The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast (Kevin Hourigan)

Wendy Pease is President of Rapport International, an agency that specializes in multilingual marketing, translating messages and meanings in over 200 languages – in any format, including blog posts, audio content, video, print, and multilingual chat. Wendy bought Rapport in 2004, because the fit seemed right with her interests. Over 15 years, it has maintained the same depth of languages and increased staff, revenue, and its focus on marketing. Rapport International is a Hubspot Partner

In this interview, Wendy explains that interpretation is for the spoken word what translation is for the written word. Translation, especially in marketing, is not done “word for word.” It needs to be culturally adapted and capture the meaning of the message. To ensure quality and to address this broad range of languages, Rapport International contracts with independent bilingual translators who specialize in writing for different markets and purposes.

Fifteen years ago, companies in English-speaking countries expanded internationally by exporting to companies in other English-speaking countries. Company websites opened markets across language, cultural, and geographical boundaries. Companies became “accidental exporters” when orders started coming in from other countries.

A reactive response to interest from other countries? Start marketing in any country that “self identified” as being a potential market. 

A better way? Wendy believes it is important to ask, “What is the corporate strategy?” “What is the marketing strategy?” And “How is multilingual communication going to support that strategy?” If a company only wants to sell certain products in a certain country, they don’t need to translate everything about all the rest of their products. A landing page can be used to test new market.

Wendy identified quite a few multilingual challenges: Keyword selection. Effective communication when a language does not have an equivalent word for critical product descriptor. Dealing with the approximately 3,000 new words added to a language each year. Marketing and inbound’s increasing complication and specialization, content management issues, and providing it all in the needed languages.

Wendy can be reached on her company’s website at www.rapporttranslations.com or on LinkedIn: Wendy Pease at Rapport International.

Bree Groff is CEO of NOBL Collective, a global change agency that helps quickly-growing startups or huge legacy organizations seeking to grow or scale to negotiate change. NOBL does not provide the strategy, or the brand work. Instead, it looks at decision-making, communication, meeting patterns and day to day interactions—the company’s culture—and collaborates closely with the company to steer the “human side of things,” embed the capacity for change and the feeling that change is productive and energizing, and help its clients get good at change—which is a critical competitive advantage—all without losing their “core.”

In this interview, Bree talks the “critical mass” for companies . . . when the number of employees requires new ways of doing things. She references Dunbar’s number, which is a rough measure of the upper limit of loose relationships a person can maintain . . . and still remember people’s names. Organizations reaching certain sizes often need to develop new ways of working in order to “move to the next level.”

How do you change large corporate cultures? Bree has found that, if you can effect behavioral and mindset changes at the individual level—even with very large organizations—and by repeating this enough times, change the organization to what it wants to become—more agile, more digital, more collaborative, more authentic, more engaged . . . and ultimately, more profitable.

Meeting-heavy company cultures tend to have a lot of ad hoc status meetings. Bree feels meetings should be intentional, with a “strong cadence around what you’re talking about with what frequency.”

NOBL published Team Tempo, http://www.blurb.com/bookshare/app/index.html?bookId=7693002#, a guide to effective meetings. Bree recommends companies consider quarterly team retrospective meetings to evaluate the company’s internal environment and strategic sensing meetings, where teams discuss customer, industry, and technology changes that may impact the company.

How a decision is made can have a major impact on decision quality . . . and acceptance. After numerous client queries of, “How do I make a decision?”, NOBL developed a “Decider app,” available as a Slackbot at thedecider.app/slack or as a web version at https://thedecider.app/. This tool asks a series of short questions and then recommends and defines the decision-making process that best fits the circumstances, highlighting the process’s advantages and disadvantages. The decision-making methods include: autocratic, avoidant, consensus, consent, consultative, delegation, democratic, or stochastic.

Bree can be reached on her company website at https://nobl.io/, on LinkedIn at /in/bree-groff-94281136/

As a bestselling author and keynote speaker, Deb Gabor, CEO and Founder of Sol Marketing, has, herself, become a “brand.” She defines Sol Marketing as a brand-driven, strategy-led marketing firm in the business of creating irrational loyalty. Irrational loyalty means people are indelibly bonded to a brand. 

When Deb talks about her agency, she does not list the provided services: she feels marketing services have become commoditized. Instead, she presents a passionate vision of what the future could be. She tells people she is on a million-brand mission – to impact a million brands in her career. She believes that the best brands in the world are truly unique – in why they do what they do. Her goal is to strengthen brands: making businesses more sustainable will up-level communities, and, ultimately, help people. 

When the Corona virus hit, Deb’s speaking engagements for the next 6 months were cancelled. She is sheltering at home . . . but not sheltering in her mind. The question was: how was she going to generate income when she could no longer speak at face-to-face events? What could she do? How could she help her company? She mobilized her team and made her personal brand a “client” of the agency. “Figure out how this has impacted us,” she told her team, “and then what we need to do.” 

Deb referenced an interview with James Stockdale in Jim Collins’ book Good to Great. Stockdale was held for 6 years in a Vietnamese POW camp. When asked how he managed to survive, Stockdale explained that he faced the brutal facts of his situation, but also kept up his hope and optimism. Prisoners who were over-optimistic, but refused to face the “brutal facts,” did not do as well.

Deb’s team identified around eight “brutal facts” about how Deb’s brand was impacted by Covid-19. Some issues were solvable, some were not. 

The company pivoted and, got Deb back on track in a new direction – creating information products, building online courses, building sales funnels, and building webinar funnels. Deb identified the assets she needed her team to build, established a schedule, and set targeted monthly income goals for the information products, her speaking, and her book sales. Then, taking things a step further, the company prioritized a something new: authority marketing services for professionals, who, like her, were facing the same challenges. The assets her team built for Deb became a product that could help other speakers, authors, experts, coaches, and consultants. 

Deb says she has never seen a better opportunity than now for “smart people with expertise that can elevate other people in their own businesses, in their lives – I’ve never seen a better opportunity for them to share generously that expertise with other people.” She challenges people to think about: “How can I be indispensable to people at this time? How can I share something that I know or that I can do in a way that helps another person?” In reaching out, Deb says “be helpful, be authentic, be true to your brand.” She now spends around 6 hours a day, every day, presenting public or private webinars, and consulting one-on-one with business leaders, marketers, creators, or people with personal brands who are interested in setting up their brands to thrive during these unusual times.

Deb can be reached through social media and on her website at: debgabor.com, where Deb is posting thought-provoking webinars that explore a post-Covid world. Deb’s books, Branding Is Sex: Get Your Customer Laid and Sell the Hell Out of Anything and Irrational Loyalty: Building a Brand That Thrives in Turbulent Times are available on Amazon.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Deb Gabor, CEO and Founder of Sol Marketing based in Austin, Texas. Deb is also a bestselling author and keynote speaker, and I think you’re going to enjoy this conversation. Welcome to the podcast, Deb.

DEB: Thank you. I’m really glad to be here.

ROB: It’s fantastic to have you here. Why don’t you tell us about Sol Marketing and about your own journey as well into authorship and speaking? 

DEB: Right on. I tell people that I’m in the business of creating the condition of irrational loyalty, and when I say irrational loyalty, that’s that feeling that you’re so indelibly bonded to a brand that you’d feel like you were cheating on it if you were to choose an alternative. It’s kind of how I feel about my iPhone, and the weird feeling I get when my friends who have Android phones send me text messages and they show up in green bubbles. I’m so irrationally loyal to i-thingies that even if I would hold a competitor’s phone in my hand, I’d feel dirty.

So that’s the business that I’m in, and how I do that is by running a brand-driven, strategy-led marketing firm. We do all the marketing things, and the reason why people hire us is because they need a good kick in the ass. They’re growing rapidly, they have a lot at stake to get it right, they have no time to waste, and they need someone to lead them through the hard work of branding. Is that a good explanation?

ROB: That’s perfect. How did you come to this positioning? A lot of people talk about what they do, they talk about the nuts and bolts, the details of what they do, and I hear you coming at the conversation from the complete opposite direction. You’re coming from a vision of the possible future, a vision of where things are going. How did you arrive at that view that this is how it needs to be?

DEB: This is the work that I actually do with my clients, so a little bit of this is the process of eating my own dog food. I firmly believe that the best brands in the world are not just different; they’re truly singular and they’re unique, and that uniqueness comes from truly why they do what they do.

When people talk to me personally and say, “Hey, Deb, what are you obsessed with? What are you working on right now?”, I tell people, I’m on a million-brand mission. Through my career, I want to have impact on a million brands. The reason why that’s important is if I can help a brand be a better brand, it helps them create a more sustainable business. More sustainable businesses are great for up-leveling communities and truly helping people.

So, I’m really internally motivated, and I’m very, very driven. It’s an obsession and a compulsion for me, so I can’t really talk about it any other way.

The other thing is I work in Austin, Texas. There are 150 other people who do exactly what I do, including a direct competitor whose office is directly across the street from me, and when I’m at my office, at my desk, I look out this gigantic picture window and across the road I see the tombstone with her sign on it, and it drives me absolutely mad. Her services, her functional benefits, the stuff that she does as a company is exactly the same as the stuff that we do as a company, yet we don’t compete. We really don’t compete for the same clients because the reason that people hire us is vastly different than the reason that people hire her company.

So that’s one of the reasons why I don’t default to the comfortable way of talking about agency business in terms of “here’s what we do” because those services have become relatively commoditized. I want people to remember me for what I’m about, and I want people to really understand the specific singular thing they get from us that they can’t get from anyone else. That’s why I talk about it in terms of “here’s the mission I’m on and why I do what I do” and being in the business of irrational loyalty.

Also, if I told you “We’re a branding and strategy and marketing services firm,” you would be like, “Meh, everybody else is that too.”

ROB: Yeah, you definitely hear that a lot, and it’s a tremendous visual metaphor to have that nemesis across the street. I find it motivating for a lot of teams to know who the enemy is – not in a jealous way or a competitive way, but in helping you refine and define the mission.

You mentioned you’re based in Austin, Texas. We were originally supposed to meet up in person at South by Southwest. It’s April; South by Southwest is cancelled. It didn’t happen. We are sheltering at home. But you, as we were talking about before we started recording, are not sheltering, in your mind. How has your strategy shifted amidst this coronavirus outbreak, amidst this pandemic, amidst some companies pulling back and some accelerating forwards?

DEB: I think I shared with you before we got on the interview here that I’m in touch with a lot of business leaders through my personal and business networks, and they fall into two camps right now. There’s one – these are the folks that are shuttering everything, they have their thumbs in their mouths, they’re rocking back and forth, they’re lying on the doormat in front of the front door – they’ve given up. They’re throwing in the towel.

Then there are others who are really looking at this through a new lens and practicing the art of the pivot or figuring out, “How this is an opportunity for me to emerge with maybe new offerings, new products, new services and things like that that are going to position me for the long term?”

One of the things that I did that I think is going to be really helpful for your listeners is I went back and reread my copy of this great book by Jim Collins called Good to Great. The day that I decided to pick up Good to Great again, I opened up the book and it opened directly to a chapter where there was an interview with James Stockdale. Jim Stockdale was previously a vice presidential candidate, but he was also an admiral and a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. For 6 years, he was in a POW camp.

Collins interviewed him for his book and asked him, “How were you able to actually get through that experience relatively unscathed? How did you endure 6 years in a POW camp?” What Stockdale explained was that he was able to maintain hope and optimism in the face of the brutal facts of his reality. He also explained that the people who were in the POW camps who were overly optimistic and refused to face the brutal facts were the ones that didn’t fare very well.

That’s called the Stockdale paradox. I was reading about the Stockdale paradox probably right about the same time that South by Southwest was getting cancelled, and it was really empowering for me because I actually did an exercise with our leadership team where we went back and revisited our core values and our core purpose as an organization, and then we documented all the brutal facts.

The brutal facts of the current situation are, personally, I make most of my money as a speaker and an author and a workshop leader, and every single speaking engagement I had scheduled between South by Southwest and the end of July was cancelled, all over the course of about two days. That’s a brutal fact. Another brutal fact was I do mostly B2B work in our company, and we had already been seeing some supply chain issues with our clients, making it really difficult to do things like shoot videos of their products. That had started happening back in January, so that was a brutal fact.

Another brutal fact was everybody’s going to have to work from home, people are going to be less productive, we’re going to have connectivity issues. Another brutal fact was I looked at how much per day does it cost to operate my agency, and how much cash runway do I have? How many days of cash runway do I actually have in the bank?

And for each of these brutal facts – and there were about eight of them – there were some that I could do something about, and then there were some that I couldn’t do something about. But for each of those brutal facts, my leadership team and I acknowledged every one of them, and then we flipped immediately to “What is our response to this brutal fact?”

What I’m doing during this time, which gets back to your original question of like “you’re not sheltering in your mind,” one of the opportunities that surfaced from really examining these brutal facts was the notion that I’m at home in Austin, Texas for 6 months without anywhere to go. What can I do? How can I help the company?

Two things came of that. One of them is that we made a very strong pivot to offering authority marketing services to other speakers and authors and experts and coaches and consultants – people like me – to help them share their expertise without the need for face-to-face events. We had already created a business for me out of this – I’m a client of my own company – and we were offering it to other people. We turned this into a service.

I’ve had a number of conversations with other people who are in my same situation where we’re offering these kinds of services, which are like creating information products, building online courses, building sales funnels, building webinar funnels. That was one thing.

And then another opportunity that came from that, which is really where I’m not sheltering in my mind – I have never seen a better opportunity for smart people with expertise that can elevate other people in their own businesses in their lives, I’ve never seen a better opportunity for them to share generously that expertise with other people. I literally have been spending I would say probably 6 hours a day, every day, if I’m not doing a public webinar, I’m doing a private webinar. Or I’m having one-on-one consultations with business leaders or marketers or creators or people with personal brands who are interested in understanding how they can set their brands up to thrive during this time.

ROB: I love what you say about uplifting, because even though you could have a disposition towards making the most and really transforming business to thrive in this environment, we all I think still need a little bit of encouragement and uplift from other people for those days when maybe we’re not feeling quite as strong about it. We’re all going to have a down day here or there.

I’m very interested by what you said about authority marketing and focusing there. I think that’s a word that has been used and misused. I’ve seen it misused in such a reductive way as essentially buying a book for yourself.

DEB: Yep, exactly. Which actually, I think the people who wrote the book Authority Marketing, the purpose is they wrote a book called Authority Marketing to teach you how to buy a book to do authority marketing. I look at authority marketing in a much more comprehensive way.

ROB: And you’re providing that service to people who know the difference, too. The people that you’re going to work with are people who know how to get a book published, probably. They might change what they’re writing right now, but it’s not “Help me be famous.” They probably have a brand. They probably have some opportunity. They probably have some skills. But a lot of these folks probably don’t have the tools around them the way you do.

DEB: Right. I invested significantly over the past couple of years to actually build these things. I’ll tell you a quick story about where this all came from.

I wrote my first book, called Branding Is Sex: Get Your Customer Laid and Sell the Hell Out of Anything. Yes, I am the person who used both the words “sex” and “laid” in the title of a book. When I wrote that book, it really was part of this compulsion to share that information with as many people as I could. I give away our methodology, my expertise, 30 years of experience and track record in brand strategy – I give that away for the cost of a book.

But what I didn’t do was connect that back to how I wanted to grow in my own career, how I wanted that to serve my agency business, and how that was going to be the pathway to what my vision is for myself. I wasn’t very intentional about it.

After that book came out, fortunately for me, because of brand disasters at the hand of such great brands like United Airlines and Pepsi and Uber and Papa John’s, lots of other branding dumpster fires that happened, I became the world’s resident authority on brand disasters and botched corporate apologies. I became the person who was able to answer all the media’s questions about who’s handling it well, who’s not handling it, what brands should do, what brands can learn.

It was really during that time that the second book, Irrational Loyalty, was written, because that book basically wrote itself. I thought, I need to be smarter and more intentional and definitely more thoughtful and strategic about how I want these pieces of content that I’ve created to serve me in the long term.

That’s when it became apparent to me that I needed something other than just a book to express my authority, because a book is just one method. I do a lot of public speaking, but I also wanted to share my expertise in other ways so that people could consume it in more actionable methods for them. So I went out and attended a Mastermind of some of the best digital marketers in the world. This is one of those Masterminds you pay $30,000 a year to be a member and then $10,000 an event. Definitely the upper echelon.

I happened to be there because I was a speaker, but I got to spend an entire 3 days with people who had 9-figure sales funnels. I thought, all right, these people are selling information products and they’re selling a buttload of them. They’ve created a way to scale their personal brands or their business brands or whatever. I could do that too.

I went out and asked all those people, “Can I hire you to build this for me?” They were all like, “No, you can find other people. Go see this person, go see that person.” I started talking to people, and I was interviewing people, and there was no shortage of people who were willing to put me into a sales funnel to sell me a course on how to build a sales funnel. I was like, what the hell? This is ridiculous.

So, I mobilized my team, and my personal brand became a client of the agency. I was like, “You guys are going to figure this out. We’re going to build all of these assets. We are going to build all of the automated marketing platforms. We’re going to tie all of this stuff together, and we’re going to build a business for me. Here’s a metric, and by this time, in this many months, we’re going to be making this much per month revenue off of these information products. I’m also going to do this much in speaking, I’m going to do this much in book sales.” We built a business around it.

Over the last year, I had a number of clients coming to me saying, “I want to be you. How do I build that footprint?” I said, “Well, interestingly, we built it internally.” When the current coronavirus situation hit and all the other authors and speakers and experts and coaches and consultants, like me, were like, “Oh my gosh, I’m stuck in front of a computer in my dining room, working over Zoom; how do I impact many, many people?”, I was like, I’m good. I’ve got stuff.

But I also was able to work with the company, and we made a pivot. We made this quick pivot. I said, “We need to really prioritize these authority marketing services.” So that’s the story of a pivot. I hope that’s helpful to your audience.

ROB: I think it’s absolutely impressive and resilient, and something to learn from. I think a lot of people strike out to write a book as a hunt for where their expertise is. It seems to me that in particular, the services you’re providing require that somebody have an expertise that goes beyond just a book.

But if someone’s feeling like they really need to have this expertise and this array of services around it, but they’re not quite sure where to go, where to focus on their expertise, how do you think about zoning in something that a person can offer that nobody else can offer, but they can’t put their finger on it quite yet?

DEB: That’s an interesting question. That’s a question that I’ve been answering for a lot of people over the past couple of weeks – people like me who are sitting around with a little bit of time to really navel-gaze and pontificate for themselves about where they’re going.

My recommendation for that is to just ask the question of “How can I be indispensable to someone at this present time?” That’s the first question, honestly. I always start everything from a reexamination of my own personal core values and my own core purpose and my mission and my big hairy audacious goal and where I’m going in life. I’m lucky that I have that as a compass.

If people are thinking about this and they’re like, “What expertise can I share?”, the first place to start is really with, why do you do what you do? Or why are you? It’s a very existential question. Simon Sinek’s stuff helps with that a lot, too. I recommend that people do some examination of that.

But then ask the question, “How can I be indispensable to people at this time? How can I share something that I know or that I can do in a way that helps another person?” If you’re looking at creating content and putting content out to the world to share your expertise with only the goal of making money, you will never be able to make money. If you are putting content out in the world because you truly have a message that you need to share with other people because it’s going to elevate them in a particular way, it is your job to figure out specifically what you do.

I always tell people, just ask the basic – I have these three brand questions. The questions are, “What does it say about a person that they use my brand? What does it say about them?” The second question is, “What is the one thing they get from me that they can’t get from anyone else?” And “How can I make my customer or my reader, my listener, my viewer, how can I make my person a hero in his or her own story?”

I think that people will find a lot of answers there. In my own experience with not being super intentional about how I’m going to use a book – I’m very intentional now because I have a book and I have another book and I have a speaking business and I have classes, and we’re starting up some online courses, I now have a webinar series, all that kind of stuff – the whole purpose of that is to create a community, and create a community that I can engage with and share my expertise with.

My goal in my approach of sharing expertise first and not asking for anything in return, my hope is that it’s going to elevate a lot of people and make them irrationally loyal to me. Then, when people are in a situation where they’re back to buying stuff, they’re going to want to buy that stuff from me, or they’re going to want to buy that stuff from my company.

ROB: Right. I think what you’re saying there – it’s subtle, but this is not a time, for the most part – unless you’re selling surgical masks, this is not a time to be selling for a lot of people, but it is a time to be investing deeply and helping, and sometimes helping – I think you’ve done some work with startups; a common thing in startup land is a lot of times you’ll ask for help, but you get money. If you ask for money, you’ll get help.

DEB: [laughs] That’s true. I have a business where I work with early stage companies, helping them tell their story effectively through their investor pitch. That’s something that we always say. You have to treat fundraising like a branding exercise, but the ideal customer that you’re going after is an investor, and you have to figure out how you’re going to elevate that investor’s life. How are you going to give them bragging rights from offering you that kind of help that you’re looking for?

But you’re 100% right. Now is a time to be looking at everything through this lens of helping versus selling. I’ve been telling everybody this. You really, really have to ask that question of “How can I be indispensable at this time?” There’s lots of businesses that we can’t use right now. There are lots of things that feel to us that they are maybe luxuries that we shouldn’t indulge in right now.

As a brand, any kind of brand, you can still help during this time. It’s not just like the parent company of Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior retooling their factories to go from manufacturing perfumes to making hand sanitizer, or Tito’s Vodka here in Austin doing the same. It’s also, how can you help people deal with the current situation at hand in a helpful way?

Really good example – I’m a skier, and I was super bummed that my season got cut short this year. One of the places that I buy gear from sent me the most delightful email. It acknowledged the current situation, showed real regard for humanity, and it said, “Hey, we’re also bummed out that the season got cut short. If you’re feeling bad, here’s a link to a playlist of your favorite ski porn” – which is a playlist of really fun ski movies on YouTube. And further down in the email, there was a nice feature that you could link to on their website about ski touring – which, for people who are not skiers, that’s the process of climbing uphill and skiing down. You don’t ride a chairlift; you climb uphill and you ski down.

The ski areas are closed, but there’s plenty of places to go into the back country. A lot of people need tips and tricks for doing that and doing it in a way that’s appropriate for the current pandemic conditions, so how do you still stay safe and ski with a buddy without getting too close? Also, safety – it’s avalanche season, all that kind of stuff. Further down in the email, they merchandised, “Here’s the best of the 2021 gear that’s coming out. Ski season 2020 is over; however, it’s never too early to dream.” So it was a light message, and it was not sales-y at all.

Then what I loved, at the very bottom of this email, I truly was delighted to see there were the signatures of everybody who works in the store. It was very personal. It was very authentic. It was really sincere. It was totally on brand. It was helpful. They’re not selling ski gear right now. People are not going online and buying a $1900 pair of skis and a $700 pair of boots right now. They’re just not. However, this brand is going to stay connected not just in my mind, but in my heart. The next time I do need something, I’m going to go to them.

Looking at everything from this lens of helping versus selling is what’s going to help brands connect in the long term and remain relevant and thrive when this is over – which this will be over. Come hell or high water, it will be over, and people will be back, but nothing will be the same as it was before.

ROB: It ties back nicely – it sounds like they even may have asked some of those questions that you asked, of what are the things they can’t change. The thing they accepted that they can’t change is that people cannot go skiing, and asking people to buy a pair of skis to sit in their closet for next year is not maybe a very good message.

I’ve seen, I’m sure you’ve seen, I’m sure everybody has seen an unbelievable number of emails from companies about their response to COVID-19, and half of them say, “We’re just going to keep being the business that we already are.” That’s maybe an innocuous brand fail. But you, being someone who keeps track of some bigger mistakes, what are some bigger mistakes people have made in messaging around this crisis that we can learn from? Not to trash them just to trash them, but to trash them by way of example.

DEB: I have something that would be really fun right now, which is this morning, I wrote something that is the perfect COVID-19 email that comes from that brand – I call it the perfect “we’re all in this together” email. How many “we’re all in this together” emails have you received from brands that you didn’t even know you were on their email list?

ROB: Oh, uncountable.

DEB: Yeah. Let me read you the message. It’s entitled, “An important message from our CEO”:

“Dear Deb,

“You don’t ever remember giving us your email, nor do you know how we got a hold of it. You once briefly thought about us 7 years ago; however, we’re here for you during these (unprecedented, uncertain, challenging, unsettling, unusual, rapidly evolving) times (pick one). We’re keeping everybody safe and monitoring the situation. If you need a new wine rack/sofa table/machete/floor lamp/outdoor fireplace/Aston Martin, we’re in this together.

“Also, here’s a reminder that we’re also here for our employees, whom you didn’t even realize existed until just now. Our thoughts and prayers go out to everybody affected by the current health crisis. Just know that (brand that you didn’t even know had your email address) is by your side during these tough times.

“We’re in this together, and I’m on Richard Branson’s yacht –

“A Brand You Don’t Really Know.”

That’s the big crime right now. During the first week – this was just post-March 11th – everybody was rushing to send out their COVID-19 email. All of them were “a letter from our CEO,” and they were all entitled “We’re in this together.” That’s my parody of that. Worst is automated marketing. Turn off your freaking automations, people.

The day that the WHO announced that we had a global pandemic – and it was also the same day, I believe, that we closed off our borders to people arriving by airplane from most countries in Europe – I got an email from Air Canada asking me, “Hey, don’t forget to opt in to get insider information and savings on your next flight!”

I also received an email from another brand, like a big box retailer, from whom I recently purchased a box of legal pads – you know, those yellow lined pads that we write on at work – and they wanted me to give them a review. I was like, “Oh hey, let me stop everything and give you a review.”

Then probably the worst offender that I saw during that time period was the email that I received from a clothing retailer. The headline on the email was “Staycay is better than vacay,” and they were advertising a 40% off friends and family sale. This is anything but a staycation, people. We are sheltering in place. This is for the safety of all humanity at this point. Don’t make light of the situation.

On the flipside, like the example that I gave you of the ski gear retailer that sent me that great message, I’ve also seen incredible efforts from brands, big and small, to be helpful.

I have a really good friend who owns a chain of ecofriendly dry cleaners, and if you think about it, dry cleaners are not doing really well during this time, are they? It’s considered an essential service, but since we’re working from home – I don’t know about you, I don’t know what you’re wearing, but I’m doing what I call the “business mullet,” where I’m wearing business gear on top and I’ve got workout pants on the bottom. It’s business on top, party on the bottom. We’re just not wearing dry clean-only clothes.

He called me in a little bit of a panic and he was like, “I think my business is going to completely tank.” I said, “Let’s think about this for a minute.” He’s an ecofriendly dry cleaner. He also has a network of vans and drivers – it’s a pickup and delivery service. They come to your house, they get your stuff. I said, “Everybody’s working from home in their day pajamas, and they make the transition to the night pajamas later, so they’re not doing dry cleaning of their clothes.”

However, I work in my dining room and I have a set of really hideous, very dirty drapes. I said, “Do you guys dry clean drapes?” He was like, “Yes, I do.” I said, “You know what? It sounds like a time for you to educate people on the household items in your home that, while you’re working from home and looking at them for 24 hours a day, you might think about getting cleaned, to have a cleaner, healthier home.”

I said, “How can you be the arbiter of helpful content? You’re an ecofriendly dry cleaner. How can you be the arbiter of content that is cool, that’s helpful content about how you can keep your home clean during this time that you’re sheltering in place with products that you have around the house that are also ecofriendly? How can you also provide helpful, useful content to people while they’re working from home? Nobody sees more business casual clothing than the dry cleaner. How can you, in a fun and uplifting and elevating way, create some content for your immediate community showing them the best and worst of Zoom fashion?” Just to bridge the gap with content.

This time is bringing out the best and the worst in people. Don’t send the email that’s the “We are in this together,” and God forbid, please don’t use any of those words that I used in my parody email. Make sure that you’re being authentic and sincere to your brand. What you do as a brand during this time is going to define you, more so than what you say. This is a time for people to take action. Thank you for listening to my TED talk.

ROB: Oh, it’s fantastic. To take action, to give, and to rethink. If a dry cleaner can rethink their business for this time, then so can any of us. I know, Deb, you’re certainly not the only one with the “business mullet.” You might’ve seen this – I saw Walmart said that their sales of shirts are up and their sales of pants are down.

DEB: Yes. [laughs] I love it. It’s amazing.

ROB: It’s pretty universal. Deb, when people want to get more from you, when they want to see what you’re doing – you mentioned all of this content you’re putting around your brand, all these different tools that you’re putting out into the world – where should people go to find those things?

DEB: People should go to debgabor.com. All the things are there, including the webinar series, which we’re adding new webinars every day. These are open and available to the public. Like I said, I’m bringing on a bunch of really, really interesting experts. Our focus really is just to help people. Nobody gets paid for this. I have experts in my network, and I’m helping them connect with people and share their expertise to help other people.

There’s ways to get in touch with me. You can send emails to me via the site. I’m on all the social media stuff as Deb Gabor. You can find me. I love to hear from people. If you hear this and you’re like, “Wow, what you said, I really like it” or “What you said, it’s complete B.S.,” I want to hear from you. I love to talk to people. I’m an extrovert, so this time of sheltering in place is really hard for me. So please, connect with me. Please, please love me.

ROB: [laughs] Fantastic. Yes, I am in that boat with you of severe cabin fever.

DEB: [laughs] Yep.

ROB: Thank you for coming on the podcast, Deb. You’ve given a lot today. It sounds like you have an absolute ton more to give. I hope people will seek you out, and hopefully next year we can actually connect in person in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest.

DEB: Yeah, I hope so. Thank you.

ROB: All right, thanks, Deb.

DEB: Take care. Bye 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.

Steve Denker, most recently Vice President of Marketing and Digital for Turner Classic Movies, chats with Rob at the virtual 2021 South by Southwest. In this interview, he gives his perspective on what he looks for when “working with agencies.” 

In the mid-90s, Steve worked for Aramark at Fulton County Stadium/Turner Field, managing relationships with the brands and products that were part of that stadium experience. He observed how fans interacted with Coca-Cola and highlighted opportunities for Coke to increase sales and strengthen the link between the experience and the product. Coca-Cola liked his approach and brought him onboard to develop the experiential look and feel of Coca-Cola in a wide variety of venues. 

After a while, Steve understood that Coca-Cola was large enough that it would be a long time before he would have the opportunity to manage people, explore the emerging field of digital marketing, and gain product sales experience. 

He took a position with RentPath, leading the marketing and advertising outreach for apartment guide publications at Apartment.com. From 2001 to 2008, Steve worked directly with companies that “touched” the rental process . . . selling digital advertising to utilities, renters’ insurance companies, and movers and helping people find the right place to live. “Moving is an incredibly stressful time,” Steve says.

In 2011, Steve joined Relocation.com, doing lead generation and business development out of New York. He connected with an individual who owned the Beach.com domain. Together, they planned to build the world’s largest and most comprehensive database of beach and beach destination information. When heavy competition from Travelocity and Expedia prevented Beach.com from getting the desired level of traffic and sales, Steve decided it was time to move again. He values his involvement in this “failed venture.” “I can’t tell you the lessons learned from that experience I have taken through everything else I’ve done, both personally and professionally.” All that “good stuff” found its place when Steve joined a consulting firm in Atlanta. (Steve’s Beach.com partner still manages the reimagined site.)

In 2016, an old buddy from his Coca-Cola days invited him to build a marketing department at Turner Classic Movies. Steve was at TCM for 4-1/2 years. Outsiders may think large organizations have such a wealth of internal resources that they don’t need help from agencies. Far from the truth, Steve says. Agencies are important for their unique talents, expertise, efficiencies, and ability to help “execute the vision.”

Steve describes what he looks for in agencies. Once agencies get past the first cut of “Do they have the ability to do what we need them to do?”, he needs to know that they “either already understand our business and who our customers are or have the capacity to understand that in a very short period of time.” He thinks organizational leaders need to have a laser focus on what they are trying to accomplish and understand both functional and emotional business priorities.

Steve recently started thefasttimes.net, a weekly culture e-zine for Gen-Xers and wannabes, and reaching out on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and continuing in our South by Southwest series, I am speaking today with a friend, a friend of the podcast, and not an agency owner but a marketer with a tremendous history that I think we will all benefit greatly from. My guest is Steve Denker. Steve was most recently Vice President of Marketing and Digital for Turner Classic Movies. He’s based in Atlanta like me, but we are still in COVID quarantine, talking online. Welcome to the podcast, Steve.

STEVE: Thank you, Rob. Thanks for having me. It’s been great running into you at local marketing and industry events over the past probably 8+ years, and at South by. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to work with Converge and/or Bellwood Labs in the future.

ROB: I appreciate that. I think I met you one fine day when you wandered into the Flashpoint Startup Accelerator here in Atlanta in the season of Beach.com. At least, that’s a memorable moment in your career. But you’ve done a great deal of things. Why don’t you start off by running through your journey and path in marketing, to give us an idea of the context you come to us from?

STEVE: Sure, thank you. And I do remember that day when we met downtown. I started out – I’ll back the train up a couple of stops. I grew up in Philadelphia and went to school in New York and came down to Atlanta in the mid-90s for a company called Aramark that was responsible for the concessions, the merchandise, and general operations at stadiums and arenas around the country, among some other businesses that they’re in.

I started working at Fulton County Stadium and eventually what became the new Turner Field. My position really was more in an operations role, but I was responsible for the relationships with all of the brands and products that were part of that stadium experience. I was working with the Budweisers and Starbucks and Bluebell Ice Cream, Coca-Colas of the world. Any product that was looking to get in front of those fans.

It’s interesting how I eventually used that relationship to transition to a role at Coca-Cola because I was watching the fans and seeing what they were doing at every game. I had the opportunity to watch their behaviors and see their traffic paths and their buying habits and so forth. So when Coca-Cola brought a team down once or twice a season to take a look at their assets, I had the opportunity not just to nod my head and say, “Yeah, the umbrellas are faded” or “We need new menu boards,” but really share with them what was going on and how the fans were interacting with Coca-Cola and how it was part of the experience to watch a Braves game.

By putting together some plans and sharing with them where I thought they could not only accelerate sales, but also make the brand more part of the experience, I caught the attention of a few folks within that sports and marketing group, at the time called Presence Marketing. Not long after the Olympics, I transitioned over to that group at Coca-Cola and was then part of that experiential look and feel of Coca-Cola at stadiums and arenas, Disney, Universal, and so forth, in a creative capacity.

It was a terrific move. The group was run by Steve Koonin, who is just Atlanta royalty and the CEO of the Hawks and State Farm Arena. He really was bringing so many innovations to this group and to the way that Coke was marketed. I was really fortunate to be part of that team and that group.

From there, a couple of years later, I had an opportunity to go to a company most recently called RentPath. At the time it was called PriMedia. Also here in Buckhead.

What was missing at Coke at that time when I left – I think there were three things I was really looking for that were going to take a while. I was looking to manage people and learn how to do that. I felt that was a good next step for my career. That would’ve taken a while within that multinational structure.

Digital was something that, in the early 2000s, was really the forefront of what the next part of marketing was. Coke wasn’t paying as much attention to it as other companies were.

Then finally, I was looking for something that would give me real sales experience, not just internally and working with other groups, but actually selling products. Again, I thought that would be something at the early stage of my career that I would learn and use for the rest of my days in terms of working in any capacity.

So RentPath offered those and more, and I went over and led the marketing and advertising for the apartment guide publications at Apartment.com. This was early on lead gen and getting folks into and around their apartments, their living situations. It was really interesting, because it was working directly with any company that has to do with that process, whether it’s your utilities and your phone, renter’s insurance, physically moving – anything like that were opportunities for myself and my team to sell advertising to.

These were the early days of digital advertising, if you can imagine: banner ads with CPMs of $60-75 and relatively no accountability. Not even serving accountability. Forget about click-through rates; did you actually serve the ads I just paid for? That was even, at the time, a little murky. Companies just wanted to be part of it. As long as they went onto the website and saw their ad, they said, “Keep serving it.”

It was really interesting to see the growth of the industry from, again, banner ads and text ads to what it is today – particularly at that time of 2001 through 2008, when it really exploded into the framework of what we see today with data and analytics and accountability. It was exciting to see that grow.

I left for a company called Relocation.com, which was lead generation and business development out of New York. I’d spend a week a month in New York and then back to Atlanta again.

I connected with someone in New York who owned the Beach.com domain, and we had plans to build the world’s largest database of beach information. Not just every beach in the world, but hotels, vacation rentals, restaurants, activities, local information, local concierge services – really anything that would have to do with a beach destination or vacation, and build out this massive portal.

At the time in 2011, this is when people really were using Travelocity and Expedia. There was heavy competition from these other sites. We went ahead and raised some money, built a plan, and it just didn’t take off. It didn’t get to the level in terms of traffic and converting users into revenue and sales that we had hoped for.

All shook hands a few years later, back in 2013, and the site is still live right now. My partner at the time is still running it with a couple of different objectives. But I can’t tell you the amount lessons learned from that experience I have taken through everything else I’ve done, both personally and professionally. I look back at that and have no regrets on taking that business risk. I think if we had done a couple of things differently – many things differently – we would’ve had a different outcome. But again, we pivoted. A lot of key learnings from that that I’ve been fortunate enough to share with other folks.

That’s what I did after that at a consulting firm here in Atlanta and had some great client relationships with companies like PDS and a company called AGRO Merchants Group, a healthcare company, we did some work with Blackstone.

Eventually, one of my earliest relationships from Coca-Cola, a woman named Jennifer Dorian, who is a mentor and a friend and could not be a bigger rock star – she’s now the CEO over at Atlanta Public Broadcasting & Radio. She was on Steve Koonin’s team as well. I worked with her in the Coca-Cola days and had stayed in touch with her really for 20 years. We were having coffee or lunch once or twice a year just to catch up and so forth.

She at the time was general manager of Turner Classic Movies and gave me a call and said, “Hey, we’re looking to build a marketing department and expand what we’ve been doing.” This was in late 2016. She said, “Would you like to come over and interview with a bunch of people?” I did that, and a couple of months later I had moved over to Turner and had an amazing four and a half years there.

ROB: It’s quite a journey. I think it’s interesting to point out that all the way through Beach.com, and probably a little bit after that as well, you were in early on the customer journey. Moving, to an extent, is kind of the ultimate customer journey. You combined that in the digital space. You mentioned the high CPM, but the customer lifetime value is also quite high if you can get somebody into an apartment for a couple of years.

STEVE: Absolutely. That’s a great point. Not only is it part of that initial customer journey – wherever that came from and whatever company claimed to own that verbiage and so forth, it was the beginning of that – but it was also, I think, a very critical time when working with customers. I was working in industries where you really can’t screw it up. In other words, moving is an incredibly stressful time. If someone doesn’t find the right apartment, if you haven’t given them all the information – and again, we were the connector. We weren’t the apartment complex, but we were certainly helping them find that right place.

But if they didn’t move into the right place, if they found out it was an hour commute from where they worked and they didn’t realize that, or if they moved into a place in Alpharetta and their friends were all in Buckhead and they didn’t realize it was a 45-minute drive, not 10 – all of these different things, they looked back and they were upset with us and the recommendations we made.

And on the moving side, same thing. Again, it’s very stressful. If that moving truck doesn’t show up on time – think about all the things physically connected to moving your stuff. You’re trying to time everything out on a particular moving day. It could be hooking up utilities or having to be out of one place and into another. If something isn’t right and you realize that all of your possessions are now on an 18-foot U-Haul and that is broken down on the side of a road, it’s not good.

So I think it’s understanding how important it is to take care of the customer and really understand what it is emotionally they’re going through when they’re finding a place to live, when they’re physically moving. At Beach.com, it was your vacation. Most people have two weeks a year, and that vacation is very important for them to recharge and connect with family or friends. It’s an important part of your life. If somehow I was part of an organization that screwed that up, it was on me, and it was something that I took very seriously.

ROB: Definitely a lot at stake there. Steve, one thing I think you can shed particularly interesting light on is maybe your time at TCM. You have a unique perspective for a guest on this podcast. You’re kind of on the other side of the table from the marketing agency, so I think it would be interesting to explore TCM through the lens of what that brand–agency relationship can look like.

STEVE: Sure. Absolutely, I’d love to do that. At TCM, we really looked at ourselves as part of the larger Warner Media portfolio. I think every brand looks at themselves as their own business, and we were certainly no different in that we had a very clear set of objectives and goals in terms of growing our brand to the audience, making sure that people not only tuned in and watched, but also couple participate in other ways if they didn’t have TCM on cable. Now there’s HBO Max and ways to watch, but also, there are a lot of other events and other enterprise businesses that TCM was a part of.

Running all these events, I think some people from the outside may look at a company like Warner Media, AT&T being the parent, and say, “Oh, there’s got to be so many resources within the company that there wouldn’t be a need to tap into agencies.” That couldn’t be further from the reality. I’ve worked with agencies for a very long time; they bring unique talent to a company like Warner Media and particularly TCM. We would work with agencies for their expertise, for their efficiencies, and for them to help us execute the vision. They were a very important part of what we did.

We had a couple of different ways we could structure relationships. Certainly, there were some contractors or freelancers that could come in for some very small projects or very specific projects that maybe had to do with production or one part of a creative execution. But for the most part, working with agencies was something that we did, and we worked with a couple of Atlanta agencies that really knocked it out of the park for us.

On the TCM side, early on when I started, we had a product called FilmStruck, which was this amazing streaming service of independent, foreign, and arthouse films. It was the first streaming service that Turner had launched, and eventually it was shut down to make way for HBO Max. But as we launched it, we worked with Nebo here in Atlanta. This team really dove into that customer journey and what the needs were, really end-to-end, of generating subscriptions and long-term value from those users, and ways to distribute and share what we were offering and get it out there.

Again, these were not things that internally we had access to. I think a lot of us had pieces of the puzzle in our backgrounds and we had some very good folks internally that had acquisition experience, subscription acquisition experience even.

But tying it all together – if you think about every customer touchpoint from copy for the website, both the frontend and the backend, things like thank you emails, things like the weekly newsletters and drip campaigns to get people excited about new content and new programming coming, ways to reengage folks, knowing how much time they’re spending on the service and ways to get them excited about spending more time, sharing with friends, seasonal deals like “Hey, get this for someone for Mother’s or Father’s Day or a holiday subscription” – all of these different occasions to buy and reasons to stay are things that they helped us with in terms of those campaigns.

ROB: How did you think about the agency selection process? Did you have a bake-off of some sort? Did you know what direction you were leaning? Because knowing the Turner/Warner Media ecosystem – I know local shops who have built web games for Falling Skies; I know global agencies on the PR side who’ve done analytics work for TBS and TNT. So you could really run the spectrum. How did you approach that selection process?

STEVE: Right now – and this wasn’t available for a couple of years while I was there, but has come on – there’s now a database within Warner Media. Folks that work with agencies all around the country or international ones put in – it’s not a scoring process and you look for the 90s or above, but it’s more or less, “Hey, I had an experiential agency work on a large outdoor event with us. They did an amazing job. Here’s the contact information, here’s what they did, here are some pictures.” That exists now. So that’s certainly a tool that I think some folks at Warner Media are using.

When we selected Nebo – and more recently 9Rooftops, which has a great office here in Atlanta, that did some great work for us as well – so much of it is word of mouth and being in the Atlanta community, being part of AMA. That’s exactly what I did. I reached out to a good friend of mine, Joe Koufman, at a company called Setup, and said to Joe, “Listen, I’m looking for an agency. This is what we need them to do. This is an outline of the project. What do you recommend?” He came back with three or four really strong recommendations, and that’s where I started.

Then from that, we sat down with the agencies – and I’m not a fan of having agencies do work for free. I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think that’s a way to start the relationship. So we didn’t ask any agency to produce work; we really just had conversations with them to share ideas. We said, “Here’s what we’re looking to do. Come with some ideas.” Each of them got a time slot, and we, again, just had a conversation with them.

For Turner Classic Movies – and I imagine this is the case with a lot of either networks or other brands – the number one thing that I look for in an agency is that they either already understand our business and who our customers are or have the capacity to understand that in a very short period of time. Certainly the agencies that I spoke with all got it. They came to the table with ideas around that. Now, they don’t know all of our business, and that’s completely to be expected. We didn’t expect anyone to understand some of the internal ways that we connect with our audience. Those are things that as soon as we awarded the business, very early on we sat down and shared that. It may have even been at a late stage pitch that we shared it.

But we’re looking for an understanding of what we do and why we do it. If an agency gets that – because every agency we’re talking to already has the technical capabilities. There’s no doubt. There’s a ton of talent. But it’s a matter of, do you understand what we’re trying to do? And then really understanding the logistics of who’s going to be working on this and your process, the best way to establish how we communicate together, how we discuss the deliverables together, and who leads that on each side.

ROB: That’s a great client-side perspective. The empathy required, the value of reputation, the value of community engagement. It’s so interesting.

I’m in this mode now where people we’re talking about working with – people still want to get together for lunch. In spite of, and maybe especially because we’ve all been in our houses for the most part for the past year, people are like “Let’s catch lunch outdoors.” That’s in bounds for me right now; some people are holed up. But geography, it seems, is still going to matter quite a lot. At least people will say, “I want a company with a local presence.” Nobody really even knows what that means sometimes, but it’s what we want.

STEVE: Again, there’s so much talent in Atlanta. I think looking outside of Atlanta in most cases is really not necessary. The talent is here. It is really nice to have face-to-face meetings. We all know they’ll be coming back. Even now, I’ve had several meetings outside at large picnic tables at a park or a restaurant with folks. That’s really how you get to connect with people you’re working with, especially on these types of relationships where it’s really important that everyone understands what the objectives are together.

I’m just a believer in face-to-face when it comes to things like that. I know certainly working remote right now has worked for many people, and even if agencies are local, they may have folks on your account that are in other cities. We worked with a company and that was the case; someone happened to be very talented on the digital team that worked out of South Carolina. And that worked out fine as well, but it was still nice to be able to have some reviews together in person. Again, I’m such a believer in Atlanta being this epicenter of culture and talent and tech, and that’s who I want to work with.

ROB: That’s something for us all to think about as we start to emerge. Steve, you had some thoughts on some key lessons you’ve learned along your journey as a leader, as a marketer, as an executive. What would you reflect on if you could talk to your younger self about what to think about as you develop?

STEVE: [laughs] I don’t know where I’d start. That’s funny. I think looking back, Rob – and it’s such a great thing to do every once in a while, even if you’re not talking about it to other people, but just to reflect on things you’ve learned. I can think of several in particular, and a lot of them are coming out of the Beach.com experience I had, but I think some of these apply throughout my career.

Certainly engaging with customers to understand what it is they want, how they want to receive your information, when they want to receive it – you remember the beginning of that whole integrated marketing push? That’s what people said integrated was. I think there’s a through-line to everything we do now. There are so many different ways to receive information, so many platforms. But at the end of the day, if you don’t understand what your customer wants and how they’re going to react to what you’re sharing with them, what that call to action is, then I think there’s always going to be a miss. That’s something I’ve learned that I took with me from those days on throughout the consulting and throughout my time understanding our audience at Turner Classic Movies and HBO Max.

Next, I would say having someone that has either domain or IP expertise on your team or advising your team is so critical because again, that’s the type of experience – when I was at Beach, we really would’ve benefited from having someone in the travel and hospitality business being a close advisor to us.

I think we all thought because we were customers, we knew what other customers wanted, but we weren’t seeing the big picture. I was just seeing it at the time for myself, married and two young kids, “This is how I vacation so everyone probably vacations like this. This is how we plan,” not knowing that that’s a very small segment of how it’s done. So I think having that advisor or having someone baked into the company that really understands – that domain expertise is critical.

I would say probably the most important thing I’ve learned over time is just having a laser focus on what it is you’re working on and really understanding both the functional and the emotional priorities of the business. And that focus isn’t just for entrepreneurs; I think it’s just as important in mid-size and large multinational companies. It’s a challenge when you manage high-achieving and creative people. They always want to bring new ideas and new innovations to the table, and that’s a great thing. That’s what you look for as a leader.

But I can’t tell you how many times I said to my manager at Turner, “Look, this is only going to take 5 minutes” when nothing takes 5 minutes. What a lot of people don’t realize, and it took a while for me to learn, is that it doesn’t just take time away from what you’re currently working on; there’s an opportunity cost as well when you try to veer off the course – even to do something that wasn’t necessarily in your plans, but eleventh hour, something popped up and you thought to yourself, “We should add this in.”

Sometimes you need to make concessions and figure out a way to make it work, but I would say most of the time, all it’s going to do is create a distraction. It’s easy for that to happen. You could have marketing plans and then something like Clubhouse pops up and you’re like, “We need to be on Clubhouse. We should create a room and get some experts to join us and talk about our product or service.” That might be a great part of the strategy, but if that’s not what you were initially planning to do, then 9 times out of 10, it’s better to continue to focus on what it is you were doing and then work that in as your next objective.

I think that focus – I had on a whiteboard in my office at Turner the word “focus” for all 4 years before we got shut down and everyone worked from home. The word “focus” was in my office, and I saw that word every single day. Of everything that was written and erased and written and erased on the whiteboard, that was the one consistent thing. Never erased it. That was my constant reminder that nothing takes 5 minutes and that you’ve got to really keep driving those clear objectives and deliverables and not create unnecessary distractions.

ROB: Right. It’s such a good practice to, number one, not do something that’s going to blow up in your face, and number two, not discard the thing you’ve already been very intentional about putting together.

Steve, we normally wrap these conversations with a couple of different questions. I think they tie together for you. Number one is typically “Where should people connect with you?”; number two is “What are you excited about that’s coming up marketing-wise?” I think you have those things linked together where we can get a much bigger dive into your mind and connect with you as well.

STEVE: Sure. Again, this has been such a fun conversation. I would say in terms of the future and what I see, I don’t think marketers should be thinking about things ever going back to normal. I think how we play and consume media, entertainment, food, healthcare, all of this, this whole sense of community is being redefined in front of our eyes.

It’s a generational opportunity that’s going to impact customer behaviors from now on. It’s not a trend; it’s really a seismic shift that’s going to resonate across the culture and economy and all of our personal and professional relationships. It opens up an opportunity to be more creative and more innovative than ever before, and I think there’s going to be some things we’ve done in the past that we’re going to have to decide to let go. Other things we’re going to hold on to.

Those are some of the things that excite me right now. I do think as a society, we need to get a little bit higher up right now. I think we need to work on making people feel less isolated and part of a community. I don’t think that’s going to go away when people can start gathering in small groups. The pandemic has exposed a real ripple in people feeling alone, and that’s something that I think marketing can play a big role in: really helping people find their community or communities.

Personally, I’ve had a lot of meaningful conversations since I left TCM and Warner Media, exploring high growth in entrepreneurial opportunities, looking to where I can create long-term value at scale and really do good. So that’s what’s on the horizon for me in terms of what I’m looking for.

And then on the side, I started something really fun with my wife and some good friends of ours. We started an e-zine called The Fast Times. We always talk about how Generation X, which I’m a part of, sometimes gets the short end of the stick. We weren’t born with a cellphone in our hands, and we certainly didn’t save the world like the Greatest Generation. We just listened to really cool music and watched really fun movies and were latchkeys and came home to an empty house and made the microwave dinners and so forth.

So we thought, what could we do to really have some fun with Gen X and the fringe on each side of younger Boomers or older Millennials? So we created this e-zine. We’re sending it out once a week, and then a special edition on Mondays. It’s taking a look at culture and how it intersects with both nostalgia from the ’80s and early ’90s and having this modern lens on things that are happening today. It’s kind of with this smart snark, I would call it. It’s the fun voice of the ’80s, voice of that Gen X. Lots of sections in it like “We Got the Beat” and “Channel Z” and “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” all very brand-driven throughout it.

Ultimately, this may be a vehicle for sponsors and advertisers as our subscription base grows. But right now, we’re doing it – I love reading. I read probably at least an hour a day and love writing, and it’s a fun way to stay sharp and create something. Again, we’ll see where it goes.

ROB: Congratulations on that launch. Where do we go to find that?

STEVE: You can sign up for that at thefasttimes.net. Even the address is nostalgic, the .net. Go ahead and sign up and give it a shot. We also are having a little bit of fun on social platforms, on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. We hope you like it.

ROB: That’s excellent. Steve, thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for sharing. I certainly look forward to connecting back in person. I look forward to seeing what else you take on next. It seems like it’ll be a natural continuation of a really good story, so thank you for sharing with us.

STEVE: Thanks again, Rob, for having me. As I said, I really believe you’re the epitome of this. Everything that people are reading about in terms of the surge in Atlanta, in the tech space, in the companies interested in coming to Atlanta, you’re the epitome of this. You started Converge bringing in outside investment and then growing it here in Atlanta and being part of the innovative labs and teams here. This is exactly what it’s all about and what everyone is hoping this unwritten story of Atlanta is, and you are a very early author of it. Thanks for having me.

ROB: I appreciate that. You’re very kind. There is a lot of good stuff going on here in Atlanta, and we’ll keep on sharing it. Thanks so much for coming on, Steve.

STEVE: Thank you.

ROB: Take care. Bye.

STEVE: 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.

Michael Boychuk is the CCO and Co-founder of Little Hands of Stone, a creative agency and Ad Age Small Agency Newcomer of 2020. Michael has nearly 30 years of industry experience, working for notable firms like WongDoody, SK+G Advertising, and Leo Burnett. Before LHoS, Michael helped build Amazon’s D1 internal creative agency as the North American Executive Creative Director. He leveraged his talents and leadership expertise to spearhead four Super Bowl campaigns and the rebranding that shifted Amazon’s identity toward the globally-recognized standalone smile. Michael also helped launch Amazon’s first Prime Day global campaign — the largest annual worldwide retail event.

Matt McCain is a Co-founder of Little Hands of Stone, an award-winning creative agency based in Seattle. Matt’s career began with WongDoody, where he spent 16 years and eventually became the Creative Director of the copywriting team. Before founding LHoS, Matt worked as a freelancer, offering his talents and expertise as a creative director and copywriter for prominent companies including REI, Hub Strategy & Communication, and Amazon.

Todd Marks is Founder and CEO at Mindgrub, an agency, consultancy, and support company that designs technology for people to transform businesses, creates enterprise mobile apps and web applications, provides digital marketing, and “unlocks human potential.” Winning Inc. 5000’s Design/Development Firm of the year five years in a row might suggest that this is a notable tech firm. Yes, but this same company has also won the American Marketing Associations Marketing Excellence Award for Best Branding Campaign. How does this all fit together?

A “high school math and computer science teacher” turned technologist, Todd collaborated with friends at his website- and eLearning-focused digital agency in the late-90s. In 2002, he founded Mindgrub as an engineering group writing code: building Flash, HTML, and CSS applications. When Apple released the iPhone in 2007, Todd recognized an important “disruption in technology,” and redirected his efforts to web application development and mobile application fulfillment. Customers soon requested information architecture, leading to larger projects. 

Early on, the company ran with agency style, top-down, waterfall project management. Today, it specializes in DevOps/agile product, mobile, and web development; user experience design, testing, and emerging technology utilization; branding, digital and traditional marketing, and application support. It has redefined the meaning of “full-service” agency by reaching back to the very beginning – developing the plan, the strategy and designing the software product and pushing forward to the very end – marketing to make sure the product ends up in the hands of its target customers, and then supporting it.

The agency manages the development of a strategic blend of technical projects in parallel with a comprehensive marketing framework. The process? Identify and define application users. Analyze competitors and the market. Conduct stakeholder interviews. Test hypothetical solutions (rapid-prototyping) to build the high-level functionality requirements on the technical side and lower level functionality user stories on the marketing side. Design the software – the information architecture, the product build, the user interface – and then provide the needed support and market the product. 

In this interview, Todd discusses the increasingly important role of technology in the marketing world. 

In particular, marketing needs automation to effectively manage and move prospects through the customer journey.

Todd says COVID took the governor off the business. Today, the virtual workplace means the company can hire excellent talent anywhere – the company has grown from 105 employees at the beginning of the year to 155 with another 30 or 40 contractors.  

Todd identifies 7 kinds of business opportunities:

• Deal Type 1: Go out and get new business
• Deal Type 2: Change orders to an existing project
• Deal Type 3: Adding a different service line
• Deal Type 4: “Support” or upselling (e.g., marketing)
• Deal Type 5: Adding a second project, same buyer
• Deal Type 6: Same account, new buyer
• Deal Type 7: An existing team member goes on long-term retainer 

Todd has written and contributed to a number of books including Flash Magic, New Masters of Flash, and Web Design in a Nutshell. He sits on the advisory boards for Loyola University’s MBA program, the Maryland Technology Council (MTC) (Chairman of the Board since 2018), and the Northeastern Maryland Tech Council (NMTC). He can be reached at his company’s website at: mindgrub.com or on LinkedIn.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Todd Marks, Founder and CEO of Mindgrub, based in Baltimore, Maryland. Welcome to the podcast, Todd.

TODD: Thanks for having me, Rob.

ROB: Great to have you here. Why don’t you start off by giving us a rundown of Mindgrub and where the business excels?

TODD: Absolutely. Mindgrub is an agency, a consultancy, and a support company. We make enterprise mobile apps, web applications, and perform digital marketing, and we excel at unlocking human potential.

ROB: Wow. That’s a pretty wide range. A lot of people just do the digital marketing part, but you’re also, you said, support, and also building applications. Where did you start? Were you doing all of that from Day 1? How did the business evolve?

TODD: That’s a great question. I really started the business in 2002. I had a startup with some partners in ’98-’99, and after September 11th we went our separate ways. In 2002 I founded Mindgrub, and I really focused on Flash application development at the time. It became Flex. I also did some web application development with HTML and CSS. I did that for a number of years; I worked in New York, worked for a Deloitte brand for a little bit, and then in 2008 the iPhone came out. I knew that was a big differentiator.

I was working in Chicago at the time. I’ve kind of glamorized the story, but it was a cold day in Chicago and I got splashed by a cab. Meanwhile, I was going back and forth to Maryland and it was getting warmer and warmer at the time, and I couldn’t take the winter in Chicago. The SDK was released in January 2008, and by March I was done going to Chicago. I was also teaching at University of Maryland Baltimore County, teaching instructional technology but working with a lot of technical students on campus. So, I quit my day job, came back to Maryland, holed up in my basement and started making some early mobile apps.

We started out as really web application development and mobile application fulfillment, and we did a great job. Engineers. But my clients started to ask, “You do design; can you do a little information architecture?” And I could, so I started to do that as well. Then we found ourselves growing into larger and larger projects, and we evolved from doing a lot of agency style, top-down, waterfall sort of project management to evolving a little bit more into agile.

With agile it takes a lot more planning up front, so we found ourselves doing a lot of the strategy and planning, which we call Sprint Zero, but it’s really identifying the users of the application, doing some competitor analysis, some market analysis. With those users, we’ll do stakeholder interviews, testing, you name it, and we’ll inevitably come up with a list of epics, which is the high level functionality they need, and user stories, which is a lower level functionality. From those users, we then design the software, we do that information architecture, we build it, and then we evolved into supporting it. So we have a support team as well, which I mentioned, called Aces.

Then finally that full continuum was that we’d market it. We would release software, and a lot of times these enterprise mobile apps we’d put in the store – the clients would say, “We don’t have any downloads but it’s in the store.” We said, “What marketing did you do?” “Nothing. It’s in the store.” “Did you even do optimization for the store?” “No.” Particularly, that store is not optimized. It doesn’t necessarily get crawled effectively. There’s some dark arts there that you can add some optimization for search engines. But you need landing pages, you need newsletters, you need marketing automation. There’s all these additional things.

So, we were getting unhappy seeing our clients not successful. We’ve made apps for Wendy’s and Yamahas and Geicos of the world, and they always have tons of downloads. They have millions of people in a database somewhere and they can get hundreds of thousands of downloads. But for our startups that didn’t have that marketing automation tool, they don’t have a big CRM, they don’t have a huge database of prospect users, they have to do marketing.

Long story long, we are an end-to-end agency. We do everything from planning, design, development, support, and ongoing marketing. We don’t just do it at the agency level, but we also have become a bit of a consultancy as well where we compete against the Accentures and the Deloittes of the world on that kind of channel.

I see there’s really two camps. There’s the Big Four on the agency side, WPP, Omnicom, Dentsu – and the Big Four on the consulting side – Deloitte, Accenture, Booz, and Booz started out as an accounting company and now they’re a consulting company. We inevitably play right in between. One of our taglines is that we’re a very technical agency, which is our differentiator, and we’re an extremely creative consultancy, which is a differentiator.

ROB: It’s certainly a differentiator, the creativity side. You can imagine there are probably a great number of development shops that – well, a lot of folks can’t actually deliver a functioning application. We’ll start there. But of those that can, you can see them delivering the application and saying, “Here it is,” and then you get to the customer saying, “What do I do with it? How do I promote it?”

But for you to take on that responsibility – it seems like there’s quite a shift in responsibility from “I gave you a functioning app” to “I am also accountable for people using it.” Was that a difficult transition to embrace, or was it somehow more natural?

TODD: I would say it was a little bit difficult in that we started out as an engineering group, very analytical, writing code. Marketing started out really with advertising and more around the creative marketing – communication planning, branding and identity, visuals. We could always do application visuals, but we never really tackled that advertising piece.

But marketing evolved to not just be the visual aspects of marketing, but the technical aspects of marketing. You think about the HubSpots and the Marketos and the Pardots of the world – those have only been around in recent years, and they automate the marketing process. They have APIs, and you can integrate with them and you can pull data and you can set up key performance indicators so that you can create rich dashboards to see how your marketing is performing. You can set up smart lists and you can automatically move people along from one list to another based on their interaction in your software or your marketing products. So, marketing itself has become extremely technical.

As a technical company, I saw a lot of advertising and marketing agencies getting left behind because they weren’t very technical. So we were able to come in from the technical side, set up the KPIs and the smart lists and the automation, and integrate with the API so that based on user interaction in the app, we can then progress them in the marketing automation software. That was a skill that marketing and advertising agencies didn’t have, and the piece we didn’t have necessarily was some of that design/advertising creativity.

So, we did a couple acquisitions there. We acquired a marketing company that brought communication planning, branding, and identity with them, so we were able to add that competency. Now we’re able to do really well on it because we have that full continuum. A lot of times we’ll get a customer where we’ll come in with a mobile app, but next thing we know, they then want us helping out with their website. They otherwise used a more traditional agency, but they see how technical we are, and creative, and they say, “Can you help with our website? And by the way, we have a kiosk too.”

We call that the hat trick. Wendy’s, for instance, we designed their mobile app and then we helped design parts of their website. We designed their kiosk. I don’t know if you have Royal Farms down there. I don’t know if you’re more Sheetz or Wawa, but Royal Farms is a pretty big convenience store, and they’re also a quick service restaurant with chicken based out of Maryland. Town & Country actually said they were the number one fast food chicken in the world, which is a pretty big accolade.

Needless to say, we had a hat trick with them. We designed their mobile app, then we redesigned their kiosk, we’ve helped with their website. But in that case, they were so confident with our ability that they actually gave us traditional marketing as well. They have a big campaign called the Chicken Palooza campaign, which is billboards and sheets and mugs. We redesigned their chicken icon, which is a classic.

So that’s a case where we are the end-to-end agency, but we really are end-to-end. We’re not just doing their traditional and digital marketing; we’re doing their mobile apps, their websites, their loyalty program, integrating with their backend services. And this is all in the vein of marketing, but now there’s enterprise application development that is a marketing effort. It’s meant to increase sales. It’s an app, it’s a utility function, but it is also a marketing function. We’ve gotten good at marketing.

ROB: That’s interesting. We do not have that chain, but now I’m wishing that we did. It also seems like being in that chair for marketing is helpful to stay top of mind. A lot of times if you talk about a site build or an app build, some people are always working on their app and their site, but some people are much more burst-y about it. They complete an initiative and then they stop. If you were only involved in the technology side, you might not be in the conversation at the right time when they’re ready to rebuild. somebody’s forgotten, turnover has happened a little bit, that sort of thing.

TODD: You’re absolutely right. The marketing buyers still consider a mobile app a one-off project, whereas our consulting buyers, they’re buying teams for years on end with option years to extend. Where we fill in a nice spot is that we are very technical, but we’re extremely creative, so we’re able to be that agency of record that can do it all. We’ll get large monthly retainers as the agency of record, but within that retainer, it is mobile apps and marketing automation and SEO and banner ads and web micro sites. You name it. It’s a very wide mixed variety of stuff that we can do.

Whereas to your point, just a mobile shop or just a web shop, if they’re just that technical shop, they’re considered more of a project fulfillment company and not somebody that you would otherwise give to on a big monthly retainer. 

ROB: You’ve mentioned quite a range of clients. You’ve mentioned startups and you’ve certainly mentioned some very enterprise customers. Have you always had that range of client mix? Where did you start out in some of those earlier years?

TODD: That’s a good question. The first couple clients for Mindgrub were actually large clients because it was myself. I was always able to position myself on bigger jobs and bigger brands and ended up working in New York City and Chicago with big brands for a while.

When I started getting some work for the team on the web side, that started really back in 2002 when I founded the company. I always had some independent contractors, some interns, and even though I was in and out of a couple jobs at that point, I always had some freelancing work. And that was just smaller projects in my network, but not my job as the consultant or the day job I worked for, which were these bigger brands.

What changed a lot of it is when mobile came out, I’d work with these bigger brands and I jumped ship with all the contracts I had and all these brands and opportunities to go start a business in my basement. I really hung my shingle on mobile. A lot of the marketing I did was mobile, mobile, mobile, “we make mobile apps.” At the time, I also had a product company. I was trying to make a mobile product.

I got a lot of exposure to mobile there, so a lot of my network that were the bigger brands were just chomping at the bit to find mobile developers, and they got to me. So on the mobile side, we started working with really big brands. On the web side was a little smaller.

Now that we’ve progressed, we’ve always actually done more web work than mobile because most mobile apps have a web backend, plus all the individual web work. Fast forward 18 years, mobile always attracted big brands, but web after 18 years also attracted big brands. On the application side, we do a lot with the big brands.

On the marketing side, our first acquisition was just over 5 years ago, and we’ve really grown that team. I’d say our marketing team, when they’re just working direct for the client, we’ve really moved up the chain. But we’re a little bit more midmarket. Now, when our mobile and web division nets an enterprise client such as Wendy’s or Royal Farms – Wendy’s is a little different because we worked with the IT buyer. Even though we did their mobile app and helped design their website and kiosk, we were not necessarily working with the marketing department. They had it together and we were brought in.

On Royal Farms, they’re a little bit smaller of a business, so therefore we were able to come in on mobile, get the website, get the kiosk, but then they were a small enough company that the same conversations we’re having with their head of IT, we’re having with their marketing department. Next thing you know, their marketing department is asking us to do some fulfillment, and then it leads into this long-term great relationship where we’re fulfilling a lot of aspects from mobile to marketing.

So really, to answer that question, the big brands find us because of our differentiators, which happen to be on the technology side, and then they learn that we are good across the board. We are actively trying to push on our marketing side, and I know we just won eight communicator awards and five – some other. I know we’re submitting for the Webbies right now. Our marketing team and the creative team, they don’t want to be in the shadows anymore.

We’re winning all these awards, so now we’re starting to stand on our own two feet as far as the look and feel. Some of our communications that we’re doing, some of the branding that we’re doing – these were things that we didn’t start with 18 years ago, we really started pushing on 5 or 6 years ago. But because we have the experience working with big brands and they have that trust on the technology side, now we’re commanding direct marketing work.

For Sylvan, which is a really big online education institution, we did their advertising videos. For ExxonMobil, we did their TV spot. We filmed it, we used Mindgrubbers as actors in it, and there was only I think one or two paid actors that we had for that shoot. We were able to do it all in-house. It’s just amazing, some of the things that we’re able to do now. I would’ve never thought I’d be sitting on a TV commercial shoot, which I get to do now, which is super exciting.

ROB: That’s absolutely fascinating for the variety. One of my advisors was positing to me the other day – his perception was that many businesses, and particularly enterprises, were much more eager to send marketing work to marketing agencies than technology work to technology shops. How do you feel about that suggestion? Do you see truth in it? And is it shifting, if that has been the case?

TODD: You said marketing work for marketing agencies and technology work for technology. Did you mean they’re more willing to send technology work to marketing companies than they are willing to send marketing work to technology companies?

ROB: That they’ve been more willing to hire a marketing agency while still trying to build a technology capability in-house, and maybe less likely to outsource parts of that. That was the suggestion and perception. How do you see it?

TODD: Gotcha. I think you have to look at each buyer, and then when the core IP of the business is. If you had a business that was let’s say a law firm, marketing and technology is not anywhere near their wheelhouse, so they would probably subcontract both.

But if you’re an events company and that events company is more of not a platform play, they’re the coordination and they’re hosting physical events, and you’re a bunch of marketers, you’re all about marketing, but you’re not a platform event company. So you probably pull your marketing in-house, but at some point you want to go build a platform because now marketing of events is online, and you’re not in a good position and Zoom’s not cutting it anymore. You would then outsource your technology because you’re a marketing core. And even though you’re growing and you start to build some products, you still probably at that point would think, “I want to do my marketing in-house.”

Let’s say you’re the opposite. Let’s say you’re that company that realizes there’s disruption in the event space and Zoom isn’t cutting it and there’s a huge opportunity to recreate that in-person experience. You might go out and build software, and you’re not going to be good at marketing, and you’re probably not even going to try to do it in-house, or if you do you’re going to flail because you’re a software company. You build product. So, you should outsource your marketing.

I really think it goes back to the buyer and the nature of the work they do and what is core to their IP versus things they should be subbing out.

ROB: I can definitely tell you’ve thought a lot about this, about the buyers, about the organizational structure. As you’ve grown, how have you thought about helping other people on your team? It seems like you’re at a point where you can’t be the only one selling, so how have you equipped other people to think about navigating organizations and understanding buyers well?

TODD: You got it. I originated pretty much every one of our departments. Now that we’re bigger, some of those departments are being created by my other leadership. But sales, I started out, like just about every founder-led company, doing what’s called founder sales. I had to sell everything. I started out as an engineer. My first company, I was raised by designers, so I went from growing our engineering department to our design department to our user experience department, accounting, the works.

Sales was finally the last department that I had to stand up, and it was founder sales. The first thing I wanted to do was find a second person that could also sell. That individual had to be highly technical, highly creative. They had to be a subject matter expert, and then they had to also be good at business development. Then I was able to supplement helping them with the contracts piece, maybe even giving them some leads that came through our contact form. But at least they could put a solution together and basically sell the work and be personable.

As we’ve advanced, I knew I needed to have a lot more people, so we really focused on process. With any business, it’s the product, the process, and the people.

We started with the product. We identified what it is we’re going to sell. Every year we organized that list of solutions. Some solutions, maybe it wasn’t great that year. We decided, let’s not push on it next year. Other solutions have been a winner for us, we’re doing multimillions in that solution and that market is big, and there’s a huge opportunity. Then we’ll promote those solutions. Then marketing knows what they’re going to be marketing, production knows where they need to do some training, what they need to ramp up. We have solutions.

The other thing we have is for every deal, we put together a deal team. Marketing works on the outside of the funnel. They’re trying to come up with contacts that could be prospects so those prospects are qualified. In our industry, we’re looking at marketing or IT buyers. We have a budget. They probably have some pain points we might be able to identify digitally. But they’re qualified contacts. They’re making them prospects, they’re putting them in Smartlist, they’re nurturing them through events, through newsletters.

Then our BD team is interacting with these prospects and they’re engaging with them. They’re having conversations. They’re sending personal emails. They’re trying to figure out their pain points as well, but is there a solution we can provide to address their pain point? From there, our BD team then, if there is a solution, they then assemble a deal team now. They brought in the lead; they’re more than likely going to be the principal manager of that deal.

We then bring in a subject matter expert and we bring in a contracts person, and that subject matter expert is either technical or creative or potentially on project management side, depending on where their pain is. If their pain point is in speedy delivery, we need to bring in some project managers to see whether it’s feasible given our timelines and resource capacities are the moment. If it’s a technical pain point, then we bring in a technical subject matter expert. If it’s a creative pain point, we bring in a creative director to really focus on what is the solution.

From the solution then, we give them a cost to produce it, a timeline, and a resource plan. Then we close the work, and we’ve turned our products into a process. Then the thing that is absolutely quintessential is we hire just the best people. We have really good products, really good process, and amazing people, so as a result, we’ve just been commanding a lot of work. We started the year at about 105, 110. We’re 155 employees with about another 30 or 40 contractors. That all started post March.

And really, COVID actually took the governor off our business. We had amazing people and process and products, but there were a lot of things that slowed us down. Driving all over the place and meeting clients physically, we spent a lot of time and energy and money on planes, trains, and automobiles. Also employees. We had a big box office in Baltimore. We also have a bar and restaurant that we use as now a food incubator, but it was a tech incubator as well. And we have a new light manufacturing space coming online. But we thought because we have now these different facilities in Baltimore, we had to have people generally in Baltimore. In a pinch we hired a few remote workers, or we’d have a really good talent that moved remotely.

But as soon as COVID hit, I said, “That’s it, we’re just going to be a virtual company; hire people wherever they live.” We’re still trying to keep the same time zone and mostly North America, although we’re looking at some points in South America now to start growing some of our own employees – but the governor came off. We didn’t have to hire in Baltimore anymore, and it was so much easier to hire when you can hire from anywhere. We’ve got amazing talent, and not having to drive around and see our clients and get in planes, trains, and automobiles – it gave us tons of time back.

All of our numbers went up. Our sales increased, our productivity increased. Our initiatives now, believe it or not, our next training is on how to take vacation. Our team members have taken one week less this time per year, so we’re actually retraining them on how to take a vacation and how to eliminate burnout because they’ve just been so stellar.

Needless to say, that’s how we’ve done it. We focused on product, process, and people. In our pipeline, it’s very, very systematic. It’s no longer the founder anymore. Myself, I’m on the BD team. I have a couple other people that do BD, and I am trying to get out there and be an evangelist and network. When I hear of opportunities, I’m constantly growing our engagement directors – that’s what our sales team are generally called – to be subject matter experts in a core vertical.

And those verticals for us are obvious things in the Baltimore area – health, cyber, government, education – but then some not-so-obvious things for Baltimore. We’re really big into retail and ecommerce and hospitality and support a lot of brands there. We’re getting into legal and insurance. We’re starting to do some financial services. So we’re in a number of industries, and I’m trying to grow those salespeople. And then I’m an evangelist. The rest of our BD team, we’re routing them deals. They’re either coming inbound or from BD efforts.

And then one more thing, just to share this amazing – and I’m a teacher; I started out as a high school teacher. I taught at university. What people will find is I’m very apt to share these things I’ve learned because it’s fascinating. I was a technical guy, and I had to learn to build a sales team.

But we even identified all our deal types, and we have sales plays. You have your outside team that tries to go out and hunt or farm and get new business development. We call that Deal Type 1. That’s a new account and a new buyer.

