The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast

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

Emily Heck, Owner and Founder, Evergreen Strategic Communications (Indianapolis, IN) 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.

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

David Finberg, CEO, Peaks Digital Marketing (Denver, CO) David Finberg is CEO at Peaks Digital Marketing, an SEO and lead generation firm that focuses on a comprehensive, aggressive approach to "addressing all seven areas of an SEO campaign to get ROI rolling as early as possible." Clients range from small, local businesses to major enterprises. Today's solutions must be comprehensive. Peaks Digital's fractionalized team operates as a cohesive unit and integrates multiple areas of expertise with its clients' teams . . . filling in the "gaps" and providing support in areas that will most impact its clients' campaigns. Highly agile, the team can address page speed, backlinks, content, reputation, user experience, and technical site auditing in a customized way that can truly "move the needle." Newly built or restructured websites typically rank in an exponentially shorter timeframe than might be expected, and sometimes in as little as three months. Clients work with Peaks Digital on a month-to-month basis . . . which reduces client risk and barriers to entry. Peaks Digital focuses on relationships, educating, and empowering clients. "The proof is in the pudding," David says. Clients who see results . . . stay. In this interview, David discusses some website "quick fixes." Analyze your sitemap/URL roster for relevance, consistency, and functionality. Do a comprehensive content inventory/audit, especially of your older content. Do you have pages written years ago that have never generated any traffic? Review your Google Analytics. Which pages have the most hits? What are the topics, pages, questions, and queries on those pages? What is the market doing on your site? Examine content that may appear to be impactful, its analytics, and its search data. Does it even rank? If not, remove it, repurpose it, or rewrite it. David recommends that companies "no index" those pages that have low quality or thin content. Otherwise, Google will downgrade your site Years ago, David was tempted to chase "shinier things," like Facebook. Mentors asked him, "How much money have you made off Facebook?" (None), then asked him, "How much money have you made off SEO?" (A lot . . . and growing.)" Their advice? "Double down on what's working." He did. David can be reached on Instagram at: @Davidafinberg, on his agency's website at: peaksdigitalmarketing.com, or on a variety of social platforms. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by David Finberg, CEO at Peaks Digital Marketing based in Denver, Colorado. Welcome to the podcast. DAVID: Hey, Rob. Thanks so much for having me on the show. I'm excited to be here. ROB: David, it's great to have you here. Why don't you give us an introduction to Peaks Digital Marketing? What are your superpowers? DAVID: That's a great way to lead in. Peaks Digital, we're an SEO and lead generation firm based out of Denver. We work with anyone from local business all the way up to enterprise, and we've really developed this claim to fame or system around providing great backlinks, great content, and really addressing all seven areas of an SEO campaign to get ROI rolling as early as possible. We do things a little differently in terms of the way that we approach campaigns. It's a lot more aggressive. We really map out a lot of the strategy and high-level, low-hanging fruit and also more aggressive opportunities, and take it from a more comprehensive approach. It's not just about one thing anymore – your content or your page speed. It's about having great reputation, great backlinks, great user experience. It's all these things. So we really like to take a more comprehensive approach. The great thing is the strategies work all the way up to enterprise, all the way down to local mom n' pop. We've got a fractionalized team here and an award-winning staff and process that goes into these campaigns. While we do offer more of the same kind of generalized experience everyone knows, like keywords and backlinks and title tags are important, we tend to take a more in-depth approach and treat it from a much more data-driven, ROI-based perspective. Our superpower is really coming in, getting a campaign kicked off, and getting them ranked in an exponentially shorter timeframe. Most companies say, "Hey, it's a year, it's going to be 12 months or 13-14 months." We can come in and, especially if we built the website, there have been instances where we've been able to rank websites in as little as 3 months. You don't need to hire anyone. This isn't some big pitch. But it's really designed to be a comprehensive experience where you're not only getting someone who knows backlinks and outreach and web development; you're getting the content team, the analytics team, people that are going to help you with reputation management, your Google business – really looking at every area and leaving no stone unturned, and doing so in a fast way that'll generate some results earlier on than the traditional expectations. ROB: When you talk about really being able to come in and make a difference quickly, that points me to the idea that there may be some things that are relatively low-hanging, relatively simple, that I might be doing severely wrong, left to my own devices. What am I doing wrong that is fixable quickly with the right expertise and the right team around it? DAVID: That's a great question. One of the big, high-level, punchy items – I don't want to call it punchy, but high-impact items, is doing a content audit on your site. So often, we're dealing with multiple webmasters, multiple people, or maybe just multiple iterations of the site, and the business is evolving and changing and growing. So just like with your business, your SEO is going to evolve and change and grow. It's really important to take comprehensive inventory of your content on your website. One of the places that we like to start is looking through your sitemap and looking through your URL roster. Sitemap basically just tells you what URLs you have on your site. You may find that you have things like thank you pages or blog posts that were written four years ago by a contractor that never really went anywhere in Google search, never generated any traffic. What I suggest is you should highly consider going through your Google Analytics, looking at the pages that have the most hits and writing some qualitative data about those topics, pages, questions, queries that you're seeing on those pages. What is the market actually doing on your site? And then audit some of your older content. Google grades your site – think of it like a school project. There might be multiple components. There's a research phase. It's not just about the best pieces of content; actually, your worst pieces of content can grade you down. You could have 10 amazing pages that are A+, 10/10 content, and then you might have 2 or 3 pages that are considered what we call "thin" content or low value, low impact content. A thank you page is a pretty cut-and-dried example. Very little content on the page. There's nothing you can really rank a thank you page for. People aren't going to be coming in off of your thank you page. So, it's really important to what we call "no index" that page, or have Google basically ignore some of these pages that arguably could be seen as low quality or thin content. So, you're going through and auditing that, and then on the other end, taking a look at content that may appear to be impactful, but looking through analytics and looking through the search data to say, "Is this even ranking?" And if it's not, that's probably a good indicator that that content doesn't deserve to be on the site anymore and could be redirected, deleted, or repurposed/rewritten. Starting there is a really great spot. If you can take your site from a C to a B to an A in terms of content quality, it can have some exponential effects across your entire site as opposed to just improving one page at a time. This can actually have a much more impactful, exponential approach without necessarily having to invest lots and lots of time inventing new content. ROB: To draw a bit of a metaphor, it sounds almost like you're describing an overgrown yard at a house. It's just been left there, nobody's really done anything. People are there looking for something – maybe it's the front door – but they can't find it, or they're not finding it well enough. You paint it up, you make it look good, you trim some bushes, you prune some things, you highlight the good things, and then you're at a better place, it sounds like. DAVID: 100%. I love that analogy. It's certainly the truth for most people's sites. There's probably some spring cleaning you need to do. Let's get these edges hedged up and work through ways to improve the overall presentation of the site when someone comes in. Pretty succinct and concise example. I love that. I may take a note out of that. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] At least if somebody likes gardening and has an overgrown yard from time to time, perhaps so. David, tell me, what is the origin story of Peaks Digital Marketing? Where did the firm come from? DAVID: It was almost out of necessity. I started making websites when I was 9 or 10 years old – Angelfire, GeoCities. These are dial-up era free websites that you could have, kind of like a Myspace or a Facebook, but they were an actual website you would type in. So, I always had this desire to create content and then be able to structure that content in a more technical way, and a way that someone could interact with, like a website. Really, my love of computers and journey started with my dad. In the early '90s, he had a 90 megahertz NEC computer. For those of you that know computers, that's basically like a hundredth of the speed of what a computer is now. I learned a lot on that computer, and it really paved the way for a skillset that I would end up honing in later. I had a pretty different journey than most people. I actually started my career out of high school as a Mercedes mechanic and really learned the technical components of how to work on cars and the electrics and things, and then over time I got back into computers. Prior to starting Peaks, I worked at a startup doing SEO; same kind of project management, high-level SEO, some content is really how I got my foot in the door. We had a great business. To keep the story short, the business wasn't being managed properly. It was a bunch of younger guys who were getting their feet wet in entrepreneurship and didn't necessarily have the coaches and the skillsets to be able to have a sustainable company. We got really spread out. We were doing municipal financing over here and launching affiliate websites over here and then doing Facebook ads over here. It just wasn't concise. Looking back at the data and at that experience, the SEO worked really well. Policies changed. The way that you do SEO completely changed from that point in time. When we started Peaks, I really had to reinvent that. The process was like, okay, this works. The company disbanded. We were making money, but the money was going to people's moms' rents. One of my good mentors told me, "How you show up one way is how you show up every way." So, if there are things happening on one end of the business, you shouldn't be surprised if other things, like the money, isn't being managed and the process isn't being managed and everything's not being managed. It was a great learning experience. I walked away with some practical skillsets and opportunities and really had to start over. I said, well, if I'm going to start over – it was me and one other guy running the SEO department at this company of 10 people. It's like, I could probably do this on my own. It was not a grand story; I moved in with my folks, which I thought I wasn't going to have to do. I was 26, 28 years old, having to move back in with my folks. They were not very happy that I took a risky move in entrepreneurship that didn't work out. It's like, "Go to college, finish your degree, go do these other things." I thought, well, I've just got to pick something. One thing that I always go back to is computers. I actually took a job, another Mercedes job, which I thought I'd never have to do. Moved out to Boulder, Colorado, where my cousin lived. He's an entrepreneur and was like, "Come out here, get off the beltway." I was living in Virginia/Washington D.C. area. Just wasn't getting the traction in that part of the world. The writing was on the wall. I was applying to jobs, wasn't in a great mindset, wasn't in a great environment being back at home, not having my space. It was just a difficult time. I said, "Okay, how do I make this a win? Let's start this company and start building out the framework of what I feel like the previous company I worked at could've been. If no one else is going to give me an opportunity, I'll make an opportunity for myself." So, it involved taking that step back and going back to the world that I didn't think I was going to need to go back to, which in this case was the mechanic world. During my off time, I would literally build the website. I hired someone to do the logo. I just kept investing, and over time, you get a client and you start expanding. To me, that's where I say it came out of necessity. There's a timing of my life and a season of my life that was coming to an end, and it was embracing this new dream, this new opportunity, this new season of life. It was super uncertain, but that's how most great things start. They start in a garage or they start in an auto shop or whatever the case may be. Everyone's journey is a little different, but that's what mine looked like. ROB: Around that time, if somebody was looking at the marketing world, I think for most people, SEO wouldn't have been where they would've started. They would've started with – I don't know whether it was particular organic social channels at the time, whether it was some paid social – it was something, and it was probably wasn't SEO. I think I would say a lot of the parlor tricks that made SEO rise in the prior decade had begun to go away and it became this more disciplined and steady practice. What made you start there instead of chasing the shinier things? DAVID: That's an interesting question. I had temptations, even after I started Peaks. I was like, "I'm going to start doing Facebook!" I had a really great set of mentors and they were like, "How much money have you made off Facebook?" I was like, "Well, none." "Okay, how much money have you made off SEO?" "Oh, a lot, growing." "So why would you switch that up? Double down on what's working." Part of it was at a more subconscious level, was this a right fit? It wasn't always clear. SEO isn't sexy. It's kind of like accounting; you need it. It's not like social, where it's fun and it's creative. It's more like research. I was thinking, and I had some talks with different people in my life, and everyone was telling me, "Pick something. You just need to pick something." I looked back to my childhood; I loved making websites. I looked at what I was great at when I was studying in college and in school; writing was always my passion, telling stories or performing research, putting a story together. That's where I said SEO actually is a pretty good fit for that. You don't have to necessarily be a programmer, which is what I was studying in school, to be a hacker – a certified hacker; I'm not a hacker by any means. Depends on your definition of hacker. I think everyone's a little bit of a hacker. Not like a computer, break into someone's website. I was actually studying to go work at the NSA or somewhere that was more of a white hat place, not something that does bad things. But it was really like, I don't feel like I'm a 10/10 on coding. Could I be? Sure. But I'm a little bit more of a hybrid – a little bit of creative, a little bit of technical. A little bit of writing or a little bit of web design and then the technical behind that. That's where it really clicked, and it was like, I do just need to choose this. Let's start this. People need this. Every business needs this. It's crazy; the SEO market is so saturated. There's an agency on every corner. But very few people are investing the time in the innovation side of it. And to your point, a lot of those parlor tricks stopped working. Panda update came out and it was no longer about backlinks and keywords in your titles and image optimization. It was about the quality and the experience and what users are actually doing on your site, to make sure that people actually like the sites that are being promoted, and all these different variables. It seemed like Mount Everest. It was like, wow, I'm not going to be able to climb this pretty easily. Really just approaching it step by step, it was like, let's reinvent the link component. Let's reinvent the way that we address content to make sure that it has the right expertise, authoritativeness, trust, research, and maybe some original analysis, factual – how do we create the highest quality? We want to be the Mercedes-Benz, essentially, of SEO. So how do we find these levers to pull and present to people? That's really where the journey progressed. Imagine having a baby. It was like, all right, I've got to really commit to this. In order to be on Page 1, you have to be in the top 10% of sites. Only 10 sites make it to Page 1, so 90% of websites aren't going to be on Page 1. How do we approach this from a more data-driven angle and start looking at the market? Once I made that commitment like, "Okay, this is a good skillset fit; I feel like I've got a good balance here of technical versus creative," now it's "How do we quantify this and make this into a