to be working in the business, necessarily. Very few people – I know one guy that bought five agencies and he just starts being in charge. But for most of us, you're starting with a special talent. You're starting with that skill that you have being the reason that people come to you, and then you start having people fill in some of your weaknesses, and then people who also have your strengths. How do you think about when to start turning the corner on getting yourself out of every piece of creative? How do you time that? MATTHEW: That's a great question. Certainly bringing in smart people and then making sure they know exactly the job they're supposed to do, and then giving them – maybe working with them for the first month or two, where you are a little more hands-on, and just ensure that your processes work. Just oversee. Say, “I built all these processes out. I have trained you. Here's enough room for you to do it yourself.” And you set, “Every Thursday I'm going to dedicate three hours to ensuring that this foundation that we've made is actually working.” You start with different topics. Maybe I'm going to let go of all of the creative when it comes to social posts and video production, but I'm still going to hold on to this web dev side. For now, I want to be able to test everything and I want to be able to overlook the code. I just want to make sure everything's working properly. I think one by one, start making sure that each of those teams has that process down. I would start thinking about what unique assets you have. Are you the best at social? Are you the best web guy? Are you the best for overall strategy? Did you create a web firm because you're a killer coder? Start thinking about the things that you can offload that maybe don't fall into your expertise as much as the others. ROB: That makes perfect sense. As we look at the future of Emerald and of the work that you do for clients, what's coming up? What's the future look like? What's exciting there? What should we be looking out for? MATTHEW: Awesome. If we talk general industry – and I kind of mentioned this before, but it felt like for many years we had to pitch about why you should be in the digital space at all. That conversation, especially in the last two years, has really shifted to “You know that you have to be here. Now we can do some really interesting things.” Our clients are much more on board with this concept of telling a never-ending story, having an ongoing narrative that can be broken up into digestible pieces across multiple platforms, multiple touchpoints. I think that's very exciting as a storyteller. We can create video, we can create audio, we can do all these interesting things. I think that's really fun. That brings us to what's on the horizon. We're not going to be using the same platforms forever, and they change all of the time. More and more, we're seeing movement in the AR, VR, and AI space. I think it's really exciting. There's this fantastic firm up in New York that we are friends with, and some of the stuff they create is this marriage of a digital space with a real-world space. I think as a storyteller, that opens up so many different avenues for us, because now all of your content and all of your communication doesn't have to be flat. It can be 3D. It can be all-encompassing. You can build things that can sit on someone's table and look like they actually exist. So I'm very excited for that AR/VR space, and then on the AI side, it's certainly helping us to more intelligently gather and parse out what our data means, but also to create content faster. ROB: Lots going on there. It would probably be a whole interesting other conversation to get into the level and approach and who's appropriate to get into AR/VR. But I think with the right creative people, a lot is certainly possible. MATTHEW: Yeah. I definitely think we're still a few years out, and it's probably a matter of one of these big tech firms releasing the Apple Glasses or a contact lens. I think the general user hasn't adopted these yet. We're very much still in the first mover advantage. It's not quite there. But part of our role as a business owner here is to set the business up for success 10 years from now. We don't want to be the best Facebook ads guys in 10 years. We want to be the guys that are doing the next thing great as well. ROB: Excellent. Matthew, when people want to track you down, and Emerald Digital, how should they connect with you? MATTHEW: Check us out at https://emerald.digital. ROB: Awesome. We get these hot new domains. I kind of want to get a .digital myself, but maybe just to track my billboard ads. I don't know. We'll get there. [laughs] MATTHEW: Yes, done. [laughs] ROB: Thank you so much, Matthew. Thank you for coming on, for sharing. Best wishes to you and the whole Emerald team. MATTHEW: Thank you so much. ROB: And all the good stuff going on in New York and New Orleans and beyond, right? MATTHEW: And beyond. ROB: Excellent. Have a wonderful day, a wonderful week, and thank you so much, Matthew. MATTHEW: Thank you, Rob, for absolutely everything. Cheers. ROB: Cheers. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Heather Isch is CEO and President at LKF Marketing, a B2B-focused full-service marketing communications company that specializes in working with manufacturers with complex, often highly technical products and complicated sales channels; governmental agencies working on regional economic development; and local community-focused arts organizations and nonprofits (the agency's give-back “passion” projects). Heather describes the process of getting to know LKF clients as a “deep dive” – into understanding all of the different industries they work in, the “customer levels” within each of those industries, who clients are trying to reach (which may vary by product application), what clients are trying to sell, and how they are trying to solve their customers' problems – and compiling that information into “customer maps.” In addition to questioning clients, the agency gets industry information through accessing existing research, consulting with trade partners, following industry trade journals, through trade shows (when possible), or by, when something is completely new and needs to be “explored,” commissioning paid research. “We spend a lot of time with engineers,” Heather says.  Another piece of the “deep dive” is market research: finding and figuring out how to effectively reach target audiences – where these people are, how they make decisions, their internal “cultures” and inter-relationships, and the right media mix to support client messages. LKF started in 1989 with two partners, graphic designer Charlie King and strategist Brad Lawton – and soon added media buyer Carol Fricke. After a number of years, Carol bought out her partners and invited Heather on board. In 2015, after Heather had served in the role of vice president for about 8 years, Carol retired and Heather took over as owner. Heather says that this transition was “always part of the plan” and that “when you plan for . . . transitions, they go a lot smoother.” Even now, Heather is working with her team so that when it is time for her to go, her current team of leaders will have everything they need to make the transition seamless.  In this interview, Heather talks about how her team of 17, each of whom has a specific “area of expertise,” has maintained relevance through the years. She explains that the agency's culture supports “keeping ahead of trends” and not fearing trying new things or failure. The agency actively promotes continued training, attending seminars, and trying out and leveraging new client-appropriate tools and technology . . . all with a focus on delivering results for LKF's clients. A recent example: LKF developed a trademarked Content Management System, McConimore, to facilitate rapid/ agile Web development and overcome some of what Heather describes as WordPress's “intrinsic flaws.” Heather takes a very holistic view of her organization. She explains that LKF's passion statement, “Assisting the people in our family to thrive,” applies to the agency's clients as well as the agency's internal work family, employees' families, and the community the agency serves. Heather can be reached on her agency's website at: lkfmarketing.com and on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm excited to be joined today by Heather Isch. She is the CEO and President at LKF Marketing based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Welcome to the podcast, Heather. HEATHER: Thanks. I'm glad to be here. ROB: Super great to have you here. Why don't you kick us off by telling us what LKF Marketing excels in? What's your specialty?  HEATHER: We are a full-service marketing communications company. We primarily serve B2B. We like really technical, confusing kinds of clients, so we have a lot of clients in the manufacturing space. We also have a lot of digital skills, so a lot of web development, that kind of thing. So helping clients with complicated sales channels, complicated products, that kind of thing. ROB: Got it. When you say “technical and confusing,” let's pull on that thread for a minute. What would something technical and confusing sound like? Even though once you describe it, it may not sound so technical and confusing. HEATHER: A lot of our clients serve highly technical clients. They might be working with highly engineered products that might be sold into packaging or beverage or wastewater treatment. Sometimes in the medical industry, like for MRI equipment. So a lot of our clients have technical products that you really have to dig in and understand, spend a lot of time with engineers so that you understand what you're talking about, first of all. But then those clients typically have very complicated sales channels, and it's understanding how to get to and share their messaging in a variety of different industries to a variety of different levels, whether they're influencers or the buyers. In other markets that we serve, we work in economic development, so we have a lot of development clients working with, in our case, the state of Michigan working to understand brownfields and redevelopment credits and all kinds of crazy stuff. And then we have some of our more fun clients that might be a little bit more – those are our passion projects, more in the community that we live in. We like to give back, so we'll be working with people in our arts community or some of our nonprofits. But we're not typically the consumer products group, if that makes any sense. ROB: It certainly does to an extent, although I'm now also contemplating who a wastewater influencer is. [HEATHER laughs] When we get into the particulars of it, take us down a layer on that. The complexity affects who you're targeting, it affects your marketing channels. How do you take a problem like wastewater treatment – I imagine the client is very helpful in informing you of what they know, but they also might not know, and the knowledge may not transfer over the same way as if you're in a core B2B context. HEATHER: Right. With a client like that, it could be a wastewater treatment plant, it could be – here's one for you. We've started working with some of the people that are trying to do extraction in the cannabis market. That's really been more of an exploration. Who is making these decisions? Same thing in wastewater treatment plant. It may be the facilities manager that we need to get to; it could be an operations person in a specific area, but then you may also need to be speaking with the director of public services, depending on the different cities and states. A lot of times it's doing a deep dive with our clients to really understand all of the different industries that they're working in, who they're trying to connect with, what we're trying to sell them, or how we're trying to solve their problems, and then really going to work and putting together all of those customer maps. Sometimes there's research that exists; a lot of times we rely heavily on some of our trade partners. We've spent a lot of time with engineers. And in some cases, there might be actual research that we commission because we're really in exploratory mode. If the client's trying to launch something new, then we have to go down that paid research path. ROB: It seems like some of these prospects for these products – they're almost going to be pleasantly surprised if you can reach them with a convincing message directly. But how do you think about reaching such a specific customer? This certainly doesn't sound like billboard and TV ad territory. HEATHER: Not typically billboards, no. Usually there's heavy emphasis in the different – there's trade journals for everything under the sun. We work with a client that makes products for linemen to keep them safe when they're up on utility poles. You would be amazed at how many trade journals there are for that industry and for very specific titles. So for that particular group, we might be doing a combination of traditional print mixed with some social media, heavy web presence. Honestly, it's trying to do the deep dive by industry, figuring out where these folks are, and doing the right media mix. Sometimes it's tradeshows thrown in there, although COVID has not done us any favors in that department, so we've had to get a little more creative with how to reach our customers. ROB: That's wild, because I'm also thinking that linemen are probably not on LinkedIn very much. Maybe less than other industries, if you will. HEATHER: Right. ROB: I can't imagine all the trade journals you get at your office. That must be a heck of a picture on its own. HEATHER: Yeah, we have a lot of trade journals that come here. Also, I think one of the things that has been fascinating is the connection that linemen have with each other. There's a very tight, almost like a brotherhood. There are a lot of ways to reach this group, but they're also very connected and become very attached to their brands, and we are lucky enough that our client is very, very well-known, and linemen ask for it by name. That's been an interesting little twist in their industry. And we find that across the board. Every industry is very different, so you really have to figure out what's going to get the best result based on the market. You learn to talk. You learn to figure out where these people are and how they make decisions. ROB: It's interesting, especially with the linemen. When someone's going to get up near high-energy power, downed lines, all that stuff, when they ask for safety equipment, I feel like you listen to them. [laughs] But I don't know. Also, you're talking about getting deep into an industry. It seems to me there could be some big opportunities – if somebody's been marketing with a firm that doesn't take the time to get in deep, there could be huge uncovered opportunities that are maybe even pretty low-hanging in the content and search world. Have you found examples of keywords that are lying out in the wide open for the taking, but weren't claimed by the industry? HEATHER: Absolutely. ROB: What's that look like? HEATHER: I think that's probably one of our key strengths. We are hell-bent on getting results for our clients, and the way you do that is really digging in deep and understanding their business and what they're making, what they're creating, what that end game is. We have search engine optimization talent on staff as well as usability experts, and a lot of this is really just years of learning to understand, I guess as best as anyone can, Google. They change everything every day. That's a full-time job. But I feel like we're pretty gifted in that department. ROB: Heather, let's rewind the clock a little bit on this. What is the origin story of LKF? Where did this business come from? HEATHER: This business was actually created in 1989, and there were two partners, Charlie King and Brad Lawton, the ‘L' and the ‘K' in LKF. Charlie was a graphic designer and Brad was a strategy guy. Then they met up with Carol Fricke, and she was a media buyer. She came to Kalamazoo after a long stint in Atlanta, Georgia, and she teamed up with this group. They formed the trio, Lawton, King, Fricke, and operated for quite a few years together. During that time, I was actually a kid fresh out of college and I met Carol while I was selling ad space for one of the papers. I continued to have that relationship with her for many years. I left publishing and became a marketing manager for a manufacturing company, which is where I probably learned to really love all of those nerdy technical things. She and I stayed in touch, and actually LKF did a lot of design work for the manufacturing company that I worked with. During one of our lunches one day, she told me she wondered what was happening with me. I said I was negotiating hopefully what I thought would be “the job” with a local agency, and she said, “I don't think so. I don't want you to go work for another agency. I just bought my partners out, so I think you should come and work for me.” So I did. I worked with her for many, many years, and in 2015 she was ready to retire, and I took over as owner. ROB: Congratulations. It's a good long story, and some of the best stories are those long stories. I find that every change of control of an agency is a little bit the same and a little bit different. What do the mechanics of assuming ownership, as it were, of an agency – I mean, you don't have to get into particulars and percentages, but how does that even work? These are often somebody's baby, but they also don't want to care for it anymore. So what does that look like? HEATHER: I think one of the things that was really beautiful about our transition is Carol and I had talked about that early on. That was always kind of the game plan. Neither one of us really had an end date, but we worked towards that, and I worked as the vice president for about eight years before taking over as owner. I think your point about the same yet different – there are so many things that make LKF who we are today, and we have always been uber-focused on delivering results for the client. That's just embedded in who we are. I think the culture piece also. We've always had this – it's overused, but “work hard, play hard” focus. We always enjoyed each other's company. Carol made it possible for me to be a vice president, help run the company, but also raise two small children. I had a very flexible schedule throughout that time. I think when I took over, I wanted to put a bigger light on that, taking that to the next level, really looking at giving our team the ability to take care of their own families but be wildly successful here at the agency. I think we've been doing flex schedules – it was fashionable before COVID made it fashionable. [laughs] So we're very blessed in that department. Our passion statement is “Assisting the people in our family to thrive,” and in the LKF bunch, we describe our family as our clients as well as our internal work family, their families, and the community that we serve. I feel like that has just gotten bigger, I think, in that transition. But it was planned for, and I think when you plan for those transitions, they go a lot smoother. ROB: How does that inform where you sit now? I'm sure someday you are planning to not run the agency anymore. How are you thinking about even the next generation? And really, you're talking about handling a 50-year-old agency before too long, 40 even sooner. HEATHER: That's my goal. I would say my vision is that my current team of leaders are getting everything that they need so that the day that it's time for me to go, it's really seamless. I think good leadership is not about the who or the personality cult of what's at the top; it's what has made us who we are. Is everybody trained and schooled in all things LKF Marketing, the LKF way? How do we push that down in the organization so that there's a seamless transition when the time comes? ROB: Nobody's surprised, right? HEATHER: Nobody's surprised. ROB: It makes logical sense to everybody involved. HEATHER: Yep. ROB: That is quite a journey, and congratulations on everything so far. In the time that you have been there, when you track back to 1989, in terms of skills of the team members, some things are still very valid and helpful. There are still media buying elements there. But how media is bought and the other marketing channels that are involved have shifted entirely. How has the team over time been able to continue to stay relevant? You mentioned even getting up into social, and then there's stuff beyond that. There are so many places where an agency can get stuck in media, in SEO, in PPC, and others keep going past that. How do you think about these practice areas, which ones are ready to adopt for the agency, and how to either upskill or add skills to the team to get there? HEATHER: I think that's always the question. How do you keep yourself relevant? One of the things that we've always been very good at is not being afraid to fail and not being afraid to try things. Having experts – our team is very small. There's 17 of us. But every person on the team has an area of expertise, and they're really charged with keeping ahead of trends. We put significant emphasis on training and making sure that we're attending seminars, that we're trying out tools, that we're figuring out which tools make sense for our client base and how to apply them so that they're getting the best results and we're leveraging the right technology, and we're not becoming irrelevant. I think that's also something that has happened during the past 18-20 months, this explosion of digital tools, technology. And that's what we're excited about: how are we going to harness some of this new technology and really apply it to our client base? One of the things we had started working on pre-COVID was a new web development platform. We in the past have had a proprietary development platform, and over the years we've realized that's just not a thing anymore. But we've also seen the need for some tools to allow rapid or agile development. WordPress is always the thing that people are all about, but we've always felt like it had some intrinsic flaws. [laughs] So we went to work and have come up with our own product in that category. It's been trademarked. We're really excited about using that, alongside many other tools. But I think that's a testament to how we're staying relevant. We're constantly saying, “This is good. We tried this; it didn't work. That's okay.” And honestly, every client, because of the industries that they're in, they're pushing us to try things that might work for them but don't work for one of our other clients. So I think that also helps us to stay relevant and on top of what's out there. ROB: Very, very interesting. Very tricky, of course. You're saying you've built a new CMS up from scratch? Is that my understanding, or did I miss a detail there? HEATHER: Say that again? ROB: You have a new CMS that you've put together? HEATHER: Yes. ROB: Wow. What's it called? HEATHER: It is called McConimore and we don't widely – it's really only available to our customers. ROB: Pretty interesting. There's always room for new ideas there. That's a category where everybody's always trying to dominate it and nobody ever does. It's sort of the tale as old as time. WordPress is always there, but you've got your GoDaddys, your Webflows – all of the things. But nothing ever dominates. It's pretty interesting. Heather, as you look at your tenure, as you look at your time in LKF and overall, what are some key lessons that you've learned as you've been leading that you might want to go back and tell yourself if you could rewind a little bit? HEATHER: I think for me personally, I am a thinker, a big picture person. I love data. But once I have enough data, I'm definitely ready to move, and I think my younger self could get talked out of moving as quick as she would like to go. [laughs] There has to be calculated risk. There has to be data, all of those things. But I think that is part of, in our industry, staying ahead of everybody else. Failure or trying things on, that's all part of the learning journey, and I hope that's one thing that we instill in our teams: to never be afraid to try something and see if it works. I think that's probably it. ROB: Very good. As you're looking forward at the future of LKF, the future of marketing in general, what are some things you are looking forward to? What's next? HEATHER: I think really taking our team to the next level. We are training up newer teams, and I'm looking forward to being able to serve more clients. We're ready. I also think harnessing all of these different technologies and leveraging them for our clients. There's been a really big shift over the last 20 months, and I think as people get back online, helping them to really innovate and think about how to solve some of their challenges – that's been a topic of discussion for us because I think we've been so focused over the past 18 months on tomorrow and next month. We've got to get people asking different questions, thinking about how we're going to do it differently, how we're going to tackle this problem in a different way. Some of the previous solutions just don't work. So I'm excited about what's next for our clients and how we might go to market and start looking at things from a different perspective. ROB: Absolutely. I always enjoy thinking through the individual contexts of where people are. It sounds like you are very aligned to your local community, to the art community. If someone has not been to visit you in the place that you call home in Kalamazoo, what should somebody go see? What are some of the highlight reels of your home? HEATHER: We have a beautiful downtown that is very vibrant with lots of fun little boutiques and breweries. Wonderful little shops. We also, on the outside edges of Kalamazoo, have a wonderful Air Zoo, which is a great museum to take your families to. We also are home to Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo Valley Community College. We are a town that is very focused on education and keeping our talent here in Kalamazoo. We are also home to The Promise, if you've ever heard of that. The Kalamazoo Promise has been talked about all over the United States. We have a very philanthropic community. So lots of good reasons to come and visit. ROB: It sounds wonderful. I always like to dig in and honor – my team is around the country, and I just like to have us all think about what makes each other's homes special. So thank you for sharing that. I know we always see Western Michigan jumping up and biting some other team in college football that wasn't expecting to get beaten that week. They're one of those upstarts that likes to surprise people, but it sounds like the people there are not surprised. HEATHER: Kalamazoo is a great place to live. ROB: Heather, when people want to get in touch with you and with LKF, where should they go to find you? HEATHER: You can find us at lkfmarketing.com. You can also find us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. ROB: Fantastic. Heather, thank you so much for your time, for sharing your journey, for sharing that unique depth of understanding that you get into with clients to sell things that I think are hard to sell by a formula. That is very much to your credit, so congratulations. HEATHER: Thank you. ROB: Be well, and we'll look for more great things from LKF. HEATHER: Thanks, Rob. It was great talking to you. ROB: Thanks, Heather. Take care. Bye. HEATHER: Bye. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Ken Magma Marshall is Chief Growth Officer and Managing Partner at RevenueZen, an agency focused on helping high-growth-oriented B2B, SaaS, and professional service brands generate more demand and leads through SEO, content, and LinkedIn . . . to get real leads that actually convert. Ken started his agency four-and-a-half years ago. His first milestone was developing a successful, process that worked and that he could pass onto another person with his SOPS and get the same results. Instead of waiting for clients to request particular services like keyword research or gap analysis, Ken could tell a client, “In the first 90 days, we're going to do these two things that will lead to X outcome based on the research and analytics from my previous clients.” The second one, he says, came about when the repeatable system evolved to the point where he no longer had to tweak the system himself to continue to get targeted outcomes.  About six months ago, Ken's agency reached its third milestone, when it was aqui-hired by RevenueZen. RevenueZen, with a traditional focus on lead gen, appointment setting, and LinkedIn, got Ken's agency's assets, his knowledge of inbound technology, his presence on the executive team, and his agency's book of business. Complementary strengths have proved win-win. ReveueZen's clients are typically established professional, mid-market service companies that have good revenues . . . but may or may not be profitable. All but three B2C “outliers” are B2B technology companies, with 60-70% in SaaS (software as a service). Most of these companies have marketing teams, but are not problem- or solution-aware with respect to RevenueZen's methodologies, don't know what kind of solution they need, or don't know the right provider.  What do they know? They want results. Ken says it is imperative for the agency to qualify its potential clients through the discovery process – if clients don't understand customer lifetime values /average lead values, they are likely to have unrealistic expectations of the value of conversion or question whether they will get a positive return on spend.  Ken will be moderating a HubSpot's Inbound2021 session, “Long Live Forms, All Hail Chatbots: The Epic Debate of Booking Demos.” In answer any participants' subjective blanket assertions, such as a statement that “Chatbots are the future,” Ken will be asking such probing questions as: “For whom are chatbots correct?” What other marketing stack does the company use?” “How will the company measure effectiveness?” The objective is to dig to a deeper level . . . to determine which use cases are appropriate, who they're appropriate for, at what level of business maturity, etc. This year's online HubSpot Inbound conference is scheduled for October 12-14. Ken is intrigued by some of the newer technologies: Lead-qualifying software that captures online prospects' form data, qualifies leads programmatically in real time, filters their information to match rep data, and immediately either notifies the appropriate sales rep or establishes a live video chat. Conversion.AI software that generates scripts based on user inputs and expectations “learned” over time. Alex Boyd (RevenueZen founder and CEO) and Kenneth David Warren Marshall II (a.k.a. Ken Magma Marshall), can be reached on LinkedIn or on the agency's website at: revenuezen.com. ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and it is that time of year once again. It is almost time for the Inbound Conference. Much like last year, it will be virtual, but what that means is this is the time of the year where this podcast gets a little bit more salesy, but in a good way. It's just a different flavor of the agency services world that we like to cover. I am joined today by Ken Magma Marshall, CGO and Managing Partner at RevenueZen based in Portland, Oregon, though he himself has newly moved to Brooklyn. Welcome to the podcast, Ken. KEN: Thanks for having me, Rob. Really excited to dive on it. ROB: Excellent to have you here. Why don't you start off by telling us about RevenueZen and the agency's superpowers, what you're known for, where you succeed well for clients? KEN: There's the 10,000-foot view elevator pitch, which is that we aim to help high-growth-oriented B2B, SaaS, and professional service brands to generate more demand and leads through SEO, content, and LinkedIn. Or in layman's terms, we help our clients get real leads that actually convert. Really, the company itself is the story of RevenueZen before Ken and then my agency. I actually started an agency four and a half years ago, and about six months ago, RevenueZen acquired it. So now, whereas they were focused on lead gen, appointment setting, LinkedIn only, I brought the inbound methodology with me. So now we've got a hybrid and best of both worlds. ROB: Is that maybe also where some of the SEO flavor came in? I would say it's a little bit atypical for HubSpot agencies in the whole ecosystem, lead gen agencies, to know SEO as well as you're articulating. KEN: That's exactly right, and that's why we utilize the terms “demand gen” and “lead gen” very intentionally, because with SEO agencies you get the whole “These are our deliverables and our clicks and our keyword increases.” We're former salespeople. Three of our executives out of four were cold calling back in the day, so we understand how to map that search intent into pipeline, how things are going to go from each perspective that actually leads to those people converting, not just being users and clicks and searches. So full funnel knowledge helps inform the strategy. ROB: I'm going to pull on a thread that you mentioned in there. You mentioned being acquired. What does it look like to be acquired, and how does that happen? KEN: That's a fun conversation. If I were a startup in Palo Alto and I was a kid in college, that might look like somebody buying me for a certain undisclosed amount of money. But for me, it was more about joining a team that was a little bit established. My run rate at my old company I think was around 600,000 ARR. When RevenueZen acquired me, it was basically acqui-hire situation – they get all of my assets, my knowledge, me on the executive team, and all of my book of business. But the strength of it and really the allure for me, or I wouldn't have done it, is that they understood these lead gen methodologies and channels and had these systems that we didn't that strongly complement the inbound engine that I taught myself and learned how to build over the years. It was really that complementary partnership with a slightly mature agency where I could really hone in those growth focuses and new innovation initiatives. Because I'm a mad scientist at the end of the day, Rob. That's what I love to do. [laughs] ROB: Not to project too much of this onto you in particular, but in general, there's a certain amount of confidence and ego that flows into starting a business, starting an agency, and then layer on top of that the degree of confidence and resilience required coming from a sales background. How do you navigate that into – there is a mutual admission of need and benefit. You have to get past the outer defenses to even have the conversation of “Hey, maybe we should get together,” and number two, “How does that look so we can all feel like we have the right seat at the table when we're together?” KEN: Absolutely. My ego, to use an analogy, went into the boxing ring and did not come out on top for the first few fights. I had to sit down with my wife, my friends, family members, and we really chewed on it. I even chewed on it with the CEO of the company. Now I'm the CGO. We lived in the same apartment building. What it came down to was really just that I understood that he has a finance/sales – he worked at a revenue-based software company, very high growth. He has a ground level understanding of what it takes to scale, whereas, like I mentioned, my strength is in customer success and product development. I'm really gangster when it comes to those two things. So I had to look at it and say, he knew that if he could just bolt on these assets that have taken me six years to create, and I knew that with his ability to understand scale and the other two executives taking on those things that I don't do well – I hate this word because it's overused, but we could create some real synergy and grow a lot more quickly. It just came down to that: being able to do what I love and a little bit more stability. ROB: Especially early on, we all want a little bit more stability. Maybe not too much, but definitely more than that early entrepreneurial journey. KEN: Exactly. ROB: Paint a picture, Ken, of what a typical customer looks like, a typical client for RevenueZen. Is it B2B? What's the mix and focus there, and maybe the size as well? KEN: At this point it's all B2B except for three companies. Upwork is one of our clients; Nalgene is one of our clients. But they're the weird B2C outlier as far as consumer goods go, Upwork being this monster that it is. But most of them, 60-70% are B2B SaaS companies. These are technology companies. They have Series A, usually, investment. They've got a marketing team, but the marketing team are not problem- or solution-aware with our methodologies. They just know that they need to turn those levers because their investors or the CEO or whoever is talking to the, VP of Demand Gen or Marketing, and they just want results. They have money to do it, but they typically don't have the knowledge of what kind of solution they need or the right provider. So we can attach ourselves on as the Chief of Digital or an ad hoc CMO and guide them not only in knowledge-gathering, but lay the strategy out and then literally bolt on our team to execute it for them. Really, it's those kind of companies who are more mid-market. They're already established professional service companies, but as far as the SaaS companies, they have a go-to-market somewhat defined; they understand product-market fit. They might not be profitable, but they have good revenues. They really just need somebody to come in, tell them what to do, and have the army to do it for them. ROB: Do they typically have an understanding – you said product-market fit, but they might have a general understanding of customer lifetime value so they can measure you that way? KEN: Yes. Actually, when I'm qualifying them, and same with our CEO, we actually still do all of the sales. At my old company I sold every deal, and now it's just us two closing every deal. But when we ask them about CLV or even their average lead values if they have lead storing and they understand the value of a lead, that's actually done in the discovery process to qualify them as well. Because if they don't understand those values, they'll have unrealistic expectations when we start getting those conversions as to how much they're worth or if it's even going to return on their spend with us. Yeah, that's pretty imperative. ROB: I would imagine once you have provided a lead, that's an MQL (marketing qualified lead). Then there's that sales qualifying that happens after that. Is that typically on the client side? Is there an element of going further down the funnel that you get involved in? Where does that boundary start to happen? KEN: Yeah, we do lean more heavily on inbound these days. I would say it's about a 70/30 split as well. But the furthest we'll get is when we are doing let's say an inbound/outbound hybrid LinkedIn content marketing and outbound service – happy for you to go on the website and check out if you guys want to – the furthest we'll get is setting those appointments with them and then letting them take over. It's part MQL or SQL depending on how they define it, but it's appointment setting as far as how far we go. ROB: Which still can be, with the proper – it sounds like potentially a real blessing for a sales rep. You're hanging out and stuff shows up on your calendar, and it's people who seem interested in buying your software. That's a good way to wake up in the morning.  KEN: Right. That's why we love inbound. Not that outbound doesn't have its place, and in fact, for a lot of startups it does in the beginning. There's urgency. But that's why we love it, because these people are coming to you saying, “You've built my trust, you've educated me, I've compared solutions and then learned about your solution, all on your site. All you need to do is not give me a reason to put my credit card down.” ROB: Very interesting. You mentioned a little bit about the merger, but if we go a little bit further back, what led you to start your own business in the first place? And you got it pretty far along. That level of bookings is more than just typically one person in their closet. What led you to get started on the journey? KEN: Not that amazing, but I'm pretty proud of it. For me, I think I'm the cliché entrepreneur without any background in it. Nobody in my family, none of my friends. But I was that kid with the lawnmower, I had lemonade stands. I used to take my neighbors' trash and put it on my parents' lawn and sell it at a yard sale. I always knew I was interested in making money and seeing what I could do, but I didn't really have the background, or I would say some of the mentorship, to know that's what it was called and how to start a company. I went to school thinking that I would be a salesperson. I was personable, I understood psychology to a certain degree. Right around my junior year, I believe, I asked a counselor, “What should I be doing? I don't really like this sales thing” when I saw my first sales job that I could get. She's like, “You seem like one of those kids who should go check out that digital marketing thing.” That really was the spark, when I started to understand if I can reverse-engineer this thing called an algorithm, nobody knows what that is. I asked a bunch of people, I asked business owners – that's actually how I got my first client – and they had no clue. So that was my first lightbulb moment: I could start a business doing this. However, I've always been geared towards being an entrepreneur, and I always knew I would. That's why I quit my last agency after only being there for about two years total between both of them. ROB: As you got into the starting and progressing the business journey, were there any key inflection points? Obviously, the merger itself is a key point of validation. But before that day, there had to have been some key inflection points in the business, some points where it really seemed to be materially different than just rubbing two sticks together, making some phone calls and getting some clients. What were some of those moments in the growth of the business that were memorable? KEN: Obviously, I still have the first dollar I ever made. Still have that first check. That's the big one. That's the pure validation of “Somebody's willing to pay me money for this thing.” But apart from that, I think the first milestone that sticks out was going from freelancer to having a repeatable process that worked and involving another human being. That was the first big thing for me. I was on Upwork – like I said, they're now our client, so it went full circle. But I remember doing these projects, and I'm like, instead of people telling me what they want me to do, like keyword research or a gap analysis, I'll just say “In the first 90 days, we're going to do these two things that will lead to X outcome based on the research and analytics from my previous clients.” So I had this system that was starting to form. I could give it to another person with my SOPs and then they could do it, so it's now an actual business. That was the first one that was really exciting. The second one, I would say, is when I evolved from doing the work. I had downloaded this repeatable system to a point where I didn't have to actually implement the changes or the recommendations myself for us to still get those desirable outcomes. That required a coach, who was not cheap [laughs], and a lot of hours and mistakes. But we finally got it dialed. Other than the merger, that was one of the most exciting. And then your first six-figure year is always exciting too, as far as validation. ROB: I think people often underestimate the value of what they can do in terms of documenting a process, having people execute on it. The good part is you mostly don't have to think about it. I think the risk after that, however, is that that process gets stale. How do you go about ensuring that a process you've understood and documented can then be also maintained as the landscape changes over 3, 6, 12 months, etc.?  