Then Deal Type 2 is typical stuff. A change order. They want more functionality. We teach all of our client services team and our project managers now who work with our clients to look out for Deal Type 2. That’s the change order. You’d be surprised; a lot of times they think from leadership, “You scoped this project out. We should just be able to deliver exactly what’s in this statement of work without deviation, or shame on us.” That’s not true at all. If the project deviates – and it’s certainly not agile, because in agile you can deviate as you go – if the project deviates, work with the client. If they need to come up with more budget, or same budget but you want to swap out some requirements, the change order, it’s Deal Type 2.

Deal Type 3 is adding a different service line. In our case, we do add support at the end of every contract. We go from the initial build to then going into monthly support. That’s Deal Type 3.

Deal Type 4 is not necessarily support, but upselling to marketing, for instance.

Deal Type 5 is a second project. So we’re not just adding services and values to that first project, but we’re adding a second project to the mix. Same buyer.

Deal Type 6 for us is same account but a brand new buyer with that account.

Deal Type 7 is an existing team member now getting an ongoing retainer to satisfy all of the needs of the business. We’re trying to get everybody up to that Lucky 7 where we’re that agency of record, but it’s across the board. Everything from mobile through digital.

ROB: Congratulations, Todd. It sounds like it’s been a heck of a year. We’ve seen that same thing with that switch to virtual. We definitely made that decision, and we’re seeing good access to talent. We’re seeing that talent really appreciates when you’re willing to commit to being virtual versus where you’re asking them, huddled in their home, to think about somebody moving to where you are. I think people need some relief and they need some permission to be in their own place and thrive there.

TODD: You got that right. As soon as we realized it was going to be a virtual world, we said, “If you’re a producer, you will never ever have to come back to the office from here on out if you don’t want to.” We surveyed them, and half want to come back half the time, and then it’s like a bell curve from there. But they shouldn’t have to. We can work online. We’re very data-oriented as a business, and we found we are more efficient.

That said, we’re also more disconnected from each other. So as soon as we decided that we wanted to be an online company, we knew that we had to really invest in what that meant. We used to invest in climbing walls and game rooms, and we had a virtual reality holodeck in the office. That was some fun bells and whistles, but it wasn’t really what makes culture.

Our culture is our passion, our creativity, our technology. It’s our grit. Those were the things that we had to really reinforce that we still were about online. And then we had some of the bells and whistles too. We had Wellness Week. We’re now doing a Games for Giving, where we’re essentially donating for every step that an employee does to get them out of their chairs and moving, which is really important. We do yoga lessons, we have adventure club teams where they go on regional hikes. We’re really trying to be a full experience for our team members and to really provide an amazing culture, from who we are and our values and our mission all the way through just having some really killer programming.

We’re having fun with it because it’s a disruptive time. That’s what I tell people. With Mindgrub, why have I been successful? I did have my family back here in Baltimore. As I mentioned, I was in Chicago. It was cold there, and I wanted to come home. So I had the need. I had, as they say in the book Outliers, more than 10 years’ experience and 10,000 hours, so I had the experience. Ultimately, what was successful for Mindgrub was the fact that the iPhone came out in 2008, and that was major disruption. So that really grew us.

Right now we are experiencing another boom because it is another period in our lifetimes of major disruption. I’ve learned to really make the most of it.

ROB: Excellent teaching all the way through there, Todd. I love the way you set up and structured these things for us to learn from. When people want to find you and when they want to find Mindgrub, where should they go to connect with you?

TODD: They can go, for Mindgrub, directly to mindgrub.com. And certainly I’d love if anybody reaches out to me on LinkedIn. I think that’s an amazing channel for business networking and business relationships. As I mentioned, I started out as a teacher, and I love engagement and answering questions. By all means, I am happy to do so on email or LinkedIn.

ROB: Excellent. Thank you so much, Todd, for coming on, and congratulations on everything that’s going on – the businesses, the growth. There’s a lot to learn from here, so thank you for sharing. 

TODD: Thank you so much for having me, Rob.

ROB: All right, 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.

Michael Barber worked for a number of agencies before he founded barber&hewitt in 2015. He intended for his new company to provide marketing strategy and planning for midmarket B2B brands, but ended up spending 50% of his time consulting with agencies dealing with growth and development issues. In February 2018, inspired by the opportunity to work with a larger team and by his client company’s culture, Michael joined Godfrey, based in Lancaster, PA, as SVP and Chief Creative Officer. For 70 years, Godfrey has been providing marketing services to midmarket tech-heavy industrial manufacturers—unknown brand names that produce automation, control, materials handling, logistics, construction, and medical equipment; building materials & systems; chemicals, OEM components; lubricants; and metal work.

Michael does not differentiate between B2B and B2C as “audiences”—both come down to people. With that in mind, he sees an increasing need to focus on creating a favorable B2B experience (paralleling that supporting good consumer experience in the B2C marketplace), and a need for marketing firms to be exposed to the non-marketing teams in client businesses in order to enhance the experience of the B2B clients’ customers. He predicts that long term survival will depend more on experience than on awareness or acquisition.

Michael is @michaeljbarber almost everywhere online, from Facebook to LinkedIn or Twitter. To learn more about Godfrey, visit: https://www.godfrey.com/.

Michael Skolnik, co-founder of Soze Agency, a social impact agency selling compassion, equity, and authenticity, believes that, if his company is going to build creative campaigns about these values, then the company itself has to operate internally according to these values. How is that implemented?

Soze Agency is a worker-owned cooperative. Vacation time is unlimited. What? How does that work?

Soze employees are deeply vested in the success of the company . . . because, to varying degrees, they own it. Michael gave 62% of the company to his workers in the first 3 years and divests himself of 8% more of his ownership every year. In 7 years, he will be out. It is, he says, “an experiment in compassionate capitalism,” a model he would like to see in many more companies. He wants to see everyone win . . . and believes this is one way to make it possible. Employees at Soze don’t take unlimited vacations because they know the company they own and the bonuses they receive depend on their being there and doing the work.

Michael started his career and attended his first South by Southwest conference as a filmmaker, which is a medium for storytelling. Today, his company is rooted in storytelling. At South by Southwest’s March 2019 conference, he participated in a panel, “Moments, Momentum, Movement,” which addressed how cultural “moments become movements, what’s happening now in America and where we are, the work that we do and how that correlates to this temperature rise in the heat of this country, and how we hold onto that for the long term.”

Michael feels this country is in a “tough spot,” uncertain about where it is going and what it wants to become. In the marketing world, this is reflected in brands’ insecurity about how to interact with their customers in critical “moments.” Younger people, in particular, are demanding that companies respond. Michael emphasizes the importance of authentic and relevant communication.

Michael can be reached on his company’s website at: https://www.wearesoze.com/, on Twitter at: @WeAreSoze, on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-skolnik-4998365/, or on FaceBook at: https://www.facebook.com/wearesoze/

Guy Alvarez, recovering attorney and Founder and Chief Engagement Officer of Good2bSocial, a full service digital marketing and social media consulting agency, provides a brief overview of effective social marketing strategies in the “legal” niche market. Good2bSocial’s clients include some of the largest law firms in the world, as well as consumer-focused law firms, ad agencies for clients with law-associated interests, and other professional services companies.

Guy can be reached on his company website: https://good2bsocial.com/, by email at: Guy@ Good2bSocial.com, or you can follow him on Twitter (@GuyLaw1313).

Rafi Arbel, President, Market JD (Chicago, IL)

Rafi Arbel is President at Market JD, an internet-based advertising that focuses its work on “increasing visibility” for small law firms specializing in personal injury and workers’ compensation cases. With the kind of clientele the agency serves, the written content has to be extremely precise and accurate. That’s why the firm currently employs 3 attorneys. Rafi is one of them. 

The agency provides websites, search engine optimization, pay-per-click, reputation management, and content production. The work split is about 65% to 70% personal injury and 55% (overlapping) worker’s compensation legal firms.

Rafi says, “Everybody can build a website and everybody can claim they do SEO or pay-per-click well.” Because this work is so labor-intensive and the details are numerous and critical, Rafi believes that those “who do it well” are not only those with knowledge, but those who have built a process to ensure consistent, high-quality outcomes. People have to know what they are doing, set an end objective, figure out the tasks to get it done, assess and respond to feedback, and do it “consistently over and over again. 

Because Rafi practiced law for 6 years, he has represented people. Following a passion for selling and “engaging people,” he worked for Thompson Reuters and spent a number of years selling for Findlaw and Westlaw. Then, he went back for his MBA and again, and decided to change course, this time to become an entrepreneur. With this varied background and because he has been promoting small law firms for over 20 years, he understands what lawyers do, “how they do it, and how to position them.” 

In this interview, Rafi notes how SEO has changed over the years, that searching for broadhead terms, “Chicago injury lawyer” or “Nevada workers’ compensation lawyer” renders a lot of paid ads at the top of the page so that even if a firm organically appears below that in the map section or even below that, the likelihood that SEO will produce much traffic is negligible. Or the firm’s won’t show well because Google’s Local Service ads take up the top of the page, followed by Google Ads below that. A big portion of the top of the screen gets taken up by all those paid ads . . . especially on mobile. So, broadhead SEO is not of great benefit to lawyers.

What does work are longtail searches. Rafi says the great race now is to “capture the longtail searches’ to find “the corners that the big guys don’t see.” 

As an example, Rafi talks about a Nevada client . . . a personal injury lawyer who, unlike his big competitors, does not have$40,000 or $50,000 a month to spend on SEO. What the attorney does have is a lot of experience representing people who have suffered sepsis and whose doctors failed to treat it correctly. Medical malpractice? Not many Nevada lawyers work in that area. By building comprehensive content to cover sepsis and medical malpractice, Market JD is carving out a unique niche for the lawyer’s business and building a moat around the lawyer’s business as well. Few competitors in that specific area will be willing to invest the resources to match this project.

Rafi says the best way to contact him is to call him at: 312.970.9353 or email him at rafi@marketjd.com. (Market JD like Juris Doctor)

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined today by Rafi Arbel, President at Market JD based in Chicago, Illinois. Welcome to the podcast, Rafi.

RAFI: Thank you, Rob. Nice to be here.

ROB: Excellent to have you here. Why don’t you start off by telling us a little bit about Market JD, and what is the company’s superpower? What is your specialty?

RAFI: Market JD is an internet-based advertising firm. We only work for small law firms. People think that we work for lawyers; it’s much narrower than that. We really don’t work for the big firms. They have their own marketing needs that are very different. We really focus on small law firms. We do everything that they need online to increase their visibility, which means we do websites, we do search engine optimization, pay-per-click, some reputation management, and of course, the content production.

Your question was what is our superpower. What I have learned over the years is that everybody can build a website and everybody can claim they do SEO or pay-per-click well. What differentiates those who do it well from those who don’t is not just knowledge, but process. Because each of these things is so labor-intensive, and because there are so many details that have to get done right, you have to build a process behind every one of them. The process should really dictate the outcome.

If you are making sure all of your t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted, then you should get a consistent, high-quality product every time, assuming you know what you’re doing. Over the years we’ve gotten feedback, like everybody else, of what works and what doesn’t work, and where Google has rewarded us and where Google hasn’t rewarded us. We’ve taken those lessons, and those have affected what we want in the sites and what we don’t want, and how our sites need to be built and the content that we need to create. Then we convert those objectives into tangible tasks that can be assigned to every person in the process.

So, our superpower is our ability to take an end objective, figure out how to get it done, and then do it consistently over and over again.

ROB: Got it. You mentioned smaller law firms. Are there any particular practice areas or geographies that you focus on? Are there any that you do not do from a practice area or geographic area?

RAFI: Historically, we’ve focused primarily on workers’ compensation and personal injury law firms. I’d say 65% to 70% is personal injury, and probably overlapping, I’d say 55% workers’ comp, because some firms do both. But we have criminal law firms, divorce law firms, business law firms. Really, generally speaking, it’s a business-to-consumer law firm – those people who don’t just have a few big business clients that they get all their recurring work from. These are people that help the individual consumer, that constantly need a new flow of cases coming in. Those are the people that need us most.

It’s not that we can’t help those that just need a law firm brochure, but what we’re really good at is improving somebody’s visibility, not just creating a brochure. We might be overkill if all you want is something that validates your existence.

ROB: As a consumer, when you mention some of those practice areas, it certainly rings to me – my perception would be that that’s largely a reflection of the marketing budget of the different types of law firms. In other words, I certainly see a lot more personal injury and workers’ comp advertising than I see let’s say business law. Is that some of the alignment between your focus and the market?

RAFI: Absolutely. Although I do find it a little – I don’t understand why some of the other practice areas don’t spend more. Yes, it is true that the potential payout for a personal injury lawyer is much greater. But what I will say is that I think the estate planners and a lot of the transactional attorneys that have the potential – or even maybe especially the civil litigation lawyers, they have potential to make a huge amount of money from a civil litigation case. If they’re representing the manufacturer that bet the business on litigation, the attorney’s fees can easily be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So why those attorneys don’t want to spend a few grand a month to promote themselves is beyond me. But that’s beyond probably the scope of this conversation. At the end of the day, it’s really the personal injury lawyers who are spending and who are programmed and understand the need to spend to bring in a constant flow of high value cases.

ROB: As someone representing smaller firms in this space, how do you think about tactically going to war and finding the client for some of these firms? I don’t even know, and you might know, what the national advertising budget is for some of the national firms, but it’s got to be quite something to go up against. How do you think about giving your client the edge and the best bang for their buck on somebody who can spend almost unlimited amounts of money on out-of-home advertising, on SEO, on pay-per-click, on all of your keywords?

RAFI: That’s a really good question. We get this from time to time from personal injury or workers’ compensation lawyers who say just that. They say, “Look, in my marketplace there are four big competitors and they’re spending enormous money. They’ve got a 10-year lead on me. There’s no way I can compete, is there?” The truth is, they can compete. But we have to be careful in what we promote.

Oftentimes when you start to dig a little deeper into their practice areas, you find that not all personal injury lawyers and not all workers’ compensation lawyers focus on the same things. For example, I have a client in Reno who has never really done any significant online advertising. He doesn’t have much of a presence now, and he doesn’t have an enormous budget to compete against the huge Nevada advertisers. And there are certainly people paying $40,000 or $50,000 a month on SEO.

So, he asked me what we can do, and we had a conversation about the nature of his practice. It turns out that in Nevada, not many lawyers want medical malpractice cases. It turns out also that this particular lawyer had a lot of experience representing people who came down with sepsis where the doctors didn’t treat it correctly. That’s a very niche field. This is something he was very good at, had a lot of experience in, and very few people did, and cases that he wanted to attract.

So, we decided to build out, and we’re in the process of finishing, a lot of content around sepsis and medical malpractice. And even if others come in to compete, they’re certainly not going to invest the same resources into that field as he will. We’ve already started to see some success with that, and leads are starting to come in the door.

It’s that sort of focus on the client, the real micro focus on what they’re doing on a day-to-day basis. You have to understand their practice. I’m also a licensed lawyer in the state of Illinois, so I understand their practice in ways that somebody who’s not a lawyer may not understand.

ROB: That experience you have as a lawyer, your licensing as a lawyer, is that what has kept your focus on law? Have you ever been tempted to – there’s other local advertisers, whether it’s air conditioning, basements, plumbers, etc., who have I think similar battles. What has kept you in the legal lane?

RAFI: That’s a really good question. The truth is that I don’t bring a distinct competitive advantage outside of the law. If I were to go sell to a plastic surgeon – and they certainly have a lot of money to spend on their advertising – or sell to HVAC guys or plumbers or any of them, I don’t bring with me any inherent competitive advantages that my clients don’t have. Obviously, I know the technical end of it, and we have the coders and the designers and everything else, but so does everybody else.

Only in the law do I really bring something that few other people, few other agencies have, and that’s an intimate knowledge of what they do, because I’ve been doing it for 20+ years. Because I’m a lawyer and I’ve represented people, I really understand what they do, how they do it, and how to position them. So yes, while it is tempting, and maybe I could make more money if I did websites for people other than lawyers, it’s just not my comfort zone. I really understand the law so well that it doesn’t make sense to do much else.

ROB: Rafi, to understand a little bit – it’s not entirely a typical path. Most people don’t go to law school to start a digital agency. What is the origin story of Market JD? What took you out of the day to day practice of law? What made you want to learn and build a team around you that understands things like SEO and SEM and everything else you have to do to make things work?

RAFI: That’s a really interesting question. I didn’t go directly from the practice of law into running an agency. I practiced law for about six years, and then I had a real desire to sell. I’ve always loved working with people, and I just love the selling process and I love engaging people. So, I took a job with Thompson Reuters and I sold for FindLaw and Westlaw for a number of years.

Then I decided to go back and get my MBA, and then when I got my MBA, I decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur, and it was at that time that I started Market JD. We do largely the same things that my former employer does, FindLaw. We do the same sort of things that they do; we just like to think we do it better.

ROB: Got it. So somewhere along the way, between some growing coincidence, between having practiced yourself, between competing in the market, you saw a set of ingredients, you made a little bit of a bet on yourself – and then who were your next coupe of hires? Who are the first couple of people that an attorney goes out and hires to build a firm like this?

RAFI: I think if I could do it over again, the one thing that I would do differently is I would’ve hired more people quicker. I was a little too conservative in who I hired in the initial years, and potentially didn’t grow as fast as I could’ve if I had hired more staff. I think I wasn’t as confident as I am now in my ability to succeed. I was always worried that I would run out of money, and it never happened. I had more clients than I had necessarily people to do the work. So, I certainly would’ve hired people quicker.

I think what happened was it was a lot of on-the-job training. I hired people as I saw the need. I knew I couldn’t design, and I knew nothing about design, and I knew nothing about coding. So I surrounded myself with the best people I can and the people I need to get the job done. It was need-based hiring. 

ROB: Got it. That certainly becomes an interesting path. In terms of running out of money, I have done that; I don’t recommend it. It’s not the most fun. We did make all the money back and then some, so it’s okay.

When you look at yourself now – you said you’ve learned a little bit about hiring more. Obviously, you can’t hire unlimited, so how do you think about, now, with experience in mind, when is the right time to hire?

RAFI: I think that story has changed as the labor market has changed. At this point, where I find great talent in an area that I know I’m going to need, I hire for that even if I don’t necessarily have enough work to fill that person’s plate. It just so happens that when you hire great people, you find work to give them, and it’s often profitable work because when they’re good, it enhances your service and you tend to sell more of the things that you can do better.

I think the question you asked me was, how do I know who to hire. I’m always looking. We recently hired a Head of SEO. I wasn’t initially planning on hiring her, but I did find an article that she had written, and I thought it was so well done and it was so technically complete that I reached out to her and I asked her if she’d be willing to do some consulting. One thing led to another, and she’s now our Head of SEO.

So, it’s more about availability than it is about necessarily our needs. It’s becoming very hard to find the right people, and I know I’m not the only employer to say that.

ROB: For sure. It’s hard to find the right people. It’s hard to find sometimes the sorts of versatile people who can and will wear multiple hats. I think that’s interesting; you’ve probably had some choices as you’ve grown. SEO probably has not been a choice. You’ve probably had to do that for a very long time. How have you considered, though, which service areas you should engage in? Are there some that you haven’t? Are you in television? Are you in out-of-home? How deep do you go in social? How do you think about those kinds of decisions?

RAFI: The traditional media is not something I had experience in or knowledge in. I’ve thought many times about doing it, because oftentimes the people who sell traditional media add digital services to their menu of choices. So I’ve often thought of adding traditional media to my set of choices, but I haven’t, largely because it’s out of my comfort zone. I would have to bring in people, and I would be doing it just for the sake of growing.

I have enough troubles in my life without taking on something that I don’t know particularly well, so I’ve chosen just to be a digital agency and do that better than my competitors. And I think it’s that laser focus and doing one thing well that’s been a great recipe for us. It’s worked for us.

ROB: Sure. There’s a certain discipline to knowing what segment you play in. I’m sure many firms have started in the legal world, and many of them really have that appetite to go as far upmarket as they can, as fast as possible. They want to buy the side of every bus, the front of every billboard, all of those things. How do you think about what firm size is too big for Market JD right now? How do you think about that decision?

RAFI: When it comes to digital advertising, I don’t think there is a firm that’s too big for us in our space. It’s when they have needs beyond that. Now, certainly we have partners we can bring in, but I don’t pretend to claim that they’re part of the Market JD business. They’re just our partners if they need them.

But when it comes to digital advertising, this is what we do best. If the largest PI firm in America came to us, I don’t see any reason why we couldn’t help them with their needs. We represent people, or we do the digital advertising for solo practitioners, and we do it for 75-people personal injury firms, and everything in between.

ROB: That’s certainly a range. Once you have 75 attorneys, I don’t want to pay those bills, I know that. That’s a sizable firm there.

You mentioned a little bit about perhaps a desire to have hired a little quicker. As you think about other lessons you may have learned while building the firm, what might something else be that you wish you’d done differently if you could rewind the clock a little bit?

RAFI: Yeah, definitely hiring quicker. Most certainly it would be also doing more internet marketing for Market JD. It was always ironic, I thought, that I’m selling lawyers internet marketing, but I’m not promoting my own wares on the internet. We ignored it because I had such a nice base of connections from my years working as a lawyer and my years selling as a salesman at Thompson Reuters. I had such a great base of people to call on that I really didn’t need to do a lot of internet advertising.

In hindsight, I think that was a mistake. I probably would’ve more aggressively done it, and that’s what we’re just beginning to do now. But you know what? In some regards, I always thought it was better to have fewer clients and do a better job for fewer clients than it is to grow as fast as I can and see the quality diminish. I’ve seen too many of my competitors with fantastic salesforces, far better than anything I have, that win the business but don’t have the resources to put into each client, and the mistakes that they made were just embarrassing.

I never wanted to be that guy, so I never wanted to grow any faster than I had the capacity to do a great job for them.

ROB: Your team is so focused. When you’re out there marketing for these firms, you know who their ideal customer is; you’re thinking about how to reach them, and to a certain extent, it sounds like you’re intuitively selling to people you know, to people you know that you know, some referrals.

What did it look like? Did you all actually sit down and formulate a picture of your customer and their journey separate from their customers and their journey? Or how did you get clarity on the target you are marketing to as a firm, how you reach them, and how you separate that from the everyday of working with all these other firms, knowing you’re trying to reach an individual consumer?

RAFI: I think for every small business, to a large extent the direction of the business is set by the needs of the clients. So, if you listen to what the clients say and you really don’t just hear the words, but take it to heart, then their needs will dictate the services that you provide.

We don’t just sell technical expertise or a set of tools or any particular solution. What we’re really trying to communicate to the lawyers we sell to is, tell us what your issues are, tell us what your end objectives are, and then let us work backwards and figure out the best way to address those and achieve those ends. I think if you listen to the client, they’ll help you. They’ll direct the solution because your solution will be based on their needs and their objectives.

ROB: Rafi, now that you’re at the level you’re at, now that you’re looking ahead a little bit, what’s coming up for Market JD and the type of work that you do that’s exciting? What’s the next frontier, maybe the next place you think you might hire for that you don’t know yet you’re going to hire for?

RAFI: I think we’re just in the initial stages of really expanding and taking what we do best, but doing it in a bigger way, hiring many more SEO content writers who can really focus in on longtail search.

What’s happening in SEO is that when you run a search for the broadhead terms – “Chicago injury lawyer” or “Nevada workers’ compensation lawyer” – the search results are so dominated by paid ads at the top that even if you appear organically in the map section or beneath that, the probability of you getting much traffic or cases from appearing well there isn’t too great because you’ve got Google Local Service ads at the top and then you have Google Ads below it. It really takes up a significant portion of the top of the screen, especially on mobile. The SEO isn’t going to be of great benefit to the lawyers.

But those same ads don’t always appear on the longtail searches, and there are so many of those longtail searches. So the great race right now – it’s no secret, but the great race is to capture the longtail searches, and the better we are at that, the better off our clients are going to be in the end, the more benefit we’re going to bring them. That’s the race these days, the longtail searches.

ROB: That would seem to also align with maybe the capacity of the big firms that target those searches as well. There’s some stuff that’s longtail, they’re not going to have keywords targeted against it, they’re not going to be SEOing for it either. But you mentioned some of those niches that are special to the firm, that is an individual strength, particular types of cases, that then become the opportunity.

RAFI: That’s exactly right. The corners that the big guys don’t see.

ROB: Are you the only attorney in the firm at this point?

RAFI: No. Actually, there are – let me see, three of us that I can think of right away. I’ve got to think through it, but we have at least three attorneys here, and two of them are editors. We’re very careful about what we write about on the law. We don’t ever want to misrepresent or get something wrong on the law, so I thought it would be a great idea to hire lawyers as editors. So two of my editors are in fact lawyers.

ROB: Certainly, you get into some of these compliance areas, it certainly makes sense to have some expertise there. I think we’ve heard this a few times on the podcast – when it comes around the medical space, there’s a similar level of depth, attention, compliance, and danger that leads to specialization and helps keep any little upstart two-person shop in town from coming after you too hard.

RAFI: That’s right. Really, for me, if I was just a general web shop, I could practice law and do better financially than I could if I were just selling to the local businesses. But it’s really the deep specialty that we have that allows us to serve the personal injury and workers’ comp lawyers in ways others can’t.

ROB: Very interesting. We’ve been hiring in a bunch of states; I’ve learned a lot about workers’ comp that I didn’t want to know, but you might know better than that. [laughs] We use a PEO; we had the privilege of buying our own policy from the state of Ohio because they don’t like the PEO’s policy. Something new in every state. That’s you and your clients to figure out for the most part, I think. Unless there’s any other states you know we should really put our heads on the swivel for, because I’d be curious.

RAFI: This is for your own company?

ROB: Yeah. Are there any other states with really weird workers’ comp regimes? Because Ohio seems unique in its specialness.

RAFI: [laughs] Most states have their own peculiarities, and it’s often changing, so I can’t claim I know every state’s. But yes, it’s definitely an area where there are differences between the states.

ROB: Fascinating. A very interesting area, and it keeps some lawyers employed, for sure. Rafi, when people want to find you and find out more about Market JD, where should they go to find and connect with you?

RAFI: The easiest way is pick up the phone and call me, (312) 970-9353, or they can email me at rafi@marketjd.com. That’s Market JD like Juris Doctor.

ROB: Excellent. Good to have that. I encourage folks to find and connect with Rafi if you need some of their help. Other than that, Rafi, thank you so much for joining the podcast, for sharing your journey. We’re very grateful. Thank you.

RAFI: Rob, thanks for having me. I appreciate being on.

ROB: Excellent. Be well.

RAFI: 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.

Blake Akers is the owner of Webology, a digital marketing agency that started by “knocking on the doors” of local small and mid-size businesses. The company focuses on using Google for organic and paid search, providing scientific SEO, testing, and data analysis on the organic side and split testing ad campaigns within paid search.

Today, the agency takes its focused expertise and works regional verticals, e.g. roofing and niche legal firms – companies that typically have a high cost per click and a high per lead value . . . companies where Webology, because of its tight industry focus, knows the business.

Webology’s intention is to work exclusively with one company in a vertical in a geographic market. Blake claims that, if you know how to rank a local roofing company website, you get a lot of leads on the search engine results page (SERP) – those from organic search and those from the Maps Pack (3-pack). The Maps Pack is the group of up to 3 businesses that appear in a box at the top of the page, after the advertisements. The Maps Pack is a valuable piece of real estate . . . studies suggest if a the SERP has a local pack, that local pack will get the majority of the clicks, but the Maps Pack alone will get over 40 percent of the total clicks.

How did Blake get Webology so well-launched in such a short period of time (3 years)?

Branding.

Blake researched SEO to figure out what it took to rank a website locally and get leads for small- to mid-size businesses. . . starting with his company. He asked some critical questions:

How do we write really, really good copy that sells, but also checks off all the boxes in regards to competitor averages?

How do we enhance a page for users and still fit the averages that Google is looking for?

He started getting some answers when he reviewed everyone else’s “best practices.” But, the true answers did not come to light until after he dove deep into data science, assessed competitor averages, and identified and implemented advanced SEO strategies. This knowledge gave him the tools to help his own company grow . . . and a product he could sell to his clients. He has used his own company website a number of times to beta-test new ideas that later get rolled out to customers.

If there is one thing he would change back at the start, Blake says he would have gone after more client reviews and worked even harder at building up his brand. Today, he is a lot more proactive about reaching out to his clients and interviewing them to get those valuable endorsements.

To contact Blake, visit his company’s website at: https://webology.io/, email him directly at: blake@webology.io., or ask general questions at: info@webology.io.

Four years ago, Paddy Moogan, author of The Link-Building Book and Co-Founder of Aira, sat with Matt Beswick in the Aria casino in Las Vegas, and over a half hour and too many drinks, planned out the company that would be Aira. Today, the company employs 34 people and provides SEC, paid search, content marketing, digital PR, and link-building. Clients range in size from local companies with 3 to 4 employees on up to FTSE 100 clients earning billions—but most are “in the middle.”

Aira’s focus, now that they are big enough to turn down clients they don’t want, is on companies big enough to have their own marketing department . . . those that have enough of a budget to work with Aira long term.

Paddy participated on a panel discussing, “How to Drive Inbound Links in the Age of Content Skeptics,” at the January 2019 SMX East in New York City. Panel members provided tips on how to establish links by producing and promoting good content. Paddy presented seven different techniques Aira uses to create more engaging content . . . to build links and onboard bloggers and journalists (see Addendum below).

Addendum

Paddy Moogan’s seven tips form the January 2019 SMX East Conference panel discussion, “How to Drive Inbound Links in the Age of Content Skeptics”:

Develop reusable content: If someone releases data on a regular schedule, make an infographic and swap new data into the same template as it is updated.

Make Outreach an ongoing activity: Build a content bank for non-stop outreach.

Learn what works across industries: Analyze campaign, link, industry, and content type effectiveness. Track link attributes. Use the tracking data to prioritize future efforts.

Exclusive content: Select a client-relevant, top-tier publication. Contact a journalist for that publication and offer an for 24-48 hour coverage exclusive on a data-backed story.

Outreach to second-tier websites: Discover who links directly to your content, and links through others who are covering you. Reach out to secondary linkages and invite them to link to you directly.

Use keyword research for more links: Find these keywords in analytics, the open graph, title tags and descriptions. Think about the keywords that you can rank for in content pieces and campaigns.

Get past gatekeepers: Internal PR teams and may guard their contacts. If you can determine their campaign plans, you can create and share a content calendar with those PR people. Establish, build, and share your own contact lists. (Be careful in the EU to comply with GDPR regulations)

Retrieved 01/15/2015 from https://searchengineland.com/how-to-get-links-to-your-site-create-content-that-people-want-to-link-to-307096

In this interview, Paddy talks about what marketers need to do to build strong links:

1. Developers need to create websites with good user experience in mind: good websites, good content, fast websites, and mobile-responsive websites
2. Developers need to build and promote website content that is link-worthy. Link-worthy content scales well. A website with a wealth of link-worthy content will get links beyond those that are expected.

At Aira, Paddy’s team might generate 50, 60, 70 content ideas for a website. They then go through a validation process—asking a lot of questions—to determine which ideas are link-worthy, including:

1. What concepts should get links?
2. Who is going to link to it?
3. Who is going to care?
4. Who will actually look at that content and go “yes, I’m going to link to it”?
5. What will inspire people to link to the site?

Paddy notes that there is “a massive difference between a good piece of content and a good piece of content that can get links” and that content should be appropriately updated, because Google prioritizes fresher content. He also provides a “timeline guideline” that Aira uses to handle client KPI impact expectations.

Paddy can be reached on his company’s website at: https://www.aira.net/ and on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paddymoogan/.

Jessica Miller, Vice President of Services for PR 20/20, explains how her company, HubSpot’s first agency partner, builds and implements services around HubSpot’s marketing automation software. Focused on B2B clientele, the PR 20/20 team often serves as a full extension of a client’s marketing team . . . and helps its clients “think through more than just marketing.”

Jessica spoke at HubSpot’s Inbound 2018 and covered the details of point pricing, where PR 20/20s clients are billed for services based on the assigned point value of that service rather than paying for the time it takes PR 2020 to deliver that service. This provides value for customers and ensures that customers do not pay for PR 2020’s inefficiencies or learning. More complex, higher cost services are broken into smaller pieces, and the pricing structure is locked onto a Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 . . .) to minimize quibbling over point values.

Originally the company based the cost per point on the volume of services a company purchased . . . the more services purchased, the lower the cost per point The purpose was to incentivize buying a “better” package, but the reality was that it priced the “little guys” out of the market. Today, the company has a flat rate of $150 per point, regardless of whether a client purchases a Basic, a Moderate, or an Enterprise package. The “incentives” now come in the form of free enhanced services and more “hand holding” for the higher point cost service plans.

PR runs a number of interesting websites which may be helpful to companies and agencies.

• Jessica finds the potential for integrating AI into marketing to be fascinating. PR 20/20s The Marketing AI Institute (https://www.pr2020.com/story/marketing-artificial-intelligence-institute) strives to “educate modern marketers on the present and future potential of artificial intelligence, and connect them with AI-powered technologies that can drive marketing performance.”
• On www.themarketingscore.com, a company can take a survey, and, using both subjective and performance aspects, determine the strength of its marketing program.
• Developed by Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of PR 20/20 and author of The Marketing Agency Blueprint, The Marketing Agency Insider website (themarketingagencyinsider.com) provides marketing agencies with marketing agency news, information, resources, training, education and engagement.

Jessica can be reached on Twitter @jessica_joellen or on LinkedIn at jessicajoellenmiller/.

Eddy Badrina is President of BuzzShift, a Dallas, Texas-based digital strategy agency that focuses on B2B and B2C client growth through the synthesis of business metrics, strategy, and creativity. In this podcast, he explores how digital marketing can revolutionize the brand CMO’s role—from being an advertiser running a cost center—to functioning as a Chief Marketing & Technology Officer—redefining IT, restructuring operations, and leveraging digital marketing and the online ordering experience to drive bottom line profits ... and in a measurable way.

A company’s problems are best solved though hiring the right people, rather than requiring people to "spin their wheels" trying to do something they are not good at doing. Prospective employees take a StrengthFinders test, which identifies 37 strengths in one of four buckets: executing, strategy, relationships, and influencing. Eddy knows what he has to see in the results... and hires people who it BuzzShift’s culture, have the needed skills, and are strong in the areas where the company needs more strength.

Eddy has had the unusual experience of selling his company ... and then "unselling" it. He reviews this on his blog in:—"Unacquired: That Time We Sold Our Digital Agency and Then Bought It Back." http://www.buzzshift.com/digital-strategy/unacquired-that-time-we-sold-our-digital-agency-then-bought-it-back

Eddy can be reached on the BuzzShift website at: Buzzshift.com or by email at: hello@buzzshift.com

Moira Vetter, Founder and CEO of Modo Modo Agency (Atlanta, Georgia), built her company with a focus on “marketing for business people.” Modo Modo serves a B to B client base and some larger organizations with B-to-B and B-to-C challenges—leveraging value, developing story, and strengthening brands in the face of company carve-outs, acquisitions, divestitures, and reorgs—times of great potential risk—and great opportunities for transformative change.

Moira notes that companies often come to Modo Modo with what they perceive as isolated problems, e.g., “We need to improve our website.” Rather than addressing a discrete issue, Modo Modo uses a broad approach, digging for strategic objectives (not “What do you want to do?” but, “What do you want to achieve?” “What are your strategic objectives?”), analyzes options, and implements connected marketing initiatives—to produce ever-better long-term value for clients.

In this interview, Moira addresses crossroads perception (how we see our options), the relativity of risk and how it affects decision-making, and the importance of milestones as motivators. She talks about the difference between using “the community’s filter to assess risk,” falling back on your “parents’ filter,” or, at some point, developing and adopting your own filter; and then explains how assessing progress in one parameter relative to another (e.g., I am this age, and I am here in my career) can provide the needed impetus to inspire change. She illustrates this with examples from her life—when external situations collapsed her rising career trajectory, and she made subsequent decisions that led to even greater success—and with examples of marketing at-risk companies and brands, and positioning them “in a new space.”

Moira can be reached by phone at 770.436.3100, ext. 702, on the company website at: modomodoagency.com, by email at: moira@modomodoagency.com, and on Twitter: @moiravetter and @modomodoagency.

In 2009, Yoel Israel, founder at WadiDigital, Israel’s leading full service digital agency, was pursuing his MBA at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel. A friend sat down with him for a cup of coffee and said, “Dude, you’ve got to get on Twitter.” Yoel fell in love with it, set his university up on Twitter (which brought in some international students), and got a scholarship for the effort He graduated and returned to his job at Xerox in his hometown – Philadelphia – and ran a social media management side gig (Facebook and Twitter) for small businesses. When he discovered the Facebook dashboard, this finance major found that he not only got to look at data . . . he could manipulate it. He was hooked.

He learned Google Ads, started his own company, and moved back to Israel where English is the “B2B tech language. When LinkedIn rolled out lead generation in 2017, the agency took off – a “first mover advantage” payoff. Yoel explains: LinkedIn ads may be expensive, but they are powerful because of the discrete targeting capability the platform provides.

Today, WadiDigital focuses on LinkedIn advertising, SEO, and lead generation for B2B technology startups, who, most likely, have already gone through Round A, Round B funding. After 3 customers asked for cybersecurity marketing and cybersecurity influencer marketing. WadiDigital decided to build a platform. Currently, a dozen cybersecurity companies are using an affiliate cybersecurity influencer distribution platform where influencer affiliates “can manage and track their own clicks.” WadiDigital’s new platform launches in January and will consist of two parts:

1. Cybersecurity clients and other cybersecurity companies can share and distribute blogs and non-gated content. Influencer CISOs (Chief Information Security Officers) can retrieve these links, share them, and get compensated based on clicks.
2. WadiDigital cohosts and curates webinars where cybersecurity company experts present content for different groups of influencers. Cybersecurity companies get to showcase their expertise. Well-vetted cybersecurity influencers (who get up-to-date information at a fraction of the cost of what they would pay Gartner or SANS), can post the information and get paid. Yoel says, ” We bring them good content and they get compensated for it.”

In this interview, Yoel discusses some of the security risks individuals and companies take, when to hire and the questions to ask when you hire, and the importance of processes in keeping things going.

Yoel recommends that people follow him on WadiDigital.com, Yoel Israel on LinkedIn, (send a connection request and tell him you heard him on the podcast), and eventually cyfluencer.com, the distribution platform (again, January launch). The company will soon be hosting a cyber intelligence magazine: Cyber Intel Mag, details on all the “new stuff” to follow on LinkedIn and the agency website. 

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m excited to be joined today by Yoel Israel, founder at WadiDigital based in Israel. Welcome to the podcast, Yoel.

YOEL: Thanks, Rob. Thanks for having me.

ROB: Why don’t you start off by running down for us what WadiDigital is excellent in? 

YOEL: Actually, our focus is LinkedIn advertising and SEO. We’re very focused on lead generation, and all of our clients are B2B technology startups. They usually have at least Round A, Round B funding. A large majority of them are cybersecurity, especially because we’re in Israel. It’s like the cybersecurity hub of the world. So, we do a lot with cybersecurity there.

We also now do cybersecurity influencer marketing. We have a cybersecurity influencer distribution platform that we’re still building, and we’re currently using but we’re building a new one right now. We do a lot of influencer marketing in the cyber space. So, we do a lot, but our focus is B2B LinkedIn, SEO, lead gen, and influencer marketing for cybersecurity.

ROB: That’s probably an underappreciated and unknown aspect of Israel for people who don’t know. In the technology space you get a flavor for that deep security knowledge and that expertise in the venture funded companies in Israel, but a lot of people may not necessarily make that association, so I’m glad we get to dig into that a little bit.

I want to pull on the thread a little bit – when you mentioned cybersecurity influencers, that’s interesting. I’m sure it looks a little bit different than what people may commonly think of as influencer marketing. What does influencer marketing look like in cybersecurity?

YOEL: We have two parts. How we got into it was a few years ago, a cybersecurity client of ours asked us if we do cybersecurity marketing. We just said no. Then two months later, a different cyber client asked us the same question. We looked around online like, “All right, let’s help them,” and we didn’t find anything. There’s nothing really for B2B for influencer marketing, and if there was one, it was more like an Upwork where they come in and make the connection and there’s nothing special about it. It’s definitely not cybersecurity focused. When a third client asked us, we decided to build it.

So, the influencer marketing, right now we’re actually developing our own that will be ready in January. We spent over $60,000 on it. It’s going to be epic. But what we’re doing right now is using an affiliate network to manage and track clicks, where basically every affiliate, which is influencers, can log in and have their own unique tracking. We have about a dozen cybersecurity companies on our platform.

There are two parts to our influencer distribution platform. One is where our cybersecurity clients and other cybersecurity companies want to share and distribute their blogs and their non-gated content, and then influencer CISOs and such, mostly in America, get to go grab these links, share it, and they get compensated based on the clicks. That’s one.

The second part that we’re doing is now we’re offering, within our pool of dozens of cybersecurity influencers, some of them are writers and they’re real experts within their space, within cybersecurity, so we’re not just writing content, but we’re also co-hosting webinars. If you were to do a webinar with SANS or Gartner, it might cost you 15 grand. However, there’s no reason to do it twice because they send it to the same audience.

What we do is set up our cybersecurity clients with different influencers every single time, and those influencers promote their content in the webinar. They each bring a different and important audience to each webinar, not to mention it’s a fraction of the price if they were to pay SANS or Gartner.

ROB: Got it. In one case you’re providing them a platform to showcase expertise alongside people they’d want to be appearing alongside, and on the other side it sounds almost like you are helping the influencer solve a problem. It’s often not really the case in influencer marketing. The problem you’re helping them solve is they want money. But in this case, it sounds like part of the problem somebody who would be sharing one of these links would have is actually that they want to talk about the industry. They want a source of good, credible content, and you’re able to connect content with people who want to share good content.

YOEL: That’s correct. We’re curating. These people are already sharing and engaging with excellent cybersecurity content that they’re sharing, but now in addition to what they’re sharing, we’re curating that content from about a dozen companies, and more are joining, that are able to then go and grab your content, and they can share it. It’s really fantastic that we make it so easy for the influencers. We bring them good content and they get compensated for it.

ROB: That’s a really interesting model I haven’t heard very much about before.

YOEL: That’s why we had to make it.

ROB: [laughs] That’s why you had to build it. Especially considering, from a product perspective, how do you think about elevating towards quality? Because that is one of the problems in the affiliate and link sharing world; it kind of has a bad reputation. How do you evaluate that experience?

YOEL: We don’t let anyone who wants to come and share links. We review anyone that wants to share a link. We go to their profile, we see all of their posts, make sure the overwhelming majority of their posts are cybersecurity related. We look at their engagement, their follower count, their work experience. So, you have to apply to be an influencer and we manually choose who can and cannot be influencers. That’s how we get rid of the junk, and then the companies, especially when our platform will be ready in January, get to choose what companies they want influencers from, if they only want to pay for clicks from what countries.

So even though you might have gotten clicks hypothetically from Pakistan, you don’t want to pay for those, so we’re not going to charge them and we’re not going to pay out our influencers that way either. We have a lot of control over it. It’s not just like “set it up and do whatever you want.” Especially the cybersecurity audience, they’re very conservative. They’re professionals. They do things by the book. By definition, they kind of need to. That’s just how they are and who they are, so we need to make sure everything is very clean and kosher.

ROB: Excellent. I love the clean and kosher. Yoel, if we rewind this business a little bit, how did WadiDigital come into existence? What led you to start the business and how did you arrive at that point?

YOEL: It was weird. In 2009 I was getting my MBA at Bar-Ilan University here in Tel Aviv in Israel, and I met with a friend of mine who’s a huge tech influencer in Israel. I wasn’t friends with him at the moment; it was in 2009, and he took me out for some coffee and he goes, “Dude, you’ve got to get on Twitter.” I’m like, “What’s Twitter?” This is 2009, right?

I really got into it and I loved it. It was a real intro to social media. I’d been on Facebook a little bit, especially from college for my undergrad when that was up and coming. But I got on and I set up my university on Twitter and they were able to get some international students. They actually gave me a scholarship, so I knew I was good at something here. 

I went back to Philly, where I’m originally from, and went back to work for Xerox. On the side I was doing social media management organically on Facebook and Twitter for small businesses. Then I had a client ask me to take out ads on Facebook, and then I saw the whole dashboard and I kind of fell in love. Originally, I have a finance background, so I do love numbers and I love looking at tables of data. But once I understood that I could actually manipulate that data, I knew this was what I wanted to do for a living.

Then I got trained up in Google Ads from a friend of mine and then started my own business and started selling Google Ads. I moved back to Israel after two and a half years in Philly. That was 7 years ago, and then naturally, because everything here in English is B2B tech, I started getting more into B2B and Google Ads and then getting all-in on LinkedIn ads, and we grew from there. Once LinkedIn rolled out lead generation forms on April 1st, 2017, we went all-in and we skyrocketed, bringing in enterprise leads and business because we were first mover advantage.

ROB: That’s a good wave to catch. For a while, a long time, you would hear that LinkedIn ads were expensive and that’s all you would really hear about them. Then I think there started to be a transition at some point – I don’t know whether it was an evolution of the platform or in strategy, but you started to hear instead that LinkedIn ads were expensive but effective. What do you think fed that transition, and what was your experience in that?

YOEL: It’s definitely expensive relative to other platforms, but it’s totally worth the money. You can target whomever you want professionally on LinkedIn. You can’t do that on any other platform. It’s extremely powerful.

ROB: Talk more about that target. What’s that look like in practice to be really effective?

YOEL: In practice, if I want to target CISOs (Chief Information Security Officers) at Fortune 500 companies only within the United States and who have just switched jobs in the last 90 days so they might be looking for new security opportunities for them to secure their companies, we can do that targeting.

ROB: Got it. Does it line up a little bit with that enterprise hunting, account-based marketing mindset?

YOEL: You could also do account-based marketing. You can upload a list of companies that you directly want to target and do that too. But then they also have different target options that you can choose, like the industry and the company size within that industry that you want to target. There’s a lot of different ways – not just choosing what companies, but there’s all kinds of different ways that you can target by company and you can target by the individual based on their experience.

ROB: Got it. To justify the expense, do you look more at something that’s in a lead capture mode? Is there any place for just pure brand and awareness marketing in LinkedIn?

YOEL: Oh yeah, for sure. If you’re a startup or you’re a disruptor, people don’t know that you’re solving an issue that they don’t know they have. They’re not searching for that solution. Therefore, you can’t use Google, but you can put in front of them the solution that you provide. So, awareness is fantastic. Video is very good. It’s not necessarily good for lead generation but creating awareness videos and then remarketing people that viewed 50% or 75% of the video and then hit them up with a lead capture, you’ll do very well.

ROB: Wow, that’s an interesting direction to take things. You started this and you got this thing moving; at what point did you realize that you were going to have to grow the team and this was really going to have to be something bigger than yourself?

YOEL: When I stopped getting enough sleep. [laughs] I was working wire to wire, and then you get this really hot client. It was like, “Ugh, I’m totally full with time. I shouldn’t take them,” but it was someone you really wanted. You’re like, “Okay, now I need to hire.” That’s how it happened.

ROB: Got it. So, you just basically got to full capacity and then you said, “Well, I’ve got to do something that is beyond me.”

YOEL: Right.

ROB: Are you still in that sort of mode, or have you shifted in terms of capacity planning and hiring to some different metrics? Or do you still think about getting a little bit too busy?

YOEL: I always try to make sure we’re stretching before I do my hires. We’re already 11 people full time, and I just signed last Thursday night a huge senior, the only other person that’s worth – let’s say it’s someone else in Israel that’s got perfect English, has LinkedIn ads, Google Ads experience, worked in an agency, built a team. So, I just made a big hire, a very expensive hire, who will be starting in January. I’m continuing to grow and I’m all-in, and I’m putting up a few more job postings now. To really build up a perfect team obviously will cost us a lot of money in the short term, but I think the medium and long term will be happy.

But in general, as a rule of thumb for others that have agencies, do as much as you can, learn as much as you can, save up as much as you can, work wire to wire until you absolutely need to hire. Then hire. Too many people try to apply the 4-hour workweek before – the whole point of the 4-hour workweek is to escape the wire-to-wire working. First, you’ve got to build the business, build the revenue, and get all that. Then you can learn how to step back. Don’t step back and start outsourcing things until you’re really working like crazy.

ROB: I know I’ve certainly had that experience of hiring for the business I wish I had instead of what’s right in front of me. Have you had any either fractional or full-time hires that you’ve learned you may have made prematurely and had to pull back from it?

YOEL: I used to say I hire on personality and then I learned that’s not nearly as important. I think having a good work ethic is more important than anything. That’s what I really learned. You need people to have a good work ethic. If they have a good work ethic, they’re competent, and they really care about the quality of their work, I think that’s the number one most important thing.

ROB: How do you think about screening for a good work ethic and evaluating that before someone’s on board?

YOEL: Make sure they have a full year of working somewhere. If you’re in marketing, digital marketing, maybe a 1 year of white collar, making sure that they haven’t been fired, and calling the references – were they on time? I really think speaking to the references and making sure they actually have some full-time employment. You should be able to get it from the references. Make sure to ask difficult questions to the references. A lot of people try to be nice to references because they’re being kind with their time, but that’s really the way to know.

ROB: Not only that, but people will often give you the good references. It’s hard to get to sometimes the references you really need to understand the full picture of the person.

YOEL: Right, but you need to ask the hard questions. You’ve got to pivot it and do it like this. Let’s say Peter. “Is Peter more of an introvert or an extrovert? Does Peter excel better working alone or excel better working on a team?” Don’t say “Has Peter ever been late?” They’ll say no. You frame it as, “How many times a month has Peter been late?” Then you hear if they think or not. You get an idea. So when you frame it that way, you get a better idea. It’s how you frame the question, you’ll be able to get an honest answer.

Also, ideally, when you do these reference calls, if you can schedule a video call because then you can see their reaction. If you can avoid the telephone and do a video call, which everyone now knows how to do because of the pandemic, you’ll be better off.

ROB: That’s definitely an opportunity I’ve seen in this time. People are much less weirded out by a video call because we’re all used to it. If you had told someone you wanted to do your first screen on a video call two years ago, I don’t know if you would’ve had the level of adoption that I’m seeing with candidates now.

YOEL: Right. It’s a hiring market. Employers have a lot of leverage in a difficult economy. If someone asks for a video interview, I couldn’t imagine anyone saying no. If you really want to weed people out, find out those that aren’t willing to do a video interview.

ROB: People find a lot of ways to weed themselves out. It constantly surprises me. Someone will spend the time on a video call, but then they won’t follow up timely on the next step you ask them to do. It’s a real tell.

YOEL: It is, yeah. For those looking for employment, just a little tip: don’t forget to send a thank you email after the interview.

ROB: Man, it’s such a way to stand out.

YOEL: It’s sad. I studied finance and they taught us a lot about business. We used to send handwritten letters. I’m not that old, man. I’m turning 35 next month. [laughs] I don’t write in cursive and all that, but there’s something to it. You want to stand out, you send a handwritten letter. You’ll get that job.

ROB: I think it’s also interesting to recognize that one of the ways that I think you’re really able to make those good premium hires you’re talking about is in your choice of market. You’re not talking to somebody who’s selling a widget for $5 bucks a month. The cybersecurity market – the threats continue to grow. There’s a lot of money on the line. What are you seeing when it comes to categories of cybersecurity that’s emerging, trending? What should people be scared of that they don’t know about yet?

YOEL: Don’t worry, all our clients are B2B. We’re not selling VPNs like B2C to end users or anything like that. But everything and anything can be hacked. If you really want to be scared, to be honest, under no circumstances should you have TikTok or WeChat on your phone. They’re stealing your texts. Anything you copy in your clipboard, even when you’re not using the app, it’s sending it to the Communist Chinese Party. That’s the simplest and easiest thing you can do. I could really scare you, but I’m not going to do that. You wanted an easy answer. [laughs]

ROB: I wonder if maybe there’s a novel category of solution that you’ve worked with, a client you’ve worked with that people wouldn’t even realize was a problem or a solution.

YOEL: I don’t use Zoom. Most people do, but we use Google Meet because Zoom is hosted in China, so it’s not secure. And most of our clients are cybersecurity. A few of our clients don’t care; most of them do. There’s a lot. You have no idea. People know everything about you. They’ve watched you do everything on your phone through your camera, heard every conversation. They’re recording everything. Everything you think Google’s recording, which it’s doing legally and with your permission, imagine what foreign governments are doing and getting information on you. I don’t think anyone can run for office in a free country in the future with foreign adversaries knowing everything about you.

ROB: Right, or they can and then it becomes a security risk.

YOEL: Right. You can see that right now.

ROB: Exposing the information is actually – you do that, you can never use it again. But if you hold it over someone’s head, you can influence them for a long period of time.

YOEL: Correct. That’s what’s happening right now maybe in America with Hunter Biden, with everything that he has on him and on Biden. It’s a little worrying. But we’ll see.

ROB: You really do have to wonder. I hadn’t thought about it too much. If someone has the dirt on you – 

YOEL: People don’t think about it. And they have the dirt on you. That’s the thing. They have it on me. They have it on you.

ROB: So turning over the dirt is the nuclear option.

YOEL: You don’t turn it over. It’s taken from you.

ROB: Yeah. But them releasing the information is the last play. There’s a lot in between. It’s really interesting. Some interesting trends I have seen in this world – I don’t know what you’ve seen here – is an increase – we have one client who is moving to virtualized desktops. It was an S&P 500 company and they got ransomwared, and they’re just over it. So they are deploying – all of their developers are going to be developing on virtual Windows boxes, I think on Amazon’s cloud. Virtual desktops.

YOEL: Yep, not surprising. You hear a lot more than that. I give examples of what people can do as individuals, but my clients are B2B, so it’s more like how they present a ransomware, patching solutions, things like that. Having different keys in order to access different information, using cryptocurrency and things like that. All kinds of different technologies in order to be able to prevent different kinds of penetration for IT and OT and industrial and ICS. It’s amazing. Think about it; if they take down the energy supply, you’re screwed. You have no food. Nothing gets to you. They can’t even pump the water that comes out of your faucet. Everyone’s out in the street killing each other.

ROB: We got a scary sneak preview. I don’t know what the immediate COVID-lockdown experience was for you, but you realize how overoptimized and how fragile our supply chain is. What was your experience?

YOEL: Yep, yep, yep. A lot.

ROB: What could you not get and what can you still not get?

YOEL: I have a couple old B2C clients from back in the day back in the States, and they’re ecommerce. Ecommerce was through the roof when people couldn’t go to the store. I was like, “Yo, we’ve got to up our budgets. This is amazing. Our ROI is like 5x the previous month. This will only last as long as the pandemic or until things open up.” He goes, “I can’t. My supply chain is screwed.” We had to cut budgets, and it was time to rake it in. He couldn’t supply. We had to go through and start removing products on their website. They sell beads for arts and crafts, high end beads and all that, like African beads. Just to get an idea.

And that’s not even important stuff. Then you talk about all of your medication and all that. I know we’re totally off topic, but that’s fine. All of your medication ingredients that go into medication and all of your technology and everything is made overseas, not to mention your master PPE equipment and everything. Nothing was made here at the time. Big changes have been made in the last 6 months, thankfully, for America to be able to centralize and other countries to start bringing their manufacturing back home. It’s become a national security risk.

ROB: Yeah. I was going to say, that’s a good security story as well. We talked a little bit about some things you’d learned along the way. What are some other lessons you have learned from building WadiDigital that you might do a little bit differently if you were starting from scratch?

YOEL: Starting from scratch? It’s such a simple question but I never thought of it that way. I would’ve maybe hired a little bit earlier. I would have taken processes more seriously. I never worked at another agency, so I would’ve hired a consultant that worked at another agency to give me some tips on how to do and build things, processes, streamline, and save time.

Oh, another thing I did, if you own an agency: get a personal assistant. I learned between me and let’s say one junior when it was just the two of us, only one person working under me, all my time was client-facing, and then I would assign tasks on Monday.com and she would do them. But then my other time went a lot of times to stuff in my personal life. So you can hire someone pretty cheap either locally, in my case – I hired someone on my block – or you can hire someone virtually to do a lot of the stuff you need to do in your personal life. I freed up almost an hour and a half of my time a day. That’s three client calls a day. That’s a lot more work and business that I can take on.

I only started that a couple months ago. After I got used to the personal assistant, I was like, “Why didn’t I do this years ago?”

ROB: [laughs] Right. What I have found is you start off thinking of a few things you could delegate and hand off, and then you just keep on realizing things you can hand off. There’s a freedom that starts to come when you start to think about the additional things you can take off your plate instead of having the mindset that you have to do it.

YOEL: It’s a shift. It doesn’t make any sense to people that don’t. Once you start delegating and handing things off, your life changes.

ROB: I think to some people it sounds very indulgent. It sounds like one of those first world problems of whether or not you have an assistant. But when you’re trying to build a first class business, it’s hard to imagine how you can go without it. After a time. Maybe not when it’s just you.

YOEL: But it’s not even that. I know a lot of people, they’re employees themselves, but they hire some help at home to help with the kids and dishes and cleaning and things like that, and it makes a huge difference. Then they can stay later at work, maybe earn more. And these aren’t people building a business; they’re employees. They just need some help so they can mentally recharge, so they’re not up all night cleaning up after the house and the kids or whatever or helping with tutoring with children. In a sense, it’s all a personal assistant in a way.

ROB: Right, especially now, probably, to have someone who is in your inner circle, who you know and trust their habits. In the middle of the pandemic, I’m not scared, but I am careful. The list of people I’m going to call to babysit my kids has gotten a lot shorter right now because I want to know how you’re living your life.

YOEL: Yeah, I feel you, man. My wife and I went through the same thing. There’s less babysitting.

ROB: For sure. You mentioned processes. I think a lot of us, especially the creative class, “I’m going to go start a business,” bucks at the idea of structure and process. It almost feels like rules, but it’s also kind of like having a bionic exoskeleton sometimes that can help you be a lot stronger than you would be on your own. What was it that helped you realize – was there a particular process that you realized needed to be tightened up or some experience that made you turn the corner on processes?

YOEL: I found out that one of my competitors had some processes that I wasn’t doing, and then I really looked into it and I figured out, “I need to get it together.” [laughs] I went all-in on these processes. I started making processes and spreadsheets, processes in Monday.com, processes on what I do before and after a call and everything. It’s almost automatic. I don’t think about it. It’s become a habit, and everything’s documented, and no work ever gets forgotten or unchecked by doing things a certain way. Processes are important.

But you don’t notice you need it until you either hear complaints from a client or you find out what other people are doing in the industry and you’re like, “Oh, I should be doing that. Why aren’t I doing that?” Which is why I recommended earlier to bring in a consultant, because you don’t know what you don’t know.

ROB: Right. Those experiences beyond yourself, certainly.

YOEL: Correct. Especially because I haven’t worked at an agency, so I haven’t really learned how to do that. I don’t have that experience of “Here’s how we do things, here’s how we do training, here’s how we do keyword research,” and the processes of hiring. You need other help sometimes to see things differently if you don’t have that experience.

ROB: We’ve had a couple of those sorts of folks on. There’s a couple of gentlemen, David C. Baker and Blair Enns, who co-host the 2 Bobs podcast. They’ve both been on here, and they are both consultants to agencies that just have that longitudinal visibility. Even right now, if you want to say, “Hey, what are people doing? How are people’s bookings? What categories are hot, what categories are not hot? What are people doing about office space?”, these are all things where you need some perspective.

YOEL: Right. But get more specific. I don’t follow what people do; I try to do the exact opposite of what everyone does. But when it comes to processes, you need to get specific. Don’t follow the crowd per se, unless you want to enter a rat race, but sometimes you’re straight-up missing the obvious, which you don’t even know.

ROB: Very solid. Yoel, when you think of what’s ahead for WadiDigital and marketing and maybe cybersecurity, what are you excited about that’s coming up?

YOEL: We’re trying to transition from a cybersecurity marketing agency to a cybersecurity marketing and media agency, so in addition to influencer marketing and doing those things, we’re building some reading resources, websites, cybersecurity news websites, cybersecurity TV show. We’re trying to do – that’s for a few years from now. We’re really trying to make the destination for everything cybersecurity marketing and media so if you’re in cybersecurity, you’re a fool not to work with us.

ROB: Where’s that going to live? Do we have a future parking spot domain for that, or some digital properties? Or just follow WadiDigital?

YOEL: You can follow WadiDigital on LinkedIn, but right now, cyfluencer.com. “Cy” like cyber. That’s our distribution platform. That’s going to be launched January. There’s a LinkedIn page we literally just made, and then Cyber Intel Mag is going to be where we do our cyber news and all of that. It’s a cyber intelligence magazine. And then there’s some other things I can’t really share just yet. Just follow me or WadiDigital on LinkedIn to learn more.

ROB: Got it. Is it WadiDigital.com? Where do we go to find you? We can find you on LinkedIn.

YOEL: Yep, wadidigital.com, but the best is search “Yoel Israel” in LinkedIn. Send me a connection request, tell me you heard me from here, and I look forward to following and engaging. I’m very active there.

ROB: Awesome. If we google your name, there’s a nice Google ad that runs right up top too. It’s pretty sweet.

YOEL: As it should. [laughs] Control your name.

ROB: Very good. Yoel, thank you for taking the time to share your experience. It’s great to learn about what you’re doing both within cybersecurity marketing, but also that goal and the thought and the distilled knowledge going into the platform and the media side. It’s really, really instructive.

YOEL: Awesome. Thanks. My pleasure, and I appreciate you having me on.

ROB: Thank you so much. Be well. Bye.

YOEL: Cheers.

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.

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 Chiat\Day. 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 Chiat\Day 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.

Ben Kunz is Executive Vice President of Media Associates, an independent media planning, buying and analytics agency working with clients with $2 to $30 million advertising budgets. Although the company “does media,” its primary focus is on tactic and channel selection and on predicting, controlling, and maximizing advertising investment results.

Ben explains the structure of advertising as having three prongs: the creative/branding/message piece; the increasingly-fragmented media channel piece (social media, Twitter, mobile devices, over-the-top (cable free) television, satellite radio); and data. Ben feels data is critical to targeting, understanding, and optimizing advertising return.

Ben’s company uses predictive analytics, modeling outcomes before starting an advertising campaign. He says, if you can measure what happened, you can turn it around and forecast what will happen – use data to get ahead and put some headlights on your business so you can see where you are going. He gives this as an example: If you are going to spend $10 million on an ad campaign, is it going to drive $30 million back in sales? If you don’t know, run some predictive models . . . this is the only way to control outcome.

Ben says that barring the time and expense of gathering a lot target audience information, the best way to change or influence consumer behavior is to advertise on 3 very different channels over a period of time. He cites Rex Briggs, author of the book What Sticks, who analyzed billions of dollars of marketing spend and concluded that, if a brand presented advertisements on television, billboards, and digital ads, customers responded much more than if they just saw a bunch of Facebook ads. Digital may be “hot,” but it is not everything. Channels should be selected based on the target audience.

Attending South by Southwest for the 10th year, Ben commented on how fast technology had changed. But, he added, human psychology has not changed. Too often, advertisers or marketers get caught up in the “bright and shiny,” when they need to balance their efforts across all channels.

Ben recommends using the 70/20/10 rule, where 70% of the marketing effort focuses on what you expect will work because it has worked in the past, 20% uses innovative, emerging ideas that you have confidence will work, and the last 10% is “the crazy new stuff.” That “new stuff,” could prove to be the source of the big ideas for your clients. He describes TV as “the James Bond of media right now” – a very powerful, but blunt instrument. He notes that 37 million Americans (a number which is rapidly increasing) have cut the (cable) cord and are using other means to access programming. Ultimately, this will make market segmentation much more granular and facilitate market targeting.

In this interview, Ben also discusses the importance of culture, team-building, empowerment, and motivation. Employees need to know “the next rung on the ladder” and how to get there. They need to feel empowered if they are to be motivated. Invest in ongoing learning opportunities. You have to nurture your employees if you want them to continue to be engaged.

Ben has found it helpful to have non-competing partners who can provide the skills his company does not provide. He also touched on the risks of the Internet of Things, a topic presented by past chess champion, Garry Kasparov, at the South by Southwest conference.

Ben can be reached on Twitter @BenKunz or on his company’s website at http://mediassociates.com. (One ‘A’ in the middle)

David Sonn is the Founder and President of Arc Intermedia, a HubSpot certified, digital only agency that focuses on “customer acquisition using digital strategies and digital tactics.”

David ran a web development company for 13 years but found that he and his partner had become “production monkeys,” delivering a commodity and competing with offshore developers. “You never want to sell or have to build a model based on price,” he says.

Ten years ago, when people started requesting Search Engine Optimization, David found his niche. Intrigued by the ability to precisely measure results, he founded Arc Intermedia -- and got out of the website building business and into the business of building businesses. 

David may have started his agency “really slow and really small,” but he didn’t start “really cheap.” He hired the most experienced SEO and paid search experts he could find, people who could lead practice area development. He says, “When you’re a somewhat small agency that we are, every person counts.” Hiring and investing in the right people is critically important.

In this interview, David provides a wide range of tips on building a strong digital business.

Marketing initiatives need to start with strategy. When clients try to tell Arc Intermedia what they want the agency to do, David says it is critically important to understand “the good, the bad, and the ugly” about that business, to get to know the client well enough to discover things of which even the client may be unaware, and to know the client’s goals – what the client is trying to accomplish – before building the strategy and implementing the strategically determined tactics.

As many people in marketing say, content is king. Marketers need to know how to leverage that content through SEO, distribution, credibility, and across social platforms.

While a variety of tactics can be used get leads, to drive people to a website, to fill out a form, to give them “stuff,” people often resist filling out forms because they don’t want the sales calls that immediately follow. David recommends giving people something of value in exchange for their personal information. 

The key to building customer relationships is nurturing potential clients through broad exposure on a variety of platforms and providing a variety of (non-sale) interactions. Use marketing automation to nurture clients to help close the deal.

Clients often come to Arc Intermedia and request adding a particular tool, such as SEO, to their marketing mix. David reminds us that today’s digital marketing requires an integrated process to succeed. SEO, social presence, publication on an industry website or blog . . . these things “loosen the soil” and build the familiarity and credibility that makes a paid search or display ad work. 

Customer acquisition is what “moves the needle for the bottom line of a company.” Paid search has evolved to a high level of sophistication. Precise targeting produces a wealth of data. Advertising on social platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter – should be backed by “great strategy.” Knowing when to pivot, why you need to pivot, and having the ability to pivot is critical. 

David describes paid search as a “sprint,” and SEO as a “marathon.” He feels that it is important for both parties to set their expectations realistically about what’s going to be accomplished when. He requires SEO contracts to be for at least 12 months – SEO takes that long to show a return. After a year, when he shows clients where they were in month zero and what has been accomplished in the year that followed, “the contracts basically renew themselves.” SEO on paid media optimized for terms and topics in high demand? He says, “It’s infinite traffic if you do it correctly.”

David can most easily be found on his agency’s website at arcintermedia.com.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by David Sonn, President and Founder of Arc Intermedia based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Welcome to the podcast, David.

DAVID: Thank you. Hi, Rob. How are you? I appreciate you including me today.

ROB: Great to have you here and have a little pre-call with you before this. Tell us about Arc Intermedia. What is this agency, and how did it get started?

DAVID: Arc Intermedia is what I call a digital only agency. Why I need to make that designation is I’ve been around the block for a while, so I have experience in traditional advertising and that kind of thing, but with this agency, when I built this agency 10 years ago, I wanted to hyper-focus only on digital strategies and digital tactics.

We basically will come to a customer that needs more customers. I don’t care if you’re Apple Computers or you’re a two-man band working out of a garage; everybody needs more customers. So we built this agency on customer acquisition using digital tactics.

ROB: Got it. How long has the business been around?

DAVID: I founded this 10 years ago. Oh, by the way, we’re 10 years old this year.

ROB: Happy birthday. Anniversary, whatever you want to call it.

DAVID: Thank you. [laughs] Yes.

ROB: The digital tactics even over that time have changed a lot. What were the tactics on Day Zero when it’s you and – were you by yourself? Did you have partners in the earliest stages of the firm?

DAVID: I’m going to back up and tell you a little different story. I promise, promise, promise to get there. Before I had Arc Intermedia, back in 1996 I founded one of the first interactive firms in Philadelphia. When we went into business, and I had a partner at the time, we built websites. At the time, 1996, a lot of companies didn’t even have websites yet. There was no roadmap whatsoever. We thought this was a fantastic idea. We thought, hmm, this internet thing has a chance to stick around.

So we built a company around it without a real plan. We raised some money from friends and family and just got after it. We made a lot of mistakes, but it was all good. 13 years of success proved that out.

But I did find that when I had that web development company, we basically became production monkeys. Clients began to tell us what they wanted, what colors, this, this, and this, and we just became builders, not thinkers or advisors. When you’re in that space and you begin to try to build a commodity like that, you’re now competing against the whole world. And oh by the way, it’s really hard if you think you’re going to compete against offshore solutions on price. You never want to sell or have to build a model based on price.

I began to look at the business and say, hmm, is this really what I want to continue to do? Near the tail end of it, we began to get more and more requests for SEO, search engine optimization. We were building these websites, but no traffic was coming to them. Clients wanted us to do SEO. I began to get my hands involved in SEO, and then jointly, paid search – way, way, way back, the origin of that was – I don’t know if you remember the GoTo Network? It was the beginnings of all of it.

ROB: Oh yeah.

DAVID: I got my hands involved in the GoTo Network, and I got real excited. I’m like, look, we can build out some strategies. We have some money, and we instantly can begin to drive traffic to these websites. Then I had clients calling me up and telling me that they were getting all these sales leads and things were changing, and what was going on at the website?

That was a light bulb moment for me. I really didn’t want to be involved in the web building business anymore. I wanted to be in the business building business. I got real excited. Being an entrepreneur, I started to get that itch again. I’m like, I built this company and it’s now been 12-13 years. I think it’s time for me to bust a move into something else that I want to do. This customer acquisition piece – the part that actually moves the needle for the bottom line of a company – became very exciting to me.

Then I did, and now back to your original question, I began to explore some of these original tactics much further. I didn’t see any companies out there specializing in it. The agencies of the land, the traditional ad agencies, still wanted to spend your money on radio and TV and that kind of stuff and things that couldn’t be measured.

As scary as digital is in that you can measure right down to the penny, to the click, to this, to that, that actually was really, in some weird way, extremely enticing to me. That we could see it, we could measure it, and I could stand up and find the client and say, “I succeeded” or, hopefully not, “I failed.” But for some reason that was an incredible, incredible attraction to me.

I decided that it was time to dissolve the web development company, and I launched Arc Intermedia, but this time I decided to start really slow, really small on purpose. It was myself and Mike Maier, who came over with me. It was just the two of us, and we started the company. We hyper-focused on some of the basic tactics of the day. There was SEO; it was much different than it is today, but it was SEO, and there was the paid search and that piece.

Then as I began to see what was working for customers, the different technologies and tactics that were evolving, I began to build the experts around it. I went out and got one of the best SEOs, Ron Sansone, in the Philadelphia area, and he began to build out our search practice. From him, I added more people with SEO experience, paid search experience. Rasheed Hendricks heads up our paid advertising department, and he’s just absolutely fantastic. That piece is ever-evolving.

And then, as you probably have heard from doing many of these interviews, content is king. You need to know how to leverage content. Content can be leveraged from an SEO standpoint, from a distribution standpoint, from a credibility standpoint, from a social standpoint, all of it. You and I were talking a little bit about how we’re HubSpot certified. Katie Schieder on my team is in charge of content and content marketing, and she does a fantastic job with her team.

There’s a lot of different pieces, and I know I’m maybe sounding like I’m rambling right now, but hopefully I answered your question.

ROB: One thing I hear in there is a strong recognition and appreciation for a team of experts in the different subject areas. One thread I want to pull on a little bit that’s unique about your story is you mentioned in your previous business, the web development shop, that you had investors. We talk a good bit about investors, but what we most often talk about on this podcast is people who are proud and grateful to not have investors, and maybe sometimes a chip on their shoulder because they know other people who have raised money and have gone out of business.

What did you learn from having investors, and what would you say to other people who think they wish they had investors? You mentioned it was friends and family, so we didn’t go out and raise $100 million, but still there are entailments to that.

DAVID: There is nothing – nothing – sexy about having investors. Zero. Now, I was super fortunate that we ended up raising money through friends and family. And oh by the way, that was because no bank would touch us. When we had a plan to build a web development company back in 1996, every bank says, “Oh, that’s fantastic, but I need a 150% collateral that we are going to freeze for every dollar that we give you.” If I had a 150% collateral that I could do, I wouldn’t be sitting at that bank looking for money. That was just silly. So obviously that never went through.

But we were fortunate that we were able to do it through friends and family and a lot of people who supported us. I will tell you, there’s an incredible extra weight on your shoulders because you don’t want to fail them. In my mind there was no chance, ever, in any way, shape, or form, that I wasn’t going to return every dollar back to the people that invested in us – and then some, of course. My success was definitely going to be their success, and I was going to make sure that happened regardless, even if it meant that I was going to pay that money back personally. I was going to get it done. When you’re taking VC money, that’s a different approach and you can’t always do all of that.

But having investors is not sexy or anything that you should really go for unless you absolutely have to. Now, when I had Arc Intermedia, the one thing that was to my benefit was that I was going to start small, and I’m also now a little bit older, a little bit wiser. I self-funded my whole thing. The beauty there is, I never had anybody standing on my shoulders. I never had anybody that I had to answer to in that regard.

So my advice would be try, try, try to do it on your own or figure out a way to do it on your own or try to figure out where you can get investment from people that trust and believe and love you, and then the VC thing is separate. Last.

ROB: Right on. I think I would perceive in the web world, when you talk about the ’90s, you’ll hear a lot about some of the sticker prices people paid for pretty simple websites by our standards. You’ll hear half a million, a million, 10 million. You mention competing with offshore now and this race to the bottom. Certainly it has been cheaper and cheaper to get a pretty good website. You can pay a kid from a high school and get something pretty decent. You can pay a pro less than you would pay one person in a year for sure.

You don’t see that same race to the bottom in the marketing world. You can’t get 10 times as much marketing for the same price as you could 5 years ago. What do you think it is that keeps it from becoming a race to the bottom where some high school kid can hop out and just crush your B2B marketing?

DAVID: Because there’s so much more that goes into it. The tools now are very sophisticated with paid search and all the data you can get back and the targeting you can do, if you’re going to do advertising on social platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all that. But at the end of the day, there has to be some really great strategy in there, and there has to be the ability to pivot and the eye to know when to pivot or why you need to pivot.

Then the other part of it is the customer. Can the customer tell you what their cost of acquisition needs to be? Or can you then prove it out? For example, Rob, if I said to you, “Hey, you give me $1,000 bucks, and for every $1,000 bucks you give me, I’m going to give you $10,000 back in business,” you would do that all day long. You would figure out how many thousands you could give me so I could give you tenfold back.