scalable, repeatable product that people, no matter what industry they're in, can benefit from?" That was the next season of entrepreneurship, which is like "Oh my God, how am I going to do this?" [laughs] Definitely looking at the writing on the wall was the big commitment that I had to make to myself: not only is this going to be difficult, it's going to take a lot more time. I wasn't getting traction. The first year, I tried to give up a few times. I was applying for jobs. I'm like, "I'm not making enough money." It was tough. Those first three years were really tough. But then once you reap the rewards of planting those seeds and harvesting what you've invested and you start to see it work for other people, the reward and benefit from that and finding that purpose – like, I can be of service. I'm finding my purpose. My purpose is to help other people succeed in an area that maybe seems like gambling. It's one of those scary things like accounting where if you mess it up, you can be in big trouble, and you don't always want to deal with it. And it's not that sexy. But on the other end, how to make it fun and innovative – we create different content programs and ways to plan out articles and map out articles to make it fun and enjoyable and still innovative at the same time. ROB: I do appreciate that advice you received from your mentors around looking at how you were already making money and not trying to get too creative. I know we all want to be creative, but I think also sometimes – everyone tells you, "You should do social media" and you're like, "Oh, I should do social media," and then you peel back and say, "What am I strong at? Where am I succeeding?" You mentioned something earlier that I do want to come back to. You mentioned something about having a fractional or fractionalized team. Tell me about that. What does that mean to you? What does that look like? DAVID: To recap, having that fractionalized team is really where most businesses need to be. It allows you to be more agile and focus on all seven of those core areas that you need for SEO as opposed to more of a Gantt chart where it's just waterfalling down. You really need to have – whether it's your page speed, your backlinks, your content, your reputation, technical auditing of your site – all these different components are what move the needle. We saw this market offering, this gap in the market where most people know that they need a web developer, but can they keep that web developer busy all the time? Instead of going and hiring all these people and paying benefits and having multiple staff on salary or as a contractor that don't play nice together and don't coordinate together, how about we just bring it all under one roof, customize the package to their needs – some people already have a web developer and don't necessarily need to double down on that. But maybe they don't have a content person or they don't have a reputation management campaign running or anything like that. There is no cookie-cutter approach, but typically you need multiple areas of expertise. I'm a big believer of if you get the right people in the right seats focused on the right tasks, and they're all experts within their field, that is really what we set out to deliver to the market. Not a jack of all trades, master of none; it's the exact opposite. You get a team full of experts that are going to come and work as a cohesive unit and integrate into your team to get you support in the areas that are going to impact your campaign the most. On the other end, the other differentiator – and a lot of people do this now, but it's month to month – reduce the amount of barriers to entry and risks for people. I don't know if anyone here listening has ever been burned by SEO. I get calls every single day talking about, "Hey, we paid this person for 12 months or 16 months and it just didn't work out." We say the proof's in the pudding. We don't want to have to lock you in. If you're seeing the results, you're going to want to stay, and we're here to invest in that relationship and frontload that work. So, thinking about it from a business perspective, you can't be that much different on the outside than – people know about our process, but it's like, "You're just another SEO company." What makes us different? To us, it's really focusing on the relationship. If you were selling a relative of yours SEO, would you be locking them in for 12 months, or would you keep it flexible? Would you educate them through the process and empower them, or make them feel small? I don't know if you ever watch SNL, but they had this guy Nick Burns, the company computer guy, and he would just totally sh*t on people, basically – excuse my language; I don't know if we're allowed to curse here. He's like, "You don't know how to do this? Move. I'm the wizard." It was very disempowering for a client. Our goal is to never make our clients feel small. Doesn't matter if we're the best at SEO; it's really about the communication, expectations, positioning of the product, and follow-through and follow-up. We're not perfect. If something goes wrong, let's call that client and make them a priority, make that face-to-face connection, and then fix it. Unfortunately, in this industry, there's a lot of bad press around SEO. It's like, "They sold me this thing and it didn't work" or "Every time I call them, they never call me back" or "They send me these reports and I have no idea what I'm looking at, no one walks through it with me." There's all these different emotional touchpoints, just like you have in your markets and just like you have in your areas of expertise. As a smaller company, you can be more agile and cater to the culture and the process around those pain points. I tell my team all the time, there are plenty of companies that have crappy SEO. They just have really great follow-through and communication, and that's why people spend a year with them. Imagine if you marry that communication angle with the technical component; people will never want to leave, and you're not locking them in, so there's no pressure. Then it's really fostering that relationship and going through some wins together and all that kind of thing. ROB: It's really critical. Someone who is hiring an outside firm to do almost anything core to their business – and in particular, I would say marketing – they're making a bet that's not always easy, and they're making a bet that they expect to pay off. If they spend a year and get nothing, it's a year of their business and a year of their life, potentially, that doesn't move as fast as they want it to. It's so key to instill that in the team and how they interact and how they communicate. That makes a great deal of sense. DAVID: Yeah, it's not rocket science. It's just things that can be hard to do at times, especially when you have Google algorithms and other things that are going to make the day-to-day more of – "Whoa, I've got to focus on this algorithm." It's like, no, let's actually just communicate what we're doing today and start there, and then we can come back and spend the 20 hours and grind or laser-focus on this thing until it's zapped. But communication has really been the cornerstone of our success, and the other is empowering that client, not making them feel small. Which can be frustrating for both ends if someone doesn't know what they're doing and they've made that bet and they're like, "I can't tell if I'm winning or losing." It's important to have – at the casino, they have the guy that tells you how to play the game and whether it's a good hit or whether it's right. I'm not a huge gambler, but it's interesting. ROB: [laughs] I wonder about that, because in the casino they're telling you how to lose money over the long term. You're never going to get ahead. But something like marketing is not a zero sum game, and there's room for everyone to get ahead. I appreciate the thought you put into your clients, into instilling that empathy into your team, and the technical expertise of not selling – we don't have to sell magic beans in SEO anymore, and I certainly appreciate that with you and what you're doing, David. When people want to get in touch with you and with Peaks Digital Marketing, where should they go to find you? DAVID: Check us out on Instagram. @Davidafinberg is my personal Instagram handle. We're doing lots of tips, tricks, things like that. And then if you want a free audit or you just want to check us out on the web, peaksdigitalmarketing.com. Hit the contact page, get a free audit or read some articles, things like that. But yeah, Instagram @davidafinberg, peaksdigitalmarketing.com, and then you can check us out on social as well. There's some other platforms if you prefer. ROB: Excellent. Thank you, David, for coming on the podcast. Best wishes to you and the team. Thank you for sharing from your experience and wisdom. DAVID: My pleasure. Thanks again. I really appreciate the time today. 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.