KEN: I think I'm going to answer that in two parts. When I was still general managing the other company, I am so obsessed with strategy; I'm a technician, I'm a strategist by trade. I'm not a banker, I'm not a programmer. So it was always easy for me to have that layer of QA and innovation just because I was reading this stuff every day. I remember – shout out to Rand – after one Moz Local, going to a wine bar and having a bottle of wine and getting to chop it up. But I always found that very easy because I loved that stuff and was interested in it. But now that I'm with this bigger organization and there's four executives, our COO might say, “Here's how we can squeeze out this operational efficiency.” The CEO is like, “Here's how we hedge against risk.” I'm sitting here – and I think that's why it's such a blessing to be in my position – as the Chief Growth Officer, all I think about all day long is how we can ink out that efficiency for the team, make our client have less friction but also stay on top of effectiveness and industry trends. So for me, the answer is simple. It's my job, and that hasn't changed at three companies. [laughs] ROB: That's a critical job, for sure. I would be remiss not to mention the reason this is an Inbound episode is because you are, in fact, moderating a session for Inbound. The session you're moderating is “Long Live Forms, All Hail Chatbots: The Epic Debate of Booking Demos.” Inbound is in October this year. I think it's usually Labor Day week, if I'm not mistaken, but things change in a pandemic. Tell us about that session, what you think you're going to talk about, and especially how you're thinking about moderating that session. KEN: I'll talk about the moderation aspect, because it speaks to who I am as a person and my temperament. Whenever folks get into very sensational language or subjective language, I like to systematically remove that and dive into the concrete, the nuance of what they're talking about and why it's effective. For instance, if somebody says “All hail chatbots, chatbots are the future,” I'm not going to give them a response. My first instinct is to give them a question of, for whom are chatbots correct? And what other marketing stack do they use? And how are they going to measure their effectiveness? That's how I'm planning on moderating things, by having these specific questions to get to the bottom of what use cases are each appropriate, who they're appropriate for, at what level of business maturity, etc. I want to make both people frustrated to get the most out of them. [laughs] I haven't talked to them about that, but now they've heard. That's my style of moderation. That's how I talk and that's how I do business. As far as forms versus chatbots, I go back to when I talk to clients who might come in for inbound, and we convince them they need to do an outbound hybrid on LinkedIn. Or they come in for only appointment setting and they want 10 SDRs tomorrow. I'm like, “You're so niche, and there's this clear keyword opportunity that you can own these terms and have a better ROI. Why are you hung up on that?” There's no right or wrong answer. I've actually used chatbots effectively, and I think forms and demos are perfectly appropriate, especially for a self-serve model. So chatbots have their place, forms have their place, but let's dive into the nuances of it to parse that out. That's my philosophy. ROB: There's a certain attention to that at any sort of conference. I know HubSpot goes to pretty good lengths to make Inbound not all about them, but it is to an extent still about them, and they will hop up there and talk about what they're doing, and they'll certainly talk about it in terms of their agencies, their clients, and the customers they're looking to acquire. They are very visionary in terms of looking outwards, but inevitably, they're also going to unveil some new toys, some new shiny objects, and it will be easy for that to be the topic of the next year, the chatbots – you name it, really. KEN: Yep. ROB: What are you hearing from the ecosystem? Is there anything, whether it's on the agenda at Inbound or bubbling up through the product roadmap, and even outside of HubSpot in the broader lead gen space, what do you see coming that's important? Certainly that isn't a shiny object, because the shiny objects are in service of an objective, as you highlight. KEN: While we're on this topic of qualifying leads and once something's in the pipeline, helping sales ops with their objectives and making their lives easier and helping them be more effective – and shout out to Chili Piper. I'm actually very intrigued by these softwares that are, once somebody fills out a form, qualifying them programmatically, and then based on that response, immediately notifying the correct rep. I've even seen softwares that will allow somebody to live video chat right after they've gotten qualified on the form. Those kinds of technologies that remove friction – and again, chatbots can do this, forms can do this; you can integrate both with these other softwares that I'm describing like Chili Piper – those are the things that I'm interested in. Sales ops is, I think – you see these crazy valued companies. I think that's the future of this stuff. Taking the friction from that person who's a user that might be a lead, quickly and programmatically qualifying them, and then diverting them to the correct part of your sales process or person or folks on your sales team and reducing that friction. I think that's where a lot of opportunities get lost. It's the classic somebody taking 72 hours to follow up with a lead that's inbound. Why? And the same thing as sending the templated email. That's also played out. People don't want that. They need a hybrid of both. That's what I'm excited about and what I'm hearing and seeing. ROB: That's really, really interesting. You may know their product a lot, you may know it a little, but when I speak of shiny objects, one of those shiny objects out in the world is AI and machine learning, but it also seems like this area where Chili Piper is playing could perhaps be a legitimate application. Are they looking at the history of the rep, the history of accounts, the history of places where they've been effective? Is that part of the routing of how they're getting the right reps to the right leads? KEN: Yeah, the cool thing is that they plug directly into the CRM. HubSpot, let's say you have a rep assigned to certain accounts based on – native to HubSpot, within HubSpot, let's say if the person comes in and they typed in “SEO” for their focus, or it includes in the form XYZ terms, then they can automatically say, “This person is qualified as a mid-market opportunity who has X, Y, and Z criteria. Give them to the rep based on our different filters that we've created within the CRM.” And then pushing it to the email address of times that are open for that rep in an automated fashion. We're talking about logging into something, back and forth emails, a form for somebody that might not be qualified – all these components are broken down into very seamless automation. That is what I think the uniqueness of their platform is. Those kinds of automations. There's lots of platforms that do one-off of each of those thing, but it's the fact that it's seamless and it directly integrates with the CRM. That's where I think the benefit is. ROB: It's almost a way to see how the things that they've announced over time, the tools that get rolled out over time, how it's accretive and how it starts to come together. Something like scheduling has been in some CRMs for a while. I recently logged into a CRM of one of our clients, and I was in there because they emailed me. I looked it up and they have our number of employees and our revenue. I'm like, man, I don't think I've seen that in someone else's CRM before. How'd they get that? Because we're a vendor. They're not going to go in and enter that data on us. That was entered for them. KEN: Exactly. ROB: You combine that with – you have some rules engines, you have some AI. It all comes together in a pretty meaningful way. KEN: I was going to say, that's so spot on. It's that accumulative knowledge put together in a way that's seamless that's the benefit. As you mentioned, calendar scheduling tools, integrations with CRMs, those have been around for a while. Even certain routing has been around for a while around automation of sending certain things out based on criteria. But the strength is really in the nuances of those experiences, like when somebody fills out a form, prequalifying them based on their responses in real time. How many different form softwares haven't taken advantage of that very simple opportunity that saves the sales folks so much time? Me and Alex, we're still selling. Every 30-minute call that we do is a pretty big part of our day as executives. So if we can, without even thinking about it, take care of that, have them go through and get that messaging out that they need within a really short period of time, we dramatically increase the chance that that lead will close without lifting a finger. ROB: It's really interesting. It's really meaningful. I think something that's also underestimated – in a lot of our processes that we document out, we put a lot of emphasis on humanizing the language of templates. I don't know if anybody's doing some good work around that. That is the hardest thing to do, but I daresay it might be one of the most important things to do: to write templates that don't sound like templates. KEN: Yep. ROB: I need tools for that, I think. KEN: We have lots of SOPs that we've attempted to do, and thank goodness that every software, even Gmail, allows you to do templates that you can drag and drop and place. But I've also been toying around with Conversion.AI to write these scripts based on inputs that we give it, but over time it obviously learns what we're expecting. That has been a bit of a game-changer in terms of templates as far as email follow-ups and responses with prospects. Or even in our SEO work, making sure that we can do optimizations at scale without having to burn out the strategists or charge these companies an ungodly amount of money. I am very fascinated by continuing to tweak and make automation work for us, and machine learning but without losing that component of human that all of us still look for. ROB: Super sensible. Ken, when we zoom back a little bit, across your founding journey, across your merging in with RevenueZen, what are some lessons you have learned on that journey that you might go back in time and tell yourself, if you had a chance to do them differently? KEN: What a question. Something I chew on regularly. I think the first would be that – Alex, our current CEO, my good buddy, has hammered home a lot that you can create a line of best fit, of effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity. I was so focused on the effectiveness, being 99.9% effective, that I forgot about that aspect of “I'm only ever going to be able to help X amount of people, and I actually can't help them that well because I'm personally burnt out from doing too much work.” I think that's a trap that creatives and agencies often get into, which is that we're so heads down on the custom, we forget about the scale and making it efficient enough to come down at a price point that's affordable to a broader market. So that's thing #1. Again, took a coach and a lot of money and a few years to learn that. The second thing I would say is when I go on a discovery call and I set the tone with the prospect, I tell them, “This is to make sure we're a good fit.” Salespeople have been saying that for years. Used car salesmen say that. But we've taken that in as a value of the company. I am so quick to disqualify in our CRM, in the pre-opportunity stage. That just saves headache for the strategists, it increases the lifetime value of our clients with us, and it's just better for our reputation. Good fits, good case studies. So that's the second thing: disqualifying them. I would say the third thing is the benefit of really good partners who complement your skillsets. As a solopreneur in the beginning, I think I had to learn a lot of hard lessons myself and chew on a lot of hard things without the aid of somebody. Whether it's a mentor or a co-founder or a really good book, just being insatiable about learning and getting help from others, external help, is invaluable. You literally cannot calculate the time and headache that it'll save you. ROB: Disqualifying almost seems like a subset of an SOP. What I mean by that is if you have to look at every lead that comes in and you have to think about all of their constraints and you have to say, “This person's in a closet by themselves and they haven't built a product yet, and they have $1,000 a month that they want to spend on inbound; what can we do for them?”, you'll kind of lose your mind trying to fit yourself to that opportunity, versus understanding when to say no, and maybe even sometimes “Here's someone else that would be a good fit for you to work with” and focusing on the things you do know how to solve. It keeps you from overthinking and getting paralyzed by choice, really. KEN: Ain't that the truth. Preach. Part of that, not only will we say this business/person is not a good fit, but what could we give them or how could we use the network effect to create value and have them go give a referral? So we do have templates of like “You're not a good fit, but here's some standard resources and here's a good one of our vendors as far as our partner program that we partner with.” That's exactly right. A good ICP defined, having that defined will save you a ton of headache and make your marketing better. ROB: As we round the corner, Ken, I can't help but highlight – you've mentioned a couple of times working with a coach and paying some real money for it. I know what that's like. How did you go about finding a coach that worked well for you, and to an extent justifying the cost? KEN: I'll start with justifying the cost. For me, I audit my time, and I audited my time in terms of how much dollars it was likely to bring in based on the activities. I started to hit this ceiling. Like, “There are all these operational inefficiencies that are holding me back, and I don't actually know how to solve them. The problem of why this is a bad thing, I have no clue. I guess I could learn about this or go get an MBA, but I'd rather just expedite that by paying somebody.” The ROI for me I knew would come because I knew I had a good system. I trusted in my “product” back then. But as far as knowing who was the right person, I always tell people to look for somebody who's done it multiple times but isn't so far ahead of you that they can no longer relate. I wouldn't want Jeff Bezos as a coach, even though he's clearly taken over the world. So this guy was a former founder three times over, but currently just wanted to give back. I mean, he charged money, but really it wasn't that much compared to the market and his expertise. I did a little bit of research. I got a beer with him. Those two components – he's done it before, I can sit down and have a conversation, and he's not too far ahead of me in my industry in the service business to be checked out and just in it for the money. I think if you look at it from that perspective, it's often worth it. That's what I would say. ROB: That's a great point also. Price is significant, but it's not always an indicator of quality. When I was interviewing coaches, I talked to – might be a wonderful guy, but he was a coach in a box. He literally had a box with a coaching methodology, and I think he was doing a career change. He was actually more expensive than the guy I ended up working with, who coaches execs of SalesLoft kind of legitimacy. SalesLoft probably pays him a lot more in total. But the credibility did not always correlate with price, is my point there. KEN: Hundred percent. ROB: Ken, when people want to catch up with you, connect with you and with RevenueZen, other than online for Inbound in October, where should they go to find you? KEN: You can check out either my or Alex's LinkedIn. Alex Boyd and Kenneth David Warren Marshall II, a.k.a. Ken Magma Marshall, on LinkedIn. RevenueZen, we're building a new website, so if you go to revenuezen.com any time in the next quarter, we'll have a lot of goodies in our Resource Center. That's always a great place to start. I'll say it now and I'll say it until the day we sell this thing or we keep doing it off into the future: I am always geeked to jump on a call with somebody who isn't our ICP to have a strategy conversation. It's not a sales pitch. It's me in real time, fixing stuff on your site and your pipeline and your methodology. I could do this just with my brain because I've been doing it for a while. So it's always good to get in touch, regardless of if you think you have the money or need SEO. I'll give you something to walk away with every time. ROB: That sounds like a YouTube channel. You let Ken give you help for free and you just agree it's going to be on YouTube in real time. KEN: I used to do that. That's how I used to prospect. That's how I got my first few clients. I would do a real-time, off the top of the dome analysis of their site and fix three to four things. I'd give it to the developers, not even the marketing contact, and the developers would be like, “You increased our page speed by like 60%. How did you do that? Aren't you an SEO provider?” I'm like, “Exactly.” [laughs] ROB: Excellent. Thank you, Ken. Hopefully we can meet up in the skin at Inbound some year when it's back in person. I wish you and the RevenueZen team all the best. Thank you for coming on and sharing. KEN: I would love that, Rob, and you're welcome to come to Brooklyn any time for a beer. Cheers. ROB: Brooklyn's awesome. Cheers. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Today's Twitter Spaces Interview is with Nick Tennant of Precision Extraction runs of one of the largest cannabis extraction consulting firms and can connect you with a marijuana expert, cannabis expert, medical marijuana expert, or manufacturing contact if you're a MMJ business looking to grow.https://precisionextraction.com/Rob: Nick has a huge operation going in terms of its influence in helping companies that are trying to get into the extraction space so they can create marijuana products with a consistent amount of dosing and is really doing a lot in the space for marijuana, making it more easy for companies that want to jump in to do so with a certain level of expertise and experience. Nick: Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Rob: I think one of the most interesting areas that people outside of blockchain had been requesting an interview on or some sort of a primer on has been marijuana. I was telling you before the show that there's a lot of overlap, like VC funds that are in blockchain are also heavily. A lot of times. Medical marijuana here in Southern California, like getting either distribution or processing or manufacturing. How did you come into first blockchain and then marijuana in terms of as a career. Nick: Sure. So I've been in blockchain since 2016, and I guess you would kind of characterize me always as a technology enthusiast, right? Like any sort of disruptive technology I've always gravitate towards. And I just try to understand. As much as I can about why it's disruptive, why the technology is going to change the future state of the world and kind of run through scenarios in my head about, if this, then this and how will this progress and proceed. And what's the, the likely paths and the likely outcomes. And I think when you run through. That thought process, it leads you to understand the future state of the world. And blockchain was one of those things that obviously, with Bitcoin back then with the financial system set up the way that it is, and we can go into all that long-winded conversation of course, there, but just really saw the future state of the world being integrated with blockchain and being integrated with decentralized technologies and, and Independent currency, right? Like this parallel monetary system that's being built next to this old system that has many flaws of course, and live through the, the 2017 boom, watch the Ethereum go from seven bucks all the way up to, 1400 or thereabouts and all the way back down and made some good trades and bad trades. And the whole time I was still running.our company in the cannabis space. And so trying to. Follow both paths. We went, obviously went into the crypto winter there 2018, 2019, but I was still building everything in the cannabis space. And I'm not full time in crypto I'm full-time in cannabis, but still follow the technology, invest in and really have my ear to the ground and what's happening. Rob: You're so right. Like there's a lot of carryover in both spaces where you've seen a huge shift. I worked in private equity for about a year. And the guy that actually led my tech department went to go work for canopy and he kind of helped usher. Some huge investments into marijuana right. About the same time that a lot of blockchain projects were scaling. And I wonder from your point of view, it seems like during the early stages of blockchain, you had, people that were coming in as a hobbyist or the seriousness, wasn't quite there, sands a few projects here and there. And then the perception, at least in Southern California, that like with marijuana, That the seriousness wasn't quite there, like real scientists wouldn't get into it. And then as the legalization came and bigger and bigger scientists and influencers and celebrities got in like the series. Started to make a real shift. Did you see that shift in your own life, like interacting with other kinds of marijuana companies and scaling things? Yeah, Nick: definitely. I mean, I think that there's a parallel path here because what you have to understand is that they both came from a taboo sort of social interpretation, right? Like blockchain or Bitcoin being used on silk road, cannabis being an illicit drug. Right. They both have. The social interpretations of being taboo or negative or, or whatever it was. And so naturally the paths were somewhat similar, at least from like a socioeconomic economic perspective and the way that people interpreted them. So really, in the early days of cannabis, You were worried how far you could stick your arm out because it might get chopped off. And I think that a lot of the same held true in the early days of blockchain, right? I mean like the Mt. Gox hack and all these crazy things that happen. But as the infrastructure started developing. #cannabis #MMJ #marijuana

Julie Koepsell came into Horizontal Digital as President of the North America division in December 2020 at a time when, due to Covid, the company was “fully remote.” Horizontal Digital is a 17-year-old global, “experience forward” consultancy that puts people at the center if its efforts by creating deeper, end-to-end-connected, seamless, relevant, and personal customer relationships that boost client ROI. Because Horizontal is a boutique consultancy, clients get a “very high touch experience.” Julie says it is important for leaders to “listen.” One of the first things she did after joining the company was to connect one-on-one with all 50 division employees. Due to continued growth, the division has hired an additional 150 employees over the first part of this year. Globally, the consultancy has 500 employees. Many of Horizontal Digital's B2B clients sell through multiple distribution channels and dealer networks. The desired push-pull challenge is complex – companies want their dealers to recommend their products . . . but they also want customers to ask for the company's products. Horizontal Digital strives to: Create promotional programs that build meaningful relationships with end customers so those customers will go to dealers and ask for a company's products.  Build a martech stack so the customer journey experience is cohesive from sales and marketing through digital POS, web and experience portals, and customer service. The goal is to understand what customers want, anticipate their needs, and grow relationships “at a life level.” Provide client education and get client employees to understand the need for internal changes related to demand generation, customer experience, or “internal digital transformation” initiatives . . . and help them understand how those changes will be implemented. She says, if a company's message is properly set up across all channels, companies can simultaneously control expenses and grow revenue . . . customer lifetime value is increased, customers will advocate for the company, and there will be an increased opportunity to cross-sell and upsell. Julie is passionate about providing women with the opportunity to advance, especially in technology. She believes it is important, as the Horizontal Digital grows, to build the infrastructure and internal scaling to support that growth, to “create an amazing employee experience,” and to make sure clients' experiences with Horizontal Digital surpass their expectations. Julie can be found on her consultancy's website at: https://www.horizontaldigital.com/ . Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Julie Koepsell, President – North America at Horizontal Digital based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Welcome to the podcast, Julie. JULIE: Thank you, Rob. I'm so happy to be here. ROB: It's awesome to have you here. Why don't you tell us about Horizontal Digital and the journey the firm is on, where you specialize, and what we should know about it? JULIE: I'd love to. Horizontal Digital is an experience-forward consultancy. We operate as a boutique consultancy, which really means that our clients get a very high touch experience from us. And we do it with global teams so we can actually deliver at scale, which is pretty unique. When I say that we're experience-forward, what that means is that we put people at the center of everything that we do. More specifically for our clients, we help them build deeper relationships with their customers so they get better ROI, and we do that by creating end-to-end connected experiences that are seamless, relevant, and personal. If you consider that customer journey, we are able to deliver a cohesive experience all the way from sales and marketing through digital POS, web and experience portals, and then customer experience, and we do that so we can better understand what they want, anticipate their needs, and grow the relationship. ROB: Got it. A lot of the services you're talking about are things that a lot of people are in the business of, but it seems like what might elevate that to the level of a consultancy is the holistic, the big picture, the customer journey not in the sense – some people think of customer journey like “I'm going to send you different emails depending on where you are in the purchase process.” But it sounds like you're talking about more at a life level. JULIE: That's absolutely right. Through the entire experience that any brand has with its customer. ROB: If we zoom in to that just a little bit, is there an example of a client, some touchpoints, what my experience might be in a client that Horizontal has been involved in? JULIE: A lot of things actually come to mind. One of the things is in our conversations – we had a conversation yesterday with a prospective client who is thinking about how they can digitally transform their business. They're selling through multiple channels; they've got distribution channels. They want to make sure that they are building relationships with their end customer so the customers are going to the dealer and asking for them. Through that entire process, they're going through an internal digital transformation. So not only are they working to make sure that they are building a martech stack that enables them to deliver the experience that they want to for their customers, but they also have a lot of internal education that they need to do to make the case for it. There's a lot of misconceptions about what that actually means in terms of whether you're talking about demand gen or digital transformation or customer experience. So there's a lot to it in terms of not only how you're building your technology stack to deliver that experience, but also how you're going through the change management internally to make sure that everybody understands why you're doing that. ROB: I know you said prospective customer, so I don't want to pull too deep into the identity here, but you said dealer. Is this some sort of vehicle? Is there some kind of picture you can fill in to help us contextualize? JULIE: Yeah, a lot of B2B clients right now are selling through dealer networks. What they really want is the end consumer to go to the dealer and ask for them. They want that push-pull, where they want the dealer to be recommending them, but they also want the customer to be asking for them. And then ultimately, they want to make sure that the experience the customer has, if they come to their website or through any other experience, is seamless, anticipates their needs, is transparent, and is really meaningful. Because at the end of the day, customer experience is really what lends to long-term loyalty. One of the things that we talk about a lot around here is that two-thirds of customers actually switch brands not based on prices or features but because of the experience they have. That's really the holy grail of business today. ROB: Absolutely. It's interesting that why you were involved as a consultancy instead of an agency is – I'm going to say something that could be wrong, but if I'm thinking about a car, if I'm thinking about a snowmobile, if I'm thinking about a motorcycle, if I'm thinking about a dealer of just about anything, digital creates the opportunity for an ownership experience. It creates an opportunity for that relationship to start when I announce a new product. It's much more long-term than “Did I show up at a dealer? Did I ask for this thing or not?” My journey may start with my previous ownership experience with that product. How does that tie in to digital? JULIE: That's exactly right. And if you can set it up properly across all channels, you can actually control your expenses and grow your revenue at the same time because you're increasing that customer lifetime value. Not only that, but they're also advocating for you on your behalf, and it creates – I think where you were going is the opportunity to continue to cross-sell and upsell. ROB: Right, because you're talking about digital platforms, you're talking about customer experience, you're talking about social listening to an extent, probably, social customer support, all of those different lenses. Absolutely makes sense. Julie, I think something that is perhaps interesting and unique to your story is the difference – a lot of our guests are founding partners, founding CEOs, and you have a unique story of coming into a business that is successful with an opportunity also to continue making it more successful. What is the background of Horizontal and the origin story there, and then also your personal journey into the firm? JULIE: Horizontal Digital started about 17 years ago. Chris Staley and Sabin Ephrem started the company. I'm going to use a term that you used earlier in our conversation, Rob – it's been a rocket ship ever since they started. It's such an inspiring and amazing story about what they've built, and it's a true testament to the way that they have run their business, the vision that they've had for it, the way they invest in talent, and the way they understand technology and what our customers want. Because it's a relatively tight community, I've known about Horizontal Digital for years, and I actually ran into them at a conference at Sitecore Symposium about three years ago. They were sponsoring a panel about women in technology, and I was actually sitting on that panel, and I got the chance to meet them. I've always had great respect for what they do. They've built an amazing culture here. So I was excited but a little bit hesitant about a year ago when they first reached out to me. I was happy with what I was doing, but as I started talking to them, their ability to deliver globally at scale and yet have a company that feels like a tightly knit family was really inspiring to me. In addition to that, I'm really passionate about advancing women, and particularly women in technology, and they're very supportive of that. What we're really trying to do here is to create an amazing employee experience. We talk about being an experience-forward consultancy, and experience-forward is really about – I mentioned this a little bit ago – putting people at the center. In addition to how we do that with our clients and their customers, it's also got a couple other pillars for me. One of them is making sure that the client experience that our clients have with Horizontal surpasses their expectations. Certainly we expect to deliver on their business needs, but also we want that experience that they have with us to bring a lot of value and, frankly, to have them enjoy the experience along the way. Then the third pillar is – and I just mentioned this – employee experience. Talent is the most important asset that we have in this business. I believe that if you create an amazing employee experience, they will in turn create an amazing experience for our customers, and then that result is growth. So I joined this company with the aspiration of making Horizontal the best career experience that our employees have. ROB: It's a particular challenge. I've seen leadership elevated from within, but how did you approach that process of coming in with a requirement to lead, but also with – you said you were familiar with the firm, but there's a different familiarity that comes when you're actually on the inside every day. How did you balance the movement into leading with the need to acclimate? JULIE: That's such a great question. What I appreciate is all the conversations that Chris, Sabin, and I had in advance about how we were going to do this, approach this. They've been unbelievably supportive every step along the way. But the most important thing to do when you come into a company in a leadership role is to listen. I came in in December, so everything was fully remote, and when it's fully remote, I will tell you it takes so much longer to build that rapport and trust with people because you have to be so purposeful with every experience you have via whatever video technology you're using rather than just running into people by the proverbial water cooler. So I very purposefully did a series of – I think I did more than 50 one-on-one introductions with people. I joined each individual team meeting. We actually hired Gallup to do an employee engagement survey. We went on a listening tour to start to understand what the needs of the team were. One of the challenges is coming in and listening. You get excited and you want to make change, or you want to advance the ball in whatever way you decide to do that. Finding the balance of moving at a pace that feels like you're making progress, but not going too fast that you aren't being thoughtful or purposeful and you aren't damaging something in the organization – it's a tough line to walk, I'll tell you. I actually made a few decisions probably quicker than I should've, perhaps should've moved a little faster on some things. But it's kind of one of the things that I love about it: it's a learning experience every step of the way. ROB: What I hear in there is a recognition that sometimes there are not shortcuts. There's no shortcut – having 50 one-on-one conversations, by some people's reckoning, that doesn't scale well. That doesn't look like an org chart. That looks like 50 one-on-one conversations. Are there any other aspects of getting in and rolling up your sleeves and leading that maybe didn't scale well, but yet were key to getting into the role? JULIE: That certainly was the big one. One of the other things that I am doing around here is weekly having a session with about five or six people from different teams within the organization, and I purposely do it with five or six people because I want it to be small enough that people feel like they can speak up and yet have enough people that I feel like I'm making some progress and getting a group together. So we get together once a week, and I call it “bring your favorite beverage.” We get together and we introduce ourselves and we talk about non work-y stuff. And sometimes it turns into work stuff. But what's been really interesting is since the pandemic started, we've hired – gosh, it's got to be closer to 150 people by now. So not just do I not know a lot of people, but a lot of people don't know each other. One of the things I know – and this isn't specific to Horizontal Digital, but in general – people really miss that sense of community, and people miss the culture. I don't think that means they want to come into the office every day necessarily, but they want very thoughtful and meaningful and purposeful moments of connection to build and feel the company culture. So we try to create opportunities to do that. And selfishly, I want to create opportunities where I can get to know people on a personal level because I believe that my job is not to tell people how to do their job, because they're all quite capable. We hire amazing people. But my job is to support and enable them to do their job, and I can't do that if people don't know me and feel like they can trust me and are willing to come talk to me. ROB: It seems to me that with you coming into the firm and that degree of growth, it almost seems like the company as a whole discovered another capability, another core function, another gear. What do you think is driving that engine so remarkably? JULIE: Well, there's a couple things. Companies understanding the importance of building an amazing customer experience and digital transformation is certainly a thing that's happening beyond our company. That's an industry-wide movement that's happening, so that is a big part of our growth. In addition to that, I have to give the owners a ton of credit because we are independently owned, and their ability to drive the vision for where we're going and see ahead of where we are today, and their willingness to invest in that, is something that I've actually not experienced in over 25 years in this business. I think that's another thing that sets us apart and truly makes us unique. And then again, back to the idea of community and relationships. I believe that relationships are at the center of everything, and when you do a great job, like I was talking about – if we create an amazing experience for our clients, then we're going to grow through that as well. There's just a lot of things that Horizontal Digital is doing right that also made it really exciting to join, and I joined and I'm just trying to continue to build on the momentum. One of the things that we talk about a lot around here is not only keeping up with the pace of growth – because there is an all-out war for talent right now, especially in the digital space – and creating an amazing employee experience, but also, we have to make sure that as we are growing, we're building the infrastructure and scale internally to enable that growth. ROB: One of those key things you mentioned very close to your heart and your passion – it seems like it's really hard to create a substitute for having women in very visible and top-level senior roles. That has to echo down through the organization. It has to be authentic. You can't do it in this demonstrative way. How have you thought about it? You've obviously had to structure for growth and refactor the organization probably a few times in the pandemic time. How have you thought about the thoughtful, intentional establishing of women in leadership as well over that time? How do you do it well? JULIE: That's a good question. I think the important thing is to meet people where they are. And I am all for advancing women, not at the expense of men or anybody else. I believe that all boats rise with the tide. But I think understanding where people are in their careers and their lives is super important, and then meeting people where they are. There is no delineation – in my life, anyway, even prior to the pandemic, there was no delineation really between work and life because when you're passionate about everything that you do, it all kind of melds together and you've got to try to figure out ways to make all of it work. I think the pandemic has exacerbated that, and I think it's been really hard. This is not me; this is clearly very much out there, but it's particularly difficult for women, and moms in particular, which I am as well. So understanding that and making room for conversations around that and – this sounds so simple – asking people how they're doing. Talking to people about their personal lives. Making sure that you are bringing empathy and listening in all those conversations. It seems like things that sound so easy, but they're also the things that are really easy to forget about in the pace of everyday stuff. And particularly, again, if you're not just seeing people in the hall in passing, you get on a call with somebody, you've got a half-hour, you've got a list of things you've got to cover off on, and you want to dig right into that list – when what you really need to be doing is making sure that you're taking time to check in with people on the human side and see how they're doing. Because everybody's at a different point in their journey. ROB: Right. That really is one of those superpower advantages. When people know that you care, when they know that on some level you know the names of the people that are important in life – I will fully confess that I have places where I write this stuff down. There's a lot of things I don't write down, but I write down people's names and what's important to them because I don't want to leave – I still care. I care enough to write it down. I care enough to ask about it. JULIE: Yep. ROB: It makes a difference in where people work and where they stay working. JULIE: I agree with that. I think it was Maya Angelou that said people will forget what you said, but they'll remember how you made them feel. ROB: Yes. JULIE: I think the fact that you make an effort to remember somebody's name and something personal about them makes people feel seen. And that stuff is really important and can't be underestimated. ROB: As you mentioned, that war for talent is real. It's really excellent, I think, that in Minneapolis, you've been able to sustain and grow as an independent business. I'm sure the owners – how many people do you have on board now? I think LinkedIn said over 200? JULIE: Yeah, globally it's nearly 500. ROB: You don't get to that level without a few people coming in and offering to write you a nice check. So there is some intentionality in staying that way, and that also feels very authentically Minneapolis. A lot of the Midwest, I think, has lost some of their anchor tenets. It's a city that seems to have some businesses that they're proud of, and it seems like you get to be a part of that. JULIE: Yeah, and I've done the other side of it, too. I have done the being part of a holding company. At this point in my career, when I made a decision to come here, it was very purposeful because the owners not only fully own the business, but they're very involved in the business, and they care very deeply about it. Like I was saying, they're willing to invest in the future and have vision for where we're going to keep going. That's what drives the inspiration, I think, for a lot of the team in terms of the longevity of careers here. ROB: Wonderful. Julie, this is not even your first time, as you mentioned, running a shop. What are some things you have learned along the journey that you would maybe go back and tell yourself to do a little bit differently if you could reset? JULIE: I think about that question a lot because I have twin girls, and it's really important to me that they have opportunities that I didn't necessarily have. One of the things that I am already talking to them about that I wish I had done more of is just speaking up. Over the course of time I have learned how to ask for things when I need them, and I wish I had started doing that sooner – whether that's asking for the next role or asking for mentorship, asking for help – not easy to do, really important – admitting if you might feel like you're in over your head, and having the courage to call out bad behavior when you see it, making sure that you're listening to your instincts. All of those things, I feel like I wish I would've learned a little bit sooner, and I would encourage people to absolutely do. I'm constantly saying to everybody here, every time I get a chance to address the company, I'm always asking them to please reach out to me. I don't care what channel it is, whether it's Slack or you want to text me or email me or call me, whatever it is. But I really want to hear from people because the only way that we're actually going to make this a truly amazing employee experience is if we understand what's going on in the minds of our employees. So I think it's really important to speak up. ROB: I think that's super helpful. I think that's great for your girls. I think at least a lot of us want to work in a workplace where that is the default behavior. There may be some generational baggage there; I don't think my grandparents wanted that kind of job. But I think about my team, and if someone's going to say when they're in over their head, if they're going to ask for help, if they're going to ask for where they want to go next and help me participate in their future, it seems like that's what a lot of us want. And we want more people to want those things so they can get out of the jobs where they can't have those things. JULIE: Rob, you may be a lot younger than I am, I don't know, but I will tell you I was raised “Don't question authority. You don't ask questions. You do as you're told.” So it took me a long time to try to find a balance with that. I think as a society, that is changing, but I think it's a really important thing to continue to remind people. ROB: Yeah, and it's our opportunity to build workplaces that differentiate by being that kind of place. It's a tremendous opportunity there. JULIE: Absolutely. ROB: Julie, as you're looking forward for the future not only of Horizontal Digital, but also in overall experience for brands and their customers together, what are you excited about, looking into the crystal ball? JULIE: Broadly, I'm just excited about where technology continues to take us and the opportunity to really, truly create amazing experiences. Not only am I trying to help our clients create amazing customer experiences, but I want to experience that with all of the brands I engage with as well. So I get really excited about the pace technology is moving and how that's becoming better and better. As it relates to Horizontal specifically, I'm not even a year in yet, so I'm really excited about the momentum that we continue to have, and again, the way that our founders are willing to invest. But I also hope that in many ways, this year is a building year for me. We set the benchmark on employee experience. We're hiring some new key talent. We're continuing to evolve our capabilities. So my hope is that we can continue to take this to the next level in terms of building a vision that the team gets really excited about, continuing to foster and grow the talent, and then building the infrastructure to scale and grow. Beyond even what we're doing for our clients, we also want to make sure that we're doing purpose-driven work that people are getting really excited about as well, so we have an organization called Horizontal Cares where we give back to our communities. I'm excited about all the opportunities that we have to build community with our employees, with our clients, and with the broader community within which we work. ROB: Horizontal Cares sounds like one of those things that I think any of us would probably wish we had started sooner within a firm. How do you think about allocating resources to that? Is there a rule, is there a budget? And where would you think about starting if you were even quite small? JULIE: Oh, that's such a good question. This started prior to me being here, but you get a few people together who want to change the world and anything can happen. To this point, it's pretty scrappy and entrepreneurial. We do internal fundraising efforts and look to our employees to help us figure out where the need is in our communities. I will tell you we are looking for how we can take this to the next level in terms of scale, so that is very much on the horizon for us and one of the things that I'm excited to work on. ROB: One thing I think probably that comes up repeatedly – it happens in every growing firm, and probably especially for you and Horizontal – is thinking about what types of either new capabilities you're going to say no to versus what you're going to say yes to, and what opportunities you might have taken on three years ago that don't fit with the firm anymore. How do you think about the things you say yes to and the things you say no to? JULIE: Boy, that's a good question, and it's an ongoing conversation that we have at the executive level. ROB: Has to be. JULIE: Of course, you want to make sure that you are continuing to be relevant to your clients and to your future clients, and at the same time, we also have to be really purposeful and thoughtful about not biting off more than we can chew at any given moment. When we are making sure that we are hiring as quickly as we can to keep up with the demand that we have – everything's a balancing act, Rob. It's a balancing act with where we are adding to our capabilities to make sure that we can not only deliver on the work that we have, but then build the future. So really, it's an ongoing conversation, but again, that's one of the things that I get really excited about because the owners here are so well-entrenched in that and willing to place bets where they think it makes sense to place bets. ROB: It sounds like a wonderful journey to be on, an excellent season to be there, in spite of everything everybody's been facing over the past little while. We still have some rough waters around us, but it sounds like you've been able to help Horizontal to be part of the bright spot in your life, and for some other people as well. Thank you for hopping on and sharing that journey. I do appreciate it. JULIE: Thank you for having me on. It was really fun talking to you. ROB: Sounds good, Julie. Be well. JULIE: Thanks. ROB: Bye. JULIE: Bye. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Bill Durrant is President at Exverus Media, a paid-media agency (TV ads, print advertising, sponsorships, and other types of media) that serves culture-creating, growth-stage brands. The agency's focus is not so much on big-budget, long-term brand building as it is on consulting with clients and recommending “how best to invest” to produce significant, trackable and measurable short- to medium-term results. Bill says, “all media is performance media” and that it can be very challenging to quickly determine the effectiveness of branding efforts and traditional marketing media. To address this, his agency tries to establish a “performance mindset” and “a structure to capture things that aren't directly trackable.” Bill finds it exciting that today's solutions for modeling are “significantly less expensive” than those that were available in the past. He says modeling has been “democratized” – that you can build and launch a model in weeks, update it continuously with sales and investment data, and track performance across a variety of marketing channels. Work that used to be done over a period of months by costly data scientists and analysts can be done now by utilizing a combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The agency's name, Exverus, is Latin for “from the truth.” In this interview, Bill explains how the name reflects the agency's values and the importance of transparency in how the agency conducts business, manages its clients' finances, and builds, over time, trust-based and truth-based client relationships. In a typical engagement, the agency consults with growing-brand clients and follows a step-by-step process that involves: understanding at a deep level client needs and stakeholder goals curating campaigns rooted in science and best practices  incorporating customized measurement solutions that prove campaign impact even when immediate, vendor-driven measurements aren't immediately available. The agency's “roots” are in a consumer-facing infrastructure. Over the past year, B2B clients have increased as brands “tired of being bland” seek to get more involved in being “adjacent to culture, creating culture, or participating in culture” in order to increase their visibility and cultural involvement. Bill can be reached on his agency's website at: www.exverus.com or on Linkedin at Bill Durrant (with two “R's.”) To make it easier to find him, add “Exverus.” Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Bill Durrant, President at Exverus Media based in Los Angeles, California. Welcome to the podcast, Bill. BILL: Hey, how are you? Thanks for having me. ROB: I'm excellent, and it's good to have you here. Why don't you start off, Bill, by telling us about Exverus and what the firm's superpowers are? BILL: Yeah, we do like to think of ourselves as superheroes every now and again. The first question we always get is “What does Exverus mean?”, so I'll start there. Exverus means “from the truth” in Latin. I think that as a paid media agency, which is our area of expertise, that can extend to things as rational as transparency in how we do our business and how we manage our finances for our clients to really the crux and the core of how the agency has been able to thrive over the past several years, which is trust-based and truth-based relationships with clients, building that over time. As we think about the mission for the agency and what the agency stands for, it's right there in the name. As I mentioned, we are a paid media agency. We like to think of ourselves as the paid media agency for culture-creating, growth-stage brands. I guess that's really where our superpower comes in. Our superpower is growing culture-creating brands that don't necessarily have the eight and nine figure budgets to invest in paid media and need their dollars to work harder. That's not only what we've found we're best at, but it's also what we've found gives us the most personal fulfillment as an agency team and as a leadership team within the agency. So it's something that's really easy to stick to, and that's something that we're very proud of as well. ROB: Does that pull a little bit more then towards consumer? Or do you also see some B2B brands you would also dub as culture-creating in their own way? BILL: It's funny; we've been having more interesting conversations with B2B brands probably over the last year. So it does extend to that space, even if it certainly has its heart, and certainly our roots, in more of a consumer-facing type of communications infrastructure. But yes, it's really interesting to see how B2B brands are now saying, “The idea of being adjacent to culture, creating culture, or participating in culture is to help stand out, to help gain association and equity from existing cultural platforms; why does that necessarily exclude us? Why does everything that we do need to be so bland, so to speak?” It's been really fun having those conversations. ROB: You mentioned a judiciousness required around the resources. Is it possible maybe for you to dive down into a client or two and share what it looks like to spend those budgets in a way that really has to deliver in a near- to midterm-way, where they can't just say “We're investing in brand, we're investing in brand”? I assume you're not posting Coke ads for Coca-Cola, right? BILL: We do some work with Coke. We can't say exactly where or how, but we do some work with some of their brands in Atlanta, your hometown. But yes, you're right; it's not about having that long-term branding campaign that's on a very long leash from organizations that are used to having the discipline and the budgets, frankly, to be able to support that and not stress about what their investment's immediate return was. That's a constant conversation that we're having with our brand partners, and helping them understand how best to invest. As we think about that, there are two axioms that we like to share with our clients. Number one is “all media is performance media.” Whether it's something that feels like a longer term-ish, traditional branding campaign, there is still a performance that's being associated with that. There is still a short-term lens that is almost always associated with that. So we want to make sure we're understanding that to satisfy and appease the stakeholders in their organization who are looking for those short-term or more “prove it to me” type results. As we think about what the science tells us, what an analysis of the world's most successful and least successful and average-success brands tells us about how to invest dollars, we know there is a huge economic argument to be made from having that kind of brand-led communications. It really comes down to how you measure it. If you have appropriate measurement in place that can measure things that aren't as immediate as “tell me what the return on ad spend was for my campaign on Amazon,” for instance, then you're going to be in solid shape. So what we try to do with our clients is really understand what their needs are, what their stakeholders are looking for, and then curate a campaign that is rooted somewhat in science and in what works best at growing brands, but does that in a way that also has measurement incorporated so they can prove the impact of what they're doing if it's something where that immediate, vendor-driven measurement isn't right away available. That's how we approach that, and it is absolutely central to our conversations with our brand partners. ROB: Does that focus on measurability in any way impact the selection of marketing channels? You mentioned selecting for the measurement and thinking about the measurement of the channel correctly. Is there anything that's completely out from a measurement perspective? BILL: That's kind of the knock on a lot of traditional media, that it's very challenging to measure them in a more immediate way. Really what you're looking at there is you're trying to put a structure in place that can capture things that aren't as directly trackable. That's where you're looking at, what kind of marketing mix model is my organization using? If my organization spends $10-20 million plus on media or on other important marketing channels, I may already have a marketing mix model in place. Let's figure out how we can align with that and ensure the decisions that we're making are able to be picked up by that measurement. But if you're not, then you might say “I need something that can help me understand what the impact was of a TV spot or radio spot or an outdoor ad” – all things that we know work but are really hard to pin down exactly how they worked for me exactly last month. That's where we're looking at more customized measurement solutions, and that's stuff we can provide directly to a client, to one of our brand partners. We're very proud of being able to do that, but it does require some – we'll call it hoop-jumping. I think that the prize is absolutely worth it, because you've now got a more balanced media mix that's proven to be more effective, 100%, in driving a return for the brand. So jumping through those initial hoops around measurement and setting that up is always worth the investment of time and energy and money. ROB: That's such a neat area to pull in on. I do think a lot of marketers, when they hear “media mix modeling,” it sounds like a high-class tool. Is there a size of brand or a size of budget where it's more viable? Or is it really just a limitation on thinking and it can start from just one or two channels? BILL: I grew up in my career to some degree working with Nestlé. Nestlé has a number of billion-dollar brands and significantly more nine-figure annual sales brands. Those brands very often had access to marketing mix models, and it did feel like a high-class tool, especially at that time. What we've actually been able to figure out over the last three years is that there are now solutions in place for modeling that are significantly less expensive. They're essentially utilizing what we hear about when we hear about AI and machine learning. They're essentially utilizing machine learning in a very efficient and democratized way where you don't need to have expensive data scientists and data analysts running analyses over the course of months. You can now actually build a model over the course of weeks and then have that model in market and be continuously updating it with sales figures and investment figures across different marketing channels, not just media. The fact that that's now democratized is a huge win for brands who aren't spending $10 million plus in their advertising and marketing efforts. We've actually had success modeling out the impact of a campaign that was in the low six figures for an extremely well-known national client, a Fortune 5 client that was really looking to drill down for one of their subsidiaries and understand what the impact was of their spend so that they could then scale it out further, but didn't know where to scale it. To be able to show this channel versus this channel versus the third channel, and this was the relative impact and this is how they all work together – which is another important element – in a way where they spent five figures to have that analysis and had it done in less than eight weeks is a very powerful example of how that works best. ROB: It certainly seems democratizing not only for the brand, but also on even the agency side, because this sort of tooling sounds like the thing that you had to be in a holding company agency at some point, or a very large brand or house of brands, to even consider having access to. BILL: Yeah, that's exactly right. I grew up in that space, working with Nestlé, working in a large holding company for whom I still have a lot of heart and love, and that was the case. It was also the case back then that you really needed to be in part of one of those infrastructures in order to get strong rates for your brand. That's shifted now as so much of our media inventory has become biddable. The standards around how we negotiate, how we manage media for clients, have changed. It really is a golden age for the small- to medium-sized brand or marketer, the growing marketer or brand, to get into the marketplace and to be a meaningful player from Day 1 and not feel like you're being outgunned by these massive organizations. It's very exciting for us. ROB: Indeed. Let's pull on that origin story thread for a moment here, Bill. How did you go from that Nestlé, that holding company agency world, and decide to jump off the cliff and start Exverus? BILL: This is always an interesting question to answer because there was no real one point where it all happened, which is usually the case for most agencies. It happened very organically. I had decided to shift from going full-time, working in one space, to freelancing and to working as a consultant, maybe 10 years ago. As I was doing that, within about three or four months of doing that, I got a phone call from one of my favorite people on Earth, a client of mine from Nestlé, who said, “Hey, I'm over at Clif Bar now. We're really shaping up how we look at media and advertising across our brands. Would you be interested in taking a stab at essentially being a one-person media agency for Clif Bar?” Of course, in my mind I was thinking “there's no possible way I could do that,” and my mouth was somehow saying, “Yes, I'll give it a shot.” [laughs] That began a really wonderful relationship with Clif Bar, and that relationship grew as their investments grew and their need to grow new brands and new product formats grew. Between them and Creative Artist Agency (CAA) and their extremely wonderful, award-winning marketing team, which is now known as Observatory, I think they hit a point where the amount of work was too much for one person plus a few helpers on the side to handle. We had a lot of built-in credibility, working with an organization that's probably over a billion dollars in sales annually in Clif Bar, and CAA, which is the world's best-known talent agency from a marketing standpoint. Impeccable reputation. So there was a lot of built-in credibility. There was new demand. We just made the decision – I still remember my Head of Operations saying, “We have to go for it,” driving to a soccer match one Wednesday night. And thus Exverus was born. We said “we're really going to give this a go” about five and a half years ago now. ROB: Wow. Congrats. A lot of companies don't even make it that far. You've got a team around you now, and it feels probably pretty real. I think the timing that a firm starts always confers some advantages and disadvantages. Your firm started around I guess 2012-2014, depending on where you are in that slow-motion window that you referred to; in performance marketing, that's an interesting time within the evolution of the different channels. How do you think that timing informed how you attacked the market? BILL: It did a few things. At a macroeconomic level, I think unfortunately it created a scarcity mindset because we had just gone through a massive crash in 2008. By the time I really started, there was no very clear boom and very clear recovery happening. That was a more recent thing. So there was a bit of a scarcity mindset, which took a long time to work out of and to shift into more that abundance mindset. I think that can keep you conservative, which is a good thing sometimes, in some years. In some years that holds you back. So from a macro standpoint, that's how the timing maybe helped and maybe slowed things down over time. As I think, too, about where the industry was, really from Day 1, it reaffirmed that even though it was much more straightforward to start a media agency and to focus on digital channels – there was much more access; it was a much more equitable system with a lot less in the way in terms of gatekeepers like there are with some traditional media – even though it was a little bit more challenging to have those other mediums in place, being media-neutral and being able to offer all media, even if we were still digital-first, was a really smart strategic decision. As the rise of performance media has come in, and now for many organizations performance media has overtaken brand media by multiple times over – knowing that that trend was happening and having a strategy and a perspective of neutrality really helped us a lot. It helped us to build more trust-based relationships with our clients because we weren't trying to push them into the latest fad or the latest channel or the latest tactic for its own sake. We were always trying to do that based off of what was best for their business, what was best to grow their brand. That helps build trust rather than saying “We're focused in this particular area which is hot right now.” So I think that can be great to be a particular specialist, even within the specialty of paid media, but I think that our timing really reaffirmed our strategy and our approach to market, and it's one that's seen us continue to grow and be successful into and beyond 2021. ROB: For sure. It's an interesting time. You got to start past the social for the sake of social, social as the source of infinite free growth, but also social as the bucket of infinite budget without accountability. It's interesting you mentioned the gatekeepers. It's almost easy to forget the times when if you wanted to manage let's say your Facebook ads, there were only a handful of companies you could talk to about that. BILL: That's right. ROB: That's a whole different world. BILL: And to see how much – at one point I was doing the Facebook ads, 9 or 10 years ago, and it was exhausting keeping up with the changes. Every three months, something minor would change that you used daily, and every six months it seemed like they were completely renovating and revamping the entire process. It was so funny to see that TV couldn't change fast enough, print certainly couldn't change fast enough, and here you had social and other channels that were changing so fast that it was almost impossible to keep up with them. It was certainly an interesting time to start things up. ROB: A friend of mine used to work for one of those vendors. They had to keep up with all the changes, and they used to call every Tuesday “new bug Tuesday,” because there would be something new they had to go out and fix. You probably had to deal with the other end of that stick. BILL: That's right. ROB: Bill, as you reflect on the journey so far with Exverus, what are some lessons you've learned along the way that you might do a little bit differently if you were starting clean, from scratch? BILL: Things that I would do differently. I think that we were never slow to meet our clients' needs, but we were sometimes slow to say, “This is a macro trend and we should have a whole staff around it.” One of the examples is more performance-based media. The reason I say that is because we have plenty of team members, particularly today, who are world-class experts in performance, but a few years ago we kind of missed the boat a little bit because we thought that by satisfying our clients' immediate needs and performance, we were doing our jobs. What I missed was that this was a strategic exercise. There needed to be a strategic team of people that were focused in the performance space. One of the reasons why was that it wasn't that they needed to have a particular technical skillset; in many cases we're talking about the same media channels that can be used for very different purposes, like search, like social, like digital video and digital display. But what we were doing was missing the mindset. Those folks who really excel in performance have a completely different mindset and approach to how they manage media and how they manage client relationships to get to specific results. There's plenty of reasons for that, which all make sense. But missing that mindset was number one in terms of what we could've done better, going back probably 3-5 years ago. The other thing, too, is I think really understanding the business and the business side of being an agency leader. The ups and downs are not communicated to you when you are working at an agency in a way that's terribly transparent, or frankly often necessary. You're usually hearing the very big undulations of the waves. “Things are amazing. We won this huge account” or “Things aren't great and we need to have layoffs.” Those are the types of things you're hearing. What you don't realize is that as an agency owner, things are up and down on an hourly basis, some days on a quarter-hourly basis. There is a mindset and there is a psychological helmet that you need to put on to be able to manage that in the context of doing all of the wonderful work that your clients are contracting you to do. I think that is one thing that I certainly didn't know about, and that's something that lives alongside what all business owners learn, which is that you're responsible now for every element of the business. I was ready to do the accounting. That's easy. [laughs] I went to an accounting school for college. But it was the psychological aspect of being in our business and being comfortable with the way that our business works that, if you're someone without a very risk-tolerant mindset, might be a bit jarring. ROB: How do you process that over time? I know certainly initially, a lot of your team, you feel like you can't tell them a lot of the gusts. Sometimes they'll surprise you and they'll have a great solution, and sometimes they won't know what the heck to do and you might just freak them out a little bit. How do you think about processing, learning some of these blind spots, those shifts that we all have to make? BILL: That's a great question. From my standpoint, we try to be as transparent as possible with our team. Today we actually just had our quarterly state of the union. This time we didn't go into as much detail as normal, but we try to be transparent. “This is what's going on. This is where we're struggling. We're struggling to fill this particular role. Do you have any solutions? Do you think you might be able to help? Or if nothing else, please know that we're working on it still, because we know that's had an impact on some people's workloads.” We'll be very forthright with everything that we can. Without being obligated to or sharing specific numbers financially, we will share where we are in terms of reaching our goals and what it means to reach our goals. Is it just profit for the sake of profit? Or does profit open up new doors and new opportunities to all of us for strategic partnerships? That's a very different conversation, and it's one that I think our team appreciates hearing. One great piece of advice that I got during COVID was actually from Simon Sinek, Start with Why, very famous guy. Incredibly intelligent. Everyone knows his public persona. He's a family friend; he's been good friends with my wife for over a decade. We were chatting about there are certain things that we just don't know what to do and how to move forward in COVID, and he said, “Put it on your team. Share it with your team. Do that in a thoughtful way and say, ‘I don't know the answer to this. I'm not going to pretend that I'm the person who has all the answers all the time, and I'd love to hear what your input is and what your feedback or solutions are.' You'll be surprised as to what you get back. Your team isn't necessarily thinking about your business all day long, but they are working in it, and they are people that you hire specifically for their intelligence. So see if that helps.” And it really did. I also think it made for more open dialogue, which in today's age of transparency is really valued by employees and by myself and the rest of the leadership team. ROB: All such really good points in there. Reminds me of a very recent experience where for a long time, I had been suggesting a certain sort of client engagement model. I tried to communicate why, but I maybe wasn't really getting my point across. In a totally different conversation, I expressed a particular business goal in terms of margin – and to your point about profit margin, the key of telling people where that goes and what that gets us when you're growing – you need cash just to be in cash reserves. You need to have good financial cushion on the business. You need to invest in growth. You need all those things. Helping them know why you need profit helps instead of just thinking you should break even and everybody should take all the cash out. But I shared a particular goal in terms of profit margin, and I had somebody super brilliant on my team who said, “Oh, why don't we engage more in this model?” It was exactly pretty close to what I had suggested before, but without the full picture and the rationale and the transparency, it was just hanging empty. And everybody does things better when they think it's their idea, and that's okay. I don't have any problem with that. So really good point. BILL: From your standpoint, where do you feel the line is in terms of transparency, in terms of how you communicate with team members? ROB: That's a great question that I'm still learning. I have typically been a tremendously private person on these sorts of things, and over the past year I engaged with a business coach about a year ago who came recommended by people who have billion-dollar companies. That was good enough for me, and I could still afford them. He's just continued to push me on the value of what I'll get by sharing more with the team. Where that stands for us right now, to be real specific about it, at an exec team level, we're talking about – in a services organization, on our services side, we're talking about revenue per employee. We're talking about target profit margin. We're talking about what that actually looks like. And that's uncomfortable for me. I could regret it. I could learn something from it. But it's going in the right direction. BILL: That's great. I think we've probably had a very similar experience. I may not dig into some of the KPIs that you do quite as in-depth, but sharing that information can be liberating when it's done properly, and it can show a lot of faith in the team. For me it was a great learning experience, and it was a great moment of growth starting to share that information. ROB: I'm glad to hear and gain some comfort. The worst story we ever had on here about somebody sharing stuff was someone who had an employee suck out $300,000 in payroll taxes that they were personally liable for, and they had to drive ahead and build the business and dig their way out. But that's a different lesson to be learned. BILL: Yes, and I don't necessarily think we should be giving access to the finances to everyone. [laughs] ROB: Totally agree. Bill, when people want to track you down and track down Exverus, where should they go to find you? BILL: Probably the best place for Exverus is our website. It's www.exverus.com. For me, I can be found on LinkedIn. I'm Bill Durrant with two R's. No relation to Kevin. I'm pretty easy to track down if you add “Exverus” to the end of that in the search queue. ROB: That's good. It's good to know we can't track down KD through you. We'll have to find our own way. BILL: Just want to set expectations. ROB: [laughs] Thank you so much, Bill. Congratulations to everything you and Exverus have accomplished so far, and I wish you the best. BILL: Appreciate it. Thanks, Rob. ROB: Take care. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

1984. Maybe '85. Take a 26-year-old art director who loves her work. Put her in a big agency where she is surrounded by middle-aged white guys. Strangle the agency's creative work with politics and bureaucratic overhead. Ask a simple question, “How long can this last?” Sue Kruskopf's answer? When both the employer's and her futures looked bleak, it was time for change.  In 1988, Sue and the copywriter she worked with started KC Truth, with a focus on truth, simplifying the complex, and serving clients by –  getting to that core truth about their businesses,  stripping away all the B.S., and making the message as simple as possible for target audiences. Sue says, “Simplifying things is always a lot more difficult than complicating things.” Her ideal client website is one the communicates what the company does and why they are different from everyone else . . . and does that in the shortest (simplest) way possible, which is both an art and a science. The large companies KC Truth works with have multiple siloed business units. Sue says the way to get to a company's “truth,” align the organization and build a strong strategy is to get everybody in the same room and listen to what they all say. When all the various departments – marketing, sales, engineering, researchers – see their part in creating the truth, they become invested in the collective work that follows. After that, Sue believes, “Great strategy requires great creative.” Maintaining the creative resources of a world-class agency is critical to KC Truth's work with such big, complex clients as Cargill, 3M, and some Minneapolis-based global companies. That might be a challenge. However, KC Truth belongs to a strong network of independent agencies, AMIN, which means they “can collectively buy all the tools we need.”  Sue says that building strong relationships, hiring the best people, the smartest people (smarter than you are), and treating people as you would want them to treat you are a big part her agency's success. She supports treating clients with respect, “not trying to shove ideas down a clients throat,” and “walking hand in hand down the same path together.” Sue can be reached on her agency's website at https://kctruth.com/. Transcript Below: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Sue Kruskopf, CEO at KC Truth, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Welcome to the podcast, Sue. SUE: Thank you. Good to be here, Rob. ROB: It's wonderful to have you on. I'm eager for all that you have to share. Why don't you start off by telling us about KC Truth and where the firm excels? SUE: Thank you. First of all, we excel in longevity. We've been around since 1988, which in advertising years is about a million years I think, pretty much, in this day and age. We've always believed at our core, our mission has always been to rid the world of B.S. and get at the core truth that companies stand for. As we all know, in this day and age, truth is more important than ever before. So, I'm glad that we have stuck to our guns and had this in the foundation of our business for over 35 years, since way back in the day. ROB: Truth certainly has a habit of falling in and out of fashion, so the longevity there is certainly admirable. If we can drill down a level, if there is a typical type of client, type of engagement – obviously everyone's a little bit different, but what does a median client, median scope of work look like for you all? SUE: One of the things our clients tell us is we've always been really good at simplifying the complex. I think anybody in our business knows that feeling when a client comes in and you've looked at their website 10 times and can't quite figure out what it is they do exactly, or the word “solutions” is in there too many times or whatever else. We're really, really good at – Truth is all about getting to that core truth about their business and stripping away all the B.S. and getting it down to the simplest thing we can determine based on the audiences we're trying to reach. Typically, we have a lot of big, more complex businesses like Cargill, 3M, a couple global companies that are based here in Minneapolis. I'd say that's our core sweet spot. We've had experience that runs the gamut across all kinds of industries, but at this point that's really where so much of our growth has come. Simplifying things is always a lot more difficult than complicating things, that's for sure. ROB: Absolutely. It's interesting that you mention websites, because of course, that wasn't really a thing when KC Truth started. It strikes me that the website creates a space, whereas in an advertisement of some sort – print or even billboards, etc. – you're kind of limited in what you can say. The website has more room. It has unlimited room, which may be a curse in some cases. But it almost seems like there is a set of truths that you can put onto a website that may encompass everything you're trying to communicate elsewhere. How does that track from the early days of the firm? SUE: Obviously, we started back in those early days when there wasn't any of that. But I come from the creative side of things, and I always felt there was nothing better than a great creative brief that you could really get in and dig into and you understood there was a really strong strategy there. No matter what it was, back in the day we'd always go, if you don't have great strategy, you don't have great creative. That's really been the basis of what we've done for all of these years. I would say even on websites, I still want to go to a website of one of our clients and be able to understand what it is that they do and why they're different from anybody else. I still think that's what people are looking for in the shortest way possible. There's an art and a science to that, that's for sure. ROB: You take a client like 3M or – I don't know if you work with them at all, but Metron – people may have heard the name, but it's a very abstract thing. It's kind of like the myth of the blind men touching the elephant and everyone has a different experience of what that elephant is depending on if you felt the elephant's trunk or tail or leg. It's a different thing. How do you think about taking something like 3M and making it tangible and helping those individual places where it really does touch people's lives make sense rather than just being a house of brands or of chemicals or products? SUE: I think anybody out there in the B2B world knows that in most big companies like Cargill or 3M, there are multiple different business units within each one of these organizations. One of the things that we believe in, and it's part of our foundation and our process, is that finding the truth involves getting people in a room from all different parts of the company. For example, when we work on a product within 3M, we want to get in not only the marketing and sales people, but the engineers, the researchers, the product people, getting everybody in a room to really understand the totality of the business. What's interesting is, especially in this day and age when people are so siloed into their specific disciplines, it's amazing how much alignment comes from getting everybody in a room and hearing what others have to say. That's something that we do and we believe in. You have to hear all sides of things. That helps us create a strong strategy, because everybody has been heard. So when we come back with a strategy, the engineers have played a part in it, besides the marketing people, and the salespeople had a part in it. Everybody sees themselves in it in some way, and that's really the magic of what we do with finding the truth. Everyone has been a part of creating that truth, so they all have a share in the collective work when it comes back. They see themselves in it, and I think that's one of the things that we've found really works. You're not trying to shove ideas down a client's throat or anything like that; you're all walking hand in hand down the same path together. ROB: Right. That's a very meaningful approach and process. If we rewind the clock a little bit, Sue, what led you to start KC Truth in the first place and take that leap? You mentioned coming from a creative background. SUE: Yeah, I was a frustrated art director. I was at a big agency in Minneapolis at 26 years old, and I just didn't dig the politics. The politics and all that got so much in the way of doing the work, for one thing, and it was really frustrating to me. I felt like there were way too many people involved. I think we used the term once that there were a lot of brilliant minds within this organization surrounded by a lead shield. You couldn't get any good ideas out of the company. That was one thing. The second thing was I was 26 years old and all I saw around me were – I hate to say it, but middle-aged white guys. I thought, my goodness. There were no women. This was back in 1984-85, and there were no women that were middle-aged. There was one woman and a few account people, but there certainly weren't any creatives that were older. I thought, “Wow, I don't know if this business is going to have a very long life. I'd better find a way to ensure a long career,” because I loved what I did. So my copywriter partner and I – we weren't making any money at the time anyway. I don't even remember, but it was an amount of money that we thought, “All we need is a few more $5,000 projects and we're going to be golden.” We literally quit, and we were having a good time doing a bunch of freelance. Brick by brick, things just kept growing. We went out of business a couple times. I'll proudly say that because I think that you learn more from your failures than your successes. We thought the account people could run the business because they were in charge of numbers and we were just going to do creative. Well, that was a false thing to believe. [laughs] All of a sudden we had no money left for rent or anything else, so I figured, “I'd better figure out the business side of this, too.” It was just lessons learned all along the way, and I think that's why perseverance and grit are probably at my soul. When you pick yourself up a few times and dust off the ashes, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? Next time around. So that's what happened, and we just kept going back at it. Lucky to be here today, that's for sure. ROB: It's quite a dance, that balance not only of personal transformation – which is ongoing – but also, when you look at when you started the business, of repeated reinvention. I mean, there's just been wave after wave after wave of change in the market that, if you didn't adjust to it, you were going to be a dinosaur. SUE: Oh, for sure. ROB: Even in TV advertising. I haven't talked to anybody about this on the podcast – would love to find them – who didn't survive the jump from broadcast to cable, much less websites, much less social, much less video and the ubiquity of video now. How have you navigated the necessary reinvention to keep the firm relevant? SUE: Yeah, how many times have we heard that TV spots are dead and all that? Went through that probably 10 different times throughout the years. I have always tried to stay ahead of the curve in everything. I'm a very curious person. It's one of our values at my company. I always believe you've got to be ahead of the game – and you're right, Rob; that's really what has kept us relevant for so long. Part of that is we belong to a network of independent agencies. There are many networks, I know, like this that agencies belong to. Ours is a really strong one called AMIN. It has helped us because we can collectively buy all the tools we need. Honestly, this is where I really sound like “OK, Boomer,” but back in the day, all we had when John and I started out was markers and sketchpads we stole from the art department at the agency. [laughs] Then we had the first Mac, that little shoebox Mac. That was a huge thing going forward. It was so much art back then, and now it's art and science. I still think it's more science sometimes than art. But we've had to stay ahead of the science game now, too. We do have all these data and media tools that really, really help us be accountable for our clients' success. I honestly think if you don't have that as a creative-driven shop, if you're not proving results all the time and constantly measuring and optimizing, then you're not going to be in business, because clients and CMOs more and more are held accountable for that. We have always stayed ahead of the game to make sure that we have the resources of a world-class agency at our fingertips so we can work with big global clients. That's like 35 years in a nutshell, but it really is the truth. I think that's one part of it, and I think a lot of it is you really appreciate how important relationships are and building relationships and all that. That's another huge part of that. And also hiring really good people. I always do what my dad told me, which is “hire people smarter than you.” That's what I've always believed in. That and “treat people as you want to be treated yourself.” I've always loved that we have a great culture and really good people. That's core to being a good agency. ROB: It's certainly a fear some people have, walking in the door of really any independent business. You might have a bad boss in a big company, but within an independent firm, you could really be exposed to some person's full crazy. What a privilege it is when you can be a good place to work, even for a part of somebody's career, for that season for work. SUE: I totally believe in that. I totally believe in finding not the best skillset, but the best mindset. It's not who they are maybe today, but who I see the potential in the future being from that person. We've had a lot of people stick around because we've let them evolve into the position that they feel most comfortable in. Somebody that started out as an account person decided she was better doing the agency work, and now she's Director of Business Operations for us, for example. So, I always think you have to watch where people excel and where they're finding their passion and their happiness and try to nurture that as much as you can. On the flipside of that, I also think it's about making sure people don't get too comfortable. You always want to make sure that people are continually curious and trying to do better and be better. I think that's another side of the coin, too. ROB: Just to take a snapshot at the moment of where we are right now, if you have a new client, a new total brand messaging package or a new campaign that's pushing out into the world, where are all the places that you are seeing that push into now? Where are you having to manage and have your team ensure that they're aligning that message to each place? What does it look like? SUE: It's crazy the amount of channels that we work in. You name it, from LinkedIn to TikTok. You have to look at every single channel as a place where a message might play, all depending on what's appropriate for that audience. We're like 100% digital right now. I don't even know that we've done anything traditional, which is kind of ironic, in a long time. Video is the new TV, there's no question about it. We don't have one niche or whatever, one type of thing. I would just say what we're good at is being a chameleon; we can adapt to whatever channels those are to reach people. A lot of times with the audiences we work with, it's the long tail. They might be chief technical officers, and how we find them and serve them programmatic media, for example, so we're following them where they live. There's all kinds of things like that. Sometimes it's a channel, sometimes it's following that person to see where they consume media and following them along their journey. There's just so many right now. Believe me, our media people can speak way more on this than I can. [laughs] I had a client say she feels like she's got a firehose pointing at her all the time, trying to figure out what everything is, and I think that's true. I think clients really need help understanding where they're going to spend their money and get the most bang for their buck. There's so many choices out there, and you need somebody that can help you wade through that and find the right audience at the right time, for sure. ROB: I have an unsubstantiated but sneaking suspicion that out-of-home digital billboards are going to be more than they are now. SUE: Interesting. ROB: I don't know if you're seeing anything yet. I know some companies now that are doing – you see online people talk about account-based marketing, like Terminus and all that sort of thing, and people looking at buying billboards near the headquarters of the client they're going after. SUE: Oh yeah, I can totally see it. Especially digital, obviously. That would make a lot of sense. Maybe all the old school will come back in all these new forms, like it sort of seems like it is. Could be, Rob. You predicted it here first. [laughs] ROB: I'm just curious. I may enjoy those sorts of things more than some people. It may just be my own interest there. We're in Atlanta, and MailChimp is of course based here. MailChimp had this habit – they're wonderful people, but they're also tremendously competitive and cutthroat in certain ways. They would paint murals on buildings across from their competitors of nothing more than their little chimp mascot winking. It didn't say MailChimp. It didn't say anything. SUE: That's great. That's a super smart idea, that's for sure. It all comes down to the art, right? Art and science. It's all art, too. That's a brilliant strategy that they have. ROB: Sue, you mentioned earlier some lessons learned. You've certainly survived through probably a number of them. What are some things you have learned along the way of building KC Truth that you might do differently, that you learned from or suggest someone else learns from it? SUE: I can say what I've learned from, which is I don't take no for an answer very well. That's for sure. That's probably my number one thing that I do. I'd say what I've learned is in the early days, just to learn, I used to call up the head of another agency and tell them I really respected them and ask if they'd go to lunch with me or go have coffee with me. I learned so much from listening to them. I didn't know what I was doing. I was an art director trying to start an agency. When I think back on those days, I think, oh my gosh, I gained so much from going to talk to people. I wish I would've kept that up more throughout my life. Now I learn so much from the people that I work with and all that, but I think getting knowledge from other people that are older than me was always really smart. I do think in our business, there's ageism that goes on, in my opinion. There aren't a lot of people that are older in the business as much anymore, and I think they have so much to offer. I would always encourage people to have lunch more often with people with wisdom, because I think you can learn a lot from that. that's one of the things I'd do differently. Also, I wish I would've been a little humbler at the beginning, because I thought I was pretty cool having my own agency at 28. You can only imagine. I just think, God, sometimes I just wasn't very humble. That kind of bugs me now when I think back on it. Humility I think is key in everything. Believe me, I've been slapped down so many times in these years. You've always got to be humble. I think I learned early on, but really practiced it later, hire the best you can at every single level in your company, in every single discipline, and make sure that you aren't being complacent and resting on your laurels ever, ever, ever, because you never can. That is for sure. You can never sit back and go, “I've got it made now.” It's like, nope. The minute you do, something's going to come along and slap you upside the face. That's not going to happen. Gosh, I don't know. Those are some things that come to mind when I'm thinking about it right now. ROB: Sure. How do you calibrate, then? There are times to accelerate the business and there are times to not overheat your ambitions of growth. How do you think about calibrating well when you need to chase versus when you need to sit on it? SUE: I know, right? Because we're not a huge company, and I never, ever – every agency has been through layoffs; we've been through very few. I can think of a handful of people we've had to lay off in all these years. Financially, I try to run the company very conservatively. But I'm also making sure that we've never, ever been a sweatshop. I said by the time my kids were six and eight, which was a long time ago, I was going to be home after school with my kids. I've always believed in having that work-life balance. It's walking a fine line, like you said, calibrating, making sure people have lives. I believe that's where you get pure inspiration, from your personal life. You don't get your inspiration from work. You get your inspiration from when you're not working and your brain can wander. It's a very fine dance, honestly, and I wish I had an exact answer for you of how I calibrate. But I have a certain gut feeling about things sometimes. Sometimes I rely on numbers. It's all a combination of touch-and-feel and trying to figure it out, and listening and taking advice. I've got a really good team of people I work with, and I love to discuss things and talk about things. I always rely on other people's opinions. That makes me smarter. Nothing concrete there, Rob. It's just a touch-and-feel, and history. You always learn from what you've done in the past and failed or done well. It's a constant balancing act, like you say. It's balanced by all those different things we just talked about. ROB: I think at the same time, though, you probably have some knowledge. You probably know almost more than you would ever think to give yourself credit for, because you've learned humility over time. If you were talking to someone who's just building, setting up, thinking they're going to grow an agency – you mentioned you can be on the conservative side, but do you have any rules or recommendations for someone to set up financially? Like cash reserves, practice – I don't know. Do you have any guideposts you use that you think someone would do really well to listen to if they were earlier in their journey? SUE: Yeah. I'd start out really small. It takes a lot more money to start an agency today. When it was just – I hate to say it – markers and pens, sketchpads, and the first Mac, that's way cheaper than what you need today. Today, you need more people. The people that are good at analyzing data, media people. You really do need – if you don't have them within your company, you need to have partnerships with outside resources that can help you. Because clients are going to hold you accountable. It's not just about it's a good idea; it's got to work. Ultimately, it has to work. I think the investment in people is the biggest expense today, more than anything else. So I think you do have to have a strong financial base to be able to have the people that can really hit the ground running. I think that's it more than anything else. It's not like it was, where just an art director and a copywriter could come up with some ads and go sell them to somebody. [laughs] That was easy. That was way easier. All the agencies that started back when I did – none of them are around anymore that started at the same time. You've got to have the really smart people or the competition is just too fierce. ROB: Sue, it's a good journey so far. What is next for you and for KC Truth that you're excited about? What should we be looking for? SUE: Oh, my goodness. As you've heard from probably every person you talk to, getting through this past year is like a historical milestone. Now we're all just going through the headlines about the turnover tsunami. We've experienced some of that. Our clients have experienced some of that. That's a place we've never been before, so that's a whole other deal. But I have to say, we had our first in-house meeting at the Truth Bar downstairs at our place with our clients. I think people were genuinely glad to see each other in person again. It felt so natural and so good. I just think we've missed relationships, and I'm looking forward to – that's the hardest thing for me, feeling like I can't build on these relationships with the people I'd like to see and hear what's going on. Now I think we're in for a whole renewal of how important it is to build relationships in our business. Our clients need to trust us and know what we're going to do is going to work, so you need to have a good relationship. And that's where trust comes, out of good relationships. We all need to get back to that basic stuff. Face time not on FaceTime, but face time face-to-face, I think is what's key. I don't believe that as an industry, we can live on Zoom calls all the time. It's just not possible. It's not sustainable. That's what I'd say, Rob. That's where my head is. ROB: Did you have any hesitancy from any of your clients, or were they like caged animals ready to come out and hang? SUE: They had to see if it was okay with their corporate people, to see if they were allowed to. There were a few other hoops, maybe, to get through. But no, not so far. We've only had one, but we're going to be back to work a couple days a week soon. I think people are feeling – they really want to be back, I think. With flexibility and all that sort of thing, it's going to be good times, I think, again. ROB: It's certainly new times. We brought in our team from all over the country – we've been hiring distributed over the past year. We started off wanting to have a team retreat, and then we realized we still had a lot of our clients local, so we invited our clients out to dinner. Everybody wanted to get out. I don't think I had anybody who said, “No, because I'm being cautious.” For the most part they either had shots or never wanted one, one or the other, and they were ready to come out and play. Our team was all vaccinated up. SUE: Same. Hands off the handlebars. That's it, for sure. ROB: Wonderful. Sue, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I think we would all aspire to build such an enduring firm that continues to be relevant well after the initial playbook was probably in the trash and burned up. SUE: Oh yes, for sure. You should've seen that first portfolio. That was something, way back in the day. [laughs] ROB: You kind of wish you could frame it somewhere in the office now. SUE: It's frightening, it's frightening. Well, thank you so much, Rob. I really appreciate that. Let's just hope we continue to move ahead in that way. ROB: Sounds good. Thank you so much, Sue. SUE: Thank you. Bye. ROB: Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