To answer your question, I think that only happens if you really have the people that have the expertise and the daily eye on this stuff to really know what works. The customer acquisition piece and the journey and all the points in between, it doesn’t happen by chance. It’s not by luck, and it’s also not subjective. You used websites as the example. We can sit here and argue that the homepage needs to be a shade of blue or maroon or what have you, and maybe we’re both right. Who knows? But at the end of the day with digital marketing, either I’m driving results and giving you a positive return or I’m not. I think that’s the difference.

ROB: That makes sense. There’s infinite rounds of competition, and there’s a level of spending that’s always going to meet the value. The value of what people buy online keeps on going. People are buying more stuff online, and you need smarter people to drive those tools as you go.

You mentioned some key folks that you have on your team, and you had clearly built a team before with your web dev shop. How did you think about assembling your team differently as you were building your second business?

DAVID: This is probably an old adage that you’ve heard before, but it’s always hire slow, fire fast. Thank God, I’ve not had to fire anybody at Arc Intermedia. I’ve got that great of a team. That’s actually one of the things that I really do hang my hat on. In 10 years, we’ve never had anybody leave but one person, and it was more or less just a career change in that case. We still remain friends with that young woman to this day.

But hiring the right people on the front end and making an investment in the right people is critically important. What my process was – and I’m going to use the SEO one as an example because it’s clean and easy – I began to see in the marketplace that SEO was critically important, but I also could see that I could build a business around it.

When I wanted to go and build the SEO, I didn’t want to just hire a mid-tier person or an entry-level person or something where we were going to, together, learn it on the fly. Rather, I thought the most important or better move was to make the investment in a senior level person who had been doing it and we could build off of that person and let that person build out the practice, if you will.

That’s my approach. When you’re a somewhat small agency that we are, every person counts. We’re mean and lean and there’s no place to hide, and everybody has to be able to show for what they bring to the table. My entire team, basically, is built with fairly senior level people that I would say are experts in their field. It’s just been a much better approach than what I’ve seen others do.

ROB: How do you think about positioning? When you have a senior person, that SEO offering also has to be a little bit of a premium offering. SEO certainly can have one of the highest long-term ROIs, but it can also be one of the slowest marketing tactics to start to bear fruit. How do you walk a customer along expectations around the sticker price you need to show them to bring the team that you have to bear on SEO?

DAVID: You actually used my word, expectations. You’ve got to set the expectation correctly up front. As a joke, we say SEO is the marathon, paid search is the sprint. If you begin to lay out and set those expectations, both parties can get their head around what’s going to be accomplished when.

Part of that is, with SEO, we will not take on a contract that’s less than 12 months, and the reason being is it is completely unfair to judge us on anything less than 12 months. 3 months in, if you were to look at what we were doing, you’d say, “You guys don’t know what you’re doing” or “This is a complete waste of money.” And they’d be right, because there wouldn’t really be the return in 3 months. Wouldn’t really be the return there in 6 months.

But what you’ve got to do is look at a plan that’s been executed correctly over a 12-month period, step back and say, “This is where we were month zero. Now look where we are.” Honestly, the contracts basically renew themselves because once you can show what can be delivered with SEO – and the beauty of SEO on paid media – it’s infinite traffic if you do it correctly. If you’re optimizing for terms and for topics that are in high demand, you can drive a great deal of traffic.

And then if you have set up your customer journey correctly on the website and begin to show those conversions and whatever it may be, whether it be ecommerce or registrations or sales leads or what have you, it kind of sells itself if you do it correctly.

Now, as far as a high ticket, SEO is a very difficult industry. It’s getting a bit better, but we’re constantly up against the – I don’t know what to really call them outside of where they begin to make promises for SEO for $200 a month. We’re always fighting against that. But our price point – and you’ve got to remember it’s all labor-based, so people need to get paid. Especially when you have senior level people that you alluded to, they’ve got to get paid and you’ve got to offset those costs.

So yeah, good SEO is not cheap, but I will tell you this: look at an SEO contract for 12 months, the cost of it, and compare that to some kind of media play. Compare that to a TV or radio campaign. Or even sometimes the money we really need to move the needle in paid search just because the search terms may be very costly, and if you don’t have X amount of dollars, you’re spitting in the wind. You’d be foolish to think you’re going to get any kind of return because you can’t drive the volume to get the return. In the grand scheme of things, SEO is actually not expensive if you’re comparing it correctly.

ROB: Right, it just doesn’t track as quickly. “I did X dollars of SEO this month and it generated this amount of results.” You have to be more patient than that. We have talked a good bit about SEO. I know that is where you started, but I know you’ve also been thoughtful about layering in other service offerings to the business. What have you added in, and how did you reach those decisions of starting to embrace something where a lot of times agencies will partner on offerings they’re not ready to do or ready to do yet?

DAVID: I often find clients will come to us, and sometimes they will have a need. The need may be that they need more sales leads or they need to sell X amount more widgets. But often they come to us with a tactic in mind. For example, “We need to do SEO.” “Why do you need to do SEO?” It’s just because that’s what they’ve been told, that’s what they’ve heard, that’s what they may not be doing. They may not be coming up in the search results, so they think that’s what they need.

But really what we’re seeing today now in digital marketing is it’s more of what we call an integrated approach. It’s the SEO, it’s the presence on social, it’s the being published on an industry website or a blog that begins to loosen up the soil so that when we do finally hit them with a paid search ad or a display ad, they’ve seen us before. There’s some kind of credibility that’s been built up just because they’ve seen us in multiple places, and we’ve nurtured them along and we can close the deal.

Many of these things now work so hand-in-hand, and again, we always want to start strategy first. Don’t tell us what to do; tell us what you’re trying to accomplish. Then once we understand the goals and we’re all on the same page with the goals, we’ll build out the strategy. Then the strategy will dictate the tactics. That then leads into, what did we think made sense to bring in-house?

With SEO, the counterbalance was the paid search. We had started doing some paid search from the very beginning, but not to the level of what we’re doing today and what we needed to. That was a no-brainer, to make sure we headed up that department with paid search. Paid search is nice because people are looking for your exact service. In fact, paid search is one of my favorite forms of advertising because it’s people actively looking for what you have. You just need to get in front of them. Conversely, people who are a bit more passive or are not actually searching, we need to prospect. And the best way to prospect is through display advertising or social advertising and those kinds of things. Again, having that piece of the pie just made a ton of sense of another piece that we need to layer on.

Now, we can talk all day long about different tactics of driving people to a website, to filling out a form, to be giving them stuff, but the place that I see people now fall short of is you’ve got the sales lead; now what? The customer fills out a form. One of the reasons they don’t want to fill out a form is because they know immediately they’re going to get a phone call from a salesperson, and that’s the last thing they want. So you’ve got to look at it a bit differently. “Hey, fill out this form and I’m going to give you something of value.” I always say you’ve got to give something to get something. Maybe they fill out the form to get some kind of a free tool or a download or a piece of advice or a consultation or something like that.

But if you’re really, really going to do this and you think you’re going to get a return on that initial investment, you’d better be able to nurture. The nurture piece comes in with this marketing automation. For example, I know I’ve already said it before, but we’re HubSpot certified, and that platform allows us to do a lot of different things. We can do email marketing and we can manage the workflow all the way through. If they open this email and they click on this, we know that they’re demonstrating X interest in something, and we can then take them down the next path of providing them the next piece of content. We can nurture and we can build that relationship without the phone call, without the salesperson getting after them.

So having the marketing automation piece was something we absolutely needed to bring in because we were doing such a fantastic job with driving leads on the front end that we needed to have the nurturing piece on the back end.

ROB: It seems like you not only are comprehensive in the different services you provide, but you have to be comprehensive in your understanding of the business to be able to nurture leads along. You can get a first conversation, but to be able to nurture and build trust and credibility with somebody else’s customer is not something you can get from just an onboarding form for a new client. How do you get to that depth of knowledge where you’re actually building trust on behalf of a business that’s not yours? That’s a challenge.

DAVID: You’re right, it really is. I’ll tell you, we get down into the weeds to the nth degree of some stuff that I never thought I needed to know about, from tuberculosis testing to hospice care to minor league baseball to all kinds of stuff. If you’re willing to make a commitment to a new client – and to be honest with you, we do say no. There’s times that we’re like, “This isn’t going to be a fit for us for XYZ reasons.”

But when you finally say, “I am going to commit to you,” commit means I’ve got to learn your business, and I’ve got to find the skeletons in the closet. I’ve got to understand the good, the bad, and the ugly. Honestly, it’s a constant learning process. We often will do onboarding with a client and we’ll try to learn and glean as much information as we can, and as we launch programs, we begin to understand that what they were telling us is completely wrong. And they didn’t even know it. So there’s that piece of it too.

Also, there’s times where we’ll do pilot programs of things just to begin to gather data. I’d like to believe that our team is very smart, and we have a lot of experience to begin to make some great guesses. But at the end of the day, we’re not always right. You’ve got to look at the data. You’ve got to really look at what’s happening in a given space and then be ready to pivot and think about things completely differently than when you went into it. But it’s ongoing. There’s no end to it. I’m still learning about tuberculosis and all those kinds of things. [laughs]

ROB: It’s more and more valuable for more and more people to be marketing online. David, when you are looking at what is next for you and what’s next for Arc Intermedia and marketing in general, what are you excited about?

DAVID: One of the things I’m excited about – we’re in a horrible global pandemic, and one little tiny, tiny good thing that’s come out of this from a digital marketing standpoint is I’m now having clients who we’ve been talking to about this for a long time understand that the lion’s share of the budget really does need to start going to digital. Digital can deliver. It can be measured, and it’s the one actually bringing in the leads.

Just in this past 6 months, we’ve had a number of clients tell me that they’re going to do major shifts in their budget for 2021 more towards the digital space. Why that makes me excited is if you give me more budget, I can do more things. I can expand out that integrated approach. I can go deeper in different tactics and strategies that we maybe have been pushing for that we couldn’t just straight up because of budget. We can get after more of the content marketing piece, the content distribution piece. We can begin to see how we can tie different paid tactics to some other things that we’re doing on the site. We can also look at different offer types and incentives to help ring the bell.

ROB: That makes sense. The margin for execution on a small budget – there’s just not a lot of room for mistakes or a lot of room for experimentation. I can absolutely see where having real digital budgets is a meaningful thing.

David, when people want to track you down, when they want to connect with you and with Arc Intermedia, where should they go to find you?

DAVID: Of course, we have that wonderful website that we’ve just done some updates to. We’ve even got our anniversary video out on the homepage, so I would direct everybody to arcintermedia.com. A lot of people find me on LinkedIn because that’s a super easy way. Occasionally some people may find me over on Twitter. But I would say website.

ROB: [laughs] Sometimes we find a different version of ourselves over on Twitter.

DAVID: Yeah, I think I’m pretty good on that front. [laughs] For the most part. You won’t me on Facebook, I will tell you that.

ROB: Got it. Just have to have a shadow account to manage some of the client relationships? [laughs]

DAVID: We have a love/hate relationship. I love the data that Facebook gives us to market on behalf of our clients. I’m not super fond of participating on Facebook myself.

ROB: I understand completely. Even after they ban QAnon, who knows what’s next? Or if they’ll actually accomplish that. Who knows? Anyhow, David, good to connect with you. Good to have you on the podcast. Congratulations on 10 years of Arc Intermedia, and really of making a living going out and killing your own food for much longer than that with the web dev shop before that.

DAVID: Yes indeed. Working without a net.

ROB: [laughs] Indeed. Thank you so much, David, and be well.

DAVID: Rob, I really appreciate your time. 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.

Espree Devora, got tagged as “the Girl Who Gets it Done.” Later, when a friend observed her enthusiasm in tackling a number of business tasks for Tony Hsieh, then head of Zappos. Her passion for content creation began when she was in the 6th grade and her father gave her a video camera. She filmed hundreds of sequences featuring “extreme” sports (skateboarding, motocross) and built the first online action sports social network. In 2012, she attempted to start “We are LA Tech,” featuring local startup founders. She shot 12-episodes, but her enterprise partner refused to edit the material. Dead end.

Two years later, in September 2014, Espree resurrected “We are LA Tech” as a podcast. By October 2014, it topped Apple’s New & Noteworthy. She had learned on YouTube everything she needed to know to run a podcast. In 2015, Espree launched “Women in Tech” in response to the dire “glass ceiling” warnings so prevalent at the time. Her purpose? To “create a positive piece of content whose sole purpose is to show us what’s possible, to expand our belief system, so listeners walk away feeling, “’If she can do it, so can I.’” Much of the theme of her work is what Espree calls “vulnerable leadership.” She wants to share “how people have built their companies and their professions in ways that are really empowering, and what can we learn from them.”

In this interview, For people interested in getting started in podcasting, Espree recommends the technical equipment and software that she has found to be most helpful, planning and motivational strategies, She provides a series of podcasting training videos. 

The first tool in Espree’s podcasting toolbag was an app to help her maintain focus on daily goals, to help her deal with her fear of “ creating this thing, and then creating a thing that didn’t work out.” Tools she uses today: An Audio Technica 2100 microphone, Sound Studio editing software. As podcasting has grown, the demand for podcasting training has likewise increased. Espree teaches everything from large groups to intensive, private, month-long master classes. She recommends continuous outreach to maintain relationships and lists a number of tools effective for doing this, and offers tips on techniques and frequency . . . in order to be “un—annoying.” 

Espree had been scheduled as a speaker at this year’s now-cancelled South by Southwest. She has given many presentations there in the past, performed live podcasts, and led meetup groups. She credits her success to being where hard work meets luck and opportunity, a variation of the Roman philosopher Seneca’s “Luck Is What Happens When Preparation Meets Opportunity."

Espree can be reached on LinkedIn and all social at (Espree Devora), and onTwitter @espreedevora. Her podcasts are on: WeAreLATech.fm http://podcast.wearelatech.com/ and WomeninTech.fm http://podcast.womenintechshow.com/. 

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Espree Devora, “the Girl Who Gets It Done.” She is the Creator and Host of the We Are LA Tech podcast and also the host of Women in Tech. Welcome to the podcast, Espree.

ESPREE: Hello, hello! Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

ROB: Very excited to have you here. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your own journey into becoming “the Girl Who Gets It Done” and hosting the things that you do? 

ESPREE: Oh my gosh. A lot of people ask me when I became an entrepreneur, like when I made that decision. I feel like I was born an entrepreneur. I remember walking into Westwood Village with my father and looking into the empty office buildings, picturing what businesses I would put in them.

As I went along my journey, I think I just became very resourceful in a lot of different areas, from junior high to high school to college, and eventually the tagline “the Girl Who Gets it Done” came from when I was hanging out with Tony Hsieh, who is the head of Zappos, and a bunch of his entourage. I was taking care of some things and people kept asking me, “Are you his assistant? Are you his publicist? Who are you?” My girlfriend who was with me at the time just said, “She’s the girl who gets it done.” [laughs] It just stuck, and it’s been that way for a really long time.

ROB: Excellent. I think if you get a nickname around Tony Hsieh, you stick to it for the most part.

ESPREE: Definitely.

ROB: What about the journey into these podcasts that you host? When did you realize that was something you wanted to do and then really caught your ongoing attention?

ESPREE: I think the first moment that I realized I was really excited by content creation was in the 6th grade, when my dad gifted me a video camera and I got to explore. I ended up building the first action sports media company online. It was the first action sports social network, and we produced hundreds and hundreds of video content across skateboarding, motocross, all these things.

Then in 2012, I had this urge to continue creating content, but at that point in my life I was more interested in the startup world. I had already been in the startup tech world, obviously, building the first social network for action sports, but I didn’t understand that. At that time I was just doing things. They weren’t a global trend like it is now. Terms like “social media,” “entrepreneur,” “founder,” “accelerators,” these things were not a thing then.

In 2012, when LA started to have more startups and have more founder stories, I wanted to capture that moment, so I partnered with someone to create a video series called We Are LA Tech. Unfortunately, that person didn’t share the same work ethic I had. We shot 12 episodes, and that person’s responsibility was to edit them and none of them were edited. My heart was broken. I waited a year, and I ended up going on a backpacking trip to escape this reality that this video series would never be completed that I felt so passionate about.

While backpacking in Europe, my friend Mark who founded a company called BetaList, started showing me podcasts on his iPhone. At the time I was an Android person. He’s like, “You’ve got to listen to these podcasts. They’re so funny. You’ll love them.” I get back to the States; I get an iPhone because I want to stay connected with my friends in Europe and it was the easiest way to do that at the time. I start listening to podcasts.

I didn’t realize that years before, I had actually been listening to two podcasts, Podcasts and Product People by Justin Jackson, who actually has now co-founded a podcast hosting company called Transistor. He was one of the early podcasters, and I just loved his show. But at that time I would move the audio files from the computer to my phone. It wasn’t the thing it is today, so I didn’t even know I was listening to podcasts.

Anyway, at the same time, I was like, wow, if I start a podcast too, I never have to rely on a video editor again. [laughs] So in 2013 I started stirring up the We Are LA Tech podcast in my head. It launched in I think September 2014, and by October 2014, it was number one on Apple’s New & Noteworthy. It was just really exciting. I’m completely a self-taught podcaster. I taught myself how to edit. I taught myself everything. I just watched a lot of YouTube videos, and I’ve been podcasting ever since.

Then in 2015, I launched the Women in Tech podcast, and the story goes on and on.

ROB: What made you realize that maybe it was worth at least experimenting with the Women in Tech podcast? Or were you all-in from Day 1 and you knew it had to be a thing?

ESPREE: The Women in Tech podcast was inspired because at the time, these women’s groups were becoming a thing. They were never a thing before. I’m like, “Oh look, that’s me. I founded companies and I am a girl too, so I want to check out what’s going on.” All these groups I would go to at the time, the whole conversation would be about how women are held back or statistics that are in the negative and this and that. I’m like, man, I’ve never felt held back. The only person I’ve ever felt held back by is me.

If I had heard all these messages about how much was not possible for me, I would have never built the first action sports social network. I wouldn’t have raised money. I wouldn’t have done all these things because I would’ve believed it wasn’t possible for someone like me.

So I wanted to create a positive piece of content whose sole purpose is to show us what’s possible, to expand our belief system, so listeners walk away feeling “If she can do it, so can I.”

ROB: There’s a common thread, it seems, between both of the podcasts. You have, with LA, an underappreciated market for startups – I think perhaps even still to this day, there’s some very good companies, but also with a chip on their shoulder. And then with Women in Tech, similarly, there’s sometimes a lack of appreciation, a lack of highlighting, a lack of encouragement in both cases, you’re putting a positive spin on it rather than saying, “Hey, pay attention because you’re not paying enough attention.”

ESPREE: Yeah. I think my brand theme – I call it vulnerable leadership, where it’s not that I want to just be positive. I don’t want to be Instagram perfect. But I do want to share a vulnerable message in a way that we could shift our belief system to turn something that could be perceived as a negative into a positive.

I think the process behind that is really important. It’s not just about being like “Everything’s great! You have it so much better than everybody else!” [laughs] It’s about, okay, today sucks or whatever a person is dealing with, but here are the steps I went to, because do I want to feel sucky right now? No. If I don’t want to feel sucky, what’s something that I can do to potentially shift myself out of that mindset? I think that’s what my shows exemplify, just vulnerable leadership: how have people built their companies and their professions in ways that are really empowering, and what can we learn from them?

ROB: For those of us who are outside of the LA tech world, certainly we’ve heard of some of the newer fliers – I think maybe Byrd or Lime scooters is from there. I apologize for not knowing what you know.

ESPREE: That’s okay.

ROB: I’ve definitely ridden plenty of scooters. But what are some of the companies that are maybe trending right now that people may not fully be aware of, but should be?

ESPREE: Oh wow, trending? I don’t know who’s trending right now because I tend to stay laser-focused on sharing people’s stories. But some companies that are iconic that you may have seen – of course, Snapchat is here. FabFitFun is here. There’s really huge companies that are popular at least across the U.S., if not globally, that were created – Myspace was in LA. Google has tons of offices here now, and they’re really a dominant force in the LA tech scene. YouTube has their Creator Hub here. It’s definitely a thriving tech city.

My primary interest is the lifestyle and culture of a tech professional, more than what is the latest gadget. However, if you tell me the latest video or microphone gadget, I will be interested, but that’s just for personal, selfish reasons. [laughs]

ROB: I was going to ask – I think a lot of people, when they hear about podcasting, they feel very intimidated in terms of the whole process, from creation of the content to editing and publishing. What was in your first podcasting tool bag?

ESPREE: That’s a great question. I’d say the first thing that was in my podcasting tool bag was actually the app. I don’t even remember what it was called. It’s like Daily Goal. It was some daily goal app. The reason that was the first one in my bag is because I was so afraid of, one, creating this thing, and then creating a thing that didn’t work out.

What I did was I created a goal every day. It could be like “create podcast artwork,” “get a microphone,” “schedule an interview.” Just one thing. And I wouldn’t allow myself to not do the thing. I remember when I got my first podcast poster designed, and I didn’t like the design and I thought it was really ugly, but my goal for that day was “post it,” like it’s done. So I just went with it. It was about the forward movement; it wasn’t about being perfect. I actually happen to really like that flyer now, but at the time I did not.

That was my first one. Then as I became more educated by watching YouTube videos, I bought a Snowball mic because I knew my episodes would be in-person and it would be more than one person, so I wanted a mic that picked up more people.

A Snowball mic is actually the lowest level mic because it’s really meant for musicians, like a guitarist or something like that. It’s not meant for multiple people. Those are for technical reasons that I can get into another time. Feel free to tweet me @espreedevora if you’d like to know more reasons why. But it was a Snowball.

What I’d recommend to everybody starting out is an Audio-Technica 2100, and that’s actually what I’m using right now. Again, I could share with you the technicalities of why in another conversation.

Then I had my computer. I have a Mac, so I found an editing program called Sound Studio. I found it on a random forum. They do a terrible marketing job because they’re very hard to find. [laughs] But they’re an incredible software program. The way I describe it, it’s like iMovie for audio. They just make it stupid simple to edit audio. It’s great. So I used that.

I remember my very first interview, I didn’t even know how to record it. I was just confused, and I plugged the Snowball into the computer and I was trying to figure it out. It’s scary, but what matters is that we take a step forward.

In my speeches, when I give speeches on how to podcast, the thing that I tell the whole audience is on their way home, I want them to take out their phone and, in their voice memo app in their phone, I want them to record their first interview on the drive home, or their first podcast episode. Then I want them to send me that via Google Drive or email or whatever it is, because that’s all that matters in the beginning, is taking a step forward and just taking action.

ROB: If you take that step forward every day, which you were doing with your app, it’s like those challenges when people talk about if you just get 1% done better every day, it really does add up. Are you still editing, or have you managed to delegate that opportunity?

ESPREE: First of all, I happen to love editing. I call it “painting audio.” But it is not who I want to be in the world. [laughs] I’m very lucky; an editor that I hired in 2014 has been with me since, and he works with me and edits everything. I have other editors that I’ve worked with as well. So I do have the editing done. Every so often, I’ll tell them that I want to contribute and I’ll do an episode here or there, but I do not rely on my own time for editing anymore.

ROB: It’s the same as my experience. We actually did a quick cycle episode that we recorded yesterday about the financial stimulus involved in the CARES Act and how marketing agencies can claim that money for themselves to keep their team onboard. But normally, I have trained editors – and I think what you said before, audio versus video is very, very forgiving.

ESPREE: Completely.

ROB: If there’s a glitch in the middle of a word, it’s remarkable. You can just highlight it, delete it, and it sounds great all of a sudden, whereas if you did that with video it would look insane.

ESPREE: Totally, completely. And there’s so much that goes into video, from lighting, color correction, angles, audio. There are so many variables, you just cannot get away with high quality video if you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s a huge learning curve.

The main components of a podcast – and again, I can dig into this deeper in a different conversation – are the tracks: is each person’s voice being recorded on a separate track or is everybody’s voice on the same track? How does it sound, the mic that you’re using? Are you doing it remotely or in person? Because that will have an impact on your equipment decisions. Things like that. But there’s just so much more that goes into editing and shooting video.

ROB: As you mentioned, all the information is out there. Everything is essentially figureoutable. I think there’s a book to that effect. I first figured out how to record live because I was at the Social Shakeup Conference and I saw somebody there recording live, and I just walked up to them and asked them, and because they’d done it enough, they had a page that listed all their gear, and they had affiliate links.

Normally I don’t even click on affiliate links because I’m kind of ornery about that, but I totally clicked their affiliate links. It was something done with a mix of generosity and sharing, and if they get a few bucks, to your point, for that Snowball mic or for the Zoom recorder that we use when we’re in person, who am I to be upset about that?

ESPREE: Yeah, totally. But I don’t have an affiliate link for you. [laughs]

ROB: Maybe another revenue stream there.

ESPREE: Yeah, it’s something I’ve thought about. It’s one of the many things that still is on my to-do list for way too long.

ROB: But you’re figuring it out step by step. How did you make that jump? I think a lot of agencies, marketers, organizations develop a competency without taking it to the next level. You went from creating podcasts to training people to do podcasts. How did you evolve into that shift?

ESPREE: I think it’s a few things. One, I was just asked by several people. I got into podcasting in 2013, when it wasn’t a thing and it wasn’t cool. It didn’t start to become more – I mean, obviously podcasting has been around for several years, way before that, but it just became this mainstream thing in the last few years.

In 2013, it wasn’t on the radar. In 2014, it started to bubble up on the radar because of the StartUp podcast. Then Serial came out, so then the mainstream news started talking about podcasting, and it was a domino effect from there.

At that time, I think it was just supply and demand. [laughs] Even today, it’s supply and demand. People have a really hard time finding any indie production companies for podcasts, so I get a lot of inbound on that because I’ve been creating my show for several years. You can’t find a lot of people who have been both producing and hosting for several years. Maybe they just started 10 episodes ago or something. I have hundreds and hundreds of episodes done and distributed. So sometimes it’s just getting there early.

Now my “why” is interesting. I get asked a lot to teach. Initially I did it just for the community so that they can learn and express themselves, but I found that it was really exciting to be a part of their journey in creation and to really help facilitate them creating something meaningful so it’s not just another audio file, but it’s something people feel mentally subscribed to. That’s been great.

So I do a couple things, whether I’m teaching classes for the general assemblies of the world or USC and organizations like that or I’m doing semi-private masterclasses that are a month-long immersive, and I meet with a small group of people and I have expert guest speakers on. It’s just really, really fun. So I’ve really enjoyed it. That’s why I do it, because I love it and love being a part of their journey.

ROB: There’s so many cool little hidden skills in there. I think you’re able to keep going on a podcast because of that rhythm that you put into your life overall. I think people might not think entirely – you’re based in the Los Angeles area, and that’s content city. That has to partly pervade who’s interested in talking to you.

When I look at how you’ve picked up these skills along the way, one skill you picked up that I think a lot of people would look at with some jealousy is you have figured out how to be selected as a speaker at South by Southwest. That’s where we originally intended to speak in person. How did you figure out that process? I know people who have been trying for years and can’t sort it out. I imagine you did it one step at a time.

ESPREE: Honestly, I feel like I got – what’s that saying? “Where hard work meets luck and opportunity” or something like that, or preparedness? I’ve bene working so hard for so many years. I started going to South by as a journalist, and then I became a speaker at South by – I don’t remember what year, but I’ve given many talks there and performed the podcast live and led meetup groups.

But the meetup groups I’ve led have been the podcasters meetup, and like I said, in 2013 no one cared. I said I would do this thing; I was the only person offering myself up to do this thing. Or maybe there weren’t a lot of people. And the talks that I’ve given have ranged from anything from in the early days it was more on entrepreneurship, and now, again, podcasting.

It’s just about demonstrating where my unique value proposition is, the unique insights, the energy that I bring to the table as a speaker, what makes me a speaker that stands out amongst the rest. So just really think about that for yourself. What is an interesting angle? Actually, I think I’ll do a thing for you in a second, just for your audience, so you can have a little sampling of what that sounds like.

The last thing is performing my podcast live at South by Southwest. I performed the Women in Tech podcast live last year and then also this year. Again, it’s over time, establishing myself as a podcaster, my relationships, the audience that I have. The purpose and mission of why my content exists in the first place is very clear.

It’s just this stew of hard work, and then it’s the luck of being noticed. Sometimes you can even manipulate being noticed. I should say positively manipulate, meaning that you’re doing enough outreach, that you’re using programs like Pipedrive and Contactually to make sure that you’re continuously doing your outreach. That’s maintaining your relationships.

My mom comes from an entertainment background, and she always said – it was her or maybe my grandmother who said “the squeaky wheel gets the oil.” So when she talks about being in the entertainment business, she says they’d cast the people who called last because that’s the person that was on the top of their mind. I’m like, that’s really interesting.

And it’s true; the more you’re on the top of people’s minds, in a non-annoying way, the more they’ll think of you when there’s an opportunity. The more you make yourself helpful – I was featured in Forbes randomly, and the reason I was featured in Forbes, that feature happened because I was doing an interview I think a year or a year and a half before, and the interview went something like 3 hours late. So I was just sitting in a waiting room for several hours. I never complained and I just chilled there and I was nice about it.

Then the person who kept coming back in to apologize to me was so grateful that I did that that when there was the opportunity for Forbes, I was the first person that was thought of. Just because I waited in a chill manner. [laughs]

ROB: Which anybody can do.

ESPREE: Totally. So it’s like, how are you showing up to life in unique ways that make you stand apart? If it’s okay with you, Rob, I’m going to do a quick thing. I’m going to show you how I start my speaking engagements and my podcast, because it’s not this tone of voice. Is that okay with you? Can I do that?

ROB: Run with it.

ESPREE: Okay, cool. Everybody watch your eardrums just a little bit. I’m going to hold the mic a little bit away because I don’t know the levels of how we’re recording right now. But this is what it sounds like, and the reason why I’m sharing this with you is because this is what sets me apart and makes me a unique speaker and podcaster. I’d say the thing that sets me apart is my energy when I show up to the stage.

Three… two… one…

“Welcome back to the Women in Tech podcast, celebrating women in tech around the world! So excited for our next guest here today. Welcome…” and then you say the person’s name. But that’s just crazy, right? That’s out of nowhere. Where it’s inspired from is growing up, I was super into wrestling. [laughs]

ROB: Yes, it sounds like wrestling. [laughs] That’s amazing.

ESPREE: I was super into wrestling and I loved the wrestlers being announced onstage, and then I was really into Steven Tyler’s stage performance and how he would really be into the mic and really be energized. So that’s why when I do my podcasts and my interviews, I stand. You never see people stand when they’re doing it. I stand. And I do it for a lot of other reasons too, because of your vocal cords. Onstage, I stand. Sometimes I’ll kick my shoes off. I’ll never stand behind a podium.

There’s just all sorts of techniques. My friend Mark, who actually built the YouTube Player, gave me the best speaking advice. He said, “People don’t remember what you say; they remember how you made them feel.” I think about that with my podcast. I think about that onstage. How am I making everyone feel? Are they feeling the way I intend for them to feel? And if not, what do I need to do?

When I show up that way, the guest feels more energized, the audience feels more engaged, and to the event organizer, I’m a unique speaker that brings something different to the table.

ROB: Absolutely. I love it. We have a wrestling announcement right here on the podcast. [laughs] I think you mentioned something that is really key that would be easy to get lost in the mix. You mentioned staying on people’s minds in an un-annoying way. I think we are in a very perhaps more challenging moment for that, where people who don’t have that skill may be a little bit lost. We are sheltering in place right now in our homes to avoid getting and spreading the coronavirus. What you can’t count on is bumping into somebody in the halls, in a restaurant you usually run into, at a networking event.

How do you think about staying on people’s radar in an un-annoying way? Because quite often, I think people give advice of sending a link – and you actually did send me a very good link in our chat – but I think there are often times where that can feel still very inauthentic and people can tell. You’re still just sending them a link because someone told you to send them a link to stay on their radar.

ESPREE: A hundred percent. I think there’s a lot of different ways, and we need to find the tools that are right for our own personalities. The kind of things that I look at – one of them, the first thing I want to say, there’s a tool called Bombbomb which does video messaging. It’s really great to make something a bit more personal, to show somebody that you care.

I find that even when I send a Bombbomb video, if I don’t say the person’s name, they may think that I created it for a lot of people. I remember I made one for even my friend, who’s also a customer, one time. She said, “You know, it was until you said my son’s name, I thought it was a video for everyone.” It’s really interesting to me because it was personalized.

There’s tools – like I said, Contactually. There’s a ton of other tools. I know Tim Ferriss uses Evernote a lot. I don’t necessarily know if he uses it for maintaining follow-up, but Evernote is a great tool. There’s WorkFlowy. There’s different programs that will spit out who you haven’t followed up with lately. LinkedIn is such a powerful resource for all of us.

I think it’s about really thinking, who do you want to connect with? Why do you want to connect with them, and how often? And are you tracking that follow-up? I use a CRM system called Pipedrive, and like I said, I’m a huge fan of Contactually as well. I think Contactually is just a great follow-up tool. I’ve heard good things about Nimble.

You could find out what’s going on in someone’s life via Twitter, via Instagram, via Facebook. Really paying attention to their social networks. I call it ego marketing. It sometimes sounds like a bad thing, but all of us – all of us – we operate on our egos. We feel like the world is revolving around us at all times. “What’s that person thinking of me? What’s that person doing,” blah, blah, blah, me, me, me.

If you all of a sudden come to someone and say, “I watched your talk online,” and say the specific talk, and then say what you got out of it and maybe a timestamp, it is just so clear that that is about them.

The kind of messages I can’t stand – because I get an abundance of inbound messaging for the Women in Tech podcast, or even one yesterday, perfect example, the We Are LA Tech podcast. Someone messaged me asking to be on the show and they weren’t in Los Angeles. If they knew the show, they’d know every single episode is from someone in Los Angeles. So obviously you don’t care. You’re just mass mailing.

With Women in Tech, I’ll get messages about the controversial topics someone could talk about, and if they knew the show, they’d know we do no controversy, no politics. So it tells me that you really don’t care. I’m just some name on your list.

So when you’re thinking about follow-up, you want to think about: who do you want to follow up with and why? What’s a meaningful way to follow up with them? And then tracking that follow-up.

And not following up too much. Another example is somebody followed up with me three times in one week, and I hadn’t seen any of the messages. Then on the third message they said, “I know you’re probably getting annoyed with my messages” – which just shows me it’s an automated system. “You’re getting annoyed with my messages,” and the truth was I hadn’t even seen the other two. My response back was, “One, I’m not interested, and two, I recommend you not follow up in such a short period of time.” [laughs]

Imagine if I’m giving a talk, if I’m at South by Southwest this week, I am not really on email or paying attention. If you follow up three times this week, during this particular phase of my life, the chances of me seeing them is so low. That’s why it’s way more effective to follow up 3 weeks to a couple months apart. But just really be sincere in why you’re even following up with the people in the first place.

ROB: If you’re following up 3 weeks or 3 months or anything like that, also, you have to have a mindset where you’re playing the long game. You’re not playing the short game where it’s “How many times can I message you in 2 weeks and then either ignore you or maybe you’ve answered me.”

ESPREE: Right.

ROB: If someone looks at the Women in Tech podcast, I think one thing they’ll realize is, number one, your level of commitment there. I think I’m seeing over 400, almost 450 episodes. But also, I think they’ll notice that you do the work, and you do the work authentically.

What I mean by that is you’re not just cherry-picking and trying to ladder up to the biggest name. You have some names on the podcast that are known, but you also have – again, in this theme – people that your listeners might not know but they should. It looks to me like quite often you are going far and wide. You’re doing the work of actually reaching out to people across the world, and probably even going there to have those conversations.

ESPREE: Rob, I love how you did your homework. [laughs] You would be an email that I would open, because that is so spot-on. I get a lot of messages from a lot of super fancy people, thinking that they’re just entitled to be on the show. My personal excitement is sharing a story of a woman that normally doesn’t have access. I’ve traveled to Bosnia; recently I was in Kazakhstan. I’ve traveled to over 100 countries just to celebrate these women in tech in person, share their stories, be in their culture.

People say, “Why not just do remotely?” I wouldn’t see the bullets in the buildings on the streets of Bosnia if I wasn’t in Bosnia, understanding that the girl I’m interviewing, as a child, she had to be in a bomb shelter to be safe from the war. These are just things you don’t get on a 1-hour Skype call or something like that.

So really discovering all these magnificent women in tech around the world, giving them the opportunity – I’m really proud that the Women in Tech podcast is, for the majority of guests, the first podcast they’ve ever been on. It just blows my mind. And it’s not necessarily even, by the way, Rob, that these people aren’t seasoned; they’re just not the internet celebrities of the world. They’re not the Gary Vaynerchuks. [laughs]

Then I also have the more well-known people, as you mentioned, and I’m excited to share their stories as well. But my “why” in doing the show is not for social status. It’s not to look good. It’s really to be this bridge for women in tech around the world to be able to discover the resources and mentorship that they need to accelerate.

Hearing stories of how women have pulled over to write notes, listening to the episodes, or shared the stories with their family, or investors have reached out to them because they’ve been on the show – truly social impact. It’s amazing. So it’s not about “do I look the coolest?” It’s about “am I creating the biggest impact?”

ROB: That resonates completely with who you are and what you want to accomplish. I think it’s also a little bit of a secret – and it’s not a secret because we’re talking about it, but candidly, it makes booking a podcast a lot easier when you’re booking people who are interesting and have a story, but it is their first podcast. They say yes a lot more.

ESPREE: Oh yeah, I’m sure. Well, the one thing about women in tech – yes, I think your point is accurate, and, unfortunately, with women in tech – a lot of people ask me, “What’s the biggest commonality of all the women in tech that you’re met with?” They’re expecting some technical answer. Unfortunately, the biggest commonality is that I think as a culture, oftentimes we feel we’re not enough.

So I will get women who will say “I don’t think I’m good enough for your show” or “I haven’t spoken before” or something. Then it’s my responsibility as a person who wants to be empowering to give them the level of confidence, and also to say, “Listen, I wouldn’t be picking you unless I thought you were good enough to be on the show, so how about I make the decision on that?” [laughs]

I’ve had a couple people not want to be interviewed because they’re scared, but yes, you are absolutely right that it’s going to be a lot easier. You’re also right that it’s a huge pain point in the podcasting industry for new podcasters, or even a lot of seasoned podcasters, to get yeses from guests. It’s a huge pain point. It is one that I do not have, and maybe that contributes to it, you’re right.

ROB: And you do in-person a lot, which always helps with that rapport. It would be great if we were, but that’s not an option right now. We’re not getting on planes right now.

ESPREE: Totally.

ROB: That is okay. We’ll hope that we can meet up at South by Southwest next year, perhaps.

ESPREE: A hundred percent.

ROB: Espree, when people want to check out all the things that you’re doing, where should they look to find you?

ESPREE: Man, if only I had been smart enough to have one link that says all the things. [laughs] Honestly, look me up on LinkedIn, Espree Devora on LinkedIn. Add me there. It’s also Espree Devora on all social – on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook. I do really engage on Twitter. And check out the podcasts, WeAreLATech.fm and WomeninTech.fm.

ROB: It’s all those little things. You put in the work on the domains too.

ESPREE: Yeah.

ROB: Fantastic. You’re consistent on the brand. Espree, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It’s been a true joy to get to know you a little bit, and I know our audience has enjoyed your challenging example of just doing one more thing each day and how that carries through in everything you do.

ESPREE: Thank you so much for having me, Rob. This has been great. I’m happy that you made it remote and we were able to make this happen.

ROB: That’s great. Be well.

ESPREE: 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.

Kade Wilcox, CEO and Owner of Primitive Social, was working at a church when he started managing business Facebook pages in 2011 as a “side gig.” Two to three years into this work, a friend challenged him by labelling his Facebook work as “a hobby.” It was time for some planning, goal-setting, and business “underpinnings.”

Some 5 years later, Primitive Social offers a far broader range of services, including custom software development; custom designed and developed websites; content marketing; a full inbound marketing, lead gen, marketing technology setup and implementation; social media management; and creative work—end to end business solutions that address customer needs. Primitive Social addresses marketing issues and the heavy tech solutions that can make a business’s internal organization more effective and efficient Expected revenues in 2018 should come in around $4 million.

In this interview, Kade talks about the quandary a company can face when it “outgrows its name.” Primitive Social? What about all the other things his company does? Kade feels his company needs a new name to convey the broader scope of what his company now has to offer. But, if he changes the name, how does he maintain the value of his brand and the goodwill his company has earned through the years?

Primitive Social is headquartered in Lubbock Texas, which, in 2018, had a reported population of 252,506. That’s not a lot of people if you want to keep a company growing. In addition to the limited number of potential clients in the Lubbock area for the services the agency offers, Kade has found the Lubbock area to be slower that other parts of the country in adopting technology and digital solutions. In order to grow, the company has had to “develop a presence” in other locations.

Lubbock is also not a hotbed of creative talent. Kade likes to hire local, but when local talent ran out, what could he do? He did not want to restrain his company’s growth. He did not want to limit the company on what it could do to serve clients. or the quality of the work. He did not want to expand by investing in brick-and-mortar in new locations. Solution? He hired remote employees. Today, twenty of his 50 employees work remotely from other parts of the country.

Kade notes that it takes thought, intention, and consistency to make sure remote employees are allowed to contribute to the corporate culture. He has had to make an extra effort “to create opportunities for organic communication and getting to know people.” Although having remote employees has not worked perfectly, Kade describes it as being “a blast.” Future company direction? Kade intends for the company to simplify what it is doing and what it is leveraging to accomplish success for its clients . . . and go deep.

Based on his experience, Kade identifies some of the lessons he learned (the hard way):

1. It’s better to grow slowly with the right client at the right place than to grow rapidly with the wrong client at the wrong price.
2. Think about how you are growing as you are growing . . . How do we think about growth? What do we do with our growth? Who are we? Who do we want to be? How are we going to get there?
3. Don’t focus on the growth of gross revenue—focus on the growth of profit.

Kade can be reached on his company website at: primitivesocial.com

Jason Blumer is CEO of Blumer and Associates, a CPA firm dedicated to providing strategic growth strategies to creative design, digital, and marketing agencies ready to go to “the next level.” Key areas of influence include transforming people to facilitate growth, leveraging teams to scale, and recrafting business models. Areas of greatest impact are pricing . . . and how a business is run.

Jason notes that an agency’s pricing reflects its value to its market or its niched expertise. It will take 2 to 3 years for an agency to transition from hourly pricing to value-based pricing – a process that starts with new clients. Legacy clients who refuse to abandon the old hourly-pricing model become “legacy baggage.” No matter the form, the co-existence of legacy systems (the old way of doing things)—whether pricing, organizational, or operational – and new, conflicting, growth-targeted policies and procedures causes confusion, and what Jason refers to as “chaos.” This kind of growth problem is often the result of an owner not letting go and letting the business become what it is meant to be – or the owner pulling rank and violating the new “rules,” destroying credibility.

Much of the focus of Blumer & Associate’s work is on moving toward simplicity, eliminating chaos (chaos inhibits growth), and transforming business owners into organizational leaders. These leaders are then charged with:

1. Developing relevant mission statements and defining how to live out those missions
2. Implementing core (foundational) values and effective patterns, processes, and rhythms
3. Caring deeply for their teams and the rhythms around their teams
4. Keeping people and teams accountable and leading them to all walk in the same direction.
5. Encouraging collaboration. Collaboration leads to strength

Jason warns companies not to hire people who are unwilling to collaborate and outlines a process to safely release an employee who refuses to collaborate or fails to follow an organization’s core values:

1. Recognize and acknowledge nonconforming behavior, with a friendly offer to help or explain
2. Make a less-friendly suggestion that the employee work on the problem
   1. The employee’s failure to follow core values
   2. That the employee must follow core values for the company’s health
   3. That the issue has been discussed
   4. That the employee knows the rules and knew them when hired
3. Meet facetime (in-person/virtual) with a manager pointing out:
4. Meet facetime (in-person/virtual) with a manager telling the employee that s/he has to follow the core values and then stating, “You will do it and this is the last conversation we’ll have asking you to do it.”
5. Let the employee go in a way that does not hurt the firm and or the released employee

Jason can be contacted by googling “Jason Blumer,” on Facebook, on Instagram, on his website at jasonblumer.com, @JasonMBlumer on Twitter, or on his company’s LinkedIn site at https://www.linkedin.com/company/blumer-&-associates-cpas-pc/ , or website at: https://www.blumercpas.com/.

Eric Enge, CEO at Stone Temple Consulting, spent 15 to 20 years providing SEO, content marketing, and social media for large enterprise clients, including several Fortune 50 clients. The company distinguishes itself with a strong commitment to solving actual problems, rather than pitching generic formulas and “hoping they stick.” Stone Temple Consulting became part of Perficient Digital, a $500 million public consulting firm, in July 2018, after a 3-month courtship. Today, Eric serves as General Manager of Perficient Digital.

Lead co-author of The Art of SEO, the 900+ page “bible of SEO,” contributing author (Forbes, Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, Search Engine Watch, Copyblogger and Social Media Today), host of 2 live video broadcasts a week (The Digital Marketing Excellence Show and The Digital Marketing Answers Show) and a Coursera Instructor, Eric spent the first 10 years of his career at Phoenix Technologies, manufacturer of BIOS, a software piece that “boots” most of the world’s computers, and then 5 years running his own business development consulting firm.

He took a right turn when a friend asked him to build business development strategies for a DVD e-tail site. Eric researched ways to use search engines to drive traffic the company’s page. A year later, organic searches had generated $3 million in annual sales. Eric became the SEO digital marketing expert. Approaching problems from unconventional angles is characteristic of his work.

A global Fortune 200 e-commerce site that requested that Stone Temple audit their site, check the SEO, and add some content marketing to overall increase organic search traffic and sales from that traffic. Stone Temple discovered 95 percent of the company’s business came from the US site, but Google spent 70% of its crawling time going to the international versions of the site. In a bold move, Stone Temple blocked Google’s access to the international versions of the site. The result? Total aggregate site traffic increased 30% in 60 days.

In this interview, Eric provides a wealth of information on:

1) the goal and impact of Google’s 2018 updates (how to make query responses relevant to users—by looking at not only the content that answers user’s question, but also the content that would answer the related questions that would tend to follow),

2) the role of “featured snippets” and “speakable markup.” (A featured snippet includes an answer that has been extracted from a webpage, a link to the page, the page title and the URL. Because the featured snippet block appears above the organic search results and below the AdWords block, it sits, not in position 1 of the Google search results, but in what is referred to as “position 0.”), and

3) the future of conversational interfaces. He asks what a good conversational interface looks like and what it will take to build it. “People will shift to voice experience,” he says, “once it becomes a better option for them than their keyboard experience.”

Finally, Eric talks about “who to hire” and why and how he sold his company as he approaches his retirement

Eric can be reached on Twitter at @stonetemple or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericenge/.

Carrie Simpson, founder at Managed Sales Pros, Everywhere Managed, and THC Results (Las Vegas, Nevada and Winnipeg, Manitoba) put herself into the cold-calling business two decades ago as a stay-at-home mom—by cold-calling companies to sell her services as a cold-caller, winning contracts with major companies, hiring and training other stay-at-home moms to cold call part time, and developing a scalable strategic process for outbound B2B IT sales calls and appointment setting.

Churn is a given in cold-calling. Critical to Carrie’s success is not that she figured out how to eliminate cold-caller turnover, but because she figured out how to minimize the effect of churn. In this interview, she emphasizes several strategic decisions her company made to build traction, optimize cold call effectiveness, and generate demand:

• Avoiding diversification and maintaining an exclusive marketing strategy: cold-calling for a single product type: managed services
• Laser-targeting and qualifying her clients’ potential customers
• Knowing her customers’ products, their clients triggers
• Utilizing “pay for performance” in order to maintain control of database data that can be leveraged for vertical market development
• Tracking trends and marketplace changes that create risks and opportunities

Carrie can be reached on her company’s website at managedsalespros.com or by email at: Hello@managedsalespros.com. Mention Carrie’s name, and your message will be routed to her.

Kim Orlesky is Founder and President of KO Advantage Group, one of the fastest-growing sales training organizations, and author of Sell More Faster. KO Advantage Group works with small companies selling high value, premium-priced B2B services and helps them expedite the sales process by focusing on building relationships, getting that first handshake with a potential client faster, connecting with the client in an authentic way, communicating value, and sometimes selling a product idea before the product has even been created. Clients of KO Advantage are passionate about helping their clients.

KO Advantage group has one product: a ten-week online sales training course, which has its own “continuous improvement process.” Alumni of the course can login to review course information at any time and read the updated material Kim has “curated.”

Kim spoke on “AI & Sales: What Will and Never Can Be Replaced by Bots” at HubSpot’s Inbound 2019,” where she discussed how sales professionals, business owners, and entrepreneurs can use AI to improve conversations with potential clients. Artificial Intelligence is already part of the sales process, but companies need to be aware of how critical “the personal touch” is to long term success. AI may help find potential clients faster, but she notes that, in the end, “Sales is about conversations and relationships.”

Kim can be reached by email at: kim@kimorlesky.com or on LinkedIn, which has named her one of the Top Sales Leaders to Follow

John Hernandez is Owner and Partner at On Advertising, a marketing and advertising agency that has, over the past 26 years, rebranded itself, leveraged “new identities,” survived a recession, and increased and changed its client base. 

In this interview, John talks about his company’s “humble beginnings” and reveals the strategic decisions that helped it grow.

Ron Meritt, a television meteorologist, started NPR Public Relations in 1993 as a side gig. He provided traditional PR for nonprofit organizations . . . working out of his house with 1 client. 

In 2002, John accepted Ron’s invitation to join the business and quit his job at the television station. They took out an SBA loan to cover payroll, rebranded the company as PRfect Media, and offered a flat fee “one-stop-shop for everything” marketing solution for small businesses. In addition to traditional marketing services – billboards, TV, radio, PR, and support – they utilized video, a technology application new for marketing. John’s television-world experience – in graphic design and in scripting, shooting, and editing video – provided a differentiating and cost-saving advantage for both the agency and its clients: They didn’t need to hire outside firms for those services. 

Six or seven years ago, the agency was doing a lot of non-traditional work, but people on the outside perceived them as a traditional PR firm. What to do? 

How about doing the same thing the agency would do for its clients?

John and Ron tasked the agency’s employees to rebrand the company and On Advertising was born: The employees set the color palette, the logo, and the brand. In a bold move, the agency took out a revolving loan and relocated the company from a commercial building in the Phoenix suburbs to a downtown high-rise, putting their signage on a street with heavy traffic all through the day. That move almost doubled their business: they were now visible, accessible, and re-defined. 

John says On Advertising has two growth strategies: to build the business organically and to expand its client base and capabilities through mergers and acquisitions. The agency still maintains its revolving credit line to even out the cash flow and to facilitate these acquisitions and mergers. 

John lists a number of keys to On Advertising’s success:

He believes the company gets traction as long as it treats itself as a client: spending money on itself; boosting its website presence, Google Analytics, and social media presence; and embracing media marketing technology.

He emphasizes that it is as critically important to have “trustworthy team members on the outside” (CPA, attorneys, PEO) as it is to have good employees. 

And, to weather a recession, as this company did in 1987-88: John recommends developing multiple streams of income. 

John can be reached on his company’s website at: https://onadvertising.com/

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:

1. Create promotional programs that build meaningful relationships with end customers so those customers will go to dealers and ask for a company’s products. 
2. 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.”
3. 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.

Matt Hodkinson, Chief Exec Agent, Influence Agents, introduces his agency as “mutinous.” He feels the old agency model of schmoozing for long-term retainers is not in a client’s best interest. Instead. Influence Agents tells clients from the beginning that it “will not be there forever” and targets a two-year client relationship with these small companies, which are mostly mid-market B2B tech companies.

The agency’s “sweet spot” clients are the IT Managed Service Providers and Value-Added Resellers – techie companies that rarely excel in self-promotion. Matt notes that these companies are “not the best at telling stories about how great their technology is, and certainly not doing it in a way that engages people in the right way.” They will often talk about solutions at a technical level – an ineffective approach at best. Effective marketing, he says, talks about challenges and heightens problem awareness and need.

Influence Agents coaches clients to “marketing greatness.” filling in the gaps, designing strategies, implementing technologies, and providing in-depth training to ensure long-term success. At the end of the relationship, the “educated” client owns the marketing knowledge and expertise as a company asset. Matt is in the process of creating a knowledge base of marketing strategies, which will be exclusively available for Influence Agents’ clients. Catch, set up the client for success . . . and release.

Influence Agents, a HubSpot Gold partner (almost Platinum), focuses on customer psychology – understanding B2B prospects’ emotional and logical triggers for making purchase decisions – and marries that with producing tangible outcomes – the metrics of revenue, qualified leads and customers.

To gather psychological information about a client’s ideal prospects, Influence Agents defines and identifies them, interviews them away from their work environment, and asks open-ended questions about the challenges they’re facing – in all aspects of business. By recording and reviewing the stories and examples these ideal prospects provide, Influence Agents can tease out trends and themes, gain an understanding of the challenges and pains these prospects face, and discover how to add real value to help these potential customers. Knowledge of what the ideal customer needs directs the marketing strategies Influence Agents develops for its clients.

Matt cam be reached on his company’s website at: influenceagents.com or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthodkinson/ -- but please send a personalized intro.

In 2006, Carlos’s fiancée (now his wife) was approached by a client to do SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click). Carlos got into the agency in 2008 when the economy “tanked” and the funding for the startup where he worked dried up. From 2008 forward, the agency has been “tapped” on a regular basis by traditional (radio, print, TV) agencies needing digital services for their clients. Bloom works with a variety of different industries – retail, B2B, government agencies, and some non-profits. Hospitality, which is big in British Columbia, is currently challenged because of the pandemic. Over the years, the focus of needs has become more complex – from a “We need to be on FaceBook” to “We need to be on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on Instagram.”

When asked why these traditional agencies did not develop their own digital services in-house, Carlos explained that many digital marketers who started in the mid-2000s were self-taught. They learned the craft by “reading blogs, by attending conferences, by networking with other marketers.” He says, “It takes time to build expertise and a skillset where you’re able to run big-enough campaigns.” Partnerships with Bloom meet larger agencies’ needs for solid, experience-based digital expertise and have given Bloom the opportunity to work with larger clients than they might otherwise have had. 

Carlos gave a nod to Converge’s marketing performance reports by relating that the number one complaint that he hears from clients coming from other agencies is, “We get an invoice every month, we don’t know what our agency is doing, we don’t know what they’ve been working on, we don’t know what the next steps are.” Carlos notes, “You can save so much time and deliver so much better quality and end results using the proper tools.” Communication with clients is critical.

Carlos commented on the problem that good digital marketing people are hard to come by and even harder to retain. He says, “Once somebody becomes skilled at running campaigns with six-digit budgets every month, they get poached.” 

In this interview, Carlos discusses how Covid has changed his business and how the marketing industry has “always been on the leading edge of change.” He is looking forward to a disrupter in the digital marketing industry because there are no barriers to becoming an expert, no licensing, and the service is becoming commoditized. What that new model will look like . . . and who will do it . . . who knows?

Carlos can be reached on his agency’s website at bloommarketing.ca – (.ca for Canada), or on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined today by Carlos Obregon, Co-founder at Bloom Marketing based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Welcome to the podcast, Carlos.

CARLOS: Thank you very much, Rob. It’s great to be here.

ROB: I’m pleased to have you here. Why don’t you start off by telling us about Bloom Marketing and what focus areas the firm excels in?

CARLOS: We started Bloom Marketing back in 2006. Initially it started as a result of my then-fiancée, now wife. She was approached by a former client, and she was invited to become a contractor doing SEO, doing PPC. That was the first client. I joined the company two years later as a result of the 2008 financial problems. I was working for a startup, and at the time all their funding dried up as a result of it, so the staff was laid off. We were then expecting our first child. There is nothing to light up your entrepreneurial fire like having a mortgage and a baby arriving soon. [laughs]

ROB: [laughs] Yeah. So, you started off in that SEO, pay-per-click; where has that path taken you in terms of the specialties of the firm now? What does a typical client engagement look like?

CARLOS: We started our agency and organically, we started getting approached by traditional media agencies wanting to build up their digital marketing expertise because invariably – we’re talking about 2008-2009. This is when they were doing radio, print, TV. They were asked by their clients, “We now need to be on Google, we need to be on Facebook, we need to rank better on organic searches.”

That led to us developing several partnerships with traditional media agencies. That became our social growth. By having access to larger clients than what we would have had otherwise, we were able to nourish and develop these partnerships. That happens still today. We still maintain most of these partnerships. That has allowed us to tap clients that we probably wouldn’t have access to because we don’t have a radio department, we don’t have a print advertising department.

So more or less, that’s been our path. We didn’t really plan it that way, but that’s how it’s been working out.

ROB: That’s an excellent path. I’ve definitely seen a lot of these traditional media purveyors – they’re used to selling TV ads, they’re used to selling radio ads. Actually, some friends of mine were involved in a company that was acquired by Gannett, who was one of these big old school media companies. They tried to equip the sales folks to go out and sell digital, and it didn’t go very well. What do you think it is in these organizations – by now they certainly could have built an in-house practice and an in-house capability. What do you think has made it hard for them to turn that corner? They really do need these partnerships. They need you.

CARLOS: I think in part it’s because those of us who started mid-2000s with digital marketing, we’re all self-taught. There were no programs in universities or colleges for digital marketing. So, we just learned as we went by reading blogs, by attending conferences, by networking with other marketers. It takes time. It takes time to build expertise and a skillset where you’re able to run big enough campaigns, where you’re able to communicate with the client. That’s a crucial part of the business, communication.

I know you’re involved in the reporting side of the tools. That’s probably the number one complaint that we hear from people coming from other agencies, from past experiences. Communication. So many times we’ve heard, “We get an invoice every month, we don’t know what our agency is doing, we don’t know what they’ve been working on, we don’t know what the next steps are.” 

I think it takes time to build the marketing expertise. Once somebody becomes skilled at say running campaigns with six-digit budgets every month, they get poached. We’re all trying to make a living, so understandably.

ROB: Right. That training effect is challenging I think also, especially where you started out in some of that SEO and PPC world. I had some friends who ran an online marketplace for building products, essentially, and these two guys are running this $20-30 million a year business, and the founders are still doing a lot of the PPC because every time they get somebody up to speed, they get poached.

CARLOS: Yeah. I’ve seen it over and over again. At one point I remember one of the biggest agencies here in Vancouver, a traditional agency, their entire digital marketing team was two people. They were both entry level, and here they were running gigantic companies. [laughs]

ROB: Yeah. So, you had those beginnings in certain areas, and the marketing world has changed quite a bit since you started the firm. What are some of the more services you offer now? What different expertises are you working with clients on? You mentioned where the clients are coming from; what does a typical client look like? 

CARLOS: We’re actually involved in several different industries. Hospitality is pretty big here in British Columbia. At the moment it’s going through challenges because of the pandemic. We’re also involved in retail, B2B, and we have also done some nonprofits as well as government agencies.

One key difference now is before, we would be approached and they’d say, “I need to do SEO because I need better rankings.” What I think now is the needs of the customers encompass more. Right now we get approached and they say, “I need to be on Facebook, I need to be on Instagram, I need to be on Google, Microsoft ads, on LinkedIn, on Twitter.” There’s a lot more of a whole vision of what the needs are and all these different channels the business needs to be visible on. I think that would be the main change. More than one channel, now it’s multichannel.

ROB: When someone comes to you and they want to order everything on the menu, how do you help them in that decision process? They still have to choose where they’re going to allocate more of their effort and budget, and also maybe some channels aren’t quite appropriate for them. How do you think about that guidance? 

CARLOS: Again, we go back to the communication. We have an onboarding process where we meet with the prospective client or client and first we try to understand, what are the goals? Usually you get an answer like, “I want more business.” Well, yeah, but what does that look like? Do you mean more subscribers initially? Do you want more people signing up for a trial?  Do you want more people ordering a sample? Do you want to get appointments? Do you want to get viewings for real estate?

When we start narrowing down the goal, we say, “You’re a business-to-business company, so perhaps Facebook is not the ideal channel if you’re selling industrial equipment. Why don’t we explore LinkedIn first, where you can target people based on which companies they work for and their job titles?” For the most part, it’s a back and forth. We agree on what the goals are, we agree on how we’re going to measure, what kind of timelines we have – because as you know, some products have a really long sell cycle, so it makes it tricky to measure sometimes.

But again, it goes back to making sure you align and you understand what the client wants and they understand what you can deliver and how long it will be. That would be more or less how we approach it.

ROB: That certainly makes sense. On this journey, you already gave us a little bit of a picture of the origin of the firm and how it sounded like your wife started the firm and then a couple years later she let you into the business.

CARLOS: [laughs] Pretty much.

ROB: How many people were on the team? Were you Employee #2, or were there some other people that had come in between the two events?

CARLOS: We had contractors from the start. I was not Employee #2 per se. I was “Person on the Payroll #2.” Up until today, we continue to work mostly with freelancers and contractors who are part of our team, but they’re not under contract. They’re not just working for us. So I was #2 on the payroll but not necessarily #2 in the company.

ROB: That’s an interesting thing. I’m going to pull on that a little bit. When you talk about contractors, what percent of your team would you say is full time versus contract?

CARLOS: I would say full time is about 40% and contract about 60%.

ROB: That’s a strategic choice, right? I know people who say that their target is 30% contract, but at the end of the day they can’t help themselves and they end up being much more towards 100% of it being full time, or maybe 10% on contract. How have you reached that decision strategically? What led you there?

CARLOS: We didn’t really choose it; it just kind of happened. People we found that were really good at what they do usually wouldn’t want to commit to working full time for any one firm. I think it comes down to quality and reliability. The contractors we work with, we know they’re never going to come and work exclusively for us just because they’ve achieved a certain level of success and they want flexibility. They want to be able to turn down work occasionally. So it just happened that way.

Now, looking back, I think it was a good thing that we learned how to work with contractors early on and how we maintained those relationships, given the changes that we’re undergoing right now. A lot of people are working remotely. Those who already have practice in working remotely, it was an easier transition. Some other ones were more abrupt. But I feel like the days of huge agencies and huge offices are probably behind us.

ROB: Is your team in any office right now or is everybody completely remote still?

CARLOS: We’re a hybrid. We do have an office, and I go about three times a week or so. But we have contractors who live 2,000 miles away from here, just as an example. We’re never going to have them in the office, and that’s fine.

ROB: In that sort of environment, how are you thinking about people knowing each other, working together, team-building? What do you think that looks like right now, number one, and then number two – suppose we’re in full regathering and getting together mode, but you’re still distributed. How are you thinking about team?

CARLOS: I’m a really social guy. I miss being able to hang out with groups of people. I really, really miss it. In some instances it’s possible to have most of our team in any one place, especially at certain times of the year or if there is something happening in Vancouver like a big conference or some reason for everyone to be together.

But I think moving forward, we’re going to have to do a hybrid where those of us who are close by might be able to meet up and be physically in the same boardroom, but I think from now on we’re always going to have people remote conferencing.

ROB: It’s definitely something I’ve been trying to sort my way through. Before, we had an office. I liked having an office. I wanted people who wanted to be in an office. And then I just kind of changed my mind. In February, we made a hire who’s an American, but in Santiago, Chile. We just hired someone in Sacramento. We’re looking at people in Chicago and Tucson, Arizona. I’m thinking a lot about how we get together, whether we have some sort of annual team event or what it looks like. I don’t quite know yet. So I’m asking a little bit for myself as well.

CARLOS: Yeah, we’re definitely in – none of us were planning for this to happen, for these drastic changes. Who knows? Perhaps next year we’ll be somewhat back to some normal, but I think especially in our industry, we’re always at the leading edge of change. Things were changing rapidly in our industry to begin with, and now with the work from home revolution, perhaps we’re going to have team members that we never meet in person.

But I don’t know if it happens to you – to me, I have people that I work with remotely and have for years, and even though I don’t see them physically very often, I feel like I know them really well. It’s like we’re buddies. So, I don’t think we’re giving up that much by not meeting everyone in person frequently.

ROB: Really interesting. It’s good to have thoughts on that. It’s good to talk to each other about that. Carlos, as you reflect on the path of the business so far, what are some lessons you have learned along the way that, if you were starting over today, you might do things a little bit differently?

CARLOS: Definitely. You know what the number one is?

ROB: What’s that?

CARLOS: I wouldn’t accept every client that comes through the door. I learned that initially because I started working in the firm in 2008, and there was a lot of uncertainty. Huge banks were going under. Huge insurance companies were going under. Everybody was kind of in panic mode. So, I started getting customers and I would say yes to everything and everyone because I didn’t know when the next one was going to be. I had bills to pay, I had a mortgage, I had a kid on the way.

Looking back, I could’ve been pickier because with some of those projects, I had no alignment. I didn’t really connect with the client. Perhaps I didn’t understand their goals, they didn’t understand me and how I wanted to deliver. Although we never really had any frictions or difficult breakups with clients, there were a lot of projects that I did not enjoy.

We’re in a free market and we obviously need to make a living and grow and prosper, but we also need to enjoy what we do as much as possible. So that would be my number one learning. Don’t accept every gig. I put it down on paper here in front of me for our chat today. That would be my key takeaway.

ROB: It’s draining on your energy, those things that you take on that maybe don’t align. There comes a point – and you probably have realized this at different times – there comes times when you’re at capacity and you end up almost having to say no to something you’d rather do, or at least scramble to figure out how you’re going to do it. It can be hard to keep the quality level high when you’re scrambling for a solution.

CARLOS: That, and obviously the contracts and the projects that you enjoy, we all do better. We’re more creative. We come up with better ideas on projects we enjoy rather than something like, “I don’t even know how to sell this product. What does the end customer want? Do I really want to be promoting this? I don’t believe in this product or this service.” So yeah, definitely a learning.

ROB: I think we all need reminders of this. It’s so easy to get off track so quickly, and then you get into the mode where you’re just handling the decision that you’ve made. Are there any tools you have found that have helped you think ahead and think about working on the business? Because you have a lot going on and a lot of people involved.

CARLOS: Yeah. I love finding new tools and experimenting, whether it be marketing automation, reporting, or analytics. You’re an expert in this industry. You can save so much time and deliver so much better quality and end results using the proper tools.

Now, as you’re fully aware, it’s a highly competitive industry. There are so many new tools. It’s hard to keep on top of it. You have to do a lot of reading, which I happen to enjoy. But we definitely love using and finding and testing new tools. I remember when I first started working in-house, running a huge technical company, I was doing the SEO for this company, for this startup here in Vancouver. It was comparison shopping. I was doing the SEO, and from one day to the next, the person who was running the Google Ads left.

The CEO approached me and said, “Can you take care of this, at least on an intern basis, while we find somebody else?” I was like, “Okay, yeah, sure.” It was a six-digit budget in Google Ads. And this was in 2005. The days of Google Ads Editor were not around yet. [laughs] We had to download all the data to spreadsheets. The campaigns were so gigantic – we were bidding on over 100,000 keywords at the time – that Excel kept crashing. Whenever we tried to do any analysis of bids and conversions, it would always freeze up.

Thinking back, if I had the tools we have now back in the day, oh my God, I would’ve done a full day of work in one hour.

ROB: [laughs] Wow. If only you could travel back in time with tools, you could take over the world. One thing I think that’s interesting that you have uncovered in your story – we’ve had guests before whose spouse is involved in the business, but they were very vague. They wouldn’t really admit it on the audio. It’s really interesting that you brought it to the forefront. What have you found makes it work well to work on a business, on an entrepreneurial venture, with your spouse?

CARLOS: We can go back even further than that. I’ll give you a little bit of background. I actually met my now wife at a marketing conference here in Vancouver. She was working for an agency at the time; I was working as in-house SEO at another company. So, we met, and that’s how it started. We actually met because of digital marketing. Then we got engaged, and that’s when she started working freelance. Then I joined in 2008. It’s been 14 years and we’re still happily married.

I can’t deny that there have been difficult times where we don’t agree and I want to do things one way and she wants to do things different or vice versa, but for the most part I think we complement each other really well. There are areas of the business – a lot of guys will agree with this – I don’t get involved in the finance. She’s the treasurer. [laughs] I like to socialize and meet people. I do a lot of the business development. It’s something that she doesn’t enjoy. We’ve made it work that way. I keep my hands off the money and the checkbook, and then whenever she gets a new lead or someone that needs more information, I usually do the communication.

We’ve made it work. Just for mental health, we work with different clients. She looks after some clients, I look after different clients. Occasionally we work on the same project, but we keep some things separate.

ROB: That sounds like a good tip in general. That’s good for division of work, I think, in any company. You want people who work on some clients and not others. You want some people to work in their area of strength in finance, and others in business development. We do that, but I think there can be maybe this pull as co-owners to have your hand in a little bit of everything. It sounds like being able to split that up a little bit has served you well just to not be all in each other’s business literally every day.

CARLOS: Yeah. When we’re at home, we have a rule of no business discussion. We talk about the kids, we talk about dinner, and we talk about vacations. We try to stay away from work because otherwise you end up working 16 hours a day, one way or another.

ROB: That makes sense. Carlos, when you look ahead at what’s coming up in the marketing world, what’s coming up for Bloom Marketing, what are you excited about?

CARLOS: I think the digital marketing agency world is ripe for disruption. I don’t know who’s going to do it, but if you recall, real estate was revolutionized by Re/Max. They completely put the business model on its head by giving realtors a lot more control of their commissions and how they split costs. I think this industry is ripe for disruption somewhere along those lines where perhaps rather than having an owner, a founder, and account managers and strategists and business development, I wonder if it could be pooling a partnership of frontend developers, backend developers, usability experts, web designers, SEO experts, PPC experts, and put them all in one company, split the costs, and somehow share revenue.

I don’t know what that would look like, but I’m hoping there’s disruption because we’re becoming commoditized. Every week I run a search on Google for “digital marketing agency Vancouver,” and every week I see new names coming up. There is no barrier of entry in this industry. You just put up your website and you say, “Okay, I’m a digital marketing expert,” and you are. It’s unregulated. It’s not like you have a license.

ROB: Huh. That’s interesting. It’s interesting to think about the different ways that we get clients and the different ways that realtors get clients. The real estate industry is set up to equip the realtor to focus on a few things and other people in the process – different people are – let’s say most real estate firms, for instance, don’t have handypeople on staff to fix up the house before listing it. They just don’t. It’s all parceled out.

CARLOS: Yes.

ROB: So, it’s interesting. What’s possible, what’s not possible? I wonder, what are the next couple steps that would prove that to be more possible and more true?

CARLOS: I’m sure there’s going to be a better way of creating a digital marketing agency business model, different than what we have right now. But if you come up with it, remember me. Call me, okay? [laughs]

ROB: [laughs] Yeah. One thing I have seen – I’ll share this; it’s been a little while since we talked about it on the podcast, but it’s come up a couple of times here and there. There is one firm that we’ve spoken with that was a co-op. They were structured as a co-op, where they were owned by their employees, and when the employees left, they gave up their ownership in the company. Soze was the agency there, out of Brooklyn. It sounds like a very Brooklyn kind of thing.

But I just swapped emails with Michael Skolnik, who’s their – I don’t know what you say – he’s the founder, I guess, but I don’t know what his official title is within that mix since everybody owns the business. But he’s going to look at open sourcing the local documents once they’ve got all that ready. I’ve got him on commitment to check in with in the new year. That may not be exactly where things go, but it is an interesting model because it does feel strange.

I guess as a founder, you take the risk. Some people would look at it and say, “Fine, you take the risk, you get the reward.” But there’s other times, I think, where you have a business that’s doing well, but its service is revenue, so there’s only so much of it you’re going to reinvest in the business. And when it’s going well, maybe it feels like it flows a little bit too much to the owners.

CARLOS: Yeah. You’re saying the co-op models – yeah, that’s one way. I’m sure some smart guy will come up with a really good business model for the 21st century.

ROB: [laughs] Perfect. We’ll keep our eyes out and we’ll keep talking about that here. Carlos, when people want to find you and when they want to connect with Bloom Marketing, where should they look to connect?

CARLOS: Our website is bloommarketing.ca – .ca because we’re in Canada I’m also active on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. That’ll be the easiest way to find us.

ROB: Excellent. Carlos, thank you for coming on the podcast. Best wishes to you and to Bloom Marketing going forward.

CARLOS: Thank you. All the best, and thank you very much for the invite.

ROB: Thank you. Be well.

CARLOS: Thanks. 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.

Adam Roe, Managing Partner of FortyFour, discusses the increasingly important role of "all things digital" in building robust e-commerce infrastructures, creating targeted campaigns, leveraging today’s dynamic marketing platforms, and using analytics to "open up the throttle."

FortyFour designs and builds e-commerce and content management platforms that strengthen businesses. They create campaigns and content that move people. They develop strategies and experiences that elevate brands and engage consumers.

adam@fortyfour.com

fortyfour.com

Ten years ago, when the real estate bubble finally burst, Jeff Pulvino closed his decade-old real estate investment company and sweated through the “Now What?” people face when they find themselves out of a job. Social marketing was in its infancy. Jeff pivoted his company, and, using the strengths of its internal marketing department, jumped into Facebook marketing, and, ultimately, built a full-service digital marketing agency. It was not an easy climb.

Eight years into agency life, Jeff realized that, without a strategic plan, the agency was just “marketing in the dark,” and often failing to deliver what customers wanted and expected – a specific goal had never been communicated. Today, most of their 4- to 5- year-long client relationships start with a marketing strategy workshop, a 30-day, low-level engagement where the parties can mutually get to know each other, discuss objectives and strategies in depth, and determine if there is a “fit.”

Jeff explains that “most entrepreneurs, business owners, and established businesses come . . . for marketing, but they have no real defined marketing strategy.” As an additional challenge, these clients often come to Boost when declining sales have left them strapped for cash. They may know the results they want . . . and desperately need to survive. They may even by hyper-focused on some particular technology, but often fail to have an understanding of realistic timelines.

Boost Media Group takes a step back, looks at the realities of cash flows, calculates how long it will take to generate a return on investment, and then crafts programs that address a client’s current cash needs and long-term growth objectives. Starting with this workshop session has exponentially increased Boot’s close rate and its ability to attract new customers. One of Boost Media Group’s sub-brands, Fitness Media, helps “big name clients” in the fitness industry develop their funnels and monetize their brands.

In this interview, Jeff identifies some of Boost’s keys to success. In the early years of the agency, he focused on sales. Over time, he has learned that it is not about how much the agency sells . . . it’s more important to make sure clients are a good fit. He credits having a robust technology stack of project management tools, templates, and proven processes . . . and iteratively improving those processes to meet the needs of his employees, clients, and his company . . . to being able to consistently deliver great results.

Boost recently acquired another agency, SearcherMagnet, which is “highly specialized in direct response lead acquisition.” Jeff says that acquiring another company brought with it experienced, high-level, passionate team members that Boost never would have been able to hire. He looks forward to expanding more this way in the future.