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

Flynn Zaiger, CEO, Online Optimism (New Orleans, LA; Washington, D.C.; and Atlanta, GA) Flynn Zaiger, CEO at Online Optimism, started his agency on a laptop in 2012 by reaching out and offering SEO services to the 6 companies where he had interned while he was in college. Today, his remote, across the country staff of 23 supports businesses with "everything they do online" – social, search, SEO, SEM, and website design. Clients are small- to medium-sized businesses (5 to 500 employees) that are either startups looking to rapidly expand or more traditional family businesses, that, in the process of being passed down to the next generation, are looking to expand. The agency strives to contribute to the communities surrounding its three offices. A cadre of interns maintains a networking calendar, tracking the activities of fifty chambers of commerce. The intern program, built internally from the ground up, is the source of many of the agency's new hires. In this interview, Flynn discusses some of the key strategies he has used to build Online Optimism. He recommends that anyone starting a business: Figure out the revenue streams that are available immediately. Set a good safety net of six months to allow you time to figure out what works and what doesn't. Recognize that, as your agency grows, you will not continue doing all those things you love . . . you will be managing other people who are doing those things. Understand the importance of knowing how to manage people. Build processes so new staff can get "up to speed" quickly. Never burn bridges. Flynn hired a business developer as the agency's seventh or eighth employee. He says it is important to work closely with new sales staff, not to expect sales in the first three months (because that's how long it takes to train and understand the proposals), and to build a solid sales process to facilitate onboarding. He did not have processes in place for the first five years and admits, "It was a mess." The agency's language around the sales process is pretty traditional. The language around marketing activities . . . not so much. Flynn and his early staff had no prior agency experience, so they built and "named" things with their own terms. No "agency of record" here . . . it's a "partnership." Flynn finds it interesting that other agencies are dropping agency of record accounts and hourly billing in favor of project-based billing and flat rates. He says, "That's what we did in 2012 because that's what I made up when I was coming up with how we structured our pricing." The agency is not organized in the traditional way, either – there a no account managers. Flynn explains, "Every one of our employees is both doing services and handling account executive stuff." He says this is a challenge for his employees (they have to be good technically and also skilled at customer/account management), less efficient than an agency where functions are more "separate," but far better for clients who can directly contact the person who will fix their problems. Flynn says, "People want to feel like there's humans behind it." He continues, "People want to know who they're working with. They want to feel that human connection in the business relationship. That's helped us grow." Flynn can be reached on his agency's website at: https://www.onlineoptimism.com/ Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Flynn Zaiger, CEO at Online Optimism with offices in New Orleans, D.C., and Atlanta. Welcome to the podcast, Flynn. FLYNN: Great to be here, Rob. Excited to be with you and talk. ROB: It's good to have you here. Why don't you give us an introduction to Online Optimism? What do people know as your expertise? FLYNN: I started Online Optimism in 2012. It felt like this internet thing was going to be pretty big. I seem to have lucked out on that guess. It was just myself and a laptop. I had graduated college, and 10 years later we have 23 employees, we have offices in three states, we have remote staff across the country, and we help businesses with everything they do online – social, search, SEO, SEM, website design. We usually say if it touches a screen, we can help you market it better. ROB: Got it. Did you start with such a wide aperture and then expand on the types of clients you could serve? Or did you start in one of those more core areas and grow it from there and add capabilities? FLYNN: When I was just starting, I always felt that I was pretty good at SEO. I had a sense that SEO is really a game where you don't know the rules and you're just guessing what Google wants. So, I started a digital marketing agency, telling people that I was great at SEO, and they'd say, "Wonderful. I have a Facebook page that needs to be managed." I was like, "Okay, that's close enough. I'll just do some social media on the side." [laughs] Then I'd be like, "Yeah, but I really want more SEO," and they'd be like, "That's so great. We need a website." So, I would learn to build websites. I think that's what you do when you're starting out: you expand and see what works and what doesn't. Now we do everything digitally. At one point we even did events. When we were starting in New Orleans, I threw a second-line parade. We threw a block party and a barbeque. As someone who started an internet marketing company, I should not be the person running a block party. But it went pretty well for a year or two. Then we decided it wasn't for us and we still focus on these main services where we feel people are constantly investing. We do social; we're not on any specific network. The networks are going to change, but at this point, people are going to be found on social media, they're going to be found on search, and we help them appear in both places. ROB: Social has certainly emerged, at least many people's expectations, much more around consistency than around creating huge spikes of activity, so that probably lends itself to some sense of normalcy. Flynn, paint for us a picture – is there any typical client, a typical vertical, a typical size, a typical buyer profile? Who comes to you most regularly that you can serve well? FLYNN: We work great with what we consider small- to medium-size businesses. It tends to be anywhere from 5 to 500 employees. Above that, usually you have a bigger in-house marketing team; below 5, you're usually not ready to work with an agency like us. We've found a niche with two things. One is with startups who are looking to expand rapidly, so they need quick testing and making sure that social strategies are working and social content is working before scaling it up. Our other expertise is these more traditional companies who have been around for 15-20 years. We do really well with family-run businesses where the son or daughter is taking over the business. This company has been successful for a few decades, they have great word-of-mouth, and you log onto their website and it's built on GeoCities or something, there's GIF animations all around, there's music playing. These are businesses that have done well enough, and now they go to the next generation, and these are people in their twenties, thirties, and they're tired of running a family business. They want to grow and be more successful. That's when they usually bring us in, and we have a first meeting where we all make fun of their family's website and how terrible it is, and then we help them. They still run the day-to-day, but they trust that we're a digital agency that knows the business and has that sort of relationship. We still try to meet face to face with people – obviously more pre-COVID than now – but we really believe in the power of a handshake. One of our values is "Screens will not replace handshakes," and I still think, especially in the digital world where SEO/SEM can be sketchy, people want to know who they're working with. They want to feel that human connection in the business relationship. That's helped us grow. ROB: That leads me into something that was perhaps a little bit self-evident – having offices in three places, is that largely centered on that ability to be close to a customer, to go shake their hands? You're cultivating relationships in those places and nearby? FLYNN: Absolutely. We started off just in New Orleans, and we had ideas always to grow beyond. We started getting more national clients around the country, but a lot of those relationships were based off of connections that we made in person. Then COVID happened, and all of a sudden everyone was reconsidering what they wanted to do, some of my staff was moving, and we couldn't meet anyone in person. As a digital marketing agency, for the first time, we were on a level playing field with everyone who was down the street from bigger companies. D.C. and Atlanta are much bigger regions; they're much bigger economic centers than New Orleans. Not that New Orleans is tiny. It's a very large port city. It has a lot of deals there. But Atlanta and D.C. are much bigger. We had staff who wanted to go to these cities. They were willing to put in the time and investment to do the work of starting an office there. That's going to networking events, helping to recruit interns, going to colleges to recruit more staff, and really trying to make a name for ourselves, producing resources in each city. One thing we do is keep a networking calendar. We mostly do this internally because we have interns that will help us track 50 different chamber calendars and pull them together. We try to make sure we're actually contributing to these cities, each in their own way, rather than just having an office that happens to be located in them. ROB: I hear you saying there's a set of capabilities you expect from an office. There is a local engagement, there is an outreach on the business side, there is a recruiting component. A lot of a services business, a lot of an agency, is sales and talent. If you can do those and manage the accounts you have well and grow them, that's a pretty good formula. Do you have somebody who then runs each office? Or how have you structured that part? FLYNN: Yeah, that's pretty much how it's going so far. We'll send someone who leads the thing, and then we try to have exactly what you said: one salesperson, business development. Our team is really good at digital marketing, so our salespeople have never really had to do much outbound. We certainly go to networking events, but we're not pushing sales. They're usually busy enough with the leads coming in, and it's mostly qualifying and creating proposals that are custom-crafted. So, it's a salesperson and then usually an account executive or two that can handle the different work in the cities. I will say this is something that we've only been doing for about a year and a half now, so we're still learning and still building out these channels. I think, long term, what we see is that each office will kind of function together, but they're going to help us by if one city has a downturn, which unfortunately will inevitably happen, the other cities can pull up the slack. And honestly, this was a lot because our main headquarters is in New Orleans. There's Mardi Gras and the whole city shuts down for a week. We needed people to work that week for our national clients. [laughs] So now we added Atlanta and D.C., who are thankfully sober and not at parades for that Wednesday through Tuesday. That helps keep the business going. ROB: [laughs] And you cut the other people off of Slack that week. I understand. FLYNN: Yeah. [laughs] ROB: It's interesting; that story is still largely unwritten, then. Over the past year and a half, here in Atlanta, I've been very engaged in the marketing community. Most of the events, most of the local engagements that we used to do before COVID are not back yet for the most part. But on the flipside, I might say that most clients are more eager to meet in person than at any time in the two years before COVID. It's an interesting split of where the opportunity is and where maybe it will be. FLYNN: Yeah, I completely agree. I've been seeing that especially in 2021, since the summer hit. There was a small decline from Omicron, but not as much as I think you'd expect. A lot of business leaders, business owners hit the summer, they said, "It's been a year" and – you can't just be done with a pandemic. My partner works in medicine and she's very much working in very intense situations this week, actually, which is wild to do that and then I'm sitting in a coworking space. With a mask, but still. It's such a weird environment that we're both in at the time. But I agree. We still meet people outdoors as best we can. We've all upgraded our winter coats on our team. [laughs] But it is certainly something where people want to meet in person. This is where you're seeing those conversations all around the world right now, which is most leaders feel that they want to see people back in the office, and they can't really give good reasons. There's collaboration and brainstorming, and to be frank, I would love to be able to turn around and ask a question instead of asking someone if they're free to have a Slack huddle and dealing with that. It'd be so convenient to just be able to turn around – and I haven't been able to do that in two years – and ask people. I miss that. But we try to prioritize our individual staff's feelings and comfort. I think that's more important than anything. So, we're letting everyone do whatever they want, essentially, and trying to be the most supportive environment we can. ROB: That makes a ton of sense, and there's a lot to learn there. You mentioned some of the early engagements you did with clients. It seemed like a natural evolution of the services. But what led you to take the jump in the first place and decide, "I've had jobs, but I don't want to have a job anymore. I want to make my own job. I want to build my own business"? What was that transition that led to the start of Online Optimism? FLYNN: One of the first things we always tell people, especially our entrants when they're job searching, is never burn bridges. It's been 10 years and I feel like I can say I didn't particularly love the job I had after college. I was pretty good at it, but it was a very corporate environment. They had those motivational "Teamwork" and "Hang in There" posters. I was like, "Haha, very ironic decorations" on Day 1, and they were like, "These are serious. These are our values." I was like, great. It was just very corporate, so I didn't love it, but I was good at it. I reached out to all the people I worked for in college. I'd done six internships. They were like, "If you had your own thing, we could probably hire you and keep you afloat." So, I got lucky. After 10 years, I've learned I know what I know, but more importantly, I know what I don't know. But when you're 22 and you're like, "I could start a company," you really have no clue how little you know. Someone should've shaken me and been like, "Flynn, what are you doing? There's no plan. You have a domain, but you don't know how to" – there was no plan. But I got lucky. The companies that I worked for trusted me because I'd done work for them, so I got like two clients from them. Then the company I was working for out of college, I increased their sales online by like 800% or something like that. So they became Client #3. So, I had three clients on Day 1, which was great because I didn't sign Client 4 until Month 7 or 8 because it took me seven or eight months to figure out how to actually meet someone and convince them to trust us with their internet presence. That was the most helpful thing, I think. If you are starting a business, you have to figure out what revenue streams you have immediately and then set a good safety net of six months. It's going to take that for you to learn what's working and what's not and figure it out. You have to be ready to – it helped that I was in New Orleans with three roommates, so my rent was $400 a month. That's also the key. If you want to be an entrepreneur, I highly recommend $400 a month rent. That's the way to go. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] Where can you find that now, I wonder? Maybe nowhere, I don't know. FLYNN: Not New Orleans, actually, now. I think you've got to go somewhere else. ROB: It makes sense not to burn bridges. I've certainly had interesting experiences where I've had former clients and coworkers who couldn't talk to each other, and I've always enjoyed being Switzerland. I'll talk to both of them and I'll be doing business with both of them concurrently while they keep talking trash about each other like a divorced couple. I don't even know. But that's certainly a good option. As you started to build, how did you think about who you brought on the team, when? What were the next couple of roles? What were some of the inflection points in hiring, where you maybe had to make a hire you weren't sure of? From a necessity perspective, not the person. FLYNN: Hiring is the most important and hardest thing about running a business. We always drill that into people's minds. Our interview process should be careful because it is incredibly difficult to terminate someone if you make the wrong choice or train them to get them up to speed. When I started off, in the services that I wasn't the greatest at, I added on additional staff in different digital marketing services so I had more time to bring in clients. We actually didn't bring in biz dev for a while. They were Hire 7 or 8. So my first three or four were designers and strategists and people to do account work. Biz dev was a major jump. One thing that we waited way too long for was operations. I was running an 11-12 person company and still basically running – if we were a normal company, that might've been okay, but we were always employee-first. That meant every weekend, I would go to Costco and get like $400 worth of snacks for the office and come back. We were on the second floor of a building. It was a three-hour Costco run, which is such a waste of my time as CEO that I would do every week. Sometimes it's hard to convince yourself that your time is valuable, and that's really what I think about when we hire. Once you or someone else on your team becomes more valuable – that's what we always tell the staff. You should be working yourself out of your job. Whatever you're doing today, if you can teach it to someone else so you can do more important things, that is the most valuable thing you could do. I know a lot of times employees think "I want to keep this process just me so there's more job security," but I've always felt like if you have a good environment and they see that you're able to teach this to someone else, that makes you way more valuable to the company, because then you could help them scale up much quicker. I always try to teach that to our Optimists. ROB: Those sound like some brutal Costco runs. There's an element where, when you're doing that Costco run, it can feel – and I'm sure it's even felt by your team – that you are, to an extent, intentionally serving them in that. I'm sure they can see that and appreciate that. But it probably needs to have its limits also. There's a point where you're serving them less by serving the business less by doing this other thing more. We had a team retreat back in December, and I spent an hour making people steaks. I wouldn't take it back for the world, but I'm not going to do that every day, either. It's an interesting balance of when and how you make those choices to serve. FLYNN: I'm going to make sure my team doesn't find out that other people are making steaks, because I got the Costco pizza. [laughs] I was like, "Y'all should be excited. This is great, came super quickly." If they knew that some other people were making steaks, they would've gone for my head, I think. ROB: Do you like Costco pizza? FLYNN: [laughs] I do. I have the taste of someone who enjoyed the apartment where he paid $400 a month in rent. I haven't quite outgrown that yet. ROB: This is the privilege of the owner and the founder. We are completely distributed. We do team retreats right now twice a year. We're doing leadership retreats twice a year offset from those. But these are people I see twice a year, so if they get Costco pizza from you once every month or so and I get them steaks once a year, I think we're square. It's my own selfishness. I wanted to buy nice steaks and cook them and eat them, and if I make some for other people, and they feel served as well, then we all win. FLYNN: I'm going to bring you in for when my team hears this podcast so you can negotiate with them over whether they're getting a fair deal or not. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] I'll go up to D.C. and we'll see what we can do with that. Flynn, when you reflect on building Online Optimism so far, what are some lessons you wish you could take back to your past self and learn a little bit sooner if you could help it? FLYNN: Like I said, staffing at the beginning is a crazy difficult thing to learn. I had never managed anyone in school or in any jobs, and that's really the first thing I would've told 22-year-old Flynn. If you are successful in this business, you don't do anything that you do today. All that digital marketing stuff that you love? You're not typing posts, you're not making ads, you're not building websites. You are managing people who do that. That is such a change in mindset. I wish I had taken that more seriously at the beginning and learned more – even in college, when I did group projects. People hate group projects, but they are the best. They are so like real life, it is wild. You're going to be with people who you don't trust. You're going to be working kind of with each other, but someone's not going to keep up the slack. What I would do is reach out to my professor and be like, "I'd like to do this by myself," which was a good way to get a good grade but a bad way to learn how to manage other individuals. So, I would definitely tell myself, you have to learn how to manage people. You're only as successful as your team. From Day 1, that ability to think outside myself – and whenever I do a task, what I'm really good at now is we do a task and we think immediately, "How could this be done by someone else? Let's write up the process. Let's have this ready to go," whereas we didn't do that the first five years. Every time someone came onto the team, it was a whole process to teach them. It was a mess. So, I think helping yourself manage people is key and also building processes so more people can join and do it. ROB: Right on. It's interesting; you mentioned that you feel like you brought on biz dev a little bit late, around Employee #8, but I would say in a different lens, I have seen 80-person agencies where the sales were still very much founder-led, maybe even to the point where they promoted someone else almost to a partner to get that level of authenticity in their sales. What do you think allowed you, and how did you equip someone – it may have seemed soon for you, but you equipped someone eight people in to not completely fall on the ground selling. What do you think allowed you to sell without being founder-led in that sales motion? FLYNN: I think the answer is that we spent a lot of time together that first year. We even did that with later sales staff. We don't expect them to make sales their first three months anymore. We even build that into their prospective commission structure, based off of them not making a sale in the first months, just because we know that's how long it takes to train and go through our proposals, and they sit in a ton of meetings to learn how we talk about things. I would also say the other thing is when we first built a lot of our sales process, the first individual who was doing it for us had actually gone to a much more traditional company where they did a whole month of sales school, and honestly that helped us a lot. I had no idea how to teach someone how to do sales, so we hired someone who had had that training. That was the one thing where – now we hire people who just have a college education because we have more processes in place, but that did help a bit. Even now, a lot of the language we use is still pretty official on the sales side, whereas all the processes we have for marketing, we tend to have different language. We never say "agency of record" at all at Optimism because we made up our own term for it, because none of us had any experience in agencies. Whereas the sales side, it's all like "discoveries and intros and cold calls," and we use very much the language of the industry, which is interesting for us. ROB: What do you call the AOR relationship? FLYNN: We just call it a partnership. [laughs] It is odd, and I know this gets me into trouble – we pretty much run an ad agency, but we built it from scratch, which is good and bad. I went to an Ad Age event and they were talking about this revolutionary new thing, which was like "As opposed to agency of record accounts and hourly billing, everyone's doing project-based billing now and flat rates so you know how much things cost." I was like, oh, that's what we did in 2012 because that's what I made up when I was coming up with how we structure our pricing. It's been fascinating to see. We sometimes will meet people who run more traditional agencies – we don't have traffic managers at our agency, and until maybe two years ago I didn't realize that was a job. Which isn't a great thing to hear a CEO say, but it was built into other processes. I will say now that we're at 23, we've talked to enough people and have enough staff that have come in that we're trying to fill these gaps that bigger agencies have and we understand why. But there are still some things we do that are unique. We don't have employees who just do account executive work at our agency. Every one of our employees is both doing services and handling account executive stuff – which honestly is a major selling point for us, but it is tricky for staff because they need to be good at Google Ads and get their certifications and also not mind dealing with the client that calls in during the day with a question. ROB: It's a tricky dichotomy. On the one hand, a lot of people gravitate towards 100% either of those responsibilities within another agency. They'll be 100% client-serving or 100% AM. That hybrid role, when you can find it, it's very authentic to you. But when you're looking for someone to hire in, a lot of times they've gravitated further in one direction or the other, I would expect, than you might want them to be for you. FLYNN: You're absolutely right. I don't want to say that it's a benefit for our staff. I'm not sure. But it is certainly a sales point for us. A lot of complaints from people who transferred from other agencies to us is that they are tired of talking to an account executive who knows enough, but they're like, "Hey, why is this Facebook ad structured like this? Shouldn't the top of the funnel marketing have this creative?" and the account executive is like, "Good question. I'll get back to you." Most of our clients, you don't have to deal with that unless it's a very, very specific technical question, because they're talking to the person who made the ad. But it is stressful and our team does manage fewer accounts at a time because we don't have those efficiencies that a more separated agency has. ROB: I definitely appreciate the opportunity to – you don't want to reinvent language; you don't want to invent your own language from scratch for some of these things. But on the one hand, I would posit that agency of record, unless as client has a need to award such a relationship and their boss told them they have to, mostly seems a little bit selfish for the agency to claim that mantle. Almost like you're taking something from the client. And "traffic manager" sounds like kind of a boring job. Maybe someone who's in their prime would really enjoy it, but I feel like there's a more robust cohort of responsibilities that is a more fulfilling role and less of a middleperson, if you will. FLYNN: I'll leave you on the line for getting the hate mail from the traffic managers on Twitter. [laughs] But I do agree. I think that because we started off small and have added positions as we've grown, the major difference is that only like one person on my team has worked for more than two years at any other agency. We recruit so many people for our internship program and we've built this from scratch. It's been an opportunity to really build things as we see them and as we want them. It does mean that a lot of our processes are very different, but at this point, a lot of the bigger and better agencies are really open about their processes. So, whenever we do have questions about like "How does HR staff work?" or "What benefits do people want?", there's a ton of research online. We're pretty receptive to even our staff sending us information about other company benefits to see if we can match it and things like that. ROB: That makes a ton of sense. Flynn, as you look forward, what are you excited about that's coming up for Online Optimism or maybe even for the types of services that clients are going to be needing? What's next? FLYNN: We love what's happening in social right now. I think it's been a fascinating turn from these really professionally produced videos – and I don't even know if this is good for agencies or good for Online Optimism – to being more authentic, individual experiences. You see that on the content that's trending on TikTok and Snapchat now; while highly produced videos do well, sometimes it's just a funny idea, something catchy, even for brands. People want to feel like there's humans behind it. I think you see that in the brands commenting on each other's posts on TikTok. People are excited. I actually feel like the people behind the brands are eventually going to catch on and start making names for themselves. Like, sure, you like Wendy's Twitter account and that's great, but there's not a Wendy back there. There's some probably bored stand-up comic in New York City and that's their job. I know there's going to be legal papers in the way, but I do think these social media superstars will start becoming famous in their own right rather than for brands. It's cool that Duolingo has that mascot that does weird stuff, but that's not Duolingo as a brand. That's some social media director who pitched that idea, somehow got it approved, and now everyone's trying to duplicate it. So that's cool. We're always looking more, like everyone else, at the Metaverse, seeing what's happening there, seeing all these bigger companies