How Rob got his start. (2:15) What is “profit first”? (15:49) Finding a distribution rhythm. (26:00) Money management with small plate practice. (38:00) How to get started with profit first. (46:00) Analyzing your sales. (55:00) Quotable Moments “Profit first is an envelope system using your bank account for your business.” - Rob “Think of it as a dashboard for your business. It is not an accounting system. Do not drop your accounting system!” – Rob “The majority of the businesses I've worked with now, more than 400, don't know if they made money last month or last quarter or last year.” – Rob “For years, I was overthinking and overcomplicating profit first. It's a simple system. Don't turn it into your accounting system.” – Rob “Small plate is that whatever is there, you're going to use it. If you have three months to do a job, you'll take three months. If you have $5,000 to complete a job, you'll use that $5,000.” – Rob “You must find a way to not take money out of your accounts. Sometimes that way is to call somebody up and say, “I can't pay you until after the first.” – Martin “The first step of getting started is to open a bank account and start putting in that 1%. The second step is to get an asset allocation assessment. The third is to  “A lot of times the activity that generates the most sales, generates the least margins.” – Martin “Analyzing your sales – If you have segments of your business and analyzing your different offerings and they're not close to the benchmarks... then maybe you need to gradually make a transition to something else.” – Rob “Diversify what your options are. Don't just be stuck.” – Rob “My program starts making profits once we get the accounts in there and then we help them to actually change those numbers.” – Rob “I had a client who had been growing for years but wasn't making any money. We analyzed his behavior and there was one activity that was using up a lot of his resources and wasn't making him much money. We convinced him to drop that service. This reduced his sales by 34% and made his net profit go up 808%.” – Martin Resources Iron Gate ESS website Rob's podcast website Email Rob Check us out on Youtube Follow us on social media: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram Subscribe to our newsletter, The Countdown Have questions? Email us! More from Martin theprofitproblem.com annealbc.com    martin@anealbc.com  LinkedIn Facebook Instagram More from Khalil benali.com  khalil@benali.com LinkedIn Facebook Instagram More from The Cashflow Contractor Ask Us A Question Sign Up For A Free Consultation thecashflowcontractor.com  info@thecashflowcontractor.com LinkedIn Facebook Instagram

The final lost episode from the pre covid episodes! Justin sits down with us to share his passion for not only his music but the other artists who he helps to bring their music to light! We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did! Doug & Rob You can find justin’s music … Continue reading Here We Are With Justin Martindale! →

With telecommuting on the rise, many luxury buyers are choosing to move to greener pastures.In this episode, I interview Doug Leibinger, a Compass Broker Associate and top producer in Aspen, Colorado.Get the inside scoop on buying and selling luxury real estate in this international ski resort town, which is famous for its breathtaking views and year-round outdoor recreation.***IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL DISCOVER***How Covid-19 has been affecting the market in Aspen.Why 3D Matterport tours are so important, especially now.The nuances of marketing in an international market like Aspen.Why lifestyle marketing is crucial for luxury properties.Advice for buyers looking to buy a home in Aspen.How property lines and water rights work for riverside and mountain properties.Tips for out-of-town buyers to make the most of the buying process.What it means for a market to be micro-segmented.How remodeling affects property taxes.***MEMORABLE QUOTES***“3D property tours are crucial in today's market.” - Doug Leibinger“Spend the night in the area where you're thinking of buying.” - Rob“You can't put a generic price per square foot on a luxury listing.” - Doug Leibinger***ABOUT THIS WEEK'S GUEST***Doug Leibinger has proudly helped some of the most accomplished people from around the world find their place in the Roaring Fork Valley. The Wall Street Journal/Real Trends has recognized Doug as one of the Top 125 Brokers in the United States and as a top-five broker in Colorado. Doug has worked with both buyers and sellers to assist with over 3/4 of a billion dollars in transactions. Clients from across the globe—Hong Kong, London, Sydney, and San Paulo—as well as around the United States choose to work with Doug for his business acumen, affinity for technology, and professionalism. Solid relationships with local architects, builders, designers, and landscapers help Doug assist his clients and proved instrumental in several high-end developments. The Doug Leibinger Team was named the #1 sales team in the Aspen Valley in 2016, 2017 and 2018 with over $800 million in sales volume.***GET IN TOUCH WITH JEFF RHOADES***Cell: 970-379-9045Email: Doug@Compass.comWebsite: www.DougLeibinger.com***ABOUT THE SHOW***Welcome to Luxury Real Estate Talk, where you get expert advice on buying and selling Luxury Real Estate.Learn from the best and brightest real estate agents, brokers, and other professionals, as they share real-life stories about the art and business of listing, marketing, selling, and buying high-end homes.Through casual but insightful conversations, the Talk's host Rob Jensen will help you master your understanding of the luxury real estate market.Rob is the President and Owner/Broker of the Rob Jensen Company, which specializes in working with buyers and sellers in guard gated communities in Summerlin, Las Vegas, and Henderson, Nevada.Rob's 15+ years of local industry expertise have made him a sought after real estate expert source with the media. He's served as a guest commentator for numerous national broadcast television networks including MSNBC and BRAVO. He has also provided content and commentary to The Wall Street Journal, Forbes.com, BusinessWeek.com, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Real Estate Executive magazine, Growing Wealth magazine, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. Additionally, Rob has penned a recurring monthly real estate column for the Las Vegas Business Press.

Running your own online 'summit' or conference is not just a new income stream - it can also bring you tons of new leads, enhance your credibility and authority around your topic, and open up valuable new relationships with experts in your space,a and summit expert Krista Miller is her to explain exactly how you do it. This one is value-packed! TRANSCRIPT: Rob: Welcome back listener, Rob Tyson here. And in the last episode, I talked to Ian Sanders about the power of story for your business. It was a good show, so do catch up on that one if you missed it, had a good chat within. I'm here today, though, with Krista Miller. Now Krista through her company Summit In A Box, does something really interesting. She helps entrepreneurs three times their monthly revenue through virtual summits without wondering where to start or what to do next. And her method is focused on strong connections, collaboration, and making a difference. And today, our topic we're gonna be talking about is how to host your first profitable online summit. So I'm really interested in this topic, looking forward to getting into it. Before we do get into it, though, if you're listening to this show, chances are good you have professional expertise and it could be you want to monetize that through an online learning program. Well, if that is the case, before you rush off and start creating content, please take a few moments to watch my free web class because it's gonna explain why the ascension model or value ladder you may have heard about is usually a really bad approach for people in your position. Not only is it likely to make you peanuts, but you won't be giving maximum value to your clients either. There is a much better way if you would like to generate real meaningful cashflow quickly and get on the right track with productizing your expertise online and my web class will show you how to do that. That is free. All you need to do is pop along to robtyson.net/class to get the web class, that is robtyson.net/class. So with that all said, Krista, welcome. Great to have you here. Krista: Hey, Rob. Thank you so much for having me. I'm pumped to chat all about summits with you. Rob: Me too because this is a really interesting topic for me. And let's open up with my first question for you. What is an online summit? I mean, how do you define this term? What does it mean? Krista: So when I'm trying to define it for people, I like to have them think about a virtual...not virtual, excuse me, an in-person conference, and what that looks like. So you're bringing together, you know, a group of people to come speak to attendees about different topics relating to an overall topic. A virtual summit is the same except online. So there's one host, they have an overall goal or topic in mind for this summit, and they're inviting speakers on who can speak about smaller topics inside the overarching topic. And then attendees from all over the world can come and tune in to these presentations usually for 24 hours is how long the free access lasts. But the goal is really to let the attendees come and get these pieces of information that they wouldn't be able to get for free together anywhere else, and really help them start making steps towards whatever the goal of the summit is. Rob: And are there other words that we might use instead of summit? I mean, do people sometimes call these things online conferences? Yeah, you're nodding? Krista: Yes, virtual conferences, online conferences, online, they say, events. I've seen people say, like, interview series. There's kind of just all kinds of different words. I would say online conference is, like, the most common alternate, but there's people using all kinds of different words who for some reason don't want to say the word summit. Rob: No, interesting, interesting. And what are some of the different models of summit we could use? Krista: So there's a few coming to mind. I guess the first one is the most common and that is a free...a summit that's free to attend. So attendees can register for free. They can get access to the presentations for usually about 24 hours for free. And with that, there are usually 20, 30 speakers at that kind of summit. From there, the host can upsell to an all-access pass and that's how they can make money. I'm happy to talk about that in more detail as we go, but that's kind of the most common. Those ones usually last around three to five days, most commonly five, but I'm seeing more and more people now cut down and going between three and five. Another one that's talked about a lot is a one-day summit. So people who don't want to, you know, go through the work of getting what, 30 speakers and having this thing go on for five days, maybe they have something really specific they want to talk about related to an offer, they will host a one-day summit instead. Usually around five to eight speakers in a one-day summit. And again, those are usually run for free with the option to upgrade for ongoing access. And then the third one is a paid summit. So instead of being able to access the presentations for free, for a limited amount of time, people charge for entry to the summit basically. Usually with these people then automatically get the ongoing access to the presentations. They're not limited by 24 hours or anything like that, but they're basically getting a ticket to attend the event, kind of like you would with an in-person conference. Rob: And which model do you like the best and why? A what are the big benefits of the model? Talk to us a little bit about that. Krista: So I'm a big fan of the first model I mentioned, which is free attendance, three to five days long, 20 to 30 speakers. And this is the one I have seen work the best for most industries. Now there are some industries where the paid model works great. For a lot of us, the paid model is not gonna work well instead what you're gonna see is you get so many fewer people who are willing to pay for that ticket. And the reason that the free entry works so well is there's no barrier there. People are like, "Oh, I can get all of this for free. Awesome." And then you have the rest of the event to convert them to your all-access pass, which is so much more powerful. And I have a customer, her name is Kara, and she was just on my podcast comparing the two because her first two summits were paid summits. Her most recent was a free summit. And her first couple summits had about 60 attendees and brought in $2,000. Her most recent had, I want to say 2,000 attendees and $16,000. So it let her get so many more leads into the summit by having it for free, she was able to just see so many more profit...so much more profit, excuse me. But like I said, there are some industries where the paid summit works fine. I see this work better for people in more, like, professional niches like if you're targeting, like, lawyers and doctors and stuff like that, like, they're used to having to pay when they're gonna go learn about something. But for most of us, the free model is what works the best. Rob: I like that. And one...you know, some of the times that I've noticed people doing summits, which seems like a really smart thing to do, is perhaps when they're launching a new business or launching a new product or side of business. That can be a really good application kind of it because it can be pretty effective way to build your authority and get a lot of leads in the door quite quickly. Krista: It's so powerful when you're doing something like that. I really love using it for launching something new or, you know, something that you already have. Because you're getting those leads that are just, you know, really interested in what you're doing if you position your summit the right way. They're warmed up, they're excited by the end of your summit, and then you have this thing to help them take it even further, you know, and make it nice and easy for them. Rob: And as the host of the summit, so you're interviewing these other experts, is that normally how you would be presenting that content? Krista: Yes, it's usually about 50-50, I have never done an all-interview summit just because I don't like doing interviews. I don't want to sit on 30 interviews. Some people love doing it that way. I like to have my speakers just pre-record their presentations like, you know, most of them use a slide deck. I personally like that because, one, I'm not required to get on 30, 60-minute calls with all these people. But also then they're able to really present their information in a way that fits their topic the best. They're not limited by the questions I'm asking. They can, you know, say, "Here's the overall teaching on this topic, and here's action steps you can," take a little more easily than if they were being interviewed. But there are a lot of really great, you know, purely interview summits out there as well. It's kind of up to the preference of the host, your comfort with interviews, your skill with interviews because you don't want to have 30 boring interviews either. But I like doing the presentations. Rob: And so, would you typically be presenting something of your own? You know, would you do a session of your typical summit, or would you just kind of leave that to the "experts"? Krista: Yes, I always recommend doing your own presentation as well. A really big benefit of summits is the increased visibility. So, you know, I always say every opportunity you can get to get in front of these people during your summit do it. They need to know who you are and that you're the host. I know some people who do their own presentation daily during their summit. But definitely have one presentation that you do, whether it's, you know, mixing with the rest, a keynote, something like that, but definitely get yourself in there. Rob: Now, as you're talking about it, I can see it would be mad not to do that, wouldn't it? Krista: I've seen a lot of people who don't, so I'm glad you asked. Rob: And what's your view on selling during the summit content? I mean, so at one end of the spectrum, you could consider a complete no-no, but the other end, I'm sure there are summits where it's pretty much all anyone is doing. So what do you think is the right balance? I mean, do you think, well, you know, people could be paying for the content and therefore it's not really...we shouldn't be pitching too much? Just talk to us about that. What's your feeling? Krista: So I have found just through, you know, experience with my own summits, that the more I can focus on the attendees and the speakers during the summit, the more I'm gonna get out of it myself. So I don't pitch my own offers during the summit. I am selling them that all-access pass though, and that is so powerful. And it doesn't mean you can't sell your own product later. So here's what I recommend, people register for free immediately they're getting an offer for the all-access pass for the first time. And then if they don't buy, they're kind of seeing that offer all throughout the summit. My last time summit I made $60,000 just through that all-access pass. So, that is a really great thing to focus on, it's giving them the ongoing access to the presentations they like. I really like including extra bonuses to help them take it even further, but they're really able to focus in on that content. A challenge I see with trying to sell, you know, one of your programs or something in a summit is they're all so focused on trying to watch all these presentations and retain the information, that it's kind of like just a distraction and like a fly they're trying to swat away if you're, like, constantly pitching them with something else. So I always wait until... You know, there are some people who do like a keynote presentation, the last presentation on the last day, and that's, like, their webinar where they're pitching their offer. Other people, you know, wait till the week after, or maybe two weeks after, I wouldn't go any longer than that. But it's kind of positioned as an extension to the summit, but it's a webinar helping them, you know, take it one step further, but "Here's my program." Rob: "Here's an offer." Interesting, interesting. Okay, no, that's really good. And how big should we aim for our first summit? Because obviously you mentioned, you know, one of the models is with 20 or 30 speakers, and if someone is brand new to this that will sound very daunting and maybe isn't where they should start anyway. So, what do you think is a good number of speakers? A good duration if you're just doing this for the first time? Krista: So, if you're someone doing this for the first time and maybe you feel a little intimidated by it, I would stick to a three-day summit with 15 speakers. Once you start getting those speakers on, you feel like, "Oh, you know, this is easy. This isn't so bad." You can always change your mind and add a couple of days. I just had someone in my program do this actually yesterday as we're recording, and she was like, "Hey, like, this isn't so bad. Would it be worth it for me to add 5, 10 more speakers?" And I was like, "Yeah, let's do it." So I would say 15 speakers, three-day mark is a good place to start with your first one. You can still get really great results with that if you position it the right way and choose the right speakers. Rob: Okay. That's really helpful. And how do we pick a good topic for the summit? And should we go quite broad with the subject matter, or is there more value in being quite niche? What do you think? Krista: I love this question. I love this question and I am all about getting as specific as you can. And I like to give an example to kind of help illustrate this. So for most of us, if we're, like, scrolling through Facebook and we see a Facebook ad on a summit to help online business owners grow their business, we're like, "I don't care." You know, we probably don't even think back because it didn't catch our attention enough for us to even have a thought. But there's a lot of people in my program who are, like, wedding professionals, so I use them as an example. If like a wedding planner is scrolling Facebook and she sees an ad for a summit to help wedding planners book up their client's schedule using Instagram, heck yes, that's gonna stop her in her tracks and she's gonna sign up for that. And there's so much more room to make an impact for these attendees when you're doing it that way. Because instead of learning, like, 101 level information to grow her business, she is learning stuff really specific and unique to her industry, and how and exactly the steps she needs to take to do it. So I'm really all about getting as specific as possible. As for how to do it, I usually recommend that people start with their audience. A lot of us find ourselves targeting online business owners, entrepreneurs, things like that, like, that's too broad. So what I tell people to do is who are the subsets in your audience? Look at people who are purchasing your products, your services, what subsets do they fall into? And which one of those are you most excited about working with, do you relate the most, find that audience, focus on them. Like, that's the audience for your summit. And then I say, get on a couple of calls with people, even if it's just 3, 15-minute calls, talk to them and learn exactly what their real problems are. Not what you think they are, I would have got that so wrong with my first time and if I did what I thought their problem was. But I found it out from them, host a summit to solve that problem. And that is how you make one that stands out, gets you incredible results, and gets them incredible results. Rob: Really interesting. And you'd just be quite open in that conversation? You say, "Hey, I'm thinking doing of a summit, you know, what's the kind of thing that would get you to give up three days or whatever?" I mean, do you frame it like that or what kind of conversation do you have? Krista: So I don't come at it quite like that, I usually ask someone who I know in my audience, you don't have to do that, that's just what I do. I say, "Hey, can we get on a 15, 20-minute call for me to ask you a couple of questions, in return I'll reserve 5 minutes for you to ask me questions?" So that they're getting something out of it too. And I just kind of ask questions about their business and, like, dig deep. So, I ask them a little bit about what they do so I can see how they talk about what they do. Ask what they're struggling with, ask what their goals are. And then why is that your goal? Why is that a struggle? And that really helps with messaging. So the struggle is great for, you know, hitting that in your messaging and so is the goal. Because then you can say, "Here's what the summit is gonna do for you" and use their words. And so, I keep it really simple like that. But if they say something kind of vague, like, you know, "My goal is to get more clients," why is that your goal? And keep asking questions like that. Rob: Okay. I really like that. That's pretty good. And so people up to this point, they're listening, they think, "Yeah, I love this idea, Krista. I want to do this as soon as possible." How much time do they need to leave themselves to do their research and prepare and do all this kind of stuff? What would you say? Krista: So my recommendation isn't what most people like to hear, but I really love to see first-time host give themselves 90 days. And it's not 90 days of you just hustling hard 24/7 to get this thing out there. It takes time for you to research. It takes time for you to find potential speakers and connect with them rather than just sending, you know, 30 cold pitches. It takes time to hear back from those people, you know, once you send the pitch. You have to give them time to either make their presentation or schedule an interview with you. You want to figure in about three weeks for promotion. So there are a lot of things in there that aren't totally reliant on you doing all the work. There is a very good amount of work that goes into especially the first one when you're figuring out your positioning, setting up the tech in your website, and writing all your copy. But 90 days is a really great spot to sit for the first one. I've had people do it in two weeks, I have people who take six months, but 90 days is what I have found as the sweet spot. Rob: And a question occurred to me just as you were explaining that, to what extent can we repeat summits? I don't mean repeat the exact same content, but I mean, like, for example, you know, if you have a summit on some aspects of email marketing this year, is that the kind of thing you might do annually because the, you know, the texture, I don't know...what's your approach to this? I mean, do you see these things as one-offs or are they things that can be repeated? Krista: So there's so much power in repeating your summit, one, because it gets so much easier. So, my first summit, I've estimated, took me 500 hours to put together. And that's because I was starting from scratch, I didn't have any resources, I couldn't find any podcasts about it. Like, I was figuring this all out. So, 500 hours for my first summit. My most recent took me 60 because, you know, I have all the pages done, the messaging is done. The copy is there, you're making little tweaks. And the biggest part is reaching out to new speakers and getting the information you need from them. So it gets so much easier. And I have actually repeated the same summit, same topic for three years in a row now and each time has just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. So, like, you can totally repeat the same summit over and over and just keep getting bigger results too and it's way easier after that first time. Rob: Why do you think it gets bigger and better each time? Krista: I think because...well, I think there's two things. One is just the increased visibility you have for that first one. You know, before my first summit, I had an email list of 500 people. After it I had 1,500. So I was like, "Okay, I'm promoting to three times as many people," there's number one. Number two is, at least for me, I got braver with who I was pitching and figured out what the right people were to pitch. So instead of just pitching people I knew and people I was comfortable with, I figured out, "Well, hello, why am I not pitching people that only have the exact same audience as my summit?" Like, it's so obvious now, but it took me three seconds to figure out. So that was definitely, you know, a game-changer as far as the growth goes as well, figuring out which speakers get you the best results and pitching as many people like that as you can is, you know, huge for seeing your summit grow. Rob: Right. And as you allude to that, I guess that it helps to show the better speakers you've got a track record and, you know, they're gonna be that much more receptive, aren't they, if they can see that you've done it before and it was good? Krista: Yes, there was actually someone I pitched for last year's summit and she said no. And this year I came back to her again and was able to say, "Hey, here are our numbers from last year." I think it was, how much was it, 2,500? Twenty-five hundred people just from your audience last year, we're expecting even more this year. Do you want to be a part of it?" And then it was a "Heck yes," you know, once I had those numbers to show her. And for the first summit where I didn't have great numbers, I was still getting yeses from people I didn't expect to. But it just gets easier both on your confidence and on them saying yes as you grow. Rob: Really good, really good. And what kinds of things do we say to potential speakers to interest them? Krista: That's a great question. So the first thing that makes it just way easier, we were just talking about with the audience and the topic, when your audience and topic really closely relates to what they do, like, that's step one of grabbing their attention. Like, if someone pitches me for a summit and it's...I am not...I'm trying to think of an example now. If they pitched me for a summit for my other business where target I designers and it's a summit for all creatives or copywriters, for me that's a no, right? But if they were to come to me with a summit just for my people, okay, you have my attention now. So that's step one is being really targeted with who the summit's for and going after speakers that also have that audience. Then it comes down to you looking like you know what you're doing. So being really organized, giving them the information they need. I really like to have a draft of my registration page as complete as possible so they can go over if they don't know me and see that this is a real thing, it's put together well, I know what I'm doing. And then as for, like, benefits for them, that's also something I like to list out right in my pitch email. I guess, first, I start with, "Here's what I would need from you. And by the way, it's not all about me, here's what you get as well." And there's a few things I like to do there, I like to give good affiliate commissions. So, I give 40% to 50% affiliate commissions to my speakers. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have a summit. So I feel like they deserve that. They've always liked that. I also give them the opportunity to pitch something at the end of their presentation. I let them pitch something paid if they want to, but I really tell them, "You're gonna get better results if you pitch something for free, have a tripwire offer, or put them in a proven funnel down the road." So they like that, they're allowed to do that. And, you know, just the way to grow their email list and I make it as easy as possible for them. Like, people want visibility, leads, and money. So if you can show them that they can get those things, it's a really great chance that they'll say yes. Rob: Great. That's really good advice. And on the other side of the coin, what are the kinds of things we're saying what's important in the messaging that we put out there to potential attendees to get them interested in attending the summit? Krista: So the biggest mistake I see with people doing this is they kind of promote the fact that they're doing a summit. Because they're like, "This was so much work, it's so cool that I'm doing this. Hey, everybody, look, I have a summit." And they're like, "I don't care." So, like, instead of focusing on the fact that, yes, it's this cool thing, you're focusing on those pain points and benefits. "So here's this free event with all of these really cool speakers," you know, do some name dropping of, you know, your most visible speakers, "and here's what you're gonna get out of it." So hit on a benefit that your summit is really focused on. And when it's just for them solving a problem for free, it's like, "Heck yes, I'm gonna sign up for that." Even if they only go to a couple of presentations, you have their attention, they're now on your email list and that's what we're looking for. Rob: Right. So it's just all about this is gonna, you know, come along to this thing, it's gonna show you how to get something nice and move away from something horrible. Krista: Exactly, exactly. Rob: And what tactics do you like the best for getting attendees? Krista: So speakers are just a really great thing to count on. If you are counting on your speakers to promote, you really have to make that clear to them from the initial email you send. There are so many summits going on right now where, you know, you get pitched and maybe it doesn't say anything, but then all of a sudden they send you this contract and it's like you have to send three solo emails to your email list and post this many times on social media. I'm like, "No." So when you're using your speakers, they're part of your promotion strategy, tell them that in the initial email but also be reasonable about it. So I have my speakers send one email and post once on social media. That way I know at least their audience has a chance to see it. And from there, if they're getting sales through their affiliate link and getting those commissions, they're gonna keep promoting. And that's what I saw with my last summit that works even better if you did do your targeting correctly for your summit and pitch the right speakers as well. So that's really what I focus on. Of course, promoting on your own platforms, my email list has always been huge for getting attendees, but Facebook ads actually have worked really well for me as well. I mean, I've seen people get under a dollar per lead for their summit, and then you're selling the all-access pass after so you're just profiting from those Facebook ads. For my last summit, I was actually at the breakeven point but that's cool because now they're on my email list and I can sell them something else. So Facebook ads are also a really great thing to do, and you can do them for super cheap by, like, retargeting people who hit the registration page without signing up, or, you know, doing lookalike audiences to your website traffic or email list and you can do it for, you know, a really decent price. Rob: I like it, I like it. And when we run the summit or...well, you know, at least when we run it the first time, so we're not talking about the recordings that we give, you know, people can get access to, but do you prefer that as a live thing or some are all of the sessions prerecorded? What's your preference or advice? Krista: So I say, at least for your first one, do prerecorded. I have never done a live summit, I never will because you will find that dealing with your speakers is like herding cats. And I would rather herd prerecorded cats than live cats every day. You have to count on them showing up when they're supposed to and having all of the tech work. And that's a lot to count on, especially if you have 20 speakers counting on 20 people to show up where they're supposed to, when they're supposed to, and have no tech glitches, that's a lot for you to have on your shoulders as a summit host. And also during the summit, you are on all week long, even with recorded presentations, you are interacting with people in the Facebook group, which is, you know, something that I just kind of dropped on you guys. I really recommend having a Facebook community for your summit. You're interacting with people in email, you're supporting your speakers, and to also have to, you know, be live, making sure things are working all day every day, that's just a lot for one person to manage it. I mean, I guess you could have a team helping out with that as well, but I always recommend prerecorded for at least the first one and just see how it goes. Rob: That's good advice and that makes a lot of sense. And so software-wise, is there a specific software you would have to get in order to pull this off? Krista: So I actually recommend that people just use whatever you're using for your regular website. Tech is like a huge hurdle that people let hold them back from doing a summit, but really whatever platform you're on, you can make it work. I'm on WordPress, all of my stuff is on WordPress. That's great. But I have people doing it on Squarespace but their courses are in, like, Teachable so they integrate those two things. There's people doing it on ClickFunnels, you know, all kinds of different platforms. There are summit-specific platforms, I personally don't necessarily recommend them because you're kind of limited by what the creators of that think a summit should look like. But, like, virtual summit software would be my top recommendation if you do just want an all-in-one kind of platform that will kind of lead you through getting everything set up, you're not too concerned about, you know, being able to customize things. That's the one that I've seen make it the easiest and just set things up in the best way. Rob: Okay. Now that's really good. And do you think there's a limit to how many summits you could or should do in a year? I mean, is this just a question of your sanity or is it to do with your audience? What's your view? Krista: I love that you put it that way because seriously, it's all about your sanity. My first time running a seminar, I was like, you know, on a high after I was like, "Oh, my gosh, I did not expect it to go that well, I didn't expect to help people that much, I want to do it again." So I did another one six months later and I was like, "Oh, this is just too much for me." But then I had to make it an annual thing, so I had to do another one six months later so it lined up with my first one. For me, every six months is too much because you get done with your summit and, like, it feels like immediately you have to start looking for the next round of speakers. And that's a little bit of an exaggeration, you have a couple of months rest, but for me it was a lot. So I really like doing it annually. I have people in my program who are doing it quarterly and that's just what they like to do. They choose a little bit different topic every quarter so their audience isn't getting burnt out on it, and they are just like summits is the way they grow their business rather than, you know, one of the ways. So it's totally personal preference and how you feel after that first one probably. Rob: If you've got the energy to do it, too, do it quickly. Krista: Exactly. Rob: And in terms of charging for access, I appreciate there's a range and it depends on the market, but what kind of price points do you see working? Krista: So for the all-access pass, is that what you're...? Rob: I guess so. Krista: I mean, again, like you said, it's all over the map. I've seen people charge like 20 bucks. And for me I'm like, "Why bother?" So I have actually raised my prices for every single summit and made more money every single time. So I have landed at... I do three different price points throughout my summit. So right after somebody registers, they have 15 minutes to get a super special offer. For me, that's landed at about $47, between $47 and $97 depending on exactly what the offer is. After that 15-minute expires, they can then buy the all-access pass for the current regular price and I just do a price increase once the summit starts. So, you know, I would say the max price I have done is $197 and people still buy at that price point. So, like, don't feel like you have to, like, sell yourself short because this is a free event, people are still willing to buy if you have something good to offer. Now, would people pay 200 bucks for just presentations? You know, that's gonna be a little iffier. But I like to include bonuses, like, I let my speakers contribute bonuses if they want to, I contribute my own bonuses, maybe some like coworking calls, network sessions that you can just host on Zoom are great ways to just boost the value of that offer and be able to charge more. So, you know, that's a wide range even I do between $47 and $197, but I haven't run into anything that has not worked yet. Rob: I really like that. It's a really nice idea, you know, offering a few other things to, you know, make it a more valuable package, you know, along with the content, I really like that. This would be really great. Krista, any other important tips or big mistakes that people make that we need to look out for? Krista: I guess just, you know, we've touched on a lot of things, so something that we haven't talked about yet is just don't put so much pressure on yourself. I see people saying...you know, they'll come to me like, "Oh my gosh, I'm hosting this summit next month, I just decided that last week and I need to get it done, can you help me? I'm so overwhelmed." Like, well, obviously you're overwhelmed. If you're trying to organize 20 people, this brand new thing you've never done before, the tech, the website, it's gonna be a lot. So take your time, let yourself enjoy the process. I am totally one of those people, I have an idea, I need to do it now. So that 90-day timeline, it can hurt but it is so worth it to be able to get those details. The details are really what impresses people, the speakers, and your attendees. And, like, the more onboard they are, the more they're gonna help you do your selling as well. Your speakers are more likely to promote, your attendees are gonna be talking about how awesome it is and spread the word about it. They're gonna be shouting out how great your all-access pass is and other people will want to buy it. Take your time, get the details right, enjoy the process as much as you can. Rob: Excellent, really like that. So just to wrap up a little bit there, what is one action people could take right now if they wanted to make a start with this? What's kind of the first thing that they might do? Krista: As much as you guys won't like me for this, I want you to start with your audience and topics. So what's the audience for your summit gonna be if you're targeting people like online business owners, entrepreneurs? What subset can you use? And then get some calls scheduled with people to figure out what direction your summit should really go in to make the biggest impact for everybody. Rob: I really like that rather than just going, "Right, I've got an idea, let's go" because that always ends in tears, doesn't it? Usually more often than not. Really great. Krista, this has been excellent. Where's the best place for people to get more from you if they would like to? Krista: So you guys can find me over at summitinabox.co. I actually have a free masterclass for any of you who are really like, "Okay, like, I want to do this thing. I want to host an awesome summit." It's my three-part framework to triple your monthly revenue with a virtual summit while building your list for free. We cover all kinds of good stuff in there like how to make a plan you can actually follow even if your business is already way too busy, which I feel like most of us can probably say, how to land expert speakers and host a really great event without a huge audience, and how to use my three-part profitable summit system to triple your monthly revenue in the size of your email list. And that training is at summitinabox.co/class. Rob: Awesome. And just to say, people, you know, I have I bought some of Krista's info lately and it's really good, really thorough. So, yeah, definitely check it out if you're interested in this topic. Krista: Well, thank you. Rob: You are welcome. No, it's been really great. No, Krista, thank you so much. This was really helpful for people and I do appreciate you talking to me. Krista: Thank you so much for having me on. Rob: Hey, it's Rob again. Want to build a successful online business from your expertise? Well, the game has changed. There are bigger opportunities but also bigger pitfalls than ever before and I would hate for you to waste years figuring these things out for yourself. Now, as a listener to this show, you're obviously a sensible person, right? So here's my invitation to you. Apply to jump on a call with me in the next few days and let's talk about you. You will get feedback on your ideas. You will get a product concept that is fit for right now. And you will get a personalized sales and income plan to take away. That is free but availability is limited. So please go along right now to chatwithrob.com, that is chatwithrob.com. Do that now. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Once again, that is chatwithrob.com. Talk to you soon.