Jeff can be reached on his company’s website at: https://boostmediagroup.com/, by phone, on Live Chat, or by filling out a Contact Us form.

Brandon Edwards started his career in the issues management / crisis / grassroots / public affairs-focused healthcare division of a multi-industry, multi-practice Santa Barbara agency. In 2009, a toxic rift developed between Brandon’s growing medical services division and the rest of the faltering agency. Brandon and his division associates bought out their piece of the business and formed ReviveHealth. It took almost 6 years to go from being issue based to what it is today – a full-service. integrated, all audiences, all channels firm serving B2C, B2B, and B2P, the business to physician/provider side.

Santa Barbara was “an extremely high-cost market” with neither a strong employment nor a strong healthcare base. In 2011 decision was made to move to Nashville, TN, which Brandon refers to as “the Healthcare Capital of the World.” He cites Tennessee’s central time zone, big airport, abundance of talent, and lack of a state income tax as major incentives for the move. 

Brandon feels his agency has a “good business moat” – healthcare is an extremely complex business with major regulatory impacts. Even if generalist firms are good at strategy, they won’t be able to deliver in-depth, healthcare-specific strategies or may lack corresponding creative skills. Firms that specialize in “creative” have the potential to propose solutions that could “send you to jail.” 

In this interview, Brandon explains how too many medical organizations try to bring customers in through “the side of the funnel,” perhaps by marketing heart surgery to people (who may or may not have a heart attack in the next two weeks). “That’s not how funnels work,” he says. “You need to bring them in through urgent care, primary care, preventative care, diagnostic care – some percentage of people that start in the top of that funnel are going to end up needing other services, whether that’s PT or surgery of some kind, and all of the other attendant care that comes with it.”

What makes an agency in this niche market work? 

First, Brandon says, “You have to start with the right people that have the right talent and the right knowledge base.” Even then, it can take 12 to 18 months for a new hire’s skills to become a “mature practice.” Strategy has come from a deep understanding of the healthcare business. To be effective, creative work, which comes from outside of healthcare –needs to be interesting and provocative. And process? “Healthcare is not a hobby,” Brandon says. HIPAA restrictions dictate everything the agency does, including information architecture, how information is shared with clients, and marketing campaign design.

One early strategy core to the company was the idea of “being built to be sold,” merged, or transferred to employees through an ESOP (Employee Stock Option Plan). The intention was to always keep the firm as if it were “for sale tomorrow,” which informed hiring, compensation, professional development, branding, business development, and marketing decisions. Profits were consistently poured back into company growth. The agency did not expand by adding offices. Instead, it invested in hiring to expand and deepen capabilities, increasing offerings, and buying the tools, technology and data needed for “doing the job” now and in the future.

ReviveHealth was recently bought out by IPG, Weber Shandwick, which Brandon says has been and continues to be “a really positive experience.”

From the beginning, he built to sell . . . and then, he sold. All it took was sticking to his plan and “little luck” 

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Brandon Edwards from ReviveHealth based in Nashville, Tennessee. Welcome to the podcast, Brandon.

BRANDON: Thanks for having me.

ROB: Why don’t you kick it off by telling us about ReviveHealth and what the agency’s superpowers are?

BRANDON: Revive is a healthcare-only agency. We’re healthcare focused. Located here in Nashville, which a lot of people know for country music, but it really is in many ways the healthcare capital of the world. It’s a pretty phenomenal healthcare city. While we founded the firm on the West Coast, we relocated out here to Nashville in early 2011.

Our superpower is really helping healthcare brands thrive. It’s helping healthcare brands that want to lead the way. What we mean by that is really bringing to bear the full spectrum of marketing communications in the truest sense of the word “full-service” in a way that is very strategically focused on what we view as an underserved segment of healthcare. Most healthcare firms are dominated by pharma or government or med device; our clients really focus on the provider sector of healthcare. So hospitals, health systems, large physician enterprises as well as health tech and health services.

ROB: It’s an interesting place to get into. I think there’s probably some interesting stories around the conviction to move. How do you go about saying, “I’m in California” – it’s like the opposite of the Beverly Hillbillies. You’re like, “Tennessee is the place where we gotta be.”

BRANDON: It might be the opposite of the Beverly Hillbillies, but I’ll tell you the people from Tennessee are probably tired of Californians moving here. There’s no state income tax in Tennessee. It’s a huge growth market, and yet everywhere Californians go, so go property values. We drive up home values in a very unflattering way.

The story is actually kind of interesting. We started in California. I’m from California, my wife’s from California, we founded the firm in California. We started the firm September 1st, 2009, and we all remember what was happening in 2009. The recession couldn’t have been any worse.

If you think about the unique aspects of headquartering a professional services business, particularly one that is highly specialized in healthcare, we were located in an extremely high-cost market without a strong employment base – without a strong healthcare base, actually. All of our talent was going to have to come from somewhere else. In 2009, no one could move to Santa Barbara because they couldn’t afford to buy a home there if they couldn’t sell their home. No one could afford to sell their home. If they were married or had a partner, that person couldn’t find a job in Santa Barbara.

So, we really reached the conclusion that for purely strategic purposes, we had to go where the talent pool already existed. We considered a couple markets, but it wasn’t even close. Nashville was far and away the lead for us. It has a big airport, central time zone, really easy to get around, and has an incredibly deep talent base.

I didn’t initially know I was going to move my family here. We thought we’d open an office and staff it. My wife actually suggested we move here. I’d been on the road 150, 200 nights a year for our whole lives, and I think the entirety of her pitch was “If we move to Nashville, you’ll get to have a lot more dinners at home and be with the kids more,” and that was it. She’s a rare person that volunteered to leave Santa Barbara.

ROB: Yeah, that seems like a direction that a lot of people wouldn’t go, except what you said: to an extent, you were a frontrunner. I imagine this past season, you read about what’s going on with real estate prices, and basically everywhere is functioning as a suburb of the California real estate market. I think you might’ve beat some of your friends to Nashville.

BRANDON: Yeah. We were maybe the front edge of the wave in the summer of 2012, and now the wave is in full force. It’s everybody relocating here. It’s California, New York, Chicago, big cities fleeing to a slightly smaller city, but a city where, again, there’s no state income tax. From an affordability standpoint, it’s a very different animal. 

ROB: When we think a little bit about your specialty, Brandon, what is it? What are the distinct needs both from a strategy perspective as well as a channels and distribution perspective of this healthcare group specialty market?

BRANDON: It’s a very nuanced segment. On the one hand, I think we feel like there’s a good moat around our business from the standpoint that generalist firms can’t really parachute into a highly specialized area like this and deliver the same kind of value and strategic counsel that we can. So our competitive set is a bit more limited.

You also tend to attract people who have more specialized careers. In some ways, from a recruitment standpoint, it’s self-selection. My phrase for it is “healthcare is not a hobby.” It’s an extremely complicated business with an intense regulatory overlay, and it also is highly emotional for people. I think maybe finance is the closest area to it in some ways because of all those factors.

From our standpoint, the tradeoff that most clients had before Revive was they could pick a firm that could really help them with strategy, but that firm was going to suck at creative. The flipside is you could hire a firm that was really creative and interesting, and some of the work they were going to propose would send you to jail.

Being able to bring together this deep understanding of the business so that the strategy is rooted in a deep understanding of the business of healthcare, how the organization is going to make money if you keep its mission alive, coupled with creative that largely comes from outside of healthcare so that we have fresh ideas and really interesting, provocative, and effective creative, was really not a value prop that existed in our industry 12 years ago.

ROB: It would seem to me that part of that story of being able to bring in those outside folks, those new perspectives, but not going to jail, also plays into process a little bit. How have you thought about the emergence of process, of getting that regulatory overlay and consistency across the organization?

BRANDON: First, I think you have to start with the people part of it. I promise I’ll answer your process question, but if you don’t start with the right people that have the right talent and the right knowledge base, my view at least is there’s no process that’s going to save you from that.

When we look at more senior level leaders in the firm in particular – I would say even mid-career and up – we look at people who already have a pretty deep established understanding of healthcare. If you bring in someone who’s never touched healthcare and they’ve been in business for 15 or 20 years, I defy anybody to sit and explain HIPAA to someone in a way that’s going to make any sense to them. There are so many aspects of the industry that normal people just cock their heads and say, “That doesn’t make any sense.” It’s like, you’re absolutely right, and it’s just the way it is.

So I think it starts with people. From a process standpoint, you still have to have process and safeguards. We do extensive HIPAA training. HIPAA and the restrictions around use of data dictate everything about our information architecture, how we share information with clients, how you design marketing campaigns that can be effective and still be well within the bounds of those. So you really have to think through the processes in terms of not just what you do in a normal agency to get good work, but to get good work within the guardrails of what’s allowable in the healthcare industry.

ROB: That seems like a totally different mindset, and I can see that domain expertise from the experienced voices helping to train and bring up the next wave of talent.

One thing I’m curious about – the timing of your focus in the space seems impeccable. The narrative of this past 10-15 years of the consolidation of the healthcare groups, the rise of these regional healthcare-group-sponsored office parks – it’s a real thing. I see it all around me. How did you end up at the right spot on that wave? It could’ve been easy to be too early and easy to be too late.

BRANDON: Yeah. I would love to tell you that it was incredible wisdom and vision on my end, and that just wouldn’t be true. [laughs] I wish that’s what it was. There were a group of us that were in another agency. We were essentially the healthcare practice, a place where I was a minority owner, and it was a multi-industry, multi-practice firm but had built up and created this healthcare presence within that firm.

But that firm was very focused. It was essentially an issues management / crisis / grassroots / public affairs firm, so the healthcare practice we had built was very focused on those kinds of services and that kind of work for clients because that was the firm’s positioning. And I think it was the right positioning for that firm.

We got to 2009 and the rest of the firm outside of healthcare shrunk dramatically. Remember, this is the same time that the ACA was being debated and passed. This was the same time that there was going to be a substantial need for all kinds of expertise in the healthcare space, including marketing communications work.

I think unfortunately, when you’re in an agency that may be struggling a little bit – what do they say? Character is revealed by difficult times, not created by it. I think what was unfortunately revealed in that moment was a somewhat toxic culture in the other agency.

So, when we looked to buy out the healthcare practice and form Revive, we really viewed it as an opportunity to go from being a healthcare practice in a diversified agency to becoming a healthcare agency, as well as an opportunity to really diversify the offering into truly full-service integrated marketing work. For us, there was this really great established base of clientele to work from and help to fund that expansion, but what started was a journey that took I would say 5-½, almost 6 years to go from being issues-focused to being a truly full-service integrated firm.

ROB: From a channel mix perspective, you mentioned a PR and comms legacy; what does the channel mix look like today, and where is it heading within the healthcare space?

BRANDON: I think the simplest way to put it would be it’s really all audiences, all channels. We’ve gone from planning for earned to planning for earned and social to planning for every stripe of media and every stripe of channel and bringing in people with integrated planning backgrounds, bringing in people that are deep in digital and social and traditional. We actually plan and buy our own media across all channels. Very unusual for a firm our size.

But one of the interesting nuances working with media buying, for example, in this space is that most media buying firms really want to buy large campaigns on a regional or national basis, and hospital media in particular is bought almost exclusively on a local community basis. The joke is if you go to work for a big brand, you’re going to spend $50 million in $5 million chunks; if you go to work for a hospital, you’re going to spend $5 million in $50,000 chunks. It takes a very different structure and thought process to create the media function. And that’s just one thing. You still have to think about all of the creative and all of the different areas.

We really think about all audiences, meaning we’re looking at consumers, we’re looking at current and past patients, we’re looking at employers and brokers, we’re looking at physicians and board members and donors, and then the people within those hospital or healthcare organizations that are purchasing from our health services and health tech clients as well. We really have both B2C and B2B as well as B2P, the business to physician side. It’s really a robust channel and audience mix.

ROB: It’s a really fascinating mix, and it reminds me, as you talk about the regulatory overhead, I could see somebody 10 years from now – you mentioned Fintech earlier; I think various dimensions of Fintech seem like they’re positioned both for some real growth versus synthetic growth, but also probably a good bit of regulation ahead. I think if somebody has a brain for that sort of thing, they might do well to start navigating the legality. There might be a good practice there.

BRANDON: I’m sure you’re in the same boat; I talk to a lot of younger people that are interning or are interviewing with us or whatever it is, and I think there’s this tendency when you’re younger to think about the sexy things, whether it’s gaming or sports or whatever it is.

Yet I believe in many ways, the best way to create a career that’s going to maximize your value is to find these industries where you can develop indispensable knowledge. I think healthcare is one. I think finance is another. I think maybe once upon a time, defense department type work was. Maybe higher ed. There are some industries that require an incredible amount of focus, and perhaps the skillsets aren’t as transferrable between working for one set of consumer products or CPG or whatever it is, but boy, it sure is value-creating for you from a career standpoint.

ROB: Brandon, to switch gears a little bit, one part of your story I think we would be remiss not to touch on is the experience of being acquired. Many firms have that wish, but I think I heard recently maybe 1 in 400 agencies will actually ever be acquired. How did that process commence? Was that something you engaged in intentionally? Were you just sticking to your knitting and somebody took notice of what you were doing?

BRANDON: We have a lot of flaws as an agency, just like any group of people does. But not being strategic and thoughtful isn’t one of them. In our very first strategic plan, September 1st, 2009, when there were four of us, the strategic plan says “Revive is being built to be sold.” There’s a little asterisk next to “sold” that says “It’s not really about sold; it’s about merged or an ESOP to employees or whatever.”

But the thinking was, and I think a lesson learned perhaps from previous agency experience, is the worst thing you can have is an agency that you need to sell and can’t. It’s a bit like owning a home. They always tell you when you’re younger, don’t have the most expensive house on the street. You don’t want to own a house you can’t sell. And most people love their home – of any day they own it, the love it the most the day they put it on the market because they’ve done all the things to make it beautiful and have curb appeal. They’ve landscaped it, they’ve painted it, they’ve fixed all the little dings and scratches.

I think agencies are a lot like that. We viewed it as we wanted to keep the firm always like it was for sale tomorrow, and that meant how we hired, how we comped people, how we did professional development, how we thought about our brand, how we did business development and marketed ourselves, how we paid ourselves. We took the view that the owners would comp themselves as employees. We would not take money out of the business; we would pour everything back into growth.

So it was always about building enterprise value. We didn’t really set a timeline on it. I think maybe in that first plan we said 10 years, and honestly we just sort of made hat up because it seemed like a long time. It turned out not to be. [laughs] But we went into it with that attitude, and it became a filter for every single decision that we made for the business.

And I think in a lot of ways it helps to keep you from being selfish. It’s really easy to have a great year and think “I think maybe we should pull a bunch of money out and go buy something cool” or whatever, I don’t know. We didn’t do that. The only money we took out of the business was for taxes, basically, and our individual compensation, which was set and didn’t change much during all those years.

We would call the question every year in strategic planning, and every year the answer was “No, we’re good.” Then we get to the end of 2014. We had grown 60% that year. We had added digital content, social, we had purchased another firm, and we got to the end of the year and called the question of strategic planning, and the group unanimously said this would be the right time to look for a partner. “Let’s find someone who has been through this process of integration and can help us do this better and help us grow faster and help us avoid the pitfalls that come with going from being a single discipline firm to a really diversified agency.”

ROB: It’s interesting to hear that intentionality from the start. I think there’s probably some threads to pull on there. For instance, I think you mentioned casually ESOP. It would be good to dig into that. When you think about building from the start, a technology startup will think about issuing stock options to their employees to ensure that they get to share in an acquisition. But that’s so often incompatible with a services organization. How did you think about employee comp, sharing in an exit, that sort of thing?

BRANDON: Probably not as well as we should’ve. [laughs] I think you’d always be better at this the second or third time than you were the first time. Let me back up for a second: we had a great experience with the sale. We went about the process in a very nontraditional way. We had a great experience with the transaction. We had a great experience with the earnout with our buyer, which is IPG, Weber Shandwick.

You hear all these terrible stories from people, and I will tell you that we had none of that. we had a really positive experience and continue to. Our executive leadership team – we had no senior level departures at the end of the earnout. That’s very unusual. Just a good experience.

That said, I think we could’ve done a much better job – I could’ve done a much better job – leading up to the sale. We did not spread equity around as much as we probably should’ve. It wasn’t so much that we sat down and decided not to as just it hadn’t been a part of our plan, and by the time we went to sell, it was probably too late to make meaningful changes to the equity structure.

We had five shareholders and five phantom equity holders just before the sale, and we then converted the phantom equity holders to real equity right before the sale because that was our buyer’s preference.

ROB: What is phantom equity?

BRANDON: Think of it as another way of creating an incentive compensation structure that doesn’t represent real ownership, so it doesn’t necessarily give a holder rights to a percentage of the firm’s profit or something like that. The upside is it can be given and taken away just like a bonus would; the downside is it gets taxed in ordinary income instead of capital gains. So it’s a little bit more attractive for the company, a little bit less attractive for the holder. It may be a little bit less attractive, but it’s substantially more attractive than getting nothing.

I think ultimately, I wish we had distributed a little bit more ownership to some key people, particularly some people who really killed it in the last 5 years, but once you’ve entered into the transaction, it’s too late to change the equity structure.

ROB: And it’s definitely tricky often, and not necessarily in your case – turnover in services can be higher. You also are dealing with the multiples that you sell for, typically. They’re not the same in services as they are in startup land.

What I want to pull on a little bit now – you mentioned a couple things. If you’re building the sell, what comes to my mind is you have to be carrying decent margins on your services to be attractive to purchase. But then you mentioned that you and your partners were also not taking money off the table. I think where that probably points the flashlight a little bit is towards the question of: how do you strategically reinvest meaningful margins to build a business? I think that’s where a lot of people typically throw up their hands and just take the money off the table.

BRANDON: Yeah, and I don’t think that’s irrational. I say this as a predetermined outcome for us because this is what we wanted for our business, but to be fair, it’s not at all irrational or even maybe a negative to say, “I don’t want to sell the business. What I want is to get it to a point where I don’t have to work so hard and I can make pretty good money and it creates an annuity for me and my family.” Yeah, there’s some dangers of that, but there’s dangers in selling too. So I don’t know that there’s a right or wrong answer to it.

I think in terms of reinvestment, we really looked at it in two branches. I’ll tell you up front the one we decided not to do, and that was that we were not going to expand on the basis of offices. We were going to look at reinvestment in people and technology as opposed to places. We’ve never opened an office for a client. We’ve never been in that mode. We’ve always had as few offices as we felt like we could get away with and still attract the right talent.

So we looked at it in two ways. Early on, it was really reinvestment in hires that would expand our capabilities – sometimes deepen them, but mostly expand them. The reason I think that’s a reinvestment is very often, when you’re bringing on someone to build out a new capability, there isn’t going to be enough revenue there really to justify that hire for some period of time. Typically for us, it was 12 to 18 months from the day we hired someone to the time that was a mature capability or mature practice.

We would look at reinvestment in building out these capabilities, and that meant a creative department, that meant a media department, that meant digital capabilities, social media, content, research, all these different areas over the years.

I would say hand in hand with that was reinvestment in the tools, technology, and data that could make those people effective. What does our media department need to do its job? What does our analytics group need to do its job? And what are they going to need in the future? What do we need to do in terms of data-driven marketing, whether that’s Salesforce or other platforms that we use? All of which carry pretty sizable price tags and some of which are more difficult to monetize with clients than others.

I think those are the big two. I would say a distant third was the constant reinvestment in brand building and business development for our firm. We have spent about 5% of revenue on an annual basis from the time we had 10 people in new business and corporate marketing, brand building, for Revive to always be punching above our weight, always be growing. As a result, we’re showing 12-year compounded annual growth rates of about 25% a year.

ROB: Wow. Sounds like a good company to buy if you’re IPG. That’s good. And you’re still there, which must mean it’s also a good job.

BRANDON: I would like to believe that they could’ve bought anything they wanted and chose us. I find that flattering and a statement of confidence from them. But yes, they’ve been great to deal with, and honestly I’ve been glad to be here. It’s nice to be part of a really great company.

ROB: That’s great to hear. That’s a good acquisition story. Brandon, when you’re looking ahead a little bit, what’s coming up for ReviveHealth, and maybe more broadly healthcare marketing, that you’re excited about?

BRANDON: I think in some ways, in our segment of healthcare marketing, the pace of change is accelerating to where many of the things we’re seeing now in healthcare marketing are the things that you would see more commonly in other industries.

Typically, hospital marketing in particular trails other industries by a few years. We’re starting to see that gap close. We’re seeing a great deal more emphasis on data-driven marketing and personalized marketing. We’re seeing a great deal more emphasis on social media and social media engagement – which, given how personal and human healthcare is, is sort of strange that it’s just catching up to other industries now.

But I think the biggest shift we’re seeing is a mindset shift from hospital operators who have been accustomed to spending the bulk of their budgets on traditional advertising to build brands to hospital executives who see the power of real 4 Ps marketing that will drive volume and profitable growth to their institutions in a way that I think is almost taken for granted in many other industry sectors.

ROB: Right. That’s actually really interesting because many hospitals are massive institutions, but now they’re also living under an umbrella where there was just one location and now there’s four, and there’s an attendant group of facilities around it beyond that. It’s “Who’s the brand?”, but also “Where is my local version?” That’s what it seems like to me as a consumer.

BRANDON: Not to be too flippant about it, but I think we all drive around town and you see these billboards with “heart surgery this” and “knee surgery that.” Does anybody really buy on that basis? I mean, it’s not like you drive around and say, “That’s interesting. I hadn’t really thought about it, but my knee does hurt. Maybe I’ll have surgery after all.” It’s sort of silly when you say it like that.

To me, this industry just begs for highly targeted, highly personalized, data-driven marketing. If I get you into what we call the top of the funnel – urgent care, primary care, preventative care, diagnostic care – some percentage of people that start in the top of that funnel are going to end up needing other services, whether that’s PT or surgery of some kind, and all of the other attendant care that comes with it.

I think most hospitals have tried to enter the funnel from the side, and it’s sort of a joke for us. That’s not how funnels work, right? You pour things in the top and they come out the bottom. We don’t get to come in and say, “I just want to find those people that want to have heart surgery in the next two weeks.” It’s like, no, let’s engage people who are going to need heart surgery in six months, in a year, in two years, in three years. Look at more the lifetime value of the consumer as opposed to the transactional value of the consumer, and recognize that physicians play a huge part in it. Most of us go where our doctors tell us.

ROB: Right. It starts with being in the provider network at some point.

BRANDON: Absolutely. Who you have contracts with from an insurance standpoint, what your medical staff looks like, how effectively referrals are processed, if you provide easy access for consumers – telephone, digital, as well as other methods. It really is all 4 Ps of marketing. It is not just promotion. I think the industry was pretty dominated by promotion prior to maybe 5 to 7 years ago.

ROB: That is tremendously interesting. Thank you, Brandon, for sharing your journey. Congratulations on everything you accomplished leading up to and even after the acquisition. It’s a great part of the story to tell, and it sounds like the national marketing community is better for it.

BRANDON: We have a great team, and anybody that does what we’ve done in the last few years and doesn’t acknowledge some meaningful amount of luck is probably not being honest. [laughs] You can work hard all you want, but if you don’t have a little bit of wind at your back, it’s going to be pretty tough.

ROB: The humility is definitely welcome. We all need a little bit of that luck, and sometimes you have to survive long enough to be lucky. Coming out of 2009 is nothing to dismiss either. Thank you so much, Brandon. We wish you and your team the best. Thank you for sharing your story.

BRANDON: My pleasure. 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.

Jackie Hermes is Owner and CEO at Accelity Marketing, A Hubspot Gold partner that provides B2B inbound marketing and lead generation, conversion, and nurturing. Accelity works primarily with B-to-B software companies operating at a pre-revenue, fundraising, or bootstrapping level on up to around $80 million in revenue. Accelity guarantees results: warm leads every month, and coordinates. product launches for unknown companies, helping them to bring new products to the market. The company focuses on building long-term, “deep” client relationships with fewer clients . . .

Jackie observes that internal marketing initiatives often don’t fail so much at promotion as they do in the ancillary functions: testing, measuring, and reporting successes. At the same time, conflicting objectives, failure to identify and appeal to the correct target market, and a lack of understanding of and clarity about the desired result all play a part in marketing initiative failure.

Jackie feels it is important to meet a client’s leadership team and stakeholders to learn their industry and their pain points and who they’re targeting. Have they identified the correct target market? Are they approaching that target market correctly? Who are their decision-makers? Have they done all of this work? Does her team believe the information is accurate and complete? What is the potential for long-term success?

As a project is conceptually developed, Jackie believes it is critical that stakeholders reach consensus on who they’re targeting, what comprises the project deliverables, and what success looks like. An agency can only be effective when this foundation is set – when it truly understands the client’s business – and when the client stakeholders are aligned in their expectations.

Within Accelity, Jackie tracks each employee’s profitability every month to monitor agency health and track the impact of internal projects on productivity. Many agencies use unpaid interns as profit centers. Jackie doesn’t do this because she wants to ensure her clients get top quality services and interns can’t provide the full-time, long-term relationships (typically 3 years) Jackie thinks are best for her clients.

Jackie sees many companies making the old-school mistake of tasking cold-callers to generate business, and shorting the budget on the marketing side . . . because they don’t understand that marketing can function as a powerful lead generator. For companies using cold-calling, she highly recommends HubSpot ‘s Sales Boot Camps (These programs are only available to HubSpot partners) as a way to dramatically improve cold-calling results. She took the program early in her career and spoke about it a Hubspot’s Inbound last year.

Jackie is available on LinkedIn at /thejackiehermes and is @thejackiehermes on every platform (Instagram, Twitter). Accelity is on all of those platforms as well.

Jake Tanner, of Digital Hyve (Syracuse, New York) explains how Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal-setting, clearly-defined core values, local-market-focused concierge marketing, and enlightened leadership coaching set up his full service digital marketing agency for three-year “hockey-stick” growth in a mid-sized college town.

digitalhyve.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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

Melissa Libby, owner of Melissa Libby & Associates (MLA), started her career in hospitality. Today, her friends call her the Restaurant Whisperer

In this interview, Melissa talks about the challenges restaurants have faced in the face of Covid-19, the changes yet to come, and the lessons she has learned in her 27 years of restaurant marketing. In recent months, MLA has helped its clients pivot to curbside delivery, takeout, and/or to serving different retail markets. Some of the adaptations? Restaurants have: 

• Started low-overhead ghost kitchens/pop-ups that provide different menus from what is available in brick-and-mortar restaurants
• Converted parking lots into patios for outdoor dining
• Elevated curbside packaging and pickup to elegant “experiences.” 
• Started selling off their wine cellars, offering some great wines at good prices. 

Melissa advises, to further support your local restaurant, “Tip well.”.

Because restaurants typically do not have a lot of money, they value public and community relations over traditional advertising. As restaurants open back up, which clients are most likely to return for dining “in”? Turns out demographics provide no clue. Dining in is the more profitable option . . . but it’s tough to figure out who to target with the “come back in” messages. Each individual will have his or her own level of comfort and timing for when it “feels safe.”

Melissa notes that “online ordering technology is glitchy.” She has seen some improvement already and thinks it will quickly evolve to something “way better, very quickly.” Third party delivery services take a significant cut of the food delivered. So, she says, order from the restaurant, and pick it up yourself. 

Melissa lauds the Georgia Restaurant Association for lobbying to get the necessary changes made to help Georgia’s restaurants survive.

When Melissa talks about the early days of her business, she says that she did not plan for success. She did not ask “What do I do if I get more clients than I can handle,” she asked, “What am I going to do if I fail?” She feels she would have done better to plan for success and to prepare for success. Melissa used a siloed PR business staffing model until she figured out that did not work for her. She then divided her staff up by what they liked to do best and where they excelled. This made her staff happier, and her organization more resilient. Now, when an employee leaves the agency, the body of knowledge connected to a client remains intact because everyone in the agency has been working with that client. 

Melissa can be reached on her agency’s website at: ThinkMLA.com.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined today by Melissa Libby. Melissa is the owner of Melissa Libby & Associates based in Atlanta, Georgia. Welcome to the podcast, Melissa.

MELISSA: Thank you, Rob.

ROB: It’s fantastic to have you here. Why don’t you start off by telling us about MLA and MLA’s superpowers? 

MELISSA: All right. MLA is 27 years old, based in Atlanta. Our superpower is restaurant marketing. My friends call me the Restaurant Whisperer. [laughs] That’s what we do. We help restaurants get business and keep business.

ROB: It’s quite a time to be thinking about restaurant business, because here we are in – what month is it? August, I think? I have to check my calendar – of 2020. We are still in various stages of COVID-19 lockdown. So, in this time, in August 2020, what are you seeing/doing/hearing when it comes to restaurant marketing?

MELISSA: Well, it’s a strange new world, that’s for sure. It’s changed over the past few months of what we’ve been doing, and it continues to change as things happen. But it all comes down to getting the message out to the people who want to support a restaurant, want to dine at a restaurant, or want to have takeout. We’ve helped our clients pivot to curbside or takeout or a whole different retail market. Whatever they need to do to stay in business and stay afloat, we help them with that and help them get the word out to people. And then as Georgia reopened and people were able to dine in at a restaurant, we started getting the word out about that.

What’s interesting from a marketing perspective, and something that I hadn’t really thought about – you can’t pick a demographic and say, “Okay, this demographic feels comfortable walking in and dining in a restaurant and this one doesn’t, so we have to focus on this.” You can’t say, “Older people don’t want to dine in a restaurant, so let’s market to the younger people” because that’s just not the case. What I’ve found is that there are people in every demographic that feel comfortable dining in and in every demographic that don’t. It’s an extremely personal decision, so it’s been really, really hard to figure out who those people are and how we get to them. Because with the dine-in, that is going to be the more profitable avenue for the restaurant.

There’s been a lot of that going on. A lot of messaging, a lot of safety messaging to make people feel comfortable, a lot of internal messaging to the staff, a lot of website writing, a lot of social media message crafting. It’s just been really, really challenging.

ROB: It’s interesting that you mention the dine-in diner as being more profitable for the restaurant, because I am a big fan of restaurants. I am a big fan of good restaurants. I am a big fan of many of the restaurants that show up on your website.

Even from early on in COVID – I think I felt like I was trying to do them a solid by doing pickup, but even continuing to do so, because I am one of those folks who’s probably not going to dine in at a restaurant. But what can I do as a pickup order diner to help with the profitability of a restaurant versus maybe what someone dining in and sitting down is doing for them to make them a better customer?

MELISSA: Definitely picking up instead of ordering through a third party delivery service is certainly a help to the restaurant because the third party delivery services take a pretty significant cut of the price. So, if you can go and pick it up, that’s what you want to do. If you don’t want to dine in, do that.

Now in Georgia, they’re about to let restaurants sell alcohol, so if you can order your beer or your wine – a lot of restaurants have cocktail kits – anything like that helps them. I have several clients that are selling their wine, basically, their wine cellar. And these are amazing wines that you can get at a really great price. So, do that, tip well. That’s what you can do to help. I feel like with dine-in, they get that alcohol order that they’re not going to usually get with the takeout, and they also obviously have the service staff who receive tips, the people that wait on you. So that’s what you can do to help.

And don’t get me wrong; all of my clients are very, very grateful for the people that are coming, even if they’re not coming to dine in. They’re grateful for them. So please keep it up.

Another thing – and I should’ve mentioned this – everyone is doing outdoor seating now. So that might be your gateway one day when you’re ready to dining back in, to go sit on a patio somewhere. People are turning their parking lots into patios. They’re doing anything they can to get some patio seating, and people are loving it, even as hot as it is here. 

ROB: I know some places have given a temporary reprieve on allowing restaurants to sell alcohol and also in terms of compromising what is allowed for outdoor seating. Are the alcohol sales becoming something more permanent that is being permitted for pickup?

MELISSA: No, it’s COVID specific. It would be great if they would make it permanent, and I guess it’s a possibility, but that has not been discussed.

ROB: It seems like it would take perhaps – and I don’t know this industry as well from the side that you see it from – it seems like it would take a more potent restaurant lobby than maybe has formed up to now. Or is there a stronger restaurant lobby that is forming in recent years to help represent – because independent restaurants just don’t have the same leverage that let’s say a large chain has.

MELISSA: Yeah. The Georgia Restaurant Association is absolutely amazing, and they are our lobbying group. I don’t know if you recall that we got the Sunday Brunch Bill passed. It used to be you couldn’t drink alcohol until 12:30 on Sunday, and now I think it’s 10:30 or 11:00 or something. That took like 3 years or more. It’s ridiculous. It takes forever to get these things through. But the Georgia Restaurant Association and Karen Bremer, who’s the head, they are big-time our advocates from the restaurant community standpoint. They have been instrumental in getting all of these things to happen.

ROB: That’s good to hear.

MELISSA: They are definitely representing everyone. They really, really are.

ROB: When all this started, I’m sure you had some clients who were already doing online ordering, some who resisted it very much at the onset, probably some who flipped over, maybe some holdouts. What were the stages of technology enablement that you’ve seen across your client portfolio?

MELISSA: It was very interesting to watch that. Anybody that was already doing online ordering immediately took it up a notch and they were great. And then you have fine dining restaurants like Aria and Umi, and they’re like, “How am I going to do takeout? How can you take out sushi?” It goes against everything that they have ever dreamed of for their restaurant. Then a couple of weeks go by and they’re like, “Yeah, we’ve got to figure this out.”

And they did. In the case of Umi, they got beautiful packaging and they really figured out a way to create the Umi experience, even insofar as how you drive up and how you’re greeted and how you receive your food. Everything about it is very Umi-like, and it’s probably some of the more expensive takeout you’ll ever get in your life. Umi has a broad menu that you can choose from. Aria took a different stance and they do two choices a day, and they post their menu every single day of what’s tonight’s menu. Some people get Aria three or four times a week because it’s different every night. They’ve got a beautiful curbside pickup.

I guess we probably have a couple that don’t do online ordering or takeout, but it’s few. It was hard, because we had to get the technology set up, and that’s always painful.

ROB: I imagine in Umi’s case, they may have also been tracking – I think there was a sushi restaurant up in New York that went to some sort of like $800 takeout. Did you see this?

MELISSA: [laughs] No, I didn’t.

ROB: Yeah, there was a New York sushi restaurant that went to $800 takeout. I saw some very elevated packaging from Sugarfish, which is a smallish/medium-ish sushi chain, that really did elevate that experience. My own experience has really been that during this time, it has become a time for those who are in the hospitality industry to think about hospitality far more than just being in the food and feeding people industry.

MELISSA: Absolutely. That’s exactly right, and Umi is the perfect example of that. They took their current offering and put it to go. They really did. And the love and care that they give you when you’re dining in, you receive via takeout. They have now opened it for dine-in, but the takeout was such a hit that they kept that going. I wonder to myself if they will continue that when they don’t have to anymore.

ROB: I’m very much excited, especially the restaurants that have figured out how to be hospitable in their takeout and have that passion for serving people. I’m indeed curious how that will continue onwards.

You mentioned that MLA has been in the hospitality industry – you mentioned you’ve been in business for 27 years. Have you been deep into hospitality from the onset? Let me start there.

MELISSA: We have. I started the company in 1992. My background was I had a job at Hyatt. I was working in the hotel business. My contacts were already in the hospitality business, so those were the type of client leads I was getting back then. Then as ’96 and the Olympics started getting closer, Atlanta’s hospitality scene started to beef up a little bit. then when the Olympics hit, I think the whole world saw Atlanta for the great place that it is, and before I knew it, I was focusing on restaurants. I don’t think I could’ve done that when I first started. I don’t think there would’ve been enough restaurants to keep me employed. But that changed, and I was a part of it. It was awesome.

ROB: It’s amazing to stick with it for that long. I think some people start off in the serving hospitality, but they find a hard way to make it a rewarding business for themselves as entrepreneurs and they start to get wandering eyes for how to better serve other clients. Particularly, I think there’s a perception – and a reality, depending on the client – of the margins in the world of being an agency driven around the hospitality industry.

You seem to be happy to have made it work for coming up on three decades. How do you attribute that ongoing passion for the industry – and also, you’ve been able to hire people as well. You’re not a one-person show, just scraping by, taking pictures yourself and posting pictures of food. How has that worked well for you?

MELISSA: There’s no question that I love the industry, and I think that has to be – I’m sure I could go work in another industry and make more money, but I do love the industry, and I love working with the restaurant owners and the chefs. It’s a very creative group of people. It’s a very entrepreneurial group of people. I really enjoy working with other people. I love to be in a meeting and go, “Hey, I have a great idea. Let’s do this!” “Okay, that sounds good.” Boom, off you go and start doing it. It doesn’t have to run up a flagpole of approvals and all of that stuff so that by the time the idea is finally approved, it’s completely different and 3 months later. I really enjoy the atmosphere of what we do.

I feel like from focusing the way that I do and focusing my team in the way that I do, we’re just incredibly efficient. The fact that we represent a lot of restaurants makes us a huge value to the media, so they can just make one phone call and say, “I’m looking for recipes using apples” – and this is a true story; got it this morning – and I can make like eight calls and then, 3 hours later, call the reporter back and go, “Okay, I’ve got” – and this is true – “a Brussel sprout and apple salad, I’ve got an apple pie, I’ve got this, I’ve got this.” The reporter has only had to make one call and spend 5 minutes.

So, I think that’s made us very efficient. You’re right; restaurants don’t have a lot of money, but I have to say that they value public relations and community relations and communications over more traditional advertising. Because it stretches a little bit more. Their money will stretch a little bit farther with us than it would two ads that month.

It really has been – I’ve made a living. [laughs] I pay my bills, almost always on time.

ROB: And sometimes you get some good meals along the way, and that’s pretty good too.

MELISSA: I definitely do. I definitely do that, yes, for sure.

ROB: Wonderful. When we think about some of these clients – entrepreneurs, and I think restauranteurs sometimes in particular, may have a reputation of being a little bit hard to corral. When someone comes in with that need for that story, for that recipe, some of them might not even read your email until the next day.

I think a lot of people, even more broadly beyond the hospitality industry, would wonder: is there a secret? Is it that you just know so well into the businesses that you can maybe bypass the entrepreneur and go straight to a chef internally? Is it that you tend to work with restauranteurs who have their details together more? Is it that you’re sometimes able to just know things well enough that you can be a proxy for them? Or a combination of everything?

How do you tighten those lines of communication? Because everybody wants, I think, that level of execution and responsiveness to be able to pull something from an idea to a published-in-the-media message quickly. But clients may not always make that easy for you.

MELISSA: Oh, for sure they don’t. [laughs] The answer to your question is certainly all of the above. Every single client is different, has a different way that they like to be communicated with. We just have to learn, “Okay, this guy, if we text him at 2:00 it’s going to be our very best time to get his attention. This one, we’ve got to call because he knows if I’m calling, it’s got to be really important. Otherwise I’m just going to send him an email. This person likes all five things put in an email at the end of the day. This person likes everything in subject by subject email.”

We really just have to figure them out. But they all are paying us to get the word out, so if they take too long or don’t answer or whatever, I just let them know, “Hey, you missed an opportunity. This is why, so next time, here’s what we’ve got to do.” They get it.

And we also know on our end who’s fast to answer – and I tell clients this when I first meet with them about “Are we going to work with you or not?” I always say, “There is no question, the people that answer us quickly and thoroughly are the ones that get the best press. So that’s what you’ve got to do.” They always go, “Okay, okay, I’m going to do it!” And then some do and some don’t. But it’s the truth. You get out what you put in.

But if we get a last-minute request and we don’t have a lot of time, we have our go-tos because we know who’s going to respond. That’s the goal, to be a go-to.

ROB: You’ve been in this business a while longer than some of the recent shifts in the food media world. It seems like between web outlets, between review sites and increased interest in the TV landscape around food, the culture of food and interest in good food has shifted mightily. What is trending now? What is evergreen now, and what is withering away in terms of getting attention within the hospitality industry?

MELISSA: That’s a really good question, and I’m not sure, given everything going on, that I can answer that with any great knowledge. I’ve seen the food industry go through all kinds of changes, and I think that food as an entertainment avenue is here forever. I just can’t see that going away.

But I think that with COVID and the concerns of the large gatherings, and even the very tight quarters, that’s going to – I don’t want to say go away, but I think there’s going to be less of that. I think people that are opening restaurants right now for sure are not cramming tables in. They’re also not making a humongous restaurant. So, I think we’re going to see some more medium-size restaurants with a lot of space. I think we’re probably going to see some lower priced menus. Just a more mainstream, low-key, as everybody gets back into it and figures out – I just can’t imagine people opening a big, flashy, fancy restaurant right this minute.

And that’s not to say that they won’t, and that’s not to say that they wouldn’t be successful. But I think if you were making your decision today, that would probably not be what you would do. Now, there are people that are well into the planning for a restaurant that’s supposed to open next week or in a month or whatever, and they have to go with what they’ve got and use the guidelines from the state until they don’t have to anymore.

ROB: The intersection that you sit at, I’m sure that your existing clients and people getting into the industry even look to you to an extent for strategy as well. One thing you hear swirling in the restaurant industry is diversification of business model. Some people are already going into events. That’s obviously changing a little bit. Some have been going into additional retail product lines. What are you suggesting to clients as they think about where to go with technology enablement and where to go with overall restaurant business strategy, possibly diversifying?

MELISSA: One thing that’s big is the ghost kitchen/pop-up idea. I have a couple clients, Drift in East Cobb is doing a lobster roll pop-up calls Pop’s Lobster Shack. They did it kind of out of necessity during COVID. They made this takeout window – and I don’t know if you know this, but lobster was really, really inexpensive. I don’t know if it still is, but all the lobster fishermen didn’t have anybody to sell to because all the restaurants up there were closed, so everybody got lobster really cheap. I don’t know if people are noticing, but you can probably get lobster at Applebee’s right now. I don’t know.

But anyway, they started this lobster roll special called Pop’s, and it’s been unbelievably successful. We had a meeting the other day and they were like, “I think we’re going to just keep this going. When lobster’s out of season, we’ll do something else.” I already had some clients that were talking about that sort of ghost kitchen idea, where you do something different than what you already do in your restaurant, you have a different menu offering, but you don’t have the building and the huge branding and all the expenses that go along with it. You just sell it on Door Dash or whatever the situation is. So that’s definitely happening right now.

As far as technology, I think the online ordering is glitchy right now. I see it already getting better, and I think it’s going to get way better very, very quickly, and people are going to be able to, as you suggested, order merch and maybe seasonings and all that stuff in a much less clunky way than they even can do right now. I’m excited for that to happen because it’s been painful, some of these online sites that we’ve been working with.

ROB: I can’t imagine, and it sounds like you’ve had to. Melissa, as you reflect on the business as you have built it thus far, what are some things that you would consider maybe doing differently if you were starting over from scratch?

MELISSA: That’s a very good question. One of the things that I always tell people when they say, “What should I know before I start a business?” is I did not plan for success when I started. I planned, “What am I going to do if I fail? When am I going to decide it doesn’t work, and then what am I going to do?” I spent a lot of time thinking about that, but I didn’t spend any time – not even a minute – thinking about, “What am I going to do if I’ve got more clients than I can handle? What am I going to do if there are not enough hours in the day for me to do all the work by myself?” I never thought of any of that.

I spent probably 2 or 3 years running like a crazy woman, trying to hire a person here and there, do this, do that. Always that’s my first thing that I tell people: plan for success. Have some people lined up. Have some things lined up to support you if it goes well. That’s always been my best learning, because it’s like “Why didn’t I do that?”

And then many years ago – but it was still well into the business – I realized that the traditional PR business model or way of setting up your staff didn’t work for me. You probably know this, but it was always account supervisor, account executive, assistant account executive, little silos, and they did everything. They met with the client, they wrote the business plan, they wrote the press release, they sent the press release, they did everything. I realized I would come back to the office and go, “Hey, we got a new client,” and everybody would duck their head like, “Oh my God, don’t give it to me, don’t give it to me.” I was like, oh, this is not good.

So I divided everybody up by what they like to do best and what they’re best at, so now we have writers and we have media relations people and we have social media people and we have client services people. If your thing is meeting with the clients and writing timelines and writing plans and checking off lists, then that’s what you do. And if you’re a great writer and you can sit in a quiet room all day long and write, write, write, write, write, that’s what you do. It was just a huge help, and it changed everything.

And then there was an added bonus of if someone leaves, the brain trust does not walk out the door because everyone has been working on the client. So that was a big learning, and it’s something that I’m glad came to me at some point in the years.

ROB: Sure. One thing I think adjacent to that is in this case – and it’s fairly common in the PR industry – your name is on the door, and that can be a challenge in bringing in other people. How have you addressed the challenge where Melissa is quite often the person who goes out and earns the trust of the client, and your reputation is a big part of the value that you bring, but at some point your client’s going to have to work with somebody who’s not Melissa? How have you handled that scaling yourself problem?

MELISSA: It’s a good question, and it worried me so much for a long time. I felt like I had to be at every new business meeting, I had to really, really be involved and really assure the prospective client that I was their main contact and all of that.

I think the true answer is good people. I have people that have been with me 11 years, 8 years. I’ve been really fortunate to have long-term employees who are awesome, and the client just wants somebody that’s going to help them get the work done. I love client meetings, so I go to as many of them as I can. The beauty, though, is I don’t have to write the agenda. I don’t have to take the notes. I don’t have to do the follow-up. I’m just spending that hour of my time brainstorming with that client or advising that client or listening to that client.

So, I’m giving them my best. I’m giving them what they expect from me and what they value from me, but then I have a very competent person and a whole team behind that person that’s going to take care of the details. Over time, I’ve just gotten more and more comfortable with it – and that’s truly what it was: me getting comfortable with it. I think it was more in my head than it was anything else. I think the clients are fine with it because, once again, they’re being taken care of. If they weren’t, I’m sure they would say, “Melissa, you schluffed me off on this person and they’re no good.” But fortunately that does not happen.

Also, one of my key employees took on the new business development role a few years ago, so she is bonused on the new business that she brings in. She takes a really instrumental role in that, to the point where now sometimes we have to be sure that the prospective client realizes that she may not be the person that they’re going to see every day too. It’s funny. It’s kind of transferred over a little bit.

ROB: It definitely makes sense. It sounds like one of those things you find along the way; you took it from your name and your person being the reputation to when people bring in Melissa Libby & Associates, your reputation is also the people you bring to the table and who does the work.

MELISSA: Yes, exactly.

ROB: The brand is still you; you haven’t shied away from that, but you’ve expanded what it means.

MELISSA: Right. And as you’ll notice, we a long time ago started using MLA as our logo. Our web address was MelissaLibbyPR.com; now it’s ThinkMLA.com because we wanted to expand beyond the PR and be more than that, and then we also wanted to shorten it and use that MLA more. It just takes my name out of it a little bit. Just a little bit.

ROB: Perfect. Melissa, when people want to find you and MLA, where should they go to find you?

MELISSA: ThinkMLAcom.

ROB: Excellent. Even in the website, it’s changed a little bit. Or was that always the address?

MELISSA: No, it’s changed.

ROB: Very good. Melissa, thank you for enlightening us on your journey with Melissa Libby & Associates as well as the journey of the hospitality industry during this time. I’ve learned a lot, and I think the listeners will have as well.

MELISSA: Thank you. I enjoyed it.

ROB: Be well. Thank you.

MELISSA: All righty.

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.

Jason Therrien is the Founder and CEO of thunder::tech, an integrated marketing agency specializing in digital marketing, brand strategy, and advertising. Since 1997, he has been an entrepreneurial force in the Great Lakes region, creating impact as an investor, board member, and civic volunteer. His dedication to problem-solving and value-driven relationships has led thunder::tech to thrive for over 25 years. A proud John Carroll University graduate, Jason is a sought-after speaker on marketing trends and an active community volunteer serving on the boards of multiple nonprofits.

Amy Balliett is Founder and CEO at Killer Visual Strategies, an agency that specializes in visual communications design – creating such “products” as info and motion graphics, data visualizations, virtual reality, and interactive content. An Inc. 5000 company for four years in a row, Killer, now part of Material, has won over 30 excellence in visual communication awards. Clients include such Fortune 1000 companies as Amazon, Boeing, the Discovery Channel, Edwards Lifesciences Corporation, and Microsoft.

In this interview, Amy talks about the “spammy” beginnings of infographics, when people slapped up on their websites images that had nothing to do with their brand.  She says, a high-quality infographic visually communicates significant meaning so efficiently and effectively that little text is required. Amy notes that around 10,000 infographics are released daily . . . and 99% fail. The 1% that succeed don’t use much text, use custom (as opposed to stock) illustrations, provide proper data visualization, and clearly show attention to detail and time put into the design. The agency’s services keep evolving to meet changing client needs. The biggest challenge is “to find that one illustration style that won’t go out of style.” 

HubSpot reports that “91% of audiences prefer visual content as their primary, secondary, and tertiary form of information delivery.” A visual strategy would consider the first, second, and third pieces of content a prospective client might see going into a funnel. Amy says, “Content is king . . . visual content reigns supreme, and visual strategy is content strategy, just leveled up.”

Amy recommends a 90-second “motion graphic” as the most important piece of visual strategy content a company might invest in now. That 90 seconds can be broken down into “dozens of visually designed scenes” that can be used on social media, stacked to create an infographic, or paginated to create an eBook. She notes that visual content has to be matched both to channels and to audiences. 

Killer evolved over the years . . . through a pivot that exploded . . . first in a good way . . . and then not. Exhausted from the frenetic pace, the agency had never stopped to consider such core questions as: “What’s the type of client that we want? What’s the type of work we really want to do? What’s the type of person we want to be bringing on to our team? What are the values of this company that are going to drive these decisions?”

Amy hired a business coach for herself and the team (probably the best decision she ever made) and an HR consultant to help establish policies. A new focus on building a values-driven culture and hiring and firing employees and clients based on these values changed “who we were, our level of productivity, and the clients we attracted . . . our revenue went up 50% in one year.” The agency’s values are simple: Keep Learning, Inspire Others, Lead by Example, Love What We Do, Embrace Change, and Respect Others.

Amy can be found on LinkedIn at: Amy Balliett on Twitter @amyballiett. Her book, Killer Visual Strategies, available on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Killer-Visual-Strategies-Amy-Balliett/dp/1119680220), was recently awarded “one of the best marketing and sales books of 2020.”

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Amy Balliett, Founder and CEO at Killer Visual Strategies based in Seattle, Washington. Welcome to the podcast, Amy.

AMY: Thank you so much for having me.

ROB: It’s excellent to have you here. You have one of those excellent names for your firm that I think probably tells us what you do, but why don’t you tell us about Killer Visual Strategies and what the firm’s superpower really is? 

AMY: Definitely. To tell you that, the best way to say it is our original name. Our original name was Killer Infographics, so even more focused on what we were doing. At the time, we really focused on developing high-quality infographics for marketing needs and things like that. Over the years, our services kept evolving based on the needs of our clients.

But ultimately, everything still lives on the foundation of what we view as our superpower, which is visual communication design. A high-quality infographic is something that you don’t have to read; instead, you can look at it and cull important information from it without diving into paragraphs of text. So everything we do centers on that. It’s about graphically representing information to efficiently and effectively create meaning and using as little text as possible. That’s really what our superpower is.

ROB: That’s interesting. As little text as possible. What do you recall in your own mind as the emergence of infographics? When did they start catching your eye? When did it become so obsessive for you that it seemed like the business?

AMY: It’s so interesting, because infographics have a very rich history. The very first known infographic was the 1600s, although you could say cave paintings on walls were the first infographics. They’ve been around forever, but around 2008 they started to be used more regularly for SEO needs, for link-building and other forms of content marketing.

I started to slowly get into them because I was heading up SEO at a company here in Seattle and really wanted to use them for the link-building value. But the company I was at never really wanted to use them. So, when I left to start my own company – which was actually a completely different business model than what Killer is today, and which had a bunch of different websites that I was marketing – I started creating infographics to do link-building for all of those websites. That was June of 2010.

At that point, infographics were this big trending thing, and everybody was questioning how long that trend would last. Everybody really thought this was something that was going to be a one-and-done trend, and by 2011 we were going to move to something else for content and content marketing. So I got on it at a time that I thought was the very end of a trend. [laughs] And it turns out it was the very, very beginning.

ROB: How has the use of infographics evolved? There was a point in time where it felt like a well-designed and executed infographic targeted at the right audience really extensively lived as a life of its own, but the fad didn’t end as a fad; it just integrated into the visual language of the internet.

AMY: That’s exactly right. The thing is, at first infographics were so spammy. People would put out content that had nothing to do with their brand, nothing to do with their website. They just really wanted to put out something controversial that was driven by visuals because today’s audiences crave visual content. They were really trying to use infographics to hook somebody and get backlinks primarily.

After that spammy part of the fad started to die down – which happened because Google kept changing their algorithm, and when Google did their Penguin and Panda updates back in 2010 and 2011, all of a sudden the big content farms that were really being fueled by infographics started disappearing from Google. As a result, infographics stopped being as spammy.

The market stopped being flooded with these really spammy designs, and instead large brands started to take notice and said, “Oh wow, this is an amazing way to connect with my audience and really get them to understand our brand, our service, our products without having to give them a big long whitepaper.” The trend was moving away from whitepapers and moving more and more towards media as a form of entertainment and education in all forms.

ROB: That’s a really fascinating evolution there. If we look at today, is there still that link-building aspect to it? Or is it more broadly about brand at this point, and about speaking to an audience coherently with your brand attached to it?

AMY: It’s about speaking to your audience coherently with your brand attached to it. Links definitely come with infographics – not like they used to. In 2010, I put out some awful infographics because I was still learning, and they’d get thousands of backlinks. Anybody would celebrate anything with the word “infographic” attached to it, whereas today, we have far more discerning eyes.

If you jump back to 2010 versus today in 2021, the fact is, media within the internet has evolved so much. There’s so much more of a wow factor in everything we see. That also has led to a heightened expectation for what a good infographic is. There’s still about 10,000 released a day, but 99% of them fail. The 1% of them that truly succeed are the ones that don’t use a lot of text, the ones that use entirely custom illustration, proper data visualization, and the ones that clearly show attention to detail and time put into the design.

But if they’re slapped together, they’re using stock imagery, or if there are paragraphs of text next to a small illustration, things like that, they’re going to fail. People are still jumping on the bandwagon because they think they’re going to get a bunch of backlinks, but if they don’t actually execute them properly, they’re not going to get backlinks, and they might even hurt their brand on top of it.

ROB: It’s good to know the danger there. In the evolution of your firm, you can see this evolution where the infographic is part of a broader visual strategy, probably with a much more expanded vocabulary. What are the elements you see now as the language of visual strategy as you think about it?

AMY: It’s so interesting. There’s this really great stat from HubSpot that 91% of audiences prefer visual content as their primary, secondary, and tertiary form of information delivery. When we think about visual strategy today, we think about the top of the funnel and we say to ourselves, what’s the first, second, and third piece of content somebody’s going to see as they’re going into that funnel?

Then we start to identify what channels those people are living on to deliver that content, and the channels and the audience define what type of content we choose to put out into the ether for the visual strategy of the brand. Sometimes it might be short form social media images with at most 6 words on them. Sometimes it’ll be a visually rich eBook where each page has at most 200 words. Other times it’s a motion graphic.

I always say to anybody who’s thinking about getting into visual strategy for their own brands, the most important piece of content that you can invest in right now is a motion graphic. That’s going to give you so much to work with. It’s usually about 90 seconds. It should never be over 90 seconds. It’s usually about 90 seconds of content that breaks down into dozens of visually designed scenes that you can pull out and use on social media. You can stack the scenes up and create an infographic. You can paginate the scenes and create an eBook. You have so much more than just a motion graphic if you invest in one. You have dozens of other pieces of content you can produce out of it.

It’s really about identifying the right content for the right channel for the right audience. I know that’s kind of the answer to all contact marketing, really, but with visual content there’s definitely different types of visual content that work on different channels. You really have to understand that landscape and choose what’s going to connect with that audience the best.

ROB: Sure, and there’s a distinction in there. Much like the graduation from infographics to visual strategies, when you’re referring to a motion graphic, what I’m picturing is that explainer video, is what some people would call it. Some people would come to you saying they want an explainer video, but I think what you’re saying is that’s not really what they want. If they just got an explainer video that didn’t consider this trend that comes and goes online but is always true, this atomization of content where you can take something and pull it apart into individual pieces that are bite-size and put them lots of places – just asking for an explainer video doesn’t get you there.

AMY: Exactly. Today’s marketers are using 12 to 14 types of visual content just to accomplish singular goals. It can never be one-and-done. You always have to consider all of the different ways you can use that content. You can create derivatives to develop even more campaigns and strategies around it. It is really content marketing. The concept that content is king, which comes from a Bill Gates article in 1999, is still true. Content is king. But visual content reigns supreme, and that’s really what we have to focus on when we think about visual strategy. It’s content strategy, just leveled up.

ROB: Right. One thing I think about in this category that maybe isn’t thought of this way when it comes out is Mary Meeker annually puts out this internet trends deck at the turn of the year. Have you run into that before?

AMY: Yes, definitely.

ROB: It’s hundreds of pages, hundreds of slides in a PowerPoint deck. If you said, “Do you want a 200-slide deck from a venture capitalist?”, I don’t know if you do. But then you look at the pieces of it, and each slide – you know better than I do – seems like it has pretty good value. It seems like it tells a story as a whole, and it seems like it builds a brand for her in whichever firm she’s with.

AMY: Exactly. That’s so spot-on. That’s the entire point. If that were 200 pages of paragraphs of content, do you think it would be given the same level of attention it gets today? Not even at all. Not close.

ROB: Nobody anticipates that one.

AMY: Exactly.

ROB: Amy, you alluded a little bit to the journey, your own journey in starting the firm. It looks from your LinkedIn like, as you mentioned, you were working in SEO. You had a job. You had someone else who was responsible for your paycheck. What led you to turn that corner and go into this process of being responsible to kill what you wanted to eat and then to eventually be responsible for an ever-growing – or maybe not ever-growing, but in many cases a payroll of people who depend on you, and it’s a lot of responsibility? What caused that transition?

AMY: It’s so odd because it’s hard for me to pinpoint an exact time. I owned my first company when I was 17. I actually owned an ice cream parlor and candy store in a summer vacation resort. It was open only during the summer, so it didn’t compete with school. That was my first foray into entrepreneurship – and I hated it, I’m going to be honest with you. I loved it and I hated it. I was working 80+ hours a week during my summer breaks my junior and senior year of high school. That gave me a sour taste in my mouth.

But then about – jeez, I don’t know how long later; maybe it was about 6 years later – I came up with an idea for a social network. This was before Facebook had opened up to non-.edu email addresses. I didn’t even know that Facebook existed yet. I came up with this idea for a social network, but all I had was the idea. I could not execute on the idea because I had zero coding skills. At the time, I was a video editor; my degree is in film, so I was doing video editing and motion picture marketing and really couldn’t bring much to the table for this idea.

I had my cousin join in on the idea, and he could bring everything to the table. He’s a full stack developer and the best designer I’ve ever met. So here’s this guy taking on the weight of the world, basically trying to make my idea come to fruition, and all I can do is try to market the idea, try to build a user base. It failed really quickly because you can’t just come to the table with an idea. You have to be able to execute on that idea. We got to a point after 6 months where it became clear that this was just way too much to put on one person.

During that 6 months, I started to learn SEO and online marketing, so I decided to pivot my career into SEO and online marketing. In that part of my career, I learned web development as well. It really just came down to I had started to stack up a series of skills – nothing that I was fantastic at; everything I was good enough at. If you’re trying to be too many things at once, it’s like trying to learn 10 instruments at once. You’re never going to master one instrument. But I was good enough at enough skills. I was good enough at graphic design, good enough at animation, good enough at development that I was finally in a place where I felt like I could do all of this on my own.

I had tested a few proofs of concept within the last company I worked at, really seeing if I could create new revenue streams for that company. Once I did, I realized, crud, I’m bringing in millions in revenue streams to this company; why can’t I do this for myself?

You get to a point where you have the confidence in your career to take that chance, but I also got to the point where I had enough in savings to take that chance. I’m not going to lie, that was incredibly important to me. I think I would not have taken the risk at all if it weren’t for having a nice safety net of cash just in case everything failed. 

ROB: Amy, a lot of people have that interesting stack of skills, but they may not recognize it. They may not know how to apply it. To your metaphor, they may still be trying to be the best at a particular instrument when it’s really the intersection of several skills that is where they can be truly unique in their world. How did you come to understand that concept of the stack of skills and see it in yourself? 

AMY: It was really just every idea I came up with, I started to realize, “Crud, I need a designer for this, and I need somebody to develop this.” I just started thinking about all the things I needed for somebody to execute on the work. I’m a control freak. I really am. So I started to say, “I need to learn these things myself because I can’t really give away trust too easily and put that work on somebody else’s plate.” For me, that’s really what made me realize I needed that stack of skills: wanting to execute on so many ideas, but not having the capacity to do it myself.

I’m really glad that over the years, I learned to release the reins, because every single employee I’ve hired is 20 times better than me at any one of those skills. And that’s really important. You always have to hire somebody who’s much better than you. But the fact that I’ve been able to play every single role in my company and that I have played every role, that I’ve sat in their shoes – it’s so much easier to manage everybody because I know what they’re going through. I know how long it would take me to do a task, so I can judge how long it would take somebody on my team to do that same task. I know what expectations to put in front of them, and I also know when to pull back and let them take the lead and run the show.

ROB: Right on. I’ve certainly experienced, at least in my perception – and you never know whether you’re wrong in your perception at the top; it’s always worth questioning. But when I’m hiring people within my stack of skills, I feel like I can get to a decision faster, and I feel like I almost get to be the Pied Piper a little bit. There’s a sense of trust and safety that they may feel where they felt wary. I tend to hire software developers for a lot of what we do, and there’s almost an unspoken bond that moves quickly when you can send the right signals, I think. 

AMY: That’s so, so true. That’s exactly how it’s always felt. I remember when we brought on our first developer to the team and I sat down with him and I was talking about a couple of lines of jQuery. He looked at me and said, “Wait, I haven’t had a boss who knows jQuery before.” It was just this weird “aha” moment.

ROB: It’s such a good discussion, the skill stacking thing. I think I have often heard of it spoken of on – there’s a podcaster, James Altucher, and I think he talks about it a good bit. But I don’t know – have you had any good sources for these concepts? Because I think it’s underexplored, and maybe there’s a book or something that I’m less familiar with.

AMY: I haven’t necessarily dove into any books related to this specific concept, no. It really has more come through networking with the right people, getting to know more people who have faced the same types of challenges, but also, again, surrounding myself with such a curious team, a team that will never rest on their laurels. One of our values at Killer is “keep learning,” and it’s probably the most embraced value in the company because everybody’s just trying to stay on top of trends and stay ahead of trends. I think that’s also a part of it. There’s a bit of a competitive attitude where all of us want to be in the know of what that next big thing is.

ROB: It’s such an interesting through line. You mentioned that Google’s obviously changed algorithms, and it feels like they’re a lot closer to trying to provide the result you actually wanted. But there was an era of SEO that was very competitive; it was very much about tactics and how ethical those tactics were. Kind of secret knowledge. But some of that transitions well, probably, into process around visual strategy. There is always something to learn. There is always a new cutting-edge frontline of what’s working and what’s not. You have to keep learning, just like you did in SEO.

AMY: Exactly. It’s so true. What’s interesting is with SEO, you’re trying to game Google’s algorithm, for lack of a better phrase. It is really what you try to do in a lot of ways, whereas with visual strategy, you’re trying to consider so many disparate audiences. What’s going to trend for one audience isn’t going to trend for another audience. There’s not one universal algorithm to break. Instead, it’s really identifying all of the different aesthetic directions that could impact Audience A over Audience B over Audience C and so on.

ROB: It’s an infinite game, too. You can’t just go for the moment. You could position the whole thing as being there to hack the human brain, but in the context of a brand, you also have to consider how people feel afterwards and in the long run. It’s not a short game. It’s not “look at this graphic,” right?

AMY: Exactly. And you also have to consider the timeline of that campaign, because sometimes we’ll have a client where they want a visual language and aesthetic look and feel to uplevel their brand, but something that’s going to last for decades to come. That’s a whole other feat to accomplish, trying to find that one illustration style that won’t go out of style. That’s been an interesting experience.

ROB: Absolutely. Amy, as you reflect on building Killer Visual Strategies, what are some things that you’ve learned along the way that you might do a little bit differently if you were starting from scratch?

AMY: The biggest thing I’ve learned is about being proactive versus reactive. Killer was a pivot from a completely different business model, and because it was a pivot, we didn’t spend a lot of time thinking proactively about what we wanted the business to be. Instead, we just lived in a reactive state for about 3 years. We basically went from our very first quarter of work being 14 orders to the first month in our second quarter being 40 orders, and it just kept going up and up and up and up.

The first 3 years or so, we were just so exhausted by reacting to the demand that we didn’t take the time to say, “What’s the type of client that we want? What’s the type of work we really want to do? What’s the type of person we want to be bringing on to our team? What are the values of this company that are going to drive these decisions?” All of those things that seem corny initially – when you’re an entrepreneur and you want to start a company, the last thing you say is, “What are the values going to be of my company?” It’s rarely something an entrepreneur does first.

But had we done that first, I think we would have grown faster and even more intentionally than we did. Our first 5 years felt like a wild, wild west, and we had a culture inflection point at Year 5 where, honestly, almost everything exploded. And almost everything exploded because we were not a values-driven company. We had a great team; we knew we wanted to go out and get a beer with everybody, but we didn’t all approach conflict in the same way.

When you have a values-driven company, you have a set of guidelines with which to attack conflict together as a team, but we didn’t have that. Nobody really knew what our values were, even though they spelled out the word “KILLER.”

So we had to reset and focus on building a values-driven culture, hiring and firing by our values and hiring and firing clients by our values as well. That drastically changed who we were. It also drastically changed our level of productivity, the types of clients we attracted – I mean, our very first year of really paying attention to that, our revenue went up 50% in one year.

So there’s more than just the corny feelings that you get with coming up with your mission, vision, and values. When you actually truly embrace those and live those and lead by those, you’ll see a team that is so much more inspired, so much more willing to take on the hardest challenges with you. You can really grow your company by leaps and bounds when you do that. That’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned.

ROB: Was it the explosion that pushed you to this realization of the need, or was there another catalyst in your life?

AMY: It was the explosion, it really was. And that explosion was such a slow burn. That powder keg – we knew it was going to explode at some point, but we were still being so reactive that there wasn’t time to pay attention to it.

By the time it happened – we actually joke in the company and we call it “emailgate” because it all started from an email. [laughs] But we brought in the right people at that point. I hired a business coach to come in and coach myself, coach my leadership, and coach the team as a whole. I hired a really good HR consultant to come in and do the exact same thing, to really help us build the right policies in that arena. By bringing on the right experts, I was really, really lucky. I was also somebody who kept saying, “Why do I need a coach? I don’t need a coach! This isn’t a sports team!” [laughs]

It turned out that having a business coach was probably the best investment I have ever made, and I know my team feels that way too, because they saw me change as a result of having somebody really help me look at problems differently and react to critiques from the team differently. When you’re a business owner and you’re at the very top, it is extremely lonely. And when you’re in a creative firm where everybody is really emotionally driven – because to be creative, you have to bring emotion into your work. When you’re that passionate – that’s what I mean by emotionally driven – you’re going to be passionate about what’s working and what’s not in the company, and you’re going to be very vocal about that.

I used to take that as such an affront to me. I would get offended by really positive critiques, people coming to me with good ideas, and maybe I would just look at it as them critiquing me instead of an opportunity to improve in the company.

So having a coach really helped me look at that very differently and embrace the amazing feedback of my team.

ROB: I think it’s so helpful for you to share that, Amy. The perception people have is – in some cases it’s true that a cheesy coach is cheesy and cheesy values are cheesy. Sometimes I feel like I can sound a little bit needy in the course of a conversation because I will tell people about my coach and my therapist and my entrepreneurial support group. But I think we just need to talk about it. For me, those things are all healthy, but maybe there’s sort of the cult of the CEO, where we feel like we need to have all the answers.

AMY: Yes, that’s exactly it. You get imposter syndrome when you don’t necessarily have the right answers. I also have an entrepreneurial support group, and that has been immensely helpful for me. Just talking to other business owners – they don’t have to be in your same industry – and realizing, “Oh, hey, these problems exist across all businesses, not just a creative content agency, or not just a mom and pop shop down the street.”

There’s very similar problems that exist across any culture, across any work environment, and when you can get other business owners to tell you what they’ve gone through and game a solution together, it is so much better than just being in your own silo, trying to figure it out yourself.

ROB: Such a healthy conversation, Amy. You’ve really shared the journey and shared the experience. When people want to connect with you and when they want to connect with Killer Visual Strategies, where should they look you up?

AMY: You can find me on LinkedIn. I’m very active on LinkedIn. Just Amy Balliett on LinkedIn. You can find me on Twitter @amyballiett, although I’m not nearly as active as I should be on Twitter. Then you can also check out my book, which is Killer Visual Strategies, on Amazon. It was just awarded one of the best marketing and sales books of 2020.

ROB: Congratulations. I think we all needed a nice visual book along those lines in 2020 – something to think about aspirationally and not just looking into our own basements.

AMY: Right? That’s so true. Oh my gosh. Good old 2020. [laughs]

ROB: Yeah. Hope is on the way. I’m tremendously hopeful for the year, and I think probably you’re very similarly positioned with your positioning and with what people are about to need to do with you as a partner.

AMY: Yeah, definitely. I’m very excited for what 2021 has in store for us.

ROB: Excellent. Amy, I wish you the best. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I encourage everyone to look Amy up, look up her book, and I would imagine that Killer Visual Strategies probably has a solid couple of social feeds to pay attention to as well.

AMY: Definitely. Thank you so much, Rob. I really appreciate it.

ROB: Thank you, Amy. Be well. Bye.

AMY: 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.

Roxana Shershin, President and Cofounder of Digital Additive, an email marketing services agency, highlights the ability of email marketing communications to marry data, technology, and creative for truly personal marketing communications. Although email is one of the oldest forms of digital marketing, it is constantly evolving. Today, the content of an email may be altered, depending on when it is opened. (The sale that was advertised the day the email was sent may be over two days later when the customer opens the email . . . but the customer will now see the sale which is in effect on the day the email is opened due to a technology called Movable Ink.) Today’s email can also be interactive, including the opportunity for customers to review products from within the body of the email. Roxana also discusses the opportunities which GDPR, General Data Protection Regulation, will afford marketers.

Roxana can be reached by email at: roxana.shershin@digitaladditive.com, on her company’s website at: digitaladditive.com, or on LinkedIn

Mike Popowski, CEO of Dagger, is The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast’s first repeat guest. In this interview, live at the 2019 South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, TX, Mike explores the direction his company, Dagger, a strategic content agency, has taken over the past year.

Dagger’s trademarked statement, “Content at the Speed of Culture,” reflects the company’s focus. Mike describes content as a rallying touchpoint and lists content strategy, brand strategy, analytics, and media as “flanking disciplines.”

Mike notes that modern brands that appeared to be doing very well and staying culturally relevant almost act like media companies. He gave the example of Red Bull, where much of its marketing content is not about selling cans of energy drink, so much as it is focused on the thrill of adrenaline junkie activities that its customers enjoy . . . but have a Red Bull first.

Flat on his back for six weeks after surgery, Mike conceived of the idea of creating a “differentiator.” He and his team loved what Red Bull was doing and decided to launch a media company, dedicated to the culture of Atlanta, and funded through funneling company profits . . . back into the company . . . and into the community. Mike finds Atlanta’s energy dynamic . . . with an exciting influx of talent and brands. @Butter.ATL features articles about topical issues in Atlanta – from emerging artists and restaurants to repeating episodic features such as SneakHer Heads (covering women sneakerheads) or Atlantipedia.

This project has proven to be the differentiator Mike sought. Now, instead of telling clients what Dagger can do for them, @Butter.ATL shows them. Dagger, a cobbler and a cobbler’s child, has a pair of fine shoes! @Butter.ATL has been quite successful, with about 22,000 Instagram followers in the first 6 months and recent recognition at the ADDY awards. Dagger is already reaping ROI results, which Mike did not expect until 2020 – ROI in terms of @Butter.ATL being a door opener. Unlike similar work that Dagger might do for its clients, Dagger is free to say what it likes on @Butter.ATL, and free of the constraints of client agreements and NDAs. Some of the coverage is not laudatory, but Mike places great value on authenticity.

What Dagger does for its clients, it is now doing for itself with @Butter.ATL serving as a learning lab, a “work sample,” an influencer, and a draw for new brands that are now reaching out to Dagger. American rapper, actor, and activist Killer Mike, a big fan of Atlanta, follows Butter.

Mike Popowski can be reached by email at: info@dagger.agency, or on his company’s website: http://dagger.agency/

Tara Murphy owns 360 Media, an entertainment, lifestyle, and hospitality agency that focuses on public relations, event planning, and digital marketing. In the last couple of years, the agency has expanded into hotel work and commercial real estate. 360 Media will have been in business 25 years as of next January.

In this interview, Tara describes how her agency utilizes a variety of complementary narratives, images, and quotes layered on different platforms (social, email, print TV) to build a “big picture” storyline and cadence a client’s message. Tara explains that a lot of companies have ineffective PR because they fail to link their messages across the various platforms. 360-Media often educates clients on how to figure out message cadencing and how to make everything work together.

360 Media’s expansion into the commercial real estate market segment came about when the agency was tasked to promote Atlanta’s Krog Street Market, one of the first “food halls” to gain global recognition. Tara explains that Krog Street Market could have been a glorified food court, but it became much more than that . . . and was pivotal in rejuvenating the neighborhood around it. 

Understanding a client’s goals and objectives, mapping out a strategy, and then building a PR program with integrated story-telling, place-making, and branding components can change commercial real estate from a B2B proposition into a personal “what’s coming to my neighborhood” lifestyle play. 

Tara provides tips on how to write and submit press releases in today’s environment, what makes something newsworthy, and how to help a client find the unique “angle” that makes a “me too” announcement stand out. (This understanding is the light-bulb moment.) Less is more, Tara says. You have to target your audience, then customize the pieces for each of those targeted audiences.

Tara notes a couple of things she might have done differently when she started:

• She feels she should have been more ready to follow her intuition, 
• She made the mistake of extending too much credit to financially-strapped clients

The things that have helped 360 Media succeed for almost a quarter decade:

• Being open to morph and willing to take on new challenges
• Keeping a diverse client base

For the past 2 years, 360 Media has published the Atlanta 100, an end-of-the workweek e-newsletter and website (theatlanta100.com), which each week features twelve 100-word stories and 100-second videos on topics of intrigue in the Atlanta area. Lots of information . . . quick and easy access.

Tara can be reached on her agency’s website at 360media.net or on Instagram at 360 Media, Inc (@360mediainc).