invest in it. I do have our design team working on messing around more in 3D space and doing VR/AR. We're still looking cautiously towards it, but at this point, you have Microsoft, you have Meta or Facebook or whatever they want to call themselves, you have all these companies throwing tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars and staff at it. So, we're trying to get our team ready for whatever is next. I don't think we're a couple months away from every mom n' pop shop having a second location on Meta Boulevard or whatever, but I do think the bigger organizations are going to have a presence, and I wouldn't be surprised to see more medium-sized companies get into that space soon. We want to be ready for when that happens. That's at least what we're looking at internally on our side. ROB: That is an interesting highlight to contemplate. I think we have been without, to an extent, as many experimental channels as there were for a while. There were a lot and everything was emergent and new, and maybe TikTok is still experimental for some, but for some brands, they've certainly operationalized it as well. But to highlight Meta, Metaverse, that world, maybe even some of the crypto and NFT world as the experimental opportunities – it's an interesting place to play for sure. FLYNN: It's been fascinating to see. We're taking it seriously because all these bigger companies are. But you make a great point that these more experimental networks are usually the ones who bring new mediums. You can't look at TikTok and not remember Vine. And I personally think 2013-2014, when Vine and Tumblr were where the entirety of internet culture was coming from – that was our peak. It's been downhill since then. That was the best the internet will ever be. [laughs] That's the question: Can these more organic decentralized networks exist and grow? I know that's what everyone wants to say but look where the money's going. It's going to Microsoft and Meta, and who knows what Apple's building with their headset. And these are the same companies and the same VCs that built the internet that we have now. It's nice to think there's going to be really cool, interesting ideas that will give more freedom to the internet, but they have a lot of 1,000-pound gorillas and billion- or trillion-dollar companies to overcome. ROB: It's a lot to navigate and it makes a lot of sense. Flynn, thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for sharing the journey of Online Optimism. I will look forward to finding some of your people here in Atlanta. Come on down sometime. I wish you all the best. FLYNN: Yeah, we're great at Happy Hour. Let us know. Thanks for having me, Rob. ROB: [laughs] All right. Be well. Take care. FLYNN: Take care. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

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

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

Avi Kumar is Founder and CEO of Kuware, an almost 14-year-old business that bills itself "as a full-service agency, but a little bit more focused on strategy than actual implementation." The shift away from "traditional marketing services and taking customers as they came" started 5 years ago. Today, the agency works with clients who want to put some strategy behind their efforts and are less concerned about the agency providing implementation. Avi says it was very difficult when the agency first made that transition to, while it was trying to grow the business, turn away customers that did not have a strategy focus. Current clients not only need be willing to work with Kuware's fractional CMO to develop a strategy . . . they also have to be ambitious about "big growth," have funding or be ready to move to the next level, or to be invested in brick-and-mortar with a solid, fixed budget. When all the pieces are In place, the agency can say, "Get the whole package. We can really move you to the next level." If a prospective client is not yet serious about their business, they are not ready for Kuware. The planning process takes a few months. Although written for a longer period of time, the agency contract allows a client to fire the agency within the first month. This tasks the agency to provide enough proof within that first month to gain a client's trust that the value that will come. In this interview, Avi describes the challenge for a growing agency of deciding "who to turn away." The agency does not "fire" its small, established clients . . . but once a new monthly billing threshold Is set (based on its 50% billing "midpoint"), it will not take on new customers that fall below that threshold. The agency keeps developing processes to meet client needs and raising that threshold as more clients come onboard. Avi addresses in detail the impacts of hiring in changing an agency, managing its expenses, and determining people's perceptions of an agency's capabilities. Avi started his career as an engineer, a microprocessor architect. On sabbatical from Intel, Avi decided to try ecommerce, did very well at it, and used it as an "on-ramp" to marketing. To ensure controllable costs and fast client service, the agency maintains a salaried development team in Avi's home-country, India. He pays everyone 20% over the market, so that in the 11 years the company has been in India, "nobody has quit." The agency recently acquired a white-label PPC service which helps small agencies provide reasonably priced PPC for small niches in local markets. The PPC service is separate from Kuware's agency operations, but the agencies which use it are the same small agencies to which Kuware refers clients that don't fit its criteria. Avi can be found on LinkedIn, on his agency's website at: https://kuware.com/, or at: Avi@kuware.com. ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Avi Kumar, Founder and CEO at Kuware based in Austin, Texas. Welcome to the podcast, Avi. AVI: Thank you, Rob. Thank you for inviting me to this. ROB: It's good to have you on. You're from one of those popular cities where everybody's moving to in Austin, Texas, but let's focus on Kuware for a moment here. Why don't you tell us about the firm and where you specialize? AVI: Certainly. Kuware is now coming up on its 14th year as a business. We right now bill ourselves as a full-service agency, but a little bit more focused on strategy than actual implementation. We do do the implementation, but what we found is what was lacking for a lot of businesses is they needed to figure out what kind of marketing they should do because just saying, "Just do Facebook ads" or "Just do this or that." So we added that layer five years back, and we service it through a fractional CMO or a part-time CMO who comes on board and helps guide the strategy, and then go to the implementation. That's what, in five years, we have evolved to. Before that, we were more traditional, just taking on business as it came in a sense. If somebody wants ads, okay, we'll do it. Need websites, being full-service, we'll do that. But now we only take clients who want the strategy as part of it and who want to spend time figuring things out before implementing it. So that's what we have evolved and started specializing that way. ROB: That can be a pretty difficult transition. Lots of people start an agency as the order-takers, the people who can say, "What's your budget? We'll do our darndest with it. What are you trying to do? You want clicks, here's your clicks." How do you take someone who comes to you and they think they know what they want – there is this challenger sale moment where you're like, "Hey, wait a minute, let's take a step back. What do you really want?" Sometimes they're like, "No, I just want this ad. I just want to spend this budget. That's my job." AVI: That's an excellent point. For us, I discovered this process along the way. We had some clients that had a few people in-house who were doing social media. We did their website and we managed the ecommerce and we were trying to do that. Then slowly, as I got to know the client for a while – and this client was with us for almost 10 years – after a few years, I said to them, "You know that person you keep hiring for social media and they keep quitting after six months? Why don't you give us that, too?" They said, "Okay, you got it. Makes sense." Then I said, "Who's planning your marketing?" They hired somebody, a new person, young, assuming that they knew what they're doing, and in a year and a half they quit. So, I said, "What if we manage the whole thing for a fixed price for you? We'll do the strategy." So that's how we started. This was a company, a brand of sunglasses, prescription glasses. They created the category. In this case, being a single owner business, but a pretty good-sized business, we fine-tuned this, and then we convinced them, "Hey, you should sell direct. Don't just sell through opticians only. Why don't you sell direct also?" They said, "No way. Our retailers would be mad." So, we figured out a strategy, convinced them, and they almost doubled their sales without losing any retailers. Then I learned that this is what they needed – a little bit of the business side, but marketing-centric. If I go and build myself as a business consultant, it'll be hard to explain that. Most marketers do give some business advice for free and some marketing strategy for free. So, I said, "Well, this client was willing to pay, and he sold." They sold the company to Hilco. Much larger, $300 million company. They kept us around for a year because they were actually amazed at what we could do with our team. And they had a 50-people marketing team. They let us run this, and then eventually they absorbed it in-house. That was the time I said, "Okay, we can do this for other clients and start selling it." The hardest point was what you did identify: if somebody comes to us, "We've just got $2,000" – turning down that $2,000 was hard, because you're still building the agency. They're willing to give you $2,000 per month for a few months. We had to tell them, "Sorry, we don't do that anymore. You should really spend money to figure out what you need and then plan." The other thing we started realizing is that this only works for companies who really think they want to