Today, Rob's guest is Ian Anderson Gray, the king of live video. Discover how you can create loads more impact, authority and profit with the power of confident Live Video on the big, high traffic platforms where your prospects hang out: Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube… TRANSCRIPT: Rob Tyson: Welcome back listener. Rob Tyson here. Now, in the last episode, I talked to B2B lead generation expert Sarah Hughes about four free ways to generate B2B leads in lockdown and beyond. So, be sure to catch up on that if you missed it. But I'm here today with Ian Anderson Gray. Now, Ian, I call the king of live video, and he helps entrepreneurs create loads more impact, authority and profits through the power of confident live video. You may have seen Ian around actually. He is an in-demand speaker and he speaks at events like Social Media Marketing World in the U.S., Content Marketing World, New Media Europe. So, he is a great person to have on to talk about this topic. But before we welcome Ian and get into all that, if you're listening to this show, chances are good you have professional expertise, and it could be you'd like to monetize that through an online learning program. Well, before you do anything else, take a few moments, because I've got a free web class for you that can save you a lot of pain probably, because I would like you to forget locking yourself away, creating content for months on end, only to find no one buys it. I'd like you to forget for the moment funnels, launches, and also selling your expertise for peanuts on a course supermarket. Instead of all that, you will get my rapid method for successfully selling high margin online learning programs in 2020. So, that is all free. And all you need to do to get that is pop along to robtyson.net/class for the details. So, that is, once again, robtyson.net/class. So, with all that said, Ian, welcome. Good to have you with us. Ian: Well, thanks, Rob. It's great to be on your show. Thank you for inviting me on. Rob: No, you're very welcome. And talk to us, so, why are you so enthusiastic about live video? Ian: Well, for many reasons. Probably my favorite bit about it is the fact that we can interact with our audiences, or more importantly, they can interact with us. It's a really intimate platform, and I think we definitely need that. We can so get obsessed by communicating one-way. And this is a way that we can actually have communications both ways, be a little bit more intimate, and be raw and authentic. I know the word authenticity is probably overused, but I think with live video, it's one of the most powerful things. And also, the other thing I love about it is the fact that it is a way to get rid of that perfectionism syndrome that so many of us can get obsessed with, and produce content really quickly and easily, and then be able to repurpose that into lots of different pieces of content. So, that's something that I've found over the last year in doing a regular live video show. I've been able to create so much more content that's really valuable to my audience, and also be able to be a bit more real and engage with them. Rob: Yeah, excellent. No, and you're quite right about the procrastination thing, because I guess if we tell the world we're gonna be doing a live video on Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever at a certain time on a certain day, well, we just gotta do it, right. And it doesn't matter how we feel about it, we've gotta do it, or else we're gonna be embarrassed. And that's really powerful when you realize that you can actually harness that and make it work in your favor. That's a really, really valuable thing, I think, a forcing function like that. Ian: Definitely. Rob: So, Ian, you're gonna kinda take us through three steps to start and be successful with this. So, over to you, sir. Let's talk about those steps. Ian: Well, I've spoken with lots of people around the world, my audience, and clients. And it really...the problems with live video are the....there are three barriers, I think, that hold people back from actually embracing live video. The first really is that confidence and the camera fear. So, people really struggle with pressing that go live button, because they, quite frankly, they're worried about looking like an idiot and stumbling over their words. Maybe they don't like the way they sound or the way they look. And so, that can be a big problem. So, I suppose this is down to mindset. And the problem is that we struggle with so many different things. It could be, as I say, we don't like the way we look or the way we sound. It could be imposter syndrome. It could be perfectionism syndrome. It could be that we compare ourselves with other people. And I think we need to get beyond that. We need to start thinking about, sorry, we need to stop thinking about ourselves and start thinking about our audience. We can get a little bit self-obsessed. And actually, we forget that our audience are just patiently waiting for us to produce that content, whereas we're getting worried about getting in front of the camera. So, there are a number of things that we can do to help that process. The first thing, that's so important, which is important in anything that we do, is to ask the question, why? Why are we doing this? Why are we actually going to be doing live video? And what is the message that we're wanting to put across? You need to have a really, really good reason to do that. Otherwise, it's gonna be very difficult to persuade yourself to press that go live button. You need to be able to plan what you're going to do. So, that's the first thing. And then the second thing is to just do it. Just to practice first, and then just to press that go live button once you've obviously planned it. So, there's a... probably a good place to start here is with the likes of Instagram stories. Now, you might not be massively into Instagram, but Instagram stories are great, because they're only 15 seconds long. They're a great way for you to become more consistent with live... with getting in front of the camera. And it also means that you're going to be able to do that on a regular basis too. So, you have to commit to that. So, commit to maybe doing it every day for seven days. And the great thing about that is that, what's the worst that's gonna happen? Because Instagram stories only last for 24 hours before they disappear into the ether. So, you know, if you make a fool of yourself, it's not gonna be the end of the world. So, that's one good place to start. And then another place to start is just to try it on Facebook. So, whether you're thinking about going live on Facebook or another platform, the great thing about Facebook on the mobile app is that you can change the privacy settings to "only me." So, why not just test going live on your personal profile, nobody else is gonna see it, and just play around with that? So, those are two practical ways. And then the other thing is just to warm up your voice, warm up your body, and to practice your breathing before you go live, because all those kinds of things can really help. Because, the problem is, the camera is a little bit of an energy-sucking device. When we look at the camera, we tend to go all strange and we tend to, kind of, our energy levels go down and down and down, because the camera is sucking the energy out of us. As human beings, we're so used to interacting with other human beings, looking into another person's eyes. And a camera is an inanimate object. It's this very strange thing that I look at when I'm doing my live videos. But actually, there's nobody there. And so, actually, you need to instead of thinking about it as the camera, actually think about that as another human being. I know, some of my clients have actually printed out a picture of a good friend of theirs or one of their really good clients and stuck it just behind their cameras so that they can actually imagine they're talking to that person, and that can really help. Rob: Yeah. And I can certainly feel that. I mean, I've never really thought about it in that way before, but yeah, I've definitely, sort of, felt that energy drain when you're looking at the thing. I mean, the other thing that bothers me sometimes, and I guess it depends on the platform, is if sometimes you're seeing yourself on there, that I can find a bit freaky. But so, getting over the fear is this first step, and to what extent, I mean, we may come onto this later, Ian, but to what extent should we be preparing? Because although they're obviously live videos, you know, I find with my stuff, the more prepared I am, the less nervous I feel. And so, what do you think is the kind of sweet spot between being spontaneous and being... but also being prepared? And, you know, maybe being prepared is just, "Well, I've got some clue what the beginning, the middle, and the end is of this thing." What do you think? Ian: Yeah. Well, that's a great question because it actually depends on the type of live video that you're going to do. So, I went live just the other day on my walk, I was walking in our local park, and I was... the idea of that live video was it was gonna be a little bit more rough around the edges, it was just an opportunity for me to interact with my audience to have a bit of a chat. And so, there really was only one thing that that was gonna be, which was... I had a few ideas of what I was gonna talk about, but it was really more of a conversation between me and my audience. So, I didn't really need to do much planning. But the kind of live videos that I tend to do more often, and the ones that I advocate more, are where you're actually sharing some of your expertise. And so, those you definitely do need to plan, particularly when you start off. You can... as you get more confident with these and you become more comfortable, you can get away without planning it quite so rigidly, although don't get complacent about it. Don't get complacent. So, what I would do with the whole structure, and this is more, maybe more kind of veering into my third... the third section, but I'll just talk about this briefly because it does tie into your confidence. So, I always like to write down the first couple of sentences that I'm going to say, because it's funny what the brain does, but you press that go live button, and quite often, your brain will go complete to mush, because you're suddenly realizing, "Oh, I'm live." And so, actually writing down the first thing that you're gonna say is really, really helpful. You have to treat yourself like a complete imbecile, because your brain just can go to mush for the first few seconds. And so, make sure you plan the first things that you're going to say. Also, when you're going to be talking to your live audience, and when you're gonna be talking to your replay audience as well, and then you need to structure, well, what are the three points, if it's gonna be three, what are the three points that I want to say in this video? What is the call to action? And then, when am I next going to go live? You want to obviously tell people when you're next going to go live. And then, what's the final thing that you're going to say? So, I think you need to structure it. I definitely don't advocate writing it word for word, because then it can become really stale, really boring and robotic. And we don't want that. So, just to have a structure to it, I do that for all my live videos, because if I didn't do that, I would probably end up rambling on and forget what I was going to say. So, definitely have that. I would recommend having a Google Doc, or just write it on a piece of paper and have that very close to you. Rob: So, you, and this is gonna be my follow up question. So, you would actually have that piece of paper there, or you might have, I don't know, post-it notes stuck up or whatever it may be, just some kind of reminder to keep you on track? You'd suggest that's a good thing? Ian: Oh, definitely. I mean, I've done hundreds of shows now, and I still wouldn't do that. I still would not do without having some kind of show notes next to me, because yeah, I have done it without, and it's just ending up being really unfocused and tedious to watch. It kind of depends on you and your character and your personality. But I still even think... I think for most people, they will need that document, a structure, and also, you need to remember those key bits. For example, what is your call to action at the end? It's so easy to forget that. I've forgotten quite a few times to do that call to action, because you're so eager to press the end broadcast button and get it all done with. So, make sure you do that. Rob: Yeah, yeah, I suppose it's a bit like, you know, you go and see the Rolling Stones, but it's a live show, but it doesn't mean they don't have a setlist, right. I mean, you know, they know roughly what's gonna happen. I mean, in fact, you know, I guess with something like that, I mean, that's pretty well-choreographed, isn't it? But... Ian: Well, definitely. And then the other thing is that if you're going to be looking at repurposing your live shows, it's even more important to plan that as well, because what you don't want is... So, to give you an example of what I'm talking about here is, I tape my live shows, and the middle section of my live shows, I then turn into a podcast, and they also get turned into a blog post. And so, if my live shows are all completely unstructured, it's going to be very difficult to then take that bit and turn it into a podcast. It's going to be tedious for my listeners, because I'll be, you know, talking about the comments and talking with people that way, and then getting off on the side track, and it's going to lose that structure. So, I think it's important to have that structure so it makes repurposing for later much easier. Rob: Yeah, that's a great point, actually. And so, talk to us a little bit about repurposing, because I think that's really valuable for people. So, you say, you just said then that with your live shows, you'll repurpose into a podcast, so I get that, so you're just, you know, I guess you're pulling a piece of audio content out of the live. But also the blog post, talk to us about that. I mean, do you use a... is that a transcription service that you use to... you know, you send that off and get that transcribed, or do you use it in a different way? Ian: Yeah. So, I've been experimenting with different ways of doing this. And I'm actually in the process of changing that. So, what I'm hoping to do is actually to hire somebody to make that into a blog post for me. So, they'll listen to the podcast, and then structure that in a way, and then I'll go in and I'll edit it. I've done that on a few ones in the past. And I think that's, in my experience, has been the best way. I have used transcription services too. So, I've used the likes of rev.com. There's also a really cool tool called Descript.com, which allows you to, basically, you could just put the video into the Descript, so you can download it from Facebook, put it into Descript, or you can just put the MP3, the audio into it. It will transcribe it for you. And then you could actually go in and just take out words from the transcription, and then it will remove that from the audio. So, instead of actually editing the waveform like you would normally do in an editor, you actually just edit the words. So, that's pretty cool. And that could be one way that you could make it into the podcast. But also, at the end of that, you can then take that transcript that you've edited, and put that into the blog post. And so, what I've done there in the past is I've taken that transcription, I put headings in it, I've added links, I've added images as I've gone through, and that can work quite well too. So, it kind of depends on what you wanted to do, but I definitely see the power of creating blog posts from my podcasts and my live shows, because historically, my blog has been the main way I've actually got my business. It's been the way I've got lots of traffic to my website, and so, because of all the SEO juice that you get from it, and so, that's something that I really want to put a lot of effort into in the future. Rob: Yes, I like that a lot. I think that's a really clever idea for people, just the idea that, yes, you can do the live video, but it doesn't have to end there, and actually, it could be that if you have some nice processes around what you do, it might be that you just decide, well, I'm going to do a live video once a week, but then it's got all these spin-off benefits because, you know, we can turn that into a written article that can go on the website and on and on. So, that's really good. Yeah. All right. So, that was step one, and so just getting over the fear, you know, as you say, it's not all about you, it's about the audience, just trying to remember that, and doing some preparation. Those are the main things, right, getting over the fear? Ian: Yeah, absolutely. It's a mindset thing. But also, it's warming up your voice as well. So, actually [inaudible 00:16:52] back in the day, I trained as a professional singer, so this is... I've got a probably, [inaudible 00:16:57] about this, but it's making sure that your body is... your posture is nice and relaxed, the upper body, in particular, and warming up your voice. So, one thing is that I see some people do live videos and their voice can end up becoming a little bit of a monotone. So, making sure that you're going up and down, using different pitches in your voice is important. And also, something, what I call "heightened authenticity." So, just very briefly on that, because authenticity is really important. People want to see the real you. And people can actually tell very easily if you are putting an act on. So, don't try and be anything other than yourself, but you need to put a little bit more energy into your live videos than you probably would do normally, because, as I said, the camera is that energy-sucking device. So, what I teach my clients is this whole idea of heightened authenticity. So, it's coming up with a phrase that maybe, it could be your tagline for your business, and then practicing it at different energy levels. So, my tagline is, "Level up your impact and authority using confident live video." So, if I was just talking to you face to face, I would probably say, "Level up your impact and authority using live video." And if I was doing it speaking with a couple of people, maybe three or four people, a group, I'd be, "Level up your impact and authority using live video." If it was a workshop for, in front of 30 people, I would be, "Level up your impact and authority using live video." If I'm in front of a camera, I will want to raise my energy levels a little bit more. So, it'll be more like, "Level up your impact and authority using live video." And then, the really fun one is, imagine you're in front of 10,000 people, you're giving a keynote at a mega-conference, and you have to put even more energy in, it would be something like, "Level up your impact and authority using live video." And the reason I ask people to do that is, and a lot of people feel really uncomfortable when we get to level five, because it just feels, it feels, like, over the top. But that's kind of the point. You need to make it more over the top than you feel... you have to make it more energy than you feel comfortable, because the fact is, when you get in front of the camera, you're probably going to... your energy levels are gonna go down. So, you need to give more than you feel you need to give, whilst being yourself. You don't want to be this, like, ridiculous over-the-top person, which is unlikely to happen. So, you need to get those two things in check. Rob: Yeah, I love that. That's a great point. Many years ago, I read a book by a guy called Max Atkinson, called "Lend Me Your Ears" which is about public speaking. And he makes a similar point. He just says that, when you're up there, it will tend to come across as flat. And so, what you need to do is... it will feel over the top to you when you're doing it, but it won't to the audience, you know, it will just feel, you know, and if you don't, you know, turn it up to 11, sometimes people are just gonna be like, yeah, you know, this is kind of... this is flat, it's boring, it's dull, and as you say, a bit monotonous, so I like that. And I bet you find when you're getting... do you get people to, sort of, scream and that? You know, I mean, I bet you find when they've done that, when they've kind of experienced what it's like to do the, you know, the level five, as you put it, probably they feel a lot more comfortable doing the level three, right, I imagine? Ian: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And there's loads of other exercises that I get people to do. So, there are things like lip trill exercises, just to get their voices using the different pitches. So, I'll do one, it's gonna sound really silly, but it's going from the low part of your voice up to the top. So, [vocalization], like that. So, you're really putting a bit of energy into your voice. And then, things like tongue twister exercises, like, make some up, so, [vocalization], really putting lots of emphasis on each of those consonants. And then, you can even sing a song. So, I sing a song at a couple of conferences I've been speaking at and this is just to have a bit of fun. You don't have to be musical. You might have the worst singing voice in the world. But the song that I tend to teach people is, "Daddy's Got a Head Like a Ping Pong Ball" to the tune of the William Tell Overture. And the great thing about this is it helps you with your diction, with your energy, and with your pitch. And it also will, hopefully, put a smile on your face. So, it goes something like this, "Daddy's got a head like a ping pong ball, daddy's got a head like a ping pong ball, Daddy's got a head like a ping pong ball, like a ping pong ball." There you go. You probably didn't expect somebody to sing on your podcast, but there you go. Rob: I've never heard that song before. But I like it. No, that's great. And I can see, you know, if you're doing these kinds of exercises, yeah, you know, it's just gonna make you feel good and help you get past that fear, for sure. Ian: Exactly. Because you want to... when you press that go live button, it's really good to start with a smile and even start with a bit of laughter as well, and quite frankly, at the moment, we probably need a bit of that as well. So, it's good to have a bit of fun with your live videos, I think. Rob: Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's, yeah. Although it can be nerve-racking, it shouldn't... if it feels like it's a death sentence, I mean, it's just, you know, you need to, you know, it doesn't need to be like that, does it? Ian: And one final thing on that, just that I forgot to mention earlier, is that actually, I had a psychologist on my show to talk about this. And there's actually a lot of correlation between the emotion of fear and the emotion of excitement. And so, actually, if you... you might feel that fear before you go live, but actually, if you try and... it's a case of convincing your brain, saying to your brain, "Do you know what? You're not afraid, you're just excited." And so, it's doing these kind of vocal exercises that I talked about, having a plan, and then say, "Do you know what? I'm really excited because I'm gonna be delivering some real value to my audience." Don't let any of those negative voices that are probably saying, you know, I don't know, that you're rubbish, it's gonna sound awful, and all those kinds of things. Don't worry about those. Just put that to one side and just be excited. And, you know, if things go wrong, that's part of the fun. So, I went live last week, and we had a power cut 20 minutes in. So, about five minutes after that, I managed to get my mobile internet on and I had a torch, and we carried on for about three minutes after that. But, you know, people loved it actually. They love when things go wrong. And so, don't let that faze you. You'll know for next time what to do, although, if it's a power cut, there's probably not much you can do about, apart from getting a generator or get the candles out. Rob: Yeah, there we go. No, very good. So, that was the first step then, really, just getting over that fear. And just, I think, recognizing it's something that most of us have, right, I mean, unless we're a complete egomaniac. You know, we're probably all a bit afraid, but that's not a reason not to do it. Ian: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm a lot more confident than I used to be. But I'm still quite happy to have a little bit of that fear. It just shows that I care. But I need to kind of get my mindset in check before I press that go live button. I need to know why I'm doing it, I need to make sure that I'm warming up, and that I turn that fear into excitement. Rob: Excellent. Okay. So, that's step one, was the fear and getting over it. Step two, we need to think about the gear, right. This is how you'd frame it? Ian: Yeah. The tech and the gear. So, and this is, some people... depends on your personality. Some people get really excited about this, probably they... you know, and I can understand this because, yeah, I'm a geek, I'm gonna admit it. I love playing with gear and technology. But sometimes, I just want to, just to mention this, that sometimes this, we can get so obsessed or thinking about this so much, that we end up not actually going live. Or sometimes, we can use this as an excuse not to go live. So, a quick story that happened to me about over a year ago, probably about two years ago now, is that I didn't go live for a whole month because I was concerned that my camera wasn't good enough and my background was boring. And so, I was looking for... what I was thinking, "I need to get... I need to upgrade my camera. I need to get somebody in to help me with my backgrounds." And I didn't go live for a whole month. And then it struck me. The real reason was actually I was just too nervous, or I was just... I didn't like the way I looked. And I was comparing myself to others. It was a mindset issue. So, just be aware of that. So, when it comes to tech and gear, it doesn't have to be complicated at all. And I'm a big believer in bootstrapping your live video studio. So, start small. Unless you're totally committed to live video, you know you're going to be super confident with this, and you've got a big budget, by all means, you know, spend £10,000, $10,000 on your live video studio from the start, but that's not most people. Start small and build it up over time. That's what I did. And so, probably a good place to start is to just use your smartphone, whether it's an iPhone or an Android phone. That's a good way just to build up your confidence, because it's so quick and easy. You can go live to Facebook through the Facebook app. And you can also do that to Instagram Live as well. You can't do it to YouTube unless you have over 10,000 followers. And you can't do that on LinkedIn easily. You can't do that through the LinkedIn app. But with Facebook, you can, and it's a great place to start. So, the two things you basically need to go live are first of all a device, whether that's a computer, a tablet, or a phone, a smartphone. And the other thing that you need is decent internet. And the important thing here is your upload speed. So, before you go live, it's always a good idea just to check your internet speed. There's a tool that I use. I'd recommend downloading this for your Mac or your PC or your Android or your iPhone, and it's speedtest.net, and it's... just check your internet speed. You should be looking for at least 3 or 4 Mbs upload. If you've got lower than that, you might be okay, but you might not, and there's nothing worse than going live and then it says your internet connection is unstable, and then people can't see or hear you. So, just check your internet speed. I would say 4 or 5 Mbs upload speed is a good minimum to go for. And then, yes, just start on going live from your smartphone. The next thing that you could look at is upgrading the microphone. And so, if people can hear you really well, that is gonna allow... people are going to stay and listen to you. If your audio is poor, they're gonna switch off. So, the microphone I recommend is a lapel mic. You can either go for the Rode Smartlav+, which is a really good microphone. Or there's a much cheaper version of that, a cheaper alternative, which is from BOYA, that's B-O-Y-A, and it's the BY-M1 lapel microphone. Don't you love these names? They just slip off the tongue. BY-M1. Rob: I do. Tell us those again, Ian, those two, just in case people are scrambling to write them down, please. Ian: Yeah. So, the company of the first one is Rode, R-O-D-E, and the microphone is called the smartLav+ and it's a lapel microphone. And the other one, the cheaper alternative, is the BOYA, B-O-Y-A, and it's the BY-M1. And both of them are lapel mics. Obviously, if you've got an iPhone, you will need, and you've got one of the more modern ones without the headphone jack, you'll need to get an adapter for that. But that's a really good place to start. Rob: So, just to clarify things. So, for example, just using your smartphone and, kind of, plugging one of those into it would be the next step up from just using the smartphone and the built-in mic, is that what you're saying? Ian: Yes, yeah. It really enhances the quality of the audio. And I know actually quite a few YouTubers who use that BOYA microphone, and they've been doing that for ages and get a really good quality. So, that's just a little hack just to improve the quality. So, I suppose at this point, it's a good idea then to talk about, well, what are the pros and cons? Or what's the differences between going live from your phone as opposed to your computer? Because there are big advantages and disadvantages with both. And I think going live from your computer, that's leveling things up and give you a lot more features. So, advantages with going live from your smartphone. Well, first of all, it can give that more raw and authentic feel. It's great if you're out and about and you want to be mobile. Obviously, you can't lug your computer around with you. So, that's really good. And it's just a nice, kind of, very easy way of going live. But the downsides are that if you want to bring anyone in remotely, if you want to do an interview show, you can't do that on any of the apps except for Instagram. And if you wanna share your screen, unless you hold the phone's camera in front of your screen and somehow do it that way, you can't do that. You can't schedule your live videos as well. So, if you're wanting to do what I do, which is I will schedule my shows on Facebook and YouTube, and then be able to then send the link to my email list and on social media, you can't do that if you're going live from your phone. So, that's the disadvantage. So, if you go live on your computer, you can schedule, you can bring in people remotely, you can use more professional webcams and microphones, you can share your screen, you can save the video in a higher quality format for later for repurposing, and you can also highlight comments on the screen as well. LinkedIn live, if you're lucky enough to have been granted access to LinkedIn live, that only works on the computer, although there is an app called Switcher Studio that does allow you to do it from phones. But most of the time, it's just on the computer. So, and highlighting comments and all that kind of stuff is only available if you go live from your computer. So, if you want to start on going live on your smartphone, but then progressing to doing it from your computer is the next step. And I definitely recommend doing that. And it doesn't have to be complicated or difficult. There are some great tools out there that make that really easy for you. Rob: Yeah, very good. And I get the feeling people do this less now than they used to. I mean, a few years ago, it was the norm if you were gonna do some video to, kinda, get to a green screen background and do all this kind of stuff. But my sense is people, they don't really do that so much anymore. It seems a bit out of fashion. I don't know, is that just me? Ian: Well, it's... people are... you know, everyone has a different take. And there are loads of different types of live videos out there. So, I've seen people that use green screens and people that don't. I actually do use a green screen for some of mine. And the only reason I use it, well, I use my green screen for two reasons. The honest reason is that it solves my messy office... Rob: It's terrible back there. Ian: So, it hides that. And also, it can make it fun and interesting. And second of all, it's great if you're doing, "how to" videos, because you can actually just... it's a bit difficult to explain on the podcast, but you can just have your head superimposed on the video that you're showing. So, it can look quite good. But honestly, green screen is difficult to get right, because you've gotta have good lighting, you've gotta have a good camera. And so, I wouldn't recommend that for beginners. That's something that I've only recently done in the last six months. I would again, focus on audio first, get a nice microphone. So, the one I would recommend to start off would be the Samson Q2U microphone is a good one. But seriously, there are so many. There's also the Blue Yeti microphone is a very good one too. But yeah, get a nice microphone that's going to give you good quality. And then, cameras. If you can, don't just use the inbuilt one on your laptop. Try and get an external one. At the moment, there's a total worldwide shortage of these, but any of the Logitech webcams are good. And if you want to level things up even more, and you've got a bit more budget, then you could get a DSLR or a mirrorless camera. So, this is what I've got. I've got a Canon M50. And then, if you have a Mac, you can plug that directly in. If you're on a PC, there's extra software you need to get called... what's it called again? I'm gonna forget the name of it. It'll come back to me in a minute. SparkoCam is the one for PCs. And you can plug that directly in there. And that will give you a much better quality. But again, bootstrap it, you know, you don't need to get all the expensive stuff right from the start. Rob: You don't need it all on day one, no. And what about lighting, Ian? Because if I were to try, in my current office to do something at my current desk, the lighting is... the natural lighting, I should say, is all wrong for me. It's just in completely the wrong place. So, I look, kind of, shadowed out most of the time. So, I kind of feel like I could do with some kind of light on me, but what are your thoughts on that? Is that something we could... what I'm after is, kind of, you know, low level, like, I don't want it to be like Wembley Stadium, you know, but, you know, is there some kind of small light or something that you can recommend that we could use just to get a bit of something going? Ian: Yeah. Lighting is really difficult, and I'm gonna admit, it's not something that I've... I'm still trying to work out the best way that I light my setup. But so, it's a case of playing around with the different solutions that you could have for your office. So, if you have... if you can get in front of a window, and you have good, consistent light, actually, that can work really well for you. Obviously, not in your case, because, depending on your office. So, the other thing is to... you can buy softboxes very cheaply, on the likes of Amazon and other places. The problem with those is they're quite big. And although they're cheap, they're big. And they can also, they're very hot. And so, the ones I would recommend looking for are LED lights. So, I've got ones, they're by a company called Neewer, that's N-E-E-W-E-R, and they do have a variety of different ones. I've got, I think, what do they call this, the... forget the name of them, I think they're the 480 set. So, I think there are 480 LED lights on each one. So, you could probably get by with just one of those or two of those in front of you. And they're really good. If you've got more of a budget, the ones that I absolutely adore, and I haven't got them myself, but I've seen... I've tried not to be too jealous of my friends who've gotten these, and there's a company called Elgato. So, definitely check out Elgato because pretty much all of the products that they produce are amazing. They're not sponsoring me, by the way, I just love what they do. And their light, they've got something called the Key Light. They've got two different key lights. They've got a desk one, so that just sits on your desk. And the great thing with this is that you can adjust the color temperature from your computer, so you can adjust it remotely and get the perfect light for you. So, you can either get one or two of these, and they are lovely. And if you buy, they've got these little programmable keyboards called Stream Decks. Bit difficult to explain, but every key has its own little display that you can customize. And you can use those to program the key lights as well, you could get really geeky. Which, I'd better stop before I go on too much. But yeah, lighting, the Elgato key lights are great as well. Rob: That's nice. No, a lot of ideas there for us to explore if we're so minded. All right. So, that's good. So, we've talked about getting over the fear. And we've talked about the gear and how you can get going with a basic setup and some of the more advanced stuff if you're into that. So, we've got over the fear, we've got the right gear. Now, what do we... Ian: Well, there is one other thing [inaudible 00:37:31] that I forgot to mention. [inaudible 00:37:33] is actually really important. If you're going live from your computer, you need a tool, you need a live video tool. So, you could use Zoom. If you're used to using Zoom, you can actually go live with Zoom. It's not the best, the most, the easiest solution or the most fancy one, but Zoom is good. If you're on a Mac, I highly recommend checking out Ecamm Live. It's a really easy-to-use streaming software, allows you to go live to Facebook and YouTube and all the different platforms. Sorry, Ecamm. Rob: Is that E-C-A-M-M? Is that the one? Am I thinking the right one? Yeah. Ian: Yes. That's right. Ecamm Live. Yeah. That's a really good one. And one that's available for Macs and PCs, because it works in the browser, is called StreamYard, StreamYard. And that has a free version and a paid version, so that works really well. You can bring in guests remotely, and that's a really good one. There are so many. I won't go through all of them. But certainly Ecamm Live, StreamYard are probably two of my recommendations for you. Rob: No, well, you're absolutely right, and we'd have been a bit stuck if we'd forgotten those. So, that's good. So, with those, you know, with that software, and, you know, the camera, the mic, and all the good things that we talked about, so we're ready to go. And then the question, of course, is what do we say on our live videos? You know, what kind of content do we create? Ian: Yeah. So, it really depends on this kind of live video that you're going to be producing. So, the format that I really like and see a lot of value in, and I've been doing regularly every single week, sometimes twice a week for the last year, is the show format. And this can either be a solo show, it can be a guest show, so you can bring in somebody remotely, that, who you're going to interview, or you could even do a co-hosted show, so there's two of you that you either just talk with each other, or you bring in a guest. So, it kind of depends on what you're wanting to do. For me, for my show, I either do them solo, shows, or I bring in a guest. And so, my show is all about how to be more confident with live videos. So, that is the theme. So, I would say, what is the theme going to be for your show? And then you... it's like how you create any other kind of content. So, every time you go on, you're going to have your theme, but then you're gonna have a particular piece of content that you're gonna be talking about. So, what is that going to be, and then breaking it up into those two or three or four sections, and talk about that. And then within those sections, you can then bring in comments, answer questions that people have, so that you're not getting too distracted by those comments. So, you need to, first of all, know what you're gonna be talking about. What's the theme? What is good, are you actually gonna be talking about per episode? And obviously, then you gotta think about, is it gonna be just me? Is it a solo show? Or am I going to bring in a guest, or is it a co-hosted show? And, I think for beginners, for people who are new to this, I actually think interview shows, or a co-hosted show, yes, it does have its own set of problems, but it's actually a good place to start, because it feels more like a conversation, like what we're doing today is a conversation. It's like, you know, we're not in the same room, but we're having a conversation with each other. That's a little bit easier than just doing it on your own, because then you really, really need to know your stuff and you need to make sure that you're not stuttering over your words and getting distracted. So, I would maybe think about doing an interview show first, and using a tool like StreamYard or Ecamm Live makes that very, very easy for you. Rob: Yeah. And the other thing with the interview type format is, again, it's a kind of forcing function, isn't it? Because, you know, if you've booked a guest and, or you have a co-host, then that's a commitment in the diary that you can't easily get out of. Whereas if it's just, it it's the Robert Tyson show, you know, gosh, actually, I feel a bit tired today, maybe I won't do that. So, that's another benefit, I suppose. Ian: Absolutely. Oh my goodness. And I'm laughing because I've been there. I think we all have, you know. And so, actually, if you have a guest, you've got to do it. So, and I think from the beginning, the first probably dozen videos that you do, I hate to say this, the first dozen live videos that you're gonna do, they're not gonna be that great. They're not gonna your best... Rob: [crosstalk 00:42:10]. Ian: Yeah. Okay. Well, you're actually saying it how it really is, you know. It's true. And so... and your confidence levels are gonna be low. And so, I like to draw this graph which basically goes up. It has a few ups and downs along the way. Sometimes your confidence will go up. Sometimes you'll have a tech disaster and that rattles your confidence, but you've gotta keep going and get better. So, it's a good place to start with, with having an interview. Rob: Yeah, I like it. And talk to us, you have a model, or a checklist, a process, The 5 P's. Talk to us a little bit about that. Ian: Yeah. So, The 5 P's, I mean, this just takes you through all the elements that you need to think about. So the first element, we kind of talked about it already, is the planning. So, this also includes, you need to have a tech check... if I can say the word, a tech checklist, of all the things that you need to do. So, check your audio, check your internet. Make sure all the tools are working really well. Know what you're gonna talk about, so have a document that has got all the stuff that you need. So, that's the first thing that you need to do. Second thing is pre-promotion. Let everyone know out there that you're going to go live next Tuesday at 2:00. If you're gonna schedule that live video, that makes it a lot easier, so you can send the link out to your list. You can send it out on social media. You can send that information to your guests for them to be able to do that promotion. You can create videos and you can create all that kind of information to promote your live show next Tuesday, because if you don't tell people about it, then, you know, no one's gonna turn up, or it's gonna be... you're gonna be very disappointed in your numbers. So, pre-promotion, really important. Then it comes to the day that you're going to go live. And this is all to do with production. We've talked a lot about that before. It's how you structure the show, it's warming your voice up before you go live. It's pressing that go live button, knowing what you're going to say. It's being able to use the software confidently and making sure that you've obviously tested that before. Then, once you press the end broadcast button, it's at that point that most people go and have a lie-down, and think that's the end of it. But of course, it's not. We want to turn that live video into a piece of evergreen content that's going to last for a long time. And so, it's at that point that you need to think about the post promotion. And here, it's down to getting people to listen and watch the replay of it, because you might only have 10 people watching your live, but you might have 30, 40, 50, even 100 people who are watching that live video later. And so, you want to get people watching that. You might want to, again, do, send people that from your email, through social media, get your guests to share it with their audience too. So, that's the post promotion. And then the bit that I get really excited about is, which we've already talked about, is the repurposing of your live shows, turning that maybe into a podcast, into short little snippets to share on social media, into a blog post, into an infographic. And there's so many things you can do there, from that one piece of content. You can turn that into a plethora of different content that's going to, hopefully, explode across the interwebs and allow you to focus on running your business without having to worry about creating so much content, because it's a lot easier doing it from that one live show. Rob: Yeah, I love that. And I suppose, would you agree, it's usually a smart choice if you decide that what you're gonna do with your content is have a few things in there that are going to be really evergreen, so that you can get the most mileage out of them, because I suppose this is one of the issues. If you're doing something that's very topical, you know, things change. Ian: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I did a podcast many, many years ago. It was the "Social Media News" podcast, not the most exciting one. I spent ages editing it, and because I was talking about the latest that was happening in the social media world, it was out of date after a week. So, it's not to say that doing those kinds of episodes is a bad thing, because occasionally, it is a good idea to, if there's a hot topic to talk about at the moment, then, by all means, talk about that. But I am more into creating evergreen content that's gonna last for a long time, because it just means you're creating less work for yourself and it's going to last a lot longer for you. Rob: Yeah, I think I'm in your camp. As you say, I mean, sometimes you can catch a wave with the really topical stuff and that helps you, but I think on balance, yeah, I'd rather be in the evergreen, evergreen gotta camp, you know, to the degree that I can be. Ian: Definitely. Yeah. Rob: Yeah. Well, look, Ian, this has been so good. So, there's... you shared a wealth of stuff with us. If listeners just took one nugget or piece of advice away, what would that be? Ian: So difficult to say one thing, but it's really to press that button, to just go live. Obviously, plan and prepare and do all that kind of stuff, but don't procrastinate. You know, because I've been there. It took me, like, probably one or two years to actually get round to producing my own live show. Don't be like me. Just do it. And now is a really good time to do it, because so many more people are doing it. And so, yeah. That's what I'd say to people. Rob: Just get it done. So, maybe, pick a date, pick a time, tell your network that it's happening, and just get out there and do it, perhaps. Ian: Absolutely. Rob: Yeah. Awesome. Ian, as I said, it's been great. Where's the best place for people to get more from you? Ian: So, the best place is my website. I've got loads of guides on how to improve your confidence. I've got tech guides and things like that. And I've also got my podcast, it's, "The Confident Live Marketing Podcast" which can be found, my website is iag.me, and my podcast is at iag.me/podcast. Rob: Ian, I just wanna say thank you. This has been great. Loads of fantastic information for people. I do appreciate it. Thank you so much. Ian: Thanks Rob, it's been great to be on.