Transcript Follows:

Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Tara Murphy, Owner at 360 Media, based in my own hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Welcome to the podcast, Tara.

TARA: Thank you so much for having me.

ROB: Thank you for coming on. I wish that we were not sheltering in place and we could then actually meet up in Atlanta and do a live interview. Those are always fun. But we will call that for another time. Why don’t you start off by diving into 360 Media and where 360 Media excels?

TARA: Sure. 360 Media is an entertainment, lifestyle, and hospitality agency. We focus on PR and a little bit of event planning and then digital marketing. Our sweet spot is traditional PR, and we are about to celebrate our 25th anniversary in January of 2021, which is very weird to say. We’ve morphed over the years but always have stayed under that umbrella of entertainment, lifestyle, and hospitality. That’s our focus and the sectors that we work with.

It’s been really interesting the last couple of years. We’ve expanded a little bit into hotel work, commercial real estate. We have a lot of those clients who say that we make corporate cool. We take commercial real estate and turn it more into a lifestyle play, which is really fascinating and interesting. It’s been a wild ride over the years, and we’ve continued to morph. But PR has been the area we’ve always continued to excel and focus on.

ROB: Congratulations, by the way, on that 25 years. Hopefully you’ll be in a good position to actually plan an event for that, because that would be an excellent thing to be able to do from where we are right now.

TARA: Thank you. Yeah, I’ve had a couple of people say the same thing, and I’m like, “We still have 6 months!” But that’s going to fly by.

ROB: For sure, it will. It’s interesting you mention that shift in commercial real estate. What do you think it is that has made it shift so that normal people are interested in development of cities and new things that are happening? Nobody really gets excited about an office building usually, but something indeed I think has changed with the emergence of let’s say Curbed and some of the blogs in the space and that sort of thing.

TARA: Yeah, good point on Curbed. I think they’ve really helped make it accessible. For years, everyone just thought of real estate – there would be a sign in front of a building or in a window, and it was like, “Okay, what tenant’s going to go in there?”

But I would say probably in the last 5 to 7 years, it’s really turned a lot more into the storytelling, the place-making, the brand awareness, because you’re creating these pockets in cities that are little neighborhoods. Obviously, you live in Atlanta; a lot of people these days, because of the traffic and the growth, are staying in their 3-5 mile radius around their home. They want to know, “Do I have those everyday needs accessible?” and “What’s coming into my neighborhood?”, whether that’s a great little restaurant or a boutique or some sort of service that you want to be able to use.

I think people get more excited about “this is what’s coming to my neighborhood.” People are really thinking about the needs of the neighborhood. Also, what’s really popular in Atlanta is not just taking buildings and revving them – actually renovating, going in and repurposing. I think people have gotten really excited, so that’s opened the door to a little bit more interest and knowledge from the general public.

It’s funny; with a lot of the real estate clients that we’ve had, it all started because we got brought on for Krog Street Market, when that got announced here. For those that don’t know, that’s a big food hall in town. It was one of the first food halls that made a mark globally, and it was interesting being part of that because people look at that and say, “It could’ve been a glorified food court” – but it wasn’t that, and it isn’t that to this day. That really helped change that neighborhood.

When we finished working on that project, when the developer sold a couple years ago, it opened the door to a lot of other real estate clients coming in and saying, “Hey, how do you take something like that and make it accessible for the general consumer or get them excited, or how do we get press like that?” It really was an area that I never thought we would get business in, but it’s been challenging and fascinating and fun. I think we bring a different viewpoint, coming at it from the lifestyle perspective rather than the B2B perspective. Clients like that. We’ve been able to get press, so that’s been good.

ROB: I think we do want to hear those stories, these origin stories, these entrepreneurial stories, of something that we hope becomes something bigger. I think it’s something that we lost. Food courts at one point actually were a place of innovation and entrepreneurship and of good stories. Chick-fil-A heavily grew in food courts, and I believe the Great American Cookie Company started in Atlanta, Georgia in a food court.

We went through a season where those things didn’t happen and there wasn’t that entry point for an entrepreneurial restauranteur. And it’s back. It’s cool that you get to be a part of that story.

Now, PR means a lot of things to a lot of people. Some people think about trying to get a software company an article in Forbes or Fortune, and some people think about this very encompassing suite of services, often on a local level. When you break down PR into the pieces and parts, what are the actual details and activities and day-to-day things you’re doing for clients?

TARA: It varies per client. A lot of them will come knowing that they need PR, but not exactly sure what we can do for them or what we bring to the table. A lot of times it’s definitely, especially in our pitching, a little bit of an education as to what we do a little differently than most.

But our day to day varies depending on if we’ve got an event that we’re working on, or if it’s a product or a restaurant opening. From press releases to pitching media outlets – and that’s print, radio, TV, online, influencers now, which is a big taboo topic – pitching all of that, crisis management if there’s an issue, management of the day-to-day messaging and storytelling for a client. We also do a lot with social media and digital marketing, whether that’s us doing it for a client or working with another vendor that they have.

We help create the storyline for the PR side, and where a lot of companies fail is that they’re not weaving these things together. When that message is weaved together, whether that’s through their email blasts or their social media platforms, it all works together. They may see something on social, then they see something in an email, then they see something in print or on TV, and you get that bigger picture storytelling.

So, we do a lot of education with clients on how to figure out their cadence of messaging, but then also, how does that all work together? Are you telling the same story on every platform on the same day? No, let’s not do that. Let’s build it out. Let’s weave in PR. Let’s weave in quotes. Let’s weave in whatever the reaction is from the general public, or high points.

There’s a lot of strategic work that we do now, which for me personally is my favorite thing. Starting an agency 25 years ago, I didn’t know a lot when I started. You don’t know what you don’t know. As it’s grown and PR has changed and morphed over the years, strategy has always stood out to me as the key need. Understanding a client’s goals and what they need to get out of it and then mapping out a strategy – that’s where we’ve had, knock on wood, our most successful campaigns and client work.

I remember years ago, prior to starting 360, I worked at an independent record label, and we used to have to monitor how many calls we made, and we had to send out so much product. It was like you send out hundreds and hundreds of pieces of music and you just see what sticks. You can’t possibly call thousands of journalists.

I learned during that time that it worked for a short period of time, but then what really changed was, let’s target. Maybe we send all this stuff out and whatever sticks, sticks, but let’s target 10-15 outlets that we really want to tell the story to, and let’s figure out that story for each outlet depending on what they cover.

As we started to do that, we had big, successful pieces, and they were larger features. That was the turning point for me, going and working with a lot of clients and figuring out, “What’s our strategy and how do we make more impact?” They always say less is more, and that definitely resonates a lot these days with PR.

So, every day is different, but those are the base things that we work on. Some days there are some new things brought to the table, especially during a pandemic. [laughs] We’ve done a lot of new stuff that I was like, “Huh, never thought we’d work on that or do this kind of thing.” But for the most part, the overarching PR is a lot of writing, pitching, press releases, and storytelling.

ROB: You can definitely see where that 360 degrees comes in for 360 Media. I think PR is often misunderstood to be shouting really loud, and you’re talking about it so much more like a surround sound, where you get those different touchpoints that really reinforce the story and create that picture in your mind.

You mentioned press releases, and I think press releases are perhaps one of the most misunderstood, maligned, and also misused tools that are out there. How do you think about and redeem the press release and help it to be the noble thing that it is, and also maybe how people may misuse them?

TARA: That has become a very hot topic in our office. You go from one extreme to the other, where, as you said, people get confused by it. Not everything is worthy of a press release, but then again, there are plenty of times that a press release done well can cut through the clutter and gets picked up exactly how it’s written, and that is a win for a client, and obviously a win for us.

In this day and age, there’s an amazing 24-hour news cycle and there’s a lot of opportunity to get coverage, but there’s also fewer journalists and people working at publications, so you’ve got to find that middle ground that you’re not inundating them with useless information, but you’re also providing enough that if they are short-staffed or they are one person covering five or six feeds, you have enough information there that they can pull content, don’t necessarily have to deal with you or do an interview, and get a story up.

Part of what we do is not only look at things and say, “Yes, that’s worthy of a press release,” but we also look at what information we have. Do we have video? Do we have photography? Do we have quotes? Is there another way that this may be delivered to a journalist that would resonate more than just a press release?

We really are now weighing out how that information goes out on our email list. Some days it is just a traditional press release, and other days it’s a video that then links to a blog post that has more information, or it’s an e-blast that is an invite to experience something online, especially now, since everybody’s working remotely. There’s a lot of different ways that we’re doing it, and we continue to change it up and think, “How is this going to land and what’s going to interest someone?”

That’s been really good. We get a lot of feedback from journalists who are like, “We’re not getting the same old, same old from you, and that’s really what stands out to us,” which I love.

On the press release side, though, I will say if you write a great press release – and sometimes I get dinged from people and they’re like “it’s not AP style” and all of those things that are traditional. It’s like, no, this stands out a little bit differently because we write in a little bit more of an editorial fashion. Some of our clients can be dinged as a little fluffy, so people are like, “This isn’t really newsworthy. It’s a little too fluff.”

But we try to find that middle ground where it’s like, here’s an editorial piece for you that not only covers what’s newsworthy on this end, but it can be cut and pasted and either put on a blog, or if an influencer is putting something up on their Instagram, they’ve got quotes they can use from the client, or a link to a Dropbox that’s got photography or graphic assets that are done for Instagram, Facebook. We really try to make it very easy because everybody is so crazy busy, and that also stands out.

Press releases are interesting. We just had a conversation this past week about a client. They wanted something in a press release, and I was like, “No, it’s not going to land right. Let’s do XYZ.” It stood out and it was different. There’s a lot of stuff going on, obviously, with the pandemic and restaurants reopening. Because restaurants are reopening, everyone thinks, “My dining room is open. This is newsworthy.” Well, we’re in a huge influx of dining rooms reopening, so what are you doing that’s different compared to everybody else and you’re not just opening? So we had to dig a little deeper, and we created the story, which then was like, “Okay, this is press release worthy because they’re doing some stuff differently.”

ROB: This is where maybe someone will say they’re doing this different menu, they’re doing this different format of service, they’re doing this very unique thing in terms of how they’re protecting people, or even some restaurants have been able to get the story out about how they are doing a mini-grocery. Is that the story?

TARA: Yes.

ROB: Instead of saying, “Hey, we’re still open and doing takeout.” It’s like, yes, so is everyone else who wants to save their restaurant. What are you doing that’s different from just “yes, you can place an order on Uber Eats”?

TARA: Yep. It’s interesting because at the time when everybody was pivoting, that was newsworthy because some of these places weren’t on Uber Eats or Grubhub or any of those services. But then it was like, okay, that’s newsworthy for all of 5 minutes, but what are you doing differently for your team or onsite or the meals you’re delivering?

A prime example, Mission + Market in Buckhead is one of our clients, and for the first couple of weeks as they were pivoting, they were doing themed nights where it was like family meal and just different things. That was working very well for them, but what they ended up doing also was realizing that so many restaurants were closing at the time, they stepped up and on Thursdays were doing meals for people that had lost their jobs because of COVID.

So, they not only covered the hospitality industry, but they were like, “Anyone that’s lost their job, if you can show that you’re no longer employed, you can order a meal through us.” They did it I want to say for 2 months and served over 1,500 people every Thursday. It was really incredible, and they got a lot of attention. Now, they didn’t do this to get attention, but we had to put it out to say this is what they’re doing so that people knew, and it ended up getting a lot of positive attention and other companies that wanted to support and give sponsorship to help cover the meals they were covering themselves. It turned into a much bigger thing. We got a lot of press out of it, even though that wasn’t the game plan for it. It really made them stand out.

ROB: For sure. There are a few folks I know in the service industry who just seem to have a natural knack for storytelling and baiting the hook and getting the right stories out there and getting coverage. How much of this thinking and getting these stories to land right is instinct, and how much of that do you think can be developed? And if it can be developed, how do you think about developing that proper mindset?

TARA: I think some of it is instinct. I think also some of it is development. I think you’re on the money there, because a lot of people – any client; it’s not just in the hospitality industry – they’re in there day to day, and they can’t really see everything that is exciting or interesting, or maybe they’re not up on the day to day of what’s newsworthy or what might be resonating in pop culture. Meanwhile, they’re doing something and it’s like, oh my gosh, here’s a local story that resonates with a national story or something that’s trending nationally.

When you start working with a client and start putting those ideas out there or talking to them or digging in a little deeper, all of a sudden you see their eyes light up and it’s like a light bulb moment. They’re like, “Wait a second, we’re also doing XYZ.” It’s like, “Yes, that is interesting and that’s newsworthy.” That’s been a really cool thing to watch as we continue to work with clients. Over time, you get in that groove, and they start seeing what you’re seeing.

They also start understanding how media works. Sometimes we’ll have clients call and say, “I read this piece. We are doing this. Can you reach out to this writer and perhaps they would do something on us?” That’s always cool, when we see clients grow into understanding what editorial options they have. Or “Hey, we’re looking to do something for our anniversary. We don’t want to do it exactly like everyone else. Here are the ideas we’ve come up with.” We come in and fine-tune that stuff.

We also sometimes – I think this is one of the things that we’re really known for amongst the clients we work with – just coming in and seeing things differently, and giving them a picture. They may come to the table and say, “Here’s what we have. This is what we’d like to do,” and then we say, “Okay, this is great. Let’s take this up a notch. How about this?” That’s been really cool, to have clients that are open to collaboration and getting it to a place where it’s like, “This will get you small press, but this will get you big press.” They’re like, “Oh, okay!”

That part is a lot of fun, especially when you tell them something is going to happen and then it does. [laughs] Which you can’t guarantee, but when you’re like, “This is big,” and then we take it out and either pitch it to someone exclusively or put it out en masse and they see the response they get, it’s like, “Oh, okay, you guys were right.” That’s a lot of fun.

It’s interesting, too – I had a new business pitch last week over Zoom, which obviously is new. A lot of calls and a lot of Zoom pitches. But in the midst of the pitch with this potential client, they were talking about some of the things they were doing, and immediately I was like, “Why don’t you take this and you could do this and this and this?” The look on all of their faces – we were on Zoom and I love seeing it – they were like, “Oh my God, that was right in front of us.” I was like, “Yes, but you’re in it. You can’t see it.” That part was great.

We had a follow-up call yesterday and they were like, “We took what you said. How about this, this, and this?” And we’re not even on board yet. We’re just now going through the proposal. It was funny. I was like, “Yes, that could all work.” That’s an interesting – either you have to feed people or they get into it and get excited.

ROB: And maybe the people I think have good instincts just have really good help, so who knows?

TARA: [laughs] Both.

ROB: [laughs] Tara, almost 25 years ago, when you started up 360, did you have any inkling that you were in it for the long haul? What was the formative driving force there?

TARA: No, I really didn’t. It’s funny; a lot of times people ask, “Did you have a business plan? Did you map things out?” For the longest time, I was a little embarrassed. I was like, maybe I did something wrong? I didn’t have a business plan, and I never mapped out, “Here’s my 3- or 5-year, 10-year goal.”

When I started 360, I had just left a record label, and the owners were married and they got a divorce. It was like you had to take sides, and the label crumbled. I jumped ship with the female side of the business because she was my day-to-day, and she started another company and I worked there for a little bit. In the midst of that, she ended up taking another job. There were four of us that had gone with her. I started to reach out and do résumés and call people and all these things, and it just never went anywhere.

I had interned with a company called Concert Southern that is now the Live Nation Atlanta office back in the day, and I was there when they started Music Midtown. I was an intern on Music Midtown the first year, and then they called and were like, “Why don’t you put in a proposal? We need a PR person, and you know this event.” I was like, “What?” [laughs] I put like a 27-page proposal together. I’d never done one before. I put it in. This was Year 3 of the festival. I’d been an intern on the first one, volunteered on the second one on the PR communications side, and then put in a proposal for Year 3.

It ended up becoming my first client, but I didn’t know it at the time. It was more, “Sure, I’ll do this. This is a 6-month gig. This will pay me some money.” I had to move back in with my parents right after college for a little while during this time because I didn’t have a job. It was kind of like, “Okay, let’s do this.” Then I started to get other business. Then it was time for Music Midtown again.

So, 3 years into it, I was like, maybe I really need to get a business license and do some things rather than this freelance stuff. I ended up getting my first employee and built it from there.

Sitting here now and thinking about it being 25 years later, there’s so many things that happened over time – the recession and things that we got hit with – and to still be here is mind-blowing to me on a lot of levels. I didn’t have a business degree, and I got a ‘D’ in PR in college. It was not what I wanted to do. [laughs] It’s like, you put your mind to something and you can do anything.

Sometimes when people ask me about a business plan, I say, had I done that, I probably would have failed because I would have been one of those that had to stick to the business plan. Over the 25 years, we’ve morphed and we’ve opened the door to other types of clients. Like I mentioned earlier with commercial real estate, I would have never, ever opened the door to that. But it rolled in in a very interesting way, and it was like, “Okay, let’s go down this road.” That’s I think kept us going.

Honestly, even in this pandemic, probably 80% of our clients have put us on hold because a lot were restaurants and entertainment and events. Our hotel, real estate, design clients are all still booming, so that’s been interesting. Had we not had that, we would probably be in a little bit of a different spot right now. But our restaurants are coming back and things are changing.

I’ve learned a lot over the last 25 years. But no, I would’ve never guessed that we’d be here. Ever.

ROB: You mentioned learning some things over the course of the business. What are some things you’ve learned along the way that you might do differently if you were starting anew?

TARA: It’s interesting. I was asked that question one other time, a couple years ago, and I had a very different answer. I think for me, there’s not a lot that I would do differently. I probably would learn to go with my gut, my intuition. I wish I had learned to do that sooner. I’ve always had a strong gut reaction and intuition, but sometimes it’s like, “That doesn’t make sense right now. Why are you thinking that?” I didn’t fully always embrace it. So I would probably do that sooner.

I also would not let people – you bend for clients that might be struggling or things that are happening, and I have bent probably one too many times for people who owed me money. I let it get a little too far down the road, and then it becomes harder to collect. I’ve learned that a lot more in the last 4 years of business. You get to a place where you’re doing well, and it’s like, “Oh, we can let someone slide for a little bit while they’re struggling,” and then it just ends up catching up. We got dinged a little too much the last couple of years. So, I probably wouldn’t let the debt get too big. I’ve learned a lesson there.

I also probably – there were two times in my entire career that I took clients for money, because it was big, but my gut said “these aren’t right for you or the firm.” Again, just listening to my gut. I would do that much sooner.

But I think also, in what would you not do/what would you do, as entrepreneurs, when you have no fear in the beginning because you don’t know what you don’t know and then you go through an experience and you’re like, “Ugh, been there, done that. I’m not doing that again” – I think it’s important as an entrepreneur to really be open and let things flow in and assess them, and not be closed off to things.

It really, truly is how I’ve grown 360. Putting out there, “Hey, I’m interested in more events or festivals” or whatever it is, always, doors open. Being afraid is fine, but you can take a pivot, you can take a next step, and it does work out. I think you just have to control your fear and be excited about it. I think that’s important.

ROB: That’s all very practical, and I appreciate that. I also had some wounds on the not collecting money quick enough train. It’s never, ever fun, because you realize quickly that when someone is going out of business, there’s just really not going to be money for you, for the most part.

TARA: [laughs] That is a lesson to learn.

ROB: You think about “Oh, bankruptcy, you split it up” – no, no. There’s just no money. Good luck. [laughs]

TARA: Yeah. Also, being diligent. I will say this: I have a former client that has owed me money since 2017, and I got a check last week. In a pandemic, I’m getting paid. I’m like, okay, this is the universe looking out for me. But it was being diligent and not just letting it go. I wouldn’t have done that before. I just would’ve been like, “It’s just a write-off. Let’s move on.” But sometimes good things happen.

ROB: Yeah, don’t write it off until you’ve asked a few times, at least, right?

TARA: Right. [laughs] Totally.

ROB: Excellent. Tara, when people want to find you and find 360, where should they look for you?

TARA: We have a website, 360media.net. We are also on Instagram under the same thing, 360 Media, Inc (@360mediainc).

We also are the publishers – I didn’t even mention this – of the Atlanta 100. The Atlanta 100 is a weekly newsletter that we do, and there’s a website, theatlanta100.com. It’s a weekly newsletter that goes out every Thursday or Friday with 12 stories about Atlanta in 100 words. We’ve been the publishers of that for the last 2 years. There’s a lot of not only stuff about Atlanta, but also our clients as well.

ROB: Excellent. Sounds solidly played. We’ll get all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on, Tara. It’s been a pleasure. Again, maybe someday we can do an event in person.

TARA: I know, I would love that. It was good to hear that you’re here. Thank you so much for having me. This has been a lot of fun.

ROB: Thank you. Bye bye.

TARA: 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.

Kevin Hourigan is President and CEO of Bayshore Solutions, a digital agency that started in 1996 as a branch of a managed services provider – a 3-member team building and maintaining client networks. Two years later? Thirty employees. 

Decades ago, one of the Kevin’s engineers developed a company website and asked 100 of the company’s clients if they would be interested in a 3-page website for $500. Client responses were either “What’s a website?” or “We’ll never need one of those.” One client agreed to give it a try. That $500 website cost $5,000 to build, but two years later, in 1998, clients came begging for websites, which were now more profitably priced at $7,500 and up.

The company failed in its attempt to go public in the late 90s and survived the dot com crash in the early 2000s. Its base of paying clients plummeted 90%. In response, the company slashed its staff from 225 to 12 in a year. Larger agencies, the ones Kevin considered as his mentors, the ones that went public . . . failed. Bayshore Solutions is one of only 2% of the digital agencies that survived the dot com collapse.

When Kevin realized that what he had left of the company would never again be “an aspiring dot-commer on the verge of going public, spending money like it’s going out of style with clients spending money with us like it’s going out of style,” he knew it was time to rebrand. He wanted the new name to be “agnostic,” that is, not tied to any transient technology. Bayshore Web Development could become obsolete. Baysore Solutions, on the other hand, would not be tied to any here today, gone tomorrow technology.

For almost 25 years, BayShore Solutions has helped clients create advertising campaigns that drive qualified traffic. It designs and develops powerful stakeholder-targeted websites with the right marketing mix to help its clients succeed. The agency markets itself as a digital expert, applying strategies horizontally across a variety of verticals, transferring experience from one vertical to another completely unrelated (and non-competing) vertical. Every solution is unique, with a balance of the “bleeding edge of new and the tested, tried, and true.” Around 90% of implementation strategies are things Bayshore KNOWS will work. The 5 to 15% that is experimental will vary depending on the phase of an industry’s business cycle. 

After Kevin had excellent experience working with a CEO coach, he decided to let his leadership team hire an executive team coach. The result? Tighter vision and a better definition of core values (working together, winning together, and solving problems together), with the team all learning together, rather than receiving the information from “an informed Kevin. He says, “Having a team coach, we’re hearing the same thing at the same time.”

In response to the impact of Covid-19, Kevin explains that his company has reduced unnecessary expenses and increased its marketing budget by 50%. He says the company’s strategy is to market and sell its way through the crisis, rather than trying to cut its way through. The results so far? Leads are up, traffic is up, and sales have met December’s forecasts. He plans to continue operating this way and says the agency’s next 90-day plan is to remove unnecessary operational expenses and reinvest that money in sales and marketing efforts. 

Kevin can be found on his agency’s website at: BayshoreSolutions.com or by email at: kevin@bayshoresolutions.com

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined today by Kevin Hourigan, President and CEO of Bayshore Solutions based in Tampa, Florida. Welcome to the podcast, Kevin.

KEVIN: Hey, good morning, Rob. Nice to be here.

ROB: Fantastic to have you here. Why don’t you start off by telling us about Bayshore Solutions and where you are excellent? 

KEVIN: Appreciate that, Rob. Bayshore Solutions, we’re a company that’s about to celebrate our 25th year of providing services to our clients. I think what makes that special – we started this company in January of 1996, when America Online or AOL or however you might know of them was still on Version 1, and many people were still just getting introduced to the internet.

As a digital agency, we’ve probably been around more than probably the top one percentile of the industry’s experts. For almost 25 years, we’ve been helping our clients design and develop the correct website that’s going to speak to their primary stakeholders as well as creating the advertising campaign that’s going to drive qualified traffic and help our customers grow through a combination of the right website to the right audience with the right marketing mix. Enjoyed 25 years and still having fun at it.

ROB: That’s remarkable. Congratulations on those 25 years. If we rewind to 1996, what do websites look like, and what do your scopes of work look like at that time?

KEVIN: It’s too funny. I love telling the story, Rob. In January 1996 when we went to market, this was a new division of a company that I had. Back then, we would be what you might call a managed services provider or your outsourced IT department. But essentially, my company at the time really helped companies manage their computer networks – which, back then, there was no cloud; they were all in some kind of closet in the corner of a company’s office space. We managed their servers, their desktop computers and things of that nature.

One of our engineers was getting into web design and built our company’s website and wanted to see if we could do the same for a couple of our clients. I told him I don’t have any blockers to it. I wasn’t super excited about the idea, but he was knocking on our clients’ doors, and he was offering them a three-page website for $500. Of the first 100 people that he asked that were existing clients, they had two responses: “What is a website?” or “We’ll never need one of those.”

Finally, finally, one of them said yes. We built them a three-page website. Really, all it was, was a digital version of a trifold brochure that they had, but I think we spent $5,000 building this $500 website. But sooner or later, all that came back. About a year or two later, all of those companies that said, “What is a website?” or “we’ll never need one of those” were banging on our door and saying, “Hey, listen, that website thing you talked about a year or two ago – I think we need one of those.” But the good news is they weren’t $500 anymore; they were $7,500.

I think we were such an early adopter to this that we were truly to educate a market on a need they were going to have, and they weren’t ready yet. But when they were ready, they came back to us, and I think that’s part of our viability. We’re fortunate; we’re one of only 2% of the agencies who survived the dot-com bubble burst. I think it was those early seeds we planted in building a good client base that helped us survive the dot-come bubble.

We were a company that went from three employees when we got started to two years later having 30 employees to a year after that having 225 and blowing up huge in the dot-com bubble. But when the bubble burst, we went from 225 employees down to about 12 in a matter of a year period of time. If it wasn’t for that early foundation of clients that we had found, I don’t think we would have survived. There’s an old saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Certainly, we learned a lot of experiences from that. But very thankful for that original client base that we had.

ROB: In that timeframe, a lot of web companies went tremendously, tremendously upmarket. I don’t think people realize how little you would get sometimes for a million-dollar website in that era.

KEVIN: Yes.

ROB: Kind of the iXLs and the Razorfishes of the world. Did you ever swim up to that scope and scale of website, or did your MSP roots also keep you grounded in –

KEVIN: As I tell the story, we started out in ’96 with $500 websites. In 1998, the average value got to be $7,500. In 2000 that went to $216,500. You just see how that was growing. iXL and Razorfish were what I would call my mentor companies. I’m very fortunate that I’ve had some great personal mentors in my career, but I had some corporate mentors. I looked at iXL and Razorfish as those two companies.

I don’t know if these are the right words, but I think we got cocky a little bit. We put billboards right above the headquarters of iXL of our company’s brand. [laughs] So companies or employees going in there knew who we were, and we used that as one of our marketing tactics.

Then, fortunately, I got a chance to actually go through the offices of Razorfish on a couple different occasions as our company was about to go public in the journey, and the bankers that were going to take us public also took Razorfish public. So, we got a chance to go see how Razorfish operated and things of that nature.

But I think one of the blessings we ended up receiving was just that we didn’t go public. iXL didn’t survive; Razorfish changed ownership numerous times, bought and sold for losses during the journey. Because we didn’t go public, I got to own the decisions that we had to make to navigate that journey. While it was no fun to deal with the downside of the dot-com bubble bursting, I do think it was a savior that we were able to make the changes necessary and nimble enough to be able to survive, where some of those mentors that I looked up to didn’t have the same outcome.

ROB: It’s interesting. I think everybody in that time was a little bit cocky. You mentioned you had the billboard by iXL, and Milchem today puts billboards near their competitors just to spite them a little bit, although they are a cash machine. But iXL I believe also had a movie theater on their roof, so I think everyone was a little bit cocky.

KEVIN: For sure. Cocky or stupid or a combination of each. Unfortunately, I think a victim of the times – everyone thought those were the right things to do. At that time, I joke like everyone in 1999 or 2000 was changing the name of their company to something “dot com.” I remember seeing State Farm change their name to “StateFarm.com.” Sears changed their name from Sears to “Sears.com.” Everyone thought if they didn’t do that, they weren’t going to survive, but fear was motivating their decision, and often good decisions aren’t the outcome of fear.

I think the dot-com bubble exploded for numerous different reasons, but one of them is everyone was chasing after something they didn’t understand, and everyone got caught up in that momentum. The good news is that wasn’t the right momentum, and correction needed to take place, and it did and everyone got better and stronger as a result of it. 

ROB: For sure. Amazing that you were even able to survive. How do you navigate that sort of path from 200+ employees to around 12? Obviously, there’s the financial aspect of it, but there’s also the psychological aspect, the identity of the company and your role shifting so quickly. How did you navigate that healthily and keep the business rolling as well?

KEVIN: Of course, downsizing is never fun for anybody at all, but the reality is that the companies who paid me $500 for a website or later $7,500 stayed with me. The companies who were paying $216,500, it wasn’t their money. They had investors, and when the dot-com bubble burst, those investors weren’t funding those projects anymore. 90% of my clients could no longer pay their bills anymore, so I had to send a cease and desist letter to all my clients that if they couldn’t meet their current financial obligations to our company, we had to sever services. 30 days later, I lost 90% of my client base.

But who did I still have left? The people who paid me that $7,500, who had realistic expectations of what their investment was going to make for their business and how it was going to help them grow. The ones who had unrealistic expectations were someone who raised zillions and millions of dollars with this fantastic idea and spending money like it was going out of style – and then it went out of style, and there was no money to be had.

I think in the journey of going down, some of my coworkers were cognizant enough to know that what we thought we all were working towards, the opportunity had gone. Others weren’t quite there yet, and I think there was a hope that it would go back to the way it was. Unfortunately, some self-selected themselves to go somewhere else, and unfortunately we had more than one round of layoffs that helped some of that reduction as well.

At the end of the journey, Rob, to your point, I ended up rebranding our company because the company that we were wasn’t the company that we were going to become. I didn’t want that brand of who we were – an aspiring dot-commer on the verges of going public, spending money like it’s going out of style with clients spending money with us like it’s going out of style – that went away, and I think I had to rebrand my company and find people how accepted the fact that it was never going to be what we thought it was, where we are going to have stock options and be worth a lot of money. I had to find a core team who realized that wasn’t on the table anymore. I had to change the company’s brand because I didn’t want us hanging onto a lost hope that wasn’t going to be a new reality.

ROB: Wow, that’s quite a shift, but it’s tremendous to think about getting the right team on board for that shift. You mentioned you’ve been in business almost 25 years.

KEVIN: Correct.

ROB: One thing you see with agencies that stay in business for a while is sometimes they get mired in the previous generation of the marketing that was hot. There are still web design development agencies. There are still SEO and pay-per-click agencies. But the bar keeps on moving. The target keeps on moving. How have you navigated which lines of service and which technologies, which tools, which marketing channels to bring into the mix and which ones to hold at arm’s length? 

KEVIN: That’s a great question. When I rebranded the company, we came up with the brand Bayshore Solutions. Why’d you come up with Bayshore Solutions? The reality is very similar to the question you just asked. I named our company Bayshore Solutions, one, because our office was adjacent to Bayshore Boulevard in Tampa, Florida, so that’s where the “Bayshore” came from. [laughs] But the “solutions” piece was I didn’t want our company’s name to be associated with any service that I didn’t know would survive the outcome of the dot-com bubble burst.

At the time, it could’ve been Bayshore Web Design. It could’ve been Bayshore Web Development. It could’ve been Bayshore SEO. It could’ve been any of those. But I didn’t want to tattoo the name of our company and associate it to a service that may not be what the new norm was going to become. So, very agnostically, I used the word “solutions.” That gave us an opportunity to not be positioning our brand name with a particular area of the industry that you didn’t know would still be surviving.

Then on an ongoing basis, under Bayshore Solutions, the services that we provide – I’ve always said that at the end of the day, the value that we bring to our clients is a level of expertise over and above what they have. Our tagline is “Digital expertise to grow your business.” It’s my job and our company’s job to continue to find a balance between the bleeding edge of new and the tested, tried, and true. It’s finding a solution that isn’t too risky to be on the bleeding edge but isn’t that lack of scalable to be leveraging the tested, tried, and true, and always be bringing a solution to our clients that balances a little bit of both, minimizes their bleeding edge risk, but maximizes their ability to have their investment have some scalability.

It’s always having that next level of expertise that our clients value and can appreciate, and the services around what we can do for them are going to help them move their needle towards growth.

ROB: Is there a percent range of budget you recommend, often, towards more experimental channels? Less proven, in your words?

KEVIN: It’s a great question. I think while every client would love to hear every dollar that they spend absolutely is intended for strict ROI, the opportunity to find the right mix is putting a percentage in the media budget and services to some experimental type things. I think while every solution is unique and different, some are in the 10% range. Give or take 5 points is probably the right answer. So 5% to 15%.

Often that variance can be where particular industries are in their particular cycle. Almost every vertical market has cycles. Some are in an upcycle, some are in a downcycle. Where you spend your exploratory dollars on an upcycle is probably a bigger percentage, and on a downcycle it’s probably a smaller percentage. But it’s finding that right mix, whether it’s opportunity to grow in each particular vertical market that we’re providing services for, and educating our clients that part of the opportunity to find their secret sauce is finding a budget that we can use for some exploratory services.

The other neat thing that we do, Rob, is we market ourselves as digital experts horizontally across numerous verticals. When I talk to our clients every month and I ask about what’s the value we bring back to them, what I hear them say is they have a choice of picking an agency with vertical market expertise or one who’s more of a generalist across many vertical markets, and they appreciate picking Bayshore Solutions, who has this horizontal approach to many different verticals, because we’re bringing ideas to their vertical that, if they had a vertical-focus-only agency, that agency wouldn’t have that awareness from.

And as we’re able to share that expertise that we’re learning in other verticals, it’s not coming at a competitive risk that we learned it on one company that may be competing against another company; it’s coming from experiences outside from another industry. So as we have that exploratory budget for each of our clients, a lot of the learning lessons don’t come at the cost of their budget, but it comes from the learning lessons of other verticals and what seems to be working that can be applicable to that particular industry.

ROB: I hear a through line, a sense of balance across what you’re talking about. You talk about there’s a balance in the channels of not too, too experimental and not too staid and old. There’s a balance in your client base. There’s a balance in choosing solutions as being forward-thinking but also flexible.

Even in the Bayshore part, people who have been to Tampa and know Tampa know that there are parts of Bayshore Boulevard that are tremendously lovely and picturesque and evocative to someone who is from there and may or may not be able to afford to live on Bayshore Boulevard, but it seems flexible also. You mentioned that you also have an office in Denver. So, the name itself even can be about a place but is also not about a place, is also more general.

When you have two offices, how are you thinking about that balance of local clients, regional clients, or location agnostic clients? What’s the reasoning on the second office?

KEVIN: That’s a great question. The real purpose of the second office, Rob, was just an opportunity to expand our talent pool. Tampa’s been amazing to us, but we wanted a complementary talent pool to be able to find digital experts in. Secondarily, we want to be able to serve our clients as easily as possible, and our clients are nationwide. So, we wanted a second office for that talent pool opportunity, but also to be able to serve our clients in their same time zone or one time zone away.

As we expanded to a second office 8 years ago, we looked at either Mountain Time or Pacific Time, and that would give s the ability to serve same time zone or one time zone away. We looked at 13 communities and ended up picking Denver, Colorado, and couldn’t be happier that that’s where we ended up picking. I had no idea Denver would go gangbuster great and we’d be this community that’s just been thriving like crazy, but I’m so fortunate that we did.

It’s funny, talking about Bayshore Solutions – I thought I was so crafty in coming up with this agnostic name. While it wasn’t very attractive or – I hate to use the word “sexy” – it was very agnostic at the time, but certainly “Bayshore” in an application in Denver doesn’t necessarily fit. I remember opening up the office out there, I’m like, man, I wonder if someone’s going to question, “Why Bayshore Solutions? What’s ‘Bayshore’ mean?” out in Denver.

It was probably about 3 years into being in Denver that we were having a kickoff meeting for a pretty significant size company, and the CEO of that business wanted to attend the first hour of that kickoff meeting. He said he was going to exit and leave it up to the rest of his team; he wanted to take me outside for just a moment and say a couple words. He goes, “I’ve got to ask you. Bayshore Solutions – are you guys from here?” I was like, finally someone asked that question. I knew it was going to come. [laughs] And it happened to be a company that was probably about $800 million in revenue that the CEO asked me for that. I’m sure if it was Denver, it should be “Snowcap Solutions” or something along those lines.

What’s really interesting about our journey is that very intentionally, we’re headquartered not only to be able to serve our clients in the same time zone or one time zone away, but secondarily, Colorado and Florida are two of the top eight states that have the most digital talent within them. The advantage to Denver and to Florida is we don’t have the cost burdens of a few of the others, but certainly California, Illinois, and New York.

So very strategically, we are in two of the top eight most digital-rich talent states, but without the cost burdens, and secondarily, able to serve clients in the same time zone or one time zone away. That isn’t accidental. That’s very intentional, and I think it’s been a benefit to our company and our customers as a result of some of that very intentional decision-making. 

ROB: It also seems aligned from a city culture – I have not lived in Denver per se, but both places are places where there are reasons to get outside. Those reasons are different, but both places have very many reasons to have a life outside of work that isn’t just going to your house and hiding in the air conditioning, as if you’d gone to Phoenix or something.

KEVIN: Right, exactly. No doubt about it. Culturally, we were a fit. In our dot-com rise, we did go from one office in Tampa – we had six offices total. Two of them were in California and one of them was in Chicago. I think we gelled well culturally with our Chicago coworkers. California was always different. We did research in four cities in California when we were doing our expansion, and when we got down to the final datapoints of what we were seeking from a data perspective, the list of 13 communities we looked at got narrowed down to just two. It was Denver, Colorado or Orange County, California.

Then I had to make a decision, and I used this terrible logic to make my decision, but it was twofold. One was about 20 years ago, I made a commitment to myself I would never fly on a redeye the rest of my life. I only cheated on myself one time, and it was coming back from Orange County, California, and the only return one-way flight to Tampa from Orange County is a redeye. So, for that reason, it had a scar. Secondarily, I recalled having two offices in California, one in San Francisco and one in Los Angeles, and culturally, while they did a great job performing, there was always a cultural riff between our California coworkers and the remaining part of our company.

For those two reasons, I picked Denver, Colorado, and again, I think I’m very fortunate that that’s what the final decision was. I couldn’t be happier about our progress in the Denver community.

ROB: That’s fantastic. Kevin, you mentioned that you made it not only through the dot-com bust, but the financial crisis. I’m sure come around March, or maybe sooner or maybe slightly later depending on how you look at things, in 2020, there was probably a little bit of a sense of, “Oh, here we go again” with the pandemic and the knock-on effects from that. Was there anything you did when you started seeing things shut down – how did you react and prepare, and how are you thinking about the situation now?

KEVIN: There isn’t a “COVID for Dummies” book published yet, so we’re all flying this with our own experiences as a navigating tool. I think everybody’s approached this in different ways. My company has taken a stance that when times get tough, we’ve reduced a lot of not necessary expenses, but we’ve actually increased our marketing budget by 50%. We’re aggressive in trying to market and sell our way through this versus cut our way through this.

We’re having some upward trends. Our leads are up, our traffic is up, sales met expectations from our December forecast. We’ve had a couple months where we actually met those forecasts where I don’t think, if we didn’t go more aggressive from a marketing perspective, we’d have any ability to do so. Our company has tried to market our way through this, and that’s continued to be what I think we’re going to see ourselves do for the remainder of 2020.

When people say, “Hey, what are we going to do in…?”, I’m not stating or committing to anything I can’t own. Right now, I feel like I can own 30 days, 60 days, maybe 90 days, but I’m not comfortable that I know I can really own anything much further out than that.

So, we are communicating frequently with our team on what our next 90-day plan is and removing any unnecessary operational expenses and reinvesting that into sales and marketing. We haven’t had to lay off any people. We’re trying to keep our great team together, and the way to do so isn’t by cutting; it’s by being aggressive and going to find business a little bit more intentional, a little bit more aggressive. There’s companies out there that need help, and we’re out there seeking those companies. That’s how we’re positioning ourselves in this pandemic.

ROB: I think not even cautiously optimistic, but just optimistically – not even cautious. There’s just an intentionality to it that I think is really worth looking at and listening to. It’s not panicked. It’s looking at opportunity without being opportunistic. I think that’s a really good stance to consider.

When you look back at the overall journey, it sounds like you’ve navigated a lot and learned a lot through that path, and we’ve talked through some of the changes, but overall if you look back and you could do some things over, what are some lessons you’ve learned along the way that you would maybe do differently if you were starting this 25-year-old company today in 2020?

KEVIN: That’s a great question. I used to have a CEO coach, and he asked me this loaded question one time. He said, “Hey Kevin, do you know how you get experience?” And I knew it was a loaded question. I knew his answer was going to be the only answer. I’m guessing, and he’s like, “No, that’s not it. That’s not it.” I was like, “Coach Chris, tell me, how do you gain experience?” He said, “You gain experience by making mistakes and learning from them.”

As I look back, I certainly didn’t make every right decision, but I’ve gained a lot of experience. I think some of the things I might do differently – one is when we started our company in the dot-com era, we had a very, very focused culture that we were driving towards, but it was caught up into the dot-com era, which wasn’t real. Then when that dot-com bubble exploded, that culture had expectations that weren’t necessarily real.

I think part of it would just be making sure that our culture is partially organically created and we have likeminded people that fit our core values, but also intentionally corporate-driven and that it’s meeting the expectations of our customers, our coworkers, and our company altogether. So, I think maybe an added focus on an intentional organic culture as opposed to an intentional focus or an organic focus. It’s a combination of both of those.

Over the last few years, I think our company has really worked on a great balance of an intentional organic culture and really spending more time identifying the core values of Bayshore Solutions and finding people to work with us who meet those core values and use those as real true guiding posts. The result of that is the amount of internal friction within our organization is significantly less than it has ever been before.

The cohesiveness of the team – they have fun together and meet all of our goals and objectives. I think in the past, we either had fun and didn’t meet our goals and objectives, or we highly met our goals and objectives but sacrificed fun. Today I think I’ve learned that there is a fine way to balance both out and meet goals and objectives with a team that you appreciate working with every day, and everyone’s having fun in the journey.

ROB: You mentioned core values. Are those something you’re able to share with us? I think it can often be helpful for others to hear each other’s core values.

KEVIN: Absolutely. First up, we work together, we win together, we solve problems together. Those are probably the three core values that we live by. We have a few others, but certainly we work together, and it’s not just as a company. We work together with our clients on one digital team. We form a digital team with our clients and our coworkers on it. We work together, we win together, we solve problems together.

We come to work with a positive winning attitude every day, problem-solving. We own our own accountability; we don’t point fingers at others. That’s really worked well, finding people who have that likeminded approach to who they want to work with and how they want to work – not only from a coworker perspective, but we see clients that meet those values also. Clients who don’t necessarily share those same values become clients who maybe you don’t have the same relationship with. So, it’s not only who we work with, but who we work for, finding likeminded customers and coworkers. In that journey, we’ve enjoyed that journey much better from a customer and a coworker perspective.

ROB: You mentioned a coach that you used to work with. Sometimes it’s interesting to hear people’s processes on working with a coach. Do you still work with a coach? How have you met that need for a voice outside of yourself?

KEVIN: I don’t have a personal CEO coach anymore, but our company has hired a coach, and in my journey of having a coach, it was great. It helped me see the blind spots that I couldn’t see. So, the coach was very beneficial.

But almost 2 years ago, I elected to switch from having a personal CEO coach to my leadership team having an executive coach. We all picked a coach together, and we started following Gino Wickman’s Traction program called the Entrepreneurial Operating System. It goes by the acronym EOS. We found an implementer to be all of our team’s coach – not just Kevin having a coach.

The journey using Traction’s EOS has been amazing for I think our entire leadership team and our entire company. It’s given us a tighter vision, a better definition of what those core values are that we just were talking about. But instead of me learning on my own and trying to bring those lessons in to my leadership team, we’re learning that all together as one cohesive team. When we hired our implementer, we made it a team hire, not “Kevin found one and brought him to the table.” It’s our coach, not Kevin’s coach.

There’s an old saying, “If you want people to be part of the plan, make them part of the planning process.” Having a team coach, we’re hearing the same thing at the same time. Following Gino Wickman’s Traction Entrepreneurial Operating System, this is stuff we’re learning together. We’re all part of the planning process. So being part of the plan comes much more easily and understandably to the whole team versus me creating this on my own and bringing it to them. It’s just been far more understanding and aware and excitable as we’ve gone from “Kevin’s CEO coach” to a team coach.

ROB: That’s a great lesson in bringing a lot of the pressure, even, off of yourself, bringing your team into the decision. I think we all need to think about and learn from that a little bit more. I was reminded yesterday when somebody on my team solved a problem better than I ever would have, but I felt like I needed to solve it at first.

KEVIN: No doubt. Quite frankly, it’s just finding the right people in the right roles. It’s helped us complement each other. I don’t have to have all the answers, and I think prior, I had to have all the answers. Today we have a very strong, strong leadership team here. We all know what we do well and the areas of the business that others do better. We’re comfortable being very vulnerable and exposing where our strengths and our weaknesses are and dividing and conquering, and working together as one cohesive team. It’s been highly effective.

I used to joke, before we were following this Entrepreneurial Operating System, which goes by the acronym EOS, prior to all of us following the EOS, I joke we were following the KOS. People are like, “What’s the KOS?” I’m like, “That’s the Kevin operating system.” No one’s written a book yet about the Kevin operating system, but there’s tens of thousands of companies following this EOS. For sure it’s been great guideposts to help us continue to find the right people to help us accomplish the things that our company seeks to do.

ROB: Super-duper solid. Love it, Kevin. When people want to find you and find Bayshore Solutions, where should they go look you up?

KEVIN: BayshoreSolutions.com, find us there. Love to hear from everybody. I’d like to have some ongoing dialogue. I’m easy to reach; it’s just kevin@bayshoresolutions.com. Rob, I enjoyed the opportunity to share some of the Bayshore Solutions story with you today.

ROB: This was great. It sounds like an excellent journey, and it’s still rolling, so congratulations.

KEVIN: Thank you.

ROB: Be well, Kevin. Thank you.

KEVIN: 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.

Jon Tsourakis is the Co-owner, President, and Chief Revenue Officer at Oyova, an agency offering integrated digital solutions such as app development, web design, and marketing to create efficient processes for company growth. Jon is a serial entrepreneur and marketing strategist whose continual study of brand identity, business communications, buyer behavior, sales conversion, and various digital marketing techniques keeps him astute to industry standards. His resumé includes executive positions with digital agencies including Innersight dZine Studio, REVOLT, and the Digital Mastermind Group, and his sales and leadership expertise led him to roles as Marketing Director and President for Astrum and CentralComp, respectively.

Alex Membrillo, CEO of Cardinal Digital Marketing, based in Atlanta, Georgia, talks about how companies that want to grow have found that marketing comes first to “plant the seed” the sales force harvests. Alex started his agency as an SEO company in 2009, when he got out of Georgia State on the tail of the Great Recession of 2008. Today, his company provides search, paid social, and programmatic display services. The primary client focus is on restaurants (Cardinal excels in balancing the challenges of national brand awareness vs. the needs of local franchisees) and healthcare (Cardinal increases leads and conversions, cuts lead costs, and ameliorates reputation management issues related to Healthgrades ratings). 

To track campaign value, Cardinal Digital Marketing develops powerful client tools:

• The imminently-to-be-launched software platform, “Gimoto,” allows SMB franchise restaurants to target campaigns to discrete geographic markets and track lead vs. spend at a local level.
• “Ladybug,” a visualization tool, enables multi-location companies to log on and see how each location is performing with spend and lead volume.
• A tool, currently under development, will enable medical practice and health systems to track the number of leads being driven into their systems, the number of patients from those leads, and the value of those patients—by linking CRM with Facebook or search campaigns.

Alex’s recently published book, The Anatomy of Medical Marketing: How to Increase Your Patient Volume by 5x, (available on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Medical-Marketing-Alex-Membrillo/dp/1543907482) covers the unique challenges of marketing medical services. He can be reached through his website: cardinaldigitalmarketing.com.

Ann Barlow, West Coast President/ Head of Employee Engagement at Peppercomm, a strategic communications and marketing firm whose purpose is promote, protect, and connect clients—and “to use its innovation and imagination to inspire people to come to know and trust the organizations it works with.” The 23-year-old Peppercomm has its roots in PR, and, although its focus today is on integrated communications, the PR influence persists in the questions it asks: What do clients need? What problems need to be solved? and What is the agency trying to create?

Ann participated in a panel, “Prescription for Sexual Harassment,” at the March 2019 South by Southwest creativity conference in Austin, TX. She places the onus on companies to create opportunities for people to “actually listen to each other.” Solving workplace problems like sexual harassment will require open discussions about things people might think are okay, but actually are not. Clarity about such issues . . . and working toward solving them . . . will improve individual and business performance. People work better in more collaborative, purpose-driven, listening environments, which Ann calls “cultures of innovation.”

Ann sees a difference in what the younger generation of workers demands as employees from the companies where they work—that their companies take a stand on social issues. She feels that companies that have a “North Star” will have an easier time attracting and retaining talent . . . and that companies that are purpose-driven perform better financially  

Ann is researching what needs to change inside organizations . . . and the interrelationship of employee engagement, business structure, how people within organizations listen to each other, and productivity. She intends to publish the results of that study on her company’s website at: http://www.peppercomm.com/

Ann can be reached at her company’s website or on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ann-barlow-4a42371/

Emily Heck, Owner and Founder at Evergreen Strategic Communications, started her agency in the fall of 2019. With no job in sight and no career plans, she started meeting with people, chatting over coffee, and trying to figure out her next chapter. Emily picked up some freelance marketing projects from a former co-worker and networked more intensely. Her business, helping nonprofits and small businesses organize their marketing, establish processes and systems, and more efficiently engage their audiences, grew. 

Although in-person networking dropped off during the pandemic, Emily is now finding contacts she did not see during the “isolation time” of Covid eager to meet and “catch up” and more interested in re-connecting face to face. Potential clients are responding to her cold-call invitations to explore partnership opportunities a lot more quickly and with a lot less requisite “relationship building” than before the pandemic.

In this interview, Emily talks about the importance of LinkedIn, “the place for silent scrollers,” for building connections. She says people may scroll through your feeds and read them, but do so with no likes, shares, or comments. Think nothing is happening? Emily says she often gets comments when she meets with people six months later, “I’ve really liked your content.” It‘s important to “keep posting.”

Emily says small business owners and nonprofits have the same marketing struggles and are “behind” the big companies on lead generation emails, getting conversions on emails and social media, and on figuring out how to “pump that up.” “Getting there” requires guiding clients to build marketing model proficiency and effectiveness and scaling larger company processes down to something that works to help “small” grow. 

When Emily first started working with clients, she spent a lot of time figuring out their processes, the location of their social media account login information, and establishing what they were trying to achieve through their marketing. Client websites, often a “mess,” may fail to “tell their story well.” “You can’t really be effective in your marketing if you don’t have a good base of organization,” Emily explains. So, she cleans up client websites and SEO first, as a base to “push everyone back to” from emails and social media efforts.”

Email has changed a lot. Today, Emily says, “You’ve got to have some personality in your emails.” She recommends “changing the sender name from the organization name to a person’s name” to improve open rates.

Emily can be contacted on her agency’s website at: evergreenstrategic.org, or on LinkedIn as Emily Hack in Indianapolis.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Emily Heck, Owner and Founder at Evergreen Strategic Communications based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to the podcast, Emily.

EMILY: Thank you very much. I’m so excited to be here.

ROB: Good to have you here and talk some Indiana connections here. Why don’t you start off by telling us about Evergreen, and what is your specialty?

EMILY: Evergreen started in the fall of 2019. I started my own business right before the pandemic; I’m not sure if that’s smart or adventurous or whatever word you want to fill in, but it is our origin story. We focus on nonprofits and small businesses, which may seem like two very different clients or types of clients, but they have the same marketing struggles. We help nonprofits and small businesses get their marketing organized, get processes in place, systems in place, and then work to help start engaging their audiences more efficiently.

ROB: Got it. Is that organization the common struggle of where they’re starting from?

EMILY: Oh yeah. That is 90% of what I see. It’s interesting; when I started my business, you’re so excited, there’s so much energy, and it’s like, “I’m going to do social media for small business” or “I’m going to do email and marketing for small business,” and I found I was spending a lot of time figuring out their processes, figuring out where the login information was for their social media accounts. I spent a great deal of time doing that because you can’t really be effective in your marketing if you don’t have a good base of organization.

ROB: I’ve certainly seen that. They may have worked with somebody; that person disappeared into the wilderness or just wasn’t very good or whatever, and they were the only person that knew the logins. Do you end up starting from scratch? Are you trying to figure out how to recover those logins sometimes? Even that part, what are you scrapping together?

EMILY: A lot of times I try to scrap it together, as you said, and find those logins. Just recently, last summer, I went through an appeal process with Facebook to get access to a client’s business suite. So I’ll go that route if I need to. A lot of times it’s just an email to an old coworker or something like that, trying to find those logins, but sometimes you have to get out the heavy-hitter techniques and tactics to get access to stuff.

ROB: I’m sure, Emily, sometimes you start with a client and they want to do one specific thing; sometimes they want to do everything. How do you help them come to the conclusion of how to do what is the right thing, what is the right thing to do first, and what’s the right thing to do next?

EMILY: This is a tough conversation that I have quite a bit. I do have a lot of clients that come to me and say, “We want an email newsletter” or “We want a blog started.” It’s more about “Okay, but what are you trying to achieve with this?” I take a step back; let’s have that conversation, let’s talk about what you’re trying to engage with your audience. And a lot of times the business owner or the nonprofit executive director is right. They know their business and their organization better than I do at that point in time.

So, the project usually evolves from what they originally thought. Maybe they were thinking a traditional-style email newsletter, and I start to throw out some ideas – because email’s changed a lot. Even I would say just in the past two or three years, how you’re communicating on email has changed so much, and they may not be up-to-date on those new strategies and tactics. That’s probably the second most common conversation I’m having behind “Where are your logins and what are your processes?” [laughs]

ROB: How would you characterize some of that transition on the email side? Because there’s certainly this historic idea of “Let’s get a good template, let’s curate some content, let me dump something in there that I think makes sense, and maybe I’m going to try to close some business too.” How does that evolve into what works in 2022?

EMILY: What I’m experiencing with a lot of my clients and a lot of the emails I’m sending out is you’ve got to have some personality in your emails. Gone are the days of just throwing together some content, a blog preview or something like that. You’ve got to have some personality. I have several newsletters that I’m making come from a specific person within the organization – just as simple as changing the sender name from the organization name to a person’s name has helped open rates. It seems so simple, but when you’re flying through, trying to get that monthly email out, it’s easy to forget.

I’m always talking to my clients about “Let’s add some personality in this. What are things that you can really connect with your audiences through on your email?” People don’t want to see this endless scroll of boring content. [laughs]

ROB: Boring content, company names. When I think about getting a bunch of stuff in Gmail across a bunch of different accounts – and I have the tabs; I don’t know how many people have the different tabs set up for the updates and the transactions. I don’t remember what all the things are. But it’s almost like when you get to the tab where the newsletters tend to sit, when you get over to that updates tab, there’s a certain curiosity to a person, a human, versus a company there. It’s almost intriguing on its own versus organization name and “Here’s my receipt from this other thing.”

EMILY: Oh yeah, it’s a total marketing trick when you really think about it. We’re tricking you into opening it. [laughs] Which you could argue is marketing in general. But yeah, you are intrigued by it. I want to take it a step further that it’s not a trick of “This is the same old newsletter that we’ve been sending you for the past five years, just we put a different sender name on it.” Let’s also take the content and make it more appealing for the reader so it isn’t an endless scroll.

ROB: That certainly makes plenty of sense there. Emily, you walked us through part of the journey. You mentioned in the tail end of 2019, you started the firm. But what led up to that? What led you to take that particular plunge to say it was time to start your own business, and what led you into that?

EMILY: I was working for an organization, and I’d only been working there for about two years, so I wasn’t looking to leave when I departed in fall of ’19. But I got into a very toxic situation that was not good for my mental health, physical health. I was deteriorating as a professional because of it. I left without a job lined up. I just went in and resigned one day because I knew this wasn’t the future that I wanted.

I reached out to a colleague who had actually left a few months prior to myself and said, “Hey, do you have any projects?” I knew she was freelancing. And she did, and the rest is history. I started with a couple projects and then picked up a couple clients and really started to network within my communities. The snowball just kept getting bigger as it started rolling. An interesting ride. There’s a huge conversation right now on a societal level about the Great Resignation, and I feel like I was a couple years ahead of that. So, I totally identify with those individuals that are departing their jobs; that’s what I did two years ago.

ROB: Sure. Even then, it’s an interesting shift, because you mentioned networking. In late 2019, you had one form of networking for a few months, and then that changed. What did networking look like? Was there a pause in networking in early 2020, a regearing, or just a dramatic shift in what that needed to look like?

EMILY: Oh yeah. It’s funny; probably about a month ago, I had coffee with the person that I had coffee with in March of 2020. He was the last person that I had coffee with right before everything shut down. It was kind of crazy – this was in December of 2021. We had gone two years without seeing each other.

When I quit my job and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, I was setting up coffee appointments and networking with people. It was interesting. It was a little bit of a slower process because you go and just chit-chat and have coffee, whatever. And now I’m experiencing where I’m emailing people, I’m reaching out to them, total cold calling, or cold emailing if you will, and I’m getting responses back quicker. So, I think there’s definitely been this shift in networking for sure.

ROB: Is that for connecting in person now, or is that connecting digitally? Is the coffee meeting back, in your view? How is it spinning?

EMILY: I’m picking up more coffee dates. I’m reaching out to people. Indiana just went through a little bit of a surge – a pretty significant surge – so everything’s been virtual lately. But yeah, some people want to do virtual coffee chats, some people want to do in-person. I’ve actually experienced more of just emailing someone or sending a LinkedIn message and saying, “Hey, this is what I offer. I think there could be a partnership here,” and they want to chat – which would never happen before. You had to work on building that relationship. So, it’s definitely shifted.

ROB: Yeah, there seems to be, kind of like your newsletters, a human connection desire that’s going on. It’s been a discipline that we started since the beginning of the year. Every week, I’m contacting five people I haven’t seen in a while and saying, “Let’s do coffee, let’s do lunch, let’s do whatever.” The hit rate is tremendous because all of the meetings and recurring events we used to go to, none of the organizations feel confident having them. I was kind of a chicken – not chicken. My level of caution was I met people for outside lunch during COVID. Until I got my shot and my booster, I was an outside lunch, outside coffee – I was that person. Now I’ll meet anybody anywhere. Some people won’t. I respect what anybody wants to choose to do, because it’s a hard time to know what to do. But the hit rate on in-person meetings has really been amazing to me.

EMILY: Yeah. Do you find people are just wanting to chit-chat and catch up? Or is it more business-related? Because a lot of mine have been catching up because I haven’t seen these people for two-plus years.

ROB: That’s right. I think those people probably might’ve seen on – the other secret weapon to me is LinkedIn. It’s a real secret if we’re talking about it on the podcast, right? [laughs]

EMILY: Right. [laughs]

ROB: But, basically, every once in a while, saying something about what we’re doing. I’ll see people in person – I saw people at football games in the fall and they’re like, “Oh, I’ve been following everything you’ve been doing for the past two years.” I’m like, we haven’t talked. I posted on LinkedIn and you never ‘liked’ it. I don’t say this to them, but they never engaged with it at all. But they’ve been reading my biography through LinkedIn.

The people that I meet, most of the time it’s chit-chatty, but I will also say that it tends to echo. Somebody I had lunch with a month ago last week says, “Hey, here’s this person you really should talk to.” So it comes back around in that very open-handed, low expectation kind of way. That’s what I’m seeing, I think.

EMILY: Yeah, that’s what I’ve experienced. It’s funny that you bring up LinkedIn because just recently I came across – it may’ve been on Instagram or something that said, “LinkedIn is the place for silent scrollers.” You will have so many people who will scroll right past your stuff, read it, but not engage with it. They’re not liking it, they’re not sharing it or commenting or whatever. But then you will hear six months later, “Oh, I’ve really liked your content lately.” The purpose was to keep posting, even if you’re not getting engagement. So, it’s funny that you bring that up too, because that’s the second time I’ve heard that recently.

ROB: I don’t have the discipline on LinkedIn that I do on my in-person meetings, so I wish I could tell you I found something worthwhile to publish every week, but I have to work on my personal content calendar there.

EMILY: Yeah, it is definitely tough.

ROB: Emily, as you’ve looked at how you’ve built things so far over the past couple years, what are some lessons that you have learned? If you could rewind two years, what would you tell yourself?

EMILY: I’d probably tell myself to slow down. This is really hard – whether you’re going out on your own in marketing or whatever your field is, your first thing is “I have to start figuring out how to make money. I’ve got to get money in the door. I’ve got to get clients. I’ve got to get work.” I wish I would’ve told myself to slow down a little bit because that would come – and set things up the right way.

I’m in Year 2 of business, and I’m going back and having to re-set up some structures within my business that I probably should’ve been doing 18 months ago. That’s been the biggest thing for me. It’s hard. I started a business, and however many months later, a pandemic hit – and at the same time, I was also pregnant with my first child, so I went on maternity leave during that first year of business. I really wish I would’ve slowed down and not been in such a hurry.

Even now, a couple years in, I’m like, okay, slow down. If I get a “no” from a client proposal or whatever, it’s not the end of the world. Slow down. Be really purposeful. Be really mindful in what you’re doing.

ROB: I can’t imagine trying to plan parental leave into that early moment of a business. How did you think about doing right by your clients but also giving yourself that time to enjoy a season of life that is unique and needs to be embraced?

EMILY: I mentioned earlier my colleague that was also a freelancer. She and I work together a lot. I always tell people who are going out on their own, find a partner. You don’t have to go into business together, but find someone to partner with on client projects, because business ownership is a lonely world, and it’s good when you have someone you can collaborate with. So, I had someone that was picking up some of the work I was doing.

The other thing was it was a weird time. My daughter was born in July of 2020. In 2022, July 2020 still seems like early COVID days. I was actually itching to get back to work because I was tired of sitting in the house. [laughs] It’ll be interesting, as our family grows, what my approach to leave is next time, because I’m actually already thinking about it. How can I put structures in place now that I can have a full leave next time? But yeah, it was a weird year. Baby, new business, pandemic. I don’t tell anyone, “Use this as an example of how to start a business.” [laughs]

ROB: No, it rarely turns out that way, especially on this podcast. Many, many accidental entrepreneurs in different ways.

As you think about the clients you work with, the small businesses, the nonprofits, we’ve talked a little bit about email and how that is changing; when people have to make the choice of what to activate first, what are some of the other things you see them needing to activate first that might not be what they expected in terms of how they need to be marketing?

EMILY: Website is a really big thing. A lot of times people are thinking social media, email, website in that order, but I like to focus on the website first because that’s your homebase. That’s where you can push everyone back to from your emails, from your social media. We need to get that cleaned up and really telling your story well. Some people, their website’s a mess because – kind of like I was a couple years ago – you’re just trying to throw something together so that you can get out there and get your name out there. So, it’s about going back and really looking at it.

The other reason that I really want to look at websites is for SEO purposes. I think SEO was really big there in the early 2010s or so, and everyone was talking about SEO. Then it died off a little bit and no one was talking about it, and it seems to be a real buzzy word right now, about how to get your organic content situated correctly so that you can be ranking high on Google and you’re providing good content. That’s what I tell my small business owners especially: making sure your content is optimized appropriately and written appropriately is free. You’re not having to create paid ads for it. That’s probably the other thing. Social media is actually the last thing I look at.

ROB: And then organic and paid social, those are two different conversations as well, right?

EMILY: Oh yeah. With these clients especially, organic is where we’ve got to start, and then we work up to paid. It’s so hard. Every social media channel is so full, so it takes time, but we can get there.

ROB: Some people would also, I think, feel the same way about content they put on their website. How do you help someone think about putting out content that is actually meaningfully different and doesn’t feel like it’s the same as anyone else? If there’s a context of maybe a specific small business client that helps tell the story, maybe that’s a lens we can look through here.

EMILY: I have a client here in Indianapolis that is a small plumbing company. They’re very unique in that they’ve been around for 100 years, they’re family-owned. When we’re creating content for them, first of all, plumbing content is not necessarily always the most interesting thing in your newsfeed, and it doesn’t change. Pipes freezing – you have the same five tips about how to avoid pipes freezing.

For them, it’s “Let’s just get the content out there.” I know that every other plumbing company in town is putting something out right now in the winter about pipes freezing or preparing your home for winter or something like that, but we need to get our content out there. We need to be a part of the conversation. And it makes their current customers feel good. They feel really good about it and engage with it because it’s like, “Oh, my guy, the guy that I recommend for plumbing services, is out there. I’m not always hearing about Competitor A and what they’re saying.”

It’s a delicate walk. Sometimes, as the marketing consultant, I feel like I’m doing the same content that everyone else is doing, but in a lot of these small business cases, you’ve just got to get your name out there and in the mix.

ROB: Right. It almost seems like for them – you kind of alluded to it – it’s about the relationship they already had with the client. It’s about the work they already did. Hopefully, they did their homework and got the client’s email address while they were out doing some plumbing work, and then that seasonal tip of how to not freeze your pipes is a little bit of caring, almost. It’s maybe not original, but you’re showing up, and it’s a good reason to be in the inbox. Nobody’s super mad about “I’m reminded for the third time about how to not have my pipes freeze,” because that’s a legit problem that is expensive.

EMILY: Right. It’s also going back to being organized. We’ve got that data organized so that we can reach whatever customer we need to so when there’s a big winter storm barreling down on Indianapolis, we can get that email out, “Hey, here’s things to think about with this winter storm.” It’s a welcome addition to their inbox because it’s timely and it’s for them. To your point, that’s exactly right.

ROB: Emily, when we’re talking about somebody’s website content, when we’re talking about having them talk about what they’re doing in a way that speaks to their customer, a lot of times they’ve probably already tried. They already tried to write their website content, and they just couldn’t find the right thing to say and the right story. How do you help someone communicate what they might not know how to communicate, but they almost feel it more than they know how to write it?

EMILY: It’s funny; I was having this conversation with a copywriter yesterday, and we were both talking about how we have struggled to write for our own websites. Which is why I’m hiring her to write some new pages for me, because I am stuck. Obviously, I’m a consultant, so I’m always going to say, “Hire a consultant,” but I think that shows the value of a consultant, to have someone come in with an outside perspective and really be able to put your story down on paper and make sense of it.

I love the clients when I’m their target audience, a 30-something young mother or whatever, because I can bring in that perspective of “That wouldn’t resonate with me as your audience member” or “Yes, that would resonate with me.” Like I said, I’m always going to be on Team Consultant because I am a consultant. But I think it’s important to know that even marketing professionals struggle with it. We struggle with telling our own story and have to get outside help. So, I wouldn’t expect a small business or a nonprofit to be any different.

ROB: I’m glad it’s not just me, because we looked at our website content and in a moment of desperation, I said, “I need to invest in our future, and I’m going to invest in having someone else do this.” They went out and talked to a few of our clients, and they told things back to us that sounded true but I could never have given the words. So I will advocate for Team Consultant here as well. I went through a StoryBrand process in our case, which was also interesting. I don’t know if I would’ve done that – I don’t know. I just know that hearing something back truthful felt a lot better than trying to make up words myself.

EMILY: Yeah, it’s a good level set for you. It can provide more perspectives and it gives you a good level set, and not only is it someone else translating your story – do we have time to do that? I mean, we’re so busy as business owners. If one more thing is off our plate, go for it.

ROB: Right, and it’s a good reason to think a lot about profitability, around margins, because that creates the ability to invest into the future, the ability to have some reserves to hire people. There’s a lot of moving parts there.

When you look forward, when you’re looking at what’s next for Evergreen, when you’re looking at what’s next for marketing for your clients, what’s coming up that you’re excited about? Where is this going?

EMILY: Evergreen, I am hoping to still grow and provide more support to nonprofits and small businesses – which I realize is a non-answer answer. But 2022 is going to be really the first year that hopefully nothing crazy is happening. I mean, first year of business was pandemic and baby; second year of business was still pandemic and it just seemed like crazy, crazy stuff going on. So 2022 is really going to be about finding level ground and finding a solid footing within the business. It’s been exciting here; even since the beginning of the year, things are happening and things are coming together. I’m doing some awesome projects with some pretty cool clients, so that’s really exciting.

As far as clients, what I’m seeing and what I’m talking to them a lot about is trying to get more proficient and effective in our current marketing models. I’m talking a lot with clients – now, keep in mind these are small businesses and nonprofits, so they’re a couple of years behind – we’re talking about lead generation emails and how to get conversions on emails. We’re talking about how to do that on social media and really start to pump that up.

Like I said, these are small nonprofits and small businesses, but they are starting – I think in the big organizations, a lot of marketing ideas and processes start there, and then nonprofits and small businesses are maybe a little bit behind and start to figure it out. I’m really excited because I’m seeing that stuff start to bubble up and happen. A lot of my job right now is trying to figure out how to bring it down to a smaller size for them. It’s easy when you have a 10- or 12-person marketing department to do a lot of lead generation and conversions and things like that, but we’ve got to figure out how to bring this down to a smaller scale.

ROB: It definitely makes sense. The clients that you’re talking about don’t always have that margin for the experimental budget that some of the other brands will have, so being able to distill something that’s actually going to work and deliver, or have a good chance of it – it’s great that people have you thinking about that for them.

Emily, when people want to find you and Evergreen, where should they go to find and connect with you?

EMILY: My website is evergreenstrategic.org, where you can learn a little bit about my agency. And I’m a big LinkedIn-er, so find me on LinkedIn, Emily Hack in Indianapolis, Indiana, and connect. I’d love to chat on message about marketing or anything else going on in the world. So yeah, I can be found there.

ROB: That’s great. Emily, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you for sharing your own journey and expertise. Very grateful for it, and good to meet you.

EMILY: Thank you. I had a great time.

ROB: All right, be well. Thank you. 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.

Jason Mitchell is the CEO and Co-founder of Movement Strategy, a forward-thinking social media marketing agency that began in his college dorm room. With expertise in emerging technologies and social platform trends, Jason guides his agency in leading social-centric branding initiatives for high-profile clients such as Netflix, Amazon, and Warner Brothers. Standout projects include branding for Yellowjackets and The Boys for Amazon Studios and the innovative launch of Looney Tunes on TikTok. Jason’s thought leadership extends to writing for prestigious publications such as Adweek and Ad Age, and he has been recognized as a top Metaverse advertising agency leader by Business Insider.

Bob Afsari, CEO of Campaign Creators, a Platinum HubSpot Partner, started his career with “a love for business development and a love for sales.” Disillusioned after companies he worked for consistently failed to deliver the products he sold, Bob decided to start his own company so he could control the whole process.

Bob presented his story, “Shattered by Embezzlement: How We Rebuilt Our Agency to Become Happier, Healthier, and More Profitable,” at HubSpot’s Inbound 2018.

In this interview, Bob provides a brief overview of his presentation, describing how a trusted employee diverted $330,000 in payroll taxes to her personal account over a period of 5 years, how the theft was not discovered until his accountant called the IRS, and the actions Bob had to take to save his company and avoid personal financial ruin. He provides precautions to prevent such embezzlement—a hard lesson learned.

To save his company, Bob developed a laser focus on his company’s mission, slashed its services, learned to say “no” to clients who weren’t the right fit, and made a huge number of changes that had only before been “under consideration.” His strategy, born of fear and desperation, worked.

Bob notes that the wealth of information on the internet, the credit crisis of 2008, and “the millennials” have transformed the way that consumers make purchases—they no longer want to be “sold.”

Today, Campaign Creators helps companies craft and frame consumer communications in a way that is personal, relevant, meaningful, and, respectful of how 21st century consumers want to receive marketing communications. It implements sophisticated lead nurturing strategies, digitizes sales processes, and turns the typically-outbound middle-of-the-funnel (consideration stage) sales cycle and sales journey into an automated, custom, curated educational process. Middle-of-the-funnel marketing automation workflows and the wealth of information provided to potential clients empowers them to autonomously determine their fit with a company and its products.

Bob can be reached at his company’s website: https://www.campaigncreators.com/ or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bafsari/

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:

1. introduce the virtual influencer industry,
2. establish Web3 for the audience,
3. discuss how these two intersect,
4. explain the agency’s work and the thought behind the Nexus universe growing around Zero, and
5. 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.

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:

1. understanding at a deep level client needs and stakeholder goals
2. curating campaigns rooted in science and best practices 
3. 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.

Justin Ramb is President and Sandra Marshal, VP of Client Services, at Bigeye, a full-service B2B and B2C agency that focuses on audiences, creative work, media and analytics, and data. 

1. Understand audience: 

1. Use primary and secondary research to discover who they are, where they consume media, what they look like, and what triggers them to convert
2. Develop marketing personas that match two or three target audience personas
3. Test strategies against those personas to ensure activities align with objectives

B2B: 

• Use current customer data to develop lookalike audience and personas based on existing data
• Develop personas based on where company wants to head. Is it looking to capture new clients or new types of clients? Supplement data with key stakeholder interviews, additional research, online research, and quantitative/qualitative research.

B2C: Bigeye utilizes specialized tools to learn about a client’s audience and customers

1. Creative:

1. As part of persona development, the agency tests messaging, colors, headlines, and photography for optimal audience response.
2. Rather than resent the parameters of defined personas, the creative team appreciates understanding the target audience.

1. Media and Analytics 

1. As part of persona development, the agency explores media usage.
2. Media develops a persona-based media plan and begins placement in that media
3. Utilizing Google Analytics and custom dashboards, the Analytics team tracks establishes targets and KPIs

1. Data 

1. 24/7 analytics data provides information about how things are performing. 
2. Data answered the questions: Where can things be optimized? How are conversions going? Do the real audiences align with those targeted? 

Bigeye started in 2002. In this interview, Justin describes the chaos of those early years and the ultimate discovery that the agency’s greatest success was driven by hiring team members who were committed, skilled, and aligned with the agency’s direction. Sandra added that the agency also has to “arm” new employees with “the appropriate support,” foster a sense of collaboration, and avoid over-siloization. 

Justin outlines the updated review and review cycle program (structured through a program called Lattice) the agency uses to keep everything running smoothly. Every two weeks team members submit a four-question online survey that covers how they’re doing, what roadblocks they have, and anything they want their manager to know. Every quarter, team members submit three or four agency- and personal-growth goals. These are used to project the agency’s direction in the subsequent quarter.