Email marketing is STILL the most powerful online marketing channel but ONLY if our emails are getting read and step 1 in that is getting them delivered... Adrian Savage is an expert in email deliverability, founder of Deliverability Dashboard and all about helping you avoid the Spam folder and win the email race to the Inbox. Including: What is ‘deliverability' - what does it mean? What's an average open rate? We're never going to get 100% of email subscribers opening so what's possible? How important your email platform is - and the one platform Adrian 'wouldn't touch with a bargepole' If our deliverability is poor, is that a good reason to move platforms? What happens if we do nothing? How long until we can expect results from our deliverability activities? TRANSCRIPT: Rob Tyson: Welcome back. This is Rob Tyson here and in the last episode, I talked to Dave Plunkett about how to run a partner program for lead generation. So do catch up on that show if you missed it, but I'm here today with Adrian Savage. Now, Adrian is an expert in email deliverability. He's the founder and the creator of Deliverability Dashboard. And he is all about helping you to avoid the spam folder and win the email race to the inbox. And this is really important because we'll talk about this but I think email marketing is still the most powerful online marketing channel but only, of course, if our emails are getting read and the first step in them getting read is them actually getting delivered. So I can't wait to pick Adrian's brains on all that. But before we welcome Adrian and get into all that good stuff, if you're listening to this show, chances are good you have professional expertise you'd like to monetize with an online business or an online component, perhaps, that breaks the time for money link. And if that's the case, I'd like to invite you. I have a free web class that's gonna explain why the ‘ascension model' or ‘value ladder' you've probably heard quite a bit about is actually a really bad approach for most people in your position, and exactly what you should do right now instead if you'd like to generate real cash flow quickly and finally get on the right track with monetizing your expertise online. So all that is free. All you need to do is pop along to robtyson.net/class for the details. That is robtyson.net/class. So as I said, I'm here with Adrian savage. Adrian, welcome. Good to see you. Adrian Savage: Hi, Rob. Thanks for inviting me. Rob: You are most welcome. And I think this is a really interesting and valuable topic for people. So what's your background briefly? How did you get into this rarefied area of email deliverability in the first place? Adrian: It has been quite a journey. I won't go all the way back to when I was 7 because that was when I became a geek because my dad bought an Apple II computer home and it was muggins here who taught him how to use it. I went down a very kind of traditional, academic, corporate career until about 9 or 10 years ago. My ex-wife moved to the other end of the country with my kids. So I went from seeing them a couple of times a week to every third weekend, and that was my big catalyst to get out of corporate life. I took my IT geekery and combined that with sales and marketing, and I got into the marketing automation space. And then I started to get clients who were having problems getting their emails into the inboxes of their clients and their audiences. So I first created some software to help with that because going back a few years, there was a lot more of an impact on where your emails were being sent from. So that was my first foray into email deliverability. And since then I've kept half an eye on that. And then for the last 12 months or so, since there's been some really big changes to how email inbox placement works, then I've had some very clear messages from the world that my expertise is needed. So I'm now focusing, maybe not quite 100%, maybe 99% on that. I still got a few other little things in this space that I'm working on. But most of what I'm doing now is just helping people get their emails delivered better, creating software that helps them do that, and just sharing the message as much as I can. Rob: And what is deliverability in the email context? How do you define that word? Adrian: So there is a lot of misunderstanding because sometimes people talk about delivery, sometimes people talk about deliverability. And they are two very distinctive things. The first thing is when you are sending an email or when your email marketing system is sending an email, then the job that the technology has is just to get it as far as the recipient's email server. So let's supposing that I use Google and you use Hotmail, then if I'm gonna send you an email, then my Google server has got to connect to Hotmail and say, "Here is the email." And as long as Hotmail say, "Yes, thank you. I have received it," then the delivery has been made. So that's just like a postman posting the letter through the letterbox. The problem is you don't know if there's a dog waiting on the side of that mailbox to chew the thing up and run away and it never gets opened by the person who was meant to get it. And deliverability is that part of it. It's once it's been accepted by Hotmail or Gmail or whoever, are they gonna put it into the inbox or is it gonna end up in the spam folder or the promotions tab or, heaven forbid, are they just gonna throw it in the garbage and it doesn't even get as far as spam, which can happen. And that is the deliverability part. And that is based on a lot more than just where it came from. And that's what we'll talk about today. But that's the key difference. You know, if you're using something like ActiveCampaign or Mailchimp, their job is to get it to the recipient's server. And they will do a very good job on that most of the time. But then what happens after that, that's where it gets interesting. Rob: And we would gauge this how, with open rates, right? I mean... Adrian: Yeah. It's a real challenge because you can't measure deliverability because, you know, we've got no idea. If someone hasn't opened the email, is it because they didn't care about it? Is it because they were too busy? Or is it because Google or Hotmail or whoever, bless them, decided not to put it in the inbox in the first place? So you're quite right. We can infer things through the open rates, and we can look at trends and things like that. And there are some testing tools out there that claim to be able to tell you whether you're hitting the inbox or not, but even those have got their limits. So it is very difficult indeed. And, you know, this is harder than SEO. With SEO, at least you can see where you are on the search rankings. There's as many different factors to get into the inbox as there are for getting to be number one on Google these days. But it is a much more of a kind of weird thing because you can't see what your results are. You've just got to infer it as in terms of are more people opening our emails or fewer people opening them? Rob: And with that caveat, I mean, what is an average open rate? I mean, I know it varies wildly, doesn't it? But... Adrian: Totally. It is an interesting one because, you know, we're talking a lot in this podcast about how to double your open rate. And, you know, a joke that I often make is that I can double anyone's open rates in seconds. And the way I will do that is I will remove half of the people from their email list who haven't opened anything for a while, and then the next time you send out an email blast, guess what, then if the same number of people opened as last time, then the open rate is doubled. So, it is a very subjective term because it depends on lots of factors. It depends on how engaged your audience is at the moment. It depends...then there is the content. There's the type of business you're in. But what I would say is that I've got clients that have messed things up to the point where they're getting a 0.2% open rate with Google, because they have upset Google to that point. I've got typical clients, maybe starting with a 10% to 20% open rate. And that's, you know, just that's what they've been getting without getting any advice from me without using any of my software or anything. If people are managing their engagement well, and they're doing everything they can, then you could expect maybe 35%, 36%, 37% open rates. That's the kind of amount that I'm getting typically with my mailing list when I'm managing the engagement. And then the other side of it is just well, how many people...or if a new person signs up to your mailing list, what is the likelihood of them opening something as well? So a good barometer is what percentage of new contacts are opening something from me? And if you're managing things well, then I've got clients where 80% of their new signups will open an email from them at some point in the first few weeks. So, you know, there are lots of different ways to measure it. But if you just look at the pure open rate, I would say that you can consider yourself to be doing well, if you're getting more than 30% opens. Rob: Okay, so most of us, you know, a bit of room for improvement there. Adrian: Definitely. Rob: For sure. And we will be using some kind of email software provider so it may be ActiveCampaign, AWeber, Infusionsoft, whatever it may be. Are some of these software providers just better for this than others? And if so, who? Adrian: It's a very interesting one because you can go to any Facebook group or mailing list or discussion forum about any of these platforms, and you can be guaranteed there will always be people complaining about deliverability and saying that emails aren't getting through, they will be blaming the platform. And now if someone's blaming Infusionsoft, then you can take the word Infusionsoft out, put ActiveCampaign in and someone else will be saying the same thing. So it's perception-based, very subjective. But in reality, these days, every single one of these email platforms has a very devoted, dedicated email compliance team, making sure they're not on blacklists, making sure they're getting a good 99-point-something percent delivery rate to the other servers. In some cases, the reputation of the system sending it has a small impact. But I can be absolutely certain and say that if you switch from one provider to another, then you are gonna experience a drop in your open rate regardless of where you're moving from and to. And the reason for that is because one of the reasons that you will suffer from poor open rates is if you do something that looks like a spammer. And guess what spammers do. They move from one platform to the next, to the next. So anytime Google or Microsoft or any of the big players see that you've moved platforms, they will instantly think, "Hang on, there's something going on here." And it might be that things recover again. But you will always have a dip to start with. And it's unlikely that you're gonna do much better than you did before because you've got to build everything up again. So I would say that in terms of how good the platforms are at getting their emails delivered, they're all pretty good. They all have the occasional problem. But it's not a reason to switch platforms. What I would tend to... When I recommend an email platform, comparing one to another, what I will look at is how easy is it to manage the various parameters that will help you to improve your deliverability. And the big thing that I'll talk about later with that is engagement. Because if you can't easily identify the people who are and are not opening your emails, then it's gonna be more difficult to send the right things to the right people at the right time. So, no, I won't call many platforms out for being good because there's lots of good ones, but ConvertKit is one that goes on my real kind of do not touch with a bargepole list, because they have a very, very kind of very poor way of measuring and managing engagement. And you can't even download the data to use from third-party tools. So all the email deliverability tools and software that I've written, I can't even connect that up to ConvertKit because they don't make that data available. Now I'm hoping that's gonna change. So maybe, you know, if people listen to this a few months down the line, maybe that's changed. But the biggest thing that matters to me is: how easy is it to manage the engagement? And most of the platforms are okay. Infusionsoft as an example is really good. ActiveCampaign, you have to jump through a few hoops. And to do a real good job, then you need to use my software to make it easier. But it does depend very much and I'd say, you know, because there are so many different platforms out there, then, you know, if you're choosing one at the start, then engagement management is one of the important things. If you're already using a platform, though, it's not a reason to switch as long as everything else is okay. Rob: Now, that's good. Well, I can speak from bitter experience here, because I actually moved from AWeber, which I'd used for many years, to ActiveCampaign, which I really like, by the way. I like ActiveCampaign, but when I did that, I wasn't aware that you could fall foul of this. Adrian: Absolutely. Rob: And I took a real hit early on. You know, it just wasn't the same and it took some time to get over that. So is there any way if we are moving platforms for some reason, is there any way to manage that process better than I did? Adrian: Yeah, totally. And the other thing is all about who you move across first because as I've already mentioned, it's all about who is engaging with you at the moment, and are you only mailing those. So if you can identify who has opened something from you in the last 30 days, and when you move to a new platform, send emails to those people first. Because that way then you build up a good reputation with your new platform because they want to see that you're a good sender. And at the same time, you're still getting a reasonable open rate. And that helps your domain sending reputation with people like Google, Microsoft, because one of the things they're doing now is they are crowdsourcing your reputation based on which of... Let's supposing that you've got 10,000 people on your mailing list, on average, half of those will be on Google. So Google will look at those 5000 people and say, "Right, how many of those people are opening Adrian's emails right now?" And if it's only 5%, 10%, then Adrian gets a poor domain reputation score from Google. If I'm getting 30%, 40% then I'm getting a good engagement reputation. So it's very much around understanding what they're looking for and just as much as you can, stack the odds in your favor by only starting with the most engaged people, then you can start to go further back. But it is like the law of diminishing returns. The longer it is since someone has opened something from you, the less likely they are to ever open anything ever again. Rob: Yeah, sure. And what happens if we do nothing? You know, if we don't do anything about deliverability these days, I mean, what is that gonna look like for us? Adrian: Oh, it's not a very good picture. Because the thing that people, a lot of people still don't get is how much the email landscape has changed. Because if you wind the clock back to those wonderful years, 10 years ago, you could build up a big list, you know, get as many people onto it, then you basically spam the crap out of them, email them as much as you like. And then you keep emailing until they buy, until they die, or until they unsubscribe. And that was, you know, that was how everyone did it. And that's how people still do it today in some cases. But if they do that now and just keep emailing, keep emailing, then you will see a very, very continuous constant reduction in the number of people opening your emails. Because typically I'm seeing about 10% of your audience disengages on a monthly basis. And that's the law of averages. Sometimes people, you know, they turn off their mail address, they might change jobs, they might lose interest, whatever it is, then, you know, you are typically gonna lose 10% of your audience through disengagement and apathy and everything else on a monthly basis. So, you know, you don't need to be a genius mathematician to work out that as time goes on, then you are gonna get fewer and fewer people opening. Now obviously, if you've got a good lead generation in place, and you're refilling the hopper from the top all the time, you might not notice as much. But if you're literally getting no new leads, and just keep emailing the old list time and time again, then you will see things decline. And that's one of the reasons that people say that email is dying when actually it's not. It's just people aren't necessarily getting enough leads and managing their engagement. Rob: Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So these four steps, talk to us about those. Adrian: Okay, so very, very simple. The first thing you want to do is you wanna protect your reputation. And the way you do that is you scrub your email list, you make sure there are no spam traps on there, you make sure that there's no dead addresses that your email marketing platform hasn't picked up on. Make sure that there's, you know, you're not sending too many emails to role accounts like sales@, or info@ and that kind of thing. And scrubbing the list will find all those different bad email addresses. And then you can choose. In most cases, what you'd do is you would stop emailing all of the addresses that have been identified as bad. And that's just a good way of making sure that you're not hitting spam traps. I haven't got time to go into the detail about spam traps, but the simple version is they are email addresses that have been created either to catch people scraping stuff off the internet, which I'm sure no one listening to this would ever do. Or alternatively, people who aren't keeping their list clean because if an email address stops working, then it will bounce for a while, but then they will reactivate that address as a spam trap. And if you're still emailing that address afterwards, then you go on to the bad boys' list as well. So scrubbing the list helps avoid that, helps keep your reputation clean, and it doesn't cost a huge amount of money. The list scrubbing services will typically say you should do this every three months. But they would, wouldn't they? Because they get the money out of it. But I would say that if you've never done it ever, then you should, and it probably makes sense to do it periodically, maybe once a year, maybe more frequently than that if you keep turning up more problems when you do scrub the list, but definitely worth doing. Rob: So you would use...you would go to a specialist or use a specialist piece of software for this because there are tools built-in with, you know, ActiveCampaign, for example, where it will imply that it's gonna help you clean up the list. Adrian: Yeah, absolutely. Rob: In fact, it may even be called list clean up. So are you saying that's not really adequate or...? Adrian: It doesn't get rid of the nasties. It will certainly help you find the addresses that might have disengaged or might no longer work or anything like that. But if it is an actual toxic address that gonna cause you problems if you mail it, then it's very difficult for the email providers to help you identify that. So yeah, third-party tools that do that will do the job. And it's one of the things that I've actually added to my... I don't have any list scrubbing software myself, but my email deliverability utilities that I've got. I've got a free integration that helps you scrub your list in place on the platform, because normally, you have to download the list to a CSV file, upload it to the scrubbing service, scrub the list, download the result, upload it into your email platform, and it's a right faff when you do that. So I've written a little tool that actually integrates with that and you just literally press a button, and it will either scrub your entire list or a particular segment and then it applies a tag with the results. You decide what to do. So nice and simple. And I'll share more details about that when we get to the end bit. Rob: Good stuff. So that was step one. So basically scrubbing the list is step one. Adrian: Yeah, absolutely. So second step, then, so scrubbing the list is one of the ways to help your reputation. The next thing that matters massively is authentication. And this is about making sure that firstly, you're telling the world who you trust to send emails on your behalf, and secondly, making sure that your emails are being digitally signed by you. So the first thing is called SPF, which stands for Sender Policy Framework. And this tells the world which email systems you trust. So let's supposing that you're using G Suite for your business emails, and then you're using ActiveCampaign for your marketing emails, then you have one...you only have one SPF record. And in the SPF record, it would say that you trust Google and Active campaigns. So that way then when those emails come from those providers, the recipients will check that against your SPF record, and they'll see a big tick in the box if they come from the right place. If someone else has then sent it elsewhere, and they're trying to forge your email, then that gets treated with suspicion obviously. But spammers don't use SPF. So that's one reason to set that up. It's just one way of showing that you're legitimate. So that's nice and simple. And again, most email platforms, I think almost all of them, you might have to dig around sometimes, but they will give you the details as to how to set SPF up for those platforms. Then the second part of it is called DKIM. So, Domain Keys Identified Mail. Again, I'm gonna kind of call out ConvertKit as giving bad advice here, actually, because they say that you should only set up DKIM if you've got more than 50,000 emails a month going out, which is not strictly true. As long as you have got a good sending reputation, you should always set up DKIM, because Google, in particular, will use that digital signature that gets attached to every single email, as a way of proving that it was from you, proving it was legitimate. And if it's been DKIM-signed, then it means that, "No, it can't have been forged." So again, most email platforms, even ConvertKit, will do that for you, you just have to make a bit of a fuss. But, you know, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, Infusionsoft, you know, the list goes on, they will allow you to set this up. It might be called email authentication, it might be called DKIM, it might be digitally signing, but dig around, you can find it, very, very important to do that. Rob: Okay. All right. So that's step two, those two? Adrian: Yeah, absolutely. I will quickly mention DMARC, which is the third authentication method, which again, is worth doing. But you have to be very careful with DMARC. And make sure whoever sets it up for you knows what they're doing. Because DMARC will tell the recipients to reject and throw emails in the bin, not even the spam folder, if it's not set up right. So be very careful with that. But if you've got a properly set up DMARC record, that is another indicator that you're legitimate, but be careful with that. You know, DKIM you can't get wrong. It either works or nothing happens. SPF, you know, it's not the end of the world if you get that wrong, but, you know, you should make sure it's correct. But if you get DMARC wrong, your emails will suddenly stop going. So be very careful there. Rob: Okay. Proceed with a bit of care? Adrian: Definitely. Rob: Good stuff. So we've talked about scrubbing the list, we've talked about authentication, the third step? Adrian: Okay, so the third thing is about whitelisting. And this is really, really important. Because normally, you are completely at the whim of Google. You're at the whim of Microsoft. Whichever your email provider is, they are gonna decide which emails they show to you and which ones they don't. And whitelisting is a way of forcing them to show the emails that you tell them that you want to see. So as an email marketer, you want to be sharing these whitelisting instructions with your audience. And it's a bit pointless doing it by email because if the emails aren't getting through, they won't do it. So it means that when someone signs up for your list, the first thing you have to show them on your thank you page is how to whitelist you. And this depends very much on the platform that they use. Now the really clever solution is to actually detect what platform they're using and show them personalized whitelisting instructions. So if they're using G Suite or Gmail, you can tell them how to set up a filter to always bypass the spam folder. If they're using Hotmail, or Office 365 or something like that, then you can show them different instructions. And there's ways of actually developing custom code that goes on to the thank you page that can do that. I've done that for a few clients. I've done that on one of my own signup pages, I do that. But if that sounds like too much work, you can also get your own custom whitelisting instructions generated that will just show all of the different platforms on there and how to whitelist you. And if you go to a website and the address is simply whitelist.guru, I'll just repeat that, whitelist.guru, then there's a guy called Chris Lang, who has created a do-it-yourself whitelisting instruction generator. You put your name, your brand, your email address in there, press a button, and it will give you a nice pretty HTML page with your personalized instructions on that you can copy, save, put in your thank you page, off you go. So, very important... Rob: That's handy. Adrian: It's very useful. Bear in mind that not everyone will follow those instructions. But even if 10% of them do, then you're doing yourself a favor. And if people complain, they're not getting your emails ever, then those are the instructions they need to see. Rob: Okay, so that was whitelisting Adrian: Yep. So that leaves us one final step. Now, this is a little bit tenuous, because it isn't just one step. This is more about change your mindset forever. Because as soon as you stop doing this, then this goes back to when we talked about what happens if you do nothing. And this is all about managing your engagement, making sure that you are only sending emails to the people that have opened from you most recently. And if you find people that haven't opened for a while, then you need to maybe send them a reengagement campaign that I'll talk about in a sec. And if they still haven't engaged at that point, then basically, you get rid of them off your list. You're gonna be very ruthless with the way that you manage engagements. Because, you know, as I said earlier on, if only 5% of your audience is opening something, Google and Microsoft and Yahoo will think that you're, you know, sending out complete and utter garbage and they will start putting your emails into the promotions, into the spam, into the junk and so on. So it's important that you are maximizing the chances of people opening your emails by only sending your emails to the people that have recently opened something. And one of the biggest questions that I get asked is, "Well, how far back should I go?" And it depends very much on whether you've got a problem or not. If you haven't got a problem, then my typical rule of thumb is to send emails to people that have opened something within the last 90 days. If you've got a problem, you might need to dial that back a bit or if you want to have a really super-engaged list, then you need to dial that back to 30 days. And sometimes you're gonna have kind of a two or three-tier strategy here. So you might say that people who have opened something in the last 30 days, I'm gonna send them everything. I'll send them maybe two, maybe even three emails a week. If they've opened something between 30 and 90 days, then maybe I'll send something every week or two. If they've opened something beyond 90 days, then ideally, you would just put them through a re-engagement campaign when they reach 90 days of no engagement. And if they ignore that, delete them. Some people will still send the occasional reminder to those people. I would say if it's more than a year, never send them. But maybe between 90 days and a year, then maybe send something every month or two just to give them another chance. You know, the law of averages says that the longer since someone opened something, the less likely they are to open anything. And the other thing to look at as well is we talked briefly about new contacts and the likelihood of them opening something. If someone signs up for your lead magnet, and then they haven't opened anything from you within the first 7 to 14 days, the chances are, they will never ever, ever open anything. Again, they're just gonna be there hurting your sending reputation. So another thing that I recommend is if you've got a process in place for your new contacts, then maybe put something in where when it reaches two weeks, and they haven't opened anything from you, maybe put them through a little reminder. And then again, if there's no engagement, get rid of them. Because, you know, let's face it, if someone signs up for your freebie, and they won't even open that, the chances are they're never gonna be interested in anything else as well. So, you know, that is the main thing. It can be a very arduous task, managing your engagement, but the dividends that it pays off are massive. That is what will make the biggest difference. And even though you will see that you are mailing fewer people, then the open rate will go up very quickly. You know, I know that what we've talked about in the past is how long does it take before you see results. And I would say typically, it can take between one and three months for you to get really good results. When I've been working with, you know, some of my private clients, I had one that came in. They are on a just under a 12% open rate, and within three months, then their open rates had reached 25%. And even though they were mailing fewer people, the actual number of people opening the emails had gone up. So obviously, the number of people hadn't doubled, but it had certainly gone up a bit from when it was 11%, 12%. So, you know, it can take a few months, but as long as you are consistent, then that's what works. And the little tale of woe that I will share is don't let the fear get to you. Don't let the fear of loss and the fear of letting go. Because that same client the month after sent a bunch of email broadcasts to their entire list again without managing the engagement. And within two days, Google had downgraded their reputation and their open rate fell through the floor. It took another month to get that back. So you have gotta keep your nerve. And you gotta be very consistent with this. But the more you do that, the better you'll be rewarded. Rob: Wow. So were those really old people, you just feel it's just not worth having them on the list at all? You know, the chance... Adrian: No. Absolutely not. Because typically, if you send an email broadcast, just the people that have opened more than 90 days ago, you will get maybe a 2%, 3% open rate if you're lucky. But if you keep mailing those people that don't open, the chances are that you'll get 10% fewer people seeing your email in the first place. So it becomes a very simple trade-off that yes, you might get a few more opens, but fewer people long term will see those emails. Obviously, just because they're not opening the emails, doesn't mean you can't use those addresses for Facebook, custom audiences and retargeting, and things like that. So there's still a value in that data. It's just that you shouldn't really email them, you know, very often if at all. Rob: And, I mean, I suppose there's a bit of value in, you know, you could go to the lengths with if we call those people kinda dead subscribers, inactive subscribers, I suppose you could have a crack at... You know, if you had a large number of these, you could maybe take them to another platform and, you know, try send or two to them from different platforms. Adrian: It's interesting you say that because typically, you know, particularly now, Google and their machine learning is clever than all of us put together. And unless you can send a separate email from a separate domain with absolutely no connection to anything else that you've got, then it will probably be linked back to you somehow and your campaign sending reputation will still take a hit. So it doesn't really matter whether you do it from your current mail platform or a different one, it is more just about making sure that your overall engagement still stays high. So, you know, if you are gonna try and send re-engagement emails to the older inactive contacts, make sure you're sending lots of good stuff to the people that are opening so that the kind of the poor performance is slightly more lost in the noise. And that's why I said, you know, having this kind of two or three-tiered process where you're sending the most content to the people that are engaging the most. And that helps you then because at least then you've got a good reputation to start with. And if you are sending to the inactive people, then it's not gonna drag you down as much as if you're doing that regularly. Rob: It's nice, great. And I suppose the good news is that to a large extent, we should be able to automate a lot of this process, the reactivation process, that kinda thing? Adrian: Yes, a lot of the email platforms have some level of that. Again, they'll kinda help you do maybe, you know, it's the 80/20 rule all over again. They'll help you do kind of the 20% that has 80% of the impact, but you can always do it slightly better. That's one of the reasons that one of the best software that I wrote actually makes it easier to do that. Because sometimes, you know, I'll use both ActiveCampaign and Infusionsoft are good examples of this, is that they will give you, you know, enough to do a semi-decent job. But if you wanna really get down into the weeds in this and say, "Right, I'll have different strategies for 30 days versus 90 days versus more than 90 days," then it requires a lot of hard work and manual reporting. So sometimes the software that I've got makes that easier. But, you know, there's always a level of it that you can automate. Rob: Okay, no, great. Really, really helpful. So to wrap up, then, if listeners only took one nugget or piece of advice away, what should that be? Adrian: If I was gonna choose one thing out of that, obviously, all four are important. But I think, you know, managing...assuming that you haven't bought a list or something horrific like that, managing your engagement on an ongoing basis is the most effective way of keeping things healthy. Because that way then, assuming that spam traps and things like that don't open your emails, which most of them don't, then as long as you stop sending emails to people that aren't opening, then that will keep things clean, it'll keep your domain reputation up, and, you know, it will mean that as time goes on, then more people will see your email. So engagement, engagement, engagement. That's the key one. Rob: Excellent. Where's the best place, Adrian, if people wanna get more from you? Where should they go? Where can they check you out? Adrian: Nice and simple. So the first thing, I've got a free email health check service. And that works with most email marketing platforms. I'm adding more all the time. So right now if you've got Infusionsoft, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Sendinblue, Constant Contact, then it already works with those and I'm adding others in. And that will just give you a nice simple score between 0 and 100 telling you how well you're managing your engagement right now, give you some hints and tips to improve that. And to get that you can go to emailhealthcheck.net and just sign up. If you're not using those platforms, then sign up there anyway and you can get added to my list. I'm always sending out blog posts and hints and tips, things like that. And also you can find me on Facebook, facebook.com/adriansavage. Connect with me there. I'm always happy to point people in the right direction if they need any help. Rob: That is excellent. And I can vouch for Adrian, because you helped me... I think we had a look at some of my stuff with your software and very enlightening it was too and I've began to do some of the things that you recommended. Adrian: Excellent. Rob: There we go. Good stuff. Well, Adrian, this has been really valuable. So just to say thank you. This has been really helpful. Adrian: And I've really enjoyed it. And thank you very much for inviting me onto the podcast. Rob: You are very welcome. And I will talk to you soon. Adrian: Great stuff. Thanks, Rob. Rob: Hey, it's Rob, again. Want to build a successful online business from your expertise? Well, the game has changed. There are bigger opportunities, but also bigger pitfalls than ever before. And I would hate for you to waste years figuring these things out for yourself. Now as a listener to this show, you're obviously a sensible person, right? So here's my invitation to you. Apply to jump on a call with me in the next few days and let's talk about you. You will get feedback on your ideas. You will get a product concept that is fit for right now and you will get a personalized sales and income plan to take away. That is free but availability is limited. So please go along right now to chatwithrob.com. That is, chatwithrob.com. Do that now. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Once again, that is chatwithrob.com. Talk to you soon.