Finding a mentor, someone a step or two ahead, can help a startup avoid pitfalls. Justin comments that if you find an outside counsel and can afford that person, it’s probably not too early. He also mentions ways to find such help for free. He says strategic, balanced growth is healthy growth and believes that a company that is not growing is dying.

Justin and Sandra can be found on their agency’s website at Bigeyeagency.com, where visitors will find an “incredibly updated” blog. 

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined today by Justin Ramb, President of Bigeye, and Sandra Marshall, VP of Client Services at Bigeye, and they are based in Orlando, Florida. Welcome to the podcast, Justin and Sandra.

JUSTIN: Thanks for having us.

SANDRA: Thank you, Rob.

ROB: Absolutely. Excellent to have you here. Why don’t you start off by telling us about Bigeye, and what is your superpower?

JUSTIN: Bigeye is a full-service ad agency in Orlando. We do a lot of different services. Full service, but we definitely focus on four key areas of audience, creative, media and analytics, and then data. We’re very focused on that and serve a variety of clients all over the country and several around the world.

ROB: Very cool. Is there any particular vertical or size of client that tends to be in your sweet spot?

JUSTIN: We serve a lot of different clients. Whether it’s a startup, a D2C, somebody just getting off the ground that’s looking for a really comprehensive strategy moving forward to launch their product or service, or all the way up to very large CPG brands that support lots of different brands under them. So, we’ve got a wide variety.

We have engagements that mostly focus on multiple pieces and customer journey, brand development, execution, media, and then the analytics and optimization. That full spectrum is what we focus on with our clients.

ROB: Right on. Knowing your pillars does provide part of the story, so maybe it’s interesting if we step through those a little bit piece by piece. When you talk about audience, what does Bigeye talk about when they’re talking about audience?

JUSTIN: We’re really focused on audience. We believe that’s the start of almost all of our engagements, all of our initiatives – really looking at, who is the audience we’re going after for that product or service? It’s really important to understand that audience, who they are, where they consume media, what they look like, and what are their triggers to convert. We spend a lot of resources upfront to understand that audience.

We’ve got a whole insights team, led here by our Vice President of Insights, Adrian Tennant, and he leads the team to really dive into that, both in a primary research way, or we’ll grab secondary research as well. That will then also get us into audience personas and developing those personas to have a target of two or three personas we’re going after, and we’ll always match what we’re doing back up to those personas to make sure we’re always leading with that strategy.

SANDRA: And Rob, it’s really been incredible to see how well that’s resonated with our clients. To see them be able to relate to an actual person and some of the persona development that we’ve done has really set a phenomenal foundation for many of our projects. Keeping that person in mind for the duration and the lifecycle of the work together has been really, really compelling.

ROB: It’s truly critical. You mentioned the startup side of the world; a lot of times when startups are asked to articulate their audience, it almost feels like an exercise in creative writing rather than in fact. Helping them dial that in seems like it would vary quite widely by customer. You mentioned that primary and secondary research. I’d imagine on the consumer side, you may have datasets at your disposal that the client might not even have, or maybe something within their data that they don’t know.

But then on the B2B side, are you diving in sometimes and interviewing their existing customers, their potential customers, and going deep on that personal level there?

JUSTIN: Absolutely. On the B2C side, we spend a lot of time looking at that audience and customer with some really great tools that we have at our disposal to get to who they are.

On the B2B side, it is important to grab the current customer data. We can develop a lookalike audience and really develop that persona based on existing data, and/or there may be businesses that are looking to capture new clients, new types of clients, and that’s where we’ll go through quite a few exercises with the client to understand those and develop personas based on where they want to head. We’ll supplement that with key stakeholder interviews, additional research, online research, quantitative/qualitative research. We always want to make sure that we’re matching it back up to solid data.

ROB: You put creative second in that list, and I’m sure that’s no coincidence. It sounds to me like given that focus on audience, the creative has a deep, deep link to the audience that’s being targeted. Number one, how do you think about creative? And number two, how do you help the creative types to view that audience information as a useful constraint rather than maybe a limitation on their creative juices?

JUSTIN: We find that a lot of the work that we do actually arms creative to produce better creative. They love to understand exactly the customer, the audience that they’re designing for. After we define those personas, we will often then go to another step before we get into creative of researching and serving audiences to make sure that we’re creating creative for them. We’ll test messaging, we’ll test colors, we’ll test headlines, we’ll test photography, and we’ll find out what those audiences most resonate with.

We have all that data; we will then turn that over to our creative team, and then they’ll match that up to what they’re envisioning to create for them. They absolutely love it. It probably initially was like, “Wait, what’s going on here? We’ll design what we want to design,” but now they’ve come to really appreciate having some solid information before diving deep into what they do.

ROB: That definitely makes sense. Stepping through, you talk about media and analytics. Those are both words I think that have known meanings, but they mean perhaps different things to different people. What do media and analytics mean within the world of Bigeye?

JUSTIN: We will continue the journey with our customers and clients. We’ve now created the creative; it’s all matched back up to the personas, and in that persona development, we’re also understanding where they consume media. Where most can we get in front of them? Obviously, in today’s world, it’s a lot of different places. Yes, it’s Facebook, it’s Instagram, but it’s also driving down the road. People still commute. Out of home is still important. It may be a lot of other platforms.

So, we will develop a media plan, again based on the personas, and then begin to place that media and watch it through the analytics team.

ROB: Got it. Then analytics in that case is useful as part of the planning process, whereas data is probably completing that loop and tying the results back to the business objectives?

JUSTIN: We watch that data, those analytics, nonstop. It is so important in the 24/7 world to watch how things are performing. Where can we perform optimizations? How are conversions going? Are we matching up to the audiences that we’ve outlined? It’s really important that we’re looking at those analytics. We create custom dashboards. We go beyond just relying on Google Analytics and we create those custom dashboards specifically for the targets and the KPIs that have been outlined early on in the process.

ROB: That entire story makes sense. Tell us a little bit about the origin of Bigeye. How did you end up starting this thing in the beginning?

JUSTIN: We started back in 2002, pre-internet, pre a lot of things nowadays. Frankly, it took quite a few years to figure out what the hell we were doing. It was a lot of trial and error. Figured out what we did best, what we did worst, and ultimately what we ended up finding was what caused the most success was to hire properly. Bring on team members that were not only committed, not only skilled, but really were part of where we were headed as an agency.

We brought on Sandra in the client services and account department and we brought on Seth Segura, our creative director. Still here today, and really defined, where do we want to go? That’s what has led us to the focus of audience, creative, and media.

ROB: Was one of those practices more prominent in the earliest of days?

JUSTIN: Hiring was just so important. Again, it took us a number of years to realize it was all about who was going to be on the bus with us. We knew that we had to get the seats filled, and frankly a lot of what we do can be taught. There is some skill to it, but a lot of it can be taught. So, understanding the aptitude and attitude of people that we were hiring, and was it part of the culture that we wanted to build at Bigeye?

SANDRA: I think to add to that, too, one thing that we identified early on was not only did we have to look for those good cultural fits and those amazing skillsets, but we also had to make sure that we were arming the people we were bringing in with the appropriate support and other members of the team to make sure all the wheels were continuing to run smoothly and there was an incredible sense of collaboration with everybody. We did not want everybody to be working in silos. We wanted to really make sure that there was the appropriate amount of department building that was also occurring while we were looking for this incredible talent.

JUSTIN: One of the big “ahas” for us was doing better reviews and review cycles. It was really interesting to me. To the fault of our own, we were doing a really bad job at performance reviews. We’ve done it multiple different ways through the years. We’ve done annual reviews, we’ve done anniversary reviews, we’ve done 360 reviews. Oftentimes we’d forget about it until somebody said, “Hey, can I get my annual review?”

I do think that’s pretty common in agencies. We’re running hard, clients are demanding things, things are changing, so the review cycle and performance reviews was something we realized if we were going to grow, we needed to make sure we put something in place that could help that. So we did.

Now we’re on a great schedule. We do two-week sprints where we do updates every two weeks. Team members will submit a four-question online survey – how they’re doing, what roadblocks they have, anything they want their manager to know. So, we’ve got these pulse checks with our team members. Two weeks in agency life can feel like a year, so we wanted to make sure that we were touching base.

Then we do quarterly reviews. We ask our team members to develop three or four goals for the quarter, all aligned with the growth of the agency, but also personal growth. We meet with them on a quarter basis, we review the quarters, and then we project where we want to head for the next quarter.

And then we’ll do the annual review, which obviously is the bigger one and more extensive, but critically important to continue to check in on the growth and the development of our team members, but also of the agency.

ROB: Right. I think people coming from some agencies would perhaps be a little bit shocked by that level of regularity, if you’re able to actually keep it in sync. How did you come to that degree of structure? Do you have a disposition towards structure and you just had to form the idea, or were there some tools that came into play to help you arrive at some of those conclusions?

JUSTIN: The “aha” was when a team member came to Sandra and I and said, “Hey, can I get my annual review?” and we said, “That’s not right. We need to put something in place and we need to stick by it.” We did a lot of searching and we ended up with a tool called Lattice. Lattice is an online tool that allows such great structure, but a lot of flexibility. You can customize what works best for your agency. We have found it to be incredibly successful.

SANDRA: It’s helpful to not find ourselves in an annual review where surprises are being uncovered about not only employee progress, but as a manager, how we could’ve helped them better through the past year. So, these reoccurring checkpoints really help us as leaders to be able to know where we can step in and either coach better or help to refocus energy. I think it’s definitely a two-way street in all of these reviews.

ROB: That definitely makes sense. You said the agency started in 2002, and that was certainly one “aha” moment. What are some other things, when you look back at the journey, that you see that you might have done differently if you were starting from scratch that you learned along the way? Maybe some lessons learned?

JUSTIN: I’d say two things. One, looking back, I would’ve been quicker to bring in outside counsel, somebody that can give us wisdom, that can consult with us, can look at our business, can look at our processes. Bring them in and really allow them to take a look at everything.

We did that about two years ago. We brought a gentleman in from Boston and allowed him to look at every single thing of the agency and to give us his feedback and his thoughts and his perspective about what we were doing – what we were doing well and what needed to be tweaked. I wish we would’ve done that much earlier. There was so much wisdom that came out of that. It was critical.

Secondly, I would say really defining our focus. What are the services that we really want to focus on moving forward over the next couple years? What are the industries we want to focus on? I do think agencies are prone to take anything and everything as long as it pays the bills, and yes, that’s important – but to really internally know as a team, “this is where we’re headed, both in an industry focus and in the services that we want to offer,” and then align everything with that.

ROB: When you mention that outside counsel, I imagine this sort of person can go by many different titles – some sort of a consultant, perhaps a coach, that sort of thing. I think there are some people you’re not sure if you can trust, so how did you identify someone that you could trust to speak into the business in that way?

JUSTIN: We wanted somebody that knew our business, was not in our business, but that can consult with us on the business. We found a gentleman who does search consulting, works with procurement departments for agencies, and allowed him to come in and really pick everything apart. He was a part consultant, he was a part coach, mentor to me and to Sandra and the leadership team. He was just really critical as we moved forward with the incredible growth that we’ve had over the last couple years.

ROB: That part is exciting. It sounds like you’ve more than gotten your money’s worth for whatever the arrangement was. I think sometimes when I talk to folks who are earlier in their agency journey, there comes a point where they’re not sure when they should start spending what could be a significant amount of money on this type of help. How would you think about when is too early to start squeezing that outside counsel to help you get outside your business and grow?

JUSTIN: Great question. I don’t think it’s ever too early if you can afford it, but I also think there are some ways to get some counsel that may not be so expensive or structured.

I know, early on in the agency, we sought out people, other agency owners, to connect with. We didn’t feel like there was some sort of competition there. We could have lunch with them and really talk shop and get some wisdom from each other. It wasn’t a formal thing, but we got together to at least have some counsel because we were young, we were small, they were larger, they had already been through the ups and downs. I think that was really important to have as well, which a lot of people can do if they search, especially nowadays where you can jump on a Zoom call or something like that.

ROB: That’s a good way to frame the current environment in terms of the opportunity as well as the constraints. I think it’s really helpful what you said there. It’s twofold – one is finding the people a step or two ahead of you and looking to them for some ways to move forward, and also, I think what you said about if you can afford the person, it’s probably not too early – I think that creates something a lot of businesses may want to find earlier than they do, which is a lens of profitability, a lens of healthy margins. How have you thought about healthy growth, especially as your team has grown?

JUSTIN: Healthy growth to me and to the leadership team at Bigeye is strategic and it’s balanced. We want to grow. If you’re not growing, you’re dying, so we want to make sure we continue to grow. We’ve been blessed and fortunate over the last couple years to grow rapidly, but we will continue to do that strategically, and we’ll do it in a balanced way. We’re not here to drive our team to burnout. We’re going to have a work-life balance. We’re going to make sure folks get out of here on time to go to their families and other things.

Now, everybody’s going to be available and be able to communicate, and afterhours, because clients will need something, but we’re going to do this growth in the right way. We’re not here to drive everyone to burnout to then go sell the agency. That is not the focus for us. We’re going to continue to grow and develop a really great agency in the U.S.

ROB: Then you also mentioned the importance of focus as one of the lessons that you’ve learned. Have there been lines of service or particular types of work that you have shut down? If so, what did you shut down and how did you realize that you needed to?

JUSTIN: Sandra, correct me if I’m wrong – I don’t know that we’ve shut down any services. We have fine-tuned our services in the sense that we know the ones that will be a win-win for both us and the client. There are services or engagements where if it’s maybe a one-off engagement, that’s probably not the right fit for us. We’re looking for multiple initiatives, a longer-term engagement than just doing a website or something like that.

SANDRA: In addition to that, too, I think we’ve identified through that when we need to acknowledge that it’s not necessarily our expertise per se, or if we know of someone who may be doing it better than us, we’re not shy to admit, “We want to make sure this is achieving the ultimate goal that you have, so let’s bring in either a partner or some outside help and counsel to be a part of this project together.”

ROB: That makes sense. A lot of times when it comes to partnering, you see a spectrum. Some agencies have a strong preference towards white-labeling their partnerships; some of them have a strong preference towards always surfacing and strictly saying “this is a partner,” and some of them tend to go somewhere in between. How have you thought about that decisioning process about if it’s explicitly always a partnership, almost always a white-label, or in between?

JUSTIN: Most of the time nowadays we’re comfortable in our own skin, and we’ll do a partnership. I think most clients nowadays have multiple agencies that they’re working with. They understand that not every agency can offer everything. They’re okay with having those partnerships as long as the agency is managing it; they don’t want another thing to manage. And they appreciate the fact that we say, “That’s probably not our most expertise, and we’d like to bring in this partner to walk alongside this journey with us.” They definitely resonate with that and appreciate that.

SANDRA: And actually, I’d say a good majority of our current clients were working with other partners and all playing in the sandbox together. So, it’s been interesting the shift that’s happened over the last couple years where that’s almost become commonplace. I think really making sure that we are not only developing that relationship with the client, but really being appreciative of others involved, has also helped to create seamless, great projects.

JUSTIN: That was probably a big “aha” of several years ago that the days of Agencies of Record are pretty much gone, from what I can tell. Clients have multiple agencies that they’re using or vetting or working with, so they understand the partnership aspect and definitely appreciate it.

ROB: That’s a great point in serving the client well. Sometimes it may seem that what a client wants is a one-stop shop, but it’s really worth clarifying. It’s not that they want you to be superhuman. They may want you to be a trusted guide to help them find someone to do everything. They may not want multiple points of contact. They may not want multiple billing relationships. Or they may want all of that. It sounds like you can serve them well by figuring out how they want to be served and what it is that they’re asking for, which is probably not for you to be Superman.

JUSTIN: Absolutely. Almost everything we do, we do in-house. We’re pretty control freak, so we like having folks here under one roof. We like to offer those services. Most of the clients that we work with understand that. They like that and really resonate with the fact that we can offer all those services to them, but also to work with other agencies as well.

A lot of the clients come to us because they’re just overwhelmed. There’s so many things on their plate, there’s so many platforms they want to be on. They want to stay ahead of the curve, but they’re just trying to keep up with what’s on their plate currently. So, they’re coming to us to really help backfill a lot of the work that they know they need to be doing.

ROB: That clearly makes sense. When you’re looking ahead, what is coming up in either the marketing world in general or particularly for Bigeye that you’re excited about?

JUSTIN: I’m going to continue to say and double down on the idea of audience. Everything we do is going to tie back to audience. I believe for us, it is resonating. We will continue to do the persona development and tie it to creative and media. There’s so much opportunity to understand and segment audiences. We can drill down to very, very micro levels of who we’re trying to reach. I think we’re just beginning that, and we’ll continue to dive deeper into it.

SANDRA: And because of that, too, I’ll just add onto that, we’ve been able to engage with some really incredible brands. My hope and my outlook towards the future is that we build on those relationships with those incredible brands and we start to work with even bigger and larger brands as well, doing innovative projects and really working on incredible marketing strategies and initiatives for some really cool people.

ROB: When you say audience, I can’t help but think one of the audience platforms that is a little bit more in the news lately is Facebook, and some brands opting out of advertising on Facebook, and probably some other brands stepping in and maybe claiming some cheaper inventory there. How are you seeing clients think about Facebook in terms of what marketing they put there?

JUSTIN: From our team and from clients, they’re cautiously watching it. We’ve not had any clients or any recommendations to make major shifts in their media budgets because of what’s going on there, but we are watching it. There are several things like that that we need to be mindful of and we need to be watching for our clients and making appropriate recommendations as we move forward with that media.

We have not seen a dramatic downtick in the cost of that. It’s still an expensive platform because of the targeting that Facebook has, but we’ll continue to watch it.

ROB: Got it. One thing I’ve seen, at least on the brand side, is some brands have maybe not shifted their overall budget, but they’ve shifted how they spend it. Some of them are scaling back on the brand advertising and drilling more into let’s say driving ecommerce or some sort of online conversion, or more outcome-based and less of the potentially risky brand marketing.

JUSTIN: Yes. Conversion is key, and everything we’re doing leads to conversion in some way. Now, that doesn’t mean that brand awareness is not important; it is, and placements like on YouTube, which tend to be more of a brand awareness play than a direct conversion – most people don’t click the ad on YouTube – but you need to be there. That’s where the audience is. It’s the #2 search engine in the world.

We know our brands that we work with need to be there, but we’re focused on conversions along with making sure the brand stays relevant, stays top of mind, and all matching back to, where is that consumer going to consume that media?

ROB: Super solid. Justin, Sandra, when people want to find you and Bigeye, where should they find you?

JUSTIN: Bigeyeagency.com is where you can find us. There’s a lot of information there. We keep our blog incredibly updated. A lot of great information there.

ROB: Sounds great. Any last words you want to leave with our audience before we get on with your day?

JUSTIN: Appreciate your time, and look forward to hearing feedback from folks.

ROB: Sounds great. Thank you, both of you, for joining today. It’s great to get to know you, and we’ll all look forward to being down in Orlando for some fun things at some point, once we get through this whole pandemic thing.

SANDRA: I hope so. Hope to see you, Rob.

ROB: Sounds great. Be well.

JUSTIN: Thanks, Rob.

SANDRA: Thank you.

JUSTIN: 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.

Tim Ringle is Global CEO of Meet the People, an “international family of unified but independent agencies. In the three months since its inception, Meet the People has acquired 3 agency brands. Tim has bigger plans. He intends to bring in a total of up to 15 agencies, reaching from Canada and the US to Europe and Asia. “We have 400 people in North America right now. We want to be 2,000 people in at most 18 to 24 months globally.”

Even though he is acquiring agencies at a fast pace, Tim says what he is not building a holding company. He explains that holding companies have been consolidating the industry, the trend a “survival response” to complications from the digitization of processes and channels and, more recently, because covid has changed how work is done. He says small agencies may need to hire one or more people “just to handle the benefits, taxes, payroll, inflation, and salary increases” of those employees who now want to work from “anywhere,” where “anywhere” has different laws, tax rates, and costs of living and working than at an agency’s home office.

Tim sees holding companies as a powerful trend. Even though there are 14,000 independent agencies in the United States, six major holding company networks “own sixty percent of the entire media industry within the agency space.” However, Tim says, they often don’t act in the best interests of their clients because they are driven from the top by financial rather than client interests. He claims that both small, independent agencies and holding companies often fail in communicating when passing clients from one agency or holding-company-entity to the next. “They’re only going to talk to each other if there’s some money to be made in between . . . there’s a lot of lost information . . . .”

In Meet the People’s “family,” the agency owns its affiliate agencies, but the people within those affiliate agencies also “own a part of Meet the People.” The network structure provides “a fully integrated approach for brands . . . to cross-pollinate across multiple services,” the opportunity for the agency to build multi-brand micro-offices, and scalable support for dealing with “anywhere” variances. Tim says, “Keep the brand, be the best you can, but let us create connective tissue between the different companies to see if we can increase share volume with a client.”

Tim has a lot of experience building global agencies. He says he has learned that it is extremely important, “especially in the beginning of the engagement,” to build trust with the client. To do this, his team of disparate agencies will need to work as one. Tim is bringing his people together physically to take time to create “a deep understanding and culture between all the different offices, people, trades, and brands,” building what Tim describes as an “integrated DNA.” They also will be discussing the implementation of individualized OKRs (Objectives, Key Results), a tech tool for tracking accountability.

Tim says his agency is very focused on operational excellence, on brand positioning, on bringing really good entrepreneurs . . . and on hyper-goals. He says it is important to make the right decisions now because, “if you build something with small cracks, they become massive gaps when you are at scale.” 

As his agency network continues to grow, Tim is excited about finding “really talented entrepreneurs who want to change the industry who can't or are tapping out” with their skills/abilities/finances and being able, through Meet the People, to provide the experience, capital, and structure and small-enough scale “where they can actually still move things.” 

Tim can be reached on his agency’s website at: https://www.meet-the-people.com/.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast I'm your host Rob Kischuk and I'm joined today by Tim Ringle, Global CEO at Meet the People based in New York, New York. Welcome to the podcast, Tim.

TIM: Hi, Rob. Thank you for having me.

ROB: It's great to have you here. Why don't you start off by telling us about Meet the People, what is the business, and what are you all best at.

TIM: I think, to understand what we are building with Meet the People, you have to understand a bit of my background. I've been an entrepreneur in the agency space – primarily digital agency space for 24 years. That sounds long but I'm also 45 years old so I can carry that. I started my first agency literally in the basement of my friend's house. We started as a SEO agency digital marketing agency, very much focused on performance marketing. I was blessed to be able to do that in ’98, ’99 – when this industry was about to develop and therefore was able build that business to 150 people and then sell the business. After that, I did a reverse takeover of the company that bought my business –and that got me to around 400 people in Europe. So, I started my first business in Germany – my native Germany – and we scaled the 400 people agency that was all across Europe into 1,000 people. It was stock market listed in beautiful Paris. I left that to move to the dark side of the ad industry as I call it. Having built multiple agencies as an independent agency entrepreneur, you were always battling the holding companies, right? And I swore to myself many times because they beat me and sometimes I beat them. That's how it works, right? I swore to them I would never work for them. So, I ended up moving to New York City and working for 1 of the holding companies who always wanted to acquire my business. So, I did that for 3 years within IPG. I have to say the experience was amazing. I really learned a ton of stuff that I couldn't learn from being someone who was leading 1,000 people. Now I was part of 65,000 people. I inherited an agency there – once again, a performance marketing agency – around 1,000 people – and then left it after 3 years scaling it to 3,000 people. So, I've done this a couple of times and what we're building with Meet the People is what I would say is version number four of my vision of what an independent agency network should look like. We're building it with my 24 years of experience of what I liked and disliked in the agencies that I've built in the past. What I liked the most was that people in the advertising industry are mainly driven by culture. If you're good in your trade in advertising, you can get a job anywhere on the client side in tech companies. You can build your own company because marketing, just like legal, is a service that you always need everywhere. So, selling a product, branding a product, coming up with a marketing strategy is something you can use pretty much in every business in the world. It's 1 of the integrated parts. Why do people choose to work for an agency? Because they love the culture in agencies, right? What we're doing at Meet the People – when we looked at the industry and I had – I still have the same vision. I'm building a global agency network as an alternative to the large holding companies. I figured that nobody's talking about the people anymore. Everybody's talking about technology, data, automation, and how computers will replace us, how AI will come up with creatives – all this kind of stuff. It’s true that the technology has enabled us to be extremely more efficient. But, in the end, the new Coke logo or the new “just do it” from Nike does not come out of AI or a computer, it comes out of the brain of a human being a creative strategist. So, we believe (or I believe) that we have to remember in the ad industry that it's all about the people. We are a service industry. Without the people who are sitting behind the machines and using the machines, tech enabled, we're not going to produce disruptive, new ideas that actually put a brand on the map. That’s why we’re building Meet the People. I can obviously talk much more about it. But that's kind of it in a nutshell.

ROB: When you say an agency network . . . what does that look like when it's an agency network? It's not a holding company. I'm curious about the differentiation of some of the different agencies within the network and how you think about that – because your website is very people-centric. It's more about the people, the partners, than it is about this brand and this specialization and this other thing we just acquired and all that you see in the holding company world.

TIM: Correct. So, why am I not calling it a holding company? A holding company has one purpose – and it is a financial orientation. right? So, a holding company is most a holding company because it is actually managed by finance people. I don't necessarily I don't want to diss anyone. But I would say that a finance-led company most probably will be struggling with creating the best strategy, best creative, and best outcome for their clients. They might create the best outcome for themselves, right? That's why we're not calling ourselves a holding company. We are running this network of agencies who, don't misunderstand me, we do own the agencies – and the people within the agencies own a part of Meet the People. That's the concept. We are building this, first of all, to fulfill a fully integrated approach for brands so, instead of just servicing one client within one specialty with one agency, we are allowing the conversation to be elevated and to cross-pollinate across multiple services. For example, when our creative agency, VSA Partners, out of Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. Beautiful, creative design work and strategy. When they come up with a brand refresh or rebranding or brand strategy – I would love to see that through until you actually can see it on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn – wherever that brand comes to life besides on brochures, in magazines, or the logo or the CI. Many independent agencies, because of their size and their financial scrutiny because they're small, can't invest a lot of capital into innovation or additional services. They can't see that journey through. That means you have a lot of inefficient handshakes in between. That happens in holding companies because they're structured that way, but it happens in independent agencies as well. One independent agency is a hundred people might be excellent in creative. The next one might be excellent in social media. But they're only going to talk to each other if there's some money to be made in between. There's a lot of lost information when a chief creative officer comes up with a brand strategy and somebody implements that on social media in community management. We want to make that a much more seamless flow with less barriers for the client but also more excitement for the people involved because you actually see the product living there and a colleague of you in another agency – but it's part of our structure – has basically put that on the social channel or billboard.

ROB: When you come to thinking about – there's, obviously, within a holding company lots of capabilities, you're talking about these more seamless handoffs. How do you think about building that team? Did you go out hunting for best of breed agencies to bring them into the group or did you build some capabilities from scratch? How did you think about this?

TIM: We were going to do both. We started Meet the People three months ago and since then we had 3 agency brands join us – so we acquired 3 brands. Three agencies and we're going to bring more than 10 – probably 15 plus – companies into Meet the People as a group. We're going to do that in North America – so we already have US, Canada, some capabilities. We're going to do it in Europe and then we're going to do it in Asia. How we decide what to go for depends on what services we need next in that journey. Right now, we have a very strong creative agency with VSA Partners and we have a very strong experiential agency with Public Labels. We have certain services that sit in a similar bucket where the client sees the service, so that adjacent service is part of the scope. If we don't service that ourselves. then we should basically fill that gap either with another agency joining us or with building these capabilities organically with the acquire or actually hire before revenue. Ultimately, we want to have a seamless handshake between the different trades.

ROB: We have 2 former guests who have been acquired into a similar opportunity recently – which is interesting. We had Chantel from Imagine Media and Techwood Digital were both acquired. Jared Belski, who was the CEO of 360i, has rolled up 3 or 4 agencies. That's all I know. Is this a trend or is this just 2 people that happen to have done a similar thing and why now?

TIM: No, it is a trend. As much as I don't like the traditional holding company model, we have to respect that the holding companies have created an industry. Because there's 14,000 independent agencies in the United States alone. Fourteen thousand and there are six networks and the six networks own sixty percent of the entire media industry within the agency space, right? So they've created an industry. We all live in that ecosystem and that industry. The trend right now and primarily driven by the extreme success of what whatever intention Martin Sorrell, Sir Martin Sorrell, had to bid as for capital. If it was ego, if it was revenge, I don't know. He only knows. But he has been extremely successful from a financial perspective doing that because there is a gap, a vacuum in the Market. So, there’s models like that that are older than the S4 Capital MediaMonks model. MediaMonks is only 3 years old but Stagwell MDC by Mark Penn is 5-6 years old and You & Mr. Jones is also 7 years old, I think. So, there's a couple of these what we call an agency rollup network model. They existed for years. What has changed in the industry is covid has accelerated the fact that independent agencies got scrutinized because of their size. Before, when you were 100 people, you could live a very good life as an independent agency. There's two real trends. One is the digitalization of processes and channels. At the same time covid is putting extraordinary pressure on talent, new work. This is all very complicated for smaller companies to handle because now your people tell you, “I want to work from anywhere.” How are you going to do that from a benefits perspective . . . tax perspective? It creates complications. Clients are the same. “Oh, I don't need you to come into my office anymore, but I want to take T&E out of your expenses.” Economy of scale becomes more and more important. A couple of people have understood that, so these networks are created over the last couple of years. But they're also created all over the planet. So there are networks in Asia, networks in Europe, networks in the US. There's only very few who can bridge multiple continents. This is one thing we're going to do with Meet the People. We're going to bridge multiple continents because we believe (or I believe) that our clients want the same quality of service across multiple jurisdictions that are not only North America. So, I've not invented this model, right? They exist. They're very successful. The main reason why they're successful is that, when you have, as I said, 100 people on your P&L, it's very difficult for you to invest a million dollars into innovation technology. You might only have a million dollars of profit and you want to keep some of that. Usually, it's very difficult for them to hire before revenue, to anticipate bigger jumps. In economy of scale, it's easier for us to say, “Ten, twenty percent of our EBITA goes to a business strategy consultancy layer that most agencies can't afford or a technology IP that you actually own as a company. We can make these investments. And that makes it extremely attractive.

ROB: How do the capital markets feel about this sort of arrangement? I know there's a lot of money out there looking for yield. I could also see the case that you just have to self-finance this sort of thing if you want to. Where is the money side of the world? Are they looking to fund this sort of thing because they need something to believe in and something that's going to give them better than inflation? Although inflation is getting pretty good now.

TIM: Let's make a relatable example. Let's imagine you have a million dollars excess capital right now. You have it lying around. Where are you going to put it? You can put it into crypto. Very risky. You can put it into NFTs. Even riskier. You can put it into traditional venture capital. So, there's a lot of money in the market. But there's also a lot of options in the market. You know pre-IPO, post-IPO, or FinTech, software as a service, space – there’s so many categories. The service business as a sector in general or the advertising industry service side of it – not MarTech AdTech – it's not the most attractive industry to invest money. Why? Because you have no tangible assets. The desks, the computers – they're all at home right now. As people, as a company, you maybe own intellectual property. But mostly you have a lot of walking assets and that's your people. For the longest time, the ad industry was not super attractive for larger investors. That has dramatically changed because of the pressure coming from tech. Tech has gotten so heavy on advertising and so relying on advertising. Same time that there's more capital in the market and that a couple of people, including Sir Martin and others, have proven that you can make real money there. Most of the investment in this space is private equity and I would say large family offices.

ROB: It's fascinating just to see this emerge. I think I hear what you're saying that you know there's all these different factors in play, right? You have some firms that are a little bit “walking wounded” due to . . . it does get complicated when people want to be in different states and now you're having to pay taxes on your payroll in different states. There's an economy to having 1,000 people, 10,000 people where you know what there's a department that handles that baked into the margins of the overall business. I totally get it.

TIM: Yeah, and you don't go through this alone, right? If you have a 50-people business and 20 people decide they don't want to work from New York anymore or LA, they're going to work from anywhere, you need to hire at least 1 more person just to handle the benefits, taxes, payroll plus inflation increases plus salary increases. So, it's complicated. What's important about Meet the People is we give that layer at scale, but the agency brands stay independent in their DNA. We're not changing their brands. VSA Partners that joined us at the beginning of the year is VSA Partners. They've done that. This work for 40 years . . . successful. They're an incredible, talented shop and great people. Why would we change any of that? Doesn't make any sense. Keep the brand, be the best you can, but let us create connective tissue between the different companies to see if we can increase share volume with a client. You're already sitting on an amazing client. You define the strategy. Why don't we talk about who actually builds the website, who actually manages social media? Why don't we talk about it because we already have that relationship? That is very attractive to companies who don't have that client access. There's a lot of independent agencies who are very specialized, who would die to get into a client like Google or IBM or Ford who just can't because they don't have the gravitas. 

ROB: When it comes to new and existing business, it sounds like you have some thoughts about the role of location. But the role of location is different from what it used to be. On the one hand you mentioned having offices and having people in these different geographies. But you also had this dynamic where some of the agencies that are joining the network may have played very much off a home field advantage that may not be the case anymore. So, how are you looking at the strategic role of geography?

TIM: I think geography stays extremely important. I'm someone who grew up with in-person meetings and built businesses within in-person meetings. I do believe in-person meetings to create chemistry. Especially in the beginning of the engagement with the client, it’s extremely important because you're not only buying a service, you're buying the trust into the person across from you. Because there's so many agencies out there. So many service providers out there. Who are you going to go for if the service is extremely comparable and they sadly so are? In the creative space, not as much, but in the digital execution, who does better search than that person – there is a chemistry factor to that. I think in person will stay extremely relevant. Our strategy here is to say, instead of having large headquarters, we're going to have more micro-offices. When we have 10 agencies, let’s say in North America, it's extremely likely that we end up having 20 offices all over the place. Instead of having one person in a WeWork, we're going to have 20 people from maybe 5 different agencies in Austin, Texas. Or we're going to have the same in Dallas, or we’re going to have the same in San Francisco. We already have 5 offices in North America and anyone from these companies can really work from anywhere within these proximities. We also hire outside of these proximities because we want to have at some point an office in Miami, maybe in New Orleans, and whatnot. So, I foresee that we have certain client-centric larger footprints in New York, LA, San Francisco. We have Boulder, Colorado, we have Chicago, we have Toronto . . . but we're going to have a lot of micro-offices because we need to have flexibility. That's new work. This is part of that. Maybe one of the things we got from covid . . . besides covid.

ROB: Really fascinating. Tim, we quite often ask people what lessons they've learned and what they would do differently, but it strikes me that you are actually in the process of getting to do things differently. You know we say, what would you do if you were starting over? You, you have had a chance to do that in some cases. An interesting thing about this model is you're kind of starting on third base but you have agencies who have made it here on their own journeys and you're having to coalesce something together. What are you doing differently in the structuring of Meet the People that you learned in your past and said, “It's got to be different”?

TIM: One thing that we're doing the same is creating a deep understanding and culture between all the different offices, people, trades, and brands. I've done this before. The last business I managed for IPG, I ended up having 72 offices around the globe. The business before had 25 offices around the globe and we made sure that these people met physically. It sounds counterintuitive during covid but, the fact that you spend time together workshopping. For example, let's say we have five companies and all their creatives can come together in one location for three days and talk about the differences of their work approach. That would be such a forming experience for them because they all are going to learn from that. You have some people who have done this for 40 years. You have some people who are doing this for 4 years. It's that culture of respect, of understanding, of bringing the different traits together. I think that is extremely powerful. I learned through this journey that you can have you can have the best product in the world. If your people don't believe in it, you're not going to go anywhere. Creating that belief and creating that culture and creating that integrated DNA is a little bit of magic that's extremely important to build a successful business. That's what I learned. What I go to do different, and I kind of promised my wife I would, is travel less. I don't think that's not happening. What I try to do is travel a little bit less because covid allows for that new model. The second thing that I learned is to run an agency a little bit more like an agile tech company. Not because I want to strip away the creativity or anything – none of none of that. The problem in many agencies is that there’s a lack of accountability because of a mutual understanding that the creative process is complicated. You know what I mean. Building a tech product is as complicated and needs as much creativity. But somehow there are better levers or control mechanisms in there that allow you to achieve a target in your planning session a little bit quicker and more agile. We want to apply a little bit of startup thinking to a very traditional industry.

ROB: I think anybody in the startup industry would claim the same degree of creativity and the same degree of craftsmanship. I'm very much from a software development background and if you want to talk about something that resists measurement. People always say, “Building software is not the same as building a house. You can stamp out houses, but software is a different thing.” Yet within technology there are certain constraints that you talk about. You don't get to just walk away and say, “Well I'm sorry. It'll take some amount of time and we'll show up and it'll be great. There’s process to it.

TIM: In the advertising industry, that is not always the case. People walk away and they say, “I’m going to come back in a week or two because I don't know when I'm going to come to a product.” I get that because it's creative and it needs time but in many of these trades you can have OKR’s, for example. So you can have certain accountability factors or set certain targets. That’s how you can manage a large company. A bit more agile and efficient. 

ROB: Yeah, so to talk about OKR’s for a moment because they're popularly said, but I think sometimes poorly understood. Where did you come to a good understanding of them and how do you think about deploying them?

TIM: I’ve got to be honest with you. This is why I got my management team together in New York this week. They're all here in the office in New York – came in from Germany, London, Connecticut. Sounds like a long trip but we're all coming together.

ROB: Can be.

TIM: We are coming together right now, here in New York, to decide “how do we implement OKR’s within an agency environment” and we're not done with that journey. We're not done with the discussion, but we do know we want to approach it a little bit different than the last 3 times we did it together. I think in six months’ time I can answer that question much better. I do believe that OKR’s need to be very individualized. Your overall underlying principles are the same, but you have to individually craft it towards your organization because you don't want to over-engineer it as well, right? You need to give people the freedom. So, I will be able to answer that question in three to six months

ROB: Sounds good, sounds good. Tim, as you’re thinking about what's next for Meet the People and for this evolved holding company model, what's coming up next? What are you excited about?

TIM: For us, it's hyper-goals. We have 400 people in North America right now. We want to be 2,000 people in at most 18 to 24 months globally. So, we are very much focused on making the right decisions now because, once you build something with small cracks, they become massive gaps when you are at scale. So, we're very much focused on operational excellence, on our brand positioning, on bringing really good entrepreneurs. When I look at companies, we have to do the financial background checks and stuff like that needs to be in order. But I'm looking much more for entrepreneurs who see that the industry needs to change. That is where the minds are aligned with the companies we are looking at and acquiring and partnering with. That's what I'm most excited about, finding really talented entrepreneurs who want to change the industry who can't or are tapping out with their skills or their abilities or financially and asking, how do I get from 50 to 100 people? How do I get from 100 to 200 people? We bring the experience. We bring the capital. We bring structure where they can actually still move things – because we're not 10,000 people or 5,000 people like our competitors are. So, that's what gets me most excited. Then, obviously, there's always something new in our industry, there's always something new, right? It never stops. I remember when I built my first agency, I thought, when I master search, I'm going to be done with this. Affiliate marketing comes along. Oh well. Then I master affiliate marketing. Then social came and I mastered social. Programmatic came. It never ends – and that's also, to some extent, very exciting because you keep having to learn and adapt. At some point, I will age out, where people will tell me, “Tim you know what? Just drink your coffee. You know we have got it because you don't, and you don't get it anymore.”

ROB: (Laughs) Ah, so it's always a struggle to try and figure out what things you might be aging out of and what things are just a little weird. It's always a little bit of both.

TIM: That's right. And what's the little bit of bullshit right now in the industry that you can just face over. You don't need to go deep.

ROB: I think there were moments early in social where it felt very experimental. It felt very strange. It felt very frothy. We've been through that on an influencer. You were around. I was around. You look at the crypto world and it seems almost like – I could be dead wrong – I think the thing that's most misunderstood but also well observed now about the dot Com era is everything happened eventually. But it didn't happen then. That’s maybe where we're at with crypto. I'm not sure.

TIM: Well, like crypto is one thing, but then think about NFTs, right? 

ROB: Yeah, I’m lumping that in. Yeah

TIM: Okay, if you lump it all into one OKR, fair enough. I can talk for hours about my diverse opinions on NFTs and the NFT world. Nevertheless, we have clients who are extremely excited about and who really want to deploy capital, being part of that industry because there's the strong underlying belief of making something really good at the same time. There is this unnecessary social hype on certain topics where I'm thinking, “Guys, you're destroying something that was meant to be really good. I think blockchain and crypto is falling or has fallen into a similar trap where the underlying idea . . . because technically I'm an engineer, right? I got my first pc when I was eleven. Taught myself coding and all this kind of stuff. So, I love the idea of blockchain and decentralized holding of assets and accountability and ledgers. That's amazing. It could solve so many problems in world. The problem is that when dodgecoin comes along in Shibona or whatever, the next thing is, it drags it in the dirt. The underlying technology is incredible. The sad story is people want to get rich fast and lots of them don't.

ROB: That's right. It happened before. People built the worst websites in the world for a couple million bucks back once-upon-a-time early internet.

TIM: But you remember when you could buy 1 pixel on a website or something like that for a thousand dollars and there were these crazy businesses out there and it's coming back, just differently now. My hope is that just like the dot com bubble . . . yes, there was a hype. Yes, there was a crash but, after that an actual industry developed. So, I'm hoping that we're going to go through the same thing with NFTs and some of these offsprings of crypto.

ROB: That makes complete sense. Well, Tim, Thanks for hopping on. Thanks for illuminating us on what's going on in this holding company opportunity, what you're doing with that. I think it's interesting you started and you kind of knew what it looked like to run a large organization. I can imagine starting with 2 people in a closet might not always be the best use of those skills. It's neat to see the industry lining up in a way that that lets us see so much happen so quickly. So, thanks for coming on. Good to have you, Tim.

TIM: Thanks Rob for having me. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

ROB: Alright, be well, thanks, bye.

Anthony Sarandrea is the founder of Siteflood, a high-revenue agency offering website design, search engine optimization, paid social, paid search management, and analytics and tracking to select clients. Siteflood’s primary focus is on paid media, fast results, and a trackable ROI. 

Originally, a boutique agency with select clients paying a monthly retainer, Siteflood has added a “partnership model,” where Siteflood’s income from a client is tied directly the number of leads it generates or the client’s sales numbers. As these clients grow, the agency’s incentivization grows. This model has enabled Siteflood to scale quickly without needing to add huge numbers of staff or hundreds of clients. The agency garners a daily gross revenue in the six figures – with a staff of around 30 people. 

Does incentivization always work?

Anthony relates the story where one of two client companies, with identical, copy-pasted Google AdWords, made $3 for every $1 net margin spend and the other company claimed they had not “made a dollar of revenue” in 4 months. The difference in results had nothing to do with the generated lead flow. It came from differences in the companies’ internal sales processes, products, and how each company closed deals. Anthony emphasizes that incentivization only works when you are “aligned with the right people.” 

In this interview, Anthony recommends finding clients that work . . . and then finding more of the same kind of clients. He describes the process Siteflood uses to select “the right clients”:

1. Does the company measure up on an in-depth “vetting process” of its processes, culture, and growth-readiness? Does this relationship look like it will be successful?
2. Is the company at an inflection point where it is large enough to quickly scale to putting six figures a month into marketing and small enough that it can be coached to improve its internal, customer relationship, and sales processes?
3. Does the company have the infrastructure to support a ten-fold increase in sales? 

At the beginning, Anthony did it all. He explains how growing his company was an iterative process of replacing himself. He recommends a book, The E-Myth, Why Most Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It, available on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Most-Businesses-Dont-About/dp/0887303625. The book discusses the growth journey in terms of learning new skill sets. Anthony feels the key to sustainable long term growth is to invest in his people – to serve as a facilitator and cheerleader, to provide the right tools and training, to continuously invest in his employees’ wellbeing, and to set them up for success. 

Growth also requires hiring . . . the right people for the right reasons:

• Hire quickly to replace yourself in jobs you don’t like to do. 
• For fast results, hire people who can do things better than you can. If you cannot afford someone full time, hire part time. Anthony recommends a site called Clarity.fm https://clarity.fm/ where experts are paid by the minute.
• Hire for jobs at which you excel, but expect that the person replacing you will only be 70% as good at it as you are. Here, Anthony explains his training process. He says a company owner absolutely has to replace him- or herself if the company is to grow.

Anthony’s interview is rich with ideas. His favorite way to be contacted is through Instagram at: @anthonysarandrea. Or google his name and reach out to him on one of his sites. He loves answering questions.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Anthony Sarandrea, Founder of Siteflood in Scottsdale, Arizona. Welcome to the podcast, Anthony.

ANTHONY: Hey, Rob. Thanks for having me, brother.

ROB: Fantastic to have you here. Why don’t you start off by telling us about Siteflood and the specialties that you work in? 

ANTHONY: We started as a boutique agency that took on select clients. Really the paid media space is where we’ve always sharpened our teeth. A lot of that is the speed of results to be able to have a trackable ROI on a lot we’ve done. We started taking on select clients in a traditional agency format where they paid us a retainer per month, and a lot of clients still are on that format.

Over the years, we started performing well for clients and realized, why don’t we productize our service? Why don’t we sell leads or sell on a per sale or something like that where essentially, instead of getting paid a flat fee each month, we were tied to incentives that aligned with the actual company itself – or our partner, I should say.

That allowed us to very rapidly scale without having to add hundreds of people or hundreds of clients or anything like that. When our clients grew, we grew and the incentivization grew and we made more money. Today, we’ve scaled up to a little over six figures a day that the company makes in gross revenue. I think a lot of people are surprised the team is only 30-something people. Most agencies in order to scale need to hire on dozens and dozens of people to get anywhere near that level, where because of the model and incentivization ad structure, and we’ve been able to do it in a win-win format.

ROB: The productization you came up with, did you get to leads? Or was there another metric? Does it vary by client a little bit?

ANTHONY: It varies by client. Most of what we focus on today is in the lead space, so each customer we send. But a lot of times it was structured initially on profit sharing or rev sharing or a bounty per new customer we drove. I think a lot of agencies and brands – we talked a little bit before this on where I see the future of advertising agencies – I think brands are going to demand more, as they should, out of their agencies, where it’s not just a “write a check and forget it” and pay it each month.

When essentially the incentivization is in alignment, both the agency and the company grow and everybody feels good about it versus writing a 10 grand a month check about SEO and saying you might see something in the next 2 years.

ROB: Right. It seems like there’s always tension in pricing, and you want to drive to value for sure. It seems like when you talk about leads, there’s a tension because if you price towards closed business, then you are linking your business to their sales effectiveness. But if you are not pricing to their closed business, then it leaves room for conversations about lead quality. How did you figure out which side you wanted to land on, if you have?

ANTHONY: Great question. That thought process – I’ll start with this, too, to asterisk the whole thing – it forced us to realize that we bring a lot more – a lot of times companies or even vendors look at themselves as vendors and they’re like, “These are the guys that write the checks for me.”

It’s like, hold on, when we’re doing good services, we’re actually helping write the checks for them. We’re helping them pay their employees because we’re driving customers. So it put us a lot more in the driver’s seat than I think a lot of agencies or even brands look at vendors or agencies. They look at them as a commodity or it’s just another person, where now it forced us to be infinitely more selective on who we worked with.

To your point, I remember at one point we had two companies that were the exact same. We literally copy and pasted the campaigns in Google AdWords, and one company was making $3 to every $1 net dollar margin that they were spending, and the other one said in 4 months, they hadn’t made a dollar in revenue. What was the difference there? It was their sales process internally. It was their product. It was how they closed deals. It had nothing to do with the lead flow we were driving.

I think a lot of agencies and brands, it’s easy to point and say the leads suck or the traffic sucks or they’re not good at what they do. We had to really look at, who are we aligning ourselves with? That is equally if not infinitely more important, to be aligned with the right people.

I guess to answer your initial question, we focused at the beginning, and we do today, on driving the best customers, really helping our clients make the most money, because we know in order for us to get paid more and put more dollars in our pocket, we need to help them put more dollars in their pocket. Otherwise they can’t pay us. If the company is not making money, they can’t continue to justify paying us.

So by focusing on really the bottom line of our clients or for agency owners to do that, you’re able to essentially justify your fees coming back tenfold. They’d be silly to not want to pay you more if you’re making them that money and you’re able to trackably show that.

ROB: As you’ve dialed in on these right customers for you, have there been certain categories, certain types of companies for certain product lines that have emerged? And how do you get close enough to really, really vet and evaluate whether they’re a good customer?

ANTHONY: The vetting, we’ll do everything. When they come in and they’re asking to work with us, we’ll buy the product or we’ll call in and even walk through the sales process of enrolling the client and stuff like that and just see, how is their follow-up sequence? How is their upsell sequence? How do they do it? A lot of that, we don’t necessarily have enough hours in the day or resources and/or bandwidth that we want to point towards helping them tune up their sales process.

If a lot of that is not already in place, we know it’s probably going to be a failing campaign. Simple things that you forget, but most companies don’t even pick up the phone when it rings. It’s so funny. They have a $12 an hour college guy or gal answering the phone, and it’s like, you’re spending 10 grand a month on Google AdWords and then you have a $12 an hour girl or guy answering the phones? How does that make sense?

So even just little quick things like that. Just saying, “Hey, is this going to be successful? Have they invested in their sales process?” That’s number one.

Number two, we’re at a really interesting inflection point where we need a big enough company that can scale so they can put six figures a month into marketing dollars, but also small enough where we can grab their ear when we need to say, “Hey, answer the phone in a certain way” or “Hey, you should work on your upsell sequence.” We had Fortune 500 companies where it took months to move anything, and it was hindering us, especially if we’re tied to performance. If we know something is going to work, or at least we want to test it, and it takes 3 months of approvals to get through middle management to upper management to senior – that’s not a partner for us either.

So we’ve really landed on companies that probably do anywhere from $10 million to $50 million a year that are heavily focused on direct response advertising. Things like that are really our bread and butter.

ROB: Any particular categories of direct response product?

ANTHONY: On our own website, a lot of the lead focus are a lot in the financial space, but healthcare has also been very big for us. Very easily, though, you can apply the same model to ecommerce. The same challenges work there, and now the conversation is on the phone with the brand. “How is your supply chain pipeline? Are you guys able to scale up quickly? Do you guys have investments? How’s your cash flow?” Asking those types of questions where if you’re signing up 100 sales and you go to 1,000 sales a day, do they have the infrastructure to support that?

I guarantee you, if you’re an agency owner or if you’re a brand listening, that conversation sticks out infinitely further than every other agency that’s like “I charge 10% of spend. We’re going to get you impressions and clicks and SEO.” The brand owner is almost like, “I don’t understand half this stuff. It feels like brain surgery. Everyone is having the same conversations with me.” “Here’s my past work.” It’s like, how about getting on the phone and being like, “Logistically, how would it work if you tripled it? Do you guys have the infrastructure to support that?”

Have that conversation. See the response you get if you’re an agency owner to a brand. Or if you’re a brand, think about how good that would feel to have that agency partner having those conversations with you as a partner.

I keep saying partner, too. I don’t say a vendor. I don’t say a company. It really becomes a partnership in a lot of ways because the whole train falls off the tracks if both sides aren’t keeping up their end of the bargain. If the engine isn’t moving, if they’re not putting the right gasoline and oil into the engine, you’re just the wheels, really. You could be the best wheels on the planet; if that engine is not fine-tuned, which is the client, or vice versa, there’s a problem. So there really needs to be an alignment on both. 

ROB: Anthony, you said you’re around 30 people in the company now, but obviously everybody starts somewhere, and it usually starts pretty small. How did you end up starting Siteflood, and what led to that beginning?

ANTHONY: It really started with me doing a lot of essentially consultation or consulting work, it felt like, or side hustle, where you’ve got a couple clients. I was the technician. I’m the one running the AdWords accounts and things like that and having the conversations.

At least me – I’ll just tell my story – you start doing everything, really. I’m the bookkeeper, I’m the accountant. I’m wearing all the hats. Then, at least my journey, I got busy enough where I was able to hire on – at the time, the first hire was a bookkeeper part-time, and then the second hire was actually my brother, someone to run the ads where then I enjoyed and was good at the conversations with the clients. Then started building out essentially people doing the work, so the technicians. I was the manager/point of contact for the clients to liaison, I’ll say. Then eventually replacing myself as that, and then last step is and was replacing myself in sales.

That’s the progression. I find a lot of agency owners move through a similar progression. They go from the technician to manager to learning how to be an entrepreneur. There’s a great book called The E-Myth that I recommend to anybody listening. It essentially walks through that journey and how you’re really each time learning new skillsets.

I was a badass sales guy, and then I was a badass internet marketer, and then I had to learn how to be a good manager. Then I had to learn to be a good entrepreneur. You really start at ground zero, almost on each one. I think the quicker you wrap your head around this is a totally new skillset, even though it’s the same industry or type of business – I think a lot of people fall into the fallacy that it’s like “I’m really good at Google AdWords. I’ll be a really good manager or a really good entrepreneur.” It’s not always the case. It’s very difficult to start from ground zero and really humble yourself each time you move that progression from technician to manager to entrepreneur.

ROB: Those last couple of steps that you mentioned can often be the most challenging. That switching out from being the lead salesperson, in particular, because in a services firm, so often the client wants some facetime with you as the founder, as the leader. How have you navigated that transition? Is it more that people who are taking the role and leading on sales are leading in that function and you’re still brought in sometimes because that’s part of the brand of the firm? Or have you found some tactics that you’ve been able to move it even further?

ANTHONY: I think there’s one thing that really stuck with me. I think especially a lot of A type entrepreneurs are very controlling, and nobody’s going to ever have the same level of care you do for your business because your name is on it. You’re taking the risk, so you get the downfall and the upside. When the company is making good money, you’re making good money. When the company is struggling or failing, it’s really your ass.

Where was I going with that? Oh, I had a great mentor tell me one time, “If you can hire someone to do the job 70% as good as you, that’s what you should aim for.” It was tough because at first I had someone come in and would run the AdWords accounts, and I was like, I can do this better.

The reality is, you probably can. If you’re telling yourself that, it’s probably true. But you will never grow with that mindset. The company will not grow. Unless you find a way to get more hours in the day – which Bill Gates hasn’t been able to figure that out yet – unless you find a way to be able to extend the length of the day, it’s impossible for you to ever break that.

Wrapping my head around that was like, got it, cool, put your ego down, understand that yes, nobody can do this as good as you – and that’s okay. Now it’s become a function of, can I hire someone to do it 70% as good as me. I really lead with “I do, you watch, then you do, I watch, and then I manage.” Essentially, I’m doing it and showing it; they’re watching. Then I’m hands off and I’m watching and I’m saying, “Now you’re doing it.”

Then when it feels good, it’s putting checks and balances in place. It’s “Hey, let’s track the CPA you’re driving for this campaign. Let’s track how many conversations you had with a client.” I’ll poke in time to time and just listen on mute to a sales call, little things like that. But really, at least for me, it’s a function of again, I’m doing and you’re watching, you’re taking notes.

And it’s not a one-time thing. It’s consistently – it’s funny. Now I joke I’m really a cheerleader, at the end of the day, today. I work for my team more than they work for me. My job all day long is like, “What can I get you? How can I help you?” They’re like, “Go get me this.” I’m running to go get coffee for everybody. That’s my job now: to continuously invest in their wellbeing, to make sure they have the right tools, they have the right training, set them up to have consultations with people that might be better. That’s in personal and business life.

That continuous grooming of individuals is really, at least in my opinion, the key to sustainable long-term growth. But again, that was a little tactical there. I think that same progression applies to whether you’re hiring someone around an AdWords account, someone to talk to clients, or someone to sell. But short answer, yeah.

The other portion of my time is putting out fires. I’m not going to say I’m sitting on a beach all day and the machine runs itself. I am there to put our fires. I am there when there’s a difficult conversation or a new challenge that comes up for a sales guy or within the accounts. I am there to help strategize or to jump in or anything like that. Yeah, I’d say I handle the top 10% of fires as well that roll up to me.

ROB: Very good. Anthony, you mentioned that one of your early hires was your brother, and it sounded like he came in in this operational structuring role. How have you thought about, as you grow, handling this balance of needing process to scale while also needing creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit to continue growth and avoid stagnating?

ANTHONY: That’s an awesome question, dude. I think first you’ve got to understand where your strength is. Is it operationally or is that continued vision? Ultimately, I think I’d be lying if I didn’t say you have to learn and work on both. That’s where that challenge of the 24 hours comes in.

But it’s hiring people that can do things better than yourself. For instance, I remember when we were at a much, much, much smaller size, I hired an operational consultant who came in for a week. It was a ton of money at the time for him to come in, and I was like, this is a necessary investment. He put together project management systems and he put together processes.

It was all stuff that I had been probably a year too late. We really needed it a year earlier and I just kept being like, “I’ll do it” or “We should” or “We’re good, the train’s not falling off.” Making those investments back into the business is extremely key because if I hadn’t done that, we would’ve never unlocked the next level in the video game. We would’ve been stuck on that same level.

That process is extremely important and it is something that I am not blessed with. I was not born to be very checklist, A, B, C, D, E. I always joke it’s a “fire, ready, aim” mentality. Essentially, finding people, whether it’s consultants, it’s a part-time person – whoever gets that ball moving, because a lot of times it’s hard, depending on the size of an agency, to be like “Let me go hire a full-time operations guy or project management.” You might not have the cash flow to be able to justify that.

But what can you afford and what kind of steps – there’s a great site called Clarity.fm where you can pay people per minute for their time. Go find someone who ran a good-sized company operationally and have them come in and help put this together. Spend a day with someone on your team that can help do it. Because ultimately, you do need to be watching out for icebergs as an entrepreneur. If that is the role you’re going to take and you are going to be the visionary, you do need to be looking out for the future and say, “Hey, we need to productize our service” or “Hey, we need to focus here.”

Some of the most successful people in the world stare out of a window for hours throughout the day. Everyone’s like, “Are they daydreaming? What are they doing?” You get paid as an entrepreneur to think. The quicker you can free up your time from – I’ll have days where I have 200 emails, and I’ll shut it down. I’ll just sit outside and just think.

It sounds funny. It’s like, “Dude, you’ve got to knock those out.” Some of my highest ROI time is just sitting on a bench somewhere and thinking. It sounds funny and it sounds silly, but it really is true. Eventually, if you are the visionary, you’re paid to think. You make money when you’re thinking. The quicker you get out of the day-to-day rut and the more time you have free to just express yourself and think, the quicker the business is going to grow.

If you’re not the visionary, if you’re not there, can you find a business partner that is? Can you find someone, again, a consultant or a mentor, someone who has been there, done that, grown to that level? How can you get around them and incentivize them again to help you? Maybe they make a percentage of growth. Maybe you’re paying them high hourly to get that. Maybe that’s a skill you’re going to work on. “How do I study some of the best visionaries and thinkers in the world?”

So I don’t want you to get stuck if someone is really good operationally on stuff to be like “That’s not me, I’m screwed.” It’s like, no, find someone who – essentially, understand what you’re good at, double down on that, and then surround yourself with people that can pick up the slack on the other level, is really the key.

I think the reason I’m so good at what I do is because I know what I’m really bad at and I’m okay with that. So I don’t need to wear 50 hats. I don’t need my ego to be stroked. I don’t need to be right. In fact, I want to be wrong. How can you find people that will tell you you’re wrong and can help get that to the next level?

And it doesn’t have to be hiring someone full-time. You don’t need to have a $100,000 a month payroll to do that. I’m telling you, there are shortcuts. There are people that want a mentee in their life because they get a ton of value out of mentoring someone at any stage of a business. Are you reaching out to those people on LinkedIn? Are you direct messaging them on Instagram for a conversation? Again, are you hiring a consultant? Are you paying someone an hourly rate to come in? Are you finding a part-time CFO that can at least get the ball rolling so you can start seeing the value or start making somewhat of your investment back? Understand the value of a CFO or something like that at a limited facet before jumping in and hiring someone at $100,000 salary, $60,000 salary.

ROB: A lot of gold there, Anthony. We will get Clarity.fm into the show notes as well. You’ve been looking back a little bit on some really good lessons along the way. What are some things you might do in building Siteflood that you would do differently that you’ve learned? If you said, “If I were doing this all over again, I would change…”

ANTHONY: I had a few key moments for me. One was I remember I sat in this all-day learning thing, and they go, “If you can’t sit here all day without having to go – if you can’t step away from your business for a full day on a workday, there’s a problem.” I think that pain point really hit with me. I felt successful, I felt good enough, I was making good money, and I felt kind of like an idiot. I was like, damn. I got four or five calls throughout that thing. I had to literally go outside. I was like, “Holy crap, I have not created a business. I’ve created a job for myself.” The second I woke up to that, I started really understanding, again, some of my pain points.

Some of the things that I would do differently is niche down in the specific industry and focus on that. I hear it over and over again; it did not ring with me, and now I can say, thank God, it finally did. In hindsight I can look back, and like I said, healthcare and financial industries – it’s not I just focus on plumbers or something like that, so I’m not even there yet, although I’d like to be one day. Even just this focus around finance and healthcare – we don’t work with ecommerce clients. Even just cutting that off, it sounds funny and it felt funny at the beginning because you don’t want to turn away business.

There’s ways to do it. Refer someone and get a referral fee to an agency that does work on ecommerce clients. Then it doesn’t feel like you’re turning away money. Stuff like that. But niching on one industry I think allows you to not just think about – if you’re an advertising agency, not just advertising all day, but really helping you read on the financial industry or read on the healthcare industry, whatever it is. If it’s legal, law firms, read on that. You start learning the conversations. You start seeing trends in what’s working and not working, even as osmosis, even outside of running ads.

It also allows your team to focus. Now they know how to run a law firm’s account versus they’re working with a car guy and then a plumber. They’re learning new industries all day long. There’s a compounding effect to just focusing on the same industry. So that’s number one. I heard it, but I wasn’t listening for probably 2 years. I heard niche down specific on one, and I was like, “Yep, sounds good, but I’ve got this auto guy who’s about to sign up, and then I’ve got this DUI lawyer that’s about to sign. That’s money. I want money.”

I’m not necessarily telling you turn away money. Find ways to monetize that or do it at a limited facet, but start gravitating towards which client are you performing the best for? Who do you have the best results for? Then go find more of those people. Go find more of those to essentially enroll more in your program or bring on as a client. That niching is the number one change that I would make. Can’t stress that enough. I didn’t listen.

Number two, again, is find what I disliked the most, like what didn’t I like in my day-to-day the most, and hire for that immediately. There is a massive cost that people don’t see to their brainpower, to you spending time on things that you’re not good at and you don’t like doing. It drains your energy.

Looking at your energy as a currency is a really big deal. People don’t look at their energy and time as a currency. Is something energizing you and getting you excited, or is it draining you? If it’s draining you, find someone who it does excite.

I remember my bookkeeper, I kept apologizing when I needed her to do stuff because I hated it. One day she goes, “Anthony, why do you keep apologizing? I love doing this stuff.” That clicked with me. Just because I don’t like to do it, doesn’t mean other people dislike to do it. So that was a really big learning point for me too.

Really, those two go a long way, the focusing, doubling down on a specific thing, and then essentially – there’s a theme here – hiring around things you’re not good at or you don’t like doing.

ROB: That’s a great takeaway to get rid of those things. Really, it takes your mental energy to think about doing it, then to not do it, and then to do it. It’s a bad, bad thing. Anthony, as you’re looking ahead, what is coming up for Siteflood or the industry in general, marketing world, that you’re pumped about?

ANTHONY: I think marketing world in general I’ll touch on – because I think it’ll apply the best to everybody – I really do see a shift in the market where brands are not going to put up with just writing a $5,000 or $10,000 a month check and be okay with it. I think the companies and the agencies that are good at what they do are going to move to more and more performance-based. I think that’s very healthy for the space.

I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here with both brands and agencies. They’ve gotten burnt by the people overseas that said, “I’ll get you to Google No. 1 for $500 a month” or “I’ll do this.” The overpromise, underdeliveries I think are keeping a lot of brands from working with the right agencies. That’s challenging, and I think we’re moving that friction point of tying in performance bonuses or becoming more performance/CPA driven agencies versus, again, these big agencies that come in and get big contracts and say “Look how many eyeballs you’re bringing out!”, which some people are excited by, but most brands are ROI focused, CPA driven. At some point they are focused on revenue.

I see that as a shift over the next few years. It will become more and more prevalent for marketing agencies, and I think it’s going to squeeze out the low-performing ones, and I think it’s going to put the high-performing ones on a rocket ship to the moon because brands are going to be a lot more excited to work with agencies. There’s not this dirty feeling around it.

I look at it as like buying a car. I hate going to buy a car because I feel dirty about it. Even when I need a car or even if I want one, I’m like, “Nah, I don’t really want to go deal with that process.” I think brands probably feel that way to an extent. They’re like, “I know I need a marketing agency, I know there’s good ones, I know I can use it, but man, I don’t really want to get jerked around for another 6 months and thousands of dollars and this and that.”

I’m hoping the overall viewpoint and feeling around marketing agencies increases in a positive light versus “I’ve been burnt 50 times” or “I’ve just given up.” They’re too jaded. So I’m really hoping for that.

The other thing that’s interesting is we’re in a great market right now. Everybody is a little bit more lenient with spending money and things like that, and as we head towards, eventually, the economy correcting itself – I don’t know when it’ll be, but that’s something interesting to focus on, too, for a lot of agencies. Are you working with recession-proof businesses? That’s interesting to think about on the horizon. Are you working with want-to-haves or need-to-haves? Are you working with people that sell trinkets? Are they going to be the first to get cut when it comes to a recession, or are you aligning yourself with businesses that are recession-proof?

That’s not everything, but it is an interesting thought that I think a lot of agencies may not be looking at. Because things are good, people forget the ’08s or ’06s of times. Or may not have been in business or around then. I fall into that too, being younger and not really being mature in business when the recession was low. So I’m really preaching to myself. Just look out for the horizon. I don’t know what that exactly means to you listening, but it is an important thing that I think when times are good, everybody forgets and doesn’t necessarily prep for. So apply that however you want.

ROB: That’s real solid, Anthony. When people want to find you and they want to find Siteflood, where should they go to track you down?

ANTHONY: I’m most active probably on Instagram. It’s just my first and last name, @anthonysarandrea. Just google me and reach out on one of my sites. I’m happy to answer any questions for anybody, too.

Any way I can help. If you’re an agency looking to grow, I’d be more than happy to help point you in the right direction or give any feedback. Or if you’re a brand that’s struggling to decide which agency to work with, I can help, give you some pointers as you’re going through that process on some of the best people or best things to look out for or questions to ask, things like that. It does feel a little bit like brain surgery. Really, on either respect, if you’re the agency or you’re the brand, having third party clarity, I’m happy to jump in that facet.

ROB: That’s great. Thank you, Anthony Sarandrea, Founder of Siteflood. It has been great to hear your own story and journey. Congratulations on everything that y’all are doing.

ANTHONY: Thanks, brother. Thank you guys for having me. I really appreciate it. I had a blast.

ROB: All right. Be well.

ANTHONY: Thanks, bro.

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.

Dean Browell is Co-owner and Executive Vice President of Feedback Agency, a market research firm that uses hands-off observation of online behavior coupled with behavioral analysis by data scientists (psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists). When people are in focus groups or other situations where they are aware of being observed, their behavior changes. By not engaging their audience, the digital ethnography research team is able to get a rich body of authentic, unadulterated data.

In the discovery phase, Feedback’s digital ethnography research team works to understand a client’s audiences and where they are going. (FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, forums, niche message boards . . . and deep into sub-communities) The team then observes behaviors, identifies preferences and channels, assesses group discussions, actions, and sentiments, and evaluates all of this existing data to discern what “makes people tick” and what causes them to make decisions. Through the sheer volume of information, the research team can identify trends and quantify and qualify word-of-mouth impressions.

Using that information, Feedback may test responses to different messages. For example, they may place 70 small-space FaceBook ads and be able to report back to the client the 4 top-performing imagery types and messaging types. Feedback is not involved in the marketing implementation . . . they hand over the data to their agency customers for use as implementation guidelines and provide clients with detailed, research-based action plans for increasing customer engagement and sales.

Dean has found that human beings are far better at detecting meaning. Where computer programs may track words and bot can make decisions about whether words are positive or negative, humans can pick up the nuances of sarcasm and humor . . . and provide a far more accurate view of audience sentiment.

Dean recommends a couple of resources for targeted searches. Board Reader(http://boardreader.com/) searches forums and message boards, either by content or by forum focus. He also talked about local message boards, such as City-Data, which can provide a wealth of information about the selected community.

Dean can be contacted on LinkedIn at in/dbrowell/. His company’s website is http://www.feedbackagency.com/

Carl Fremont is CEO at Quigley-Simpson, a direct marketing/direct to consumer marketing agency with its roots in longform television infomercials. The agency has pivoted numerous times from informercials to shorter form direct response TV to full-service media with a focus on digital marketing.

With an almost 40-year career in direct marketing, Carl joined Quigley-Simpson. Six months later, Covid sent the company virtual. 

In this interview, Carl reflects on the history of direct marketing. Twenty years ago, the required tasks included setting up call centers, and providing fulfillment, pricing, and promotion strategies for a variety of products. In today’s digital world, the agency helps clients determine how to sell their products in different digital marketplaces and the mix of creative and messaging content that will be most effective. Carl explains that over the 18 years this agency has been around, it is well grounded in “in driving sales and building relationships with our clients’ customers.”

While the pandemic has increased many clients’ focus on direct sales and short-term revenues because they are trying to “catch up,” Carl says that a business will eventually fail if it doesn’t also invest in building its brand image and association. 

What is the right investment balance for building brand awareness, association, consideration, guiding the purchase journey, driving revenue, and developing customer relationships? Carl says brand marketing is an end-to-end process. A careful analysis of data is the only way to determine the right investment balance to optimize the consumer journey and build a brand for the future. It takes a lot more investment and effort (and even bravery) to invest in a brand’s image than to go straight for sales.  

The balance of long-view brand building and quick sales requires a corresponding strategic balance of creative and messaging content and presentation. Every brand is unique . . . and the balance may change over time.  Carl believes that brands need to be flexible – to have the ability and willingness to adapt and adopt new ways of working and thinking – if they are to survive and thrive. “Every year is a new opportunity and a new way to accelerate growth,” Chad says.

Today’s brand-building is not just about touting a product’s features and benefits. Winning the business is now “deeper” than “What will this product do for me?” Customers are asking such questions as, “What is the purposeful meaning behind the brand?” “What does the brand mean from a social side?” How is it giving back?” “What does the brand stand for?” 

Chad can be reached on his agency’s website at Quigleysimpson.com or through LinkedIn at Carl Fremont.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Carl Fremont, CEO at Quigley-Simpson with offices in both Los Angeles, California and New York, New York. Welcome to the podcast, Carl.

CARL: Thank you, Rob. I’m thrilled to be joining you.

ROB: It’s excellent to have you here. Why don’t you start off by telling us about Quigley-Simpson and where the firm specializes?

CARL: Sure, that would be great. Quigley-Simpson was founded 18 years ago by two entrepreneurs, and the co-founders, Renee Hill Young and Gerald Bagg, are still involved with the company. Its roots are similar to mine. It’s in direct marketing. Today we say direct to consumer. I don’t know when direct marketing got out of fashion and turned to direct to consumer, but we were really one of the first direct marketing/direct to consumer agencies.

Our heritage, believe it or not, is in infomercials, in longform television. We pivoted. We pivoted many, many times and continue to do so, from longform infomercials to shorter form direct response TV to full-service media, in particular focused on digital marketing. So, our roots are very much grounded in driving sales and building relationships with our clients’ customers.

But we’ve evolved as the industry evolved because we needed to. Today, we’ve taken that heritage from direct to consumer, direct marketing, and applied it in a digital world. Twenty years ago, that meant arranging for call centers. That meant product fulfillment, price, promotion of different products. We’re still doing the same thing, but in a digital world. What that means today, to correlate, it’s how you sell your products on different digital marketplaces, like on Amazon or Walmart or Kroger, and using a plethora of different channels to market, including the creative and the messaging.

The one thing that distinguishes us is that we’re not only focused on the revenue creation, but on the brand as well, which is why we say our value proposition and what we stand for is both brand and demand: building the brand’s image and awareness as well as driving performance, driving revenue. It’s the balance of those two, between building the brand’s awareness, building the consideration, all the way through the purchase journey through to driving revenue and customer relationship marketing. So, it’s really an end-to-end way that you look at brand marketing today.

ROB: It’s really fascinating. Much as you’re saying that direct marketing made its transition into direct to consumer, I think at some point B2B marketing stole the show from consumer marketing when it comes to the customer or buyer journey. It seems like consumer products have been the original home of the buyer’s journey.

How do you think about that journey when you’re really talking about – you’re probably involved in making sure product ranks well, lists well, looks great on Amazon, but you have to start with that awareness. How do you think about connecting the dots where you’re going to make somebody aware of something that eventually they’re going to see on Amazon and buy? What are the approaches?

CARL: That’s a great question. Today, as we know, especially with COVID and the pandemic and what’s happened the last year, it’s hastened the way in which we’re marketing brands today. There’s even a greater focus on the short-term revenue to make up for where we were. Many brands right away focus on that marketplace, on creating the direct sales without thinking about how they build the brand. At some point, Rob, you will hit a proverbial wall. You will reach a point of diminishing return on sales if you haven’t built the brand and the brand association.

So, the question, and what we help our clients determine, is what’s the right balance for building that brand’s awareness, association, consideration, and the demand side? As we all know, it takes a lot more investment and effort to build and sustain a brand’s image and awareness than it is in a direct sales capacity. In the short-term world which we are faced with today about driving revenue, it takes brands greater investment and bravery, actually, to build that brand’s image.

What we do is help through data and analytics to determine what that right balance is between investing and building that brand’s image or awareness to driving demand. How do you do that? It’s both in the investment in media as well as the creative, the messaging and creating the right balance. There’s no magic formula. Not one brand is like any other brand. Each one has its own unique situation for determining that right balance between the brand and the demand side.

But using a number of data sources – looking at sales, looking at the marketplace, competitive insights and intelligence, consumer insights – all of that, bringing that all together, plus in many cases some primary research that’s done, helps us with determining that right balance, the correct investment level between the brand and demand side.

And as we know, Rob, nothing today is static. Everything is very dynamic. We may determine up front the balance between investing in the brand and the demand side, but that balance may change over time. It means also that because you have a message and efforts that are focused on sales and driving sales, it doesn’t mean that the brand’s image should not be well represented in that as well. So, it’s not only looking at an investment; it’s incorporating a brand’s messaging and image even when you’re doing more direct sales.