RDSP (H1) Rob: We're talking about RDSPs today, Registered Disability Savings Plan. I'm Rob Tétrault from robtetrault.com. Head of the Tétrault Wealth Advisor Group here at Canaccord Genuity Wealth Management. Today we're here with Adam Buss, Wealth and Estate Planning Specialist here at Canaccord Genuity, to talk about the RDSP. The RDSP, so where do we begin? Adam: Well, it is specifically designed for those who qualify for the DTC, the disability tax credit. We do have another video on the disability tax credit, so please click and enjoy that one as well. But the RDSP is a savings plan to basically save for the financial future. For somebody who has a qualified disability,  it's a plan the government throws a pile of free money towards. So comparable to the RRSP and the RESP, because we love acronyms, we're going to throw all those out. But  basically, the contributions that you make towards this plan are not tax deductible. For example, you put $1,000 in, you don't get a tax receipt, unlike the RRSP's case. It's a bit like the RESP in that way. The government does throw in some matching grants on that, which can be quite favorable depending on your income level. Rob: Let's talk about those grants. Could I open an RDSP in theory, for a beneficiary, I would imagine? Adam: Yeah, maybe a parent opening one for a child who's a beneficiary, or an individual who has a qualified disability opening one for themselves. Rob: Okay, and then there's grants for the first $3,500, there are matching grants. So basically 300% for the first 500 dollars. Adam: You bet. 300% return on your first $500 of contribution. Rob: That means you're getting $1,500 not bad, 200% on the next thousand, that's another $2000. And then 100% for the last thousand. That is a lot of grants. There is a lot of grant money coming out and there's some family income rules with respect to that. You must be making less than $93,000 per year.  Adam: That's to qualify for those grants. Anything above that income level I'm pretty sure it's 100% matching only, which dollar for dollar on the first thousand dollars is still a pretty good deal. Rob: It's a pretty good return. That's not bad. Most portfolio managers would be thrilled with that return. Let's talk about the bonds themselves. I understand there could be even more money thrown at you if you make less than another threshold. Adam: Yeah. If a family has a lower income level, you can get additional bonds that are thrown into the account even without you having to put a dollar in. I think it's $1,000 per year up to a maximum of $20,000. Rob: Wow, that's very, very good. Okay, now we open this account. Maybe I had the DTC now for five years. Can I go back?  Adam: You can. Absolutely. Let's say for a couple of years, maybe you're in low income, you can't afford to put a lot of money into there. And you come into some money or you get a gift at some point and you can put a large amount in and make up for some of those unused years of room. You can get a big pile of grant money in one lump sum and carry forward up to 10 years. Rob: Okay. Now the DAP, the disability assistant payment, that's for age 60 and beyond. And then would that be taxable on the way out? Adam: Any money that you put into the plan you can take out tax free. It's your money. Any money that the government put in, or growth on the account, is all taxable when the money comes out essentially. It does provide you with an income for your retirement time. Rob: That's very similar to the RESP. Very similar in that regard for the grant and the growth are taxable in the individual who pulls it out in their name. Now, I guess the idea here for planning wise is that one, you're getting a ton of money upfront from the government. Two, It's growing tax free inside the account. That's a big part, right? You're not paying tax on the income that's being generated inside the RDSP. And I guess finally in theory, as you're withdrawing this money, you could potentially be in a lower tax bracket at that age, you've had all those years of deferred growth. Adam: Yeah, generally, maybe some individuals with a qualified disability don't have the same potential of earnings throughout their lifetime, but their family wants to make sure that they have the money come retirement to look after themselves. This is a great way to try to protect their benefits that they're receiving from the government on a regular basis, which is why all that income is sheltered within the plan. Rob: If you get started early here, I could just see these accounts could get fairly large. I would imagine. Adam: Which is probably why the government did put a cap on the contribution limit of, I think it's $200,000 for a lifetime contribution and up to $70,000 of grant money. Rob: Right. And the contributions, you can make them up until you're 59 and no more grants after you're 49. Adam: Yeah, you don't have to weigh the pros and cons. Does it make sense to put money in past the age of 49 or not, as you aren't getting any free government money? There are situations where it does make sense. Rob: Yeah, you're putting $2,500 and you're getting $3,500 in matching. That's pretty neat. Now do they count, do they affect any future government sponsored benefits? Adam: Typically not. I mean, every province does set their own rules as to what qualifies and what doesn't qualify as income for reducing the government benefits. But the idea behind it is hopefully that it doesn't affect your government benefits. Always recommend checking with your provincial governing body. Rob: Now they talk about bonds. Does that mean that in the investment account you have to have bonds or could you put whatever you want in that investment account? Adam: Now you have a few more investment options. It's not an actual bond. It's basically just a gift of money that the government's giving, but you do have a lot of investment options at your disposal. Rob: You open an RDSP, you can put effectively stocks, bonds, debentures, preferred shares, alternatives, equities, ETFs, mutual funds. You could put whatever you want in that portfolio. Adam: There's a certain limitation. There's a few providers out there that don't provide services for RDSPs. But the best place to get the answers is to come to Rob Tétrault and figure out what is the investment options that are available for your RDSP account. Rob: And to do that, you'd go to www.speaktorob.com, to book a no obligation free consultation. Adam, it's been a pleasure, a real pleasure chatting with you today about the registered disability savings plan.

HEB | HEPP Pensions   Rob: If you're a healthcare provider in Manitoba, this is for you. I'm Rob Tétrault, Head of the Tétrault Wealth Advisory Group from robtetrault.com, here at Canaccord Genuity Wealth Management. I'm here with Adam Buss here at Canaccord Genuity Wealth Management. Adam, thanks for coming today.   Adam: Thanks for having me, Rob.   Rob: You are the pension expert, so I'm super thrilled to have you here. You've seen a ton of these. We're going to have a good time today talking about these Manitoba health care provider pensions. All right Adam, first of all – HEB and HEPP. A bit of a tongue twister.   Adam: It certainly is. And I would view those as rather interchangeable.   Rob: Yeah?   Adam: A lot of people deal with the HEB, the health care employees' benefit side on a regular basis. The one that we often work with is HEPP, which is health employees' pension plan. It really comes from the exact same place, but we're actually dealing with the pension plan side of the business majority of the time.   Rob: Okay. So these are health care employees in Manitoba. They have a pension. What kind of pension do they have?   Adam: This is a defined benefit pension plan. So there's two different types of plans out there, a defined contribution plan where you put the money in and choose kind of the investments that you want to deal with. And there is a defined benefit, which is you still have to contribute, but it results in a, you know, a guaranteed payment stream for the rest of your life, which is what this is a defined benefit.   Rob: Okay. So with respect to these pensions, how are they calculated? I mean, I know that t's probably a tough question, but I assume there's a formula with respect to years of service income.   Adam: Yeah. So it's years of service. It's generally your best five years. Some plans are the best 10 years of your income, multiplied by a pension factor. In this case the health employees' pension plan is a 1.5% up to YMPE and I know you're going to ask what is YMPE...,   Rob: That's the song, right? Where they go …   Adam: It's not the YMCA song, but they do get confused rather often. YMPE is yearly maximum pensionable earnings.   Rob: Okay.   Adam: That is basically the number is to what level of earnings do you pay Canada pension plan premiums on?   Rob: Okay. Okay. Right now, that would be…?   Adam: $57,400 I think is the magic number this year. It does change every year. So based on your pension, the health employees' pension plan is a lesser amount up to that. And then over that amount, it's a 2% factor.   Rob: Once we get one and a half of the first $56 K and 2% above that.   Adam: Exactly.   Rob: And that's your factor. That's multiplied by your years of service   Adam: Correct, you do years of service, times the average pensionable income and that equals your guaranteed payment stream for life. There's added complexities. When you get your pension options, it's going to be 10 different options. Okay, well what happens if you choose a guaranteed survivor option, you know, 100% or a single life or a 66% to survivor or you want, you know, a 10 year guarantee period. All of these different options effect that number as to what is going to be in it.   There's probably a baseline and then they adjust, whether or not you're guaranteeing it or you're not.   If you did the simple math, that's called a straight life, which is basically just for one person saying, okay, this is your payment stream guaranteed for the rest of your life. If you want to add the bonus aspects of leaving money for a surviving spouse or in a state for the beneficiaries, that's where that number starts to go down a little bit.   Rob: Okay. Now, if I'm an employee, how do I know when I can retire? Is there a formula for like a magic number or something like that?   Adam: Yeah, most of these plans do have a magic 80, which should be once your years of service plus your age equals the total number of 80. That's when you generally can retire without an unreduced pension. Some plans also have a minimum age of 55 years, which is when you're allowed to start drawing from your pension. Every plan is slightly different, but we certainly want to a work with our clients to identify what that looks like.   Rob: Okay. Let's say I'm retiring in a year or two. And I'm a little stressed about these options. What should I do, and how do I know what option is for me? And is there are another option.   Adam: There certainly are many options. All we do with our clients is we work with our them to pick A, the best option, which isn't necessarily A, but it's trying to determine what is the best option on their pension for what their needs are. Hopefully you're coming to us to kind of navigate what some of those options are. There is also the option of taking a commuted value for your pension.   Rob: Now that's interesting.   Adam: Yeah. So commuted value is the lump sum of money behind the scenes that is being exchanged for that guaranteed payment for the rest of your life. So, Rob, you have the option of transferring that commuted value out of the pension plan into your own investment choices. And then you get to pick as to how that money's invested. When do you want to draw from it? Do you want to take more upfront in more and less than the later years, you have a lot more options available to you and it's guaranteed to leave any money that's left to your beneficiaries.   Rob: Basically, you own those assets.   Adam: You own that money, not the pension plan.   Rob: So contrary to, you know, you contribute to this pension, take the money out, you give it to them, they give you a stream forever. If here you say, give me my assets, I will put them in a locked in retirement account and maybe I can roll some of that to an RRSP and then that becomes my assets. Those are my assets, my pension. I can have quite a bit of flexibility on it because I can draw more or less. But more importantly, the big one is, it's in my name. If I pass my estate gets it, my spouse gets it, it goes onto my beneficiaries. Full Blog Article and Video on Pension Tax Credit    Adam: That is often the number one thing when we meet with clients is their goal is they want to make sure the bulk of that pension that they worked so hard for their entire career actually goes to their family if they pass away.   Rob: Yeah.   Adam: Right. Instead of that guaranteed payment stream, it's making sure that 100% of whatever money is left goes to what's most important. Their families.   Rob: Makes a ton of sense. Talk to me really quick about the bridge benefit.   Adam: Some pensions do have a bridge benefit, which gives you a little bit extra money prior to age 65 which is to bridge you until you start your Canada pension plan or your old age security. So it gives you a slightly higher pension until that point in time and then it drops your pension. But then your CPP and your old age security kick in, which boost up your income back to where it should be.   Rob: It's an advantage.   Adam: It is an advantage, right? It's extra money that you're getting to try to smooth out your income throughout retirement.   Rob: Okay. And what about cost of living adjustments? Are there any for costs of living.   Adam: When it comes to that, the HEPP pension plan, it is on an ad hoc basis, which means they will give you the cost of living increase when they feel they have the money to do so. There are no guarantees in place that your pension is going to keep up with the cost of living increases.   Rob: Historically, some of them have happened, some of them haven't.   Adam: Yeah, they do it on a year by year basis. Depends on how the pension's funded. Depends on all the performance has been a variety of different factors that may only be partially indexed to inflation or cost of living on a year by year basis. But of course, there's no guarantees.   Rob: That's called COLA.   Adam: COLA, Cost of Living Adjustment.   Rob: All right, perfect. Well thanks Adam. I really appreciate your time. It's great to have you here live from downtown Winnipeg talking about the HEB and the HEPP pensions. I'm Rob Tétrault from robtetrault.com, Head of the Tétrault Wealth Advisory Group here at Canaccord Genuity Wealth Management. Adam Buss, Senior Wealth and Estate Planner at Canaccord Genuity Wealth Management.  If you have questions on this or on your portfolio or on your planning, or if you're retiring soon and you're not sure what to do, go to speaktorob.com, we'll book a consultation free, no obligations. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in. Have a great day.

Raj Lala – CEO of Evolve ETFs   Rob: Good Day folks. I'm Rob Tétrault from robtetrault.com, head of the Tétrault Wealth Advisory Group here at Canaccord Genuity Wealth Management. Pretty excited today who we got here today. Raj Lala. He's CEO, president and founder of Evolve ETFs. Really glad to have him in our office here in Winnipeg. Thanks for coming, we are excited to have you and we're going to talk ETFs today. Evolve. You guys have really kind of evolved from, I'll say a niche player, to now becoming more mainland with some of the line's you guys have on the ETFs. First of all, I'd love to hear about how the company started, and why ETFs. Raj: Prior to putting a evolve together, I ran Wisdom Tree Canada, which is one of the world's largest CTF providers. Prior to that, I ran the retail business for Fear of Capital, which is one of the country's largest asset managers. Before that, I ran a company with a couple of partners and actually sold that to Fiera. Going all the way back, I worked at Jovian capital, which was a mid-sized financial services company. Jovian was actually the company that helped incubate the horizons ETFs. I intersected into the ETF business a couple of times. When I left wisdom tree towards the end of 2016, I decided I wanted to go out and build one. All my friends said I was nuts. How are you going to build something? It's way too competitive. You've got the banks, you've got the large asset managers. How are you going to compete? We already have 500 ETFs, today we have over 800 ETFs, but back then, 500 ETFs in the market.   Rob: This is in 2016?   Raj: This would have been at the end of 2016. And how are you really going to get traction? I said, you know what? You're actually right. If I was going to go and create kind of another XIU or another SPY you know, I think that those are very well covered by the big firms like the iShares and the Vanguards, but I believe that there's a couple of areas of the market that are either underserved or unserved. I'm a big believer that in certain asset classes you really need good active management because good active management can make a big difference on a risk adjusted return basis. What we did was we put together a lineup of asset classes, and specifically in fixed income for sure, that we felt truly do benefit from good active management. And then how we differentiate ourselves a little bit is we went out there and went across the globe, and of course folks here in Canada, to identify the kinds of portfolio managers that we could partner up with who had a great track record in that specific asset class. Oftentimes our competitors, what they'll do is they'll internalize that portfolio management, but sometimes the portfolio management team doesn't have a great deal of expertise. For us it was more important to find a manager with a brand, and that actually had a great track record. We've partnered up with Voiced and Gordon Pain to run a couple of funds for us. Our biggest fund, which has emerged somewhat of a flagship for us, is a Canadian preferred share fund that they run full as …   Rob: That's DIVS?   Raj: That's DIVS, yeah. We've partnered up with Voiced In also to run a Canadian core fixed income fund. We partnered up with Nuveen in the US – for those of you not familiar with Nuveen, Nuveen runs part of TIA, which is effectively the US version of Ontario teachers.   Rob: Okay, yeah.   Raj: They run about a trillion dollars. They're running a couple of funds for us, a US equity as well as a short duration yield, and the biggest manager that I've ever worked with in my career. About eight months ago, we launched a fund with Allianz Global Investors. Allianz right now runs about $2.2 trillion. The portfolio manager of our fund is the sister company to PIMCO. So really, these are segments of the market that we believe really benefit from good active management. Then the other pillar to our business where we've gotten a lot of press and a lot of attention is our thematic, primarily index-based ETFs. So focused on long-term trends, focused on strategies or sub sectors that you can point to that are really changing our world over the course of the next 10 years. But most importantly from an investment perspective, that they have a strong investment thesis behind them, and that they could never be confused with a fad. For example, we launched Canada's first cyber security ETF. Can't be a fad; everybody knows, all of your clients will know. I'm sure everyone has had an attempted breach. They have gotten an email from a bank that they don't bank with asking them to verify their account details, or a Microsoft email to verify their account. We're clear we're getting barraged by attempted hack in our world today, and it's only going to increase.   Rob: Let's talk about that one. So that is the cyber security ETF launched in the last year or so, right?   Raj: A year and a half ago.   Rob: So specifically, what kind of tech, what kind of companies are you targeting, what goes in there? How many names are in there?   Raj: That's an index based, passive ETF.   Rob: Okay.   Raj: What we do is, our typical index provider is a Frankfurt based company called Solactive. They're doing a number of ETFs in Canada as well, and what we do is we put together the methodology. They put together the methodology with us. I would go to Solactive and I would say I want to build a cybersecurity ETF. They would go and take a look at their entire list of indices. If they say, actually we don't have a cybersecurity index, they would go and build it. There's an organization called Factset. Factset creates the methodology. Effectively, every company that would be classified as a cybersecurity company that's publicly listed, that also has a minimum market cap of 100 million for that fund. Depends on the fund, but for that fund – Minimal Heart Capital – 100 million. And then minimum trading volume of 2 million a day makes it into our portfolio.  So right now, that's about 37 companies.   Rob: That's globally?   Raj: That's globally.   Rob: How many of those are in North America?   Raj: About 75% is US based. There's nothing right now in Canada. And then you've got a little bit in Europe and you've got a little bit in Asia, but still it's been dominated. One of the interesting elements of Cybersecurity is that there's such a massive shortage of human capital in the cybersecurity world. I'll give you an example. When I take a look at this space in this sector and think long-term, here's what I think. First, we all know cyber-crime is going to continue to increase. Second, we all know that companies need to continuously increase their spending on cybersecurity. What's really interesting is that it's a nondiscretionary spend. You're never going to have a CEO of a major fortune 500 company after a terrible financial quarter stand up in front of their shareholders and their board and say, we've had to cut our spending on cybersecurity.   Rob: Right.   Raj: They will say that we've decided to close some offices, or that were the first certain initiatives, but they're never going to reduce their spending on cybersecurity because it's death if they get breached. Equifax, about two years ago, got a breach of 143 million records, right?   Rob: Stock dropped like crazy.   Raj: 35% drop and still hasn't recovered. Why hasn't it recovered? Because everybody left Equifax and went to companies like Transunion and never went back.   Rob: They don't have the confidence, right?   Raj: They don't have the confidence. You can imagine what it would be like for, let's say a bank, where if you lose that customer confidence they'll just go to another bank. They may never come back, and you spent all that money to acquire that customer, and tens of years to get there, you never want to lose it. It's really important. Then the third part to it is that a lot of people don't know that cyber security is one of the very few sectors today that actually has negative unemployment. There is a shortage of about 3 million people, meaning there are 3 million job vacancies in the cybersecurity world. What has happened is a lot of the largest companies, government agencies, fortune 500s or banks, contract out a huge portion of their cyber security work. Typically, a Canadian Bank for example, might have between 3 to 5 million attempted breaches per day. They need a cyber security company to help them weed through the real threats and the artificial threats as well. When you look at a product like that, the investment thesis behind it is yes, cybercrime is going to continue to increase. Companies need to continuously increase their spending on cybersecurity, making it somewhat recession proof. Finally, there's a shortage of human capital, a massive shortage of human capital, which means most of the work needs to be contracted out. If you're CEO of a fortune 500 company, are you going to contract out that work to a small private cybersecurity company or are you going to contract …   Rob: Publicly listed.   Raj: Bingo. So that's that fund. So that fund …   Rob: How's it done?   Raj: First of all, it ended up being the top performing equity ETF from Canada last year.   Rob: Wow.   Raj: Right now, we launched at the end of September, so we're, what, call it a year and eight months, and we're up over 50%.   Rob: Wow.   Raj: From point to point and not been an easy market the last year and a half …   Rob: Right.   Raj: … it's performing incredibly well, but what I love about it is the long-term investment thesis is strong. And then another example of that would be our Future of the Automobile ETF.   Rob: Yeah. You know what, let's talk about Canada's first future car ETF. I'm here with Raj Lala, CEO of Evolve ETFs. Raj, why would someone launch a future cars ETF?   Raj: I think that the next 10 years will be the biggest transformation in the automotive industry, not just of our lifetime, but in history.   Rob: Do you think oil is going to eventually not be a player at all?   Raj: I think what's interesting is the misconception as to how much of oil demand is derived from automobiles. It's not as much as you think it is. It's about 20%.   Rob: Right.   Raj: Oil is used for so many other things, right? So, yes, I believe that in the next 10 years, that 20% will shrink dramatically for sure. Because we have countries today like India and China who have both publicly declared that they will ban the combustible engine in the next 10 to 15 years – China in 2030, India in 2035.   Rob: Okay. So, this ETF, how does it play that?   Raj: When I looked at – again, the long-term trends are shaping our world – the long-term trend, I'm a firm believer that in the next 5 to 10 years, we will have self-driving cars on the road, autonomous cars. I'm a firm believer that electric vehicles will continue to rise in popularity, especially as the cost comes down and it is coming down. The cost of manufacturing the battery is coming down, countries are putting in place policies ...   Rob: Infrastructure's improving.   Raj: … Infrastructure's improving, the auto manufacturers are moving from combustible engine, to hybrid, to eventually full electric. You're seeing all of that. I mean, more electric vehicles were sold last year than all other years combined. China's producing about 39 million electric vehicles right now. They have that much demand at the moment. You're seeing all of this taking place. On the electric side it's firmly embedded. It's firmly going to continue on the self-driving side. I do believe that you're eventually going to have self-driving cars. In fact, I was just talking to a couple of other people about it, and I said I think in the next 12 months, most people here in Canada will actually have their first experience in a self-driving car. Somebody will be sitting at the steering wheel, but they won't be touching anything. They'll just be there to make sure that the car is safe. But we are definitely getting to the point where the technology is there. And I'll give you an interesting stat. In order to power a self-driving car, a semiconductor chip needs to have the ability to make 10 million decisions per second.   Rob: Okay.   Raj: That's how many decisions you and I are making per second when we're driving. Now you could think that doesn't make any sense, because I know I'm not making 10 million decisions per second. You are, it's just subconscious. Right now, the best something semiconductor chips can power about 4 million decisions per second. So, we're still 40% of where we need to be to power a self-driving car.   Rob: There's not enough computation power right now to drive, is what you're saying?   Raj: Right. The way it works in self driving cars is level 5 would be a fully self-driving car. Today we're at about level 3.5, so we still have a ways to go to get there, and then we've got to deal with legislation, and then we've got to deal with insurance. If you get into an accident, who has the insurance claim? You're not driving the car, so it was that the auto manufacturers. That's all the stuff that still needs to get sorted out. But I believe that we're getting there, and that the amount of increase in safety that it's going to create, and also decrease the amount of traffic and congestion. I live in Toronto and I know how bad the traffic is, and self-driving cars would be great. Then the other side to that business is also the shared. Shared is a super interesting side of the business. when I'm talking to 65 or 70-year old's, and their grandparents, I say to them, if you're thinking about saving money for buying your grandchild a car, go on a trip. Don't waste your money. Because as kids are getting older, they actually don't want to drive. Most kids don't want to drive, they want to be Ubered or Lifted around. Or they might even consider a shared a model where they have a partial ownership of a car, but they don't actually even really want to own a car. Very different than when we grew up.   Rob: I couldn't wait to save money to buy my first car.   Raj: Right. I couldn't wait until I could get my driver's license and drive my Dad's Monte-Carlo around, and eventually get my own car. It's different. Younger people are different today. They don't want it. The shared side is also another aspect of this. That fund really kind of encapsulates what is actually like   Rob: What are the companies that we're buying? Are we buying like Waymo and those kinds companies?   Raj: Great question. Well, although Waymo is making a lot of progress and …     Rob: And Waymo is Google's self-driving car.   Raj: Yeah. Although Waymo is making a lot of progress and some people think they're the front runner, the challenge with Waymo is, unless Google spins it out, we would have to buy Google. And so how do you do it then? What are you actually buying? Typically, you would have to generate between 25 to 35% of your overall revenue from these aspects 25 months ago. And Waymo is not generating. Waymo is not making up 25% of Google's revenue as an example rate. It has to be more of a pure play. And what we also did was we equal weighted this fund instead of market cap weight. And the reason we did that was because if we market cap weighted it then investors would basically just have a lot of exposure to the car manufacturers. Rob: Right.   Raj: What we wanted was to give investors the experience of having exposure to the supply chain, the companies that are creating the batteries, the companies that are creating the semiconductors, the technology that's going into self-driving cars, electric vehicles.   Rob: So is this one an index or is this one …   Raj: It is.   Rob: It's an index as well as, and there'll be some supply chain, there'll be some car manufacturers, there'll be some battery makers, there'll be all of that.   Raj: You got it.   Rob: Nice, very interesting.   Raj: And then one other fund that ties into those two, which I think is always relevant is the Innovation Fund. The TSS ticker for that is edge. The reason we created that was because when we were talking to a lot of advisors, and we're talking to a lot of clients, you know, we, we heard them say to us that I love your cyber security ETF, I love your Future of the Automobiles ETF. Don't know how it fits into my portfolio. So, could you create something that becomes kind of a catchall to all the disruptive industries and companies that are really shaping our world over the course of the next 10 years? We created Edge to basically be that proxy. So effectively, it has six buckets; in in a week from now, we'll actually have seven buckets, but six buckets. One bucket allocates to our cybersecurity ETF, one bucket allocates – and it's all equal, so, one sixth in each – one allocates to the Future of the Automobile. Then it also allocates to Robotics and Automation, and also to Data, Genomics and Social Media. All of the industries gives you a more diversified way to invest in everything that is shaping our world. And you know, it's a super interesting world, there's a lot of things that are going to change. I'm actually a firm believer that in the next 10 years most of us will have robots living in our house. We'll have cars and …   Rob: Not just doing our vacuuming,   Raj: No, not just doing our vacuuming. First robot was actually the dishwasher. That was the first official encounter with a robot. And now it's the vacuum or the Roomba. Now we're migrating because artificial intelligence is becoming so strong, which is super important. We will have robots performing surgeries on us without that nine month wait list. It's a super exciting world. And these are all the industries and the companies and sectors that are changing it, and making it better.   Rob: I'm here with Raj Lala CEO of Evolve ETFs. Let's talk briefly about cannabis ETFs. There's a lot of talk that's been about HMMJ, kind of the first ETF that came out. You guys approached it a little differently. Tell me about the two that you have on the shelf now.   Raj: Yeah, good question. When we started looking at the cannabis space, I started looking at it actually a few years ago and decided not to launch a product because I just still didn't feel like the social stigma was positive enough towards cannabis. This was pre legalization of course. Then we started getting more comfortable and started taking a closer look at it. What we decided as a firm is that we felt that it made a lot of sense to take an active approach to this market, because there's a lot of things at play that are a little bit unique to the space, legislation, momentum, things like that. It's a niche play. We have two – as you mentioned – we have two cannabis funds. One that's kind of Canadian/Global, and then one that we launched just about two months ago, which was actually the first in the world focused on the US space. I'll talk really quickly about both. The Canada global one has been around for about a year and a half now, and over the last year, the top performing ETF actually in Canada.   Rob: It was up like 40% or something like that?   Raj: Yeah, up about 43% for the one year. It's done incredibly well, and our management team has done a fantastic job of managing it.   Rob: How many those names would be in that one?   Raj: There're about 35 names in it.   Rob: So that's an actively managed ETF. Management is picking stock selection that's happening in there. Arbitrage, you're trying to find deals that are going to come. Overprice; is it long short or is it strictly long?   Raj: Strictly long.   Rob: Strictly long, and you're trying to find value.   Raj: Very little in privates. Like you know, we can only allocate about 10% into privates. But what the guys did, I think where they really generated some strong alpha would have been in Q3/Q4 of last year. Leading up to legalization in October, we took the view about a month and a half prior to legalization that the euphoria that was going to go into the space was going to go into the big names, the Aphrias, the Canopies, the Auroras of the world. We went overweight into those names, a week and a half to two weeks prior to legalization. The team took the view that there's not a chance that post legalization reality is going to live up to all this hype. What they did was they went way under on the large caps and they also started to allocate to some of the tertiary businesses like the Scott's Miracle Grow. In that two-month period, we added about close to 20% Alpha versus the passive index. The active approach has really worked well for us in that fund. As we started to focus on that fund, we started to recognize the opportunity that exists in the US cannabis space. Looked at stats like Planet 13, which is a big dispensary business in the US, had more revenue than Kronos, but had one 20th the market cap of Kronos. The US companies were way undervalued. Part of it was because there's a lot of legislative things to deal with in the US as it's not federally legal yet in the US, but we hope that that's going to change the next couple years. But then you have States Act, Farm Act, Safe Act, all these things that are kind of coming into play at the moment and went, and US companies cannot also list in the US right now, so they're listing here in Canada. But the opportunity is massive. We look at the US opportunity to be kind of like the way the Canadian opportunity was like three years ago.   Rob: You're trying to get ahead of the bump there.   Raj: What we try to do with our business, is always try and look forward. I try to stay away from, oh this is a sector that has performed the best over the last five years, so let's launch this product. If you don't have the conviction or the strength to believe that it's going to continue for the next five years, then I don't think you should do it. You should be thinking early stages. Like for example, we launched a Materials and Mining Needs ETF just last month. It's not a popular sector, right? It's been beaten and battered and bruised. But we believe that that's a sector that's going to recover over the course of the next couple of years and we want to be there for that recovery. So, the same type of logic. On the US side for cannabis, our view is that as legislation starts to become more friendly towards cannabis companies, you're going to start to see more value go into those stocks, more investors moving into them eventually. They'll also be listing in the U S which will be a lot easier for Americans to buy, versus trying to buy a Canadian listed stock. As you and I both know, the potential of the US market is always 10 or more to 1 versus Canada. The big advantage that they've got, like you look at California, which is the interesting one, California …   Rob: The size of Canada. Raj: Right, similar size. But they allowed them to brand the products and market them properly and things like that. We don't unfortunately have that hear in Canada, so the US will most likely displace Canada in many ways in that space. We want to be there early.   Rob: And these are listed companies in Canada that are in the ETF?   Raj: That's right.   Rob: It's a real neat idea. Congrats, and want to talk about one more. It's really interesting to me. I'm here with Raj Lala, CEO of Evolve ETFs. Let's talk about Hero. The ETF that you guys launched about Canada's first e-gaming ETF. I played a lot of video games and as a kid, I still wish I had more time to play them. What's Hero?   Raj: I love this fund. It's an interesting story. I would say about nine months ago, multiple people brought the idea to me; have you looked at the gaming industry, because it's really taken off in a big way. I have two 11-year-old daughters that do not really spend much time gaming. I think my mom spends more time gaming because she plays a lot of candy crush cause she's retired. I was looking at that whole space and I was like, I don't see. And then as I started to really drill down into it, I was like, wow, this is a massive, massive space. There are today 2.2 billion gamers in the world. A gamer would be defined as somebody that spends six hours or more a week gaming. Okay, so 2.2 billion. That's a third of the population …   Rob: That's a lot of time, a lot of time.   Raj: That's a lot of time, and it's a third of the population. Most of it is on people's smartphones. So originally, I was thinking, okay, but how does this make a lot of sense? Because when I think of video gaming, I think about, yeah, when you and I were teenagers, we were playing video games or in today's world, you've got your teenager up in their room playing video games or in the basement or what have you, and then realized how big the market was because it is people like retired people playing candy crush and word search games, things like that. It is 40 something year olds. I've got friends that are 40 something years old, working on the trading desks at the banks, that wake up on a Saturday morning and they hop online and play an e-sport together with their friends for three, four hours. The demographics for this are enormous. That's interesting. Then I started to take a closer look at the business model of these companies. And that's where I would say I had my aha moment that we need to launch this type of product. Because in our days when, we wanted to play video games, we would go to the store, buy the cartridge or the CD, we'd come home, we'd plug it into the console, and away we went, right? But that's where the revenue stopped for the game manufacturer. In today's world, they have an entire vertical of revenue. So, Fortnite as an example …   Rob: It's unbelievable.   Raj: It's a free game, right? But where they make their money is the boosters, the weapons, the players, all that kind of stuff. Right? But companies like Tencent effectively and directly owns Fortnite. But technically it's not just creating the revenue off that game. What these game manufacturers are also doing, like Activision, Blizzard, EA and Tencent is that they're creating the leagues that people compete in.   Rob: Yes.   Raj: And then they create the events. The events are very interesting. Last year, Dota 2 was a big event, actually the biggest event so far. It was actually in Vancouver. They had over a hundred million people. League of legends as well, had over a hundred million people watching it. So not just filling stadiums to watch people play games, which surprised me, but watching online. Today, 11% of all YouTube video viewing hours is about gaming. Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, is all about gaming. These companies have created an entire vertical of revenue for the game. Then it leads to media rights, cause now ESPN is broadcasting, TSN is broadcasting. Then at leads to sponsorship rights. You can see how the business model has morphed, evolved and improved significantly for these game manufacturers, which I find super interesting. I never thought in my lifetime that people would go and fill stadiums to watch other people play games. But they have. And so, when I look at this and I look at how it's just starting now, you've got 5G coming. When 5G comes, it means that graphics are going to improve in games, it's going to be faster to play online. 5G is going to change a lot of things of course, but gaming is definitely one of them. You're seeing it, and Fortnite is a great example. You know the average revenue generated per user is getting close to $100. It's $96 right now per user. Give you something to equate that to the average revenue per user on Facebook, Google, Twitch is about $25. Fortnite is generating four times more revenue per user than some of these others because they've built a great business model off of this. I mean, how many times do you here this story, that my teenager needs to take my credit card. That's why they use PayPal now because they want to buy boosters and weapons and things like that. I look at all of that and I think this is a real business. A lot of people have their eyes on this sector. And I thought, okay, so I get the business model, I get the investment case; let's create a passive index. It's passive market cap weighted.  We just launched it last month. So, it's very new. Probably my favorite ticker that we have as well. The ticker for it is here. So far so good.   Rob: Nice. Okay, good. Hey, you guys also have some income stuff as well as some actively managed. Real briefly want to touch on some of the covered call strategies that you guys use. Generally, why would someone want to do that?   Raj: Yeah, covered call strategies are interesting because what they could do is, they could subsidize income and they can help potentially moot some of the downside risk. Effectively, the way a covered call would work is you are going to end up giving up a little bit of your upside potential, but you're not going to have as much downside risk as well. And in return for that, you're going to generate some yields. There're premiums generated based on the covered calls. We have one fund, the ticker's life that's global healthcare. It's a passive index of the 20 largest global healthcare companies. And then our team does an active covered call overlay on up to a third of the portfolio. They take a passive, and they put a covered call overlay onto it. We also have done the exact same thing for big US banks. And as I mentioned before, we just launched one on materials and mining. Right now, depending on the fund, those are our three covered calls strategies. Right now, between 7 and 8%, a yield that's being generated between the dividends on the stocks, plus the premiums from the calls. And then the other one that has, as I mentioned at the beginning, emerged as our flagship, is our preferred share fund. I think it's starting to get a lot more attention now, perhaps have been beaten up over the last six to nine months. It's not been easy for them, but where can you get a 5.5 to 6% tax advantage yield in today's world, pretty tough to find. It's pretty tough to find …   Rob: Doesn't exist really. I mean there's a real estate space that can give you something comparable, but it's a different risk profile for sure. Different volatility profile tool.   Raj: Absolutely. I think that fund is going to start resonating again as people start to recognize that the pref space, because the pref space is one of the only sectors or asset classes that hasn't recovered yet, unlike the equity markets. We think that over the next little while that fund's going to perform well.   Rob: All right folks, you heard it here, the preferred market's going to come back. Fantastic, great to have you here. Appreciate the time. Always good to talk about ETFs, huge part of, I think any portfolio managers toolbox, especially the niche stuff that you guys are doing really, really interesting. We're thankful for your time. Thanks for being here.   Raj: Thanks.