ROB: Perhaps we can get a little bit more practical here, Carl. I recognize that every brand’s a little bit different. Is there a brand you have worked with that you can speak about that might be an interesting example of this combination of the market research, establishing the brand, and not overharvesting the low-hanging fruit, but really building towards a good robust, long-term pipeline of demand?

CARL: Sure. I’ll talk about it from a category side because I don’t want to talk about a specific client per se. But from a category side, there’s a category I’ve been personally involved with for decades, which is in the consumer credit card industry. As we know, it’s a highly, highly competitive marketplace. There are a plethora of cards and choices and opportunities.

Building the brand’s image and building the association that “that piece of plastic is right for me” is really critical in building that audience base – but not only getting the share of mind, but then the share of wallet. That’s a very highly competitive category. In many cases, the brand features and benefits are very similar. All you really have to stand out and build that long-term value proposition is your image. It’s what you stand for. It’s how you relate to a consumer.

And that’s where there’s a lot of research and insight that goes in. How do I connect someone to the right card, the right consumer experience that is right for them? If you go at it in the credit card by just the offer, you’re not going to get that share of wallet. You may not win over their long-term hearts. You’re just going to acquire them, but they’re not going to have the longer-term value to you. It’s creating that association that that card not only has the right features and benefits, but I associate to its image, I associate to the values that are behind it.

And I think today, brands need to go beyond just their features and benefits of building a brand’s image. Today that also includes building purposeful meaning behind the brand and thinking about what the brand means from a social side. How is it giving back? It’s not just about creating that image and awareness and association. It’s purposeful marketing. What does the brand stand for, for me? I think today with so many different social issues that we’re encountering, especially in the past year, having a brand stand for something is very important for consumers.

ROB: That’s a really interesting conversation there. I’m in Atlanta; some folks here – I think an investor, and I think also Killer Mike – were involved in standing up Greenwood Bank. When you think about financial products, there aren’t really very many products that can differentiate themselves by saying they’re going to serve an underserved community and actually show it and mean it.

Something I want to pull on that’s interesting – maybe this trend is real, maybe it’s not – it seems to me that the marketing world is moving in your favor, is what I would say. It seems like we’re moving more and more away from considered purchases and more into habits. That’s kind of what you’re alluding to with the credit card. But our phones have switched more from a considered purchase to a habit of what phone I’m going to acquire with regularity. Or I even think in a completely different market about the cloud computing market. Amazon Web Services and Google, they’re advertising, but they’re really advertising for a share of your habit, a percent of where you’re going to spend your money on your IT infrastructure.

Have you seen more and more things shifting? Even with television, televisions are more of a habit than a considered purchase, I would say, now.

CARL: Oh yeah. You mean the actual television set?

ROB: Yeah, it’s $200 and now $1500.

CARL: I just bought one in a big box place – I’m not going to say which one – that was shockingly $100 for a 24-inch television. Who would ever think you can buy that? All of these consumer electronics – and we just had CES, so it’s a good time to talk about it – they’re utilities. They’re part of our connected lives. Just as you talked about the phone, we know for years now that the phone is part of our connected life. It’s not obviously just about making and receiving calls. It is connected to our life and how we shop, of course how we communicate, importantly how we receive news and information, how we socialize with our friends and colleagues. It has become a utility.

The television is the same way. Now that we can stream, it’s certainly a big entertainment, but with streaming opportunities, we can narrowcast, and that’s what’s happening. It’s mimicking in some ways cable, but it’s all on demand where we’re narrowcasting even further information that is important to us.

So, there’s a blending of all of these utilities, too, all these devices. Over time – we’ve been talking about the Internet of Things for many years now, but it very much so will become part of our everyday lives.

Now, the question is, getting back to marketing, how do brands participate in it? What is the brand role? Is brand’s role this traditional just pushing messages out on all these devices? Does it contribute any value in any of the content that gets streamed? How do brands enter into this in a way that doesn’t seem obtrusive, but seems complementary to what we’re doing – the habits, as you said, that we have?

As consumer electronics, consumer behavior and the way we’re engaging with content has vastly changed. It’s been doing that for years; it’s just been accelerated because of the pandemic. With the way we shop also, that behavior has been changing for years but now is being accelerated. All of this is coming together. The devices, the way we connect, whether that’s through brick and mortar or through digital, through the way we receive entertainment and news and information to the way we shop – all of that is merging together. It’s all coming together, and in some ways, Rob, it is a little “back to the future” for us. When we started doing infomercials, they were entertaining and you were able to shop through them. So, there’s a little bit of lessons learned from the past as well.

But all of this is coming together and merging together. What brands are now faced with more than ever is, what’s their role in all this? How do they play within all of this? Because the models have been turned upside down.

ROB: It’s really blinding, and it’s interesting – YouTube is the new infomercial in a lot of cases, which is such an interesting shift.

I want to pull on something else that you mentioned. You mentioned the firm itself is 18 years old. How long have you been with the firm? Were you the first transition away from being founder-led? Or what did that look like for you?

CARL: That’s a great question. I joined a year and a half ago, and I had no idea, like everybody else, what was ahead. After 6 months of being in LA and mostly focused in our Los Angeles office, everything turned upside down. I literally believed, Rob, that we would be back together in 2-3 weeks. None of us had experienced in our lifetime a pandemic, so there was no rulebook. I really thought we’d all be back. We were, like everybody else, improvising as we went. We had no rules. We didn’t see it coming, so we didn’t plan for it. It just sort of evolved and happened for us.

So, I joined a year and a half ago, and certainly the last almost year now, being it was March that we had our work-from-home policy that went into effect and have been following pretty much ever since – never really thought that.

But for me, Quigley-Simpson was a big comfort zone because my roots and heritage or where I’ve spent a vast majority of my almost-40 year career (September I mark my 40th year) has been in direct marketing and direct to consumer marketing. Very much so it’s my comfort zone. It’s where I’ve always been.

I came on, thankfully, by our two co-founders to help evolve the company further. Again, the company was evolving and had many pivots long before I came, but now we have to make another big pivot. We have to continue our heritage of being nimble and flexible and adopting to the times as we always have been. And as we just talked about, the acceleration of how consumers are engaging with and watching television and other entertainment sources, how they are connecting their lives through multiple devices, their shopping behavior all have been accelerated. It has caused us to reflect on the future and look at what lessons we’ve had in the past and how we apply them moving forward.

We’re at a vantage point versus other agencies that we’ve always practiced this direct-to-consumer mindset with a heavy focus on brand and brand building. So, for us, this next pivot isn’t that remarkable because we’ve always done it. Now the question is, again, how do we take our clients along with us on that ride? Because everyone is looking at how that acceleration, that often-used and overused word of “transformation,” how do we now accelerate it even faster to catch up with consumer behavior – your behavior, my behavior, everyone’s behavior?

ROB: It’s quite a transition. People often say society to some extent has a reverence for the founders of different things, whether it’s your Edelmans or your Steve Jobs or anything like that. But beneath that, within any company, quite often the culture of both the team as well as the client relationships, there’s a magnetism. They’re working there because they like and respect the people in charge.

What do you think are some keys to making an effective transition there so that clients are not jarred and the team is not jarred by such a consequential change of leadership?

CARL: I’m nodding my head. You can’t see it because we’re on a podcast. [laughs] I’m nodding in agreement with what you said. We’re all in this together. We’re all on the same path forward. For me and for us at Quigley-Simpson, it’s about really partnering. It’s not you against them; we’re all in this together. We all are heading in the same path on that transformation acceleration.

Really doing it together and being one team and having that trust with each other that we’re going to go through it together and have a concerted roadmap is important. Now, what that entails, as I said before, is a commitment to each other and a commitment to trust and a commitment to open up on all sides – on the agency side, on the client side – information and data that’s going to allow us together to assess the market, assess customers – which is where you always begin: with the customer. We’re putting consumers in the center and building a roadmap for it.

That roadmap and acceleration of the roadmap really depends on many factors. It depends on where you are, where any marketer is in that journey. What have you done before to bring together your whole database of your consumers? Is it all together? Is it in disparate databases? What have you done to put measures in place to protect your consumer privacy? What have you done to assess through all that data who your audiences are? And what have you tested and learned along the way? What roadmaps have you put in place along the way?

That’s what a lot of this is. It’s putting together that roadmap, doing it together, and accelerating at the pace that is most comfortable for the marketer in terms of where they are. There is no one size fits all in terms of building a roadmap and accelerating. A lot of it – you used the word “culture” – depends on the culture of the organization. It depends on how fast they want to move.

Today, everything’s moving so fast and so accelerated that you really need to get together and have that roadmap established. But I believe that it first comes with a true, true partnership with everyone aligned on what the objectives are, what’s going to be measured, how it’s going to be measured, and it’s always on. We’re in a world of always on. We have been, but it is constantly dynamic testing and learning and then optimizing from there. Now more than ever, we have to be testing many different factors of the consumer experience along the consumer journey.

ROB: Carl, if you look over your LinkedIn, you’ve been on quite a journey in some agencies of different magnitudes and size. What are some key lessons you yourself have learned along the way that you might revisit if you were starting over?

CARL: That’s a great question and a good thought. For almost four decades I’ve been in this. Adaptability is always key. You have to be adaptable to the times. That also requires a great amount of curiosity. You’ve got to be looking always at every year as a new year. The brands and marketers I’ve worked with and had the most success with never look at one year as the same. Every year is a new opportunity and a new way to accelerate growth. There’s never a repeat. It’s always, what are we doing now? What’s new? It’s a constant evolution. You’re never done. You’re always evolving.

I remember saying to people who I’ve mentored and who’ve worked for me in the past, “This is the best time we’ve ever been in marketing and advertising.” Honestly, I’ve been saying that for 40 years because every year, it’s constantly evolving.

So adoptability and adaptability to the times that we’re in and being curious about what is next, being curious around data and technology and what that enables, is really how you progress forward. If you are not someone who is adaptable and adopting new ways of working and thinking and don’t have a curious mind, then you’re not going to succeed and this business is probably not for you. You need to be able to constantly be changing and reinventing every year. And frankly, Rob, that’s the exciting part of what we do.

ROB: There are a lot of things on a lot of people’s minds right now in January 2021, and I think there are some people who are holding on and hoping they can just get back to normal. I think that’s never really true. Maybe it’s just emphasized a little bit, or maybe it’s – I think this is probably a little crazier than it’s usually been. I’ll just concede that. But if it’s changing a little more slowly, you still can’t hang on. I think the folks who have tried to hang on and come out of this past year and go back to what they were doing – I don’t think that’s going to go well.

CARL: No, exactly. Now that I’ve just said things keep changing, there are some things that do stay the same, and that is great brands that tell great stories. That was definitely an art. We’ve been practicing at Quigley-Simpson, since early days of longform advertising, great storytelling for brands, and that art is on the present and will continue. It is being adapted into new forms based on technology and access to data.

But the notion of building great brands through great storytelling will be going on in infinite times. We always need to be focused on that and take that great storytelling and adapt it to new formats, new ways of consumer engagement, new technology, and making sure that we are always connecting it to the consumer experience based on information and data that we know about someone.

ROB: It’s such a great point. I’m glad you’re here to elevate the appreciation of the infomercial as an art – and I mean that, and I mean that in this way. People talk now about StoryBrand, they talk about that being rooted in the Joseph Campbell Hero’s Journey, that Star Wars story structure. But it seems to me that that’s kind of the story of infomercial as well: how do you make the person who will buy this product the hero?

CARL: Exactly.

ROB: And the product is the guide. The product is the tool. That is their lightsaber.

CARL: If you think about it, in this short amount of time from where we’ve been, in that period for the informercials, you were both telling that brand’s story and getting somebody to respond and to connect. Now, if we can take that same notion today about building a great brand through storytelling, through a value proposition, a unique selling proposition, and marry it to what matters to consumers, what’s purposeful, and connect it to sales, to driving an action – that’s what it’s about. Adapting those principles that will always be to new forms of technology, new forms of media.

ROB: That’s very wise, and I appreciate it. I’m glad you’re here to bring the perspective. Carl, when people want to connect with you and with Quigley-Simpson, where should they go to find you?

CARL: Quigleysimpson.com is the best place, or through my LinkedIn, Carl Fremont, is probably the best place. I’m passionate about building brands, so the opportunity to talk to anybody about brand and demand – I can do that all day long.

ROB: That’s wonderful. Glad you have kept an openness while you also stay curious. Thank you so much for putting that out there. Carl, it’s a pleasure to talk to you and learn from you. Thank you for coming on the podcast.

CARL: It’s been fabulous. Really appreciate it. Have a great day.

ROB: You too. Be well. Thanks.

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.

Blair Enns, CEO of Win Without Pitching (Kaslo, British Columbia) and author of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto and Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour

Blair Enns is Founder and CEO of Win Without Pitching, a company that trains creative agencies on how to win business without giving away their most valuable product—their intellectual property—in getting that business. Blair authored two business books that have proven to be transformational for many creative firms: The Win Without Pitching Manifesto and Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. Key to the power of these books is Blair’s recognition that Creative people have an inherent difficulty with “sales.”

Blair defines creativity as “the ability to see, the ability to bring a novel perspective to a problem you haven’t previously solved.” Creative people tend to build businesses that allow them to solve problems they haven’t previously solved. However, their personal desire for variety does not work from a business standpoint—to build a strong, financially solid firm, they need to differentiate, to focus on doing a specific thing for a specific market.

In this interview, Blair emphasizes the importance of client selection . . . of building your business with clients who are interested in value and a return on investment . . . rather than chasing budget-driven clients who are focused solely on price—those who see marketing as a commodity with charges based on billable hours and the cost of materials. The foundation of a strong business is value-driven clients who recognize that creativity is unique in its ability to produce bottom-line results and worth the investment. Although a creative agency might sell excess capacity to price-buyers, it is critical that the agency “strip out the extras” for the reduced-price client, instead of trying to “fly everyone first class.”

Blair is very clear that a price-focused buyer is unlikely to become a value-focused buyer. The creative’s job is to discern a buyer’s-type and manage that buyer appropriately.

Blair is available on his company’s website: winwithoutpitching.com and as Blair Enns on Twitter and LinkedIn. If you’re interested in his book, Pricing Creativity, go to pricingcreativity.com.

Keith Perhac is the Founder of SegMetrics, a once-upon-a-time marketing agency that pivoted from marketing services to a suite of analytical and reporting products. Today SegMetrics builds and refines digital testing and tracking tools that provide marketers with critical information on where “leads come from, how they act, and how much a marketing program is really worth.”

In this interview, Keith explains that KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) tell a company if it is doing something better or worse than at some time in the past. However, KPIs are about averages – they do not explain what is wrong or right – or what action to take next. Keith says it is important to look at the outliers, follow your leads through their entire customer journey, and dig beyond top-level KPIs to get a deeper understanding of the contribution different components make to a KPI.

Before SegMetrics, Keith worked as a developer at a marketing/development agency in the middle of nowhere Japan. Fed up with long hours, Keith decided to quit to do “something on his own.” He started freelancing, “building awesome software” for great marketers, including Ramit Sethi, author of I Will Teach You to Be Rich. Keith claims Ramit taught him most of what he knows about marketing. Back then, agencies built their own metrics and testing tools.

Ramit’s focus on data, customer experience, and the customer journey brought a new dimension to Keith’s understanding of marketing: He had to go back to his college psychology lessons on “how people think.” How could a company measure every touchpoint, every experience? How could it split-test design or copy position? What could it do to test whether people were converting?

Keith’s agency focused on expediting client launches and optimizing their marketing funnels. Keith says that, often, the biggest value the agency provided was in pointing out customer journey disconnects, fragmentation, and “holes” in funnels. The launches were exciting . . . the retainers not so much. Still, the agency expanded to twelve employees in four countries. 

During a two-week period of client-free downtime, Keith’s team built the software that is the foundation of SegMetrics today. A month-and-a-half later, the product launched. Keith intended to transform the agency to a product-oriented company over time and as the product increased in popularity. Didn’t happen. The product did not “take off” until three years later, when they started a SegMetrics marketing campaign . . . and shut down the agency. Skillsets, tools, the business model, and staffing needs changed overnight.

Today, SegMetrics provides done-for-you services, facilitates client agency onboarding, and offers a lot of customer support for its software. The biggest challenge is educating agencies that “think they already know what they know.” Keith is believes that setting up solid tracking and UTM implementation is critical for understanding where to best spend marketing dollars. An Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) is simple URL-linked code that generates Google Analytics.)

Keith discusses the impact of Covid-19 on various business segments . . . and highlights the surprising number and kinds of businesses that are seeing tremendous business growth. While brick-and-mortar companies have suffered, Keith has seen increased traffic for companies providing entertainment, digital media, telecommunications, online information products, and Masterclasses.

SegMetrics is releasing its first printed book this May: The 90-Minute Guide to Building Marketing Funnels That Convert. The book will be available on Amazon. Keith can be contacted throughs his company’s website at: segmetrics.io and on Twitter (Keith Perhac).

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I am your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Keith Perhac. He is the Founder of Segmetrics, based in Portland, Oregon. Welcome to the podcast, Keith.

KEITH: Thanks so much for having me.

ROB: It’s excellent to have you here. Keith, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your own journey and how that landed you into Segmetrics?

KEITH: It was a long journey, as I think many listeners’ journeys were. I started out working as a salaryman in middle-of-nowhere, Japan as a marketer. Or not as a marketer, as kind of a developer and working at a standard marketing/development agency. That continued on for a while. The company got acquired; I decided I don’t like working until 2 a.m. every night, and I’d prefer to do something on my own.

I ended up leaving that and started out freelancing and doing work for a couple of marketers that were not very well-known at the time. Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You to Be Rich and a couple of other people. It grew and ballooned from there.

It was interesting, because my journey was not, “Oh, I’m going to go start an agency.” It was more falling into that agency. I started out as a freelancer and then I got too busy, and it’s like, I’ve got to bring on a subcontractor, and then I’ve got to bring on another one, and then there’s more clients who want to work with me, and okay, now I have five people working with me. Oh, now I need to start doing events, and now I have 12 people working for me in multiple countries.

So, it just grew organically from “I just like building awesome software and working with great marketers” to “Now we have a team of 12 people over four countries and we’re working with clients all over the globe.” That was a shift. [laughs]

ROB: [laughs] That’s quite a shift. Across the world, across industries. So many different shifts there.

KEITH: Yeah.

ROB: I would imagine going through that I Will Teach You to Be Rich phase – people may have heard of Ramit now. From a marketing perspective, were they numbers-driven? Is that part of your story?

KEITH: Yeah, he’s always been super numbers-driven. Honestly, working with him was probably the highlight of my career and probably where I learned the most stuff about marketing because it really was trial by fire.

This was back in the day when there really wasn’t a lot of marketing technology out there. We look at things like automated webinars now, or we look at things like proof, to have a little pop-up to say, “So-and-so just bought . . .” None of this existed back then. There were no metrics except what you could calculate yourself. Google Analytics was around, but it wasn’t very good. Split testing tools – all of the stuff that we take for granted now, we had to build ourselves.

Ramit’s always been a marketer who has been very into the data and very into the experience that customers are having and that people are going through. So the whole idea of how we can measure every touchpoint, every experience that people have and then take that and do something with that, whether that’s a split test on design, whether that’s positioning for copy, whether that’s a little pop-up that says “So-and-so just bought . . .,” what are the things that we can do to test and see if people are converting or not?

This all sounds like standard hat now; it wasn’t back then. And we were also in a compressed timeline where it’s like, “Hey, we want to have this up by Wednesday and it’s Tuesday evening.” [laughs] It really was a trial by fire. I had had some marketing background, mainly dev and design, and then suddenly I got thrown into this world of, “You have to understand the marketing, how people think.” I used a lot of my psychology background and stuff that I learned in college that I thought, “I’m never going to use this again,” and now that’s front and center with how people react to pages, how people interact with sites and copy and design, and then being able to test and improve that.

It’s really crazy. It was just constant. I think we worked with him for 5 years. That sounds about right. But it was a small team. He had just launched the second version of his first product, and I think there were five of us. It was pretty amazing.

ROB: That sounds like quite an adventure, and quite a journey for him, his brand, and probably you along the way. I think you have talked a lot about numbers, about KPIs, and things that people get right and people get wrong about KPIs. What are some of the goods and bads of KPIs?

KEITH: There’s a lot of cargo culting in marketing, for good and bad. I think that KPIs are something that have been pushed for so long that people, rightly so, are like, “KPIs are important. They’re our key performance indicator. If we don’t know these, then we’re not going to be able to improve our marketing.” That’s what I hear over and over, especially when we were doing the consulting with the agency, and especially now that we’re a KPI-driven company. People are always like, “What KPIs do I need to look at to improve my marketing?”

The answer is you don’t, because KPIs are key performance indicators. They indicate whether the company is doing well or not, or whether a marketing funnel is doing well or not. It’s a measure like your speedometer, or I guess the engine heat gauge on your car. If the number is going down or up, you know you’re doing something wrong or right. But just looking at that number is not going to let you know what to do next.

That’s why we’re really big into looking at outliers. When you look at a KPI, you’re looking at an average. Let’s say you have 200 people coming into a funnel. You have 100 people coming in from Google, you have 100 people coming in from Facebook. The 100 people from Google convert at 100%. Every single person purchases. No one purchases from Facebook. What’s your KPI for your conversion rate? It’s 50%. That’s great. But that didn’t tell you that you have one audience that’s making all the money and one audience that’s making none of it. So, you know what to do at that point. You either get rid of the Facebook ads or you figure out why they’re not converting.

Looking at that top level KPI – and this is what most people think of when they think of the KPIs – it doesn’t let you know anything other than, is the business continuing to do better or worse than it was yesterday or last month? It doesn’t tell you those outliers, which is what you actually need to look at if you’re going to improve.

ROB: That’s interesting what you mentioned on outliers. Especially when you’re talking about looking at traffic from Google, some traffic from Google you can do more quickly in terms of ads. Some traffic you can do more slowly, maybe, in search. And sometimes you don’t know – without a proper indicator of search traffic, there may not be any more traffic for you to get.

KEITH: Right.

ROB: All of that is context, I think, for what makes a good number and what makes a good KPI. What are you seeing in terms of maybe some unexpected outliers? We are in this moment where many of us are sheltering at home. We are in the middle of this coronavirus outbreak and trying to take care of each other and other people in our world by staying home. What are some of the shifting outliers you’ve seen in this mode?

KEITH: This has been super interesting because some of the things that I predicted would go down and fail have not, and some of the things that I thought would do great have not. Obviously, anything with a physical aspect to it has done poorly. Anything where you have to go do sales in person or you’re running a brick-and-mortar shop, those places are really struggling right now. It’s very difficult.

We’ve had a number of clients in those spaces – we had some dog trainers that are not able to do their work anymore. We had some construction places that aren’t able to do their work anymore. There’s a lot of places like that. That was I think an assumption that everyone had.

Entertainment, digital media has gone way up, which has been really interesting. I think everyone kind of assumed that as well. Netflix is killing it. Telecommunications, of course – Zoom, we’ve all heard what’s going on there, but that’s been crazy. There’s all these new telecommunications companies coming out of the woodwork because working from home is the new normal. I think both of those, people knew that that was coming.

The one that’s been really interesting to me, though, is online info products, especially higher tier ones, because I expected that people have less money, they have less disposable income; they’re not going to be dropping $300, $500, $1,000 on info products and learning products. And I was wrong. Across the board, we’ve seen most niches of info products actually increasing in sales.

Masterminds are increasing. A lot of events that have gone virtual, those are all improving. Specific niches – like I have a friend who is in the jobs space, and that of course has gone down because no one’s going to work. But most places for general online learning have been increasing, and it’s been very interesting to see that.

ROB: Very interesting. I’m getting bombarded with ads for ClassPass – not ClassPass, rather, but Masterclass. ClassPass is probably having a hard time with their gym passes.

KEITH: Right. [laughs]

ROB: Masterclass for sure. So, it’s interesting to hear those trends. When we look a little bit at your journey, Keith, talk about the transition from agency world to product world a little bit more. Was that a gradual transition, and one day you just realized where you wanted to be? Or was there a very decisive moment where you threw a switch?

KEITH: It’s a little bit of both, to be honest. I’m kind of risk-averse, I guess I would say. We were probably 6 years into the agency at this point, and our whole thing was we help people with launches, we help people optimize their marketing funnels. So, we’re dealing with clients who, when they do a launch, they do $5-12 million launches. We bust our butts, and it’s really rough, and then we see the same retainer, the same pay rate for that client that we do for any other client. So, we help make a $10 million launch and then we’re just sitting there at the same point.

After doing a number of these, we got to the point where we were like, “We know all the parts of this; why can’t we do this for ourselves?”, as I think many people do. We’re a bunch of developers. We really like developing, and we had done the marketing, so we said, “Why don’t we try to build our own software?” We had about two weeks of downtime where we knew we weren’t going to have any client work, and we said, “We’re going to sit down for two weeks and build this thing.”

And we did. We launched it I think a month and a half later, because building it and launching it are two completely different things, and it was always something that we were going to continuously work on in order to improve, and eventually that was going to take over the revenue for the agency. We were going to slowly transition from agency work to working on Segmetrics as it became more popular.

We jumped up, we had really good MRR [Monthly Recurring Revenue] in the first month, and then it just plateaued for the next 3 years. [laughs] We didn’t really lose any MRR; we didn’t really gain any MRR. It just kind of sat there, and occasionally we’d fix things, but there was no focus on it. This was the main problem that we had for many years, which was “We have this great piece of software that we’re using internally for all our customers, but how do we focus on it?”

Focusing on the software is easy because we’re all developers. Focusing on the marketing is harder because marketing is not something that you can sit down for an hour or two hours and bang out. Marketing is an overall idea and understanding of your customers. There’s customer research. There’s a lot of that goes into it. What we were finding was we couldn’t make the time to do it.

ROB: I think many services firms have that challenge. It’s sort of the “cobbler’s children have no shoes” scenario. How do you look at turning that corner? What started to unlock for you? Because that’s a problem even for any given agency, I think.

KEITH: Yeah, definitely. Just look at most agency websites. They don’t usually build them internally because they don’t have the time or the energy, or it makes more sense to go work on client work. Back when I was a salaryman, we actually had a group of five agencies and we were all friends with each other, and we would build each other’s websites. We’d hire each other to build the other one’s website because we weren’t going to do it ourselves. [laughs]

So, we tried a number of things. If you know 37signals, who did Basecamp, they were an agency originally. They’re probably the unicorn of that agency turning into a SaaS company. They did the Fridays. They said, “We don’t do any client work on Fridays, and we’re only going to work on our own stuff.” We tried that; that didn’t really work. We tried “After 3:00, we’re not going to work on client stuff.” That didn’t work.

We tried a lot of different things, and we never really were able to get any traction on any of them. I think that a lot of it was just mental, because it’s things like – let’s take the Friday for example. We worked really hard on clients Monday through Thursday; now we’re going to work on our own stuff, and we’re just exhausted from 4 days of working on client stuff. And then we also need to reset and say, “Where were we last Friday when we left off?” So, there’s this huge gap of what we did then, what the priorities are, if the priorities have shifted. Half the day is then essentially wasted getting back up to speed on what we were doing last week.

We had the same problem with doing afternoons. After 3:00, we would work on our own stuff, or after 2:00 or whenever we decided to make that break, and the issue was for the entire morning, we’re focused on a very input-output type of work style. Client says, “I need these six things,” we produce those six things, we know the agency has made six things’ worth of money. It’s a very transactional idea.

Being able to translate from that into “Okay, now we need a marketing campaign. When are we doing this marketing campaign?” “I don’t know, we need to figure it out” – going from this transactional to this creative side of things was very difficult for everyone.

Those were really the two main challenges we had. How do you shift from a transactional mindset with the agency and with client work to an almost blue-sky, “We don’t know what the answer is here”? usually when we’re working with clients, they have a strong readership, they have a strong brand. They’ve gotten to a certain point where we are iterating on a foundation that they’ve made. But we’re now having to build that foundation from scratch.

Starting over from that and not knowing where to go, and to have to spend that time to do it, was very difficult, making that mental shift every day or every week.

ROB: You knew yourself as a customer. You knew what you needed. You built technology to do what you needed. But it seems like there was probably a stage of getting to know your own customer better, which we all need to do. How did you take the steps to get to know that customer well enough to speak their language and really market well to them?

KEITH: Lots of customer calls is honestly the only way. We talked with our agency friends, got on calls with them. Made it very obvious that they weren’t sales calls, but essentially saying, “Hey, I want to show you this. What is the value for you?” We knew what the value for us was. We knew what the values for our customers was as an agency. But one thing we’ve learned is that every single marketer is different, and every single marketer wants different things, and they all have it set up differently. Honestly, that’s the most painful thing out of all of it.

We take something simple like recurring payments – there’s 101 ways to set up recurring payments for a product. Maybe it’s an invoice that gets an extra payment on it. Maybe it’s multiple invoices. Maybe it’s not even called an invoice, but a recurring – there’s just so many things that come in, and everyone has set them up differently, even within similar systems. This was the first time where we realized, oh crap, everyone’s doing something different; we need to figure out how to support everyone in a single bucket.

So yeah, it was just talking with a lot of agencies. A lot of the things we ran into with the agencies were not actually technical at all. They were more like, “This is great. I really want to start using this. We don’t have the time to set this up. We just signed up for someone else who does something similar, and it’s been sitting there for 3 months because no one has the time to do anything with it.”

ROB: Even with one of the simple things that you were involved in with Segmetrics, when I see lead tracking – we actually had an experiment we did with some agencies that we know involving simple things: how do you get very regimented about your UTM tracking, and how do you do this right? Can you get involved in publishing content and ads and whatnot so that it’s easier to close the loop on a transaction? Everybody does it differently. Some people say “That’s not important to me”; some people say “That’s confusing.” And yet I know myself, coming from an engineering background, there’s a part of me that screams out and says, “Don’t you see? This is a really good way to do things.” [laughs]

One thing I notice when I look at your product platform and some of the things that it does – and we don’t talk a lot about products on this podcast, but I think it’s worth reflecting on, especially from your background. I see this different DNA of how to efficiently run an agency well. You want to know when someone’s not paying you. You know that talking to a client every week, giving them feedback on what you’ve done for them every week, can be a good practice to do that a lot of people don’t get around to.

How do you strike that balance of the stuff you feel like you strongly know somebody should do and whether or not they’re ready to do it? I think we all have those things we feel like we ought to do. We ought to eat our vegetables, but we’re not ready to, business-wise or at dinner.

KEITH: It’s rough. You know the old saying: you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. There’s a number of things that we want people to do. There’s a number of things that we want people to think of when they’re doing analytics. The only thing we can do is really educate them.

We produce a lot of content about teaching people how to market. We have onboarding calls and we have hand-holding, done-for-you services and stuff. But the education side, especially when you’re targeting agencies, is tough because they think they already know what they know. That’s one of the biggest issues I think we have, which is we want to teach people that you should really use UTM values, and they’re like, “We haven’t used them up until now and we’ve been doing fine.” I’m like, “Well…”

It’s funny because I think the biggest hurdle we have is getting people’s tracking set up correctly – installing the snippet, making sure those ad IDs and those UTMs are installed. We have a number of customers who are more technical, and they have literally perfect analytics. 100% attribution of every single click, and it is beautiful. I love it. And then I work with some people and I’m like, “None of your ads are set up correctly.” They’re like, “Oh, we threw it over to the ad guy and he never set it up.” It’s just so frustrating; it’s been like 3 weeks, and why have they not added this ad snippet in?

It’s just very frustrating that because I’m technical and I understand the technology of how the web and marketing on the web works, I consider it a foregone conclusion that these are the things you need to do to set up. What I’m realizing is that a lot of marketers do not understand how the internet works and how marketing on the internet works.

I think this is a difference of marketing now versus marketing 10 years ago, when you had to build everything yourself. Most people just see, “I have this landing page builder, I slap in this iframe, and then I’m good to go,” because from their perspective, it works. But that’s not actually how anything is working, and there’s a lot of magic going on in the background that they can’t see and they don’t understand as to how it’s actually working. As long as it’s working for them, they’re like, “Everything’s good.” But then something breaks and they have no idea why.

We had one customer we were looking at and they weren’t getting – and this is amazing, I think, with the software. This is also what we found when we did the agency stuff. The biggest value we provided to new customers was telling them where the holes were in their funnel. And sometimes these holes were not like, “Not many people are clicking on this.” It was “This campaign is not hooked up to anything” or “Your webinar is not sending in any leads to your marketing, so you have 5,000 leads that have never gotten an email from you.” We find this all the time, and it’s so frustrating. It’s so frustrating, both for them and for us.

ROB: You’ve dialed in with being able to lead a horse to water. The follow-on from that we don’t think about as much is really that you learn this often in relationships. You can’t change people for the most part, but you can be there and help them and be helpful to them when they make a decision to change. It seems like that’s a lot of times what marketing around this kind of product can be.

I think there’s an interesting thread I want to pull on here. You mentioned your own agency making a transition into a product and 37signals making a transition into a product. What do you think it is, perhaps – and maybe you’ve seen some other examples – that is in the DNA of an agency that makes it possible for them to make a jump into product? I think a lot of agency owners want to, and even spend a little bit of their engineering bench time to build something, but there is a wide chasm to cross past that. What do you think makes it work?

KEITH: I don’t know exactly, and that’s because I don’t think that we were able to make it work while we were an agency. But I think that you can’t look at the product as a side hustle. It has to be part – we did not really start growing Segmetrics until we decided, “Hey, we’re shutting down the agency. We’re going to start moving everyone off and we’re going to focus on this full-time.”

It wasn’t like we fired all the clients that day, but we made a very distinct decision that “We are not focusing on getting new clients. As client contracts are over, we’re not going to renew them and we’re just going to keep going down this path of software because that’s where we want to go as the agency.”

It has to be buy-in from everyone. We had some people who either did not or could not make that transition mentally, or didn’t want to, and that’s fine. But if we were to keep those people on and we were to keep going half-kilter at it, we were never going to succeed, because we had done the half-kilter thing for 3 years and it just doesn’t grow like that. You have to be all-in. Or at least have that all-in as the final goal.

ROB: Were there some roles that were more or less receptive to the transition than others?

KEITH: Yes. I think there were some roles, but also just some people because of the way that – we were talking about that transactional idea where a client says “Do this,” you work for an hour, you complete that, the client is happy, and you know that you made the agency 1 hour’s worth of money. With software, it’s completely different. You could work for 8 hours and not produce anything because it was the wrong thing, or even if you did something awesome and everyone’s happy, it doesn’t actually result in any money. That was a very hard mental thing that was not role-specific, but a mental thing that needed to be addressed.

One of the harder ones was account managers, because as an agency, you have to have an account manager, and only now are we starting to go back into account managers in Segmetrics because we just didn’t need them. We needed support people, but that’s very different than an account manager. We couldn’t afford to have an account manager for every single customer that we had, especially when a customer is paying you $100-200 instead of $5,000 a month. It doesn’t make sense at that scale.

It was interesting, because I thought support was going to be very similar to account management, and it is not. It’s a very different skillset. You need very different tools, and getting a new support person, getting support to work with Segmetrics was very difficult just because it was so different than anything we had done before.

ROB: As you were talking about the account size required to support an account manager, it made me think of another example of what we’re talking about here of an agency transitioning into a tech company, which was MailChimp. MailChimp started off as a web design shop and now is this huge, massive email marketing platform with hundreds and hundreds of people onboard.

When you’re charging $20 bucks a month for email marketing, you can’t put an account manager on that. You can hardly spend an hour on them. But you can scale support. Support is a process of scale, I would argue, largely of consistency, of knowing when something needs to be escalated and when it doesn’t, where the answers are, and how to help people find the answers. That may be overly simple. You probably have a better pulse on it than I do here. How would you distinguish it?

KEITH: I think that’s exactly right. It’s very different than an account manager, where it’s not about necessarily solving the issue directly, where support is, but more of that overall keeping in touch and relationship with them. It’s more of an emotional thing than support is.

ROB: Keith, what is coming up for Segmetrics and perhaps for broader marketing that you’re excited about? We all need some things to be excited about in these moments, and I think many of us are finding them. What’s exciting you?

KEITH: Going outside at some point. [laughs] Being over quarantine would be great. Man, that’s a hard question because there’s so many things that I want to do and that we’re working on that excite me.

One personal thing that I’m excited about with Segmetrics is that we’re actually releasing our first paper book in May, and I just got the proof for it yesterday, so I’m pretty excited about that. It’s something that we’ve been working on for – even from the agency days, I had originally done a video course that never got produced, and we decided, “Hey, this is some great content. We really need to put this together into a book.” So, I’ve been writing that for a while. Really happy about that.

Overall, with Segmetrics, I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m excited about next. The long, slow SaaS ramp of death I think is what they call it, and I think we’re right in the middle of that right now. I have a list of features and new things and new ideas that we’re super excited about, but it’s just doing them. It’s out of that exciting, blue sky phase and more into the “Okay, time to put our pedal to the metal and actually get this stuff done.”

One thing that we did that I’m happy about is – I think I mentioned that we’re bringing some account managers back, and what we decided to do is start working with agencies and companies that are signing up and providing them an account manager and getting them set up and having someone come in and configure all their campaigns and do all that. That’s something I’m excited about that’s hopefully going to be kicking off at the end of this month.

ROB: Excellent. And where do we find your book when your book is available?

KEITH: The book will be on Amazon. We’re probably also going to have it on the site, but it’s going to be on Amazon. It’s called The 90-Minute Guide to Building Marketing Funnels That Convert.

ROB: Excellent. That sounds very practical and like something we all need to think about.

KEITH: I read a lot of marketing books. I read a lot of business books, and I always hate that they’re really fluffy. They’re also only half the size they need to be. I was talking to a friend about this who’s a writer, an author in the industry, and I said I was reading Ryan Holiday’s book – I’m trying to remember what the name of it was – and I’m like, “It was great up until the halfway point and then he started repeating the same stories. It was like he was rehashing the first half of the book.”

He’s like, “Well yeah, a book has to be 175 pages. It cannot be shorter than that. If you only have enough content for half, the publisher will say, ‘Write a second half that’s just rehashing it.’” I hate that.

ROB: Was this The Obstacle Is the Way or one of those?

KEITH: No, I think it was his first main one that he did. I can’t for the life of me remember which one it is. But I’ve always hated that, and I’ve always hated the extra – I like the stories because you have to get emotionally involved and you have to have a connection with the reader, but at the same time, at some point I just want to know “these are the six things you need to do, these are why they work, and here’s my experience with them.”

So that’s what I’ve really tried to do with this book, is really put it down into “here’s the theory, here’s the reasons, here’s what you need to do.” Hopefully it’ll do that.

ROB: Keith, when people want to find you and Segmetrics, where should they go to track you down?

KEITH: Segmetrics is segmetrics.io. We’re also on Twitter. I am Keith Perhac, also on Twitter. I am literally the only Keith Perhac in the world that I know of, so it’s very easy to find me. And if you search far enough on Google, you will find things that I am still trying to bury 20 years later. [laughs]

ROB: [laughs] We won’t put those in the show notes.

KEITH: Good, good. That’s the problem with having a very unique name. You can never escape Google.

ROB: Understood. Keith, thank you for coming on the podcast.

KEITH: Thank you so much for having me.

ROB: All the best for you and your team. Be well.

KEITH: Definitely.

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.

In 2006, Angie and Will Scott, COO and CEO and co-founders, started Search Influence as a technically oriented search, social, and digital marketing agency, supported with tracking and attribution, and demonstrating value across very complex systems. Challenged at the beginning to find people with the needed skills, the agency outsourced its production work and developed an intensive training cycle and “robust” documentation for new hires. Will claims that, to this day, the agency’s internal-facing superpower is training and education. 

For the agency’s first six years, SEO required seeding web content with relevant keywords. Will says that today’s content has to be more nuanced . . . that SEO is now “more about meeting the customer where they are in the buyer’s journey.” The agency concentrates on three verticals: midmarket healthcare (driving patient visits to individual practitioners on up to regional medical centers and, on the practice side, generating more leads), higher education, and tourism – market segments where the strategically complex buyer’s journey is characterized by “multiple systems between a customer’s first interaction with the brand and actually closing the sale.”

When the real estate market crashed in 2008, two years after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans and decimated the region’s small businesses, the national economy took a downturn. New Orleans was still rebuilding. Tourism was booming. Medical and – in particular, elective medical – remained strong. At a time when many companies were failing, Search Influence . . . grew.

Unlike many agencies, Search Influence does not try to “do it all.” Outsourcing work that is not in its areas of concentration (SEO and paid advertising) and bringing on partners to provide services complementary to its quantitative efforts keeps the agency focused and nimble. Client websites are built by a cadre of website development partners. Early on, the agency built a process, an internal editorial team, and platforms to manage external freelancers who produced as much as 10,000 pieces of content monthly for a large direct-to-SMB digital marketing company. That creative management arm is still in place today. Angie questions whether it makes sense to try to develop “side skills” when the agency can so easily partner with “top talent.”

With its practice built around content, the Search Influence developed an internal tool, UpScribed, that morphed into an external-facing platform. Through UpScribed, other marketers (including those who are not Influence clients) get direct access to the Search Influence content team. When Covid “shuttered” a lot of New Orleans’s small businesses, the purposely overstaffed agency went to work for its clients . . . for free. That’s taking a rare, long-range view on things. The same clients they keep afloat today will be tomorrow’s even-more-dedicated customers.

In this interview, Angie, who has an accounting background, talks about maintaining organizational balance. Will identifies a valuable list of free business development networks and ecosystems available to help small enterprises. They can be found on their agency’s website at: searchinfluence.com or on their blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined today by Angie and Will Scott. They are the COO and CEO and co-founders at Search Influence based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Welcome to the podcast, Angie and Will.

ANGIE: Thank you. We’re excited to be here.

WILL: Thanks, Rob.

ROB: It’s a treat to have you here. We don’t always get a little tag team like this, so that is an exciting change of pace. Why don’t you start us off by telling us about Search Influence and what the agency’s superpower is?

WILL: Search Influence, Angie and I started it together more than 15 years ago. We started rather technical. I had come out of a position where I was very focused on SEO, so that’s what we started with. Over the span of time, though, what we have decided our internal-facing superpower is, is training and education. Because we started in 2006, it wasn’t really easy to go out and find folks who had the skills we needed, so we did do a lot of training. And to this day, we remain robust documentation and a training cycle for all new hires.

Externally, we feel like the things that we do really well are still more in the technical realm. Our name is Search Influence, so search is a big part of where we spend our time. But we’ve also spent a lot of time thinking about tracking and attribution and how we actually demonstrate value across very complex systems.

Our top verticals in which we work are healthcare, higher ed, and tourism. And in almost every one of those cases, there are multiple systems between a customer’s first interaction with the brand and actually closing the sale, in whatever way that happens.

ROB: I can certainly think that through. We’re talking about healthcare – what part of healthcare? Obviously, it’s a journey. We’re not going to the ER here. What segment of the healthcare market is representative, would you say?

WILL: Our focus has historically been on the midmarket, so think a handful of practitioners up to say a regional medical center. Very much about driving patient visits, and on the practice side, more leads.

ROB: This is I’m coming to an area, I’m trying to figure out where I should go, or it might have an existing doctor and it’s an evolution over time of where my loyalty is going to go. There’s a journey there. There’s a journey in travel. All of that makes sense.

I can certainly see – you talked about 2006; there was I would say a lot of science around SEO, and it has evolved into art and science, to an extent. How have you thought about evolving your team and the documentation as there has become more of – I would almost say Google and the search engines have moved more towards searcher satisfaction with what they found, which is kind of an art.

WILL: Yeah, in the early days, say 2006 through probably 2012-2013, it was easier to be a little more heavy-handed, to think about content primarily as a vehicle for keywords to correlate to what people were searching for. I think in the time since then, we and any company that tries to practice SEO in a serious way have learned that the content actually has to be more about meeting the customer where they are in the buyer’s journey. And that’s a much more nuanced piece of content than one where you’re trying to have an appropriate keyword density and blah, blah, blah, and highly targeted internal links and that kind of thing.

ROB: Right on. You started in 2006; a few years in, we hit a weird economic spot and the market of search was rotating at that time as well. How did you think through and evolve through that transition to emerge healthy on the other side? Maybe it was always healthy to an extent, but I don’t know. The tourism thing was probably down a little bit if you were in that market at the time.

WILL: New Orleans is interesting on a lot of levels. In 2008, when everybody else was suffering from the real estate market crash, we were booming because it was two years after Katrina. Where everybody else was seeing people drop the keys off at their mortgagor and walk away, we were still in a heavy rebuilding phase.

Also, with the focus on medical, particularly elective medical – that was really a heavy piece for us at that time – there wasn’t much of a downturn. We actually grew through that recession.

ANGIE: Right. Our largest focus, though, at that point was medical. We were – I don’t know, lucky or saw something coming, I don’t know.

WILL: I prefer brilliant. [laughs]

ANGIE: [laughs] We almost felt bad at that time, I remember. It’s like when your baby is sleeping through the night and no one else’s is and you don’t want to say that they are. I think we would talk about if somebody asked, but we just didn’t talk about it because we felt bad. It was like, “We’re growing.” 

ROB: And that’s been an echo for this year for a lot of people. This past year, this COVID, 15-16 months now, some people – restaurant industry, they’re just scrapping to get by. A few restaurants figured out how to nail takeout and delivery, and they’re doing better than ever. And then some folks in the digital realm are just doing great, growing. But it’s hard to talk about.

WILL: Totally. Sadly, we are not among them, because we did have a bunch of revenue in tourism and attractions leading into COVID.

ANGIE: But they’re starting to come back as the recovery comes.

WILL: Yeah. And we did this thing where because we were intentionally overstaffed – we didn’t cut nearly as much as we should have if we were trying to meet revenue. So we had staff and we reached out to our customers who were paused because of budget, and we created this thing – our core values spell CHARGE. We marketed it as the “Recharged Fund.” We put our team to work for free for those clients who were effectively shuttered because of the pandemic.

ROB: That’s a pretty bold move, and I wonder, when you first started doing that, how long did you think it was going to be before things echoed back, and when did you start wondering again?

WILL: A handful of weeks. [laughs]

ANGIE: Like everyone else.

WILL: I was actually out of town and Angie was responsible for shutting the office down on March 13th. I don’t think at any time until many, many weeks later we thought that it was going to be more than a handful of weeks that we were out of the office.

ROB: That was a rude awakening for a lot of us. “Oh wait, this basement setup I’m in? This is a lifestyle.” That’s when I went back to the office and I grabbed some tables and chairs and I said, “Okay, this is going to be for real. I’m bringing home a screen, I’m bringing home anything I want to see for the next few months.”

ANGIE: Right. I think everybody had that happen. We did the same thing. We plotted out a very careful schedule for everybody to be able to come one by one and meet me at the office to get any equipment or furniture or anything that they needed so that they could set up some sort of workspace once you realized this may be life. [laughs]

ROB: If we rewind a little bit, we mentioned earlier that you are co-founders. Talk about the journey that let you both into a place at the same time where you’re like, “Hey, let’s start Search Influence and drop whatever we were doing before.” What did that jump look like?

WILL: At that time, we had come from working together – we actually met at work, which is I think part of what makes it so effective for us. But what happened was we found ourselves at the beginning of 2006 still in that Katrina hangover, if you will. I had actually just exited another company, and we were looking for what we were going to do next.

We had the good fortune that Angie and I don’t have the same skillsets. Angie is a businessperson. She has a degree in accounting and has spent her whole career in that side of the businesses, whereas I, oddly enough, have a degree in architecture, but I’ve spent my whole adult career on the more creative and development side.

We saw this opportunity, especially post-Katrina, that there were a lot of small businesses that were decimated. It actually wasn’t too much unlike right now, except that the infrastructure didn’t exist for these companies to go online as they had to after Katrina.

Angie’s family runs a chiropractic clinic, and we saw them as sort of a prototype. They had been located in a place called Chalmette. They were the Chalmette Chiropractic Clinic. Chalmette is a New Orleans suburb that you really don’t hear enough about in the context of Katrina, but it flooded from two directions, and one of those directions came through an oil field. So it wasn’t just wet; it was wet and oily.

We really had to restart their business online. For a little while, the Chalmette Chiropractic Clinic was practicing out of our garage. And then, because it was 2006, we were able to build their brand rather quickly online, rebuilding them as New Orleans Chiropractic and ultimately the Maple Street Chiropractic Clinic.

ANGIE: And making sure that their patients could find them. At that point in time, it wasn’t just about cellphone service and so forth. People were searching online for where did they go, where did they set back up. Thankfully, Will had exited; I still had my current role, an accounting and HR role at a business, so we were able to not only have the time, because I had moved into consulting, but also have the funds and also the time to really get it going and truly focus on the business between both of us.

I think we were lucky and we also had an agreement that we would only start a business that didn’t require going out and finding investors or getting loans. So we were able to get it going just between the two of us and devote everything we had to it.

ROB: What sort of business were you working in together when you met?

WILL: That business morphed over the time that we were there. It was originally a website business, and then we moved into online Yellow Pages. You remember Yellow Pages, right?

ROB: I do. I sure do.

WILL: We actually put them online so that they looked like the book, which was – 

ANGIE: Weird. [laughs]

ROB: It reminds me a little bit – I had a friend in the agency business who exited his agency, and what they used to do was take the corporate earnings reports and he would put them on CD-ROMs and make it look just like the real thing, but on a CD-ROM and maybe a little bit interactive. He built a good business of it. So you can never underestimate what that looks like.

You can see how that would lead adjacently, then, to the search side where you would have some of those technical chops of how to do that right. I can see the transition there, for sure.

ANGIE: Right.

WILL: It really was. I remember having a conversation with a guy who was at Yellow Pages. It was shortly after I’d exited that business and I was thinking about maybe going to work for them, and I said to him, “What’s your biggest priority for these phonebooks?” He said, “Anti-scraping technology.” He turned it around and asked me the same question: “What would be your biggest priority?” I said, “Making our data as accessible to Google as humanly possible.” So clearly, I didn’t get that job.

ROB: Yeah, there’s a little bit of a strategy delta there. But somehow those businesses managed to wander around. I knew some folks here a few years ago who were working for YP.com, which is YellowPages.com. I don’t know if they’re in there selling to car dealerships and TV stations or what they’re doing, but those businesses remain around.

There was obviously at some point a step where it made sense, Angie, for you to join full-time as well. What did it look like when you started growing the team? Who did you need to join? At some point I’m sure it came from “We’re doing this, we’re not taking investors, we’re not taking on debt” to “Hey, this is kind of a good business. We can grow it.”

ANGIE: Right. If I had to guess, looking back, I maybe spent six more months consulting within the other company. Having two of us full-time devoted to it was not necessary when you only had – we weren’t even employees; we weren’t even getting paid. So once we started having employees, you start to have to build all the processes, the handbook, the payroll. I was bookkeeping sitting at night for an hour, no big deal, super easy. But once we started having employees and growing that side of the business, that’s really when I think it took over for me.

Our first employee was actually somebody who stepped in and worked with Will really closely on what we now would look back and probably call account management, because it was strategy, and then we had – at the time we were outsourcing all of our production work. They would basically strategize with our production teams outside of the company.

ROB: Got it. That’s an interesting little strategy there. Different people still recommend, even at scale, having different percentages of the work go outside the firm and then have some burstable capacity outside of there.

I think probably one part of your journey where you’ve had to make a lot of decisions is what to add and what not to add. You mentioned you’re in three verticals now, but you could be in 12 or 20, and there’s probably some services you’ve added over time and some you haven’t. How have you navigated that decision of “We’re going to add this line of service; we’re not going to add this line of service. We’re going to add this vertical; we’re not going to add this vertical”? How have you navigated the temptation to do everything?

WILL: I think it was about 10 years ago that I coined the phrase, “If we really want to lose money, we’ll take a website client.” The thing is, there’s a very different skillset there. What we do instead is we have partners that we work with to build websites at different scales for different clients if they need them. But the things that we do really, really well are much more quantitative.

We also developed a practice around content, so much so that we built an internal tool that we ultimately turned into an external-facing tool that we call UpScribed. It’s a platform that other marketers can use to have direct access to our content team.

We had a period in time where we were the backend for a company that has been acquired – and they may still have the same name – Yodel, who was one of the big direct to SMB digital marketing companies probably between 2007 and 2013-2014. We were doing as much as 10,000 pieces of content a month for them.

ROB: Wow.

WILL: As you can imagine, we didn’t employ the writers and editorial staff to do all of that, so we built a process where we had an internal editorial team and platforms to manage external freelancers for the actual creative of that.

ANGIE: That we will use today.

WILL: Yeah, that we still use today. And UpScribed has clients using it external to Search Influence as well.

ANGIE: Because it turns out that is an agency problem. [laughs] Which is probably not a surprise to anyone. I think right now – it’s funny; I was actually chuckling inside my head that you maybe were a fly on the wall in the last few weeks, because we’ve been discussing literally writing out the services that we are going to spend all of our focus and time on. We do quarterly planning, we do annual planning. These are the services that we should be planning around, and that’s SEO and paid search. Sorry, SEO and paid advertising. I have to get my words right.

Then those other services that we do still offer, like website builds and PR and so forth, we would find really good partners if we don’t already have them. A lot of it we already have a great partner for. And to your point of what things we outsource, we outsource and partner with different people who are really good at that stuff. There’s people out there who are very good at video production. Why would we build that? That would be silly, because there’s some really great video production companies out there that we can use, and use their strengths.

WILL: And it turns out that somewhere in the last decade, people have forgotten how to do SEO. I think as everybody’s gotten on the whole inbound content marketing bandwagon, we’ve forgotten the basic blocking and tackling of SEO. Oftentimes, we’ll come across a site that has great content that’s completely inaccessible to search.

I think of myself as having grown up in SEO because back in 1999, we were using GoTo.com to try to figure out what keywords we were going to stuff into the metatags. So really, for us, when we think of the things that we’ve trained our team on historically and where we feel like we’re adding a lot of value, it’s in those places that are technical and quantitative and ultimately that we’re able to demonstrate very good return on those investments because of that tactical focus.

ROB: Has there ever been a service area that helped teach you some of these lessons? Like you dabbled in it and you realized – maybe it was websites, maybe there was something else. Sometimes our eyes get a little bit big for our appetites and we say, “Oh sure, let’s do that too,” and then we get our hand smacked one way or another.

ANGIE: I think maybe it wasn’t services and it was more so certain clients, probably, that led us down “Yeah, we can figure out cross-domain tracking for this and that,” and then you get into it and you’re like, whoa, this was a much bigger thing than we thought it was. But then you’re there and you’ve got to figure it out. So I think it was probably more the client side that drove us down some of these more technical areas.

ROB: That makes sense. If we broaden that a little bit, what are some bigger picture lessons you’ve learned along the way that if you were picking up the phone to yourself 15 years ago, you’d be like, “Hey, you’re going to want to do this. Don’t do that. Do this differently”?

WILL: This is one of those things – and I think time and maturity allow you to really look at these things in the right way. Almost all of those lessons helped us to better understand the kind of company that we want to be.

A great example is we spent about five years with a single reseller representing way too much of our business. The kind of work that they needed was much more fulfillment, much more high throughput work, and it was not as satisfying for our team to execute on. It didn’t make for the greatest work environment for some of our team for a while. And then after all that, they decided to take that business in-house, which meant that they were taking a really big chunk of our revenue with them.

I think that was a really good lesson learned. When you find yourself with too much concentration in one customer, you’ve really got to get busy making sure that you’re doing the business development work that makes them not so monolithic. I think anybody who’s ever worked with customers knows, when a customer comes to you and says, “Hey, I want to give you five times as much money,” you don’t say, “Hey, sorry, we can’t take that because that would screw up our customer concentration.”

ANGIE: Right, because a lot of people do talk about that. They say, “Don’t let a single customer get to X percentage of your revenue.” It’s like, don’t let them? So, say no? Who’s going to do that? No one’s going to do that. So really, the answer is not that. It’s when they offer that, you go and you find more of that in other clients.

ROB: Notoriously – I’m here in Atlanta, and one of the bigger agencies here for a good while has been Moxie, and they’re owned in a holding company now. But when they were acquired, at least if the street reports are to be believed, they had 200 or 300 people and 70% of their business was Verizon. Every time a new iPhone launched, they had to do all the in-store collateral, just fire drill. Are you going to say no to that? You’ve got 150 people you can put on the payroll to serve this client. You figure out how to grow out of it.

I think what is often the case with some of these reseller, these channel relationships, these subcontract relationships, is sometimes they’re selling a deal that you haven’t quite figured out how to sell yet. Was that your experience? Or did their business look a lot like business you were bringing in yourself?

WILL: It actually didn’t look like the business we were bringing in ourselves. In fact, we found ourselves with two account management teams, one that was serving our direct clients and one that was serving this reseller. And there were a couple of other smaller resellers as well, and their lived experience day to day was very different, and their understanding of the work that we did also was very different. So it was hard to move somebody from that partner account management team to the direct account management team or vice versa and have them be Day 1 ready.

ANGIE: The reseller was selling packages because you could sell them – you didn’t have to understand everything. If you have a large sales team, it is much easier to hand them a package that says, “This is what you’re getting on this month in Month 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,” whatever it is. It was the same work over and over, whereas our direct clients were much more about the marketing funnel and creativity and so forth.

ROB: So even some of those clients may have been – would it be fair to say they were a little bit smaller where the direct engagement might not make sense? Was there a delta in deal size, or was it just a matter of the relationship?

WILL: I think generally speaking, those that were coming in through our reseller partners were smaller than we would’ve approached directly.

ANGIE: Yes.

WILL: They were much more true SMB. The other thing that we talk about as an opportunity and that we try to tell new business owners about when we encounter them is that we didn’t know how many services were available for small businesses when we started this up. Things like SBA’s Small Business Development Center and all of the different networks and ecosystems.

We literally had a meeting with one of those organizations, the local big entrepreneur ecosystem entity, and we sat down with them and we were like, “Hey, you guys are doing great things here. We’d love to get engaged. How can you help us out?” As we were talking to them, they started asking us questions like, “How many people do you have? How much revenue do you have?” At the end of the conversation, they were like, “You seem like the kind of people who could really help us out.”

ROB: [laughs] Wow.

WILL: Yeah. Not the plan. But I think there are so many of those services available that smaller entrepreneurs who are coming up in that classic startup ecosystem don’t really have a sense of.

ROB: What are a couple more of those that you would say someone should at least take a look at and not miss out on? Maybe New Orleans driven, maybe more national in scope. What should people pay attention to?

ANGIE: Later on – probably much later on, I went through the 10,000 Small Businesses program, I guess you would call it. It’s put on by Goldman Sachs, and I would say that’s a really good one. And it is everywhere. They’re all over the place. They do a really great job of walking through – you don’t have to go there with questions. They assume you don’t know anything and you’re going to learn it in the classes. So that’s a really good one.

WILL: I was going to say we have a number of purpose-driven organizations that I think are opportunities as well. There’s one called the Good Work Network that tends to work mostly with smaller businesses primarily in marginalized areas, and I’m sure that there are sort of sisters around the country. There’s one called Vet Launch, which is focused specifically on veteran entrepreneurs.

I would say that there are going to be dozens of these, and if you can find one that you can plug in consistent with their affinity, the resources are going to be invaluable.

ROB: That’s a great thought, to think about plugging into the affinity. It creates that extra link. Sometimes it’s hard to ask for help, it’s hard to ask for mentors, it’s hard to ask for advice. Sometimes that linkage can be a relationship you incubate over time, but it sounds like a great shortcut you’re talking about there, about navigating through a shared interest. That’s a really great thought there.

Angie, Will, I’m sure when people want to find Search Influence, I’m sure they can search for you and find you pretty quickly. But if people want to connect to you, how else should they go about finding you, connecting with you, and keeping track of what’s next for Search Influence?

WILL: Our website, searchinfluence.com, and our blog are really great places to start. We are pretty active as a company on Facebook and LinkedIn, and Instagram as well. Those are all great places to connect with us.

ROB: It’s not to be missed. LinkedIn in some ways seems to continue in effectiveness, even though – you probably have this worse than I do – the random connections. I don’t know how you handle them. I get a lot more than I’d like to get, I’ll put it that way.

WILL: What’s funny is that I’ve been getting a lot of them – a lot of my random connections lately have actually been somewhat relevant. So if I do choose to connect with folks, I’ll say, “Hey, I connected with you because I’m interested in this thing that’s in your bio. I’m not a buyer today, but I wanted to have you in my list of connections.”

ROB: Nice.

WILL: Especially when you’re working B2B. When we’re approaching folks who work in higher ed or who work in hospitals and health systems, they’re on LinkedIn and they’re paying attention. So from a cold outreach to start a conversation perspective, I find LinkedIn to be the most effective.

ROB: Makes so much sense. Angie, Will, congratulations on building, growing, sustaining a meaningful business through making it through some challenging times and some good ones. Thank you for sharing your journey with us. It’s really helpful. I think it’s motivating, and there’s great little tips all along the way to learn from. Thank you so much for sharing.

ANGIE: Yes, thank you for having us.

WILL: Yeah, Rob, thanks for having us on. I was glad to be introduced to your podcast because in prepping for this, I came across a number of episodes that I thought were really useful.

ROB: Well, thank you. We all need to get outside our head sometimes, and that’s part of it as well. Thanks for coming on. Be well.

ANGIE: Thank you.

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.

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?

1. Dig deep with clients to get beyond the facts and gain meaningful insights; 
2. Understand who a brand’s customers are, their experience with the brand, and their “journey 
3. Analyze insights to reveal and unlock a pathway to connect consumers with the brand
4. Bring real emotion to the table 
5. 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: 

1. A client strategy lead (who elicits from the client what is to be done and why), 
2. A planning lead (who aligns work with client needs, market trends/ opportunities, and strategies), 
3. A creative lead (who invents new products, generates advertising promotion, or “produces the show”), and 
4. 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.

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.

Sue started her career at Vera Bradley and rode a 9-year growth boom where things changed so rapidly the company had to reinvent itself every six months. (Revenues increased from $10 million to $400 million.) She left Vera Bradley on such good terms that they provided her with furniture for her new company and stayed on as clients with Britton doing catalogs and marketing for them for the next 10 years until Vera Bradley went public. 

Sixteen years after she left her position at Vera Bradley, Sue says the experience “gave us a wonderful foundation to work with companies that are focused on home and colors, or fashion” – Britton’s niche market. She believes that brands “really take off” when a brand is distinctly “nuanced” in a way that shows the brand is special and the agency builds a “very highly descriptive visual expression” reinforcing the brand identity and couples that with a “strong strategy.” Done right, the created assets can be amortized over time, broadly used, and will promote a “more devoted following.” 

As an example of a typical client, Sue talks about working with a number of paint companies, the importance of tracking color trends and building brand uniqueness, and the challenge of reaching out to “the do-it-yourselfers and the do-it-for-mes and then the pros.”

Some changes Sue has seen over the years are “a reluctance to invest in creative because it’s changing so quickly,” the need for lots of online (and often transitory) creative assets, and the flux of brands vacillating between bringing their creative work inhouse . . . and seeking an external agency. Sue’s agency has deleted some staff positions over the years and today outsources to partner vendors such less-frequently used services as building website backends or videography.

Sue is a strong believer in work-life balance. Before Covid, her agency interviewed people to discover what they valued . . . and came back with these results: “Their family, whatever that looked like. Their community. Their spirituality, whatever that looked like, or wellness. And then their environment.” She says, “They’ve circled the wagons around their family in a really, really big way.” She describes this as “the new American middle.”

Sue can be reached on her agency’s website at: bmdg.com (for Britton Marketing & Design Group), send an email off the site, or email Sue directly at:  sue@bmdg.com

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Susan Britton, Owner and Principal Creative Director at Britton Marketing & Design Group based in my hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Welcome to the podcast, Susan.

SUE: Thank you, Rob. You can just call me Sue, that’s fine.

ROB: We’ll go with Sue. Yeah, it’s excellent to have you here. I want all the Fort Wayne stories that the audience might not want to hear. But why don’t we start off first with a little bit of introduction to Britton Marketing & Design Group, and what is the firm’s superpower?

SUE: Well, we’re in Fort Wayne, Indiana because my education happened when I went to work for Vera Bradley, which is located – their headquarters are here in Fort Wayne. I joined Vera Bradley when they were about $10 million, and nine years later they were about $400 million. We tried everything, we experienced everything, and growing at that fast rate, we were reinventing every six months what we were doing. So that was a real privilege, and like I said, a great education.

Then I jumped off after about 10 years, and owner/founder Barbara Bradley Baekgaard and her partner, Pat, were really supportive when I left. They gave me furniture from the merchandising department and helped me get set up because they appreciated that they were female entrepreneurs and I wanted to be one again as well.

Then we continued to work with Vera Bradley, doing their catalogs and some marketing for the next 10 years until they went public. It really gave us a wonderful foundation to work with companies that are focused on home and colors, or fashion. We worked with Peter Millar as well for a few years, getting them on the map.

So really, our superpower, I would say, is design. It sounds very typical, but I think it’s sometimes underappreciated. I guess it’s hard to define sometimes, but when you have a brand that is really nuanced, when you have a very highly descriptive visual expression of what that brand is coupled with a really strong strategy, that’s when it operates on all cylinders and when we’ve seen brands really take off. I think people talk about it a lot in this industry – the form and function, the art and science – but it has always been true and will continue to be true.

ROB: I assume on Day 1, you were the one designer. Is that the case?

SUE: Yes. [laughs] I was sitting there looking out the window on a rainy day, at my desk. I had two other family members involved with me, and we were like, “Oh my gosh, what did we just do?” But the work followed, and we worked really hard. It all worked out. We’re here 16 years later and still figuring out marketing in the world today, which has gotten very complicated as well.

ROB: I was going to ask, because design in and of itself can be a little bit tricky to define, but then the definition has even probably changed on you. How has the nature of the work you do, the services, the deliverables – what has shifted in those 16 years?

SUE: I think it’s how fast everything – the kind of creative assets that people need constantly, day in and day out online – in the past, when we started out, it was print. Catalog work, and you would do two-week photoshoots. Well, that has really changed because of the tentative nature of the imagery that people need and the quantity of it. But I think what happens today is it’s easier to rely more on the science, which is more memorable – how many click-throughs – as we look at the success of an email campaign or whatever, a social media campaign.

I’ve seen a transition for a couple of things. One, a reluctance to invest in creative because it’s changing so quickly. But when they don’t do that, then you could put anybody’s logo on a picture on Instagram, like fashion or even home goods. It really needs to be nuanced in a way that you know when you look at it that that is a special brand. And it takes a little investment to do that, but there is a way that it can be done where you’re really creating assets that are amortized over a certain period of time and used in every area. I see when companies do that, they really have a more devoted following. People respond so well to the uniqueness that that brand represents.

Secondly, I think I’ve seen a change where in order to save costs many brands will bring their creative in-house, and that can be very successful, too, if they find the right people. It can also be easily unsuccessful just because of the complacency or the repetitive nature of the work. Focusing on one brand, day in and day out, I think sometimes people lose a little bit of edge. But not necessarily.

ROB: There’s definitely a lot to consider there. The pendulum of in-house versus – not outsourced, but out of house, working with a creative services firm. That pendulum seems to swing both industry-wide and then some clients really swing that pendulum back and forth as well.

You certainly mentioned Vera Bradley as a foundational client; what does your mix of clients look like? Are there typical industries, other key clients you’re able to talk about that you’ve snapped up since then?

SUE: Yeah, what’s happened since then is we really have honed our expertise in mostly color-trended consumer goods – I can say primarily purchased by women, but sometimes not. We’ve really worked into a lot of different paint company work. When you think about paint, it’s kind of like chemicals in a bucket. It’s really all marketing to talk about what’s special about that particular brand of paint and to do it in a lifestyle way, but sometimes with humor. It’s very color-oriented, so we’re always working on trends, looking at trends, trying to look ahead to what’s coming up that the consumer is looking forward to seeing.

Also, we asked ourselves when we were getting into especially the home goods market, what makes us successful in Fort Wayne with these kinds of customers, the color trending customers, home group customers? We saw that it was like the everyday person. It’s you and me, and so many percent of their consumers were everyday people. It wasn’t the super high end or super low commodity end. It’s really right there in the middle. So we’ve done a lot of research on that and have built an expertise around that particular consumer. That helps us work with these different companies.

ROB: Paint’s a really interesting one because nobody looks at your wall and can tell what kind of paint you have, and you probably don’t know either. There’s not a lot of word-of-mouth there, I don’t think. Any paint could be any color. But you have an industry buyer – we’ve had somebody helping paint our house; I don’t even know what they’re picking. They know, absolutely, what they’re picking for us, and then there’s “What do I pick up when I wander down the aisle at Home Depot or Lowe’s?” It’s anybody, for sure.

SUE: Right. And then they also have their pros that they’re trying to respond to. They have the do-it-yourselfers and the do-it-for-mes and then the pros.

ROB: Yeah, that’s what I’m getting at with the pro that we work with. I don’t know what they’re picking. I don’t ask for anything. They tell me where to go pick my colors. They say, “Go to this store and pick a color.” And I listen and I do it.

SUE: Right. They have undue influence. [laughs]

ROB: [laughs] You got ahead of us on the origin story and where the firm came from, and you mentioned, of course, that you are still the principal creative director, but I’m sure you don’t do it all now. What did it look like to bring in let’s say the second design creative, and what did it take to get over the hump of you not doing it and letting them do the work?

SUE: It’s probably a variety of things, but I think what’s really important is to not only mentor but provide room for mistakes. We had a saying early on; we bring in interns and grow our own. We would bring someone in and explain the level of quality that our clients expect and then coach them on how to get there and make sure they were getting there. Then they would embrace it. And we really provided a non-threatening environment where people could really grow, we could really mentor them, and give them their own work to own and really work at.

That’s really what they’re doing today. Some people that are here have been here over 10 years, and probably the last group we hired has been for 7 years. So we’re probably getting ready to add another couple. But I think the important thing is respecting your team and allowing them to be different from you, but just making sure that the expectations are really clear and the goals of the company are clear too.

But we also wanted to create an environment where they could have a life beyond work. I think we’ve all worked places where we just worked way too many hours and we couldn’t have a personal life. Even before COVID, which I think has really brought that whole situation to light, we wanted to create an environment where family also comes first. So, if you’re taking care of the people that are working for you, they’re your human resources, and respecting them as much as you respect the work I think has been really key to our success and to having a well-oiled machine where everybody has been here a while and keeps it all humming.

ROB: Do you think that sort of autonomy is partly – you mentioned people who’ve been there 7 years, 9 years – do you feel like there’s a degree of autonomy where they get to do the work they would do even if they were out on their own, without the headache of being out on their own? Is that some of the mix? What’s some of the secret sauce on that kind of longevity?

SUE: I think it’s very close to what you said. I think it’s a way that they feel ownership in the work that they’re doing, and as a team, we might group critique something so that it’s not really threatening, but we’re always looking at improvements so that they can grow into their work and they can own it, and I don’t have to look over their shoulder. Because I don’t think people really like that. Especially creative people. They have their own expression within a certain frame and having them hone that and be able to do that I think is what creatives really want to do.

ROB: Certainly, with the amount of time you’ve had the firm up and running, I’m sure you’ve had to make some choices of where to grow and maybe some service offerings and lines of business that you’ve perhaps decided intentionally to not add. What are some things that maybe you have chosen to not do, maybe you keep partnering on them, maybe you refer them, maybe you say you don’t do that? Have there been decisions like that along the way?

SUE: Oh yeah, for sure. We used to have a videographer on staff and some photography, and we decided a few years ago that our expertise is a branding boutique agency where we’re helping our clients brand themselves better and have a better marketing strategy and better nuanced creative. So we have partners that we use for website backend building or videography or some even just video editing, those kinds of services. We don’t always need them consistently, or even photographers, because for every particular job you want to customize the right vendor to that particular project. They all have different levels of need, from high quality to a lower quality maybe, depending on budgets. It’s nice to be flexible and then just plug in and play with those other vendors as needed.

ROB: Got it. That makes sense. There’s an element even where maybe you have enough work to keep a videographer busy, but you really need half or a quarter or a tenth of 10 different videographers rather than ten-tenths of the same person.

SUE: Yeah, exactly. That’s definitely true.

ROB: Sue, as you reflect on the journey so far, what are some of the lessons you’ve learned in building the business – things you might go back and tell yourself to do differently if you were starting over?

SUE: That’s a good question. I think building an expertise is so important. I learned that from a fellow that was helping with us, consulting with us on our business a few years ago, and it’s the best thing that we’ve ever done because it helps us focus on what we’re really good at, what we have the right to win, and not try to be everything to everyone. I’m sure many agencies go through that, because you really do want to reach. You want to do something new and exciting. And sometimes that’s fine, if it’s not too far from your expertise, to stretch. But sometimes if you overreach, you get yourself in a difficult position. That’s not really good for you and not good for your client, and it’s not good for your team. So, I think really understanding what you’re good at and owning that is key.

In the past, we may have hired people that we thought, “Oh, we’re going to build this whole department,” but that really wasn’t going to happen. One thing is, people didn’t always trust you to be able to do it. They would look at what you were traditionally good at and they would not trust that you could go that far the other direction. So, I do think you have to really focus.

ROB: I can see that. It definitely helps you know how to talk to your clients as well, rather than being everything to anyone. But it’s hard to get that conviction.

You mentioned in some notes as we were getting this scheduled something about the “new American middle.” Tell me about the new American middle. What is that, and what is that expertise? How does that play into the firm?

SUE: As we all know, marketing is really about values. If you’re in lifestyle marketing, it’s really about values, and it’s a pretty complicated, noisy world. You’re not going to get a chance to remember much about a brand with everything going so quickly, so it’s really important that when you’re marketing, you’re really connecting and resonating with your consumers’ values.

As we looked at, again, who we were in Fort Wayne, why anybody should work with us, the kind of projects that are a good fit and companies that we could align with, it came back to that everyday person. As we dug in and we did a lot of research, we did some primary research, it was really illuminating to us that – and this was before COVID – we realized that the world had become less certain, and while maybe in the ’90s or some of the more consumer-driven decades, things had really changed.

When we interviewed people, the most important thing to them was their family, whatever that looked like. Their community. Their spirituality, whatever that looked like, or wellness. And then their environment. Those are the things everyone was really concerned about. They’ve circled the wagons around their family in a really, really big way.

For example, if you’re featuring maybe a woman with a handbag and that’s the product, so many companies feature it as a product on a person. But if you would reflect them doing things with their family, they may relate to that photo more quickly on a social media post than a single one. It’s just an idea of blending and taking your brand and looking at, with your competition also, what are the values that you compete over? What are the values you share? And what is the open space that they’re not owning?

Many brands are not owning family. If, for example, when you do your research, it pops up as a top important consumer value to those customers, then you can really reflect that through your digital expressions and your copy, etc., if that makes sense.

ROB: Yeah, that makes sense. You mentioned also – we talked a little bit about family. I understand that family’s also important to how you operate the firm. How have you thought about setting up the work environment, setting up the work, setting up roles in a way that is compatible with families, in a way that maybe other services firms have a hard time with?

SUE: I think one thing we do is, for example, with the creative team, we have three different creative directors so that when we’re working with a client, usually there’s one that’s assigned, but they help each other out. So if one’s going to be out for a week, they’ll double up a little bit and do some handoffs just to get by through that week. And they know each other well enough that they can do that smoothly. In the past, I would say it was not the case.

Early on, we had creative directors that were very specific about their work, which was great, but they didn’t really overlap. But I think as we’ve worked into trying to be more flexible in our schedules, we’ve overlapped with each other so that we can help each other out when the other person’s not in, and also, again, the work from home has really helped. I think it’s helped many companies realize that, oh, we didn’t lose productivity, and oh, this gives us more flexibility to have more work-life balance, and we haven’t seen a drop in productivity. I think that’s been of the nicer outcomes of COVID.

ROB: How are you handling work from home? Is everybody home? Is there still an office? Do people come in anywhere at any particular time? How are you thinking through that?

SUE: We feel like for our culture, to maintain a good culture, it’s still good to have a building and a place where we can be. So we work two days a week in the office and three days a week from home. But sometimes people don’t work in the office for the work because they may have a project that they really want to concentrate on, they don’t want the distraction of office. But I think naturally now, the days in office become more meeting-oriented days. It’s naturally flowed that way, and then the other days are more work days. I feel like it’s been less distracting than when we were in every day.

ROB: So, it adds a little bit of predictability, less Swiss cheese on people’s schedules of meeting, work, meeting, work, meeting, work. But it also sounds like it’s a little bit more of a norm rather than a rule in terms of how many days in the office per week.

SUE: Yeah, we don’t really use rules here in that fashion. [laughs] We’re all here on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, try to get in. And people do. And I think people do like that balance because it orients you to be here and to be able to have meetings together and see each other, and then it’s balancing to be able to work from home the other three.

ROB: That’s good. It’s always interesting to hear the different ways that people are handling this. But I do think there’s value – if you’re going to still hire people and have people in a certain geography, it seems like being in the office sometimes matters. Otherwise, why not just hire somebody somewhere else? Which then you’re also competing with everybody everywhere else for talent.

SUE: Right. I think that’s so true. It is really interesting to us how everybody’s handling this whole thing and how it’s evolving. It is true you can hire people remotely anywhere these days, and that’s a good thing. It can be good and bad. I don’t think we would be opposed to hiring somebody out of Fort Wayne, but it does sometimes get more challenging when you’re trying to put everything up on a board. I mean, you can Zoom some of that.

I think everybody’s making it work, but there is a camaraderie. Actually, we do have someone who works out of Fort Wayne at this point and comes in every other week for a couple of days. That’s great because you still get to see them. But everybody will handle it differently, I’m sure.

ROB: Yeah. It’s very, very interesting. I have a friend who just took over as president of an existing agency, and she lives in Atlanta, and the agency is in Knoxville. I think she’s going to be up there every other week. It really depends on the age and stage of life. I think her children are grown, college-bound. Flexing life here and there is a better fit for different people at different times. But I think picking a lane – you’ve picked a lane for your team, and you let them know what the expectation is – that really helps versus what we see in the news where Apple’s still trying to get their people to go to the office, but every time they try to get them to go to the office, they complain, a couple of people quit. It becomes this whole fits and starts, and “what are we doing here?”

We ended up hiring primarily – during COVID was a lot of our growth, so we ended up being a distributed team without trying. We have folks everywhere from Florida to Georgia to California to now Canada. You know what lane you’re in. You pick it, and people who will gravitate towards that will be your tribe, I think.

SUE: I think so, too. It’s really how you treat each other and how the culture is developed and how you respect each other. That’s where people want to work. Location almost doesn’t matter anymore. Many of our vendors are all over the U.S. We work with companies for photography, all over. Also video, also web development. You just try to pick the best vendors that you work well with, that you understand their quality level or their style.

ROB: Yeah. Sue, when you look ahead, when you’re looking at the future of Britton Marketing & Design, you’re looking at the future of marketing and design in general, what gets you excited? What should we be looking for? What’s coming up? What’s going to be our exciting future?

SUE: I think for us, we still just love telling a great story about a great brand that people have worked hard to develop and have put their heart and passion into. That’ll just never get old, looking at someone’s journey of developing an idea and then making it work. That is still really possible in the U.S., and I think that’s always an exciting thing for us: to take that beautiful idea, brand that they’ve developed, and then really illuminate it. Give them a nuanced creative that shows it for what it really is, the heart and soul of somebody’s idea, and then really laying that over a really wonderful marketing matrix where you’ve looked at the most inexpensive yet most effective way for them to go to market, and then how they reach the people who would really like this, who they can really respond to, to make their quality of life better.

Also, the conscientious capitalism piece of it. What are people doing? How are they giving back? How are we as a community helping each other grow and be successful? I think whatever form that takes, it’s always still going to be a really exciting journey from a marketing standpoint. So many people think of marketing and think, “Oh, they’re just trying to sell me something.” No, that’s not what we do. That’s not what we get up for. It’s really a lot more layered than that.

ROB: Yeah, you loop it all the way back to the paint conversation. I feel like when I see paint advertising, a lot of it is about creating ideas of what’s possible, it’s about how you make people feel, it’s about a combination of pride and hospitality. And maybe I’m making some of that up, but I think about it more on those levels. I’m not looking for a material datasheet comparing one paint to another. Maybe somebody in an industrial application is, but when I’m thinking about my home, my office, you’re not showing me a picture of a bucket most of the time.

SUE: Right. It’s really your interaction with that brand – how does that brand make you feel about the products they have, the color ranges they have, the names? We had a project with Benjamin Moore years ago where we named a whole set of paint colors, and that was super fun for the team. They really loved that. Like some people will only buy paint that’s the name of a food, like whipped cream or chocolate or something like that. It’s funny what influences people.

ROB: How did you come up with these names? Did you do research with consumers on their responses to these names? How did you get to the answer on that one?

SUE: It was kind of a high-end line of paints that had different layers of pigments in them. The team would get together and – yeah, they didn’t really research. They just knew what the goal of the name should be in terms of a style, in terms of what they needed to imbue. So, they would come up with a range of names, a couple of names for each color, and then the company would look at them and pick them.

Since then, we’ve worked with other paint companies – some of the very prominent, and they don’t like us to talk about it too much because they like us to just be quiet about it. And that’s okay, because we do a lot of work with them. But it really is about the paint names; it’s about how you talk about the paint, like you said, envisioning their new space or home and how it makes their home better. Paint is difficult for people to choose, so making it easy for people to select paints and pre-curating some for them is all really important.

ROB: And I understand them wanting to take the center stage. That’s what every client wants. That’s what most people want. They want to be in the Story Brand metaphor. In the Hero’s Journey, they want to be the hero and they want you to be the guide, that you help them be the hero. That’s what we end up being there for when we’re on the services side, I think, so it’s hard to even market ourselves and show other potential clients how we can also be a good guide for them rather than using another client’s story to be the hero.

SUE: That’s really true. It’s funny; we really feel very successful at helping other brands illuminate what they are and what they do, and it has always been a struggle for us to do a good job of that about ourselves. I think we’re a little humble, too. Midwest, you know.

ROB: That’s right. There is that Midwestern humility. Sue, when people want to find and connect with you and with Britton Marketing & Design Group, where should they go to track you down?

SUE: They can go to our website, which is just bmdg.com, as in Britton Marketing & Design Group. They can send an informational email to us and we’ll call them back. Or they can just email me as well, which is sue@bmdg.com.

ROB: Excellent. Was it difficult getting a four-letter dot-com domain?

SUE: We were surprised that it was not. That’s why we snagged it.

ROB: [laughs] Well, excellent. Sue, thank you so much for coming on, for sharing your journey. Congratulations on everything you have done, and we look forward to seeing so much more ahead.

SUE: Thanks, Rob. Thanks for your time and for the conversation. I think we can all help each other by having these kinds of conversations. We all learn from everything we hear and read, right?

ROB: So much, Sue. Thank you. Be well.

SUE: Thank you so much.

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.

Rahul Raj is founder and CMO of 5&Vine, a fractional CMO and marketing agency that identifies industry incumbents’ vulnerabilities, market changes, and technological opportunities to enable startup brands to challenge and overtake established brands. 

The agency focuses on challenger brands that have both economic and social goals, e.g., increasing financial literacy, addressing discrimination, or making organic food more accessible to the masses. 

Before starting 5&Vine, Raj worked at a Canadian thermostat startup, Ecobee. The big-name competitors, Honeywell and Nest, owned the market. Their vulnerability: single location thermostats did not address the comfort of people in “different” parts of their homes. Ecobee developed a system of individual room sensors that identified temperature and occupancy so that people could be comfortable where they were, instead of only being comfortable in the “single thermostat” hallway. The technological opportunity, Bluetooth, enabled sensors located in different rooms to communicate to the main thermostat without the need for “dropping wires.”

The company had no money, no “presence,” and no awareness. It invested heavily in customer support, won converts, and curated reviews. Ecobee had 10% of the five-star reviews of big-name competitor Nest . . . with only 0.1% of the market share – which made Ecobee larger than they actually were. 

Faced with a profound family tragedy, Rahul left Ecobee, interviewed over 200 companies, received 10 offers, and decided he wanted to “date.” With each company, he agreed to work for anywhere from a week to a month which de-risked the hiring process for both sides. He so loved working as a “fractional CMO” that he professionalized his “dating” and launched a fractional CMO agency.

Rahul’s “sweet spot” is working with referred clients are those who are “pre Series A to just post Series B” – those who have the financial resources to invest in marketing and are highly motivated to grow.

In keeping with his “dating” philosophy, Rahul typically works for a company for up to three days to ensure there is a personal and intellectual fit. If both Rahul and the customer are satisfied, they write a formal contract. Of the thirty or so companies 5&Vine has worked with, the agency has taken a significantly reduced financial compensation from five or six – in exchange for equity or options in the client organization.

Rahul has developed a formalized process to discern vulnerabilities that open opportunities for his startup clients to beat more-established companies.

1. Use the web to research the big company’s product
2. Compare customer reviews to the company’s product claims
3. Buy and use the product and compare your experience to the company claims and to customer’s reviews.

Answer the questions:

1. What are people yearning for?
2. What is being under-delivered, and 
3. What opportunity exists for your startup to come up with a powerful product that will prove a market winner?

In this interview, he also notes that it is helpful to determine what has changed over time. . . and what technologies could be applied to solve problems.

Rahul spoke at HubSpot’s 2020 Inbound Conference on Go-To-Market Strategies for Startups: A Framework + Insights from One Challenger Brand to Another.

He can be found on his agency’s website at 5andVine.  

Transcript Follows:

Rob: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host Rob Kischuk and I am excited to be joined today by Rahul Raj, founder and CMO of 5&Vine based in Toronto, Canada. Welcome to the podcast, Rahul.

Rahul: Thanks so much I’m delighted to be here.

Rob: It's excellent to have you here. Would've loved to meet up with you in person at the Inbound conference, which you spoke on and we'll talk about that, but glad to be on the line too, in virtual land. Why don't you start off by telling us about 5&Vine and what your agency superpower is?

Rahul: Fantastic. We are a fractional CMO and marketing agency that helps startups and scale-ups take on industry incumbents and win. We focus on challenger brands that have some type of social pursuit alongside an economic aim. Whether that be financial literacy or addressing discrimination head on or making organic food more accessible to the masses. What we're particularly great at is identifying the vulnerabilities of the industry incumbents and using that to help propel the challenger brands that we work with to positions where they either take on or take down those industry incumbents.

Rob: And you have some experience with that yourself having worked in a startup and a challenger brand before starting the firm, right?

Rahul: I do indeed. Yeah. Prior to starting 5&Vine, I was the CMO at a technology company called Ecobee. Now, when I joined that firm, they were single digit million in sales, they were focused on the B2B market with a smart thermostat. That organization had a tremendous opportunity to go head-to-head with both Nest and Honeywell in the consumer space, but they were very reluctant to do so. Obviously, both of those organizations like Honeywell, as an example, created the thermostat and are a massive multi-billion-dollar organization with a variety of product lines that essentially translates to deep pockets. On the side of Nest, they were the darlings of Silicon Valley, started by Tony Fidel, who was the principal designer behind the Apple iPhone. And so they had tremendous street credit on the design side.

And so here was this little engine that could call Ecobee in the Canadian marketplace that kind of wanted to rattle the cages of those big dogs. And, in essence, what we did was we identified the single biggest vulnerability of both of those organizations. And that vulnerability being that consumers are uncomfortable in their homes despite hiring a thermostat to make them comfortable. And the reason is that both of them measured the temperature in one spot only and it was typically in something like a hallway. Now, if you spend the entirety of your life in the hallway, outside of your thermostat, you are going to have one cushy life when it comes to temperature. But if you're like the vast majority of humans that sleep in their bedroom that eat in their dining room or hang out in their rec room, you're probably going to experience hot and cold spots.

With that insight in mind, we created what was deemed to be a room sensor. Now a room sensor measured temperature and occupancy. So, we knew which room you were in, and we could help curate the comfort for the room that you were in instead of by the hallway. The way that we framed it from a language point of view is that Ecobee delivered comfort in the rooms that matter. So, there was a sub text, which was Ecobee: for homes with more than one room. And that, that strategy of going and addressing a fundamental design flaw that existed with thermostats was the cornerstone that enabled us to take on those industry incumbents.

Rob: That's interesting. I didn't know that Ecobee story so much and, I'm just curious, how did those room sensors connect through to the main thermostat?

Rahul: Yes, it was done through Bluetooth.

Rob: That makes sense. And that really highlights it. You know, one of the things that can make a startup a success is by taking advantage of something that has changed in the market. And something that has changed in the market is Bluetooth, right? Very few people would string wires around their house to connect different rooms, to connect the sensor back to the thermostat, but with Bluetooth or even if it had been Wi-Fi or something like that, that's something that changed in the market that it seems like hadn't fully been exploited by the incumbents or even the splashy new entrants.

Rahul: A 100%. Yeah. I think that they kind of fail to acknowledge the customer pain point, failed to sort of conceive of a solution. And then it was the like solving for “how do you make that solution technically feasible.” Now that the sort of first chapter of that story. The second chapter, just in brief, was that we had no money and we had no presence and no awareness. And so what we ended up doing to get this product out into the market was that we invested disproportionately in customer support, over marketing. And so the intent was to go out and find people that had this pain point, sell them on the resolution of the pain point, which is be comfortable in the rooms that matter, but then go out of our way to deliver on support. So if they needed help with the installation, we would stay on the phone with them the entire time. We would go out of our way to do whatever it took to make sure they had an extraordinary experience. 

Now, at the end of that experience, we say, if you're happy with our product and our service, could you do us a solid and write us a review. There wasn't any sort of bias towards it, where it was like writing a review that consisted of X nor was that like write a review and we'll give you X dollars. It was just based on reciprocity – doing the right thing. If we go out of our way to do right by you, could you please help us with a review? And in the end, we had about 10% of the five-star reviews that Nest had with like 0.1% of the market share. So, we presented an image to the world that we were bigger than we actually were. And then we worked like heck to close the gap between the perception and our reality and grew our sales.

Rob: That's a great point. And in your talk at the Inbound conference was go to market strategies for startups, a framework and insights from one challenger brand to the other. And I think that kind of tees into the question of how you build a business and agency around finding these insights. Because a lot of times what you have is this sort of survivorship bias where a company survives, and then you go back and you write the story of why they succeeded. But you're really putting yourself in the position where you need to have a process to uncover these insights about what the vulnerability is in the market. How do you get to that?

Rahul: Yeah, it's a great question. I think the starting point is just like web research about the product. So obviously there's a bunch of commentary that's put out by the organization about what they're great at and perhaps what they're not as great at. So that becomes your starting point and it's the hypothesis that you're trying to validate working validate. So, the next step is to go to customer reviews and seeing whether the customers substantiate the strength of that product or service or whether the company is misleading people by stating that they are better than they actually are and so that becomes the second phase. The third phase is to buy the products yourself and experience them in some way and determine whether your experience is in fact reflective of the reviews and what the company has stated or not. I think in total, that that gives you a sense of what are people yearning for that is being under-delivered and what opportunity exists for your startup to really come out with a powerful product or service and clean up.

Rob: Wow. And so you've talked a little bit about the origin story of the business, and I think we can kind of see the overall through-line, but it's still nonetheless a significant jump to go from CMO of a sort of scaled physical product startup into starting 5&Vine as a services organization. What led you into taking that jump?

Rahul: Yeah, I mean, truthfully, I did not architect this. I accidentally stumbled upon it. So, when I left Ecobee, it was on the back of a profound amount of family tragedy, five deaths in three months, murder, a suicide. My father was given three months to live, it was overwhelming. Through the negotiation of that grief, I read an adage that said you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And it resonated so deeply with me that my quest was actually to find my five. So, I went through the process of evaluating a number of jobs, and I had 287 job-related conversations, which translated into 10 offers. And with each of those 10 offers, I wanted the experience of working with them before I drew a conclusion about whether I wanted to engage full time.

So, in other words, I wanted to date. I didn't want to get married because I was aware that dating behavior in marriage behavior are materially different. So for each of them, I said, let me work with you for anywhere between a week to a month, pay me and we will essentially de-risk the hiring for both sides. So, I did this 10 times, and with each of them, I was able to make a significant impact to their business, to help them see opportunities that perhaps they were otherwise they were otherwise unaware of. And, and that was all done in a very short period of time. Now, the reframe of that experience is that I was engaged as a fractional CMO instead of a full-time CMO. And I loved the civility with which I was able to engage because I was treated almost more like a guest than a family member. Can I decided that this was such a delightful experience and the variety was so appealing that instead of taking any one of those jobs, I would just professionalize my dating and launch a fractional CMO agency.

Rob: And at what point did it become clear that you were going to have to get some more people on board? You know, obviously it’s one thing you can kind of picture making your own way kind of as a consultant, but there's another inflection point from there where you say, gosh, I need some help and even get to the point where you may have other people who are running that primary fractional CMO seat. What was that transition like?

Rahul: Again, it was relatively like a logical transition and it kind of comes back to de-risking the move. So, when I needed extra help whether it would be in PR and growth in social, in content, in design. I would initially go to trusted people in my network that I could engage on a contract. And so, I would start paying them to do the work. We would evaluate or solidify our chemistry, both personality wise, intellect wise. And it was only when the expense for that discipline became significant enough that I could make the calculus to say, I think it would be more economical to hire someone full-time than it would be to continue on contract. And that's when I started building up my team.

Rob: You make it sound so logical, but I, you can also see it, it really is kind of a steady sort of building block path to progress. Now, one thing that strikes me, particularly when you're talking about startups, a challenge that some agencies have when they work with startups is client selection. Because you have to essentially find clients that you can help, but also are financially solvent enough to not leave you hanging with open invoices. How do you think about process of choosing the right risks when it comes to clients?

Rahul: Yeah, it's a fascinating question. There's a few dimensions to the answer. So, I'd say as a general rule, what I've learned is my sweet spot is just pre-Series A to just post-Series B. And the reason for that is that the organizations have the financial resources to invest in marketing and to pay me, but it beautifully aligns with their motivation to grow. They've they need to show aggressive growth as they, in order to land financing, or if they've just landed financing, they need to show their investors that it was worth it, that they can grow at the pace that they originally promised. So that's my sweet spot when it comes to . . .

Rob: Okay. Have they typically raised seed money or have bootstrapped their way to some measure of viability at that point?

Rahul: Yes. Yes. So, it's either that, or the founders themselves have means either due to a previous success, the discipline of saving, or family means.

Rob: I see. And so, it definitely makes sense that somebody who's pre-Series A, you know, they're looking for that edge. They're looking to come into that fundraise with all of their advantages and with articulation of their differentiation and that's always an investor conversation, is what makes you different. And so, I can certainly see, you probably are plumbing some words into some investor decks along your way,

Rahul: 100%. Yeah. I've pitched X so far for the startups that I engage with, and it's been amazing to even join them alongside those pitches to help close financing.

Rob: And how do you think about customer acquisition in this way? Because it seems to me that startups are, they kind of show up, they get some degree of success. Sometimes they disappear there. It's not like targeting a Fortune 500 firm, everybody knows where Coca-Cola is and how to find them. You may have to navigate the organization to get there, but it seems to me that startups right around as they're getting to your sweet spot can be a little bit hard to find even. How are you finding these businesses?

Rahul: So, fortunately it's all referral based. There's no active prospecting, it is just word-of-mouth, because I think when you start to see a startup do well, many people ask, well, how the heck did that happen? Right. Where did these guys come from and what drove their growth? And when I'm associated with that story and whether it's helping in a minor way or in a major way – that helps generate more client work.

Rob: Got it. Rahul, you've been at this for a little bit now, what are some lessons you've learned in building 5&Vine that you might do a little bit differently if you were starting over from scratch today?

Rahul: Yeah. Great question. So I think the first is, it's something that I'm now practicing I just didn't realize that at the beginning But I employ the same first date premise that I did with the job prospects that I referenced earlier to the startup clients. So, because fit matters and it's really, it's hard to assess fit during an interview process. I'd like to start by engaging in one to three days’ worth of paid work with the client, but I don't need a contract. I just work on the honor system and I want to see whether our personality-based chemistry in our intellectual-based chemistry works. And if they're happy with the value that I've delivered and they like me, and I feel the same way about them, then we'll formalize a contract. And to me, it's not how I necessarily started, but it's what I've embraced now, it’s very different than trying to hunt for as many clients as you can and treating them all as just dollar signs to build your business. I'm not trying to optimize for money alone, I'm trying to optimize for joy, social impact and fair economic compensation so that's one of the big lessons.

Rob: Got it. It's funny how sometimes there are things we instinctively do early in our business that we don't realize we value. It sounds like you were doing this dating and then you kind of got away from it and you've realized that it wasn't just something that you did. It's actually something you did that was valuable along the way, it's an interesting journey there. Does anything else come to mind that you might adjust?

Rahul: Definitely. The second one is, thinking about the composition of your compensation. I have out of the, certainly, 30 companies that we've worked with, there were about five or six where I have taken a meaningfully reduced financial compensation in exchange for equity or options in that organization. And that is just a powerful decision to make, but it obviously comes along with a proportionate level of risk. But it's powerful because when that organization does well, its game changing, it's just game changing. So, give you one example and knowing that you're in Atlanta, this will land pretty well, but one of my early clients was a company called Greenlight Financial, based in Atlanta. Greenlight is a smart debit card for kids that helps parents teach kids about financial literacy in an era where we're no longer as dependent on paper bills. Right? So, because our transactions occur virtually Greenlight helps facilitate that conversation and that education between parents and kids using a debit card and a mobile app, and they do an extraordinary job. When I was engaged, we grew the business significantly enough to close a Series A, led by Amazon. Recently within the past month, Greenlight has closed a $215 million round of financing that values the company at $1.2 billion. Trust me that I am delighted that I took a reduced financial compensation and have a piece of that business.

Rob: Yeah, that's a great one to be in, they are certainly on their way, but early on, I think there were probably along the lines of what you were saying with the thermostat. Some unspoken kind of concerns and skepticism from the market. I know those folks, Johnson Cook, I think I know over there, I've known for a while. I think, Tim that's in charge of it. 

Rahul: That’s correct, yeah.

Rob: Anyhow. They used to be right down the hall from us So, I know Greenlight well.

Rahul: Do you know TBC as well?

Rob: Yes. Absolutely. But talking about the insights, what was the insight in that payment market that really, it seems to me that the challenge would be trust. I think I had a little bit of skepticism and trust around the product when they first rolled it out the way I knew the people involved were excellent. Most people don't have that privilege. So how did you think about the differentiation and opportunity in the market with Greenlight?

Rahul: Yes, there was, I guess to your exact point, because it's trust-based, you de-risk a situation when you know someone that has used it and derives value from it. So, you need to take something that is a private experience – and most financial things are private – and you need to help make the private public, and you can do that through storytelling. And so what we did fairly early on was we had great relationships with the parents and kids that were using our product and with their permission either encourage them to share their story on social and or enable us to share their stories on social. But we did so in such a way that the storytelling was, you were exposed to the storytelling, likely from someone in your community, in your city or someone that was relatable because their kids play in a particular sports league that your kids played in. So we made the private engagement with the product or public but did so in a way that you could relate to, and that was familiar to you.

Rob: Wow. That's really intriguing and for the sake of Rahul, but as well as for the sake of your children, go check out Greenlight is a really, really cool product. I would encourage anybody listening to go have a look. I think the market is certainly validated that there is something there, there is value there, and I will vouch that there are good people working on it, so that's really exciting. Rahul, when you look ahead, when you look at what's coming up for 5&Vine, or maybe more broadly in the market of either marketing or innovation, what's exciting to you that's coming up?

Rahul: So, we're evolving our business into a venture studio model where we are taking a bigger position in companies but taking on a higher level of risk in developing their brand, their websites, and their acquisition strategies. So, in essence, whereas a venture capital firm might put in dollars and then the use of proceeds is to do those things, we are doing the same thing, except we're giving all of our intellectual capital to these organizations to help them develop and accelerate them in exchange for more material equity positions. And that to me is unbelievably exciting because there's so much skin in the game. Where our future essentially depends on the success of those organizations and I'm just so excited to unleash more of the team's talents in bringing more socially responsible brands to market.

Rob: That's interesting. And it's really interesting from a team compensation perspective, because oftentimes a lot of agencies will get into a model of some sort of profit sharing or distribution or something like that. How do you think about, is there any way you've been able to align the equity upside to the incentives of your team to kind of be staked into the long-term success of the clients?

Rahul: Yeah, truthfully, not yet. But the model that I'm exploring – but I have not yet solved for – is the venture capital model. And my understanding of the venture capital model takes into consideration is: who’s working on the business, how long are they working on that business, and then what is the outcome? And then how do you proportionately share proceeds based on agency and risk and by agency, I think involvement. And that's the trickiest part of this model is that we all know there's turnover. People leave agencies for a variety of reasons and so you want to ensure if they contributed to the success of an organization, that they can benefit from it for the time that they were involved. But the related thing is to what extent does it impact their base compensation? Because it's a risk model and the risks or the return isn't necessarily generated in the first two years, five years, or even 10 years. Right? And so, I'm trying to figure out how to structure it in such a way that it's equitable, doesn't disadvantage people, also they're still able to live fairly, get compensated fairly, but benefit from that level of upside, knowing that it's the agency that's taking on the most risk.

Rob: Right. I've been having some conversations lately with attorneys. I've been facing down a similar thing because coming from an investor-funded product business, as I have, but also a services business, which we are spinning up. What you run into, if you just follow a typical startup pattern of granting equity, not that you run out of equity, but you keep diluting people with people who are not there anymore. And on the one hand you want them to benefit from the upside maybe . . . probably . . . not at the expense of everyone, they’re not at the expense of maybe even an investor. So I've been tweaking with an idea, and I'm not sure if we're going to get anywhere with it, but if I can find an attorney who will make this format public the same way that some attorneys have made like safe notes and certain sorts of, investment instruments, they've made them public and sort of open source.

What I've been thinking is to have people vest into a profit sharing and equity pool that they vest out of, they relinquish when they leave and that doesn't fully solve things. We had an episode where we talked to Soze, which is an agency out of Brooklyn. And they, it wasn't like Monte Python where they were an autonomous collective, but they said something kind of like that. It was a very like Brooklyn kind of hippy sounding, but really compelling and empathetic way where they, nobody owns that agency, they’re a co-op I think they said. So, everybody owns the share that they own for the time they've been there while they're there and then it goes back in the pool when they leave. And so, I think somewhat inspired by that I've been tweaking with ideas and I, I don't know where I will get with it. I hope if anyone else has some thoughts on it, I'd love to hear drop me an email.

Rahul: Oh, that's fascinating. We should make sure to stay in touch on that one then.

Rob: Yeah. I think it's something that needs to be solved for, I mean, a service business with an interest in the product, which is what we are, which is what you are. I don't know how many of those there are, but I'm a big believer in letting the team share in the upside. And it's a lot easier to reckon that I think on the services side, it's here's profit sharing. but it's, it's harder when it's longer term it's harder when it's, it's something that's not, it's not divisible in the same way. 

Rahul: Yeah, fascinating.

Rob: Well, Rahul, when people want to find you and when they want to find 5&Vine, where should they look for you?

Rahul: Yeah, the best way is online. Our website is 5andvine.com. It's the number 5, A-, N-, D-, V-, like Victor, I-, N-, E.com. And as you referenced earlier, it's based on the David and Goliath story where David took five stones from a river and use that in a slingshot to take down Goliath. So, he made a Slingshot out of vine. So it's 5 and Vine

Rob: That's a good, concise backstory as well. Well, Rahul, thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing your story and I'm sure the audience will benefit well from it

Rahul: Much appreciated. Thanks so much for having me on.

Rob: Be well. Bye-bye. 

Thank you for listening. The marketing agency 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.

Chris Yoko is President and CEO of Yoko Co, a digital marketing firm that focuses on working with organizations that have a passion or purpose beyond mere profit. 

Why would a marketing agency choose to work with that “slice” of the business landscape?

In 2014, Chris’s small team questioned why they loved working with some clients . . . and others . . . not so much. Their newly-formed Advisory Board challenged each member of the team with two questions: “What do you want to accomplish with your life?” and “What are you living for?” 

You may ask, “What do personal questions like these have to do with a business’s operations?”

As it turned out in this case . . . Everything.

What Yoko discovered was that each member of his team shared a vision similar to his own: that each, in their individual lives, wanted to make an impact on the world. 

A marketing agency typically has a list of strategies and services designed to promote its client companies’ messages, enhance awareness of its client companies’ capabilities, and improve its client companies’ bottom-line results.

Yoko Co. did not have a world-changing message itself. And, as is the case with most agencies, it did not interface on its own behalf with “Joe Public.” How could the agency channel this newly-identified passion?

Yoko and his team discovered that they could have an “amazing amplifying effect” on the impact the agency’s clients made on the world—but only if the agency and its clients were philosophically aligned. If Yoko Co. wanted to make a difference in the world, the agency had to work with companies that wanted the same thing. 

In order to align the company with its employees “passion,” the 25% of clients that lacked that passion, “to impact the world,” had to be “fired,” but diplomatically – a process that took about 3 months. Yoko handled the “breakups” in such a thoughtful and supportive manner that two of the “dismissed” clients referred new clients that were a good fit for Yoko. Once the “housecleaning” was complete, free time increased 40-50%. For the remaining clients, who were a “good fit”? Yoko has been able to produce industry-leading results.

To find out more about this journey or to contact Chris, check out his company’s website at: yokoco.com or his personal site at: chrisyoko.com.

Mary Patrick is CEO and Managing Partner at Jasculca Terman (JT) Strategic Communications, a 40-year-old public affairs firm that provides issue education and crisis management and builds support for its clients’ controversial legislative, regulatory, and public policy issues. 

Over the past few years, crisis management has been close to 50% of the firm’s business. “Topping the list” over this past year were Covid and social issues, but the agency’s scope is broad: workforce and labor issues, leadership misconduct, immigration, environment, non-Covid healthcare, protest and rally management, and contentious leadership changes . . . anything where there is controversy or two or more sides to a story.

Organizations might engage JT at any time – when they want to plan ahead to avert potential problems, when they know something is coming and want to put the key pieces in place to manage it, or . . . when the news chopper is overhead and news media are banging on the door.

Mary believes storytelling is the most important tool in JT’s arsenal. She advises organizations to be the first to tell their stories. Even if news is “bad,” being first to talk about it provides the opportunity to better define your narrative, bring forth your mission, present your position, and paint the picture, making it “resonant and memorable.” Story “examples” showing the human-interest side of an issue are most compelling. “People remember how an issue impacts a person or a family, or I guess even the world,” she says.

JT comes with a full toolbox and creates for its clients a lot of videos (some even award-winning), infographics, animations, social posts on all platforms, vignettes, testimonials. and talking points. Stories are also communicated directly in person, through Zoom, and in written material. 

The firm’s major events division brings people together with turnkey, end-to-end solutions – from booking venues and speakers, planning breakout sessions, and providing all levels of seamless, onsite technical support. Covid and “going virtual” meant the firm had to add an additional technological layer. Does the client need their event to be interactive? How will people raise a hand, ask a question, put things in the chat? What needs to be done to keep “zoomed out” audiences interested and engaged?

The most challenging PR question? What can an organization do when things have gone catastrophically bad and the story has gotten really big? Who should the organization contact directly to help people understand its perspective, its point of view, the scope of the issue, and what the organization is doing about it? When is “strategic silence” appropriate? 

Handling this kind of crisis is where JT excels. Mary says there are times when mistakes have been made or things have gone bad for an individual or organization, and the entity (or JT on its behalf) has to own the responsibility, apologize, and tell people what will be done to correct the situation. . . if it wants to rebuild trust and credibility. “You can never say that it’ll never happen again,” Mary warns.

Mary can be reached on the Jasculca Terman website at JTPR.com.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Mary Patrick, who is the CEO and Managing Partner at Jasculca Terman Strategic Communications based in Chicago, Illinois. Welcome to the podcast, Mary.

MARY: Thanks, Rob.

ROB: It’s good to have you here. Why don’t you start off with a little bit of an introduction of Jasculca Terman and the focus of the firm? Where do you all excel? 

MARY: Sure. Jasculca Terman Strategic Communications – and we’ll make it easy for everybody; we typically call ourselves JT – JT was founded by Rick Jasculca and Jim Terman 40 years ago this year. We’re a public affairs firm, which means we focus on issues like legislative, regulatory, public policy, areas where there might be controversy or two sides. We do a lot of educating around issues, and we do a lot of crisis management work. I would say over the last few years, crisis management has been at least 50%, maybe more, of our business.

ROB: Wow.

MARY: Big picture, to describe us, I would say what our superpower is, what we’re great at, is storytelling. That’s how we look at the world. Storytelling in all its forms and all its situations.

You can imagine, for instance, over the last year, if we are doing a lot of crisis management work, we’ve been working on COVID in all its iterations. We’ve had a lot of social justice issues that our clients are managing and trying to communicate around. Those currently top the list, but we have several crisis projects that don’t touch either of those issues – things like workforce and labor issues, maybe misconduct by a leader. We’ve done a lot of work in the immigration space, in the environment, in other aspects of healthcare besides COVID. We’ve helped people handle protests and rallies and controversial leadership changes and a whole lot more.

But storytelling is really where we excel, and we look at it, honestly, as defining the narrative on your terms. It’s about bringing your mission, your position to life and really painting a picture, making it resonant and memorable. And we think examples really make a difference, especially the human interest side of an issue or what you’re trying to do. Those are the most compelling. Those are the most connecting. Those are the things people remember: how an issue impacts a person or a family, or I guess even the world.

And we tell those stories through a variety of vehicles. We have an in-house creative director and video producer, so we produce a lot of videos – some even award-winning. We use infographics and animations. We do social posts on all different platforms. We create vignettes and testimonials and talking points. We have a major events division, and we see that as a really important companion in terms of our public affairs work bringing people together. And of course, that has pivoted to also doing actually quite a few virtual events in the last year and a half.

The other way we tell stories is directly in person or through Zoom, and of course, with the written word. We obviously put a lot of stock in what we write and those kinds of materials.

ROB: Dig in a little bit on – during normal times, and maybe coming up, what does an event that you’re involved in, that JT puts on, look like? What’s an example or a big picture, at least, of who it’s for, who comes to it, that kind of thing?

MARY: We’re working on a major event right now for a major not-for-profit that focuses on women’s issues. They’ve done this for years in person, and it draws 2,000 people. The issues around missing that level of networking and how we bring that back through a virtual lens – they have a major speaker who I can’t share yet, but they have a major speaker who we will bring in via satellite. There will be breakout rooms so people can have a little bit of that experience of networking with each other. We helped them produce some video vignettes around the women who have received grants through this organization for the amazing work they’re doing in a variety of spaces.

We’ll package that all – our team works with a variety of platforms, depending on a client’s needs. Do we need an event to be interactive? Are there places where people will be able to raise a hand, ask a question, put things in the chat? All those aspects are considered as we pull these things together.

And what we’ve discovered in the many events that we’ve been doing over the last 16 months during COVID is that interaction is important. Visuals are important. Getting a lot of variety, so you’ve got some live components and then you also have some prerecorded components. Making it as interesting as possible for people who are experiencing Zoom fatigue at best.

ROB: Got it. It really is turnkey, end-to-end. In normal times you’re talking about everything from booking a venue, booking speakers, planning for breakout sessions in reality. It sounds like a turnkey, end-to-end, and very complicated situation. And then to also have to turn around and evolve that online while you’re at it.

MARY: Exactly. I think it’s all about asking the right questions and really thinking about what it is our client is trying to accomplish with an event and managing all the logistics that go into pulling that together seamlessly, smoothly, and mainly, if we do our job right, then you’re just troubleshooting the live aspects. And putting the technology into the middle of it in the last 16 months, there’s an extra level of holding our breath a little bit. [laughs] But we’ve got some terrific people in-house who have really pivoted very well, and our event business is as strong as it’s ever been, which has been in some respects a surprise to me.

ROB: I’m sure when we dig into the crisis side a little bit, that seems like every day could be a fresh and new surprise and an opportunity to jump in. What does the life cycle of a crisis look like for you?

MARY: Everyone is different, and people bring you in at different times. We have actually worked with clients who want to plan ahead, which we think is a great idea. That’s even before the beginning of a crisis, when a client is thinking about their potential vulnerabilities and what they want to put in place so that they wouldn’t have to scramble at the last minute. We’ve come in at that time.

We’ve come in when someone knows something is coming and they’re anticipating it and they want to plan for the real event and put all the key pieces in place. We’ve been called when the news chopper is overhead or the media is already knocking on the online door, asking the client for comment or pointing out the tough issues. And we’ve also been called when a client had thought or hoped that they could manage it internally, and a couple days into it they realize that they really could use some outside expertise.

There are some wonderful, wonderful organizations, corporations, that have terrific communications staff, but a lot of the communications staff doesn’t have crisis experience. So we often work hand in hand with an in-house communications team, helping them manage the crisis with the expertise that we can bring to the table. And it starts with asking all the right questions and thinking about scope and scale and audiences and who we can try to get to, to share your story before things get really big in the media.

If things have already gotten big in the media, who do we need to reach out to directly to help make sure people understand your perspective, your point of view, the actual scope of the issue, and especially what you’re doing about it. There are absolutely times when things have gone bad for someone, or mistakes are made, and you have to step up and own them. You have to step up and apologize for them. If you want to build back trust and credibility, you have to tell people what you’re going to do. You can never say that it’ll never happen again.

ROB: [laughs] Can we highlight that and tell people that? Because some people want you to guarantee it will never happen again.

MARY: Right. We’re very careful about how we talk about that. But we do help a client put as many things in place to hopefully avoid it happening again.

ROB: I think in any firm, there’s a potential for conflicts between individual people on the team and the clients. You can imagine a marketing firm where someone’s an ethical vegetarian; they have to market for a hamburger chain. These things happen. But here in your world, where you’re talking about things where, as you say, stuff is out in the media, it seems to an extent unavoidable that your team and you – bringing your whole self to work – will have feelings about a topic that might be in tension with a client. How do you think about that / handle that? Does it impact who gets work on what client?

MARY: Generally, I think everyone who works at JT believes in this idea that everyone should have a chance to tell their story. JT is 40 years old; I’ve been there for 36 of those 40 years, and in those 36 years, I’ve only been part of probably two experiences – and it wasn’t even me – where we were working on issues that people either had a strong feeling that they could not represent a client as well, or they’d had a personal experience that made them feel they could not tell the story for the client just based on what the client was dealing with. But that’s two experiences in 36 years.

ROB: It resonates with the similar role of – not to say that someone’s charged with a crime, but the defense attorney and the public defender. There is a right to being represented fairly and accurately.

You did reference – I think it’s interesting – that you’ve been with the firm 36 out of the 40 years. It’s notable that you are not Jasculca or Terman, but you are the CEO and managing partner. How did you come to be involved? And how did you end up in charge?

MARY: When I got out of college – I studied PR and communications at Miami University, and I thought as I was studying it that what I really wanted to do is agency work. I sort of thought that was the only path. Literally maybe a month before I got out of school, I went to some presentation or lecture where someone was talking about not-for-profit PR. It opened my eyes. I started to realize that agencies aren’t the only place to practice; there are people who do PR for hospitals, for universities, for not-for-profits.

I decided that what really interested me was the not-for-profit side. So when I moved to Chicago – and this will tell you how very, very old I am – I literally went to the library to look up all the not-for-profits that had headquarters in Chicago. I sent them my letters and I pitched them and called them, and my first job was with the American Red Cross in their Midwest chapter downtown.

In my first year of being there as the Public Affairs Blood Services Specialist, the AIDS crisis hit. You can imagine what sort of baptism by fire that was for a 23-year-old fresh out of college, dealing suddenly with the safety and sanctity of the volunteer blood supply as it related to AIDS. I ended up doing lots of interviews and essentially learning, by being in it, how a crisis works.

Our job was to keep people continuing to voluntarily donate their blood, because it very, very, very much matters in terms of the health of the world. And people were afraid. AIDS was so linked to needles and so linked to blood. So that was my first taste of this issues management piece, and I really found that I liked it a lot.

So when I was thinking about a next step, I looked at agencies that were smaller and that might have some sort of political or cause-related path. I honestly, truly lucked into JT in its – I guess it wouldn’t be infancy. In its toddlership. It was four years old. It was smaller then. I really got the ability to grow and then eventually help shape the agency over the years.

And I think what keeps people there – I’m not the only one with such longevity. We have a number of people at our firm that have been there for 20 years or more. And its’ honestly because of two major things. One is the people at JT, who are incredible and brilliant and strategic and passionate and compassionate. I think that’s what really makes the firm. And secondly the variety of issues. As you said, sometimes you don’t know what you’re doing day to day. That’s been 36 years for me. I mean, I think I know some days, but there’s going to be a twist or a turn, or there’s going to be something that comes up, a new issue to manage or a new way that someone has impacted what you’re working on, and you need to address it. That variety, that adrenaline, and the people are what keeps us there.

ROB: What did that transition look like from the original partners to – it seems like they’re probably less involved now than they were initially. How did that manifest itself?

MARY: Interestingly, that’s not true. Most people assume that, and in fact, when my announcement went out when I became the CEO, we made sure that front and center, people knew that Rick and Jim weren’t going anywhere, not even partially.

They remain heavily, integrally involved. I’ve had a lot of people outside of the firm say, “Oh my God, don’t you wish you could get those guys out of there?” And I don’t wish that at all. They’re fantastic and smart and supportive, and have been very, very good to me in terms of letting me lead and stepping back from those issues, but still with a great passion and drive to do the work.

It’s been a really wonderful experience for me. I’ve worked at every level of the firm, and as – the partners would probably kill me for saying this, but once they turned 70, they really felt like they needed to take a look at what was next and how the firm should be led going forward. So I’ve been the CEO and managing partner for a little over three years.

ROB: That is excellent. Thank you for clarifying. Congratulations. It reminds me, actually, in some ways of an agency I know of in Atlanta called Nebo. These two guys started it together, and they had someone who came up through the business, and they put this awesome woman in charge as their president even though she didn’t start the thing. I think they have benefitted from it, probably much as you have. And not for nothing, I think it has also really helped their entire organization to feel like they have a little bit more balanced leadership and it’s not just two guys running the show. There’s a woman in power all the way up to the top.

MARY: I think that’s true, and I think both J and T have always been very supportive of growing people internally. And again, that’s why people stay as long as they have. I can’t honestly think of a time in the recent past where we brought someone in at a high level. Our high level people are homegrown. And even when we’re hiring an AE, it usually comes from our intern pool. When we’re adding to the team, it’s usually folks that have done some work with us.

In the past, one of our more recent hires was an intern with us, went off and did something else for a couple years, and came back. We didn’t have a job for her at the time when her internship was completed, but when we did, there she was. It’s that training and that passion and, again, working with a group of people that really support each other and have the clients’ best interest at heart.

ROB: Got it. Mary, as you reflect on that journey, your past few years particularly in charge, but certainly all along the way, I’m sure it’s been a journey of growth. What are some things you have learned in leading JT – some lessons you might’ve done differently if you were starting over today?

MARY: I’ve given that a little bit of thought. There’s so many things I’ve learned over the years – mainly, again, from my wonderful colleagues at JT, and often from clients and the issues that they entrust to us. Frankly, I say this all the time, but I actually mean it. It’s true and authentic that I’m still learning every day, because the issues we manage and the crises we work on really test our skill, can often surprise you and can certainly stretch those strategic muscles.

Obviously, over the years, social media has really changed the practice, often for the better but sometimes not so much. We’re dealing with lots of issues right now that start in social media, and it’s misinformation. In the past, you didn’t have that as much because news was supposed to be vetted. People had a news cycle to confirm or test information. Those are newer and different challenges. The shrinking traditional newsrooms play a big role in how we approach media. The whole “it bleeds, it leads” mentality and “the first to get the scandal out there” has made our jobs different and more difficult.

I guess one very key learning which is fundamental – I hope I grasped it from the beginning, but I may not have – is this idea of telling your story first. Even if it’s bad. Your ability to shape and control the narrative is very important. So whenever you can, as much as you can, playing offense rather than defense is important.

Another tried and true colloquialism around the office is that trouble fills a vacuum. We’ve learned and we’ve seen with our clients that if they put their head down and pretend something’s not there, then someone else is going to define the story for them, and it’s not going to be, generally, the way you want it to be. So again, getting out there first and defining things.

And then a mistake that I feel like I made that I learned a lot from, and I thus far have not made it again – I worked on a project once where I never met the CEO, who was ultimately going to be the main speaker at a press conference that we were pulling together. Then the press conference that we had planned got overrun by protestors. It was a fairly controversial issue that was going to be shared. The mayor of Chicago at the time was going to be part of our press conference, and these protestors really took over at our venue.

When that happened, I had no credibility with the leader because honestly, I’d never met her. So in a time of great turmoil and when there was a need for a lot of debate and conversation and decisions, she didn’t trust me because she didn’t know me. I mean, how could she, right? And so I vowed that I would never let that happen again, and it hasn’t.

ROB: That’s such a good point, too: the value of relationship with clients, the value of investing, the value of having that connection.

You do highlight something that plays very much also into the future of PR and marketing as well. I think it used to be, to an extent – and you know better than I do – most controversies that got any legs had some degree of substance to them. It almost seems like now, there are secret rooms on the internet where people just make up stuff for fun and see what sticks. Do you feel like that’s an actual trend? Is that something you think is growing or shrinking, or is maybe overblown?

MARY: Oh, absolutely. I don’t know how to judge these back room making-up-things, but I will say that we have managed a number of issues that started with literally completely false information. Just completely false. And because it struck a chord or because people wanted to believe it or something, or God help you, goes viral, it puts a company or an organization or a person in a very, very difficult place.

We’re often balancing issues of you don’t want to give something credibility by having your organization enter into the social media fray, but how far does it go before you have to do something? We actually call it strategic silence. Often, we’re going back and forth with boards of an organization, for instance, who are like, “Oh my gosh, why are we not fixing this? Why are we not correcting this?” But you can actually elevate an issue by engaging.

So we have to make sure that people understand, no, we’re not ignoring it. No, it’s not that we don’t see it. We’re actually making a decision to be strategically silent – to a point. A lot of times in those instances, we try to really think about, who are the audiences that matter most to you? Let’s make sure they know the real story.

ROB: What a tricky, tricky balance. Mary, when people want to get in touch with you and with JT PR, where should they find you?

MARY: Well, you practically almost said it. JTPR.com is our website, and that’s where you can learn more about JT and you can see case studies and clients and videos that we’ve produced and meet the team that makes up Jasculca Terman.

ROB: Wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Mary, for sharing your expertise, sharing your journey. You have really been a long hauler in building this firm up, and I congratulate you on everything that you’ve accomplished together.

MARY: Thanks so much, Rob. I appreciate it.

ROB: All right. Be well. Thanks, Mary.

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.

Justin Gray is CEO and Founder of LeadMD, a performance marketing consultancy. The agency concentrates on achieving tangible, holistic business goals – defining a buyer, launching a product, increasing revenue – to produce bottom-line impacts, rather than focusing on middle-process goals such as website or cost-per lead-optimization. Most of LeadMD’s over 3,500 clients are B2B and B2C considered-purchase organizations – big market enterprises of $100 million and up. 

A “considered purchase” is a complex buying decision, fraught with emotional and financial risks and potential rewards – one that requires extensive pre-purchase research and evaluation. In B2B, this space might include software purchases, but it is more than that. LeadMD’s clients include technology providers (50% of clients are software providers), healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, and “anyone with a channel sale type of go-to-market.”

LeadMD bridges the space between being a global strategy consultant and providing regional implementation. The agency has data science, strategy, and go-to-market teams – who set strategies, plug those strategies into a broad range of systems and marketing platforms, build processes that work for clients, measure results, and optimize performance over time. Justin says that broad scope of function is rare in the B2B space. LeadMD’s consultants find the diversity in clients, the variety and unpredictability of problems and solutions, and the challenge of cobbling together customized solutions . . . exciting, and average 5 to 10 active, and widely-different campaigns a month. Close client relationships are critical. 

New clients may come to LeadMD with a particular goal. The agency uses its “Catalyst Marketing Framework” that clearly states the client’s objective and then provides a “laundry list” of what the client will need to have solidly in place in order to achieve the stated objective. This helps them align their activities to the objectives, and, in the end, produce significant, relevant outcomes. 

Justin has discovered over the years is that many clients believe they already have a full understanding of their buyer profile. Often that “full understanding” is only superficial. Do they really know who their buyers are? All of them? Then, do they know the platforms where their buyers “hang out”? Probably not. Yet that information is critical to know because those platforms are where LeadMd’s clients need to focus their marketing efforts. 

LeadMD’s 3-person data science team digs in at a deeper level that its clients have – researching the market, defining buyers, assembling ideal customer profiles – and then translates that information into engagement and messaging frameworks.

LeadMD utilizes role-based psychological/personality profiling to select candidates who will strengthen the organization—either by reinforcing role-desirable traits . . . or by bringing a new direction to the role. The hiring process can take as long as 2 months. Fifty percent of the organization is employee owned.

Justin can be reached on LinkedIn, on Twitter @jgraymatter or on his agency’s website at: https://www.leadmd.com/.

Transcript Follows:

ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined by Justin Gray, CEO and Founder at LeadMD based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Welcome to the podcast, Justin.

JUSTIN: Thanks, Rob. Appreciate you guys having me on.

ROB: Fantastic. Why don’t you tell us about LeadMD and where LeadMD excels?

JUSTIN: LeadMD is what we describe as a performance marketing consultancy. It basically just means that our outcomes are aligned to tangible business goals, whether that be revenue increase, product launches, defining a buyer – something that’s going to have a real tangible impact, not on the tactical side.

We don’t get into any engagements where we’re trying to optimize a website or a cost per lead. It’s going to be more holistic than that. Although we might conduct those tactics, we really desire to impact the bottom line of our clients – which are predominantly B2B and B2C considered-purchase organizations, big market enterprise.

Our secret sauce, or where we made our bones, is by operating bridging two different spaces. Normally you either work with a really high dollar, white shoe global consultancy like Accenture or Deloitte and they will help you set your go-to-market strategy or your marketing strategy, and then you’ll work with a much more regional partner that’s going to help you, maybe even an independent consultant that would pop in and help you operationalize that stuff. We do both, and we beat out the Deloittes and Accentures of the world every day.

Our real claim to fame is that we do stuff. Marketing operations is really the backbone of our organization. We’ve got the data science team, we’ve got a strategy team, we’ve got a go-to-market team, and these are all really smart people. But the thing that makes them truly unique is they know how to go plug that strategy into systems and make it work and measure it and optimize it over time, which is just a real rarity, unfortunately, within the B2B space.

ROB: For sure. You cast an interestingly wide net with your description that is still narrow in an interesting way. You said B2B and B2C considered purchases. A lot of times I think when you look at performance marketing groups, that B2B considered purchase dials in pretty tightly on let’s say software. There’s not a lot of white space around that. But it sounds like when you talk about considered purchase in consumer and non-software – where does the rest of the range go beyond that preconception about software, software, software?

JUSTIN: We’ve got probably five – because we’ve been in business for over 10 years, we’ve followed the marketing automation maturity curve, and we’re a primary partner of many of those providers. I’ve got over 3,500 customers, literally from vape pens to traditional software providers and everything in between.

But the primary concentrations we see are obviously technology providers, as you mentioned, software. Then healthcare, and that bifurcates itself into the payer/provider side and then the med device side. Both those industries, we’ve had a really strong footprint in. Then manufacturing. I describe it as when your grandma gets an iPhone happening in manufacturing right now. A lot of these organizations have really archaic marketing practices, but they’re springing forward into the latest and greatest because it’s become standard at this point. So manufacturing is a big one for us. Financial services, everything from traditional banking to online banking to credit unions.

And then really, anyone with a channel sale type of go-to-market. That can be insurance brokers, that can be real estate – commercial real estate, predominantly. Anyone that’s selling through the channel is also where we’ve seen a big concentration. But definitely, of that 3,500+, you’re probably dealing with about 50% that falls into the software provider space. Still a big industry for us.

ROB: Sure. But a fascinating range beyond that. If somebody looks you all up on LinkedIn, at least, if LinkedIn is to be believed, you have dozens and dozens and dozens of employees, but it sounds like you’re talking about quite a variety of products and perhaps even thousands of customers. It seems like there’s a story of tremendous leverage in there that I’d like to dig into a little bit, that you can be effective across such a range and across so many customers.

JUSTIN: Yeah. I think that’s just a function of necessity. With the rise of marketing automation and therefore marketing ops, there was this big talent vacuum that occurred. As we were building this agency and bringing people on and training them – and even advertising to them why they should come work for us versus go to the client side – the fact that they’re going to get exposure to – our average consultant is running between 7 and 10 active projects every month. That’s an incredible amount of exposure that they’re getting.

As I mentioned earlier, both from the strategy side of the house – fundamentally, how are they going to market? What does their buyer look like? How are they engaging this individual? – all the way down into how we make a platform like a Marketo work for that business. We’re talking to a retail burger chain right now. Loyalty programs are their predominant reason for up-leveling their marketing ops tech stack and therefore the surrounding strategies.

That’s so much different than talking to a traditional B2B software provider. I think that’s what frankly is the interesting part about what we do, and that’s also what we hear from our employees over and over again, like, “I don’t know what my day is going to look like, and that’s the exciting part about it.”

ROB: Sure, you have 7 to 10 different customers, each of which could ask you an interesting question that day or have something in their tech stack that might not be working quite as they hope. Do your teams specialize in particular marketing automation suites? Also, something I think is different – many agencies we’ve talked to will specialize in one. They’ll have HubSpot and just be trying to increase the quality of metal that is associated with their agency with relation to HubSpot. Platinum, or I guess you can go to gems, too, with Diamonds. How do you think about the right tool for the client?

JUSTIN: We were born as a Marketo consultancy, but right around the 2013-14 mark, we decided – Marketo was a predominant provider, and obviously still is, although owned by Adobe. What approach do we really want to be known for? Do we want to be known that all roads eventually end up at Marketo, or do we want to be a customer-driven solution provider?

At that point, although we still have partnerships with all of these different providers, we really do take an agnostic approach where we’re trying to understand, fundamentally, what is this business trying to accomplish? What is the best tech stack to reinforce that? And oftentimes that does go against hype. We may be recommending Pardot. We may be recommending an ESP, something that’s much more in tune with the business goals rather than our traditional partnership.

We do have specializations internally, certainly. We’ve got folks that have a big Pardot footprint, HubSpot footprint, Marketo footprint. If you think about the 6,000+ martechs on the market today, that gets pretty complicated pretty quickly. But really, we structure ourselves down into practices, and all of that will fall within our revenue ops practice. So those folks are constantly thinking about what skillsets we have, how we up-level those, how we maintain our certifications, and ensure that whatever comes long, we’ve got enough context to give the best performance for the customer.

ROB: I think something that’s implied – and tell me if I’m reading this correctly – by the tool stacks you’re mentioning, your Pardots and your Marketos and whatnot are a little bit upmarket from the entry level marketing automation platforms. Is that a selection filter for the type of customer, or is that an outworking of the type of customer that you tend to pursue?

JUSTIN: Yeah. When I say big market, I really mean $100 million and up. Everyone’s got a different definition of their market levers, but for us, our best client starts around $100 million and goes up from there. I’ve got a Fortune 3 company right now that has an active engagement with us. So it is that mid enterprise level footprint.

ROB: That sort of client often has a very high expectation of touch and relationship with their marketing providers. With that 7 to 10 customer per staffer ratio, the accounts they’re serving, how do you retain that sense of touch? Or is it really, because you’re delivering results, the touch is a little bit easier to manage and you’re not just trying to say sweet things to them?

JUSTIN: I would say regardless of how we’ve grown or scaled, the customer relationship has always been the centerpiece there. You’re never going to get away from the fact that when something goes wrong or a customer has a question or a customer just wants a piece of information as they’re going into a board meeting and they need that final piece that’s going to make them look awesome, they’re going to want to reach out and have someone answer the phone, answer their email, be on Slack, whatever it happens to be.

Relationship is absolutely critical. Again, I think that’s a unique element when you see an agency of our size that’s still able to maintain not only great client relationships, but personal relationships within that. We’ve got folks that have called us on weekends where it’s not our problem, it’s not even in our space – maybe something happened in IT – but marketing knows that they’ve got this great partner that is great at problem-solving, and “Hey, let’s reach out to them and see if they can help us.” I’ve been on those calls on Saturdays before.

It’s a tricky line. You want to make sure that you’re setting boundaries and you’re letting the client know, ultimately, we want a relationship and a partnership here, not something that’s going to feel like a whipping boy. But I do think you can’t get away from that within an agency. Any time you try to automate and people insert these separated ticketing systems and portals and things like that that their clients have to go through, I think that’s always a bastardization of the client relationship.

When I say 7 to 10, also, I should clarify that they may be hopping in and doing a piece of that project. Fundamentally, we’ve got principals aligned to those accounts that do all the account management and the relationship management. Because of your specialization, you might need to hop in and troubleshoot something on a Pardot platform or help with an integration for Marketo. But it’s really critical that we maintain a one to few relationship with the folks that are charged with managing that relationship.

ROB: That’s aligned with what you mentioned earlier, with those different practice teams. But you probably didn’t start off with a variety of practice teams, so how did this whole LeadMD thing get started?

JUSTIN: The short answer is accidentally. Yes, you’re absolutely right. Most agencies always start in the same manner, which is one person aligned to an account, like “Just don’t piss them off. Just don’t have these guys call me and say, ‘You’re providing terrible service.’” Everyone focuses on that one to one. I think agencies go through a number of maturity inflection points, but certainly when you realize that’s not going to work for your business long-term is probably one of the most difficult.

But back to your question in terms of how this got started. I was a very young VP of Sales and Marketing at a payment startup. It was actually my first venture into startup world. I graduated in marketing. I had three marketing jobs after college; I hated all of them. Suddenly I stumbled upon this new world, which was startup. I completely fell in love with it from every dimension that you possibly could.

In that business, we were selling through channel partners. We had 30+ different partners where our solution was integrated. It was a payment technology system. When we went to market and we marketed, we had to look like we were either marketing on behalf of that partner or co-marketing with that partner. We had that built into our standard agreements with them.

I was managing an ESP with that requirement and pulling lists and sending out these blasts and trying to make it seem like it was a lead nurture thing, although we didn’t even know what to call it back in 2006. Went out to Dreamforce and was talking to one of my buddies out there who owned a Salesforce agency. He said, “Hey, you should really talk to these guys over here.” We stumbled upon Eloqua, and I was like, “Wow, what is this?”

So, we did this whole evaluation of marketing automation platforms back then, like V Trends. There were so many that are not around any longer. In fact, the only two that were in that cycle were Eloqua and Marketo. Marketo I stumbled upon eleventh hour. They had a little 10 x 10 kiosk out at Dreamforce, if that tells you anything about the year.

ROB: [laughs] Which would still set them back a pretty penny.

JUSTIN: Right, totally. Jon Miller, who’s one of the founders, was working the booth. Bill Binch, who went on to become their CRO, was working the booth. I talked to those guys and described what I was looking for, and they showed me their platform. I was just blown away by the drag-and-drop nature, the intuitiveness of it and so on. I signed the contract right at that show.

We came back, we implemented it, loved it, rolled it out to my team. Eventually I sold my piece of that business and figured I was going to do the typical, “Hey, let’s go live in Italy for a year and take a year off” and so on and so forth. I flew over there. I took two weeks off. While I was over in Italy, a couple of my relationships called me and said, “Hey, can you do what you did over at this company,” which was called Billingtree. I said, “On a consulting basis? Sure, let me figure out what that would look like.”

Those three clients who reached out became our first three retainer relationships. It was just me, operating in a spare bedroom, supporting these guys. Fortunately, because of the advent of marketing automation and the rise of these technologies, the phone just kept ringing. I had to bring on employees at that point, and before you knew it, we had 12 employees and I had to take an office space.

Truly an accidental business for me. Not something I ever intended to get involved in. Never had run an agency before, never had run any sort of people-based business before. Always technology or payments. Just a really interesting experience that has really become the heart and soul of my businesses.

I’ve sold four businesses since I’ve had LeadMD as an agency, and it’s definitely the one that I am the most emotionally attached to.

ROB: With the timing of you starting that business, you were a little bit before businesses probably cared about social in any way. Is that accurate?

JUSTIN: That was the big conversation at the time, like, is social going to catch on? Who should be on social? Just like marketing automation, there were like 100 different social media platforms, like Big and – God, I can’t even remember all the names of them. Just these random little – so everyone was playing around.

I was thinking about it the other day. I can think of days where all I did was set up profiles on different social media platforms because we had no idea what was going to take off. Obviously, for business, LinkedIn has become the home for everyone, and that’s where we spend the majority of our day from a sales engagement standpoint, from a content publication standpoint.

But yeah, early days, that conversation was taking place across social, it was taking place across CRM, it was taking place across marketing technology and marketing automation. No one really knew what any of this stuff was going to become and if it was going to catch on. My early content creation was centered on that, like “What is this marketing automation thing and why should you care?”

Every once in a while, I’ll feel one of those little waves come around. Manufacturing went through that 2-3 years ago, where they’re asking, “What is marketing automation and why should we care?” You get these little flashback moments as laggard industries fall into more desire for digital transformation and so on. It’s interesting to feel that nostalgia when those circles come back around.

ROB: I imagine when manufacturing comes around to it, you probably have some playbooks in place and some understanding of how to measure success. How do you help filter when clients are asking – you have some industrial software company who comes to you and says, “Tell us about TikTok.” Who’s to say that TikTok doesn’t become – at one point in your business, I imagine LinkedIn was not a place where people should be spending time. How do you start to filter and maybe experiment when something is potentially relevant, kind of relevant, or strategically critical?

JUSTIN: Fortunately, questions like that all root back to the same answer, and that’s the buyer. It’s a great emphasis for us to start the conversation on “How well do you know the buyer that you’re trying to engage? Are they spending their time on these platforms?” and really have that be the guiding light around a recommendation.

Oftentimes when we first engage with a client, we’ve got what we call our Catalyst Marketing Framework. Essentially, it’s just a big menu of dependency, like, “Hey, I want to launch this product in EMEA via a demand-generation go-to-market.” “Great, here’s the 15 things that you need to have in place and shored up at a decent maturity level in order to succeed within that.”

The box that always gets checked on there, i.e. the customer feels like they’ve done a great job around it, is, “I do customer profile research and buyer personas.” Then as we proceed down an engagement, that’s also the box that tends to get rewound and revisited. We say, “Well, you felt pretty confident in that, but as we dug into the research that you have and the information you have around your buyer, there’s some gaps there. Let’s dive in and help you better define that process.”

We have stood up a data science team. It’s small but mighty. It’s literally three people, but they’re producing some awesome, awesome results in terms of market research, buyer definition, ideal customer profile assembly, and then the translation of that into engagement and messaging frameworks.

Long story short, we answer those questions through the lens of the buyer, and it’s a great opportunity for us to dive in where often a superficial look at who the buyer is has been conducted in the past.

ROB: Right. I think a lot of businesses are pushed into inventing a fairytale about who their ideal customer profile is, and you having three data science people who know what to do with the data is many steps ahead from the forced hypothesis I think a lot of businesses get into.

JUSTIN: That’s the danger of data science, actually. The one thing we’ve learned about these services is you really have to set a strong foundation for the fact that data is going to be the determinant of what we do. Even when you think about the narratives that happen within an organization – like I’m extremely opinionated about who our ICP is. I get challenged all the time from our marketing team, like, “Is that truly correct still? That’s something that was true 5 years ago. Let’s go out and go into the market and do some research and validate that.”

If you’re going to open that door, you have to open the door to being really uncomfortable, because what you often find from a data perspective is incomplete data. It’s the fact that you can’t draw those lines without going out and doing customer interviews or prospect interviews and employee interviews. Therefore, organizations really have to be prepared to say, “A lot of these maxims that we’ve held up are not supported by data and may be untrue.”

We’ve had to do a lot of expectation setting around the engagements that involve data science because the results are often quite different from what the internal narrative actually is.

ROB: For sure. I appreciate your willingness to be questioned and not just to say, “I’m right and I know because I’m in charge and I’ve been doing this for a while.” I think that willingness to be wrong probably helps model what your own team does in engaging with clients and how to guide them through that process gently, where they may be wrong, but you’re really just interested in helping everything be right.

JUSTIN: I’ve had some meetings in the past where maybe we’ve involving a vendor or someone from the outside is sitting in – we had a leadership coach in, in Q4, and they were in one of these meetings and afterwards said, “Wow, the way your staff questions the things that you say, are you ever bothered by that?” My mantra is ruthless pragmatism. If you see something that doesn’t make sense or isn’t supported by something or you think it’s assumed or you think there’s a better way to do something, everyone here has the license to dive into that and really question that.

I think sometimes that can be a bit uncomfortable for people from the outside. They have these strong lines of strata that are drawn where it’s like someone breezes into a meeting, says something, leaves, and everyone just has to go run and do it. I think that’s the value if you’ve got a really strong team and you embrace becoming a people-based business.

ROB: That ruthless pragmatism sounds like a cousin of radical candor and that whole line of thinking. Have you had people where it turns out that it may not be a fit for the organization with that level of candor? Is there a way you filter for that on the way in?

JUSTIN: We’ve done probably more work than I even want to admit around trying to profile for hiring and really getting into role-based profiling. We have a 200+ question survey. You don’t have to answer all the 200 questions; it just says, “Answer these for an hour. Do at least 100 of the questions.” It is a psychological survey – I forget who publishes it; some university – but our data science team got a hold of it and scrubbed out a few questions that are inappropriate for an employer to ask, and now we give that up front.

We don’t provide the results of that survey to our team until someone’s ready to make an offer. What we’ve done is essentially taken all of our employees, had them complete that survey – it is a personality survey, akin to a DISC or a Briggs-Meyer, and it really gives great insight into the traits and the skillsets someone’s going to have. But we’ve also scatter-plotted those around role. So, we know that in our project management role, here’s the big skillsets that stand out. We take the lens of, do we want to change that? Do we want to bring in someone that’s more extroverted to push the team into a certain direction, or do we want someone that fits the existing mold?

I will caveat all of this that we are by no means where we want to be in this process. It’s always a maturity curve and a learning process. But I think for an agency, every single person I bring in is going to develop personal relationships with the client – I don’t care if it’s an associate, which is our lowest level of consultant, least amount of time in the chair; if we lose that individual, someone’s going to say, “Hey, are you guys okay over there? I was really enjoying working with so-and-so. They’re the key to my account.”

Any loss of employee, whether it’s voluntary or involuntary, is a natural stick in the eye of an agency, so we have to be really careful about who we bring in. We have to be really intentional about the types of people we’re looking for. It all boils down to the desire to employ owners, like people that are going to own whatever they’re working on. 50% of this organization is owned by our employees, literally, through an equity program. We want that to foster the type of environment that we’re trying to create and be a representation of that.

But that’s so difficult to uncover, even when you take 2 or 3 months through an interview process. There’s so much that comes out in the day to day that you just can’t get exposure to. Every day we’re trying to get better.

ROB: Fascinating, Justin. Based on what you’ve learned so far in building LeadMD, what are some things you might do differently if you were starting over right now?

JUSTIN: God, there’s probably a host of them. I would say certainly one of the first things I would do is go to specializations earlier. We spent a lot of time trying to hire for these unicorn generalists that could do strategy and be really adept at tactics. We spent a lot of time pulling our hair out, wondering, “Why can’t we find more of these people?” The short answer is because they’re incredibly rare and rarely exist. I would certainly go more into a segmented and a specialty type of approach earlier.

I’d also say – you have to remember the year that this was formed, 2009. People rarely knew what marketing automation was. They didn’t know what it did. Certainly no one was implementing it around any sort of consistent methodology. We productized our offerings very early, but when we did so, we also really painted ourselves into a corner. For a number of years, we became a Marketo implementation shop because all of our products were focused on that implementation or optimization motion.

Then we had to spend a lot of time unwinding that and getting back to our roots and fundamentals of starting with strategy, starting with the real reasons why, and building from there. The brand ramifications that that has in terms of the runway and the necessary rebranding and the time it takes to get that optic to change is something that added a lot of lead time to our business that I wish it hadn’t.

Productizations is really critical in terms of trying to define the quality of outputs, but I would not take such a laser-focused productization approach.

ROB: I want to pull on something there a little bit, because I think what may often happen is that you’re starting, and you’re the superhero, and then you hire some people who are pretty good superheroes too and do all of those things, but as you said, they’re sort of unicorns. I think sometimes there’s a tension in the billing model that can make pulling that apart a little bit difficult. You feel like, “I’m charging X amount for a superhero; how do I switch to charging for a team?” Was that something you learned, or did you have a different path through that transition and that challenge?

JUSTIN: Yeah, absolutely. Fortunately, there was a degree of immaturity and inexperience that set our original pricing. I’ll say something that’s quite embarrassing and I rarely admit: when we first launched this business, our rate per hour was $75 bucks an hour because I had no idea what the hell I was doing. Right now it’s $300, and $500 for end version work. So, we had a lot of room to grow there because I was charging $75 bucks an hour for my own time.

As we adjusted along the lines of what you’re describing, which is you have this rock star, “I’ve been charging X for them; now I need to scale, I need to charge potentially the same X for that individual,” we were able to scale our pricing up on the upper bound rather than having to have it come down. Early days, I had a lot of competitors that were very upset with me because of the pricing that we were introducing to the market, and it was just my own inexperience, quite frankly, that made that happen.

ROB: Now I think you have some pricing that is probably aspirational for a lot of people who are listening, who would like to figure out how to charge $300 or $500 just for their own time, much less for somebody who they’ve brought onto their team. I think there’s probably a lot to learn in the middle there that makes it easier to learn – 

JUSTIN: Sorry to interrupt, but we still run into downward pricing pressure, of course. We’ll run into a $25 million hypergrowth organization with another $50 million bucks in funding, and they have no problem paying for anything. Like, “Okay, great, send me over the MSA.” Then we’ll run into a global, highly visible, highly well known brand – and I won’t say the name, but the biggest rideshare organization out there – and they’ll throw something out like, “Hey, we don’t pay more than $165 an hour for consulting.” We went through an incredible procurement cycle there. We don’t dip down that low.

The only thing that really adjusts that mentality for the client, I think, is being able to call in references and referrals from folks that look like them that say, “Yeah, an hour with them is expensive, but only because it’s worth three employees. Only because it’s knowledge that you’re never going to get internally, you can’t hire for it, and it’s really uncommon what they’re combining over there.” You’ve got to build up – and certainly discounting and things like that are critical to building up those referral sources and getting people to take a chance on you.

But once you’ve got both a good stockade of references and folks willing to go to bat for you, I think that’s the most powerful lever that you can pull there. Like, “Let me put you in touch with someone that you respect that we’ve worked with, and let me have them give you the story.”

ROB: There’s so much wisdom there to unpack. You’re talking about the referrals; earlier, woven into the conversation, you also talked about LeadMD in a consulting role, and you talked particularly about benchmarking. You’ve positioned yourself alongside Deloitte and some other folks that I think really helps elevate that brand profile instead of saying, “Hey, we are Scottsdale Agency #25 and we are here to help you get some leads.”

JUSTIN: Yeah, totally. People think in terms of stories. How many people have put “We want to be the Facebook of X or the Uber of Y” in their pitch deck? People need frames of reference, and I think that really helps them do so. We are the combination between the best strategic Deloitte out there and the best independent consultant you can think of, because they both have really great aspects to them, but they also both have downfalls. The reason we exist is to eliminate those downfalls.

So I agree. I think you need to speak their language. There needs to be a shared vocabulary established there.

ROB: Really solid. Justin, when people want to find you and LeadMD, where should they go?

JUSTIN: They can of course go to the Google machine, but the best channel to get me at is certainly Twitter or LinkedIn. I’m @jgraymatter on Twitter. On LinkedIn, you can just search for me, Justin Gray. LeadMD is just leadmd.com.

We use Drip, so there’s a little chat feature on there. You can mention that you want to chat with me or anyone within the organization, and we can hop on and have a bit of a discussion there. I love to talk to anyone that’s curious about business, marketing, sales, life, any of those topics. I’m happy to lend my time. I find those conversations very interesting. So if you have a question, please reach out.

ROB: Perfect. Thanks so much, Justin, for coming on and sharing so much about that LeadMD journey. It sounds like a really excellent ride.

JUSTIN: Thanks, Rob. Appreciate it.

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.

Cheryl McCants, Founder and CEO of Impact Consulting Enterprises (East Orange, NJ), took her journalism background and founded Impact, a communications/marketing/digital company. In today’s interview, she explains how “story” works as the foundation for an effective marketing campaign, why it is important to be mindful of industry trends and be ready to leverage experience to diversify into new customer populations, and the critical difference between a news release and a press release.

Cheryl provides a clear path for creating and communicating a client’s story:

• Consult with client to identify the ideal customer and clarify the story that needs to be told to this target audience,
• Develop an integrated cross-channel promotional strategy,
• Research the market, the business environment, the client company, competitors, and customers,
• Build a memorable story that resonates with the ideal customer at a psychological and  emotional level, and
• Implement the campaign, keeping in mind the communication preferences of the ideal customer and potential cross-channel synergies

Impact Consulting Enterprises is a sponsor of New York and New Jersey Minority Supplier Development Council’s Business Opportunity Exchange (June 12-13, 2018).

Cheryl can be reached by phone at 973.337.2028, through the company website at www.eimpactconsulting.com, on Twitter: @icebranding, on Facebook at Impact Consulting Enterprises., and on LinkedIn (Cheryl McCants), where, writing under a pseudonym, your Marketing Mama, she provides marketing tips. http://www.eimpactconsulting.com/success-blog/

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.