In this episode of The Frontside Podcast, panelists Charles Lowell, Rob DeLuca, and Sam Keathley, discuss how much the distinction between frontend, backend, and fullstack developers matter in both personal and professional senses. The differences in mindset between these categories are also discussed, for example, how does a fullstack developer solve a problem vs how a backend or frontend developer? And also, how clear (or fuzzy) is the line that separates them? What are the skills a frontend or backend developer needs to consider themselves fully fullstack? And finally, is there any sort of tribal separation between the factions? Do you have opinions on this show? Want to hear about a specific topic in the future? Reach out to us at contact@frontside.io or on Twitter at @thefrontside. This show was produced by Mandy Moore, aka @therubyrep of DevReps, LLC. TRANSCRIPT CHARLES: Hello everybody and welcome to The Frontside Podcast Episode 101. My name is Charles Lowell. I'm a developer here at The Frontside and I'll be hosting today's episode. Today we're going to be talking about the different developer profiles that are out there. You might have heard mention of them on Stack Overflow, on job boards, on the Twitterverse. Things like frontend, backend, full stack, half stack, short stack. [Chuckles] Things like that. With me to talk about these are Rob and Sam. Rob is our director of open source here at Frontside and Sam is a software engineer here at Frontside. So, hey y'all. SAM: Hey. ROB: Hey yo. CHARLES: Alright. So, before we get into the meat of the topic, there are a few announcements that we wanted to make. First and foremost, this is some really exciting news. This week, Taras Mankovski officially joined the team at The Frontside. And we are really, really excited about that. [Cheers] ROB: That's exciting. CHARLES: Yeah. It's super exciting. Not only is Taras an exceptional engineer, he's got amazing code skills. He's extremely empathetic and a great person to work with. He's great working with clients and he's also fantastic at really working with developers who are climbing that ladder and helping them level up. So, he's been involved in mentorship literally since I've known him. I think that was the first time that we ever came into contact with him was through his mentorship work in the Ember community. And we've been collaborating with him for years on several open source projects. And so, we just are so excited and know that he's going to come on and do some amazing things by helping us be better developers, helping us be better community emissaries. And so, lots of good stuff coming out of that. ROB: Absolutely. CHARLES: Yeah, yeah. No, that's really exciting. So, definitely wanted to throw that out there. ROB: Too bad he didn't join a little bit earlier. We would have had a good time with him on this podcast. CHARLES: I know. Well he's actually, I think he's been on the podcast twice. ROB: [Laughs] That's true. CHARLES: But yeah, there's definitely a couple of topics where his input would have been absolutely critical. I think it would have been great to have him along when we were trying to run our own apprenticeship programs. Those would have worked out I think a lot better. Well, not to say that the outcomes haven't been stellar in some cases. But I think having his expertise would have made it a lot smoother. That said, before we jump in then, just wanted to let everyone know that as always, if you want to work with us you can get to us at contact@frontside.io or send a shout-out on Twitter @TheFrontside. Okay. Y'all, let's jump into it. Like what is even a stack? ROB: [Laughs] So, do you want to kind of set up where this came from, Charles? I think it came from you and I going back and forth on Twitter. And I was like, “You know what? We need to talk about this on the podcast.” CHARLES: Yeah. I think I was actually on vacation. ROB: [Laughs] That's right. You were trying to ski. CHARLES: [Laughs] I was on the ski lift. And I saw you tweeting and I was like, “No, no, no. I got to respond to that.” Probably because there was maybe a little bit of disagreement but also because I just needed something to do. Looking out the majestic scenery of the Rocky Mountains wasn't enough. So yeah, what's the backstory there? ROB: So, I can't remember what I was actually tweeting about. But I kind of feel like there is a distinction between a frontend developer, a backend developer, and at this point I don't know if a full stack developer truly exists. I mean, it does. But it's used more often than it really implies what they're doing. Usually when you hear of a full stack developer, it's like, “Man, I can sling some code on the backend and I can do a little bit of architecture stuff on the frontend. But CSS, keep that away from me.” And in my opinion, if you're a full stack developer, you need to sling CSS, too. CHARLES: Really? ROB: Yeah. CHARLES: No, no. I certainly agree. Because I was going to ask, is it fair to say that full stack developer is code for like, startup developer? ROB: Yeah. That's a good – like a utilitarian, like a jack of all trades but not a master of any? CHARLES: Right, exactly. ROB: I can take that. So, I guess the way we can start to dig into this one is like, how much distinction is there between a frontend, a backend, and a full stack developer? And does that matter in a professional sense? CHARLES: Right. And so, I think my take was that the skillsets that you need in both places are actually much more convergent than you think, than people might think. In other words, the skills that you utilize on the backend actually translate very well to the frontend. I think my stance is that what makes a frontend developer and a backend developer is more the problem sets that you gravitate towards naturally, the things that interest you. I actually was a backend developer. And now I consider myself to be primarily a frontend developer. But the skills that I had developed writing backend systems in Java translated shockingly well into frontend development with JavaScript. But it was working on the portion of the program that interfaced with the human was, that was the thing that fascinated me. And so, it's what I gravitated towards. And so, I guess in my [6:15 inaudible] or the way that I have been thinking about it is that what makes a frontend developer and a backend developer is more what gravitational pulls you respond to, rather than one particular skillset. But I know that you've got a perhaps more refined take on that, or a different take. ROB: Yeah. Before I do, I want to know what Sam's thoughts are on this. This would be a good one. SAM: Where I come from in the understanding of frontend, backend, and full stack is I – background on me: I did a bootcamp before working here. So, I did a development bootcamp where they were really excited to tell you at the end of it that, “Oh, you're a full stack developer because we've introduced you to everything. Like, touched on every sort of little topic. You're full stack. Tell everyone you're full stack.” And it's like, “Well, you're not really a specialist in any of the sense.” So, what makes a difference to me, I'm going to specifically talk about full stack, but it's like before you can say you're full stack, having knowledge of frontend and at backend, you need to have expertise in at least one of them first, or understanding of that mindset first. Like if I say that I like frontend work more then I need to understand frontend work more before I can say that I understand backend work, you know? ROB: Yeah. CHARLES: So, do you feel like the bootcamp was doing you a disservice? Or do you think they got… SAM: I don't think they did a disservice at all. So, they did a really good job. So, bootcamps are really for introducing you to everything. And then whatever you take from that is your own. So, they introduce you to all the little things like database working and then JavaScript, Ruby, whatever it is. And then it's your job to figure out in those introductions, what you resonate most with. So, I think they did a really good job in that. I think that they shouldn't tell you what you are, like tell you that because they touched on whatever it was, that you're full stack. CHARLES: Right. SAM: So, I don't think they did a disservice at all. I learned a lot. But I wouldn't say I'm full stack at all. CHARLES: So, if you feel as though you're not full stack, what do you feel that you are? SAM: Definitely frontend. CHARLES: Definitely frontend. SAM: I gravitate more towards frontend. ROB: Why would you feel that way? Is it because you're more pulled towards the UI of things? Or is that where you feel like you've gotten most of your experience now? SAM: Actually a little bit of both. I tend to like the UI of things a little bit more. It's interesting. Whenever I was going to the bootcamp, I thought I was going to be more backend because I thought I really like working with the behind the scenes sort of. You don't see this work but you know it's there. But I definitely like the UI of frontend a lot more. Just personal. ROB: I see that. SAM: And it's where my skillset is, because this is all frontend work that I'm doing here at The Frontside. So, it's what I know most at this point. CHARLES: Yeah. I'm curious too. Isn't it true that there's also a conception in the wider tech world that frontend is limited to CSS and HTML? ROB: Ooh. Yeah, that could be. CHARLES: Like when you see job posting for frontend developers, typically it's like, we want someone… ROB: Yeah. It's kind of morphed from – JavaScript developer is now a single-page app developer instead of frontend. Yeah. Yeah, I see what you're saying. It's now, it could be considered as HTML and CSS and not JavaScript anymore. [Chuckles] CHARLES: Which is so bizarre to me. SAM: [9:42 inaudible] a lot of places when a frontend developer who is also a UX designer. Someone who has the knowledge of designing things from the ground up and then only working in things that look good, rather than logic. ROB: Yeah. This can be probably an entirely other topic. But that's like the frontend of the frontend and the backend of the frontend, is like [10:03 inaudible] call it. Because there are [10:06 inaudible] developers. And single-page apps have gotten so complex these days, between your data layer and your testing and managing state on the frontend. There is a backend, an architecture, that you need to consider when you're developing a single-page app. And I've worked on teams where there are developers that are working on the frontend but they still don't like CSS. They don't do CSS things and they don't consider layout or any design. They just take the ticket and they get the data going. Get the data from the server, request it, display it on the page. And then another person would come through and style it up to the spec or the mock. But yeah, that's interesting. So for my take on this, and where this actually really came from, is we were going through some hiring. And we were trying to figure out how we can place somebody or hire someone that can be effective in the role that we immediately needed. And all of our immediate needs were in frontend-specific things. And we can actually talk about if they're frontend-frontend or frontend of the backend. But where this kind of came from or was born was: if we're hiring somebody that needs to fill a frontend role and they're primarily a backend developer, there are gotchas and things you have to know to be an effective frontend developer. Like quirky browser things that happen or like how to set up a Babel transpilation setup. And what are the gotchas here? Kind of the history of the frontend web, because there's a lot of things that are there that can cause a lot of headache if you don't know the backstory. And I know from your perspective Charles, you think – and this is isn't wrong – but you think that if somebody has a really talented backend developer, it's really just concepts that you can apply to the frontend. And I agree with that. CHARLES: Right. But you have to want to do it. [Laughs] ROB: Yes. That is also a key. CHARLES: You have to be gripped by the problem set of the frontend. You want it to inspire you to leverage those solutions. ROB: Yeah. So, would you say there's a different mindset between a frontend, backend developer, and full stack? Does a full stack developer solve a problem that's different from how a backend developer or a frontend developer would? CHARLES: That's a subtle question and probably one that might offend people, my answer to it. So, I'll go ahead and answer it. [Chuckles] ROB: Hashtag [12:23 inaudible] CHARLES: Actually, maybe not. Just in my experience historically – I want to underline the fact historically – I think that it is people who gravitate towards the outside-in mindset, in other words the very first thing they're thinking of is, “How is this going to feel to a person who's going to use this?” If that's your first question that you ask, then you probably are going to gravitate towards the frontend. Then in terms of the backend, I'd say historically – and like I said, I want to underline that, and I'll get to that later – I think it's people who are more drawn to: I want to attack the most complex problem that exists. Like distributing state over 10,000 nodes, managing huge deployment infrastructures that drive these massive websites that happen at this mind-boggling scale. And so, there you really are thinking computer to computer and, “What's the ideal interface for doing that?” And then on the frontend you're thinking more like human to computer, because that's where the interface lies. Now the reason I say… ROB: I feel so let down. Where's the controversy? CHARLES: Well, okay. Well, because I think that basically – I think the controversy is saying like people who are more naturally empathetic. I don't know. That would be the controversy thing. But I want to say historical. ROB: Yeah. I can see that. [Laughs] CHARLES: So, I want to say historical too, because I feel like one of the things that's been magical about the last two decades of software development is the dawning realization that no software you write exists in a vacuum and that it's all interconnected. And so, I think that I for example feel very strongly while I try to think about the user experience first. And the developer, I'm also thinking about developer experience first. The way that you want a system to feel is going to inform the design of the UX workflow and that's going to affect the architecture of your frontend. And if you're interfacing with it through different media, like websites, phone, I don't know, even text messages, Slack, what have you – that's going to inform then the next level of how your APIs are shaped, your public-facing APIs. Which then inform the structure of your internal deployments. So, recognizing that the decisions you make in one end of the stack and ripple through completely and that they're not what we hold as dear these concepts of separation of concerns and complete and total isolation of layers. That really is false. But what it does is it enables us to change the individual layers to more – ironically the reason you want to have separation of the layers is so that it more easily lets you change them provide a more integrated experience. So, I think that's a long way of saying that I think frontend developers are more aware of what's going on in the backend and that they might be drawn into the backend. And the same thing goes for backend developers, realizing that the decisions they make are affected by the frontend and affect the frontend. And so, I think there's been a dawning more of a collective responsibility for design, for operations, for developer experience. And I think it's great. ROB: Yeah. And to [think back off] that. So, I was kind of wondering where the controversy was, because that's kind of my exact answer, too. Where do you gravitate towards on? The difference of mindset is like, if you've got a problem and let's say you're a full stack developer, so whatever that manes, but if you're given a task where you have to implement the frontend and the backend, where you gravitate towards first I would say is how you would attack solving a problem. For me, I would immediately go to the frontend and see how a user would immediately interact with it and then work out that way. Mostly also because I like having a tight feedback loop. And the frontend provides that nicely. I can change something and immediately see the difference there. And in the backend you can spend a little bit of time, unless you're TDD which you should be – you can spend a little bit of time piecing together things and figuring out the architecture. And then you'll have something that you could show for. It's just nice to see UI get thrown on the page. And it's real and you click a button and something happens. That's a really nice feeling. And that's kind of where I gravitate towards. And if yeah, if I had to attack the problem, I'm going there first. I get the endorphins from it. [Chuckles] CHARLES: Right. So, if we want to add controversy to the other side, because you got to always be controversial, right? So, we said the really blunt horrible oversimplification is that people who are more naturally empathetic gravitate towards the frontend. You could also say that from the other perspective, people who are more internally validated will gravitate to the backend. Because if you need to get those endorphins from working on the frontend, basically what you're saying is, “I want to put it in front of people and get the feedback from those people and know whether it's good or bad.” Whereas you could say, “Actually, I don't need validation from other people. I've got this concept of this architecture that is going to be the ideal thing. I know it. I've got this vision and I'm going to chase it, regardless of what's going on.” I think you can more readily do that on the backend because you're not as open to the feedback of a whole bunch of different users. And like I said, I think those are gross oversimplifications. ROB: Yeah. I agree. And so, as a devil's advocate towards the backend developer that is less empathetic, I think actually some of the best backend developers I've ever worked with were the most empathetic people ever. Because they know that software is for humans. And humans are going to be consuming the API that they build. And they take that into consideration. CHARLES: Absolutely. And I actually think that empathy pervades good software development just wherever you find it. Because yeah, someone's going to be using your APIs whether it's software as a service or it's a library. If it's software as a service, it's got to be easy to work with. It's got to be performant. It's got to have a nice command line. And so, you have to be thinking at all times, “What is it like to use this software? What is it like to consume it? What is it like to link it into my library? What is it like to call it from a web client?” So yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think it's actually one of the great virtues of great software developers. SAM: Yeah. So, something that I've always kind fo had a question with, especially coming from that bootcamp setting: is there any sort of tribal separation between what you would consider a frontend or a backend developer or even full stack? Like, “I'm better because I understand data layers than I understand how a button fits on a page,” that sort of thing. CHARLES: I would say absolutely yes. If you at the, just do a quick poll of the Twitterverse, it seems like people tend to hang out in little circles of similar interest. So, there's definitely a bunch of people that I follow that are always tweeting about backend stuff. ROB: Yeah. Twitter is ‘build your own echo chamber'. CHARLES: Yeah. And there are people who I follow that are tweeting nothing but mostly frontend – when I say frontend, I mean frontend of the frontend. Well basically, from CSS down to nothing deeper than React components. And then there's people who are talking primarily about the backend of the frontend. So yeah, I do think that people – there are clearly, there are different areas of the stack and I think that people do tribalize around them. So, the question is: Who are the border agents? Because always cross-border trade. Any time you have borders, there's an exchange of ideas and information and things that happen at those layers. And actually, one of the things I'm really curious about is: How does that happen? ROB: Yeah. You might have the best perspective on this because you did – you were using Java Swing back in the early 2000s building UI. And that's like backend things. And then you had a lot of experience with Rails and you've moved into the JavaScript world. And the thing that I've noticed with frontend is, we're applying a lot of concepts that existed on the backend. And we're moving all that complexity into the frontend. And that's kind of where that fuzzy line of, “Are you the frontend of the frontend? Are you the backend of the frontend?” comes from. And it's interesting that – like this is going to be another podcast. We'll end up talking about this – but we have – MVC lives on the frontend. Like in React, your C is a container component. The controller is a container component. The model is probably your Redux layer if you have it or if you're using micro-states. And the view is your components, your view layer components that you're rendering down. So, these concepts are moving from the backend to the frontend. We're just kind of renaming them and making them our own concept. But they're there. So, how does that knowledge sharing happen? Is it really just a mass exodus of backend developers interested in frontend developers now? CHARLES: I don't know. I think it goes both ways. So, I can only speak to my own experience. And that was when I first started doing frontend development was back in 2003 I think. So almost 15 years ago. We were building a touchscreen interface for an electronics vendor in the UK. And it was just so much fun, because we were getting to build these interfaces that literally looked like nothing else. And you could touch them and you had support for rudimentary gestures and there was no keyboard. And basically the only interface was your fingers and like a price scanning gun. And everything, all the entire UI had to be developed out of that. And so, it was such a novel system and it was so fun to implement that I just gravitated towards it. I think the thing that was particularly compelling was it was very interactive UI. It was high-touch, literally. This is a clerk who's sitting there using this thing as rapidly as they can to sell stuff and move people through the line. So, it was like a unique problem. But the thing that was cool about it was I realized so many – we kind of already touched on this in this conversation – so many things that I had learned on the backend applied there. And there was in order to provide that experience, there had to be a pretty complex machine behind it. And that was fascinating, that machine. And so, we were able to apply a lot of the concepts. And so, in that time on the backend I'd just come off working off a backend that had basically an event bus – we would probably call them microservices now, although we didn't call them that then – were coordinating based on all these events. And that translated over into the frontend really, really well. And I remember using a lot of the techniques for exception handling – doing it on the frontend and doing a lot of the multithreaded stuff that we were doing on the backend, trying to reconcile that with the frontend and really understanding. So, there were all these analogous concepts. And it could be – so, there was an original exodus of backend development, for me personally. And so for me, it was like I felt like I moved onto the web pretty much exclusively in 2006. And it was a good – I would say 2013 maybe is when web UI development finally caught up with Java Swing. Like it was like, that whole time I was like, “I'm using the web because it's an awesome deployment platform. And it's got all this great stuff,” but man, the developer experience is not as good as like a stateful fat GUI was back then. And now, I would say it's actually surpassed quite significantly. But now, I think there are a lot of people maybe who either – I think there's a casting back of people who are in frontend development and casting back to the web. So right now, my love affair with immutability and functional programming started by using a Clojure web framework which borrowed a lot of the ideas from Clojure. So, I guess there was an exodus there – people from Clojure wanting to develop apps, wanted to have their goodies. But then I found that and I was like, “Whoa, that's awesome.” But then that really set the hook for me. And so now, I try and go back to the well, the backend well or the shared computational well, as much as I can. So, all of that stuff of basically discovering all this functional programming stuff, this highly formalized functional programming, all came from saying, “Wow. I got a taste of that. Let me get more.” So, it's very much like trying to run through the village of the backend and ransack the stores and take as much as I can and bring it back, because I know that it's good. ROB: So earlier in the podcast, you said that you were a frontend developer. You described yourself as a frontend developer. And that's funny, because I actually consider you a full stack developer. It's because you can jump in on the backend and sling any kind of code as well as anybody could, and then you can also do the same thing on the frontend. So, the question I have here is: Do you think actually someone that truly is a full stack developer – and we can define that in a second – but do you think they're at an advantage here, because they have all that experience? You can answer yes. But why? Why do you think they have an advantage? CHARLES: I think they have an advantage in the same way that a person who's bilingual has an advantage. So, if you are living in North America, it behooves you to speak Spanish because you are now open to an entire set of markets that were previously closed to you. Well, not entirely closed but like you can trade with Mexico and you can trade with South America. You can buy and sell goods. You have access to yeah, emerging technologies that might – something special might be happening in Mexico City, or in Medellín, Colombia, and you're going to have first access to that. And so, if you don't, if you're not bilingual, then you're going to have to go through an intermediary who is. And so, there's a premium: you get to be the middle man so to speak. Or you get to be, maybe that has kind of a negative connotation, but you get to be the broker of new ideas and new technologies. If you can, if you are fluent in backend so to speak, then you can go into backend-landia and you can talk with the developers there and see what kind of cool stuff they're doing. And then you can take it across the border into frontend-land and sell it. And so, that's – I think we're very much first to the gun on – not first to the gun but we're ahead of the pack in terms of functional programming. Because we've seen that. We've seen it proved out and we've now actually started to integrate it into your day-to-day routines. And we're ahead of the pack on that, right? And so, I think that's kind of a keystone analogy for me that I think really, really captures what is the advantage in being a full stack engineer. ROB: So, well how do you define a full stack engineer or developer? What things do you have to possess to actually claim that title? In order to be a full stack developer I personally believe you have to know, you have to be comfortable with CSS. You can hate it. You can yell at it. But I think you have to be able to put together a layout if a designer gives you a comp in order to claim full stack. And in the same token, if you're a full stack developer and you mainly came from the frontend, you should be able to implement backend features. I don't actually have – so, I'm strong in the frontend, not so strong in the backend. What would be the analogous of CSS in the backend? Would it be like mocking your controller actions? [Chuckles] CHARLES: I would say you should have a familiarity with HTTP and REST, would probably be the equivalent. Kind of like a foundational technology that just every single technology is oriented around it, or most. Regardless of the protocol you're using – there are things like GraphQL which are not really RESTful, although it's a blurry line there – but they're still delivered over HTTP. And so, understanding things like CORS, understanding the things that are going to be universal to APIs. ROB: I think a lot of people try to claim full stack. I try to claim it. And I know I'm not. I can put together a pretty crummy Rails API on my own for personal projects. But I'm not going to be the one that's setting up indexes on a database to optimize a database or anything. I think that does come in time, but you have – borrowing from Brandon Haye's talks about career development – if you're a full stack developer, I think you end up having to be in the industry for a long time. Longer than what we consider a senior developer these days, I think. Because you could be a senior developer and be specialized. And we see that all the time, and that's okay. But in order to amass that knowledge and experience, I think you have to be in the industry for a long time and done those things a couple of times to really know. CHARLES: Yeah. I agree. So, can I add something there? To continue the analogy of being full stack is like being bilingual or multilingual. I go back to those analogies a lot because that's what I – linguistics is what I studied in school. But when I was studying linguistics, one of the things that was going on there was they were kind of redefining what… ROB: That makes so much more sense of your vocabulary. [Laughs] CHARLES: What it means to be bilingual. There was kind of a reorientation of that definition that was going on while I was in school. And that was being bilingual doesn't necessarily mean you're able to converse about poetry or like deep technology or give speeches in another language. It really is, it's as spectrum of… ROB: Ooh, that's quite interesting. CHARLES: The definition of bilingual is like: Do you use another language in your life? So, if you are let's say someone who is a recent immigrant to a country and let's say you've got less than 1,000 words but you're using them to buy groceries, to pay bills, to do things like that, then you are bilingual. Bilinguility is not an exclusive club. It's really, are you actually using a language? So, if… ROB: Ooh, so that actually gets my wheels turning. Does that mean that you can have a junior full stack developer? Because like, if you just merely speak the both languages, technically by that definition, I jive with that. You can speak two languages. You are bilingual. You can write in two different languages. You might be full stack. But does that mean in the software industry you are a junior full stack developer and then as you go on and get tasks that are full-stack-like, you get better on both sides? Or is it as an industry, we really have to specialize? CHARLES: To start on the first point, I think that if you – let's just restrict it to one language – if you're doing JavaScript on the frontend and using Node.js on the backend, if you're writing Node code you are I would say by definition, and certainly by the definition of bilingual that I just proffered, you would be considered full stack, a junior full stack developer like I was saying. And I think that it's just been my experience that as you go on in your career, you will cross multiple layers of the stack just because you can't keep your hands off. If you have an ownership mentality of, “Here's this thing that needs fixed,” and it's on the backend, you know what? I'm going to go ahead and learn a little bit of how to do this, because I need it to work with the thing that I'm working on. ROB: Yeah, that makes sense. CHARLES: You will just naturally be drawn over borders throughout your career just because someone's got to do it, to do the thing that… ROB: You got to solve a problem. CHARLES: Right, when you've got to solve a problem. So, I think that people become more and more full stack over the course of their careers. But that said, I do think that there are clearly areas where functional specialization is absolutely a requirement. Like if you say, “You know what? We've got this API and we need to support 600 queries per second and we've got this huge, crazy deployment…” ROB: I will not be your person to do that. CHARLES: Yeah, exactly. That's something you're very much – that is something that you're very much hiring for. And you want to be hiring for like you said, someone who has the skill and someone who, that's what they want to do. ROB: Yeah. If you need better state management and rendering performance and testability on the frontend, I'm your person. [Chuckles] If you need me to scale your API, to handle hundreds of thousands of requests a second, nope. [Laughs] So yeah, I agree with the specialization. So Sam, I want to know. Has this conversation swayed you any way? Are you more interested in being full stack or are you leaning to a side more? [Chuckles] SAM: So, I think full stack is, it's as much about skillset as it is about personality. So, like you were talking a little bit earlier on how someone who's frontend might have more empathy towards the user. And someone who's backend might have more empathy towards the computer and the developer, rather than the end user. I think someone who's full stack has to have a wider range or empathy so they can empathize with all rather than just one or the other sets. I think personality-wise, I'd be a fine full stack developer. But I think professional-wise, I do gravitate towards the frontend because that's just how I am. As a person, I like to see the visual rather than the concept. I do a lot of painting. I do a lot of drawings. So, I'm a very visual person. So, it's really helpful to me, especially for someone who's junior and who's still learning and who came from that bootcamp experience, to be able to see what I'm changing. So, I think it does kind of go a little bit into experience as well. So, I think over time when I start touching on maybe some more backend work and I see some stuff that interests me, definitely I'll gravitate towards it, just because I want to learn. But I don't know that it's like an intrinsic quality, you would want to be full stack or be backend or be frontend, you know? ROB: That's interesting. Yeah, I agree with that. CHARLES: Yeah. That is actually a really interesting point. Because I think what I heard you say there is that when you have – software is a hidden world in many ways. You talked about it in the beginning of the conversation, the areas of the site unseen. Like you know it's there but it's hidden from view. So, there's a certain amount of vision that needs to develop. So, you kind of internalize what software, like this hidden software, looks like. So what does a deployment of some load-balanced microservice clustered thing look like? Most people would not be able to answer that question. But the more time you're exposed to it, the more it becomes burned into your inner vision. ROB: Mental model? CHARLES: Yeah. You develop a mental model. Your brain literally wraps around that. It takes time. But on the frontend, especially if you're a visual person – but I would say even if you're not – I think the same would apply to someone who's using assistive technology. It's still something that you can feel with your sense and you don't have to develop a sixth sense to perceive it. So, there's literally a problem of perception there. And so, maybe frontend work is a great on-ramp for everybody, because it's so perceptual. ROB: That's exactly why I picked it. I was trying to do iOS dev before. And I could not do it for those reasons. I didn't have that nice tight feedback loop of even though it was UI, in Objective-C you had to construct your UI and buttons out of Objective-C. Unless you wanted to use Apple's Interface Builder and that was, meh. Everybody built it procedurally. And what I loved about HTML and CSS, was I could instantly throw something on the page, attach some CSS to it, and see it change immediately. And that felt so good. [Chuckles] CHARLES: Yeah, yeah, no. And it's important to get those really tight feedback loops, especially when you're starting out. ROB: So, if we had to tie this back together, did we decide that there is a distinction between frontend, backend, and full stack? And if there is, or isn't, why? SAM: I think there's like… CHARLES: I don't know if we've… go ahead. SAM: Kind of a distinction. But it's also really fuzzy, I would say. So, if I'm going to explain what the difference is between frontend and backend to someone who maybe isn't a developer, I would always go back to a video game. So, when you see your guy… ROB: Ooh, this is interesting. SAM: Yeah. [Chuckles] When you see your guy running around and you're like, “Oh, this game looks really good. I'm really into these graphics,” but do you ever think about what it takes to save the game or what is actually being saved when you go to save it? So, if you're more interested in making the guy run and making the guy and the environment look good, you might gravitate more towards frontend. But if you're really interested in saving the data, like well what is being saved when I hit ‘save to this slot' or whatever? Then you might gravitate more towards backend. ROB: Or like the network layer of the online multiplayer? SAM: Yeah, yeah. ROB: [Laughs] That's interesting. I've never used video games as an analogy. I always go like, you know, if you're a frontend developer, you know that button that you click? That's the button I create. And then the action that happens is usually what the backend developer does. I think I like the game analogy better. [Laughs] SAM: I think the game analogy is something that most people can grasp. And most people can grasp. Like I'll tell people the difference between frontend and backend if I'm talking about Facebook. Like what I do for a job is I'll show you everything that's on your Facebook page. And when somebody, or the backend is somebody who makes all of that come into play, kind of, you know? But I think video games are easier to conceptualize that abstraction of data being saved rather than trying to explain the intricacies of Facebook to somebody. ROB: [Chuckles] CHARLES: Yeah. No, I like that. I like that. So, I guess if we achieved consensus, would we say that these do exist as broad functional categories? And a full stack developer is someone who will move in between those functional categories through the course of their career. And that generally, the trend is that the longer the career goes, the more you will do that. ROB: Yeah. I can get on board with that. I'm going to use your career as like the guiding post of that. The way you just explained it, it kind of made something click for me. You describe yourself as a frontend developer. And I think in our industry with software development and the way teams work, I think you end up specializing no matter if you call yourself a full stack developer or not. Because I do think you're a full stack developer. But you've mainly been working on frontend for the past what, three years, four years? So, I think it's okay to call yourself a frontend developer. But you are a full stack developer. But as you specialize around and amass that knowledge, that's where you become that full stack developer, right? And so, at one point in your career, you were a backend developer. And then now at this point in your career, you're a frontend developer. But now you have those experiences and you can draw on both of them and apply them across the fields, right? That's super interesting to me. So, maybe it is that you have to specialize in order to achieve the full stack. And you're never truly a full stack developer in your role. But it's possible, depending on the team and the team dynamics. It's just interesting that you can be a full stack developer, also at the same time be specializing as a frontend developer at that current time, right? Yeah, that's interesting. CHARLES: Alright, so it sounds like consensus achieved. Let's all virtually hug. [Chuckles] ROB: Send the hug emoji. CHARLES: Alright everybody. That is our show for today. We are The Frontside and we build software that you can stake your future on. We would love to hear from you, especially if you have an idea for a future podcast topic. Any news that you think is something that we should discuss, even if it's not the theme of the whole episode. And we will see you next time. As always, you can give us a shout on Twitter at @TheFrontside or just drop us an email at contact@frontside.io. If you enjoyed today's podcast, it was produced by Mandy Moore, the inimitable @TheRubyRep. So thank you, Mandy. And see you all next time.