double, triple, or who are brick-and-mortar who have fixed money already and they have a fixed budget. It doesn't work for somebody who's just trying and playing and not serious about the business. They need to be somebody who's also ambitious. Either they've got funding, or they have decided now to really move to the next stage. Only then can we tell them, "Get the whole package. We can really move you to the next level." The other challenge is this stuff takes time, a few months. We sign them up for longer, but we have a deal that you can fire us within the first month. So, we've got to do enough in the first month to buy in their trust that, "These guys are not just planning. They're actually saying things which make sense." It took us a while, but we do have a system now where we are able to show them within a month the value that will come. Even if actual sales might not happen, they will see enough plans to say, "This will work" and continue on a longer term contract. As a small agency, that's the thing you've got to decide at some point, who to turn away. We keep increasing the threshold – "This much, no, this much, no, this much, no," and then we moved on from there. It was a transition, for sure. ROB: What size metric would you use to describe that you were at when you felt like you needed to start cutting off this low-end, very transactional customer? AVI: Basically, in size metrics, what we said is that when we switched to more than 50% who we were billing at least $5k a month, then we said we might lose some – we didn't fire any client if they were small ones. But we said, "We won't take anymore, because we have proven that more than 50% of our revenue comes from these bigger clients who are willing to" – so that was our criteria. Once we get more than 50% of clients paying $5,000 a month and they are going for strategy – and usually the average client ends up at 20 to 25. So, we said, "Don't take anymore. Just existing ones." We do have some for now, 12 years, existing clients working. We're still doing their social media. But it's a lot fewer of them. ROB: That also makes sense, how you're able to then incubate this capability within the firm. It's hard to go from not having an offering to having an offering, but when 50% of your clients need the service, you're able to start building the processes, building the people. You're not trying to go from nothing to something. You're saying, "Here's the offering. Now we know how to maybe repeat it a little bit." AVI: Absolutely. By the way, the building process part – even though we've been doing this overall 13 years and the last 5 years, this – it's an ongoing process. It's never set as a cookie-cutter, ever. Things change and the business changes. What we have said is just agree to the fact that the process itself will be changing, but we need a process. That's what we've been doing. ROB: Processes are all about enablement. They're not about restrictions, they're not about tying hands. They create freedom. It's hard to feel that, because I'm not a process kind myself, but it's necessary, or else you go crazy. AVI: Yeah, absolutely. ROB: Avi, what led you into this business in the first place? What led you to start an agency and originally start taking some ad budgets and then continue figuring out what the business needed to be? AVI: I worked for a major corporation. I was a microprocessor architect. I worked on Pentium 4. I worked on some low power processors for Intel and going into Apple. It was a very different area. So, when I wanted to do something, I realized it's impossible, almost, to start a hardware business. You want to do chip design? It's very expensive. And I did try that for about a year. I had some funding from the Chinese government, but it didn't go very far. Then I had to pivot and say, okay, I want to do my own thing. My sabbatical came up; I left Intel. I wanted to start something different. I had enough money from Intel, from stock options, so I said, let's play the stock market and do things on the side. That's when I started looking at ecommerce and started doing and selling things from my connections in China online. This was 14 years back or so. I was not expecting to do well. Everybody knows so much SEO, they're talking about techniques, and I'm a hardware guy. And marketing – I mean, yeah, I did have an MBS somewhere along the line, but they don't teach you marketing there. It was more management. So, I was thinking this would never work. But soon I found I became the number one seller of Windows XP online, and an Adobe reseller, by just doing a few things online. That's what got me thinking, okay, if I can do this in three to four months, then I think I can help others too and create a business out of it. It seems like it's not as – the system, everybody's not exploited it yet. I used to assume that marketing guys knew everything; "How will I learn this?" That's where we just kept on doing ecommerce. First a lot more ecommerce. We were doing Zen Cart, if you can remember that. Then moved on to Drupal Commerce and Magento. Did a lot more ecommerce initially. The thing was, ecommerce people have money. They're selling something, always. So that's what we did a lot more, and then we moved on to B2B. So it was more of a slow process, and I didn't trust myself in marketing for the first five years. I kept telling people, "I know slightly more than the customers but not much more." That was a learning process also, just to try to figure that out. ROB: Right, but ecommerce is a pretty good on-ramp for a lot of mathematical minds. It adds up. You can put some money in, you can get some money out, get some feedback on whether or not you're doing a good job. This is one of these funny episodes we have from time to time where you're a computer engineer from UT Austin, got your MBA, I'm a computer engineer from Georgia Tech, I have my MBA, and we get to hang out and talk marketing. [laughs] We have these episodes every year or so. We have engineers who have made their way into the marketing world. AVI: The phrase I use is ecommerce is the closest you can get to engineering in marketing. If you're used to engineering, ecommerce is the closest thing you can touch which looks/feels a little bit like engineering. ROB: As you've had to grow the capabilities, grow the firm, sometimes you think about those key hires that have come at a moment where you needed a little something different in the business or it was really an inflection point. What are some of the people or roles that have made a difference in Kuware? AVI: Early days, the first hire which people talk about, it should be done earlier than later, before contracting. I'm talking about beyond contracting. Of course, contracting and outsourcing still works, and we all have done that and we still do some of it. But your first full-time hire I think should be done as soon as possible. It really changes the game because you have to think about two people. You have to make enough money for two people now. You start thinking more seriously than just playing it as a game at that point. You're responsible for people's salaries at that point. I think that was a key. And that person was great. She was not a great marketer, but she was a great person to work with. Then as I moved on, into the CMO world, I needed people with credentials beyond me so when I took them to clients, they'd say, "Oh yeah, they have experience. They can handle our CMO." So those became our key employees later because their credentials they had from other places got us to easily sell that service – which we already knew how to do, but people still want to know who will be the CMO. Those became key people for us. I think the next key thing for me was stop outsourcing. We used to do development outsourcing to India. Being of Indian origin, I said, "I'm just going to go to India and set up shop," because I learned my first outsourcing team were outsourcing to somebody else. Being an Indian, I thought, "They will not fool me because I'm Indian origin, right?" But that happened to me. So, then I said, "I want my actual salaried team in India." If you have a system, if you are doing it for low cost, I would say start owning the piece of it somehow. To me, that building of the business that way gave us the stability that I never had to think – I mean, I can give a quote on any website without spending too much time now. I don't have to depend on a freelancer or somebody telling me how much it'll be so I can pad it and add my expense and do it because it's all in-house. I think that changed the game for us, and for our customers, because now when customers say something needs to be fixed, it'll be fixed overnight. And if it's a small thing, we don't even worry about billing it. It's not worth the time to bill it. And they're happy. Customers are happy that this happened so quickly. ROB: Right, it's a strategy to overserve. It makes a ton of sense. For people who find that idea, though, of salaried employees outside of their country intimidating, how did you get over that hill? I think about setting up a legal entity. What's the local compliance, what's all that look like? I would be scared a little bit. How do you think about it? AVI: It was a hassle, for sure, absolutely. I would rather do business, I used to say those days, in China than India. I spent a lot of time in China with Intel. In India, in many places, things are not as clear. So, it was just a question of, I'm going to risk getting two to three people, and how much is it? It's money which will go away. As long as I can afford that money, worst case, this will fail. That's how I started. I start all situations by saying, "Can I afford this failure, this much money, pragmatically?" And that's what I did with it. It worked. Great. We had to make some changes there. Another thing I did for outsourcing is I said I'm going to pay everybody over 20% the market. As a result, in our 11 years of company in India, nobody has quit. ROB: Wow. AVI: We have fired people because they didn't work out, but they don't quit because they're going to another job. And India is like Silicon Valley of 2000, where people quit every three months for more money. We have managed to do that by keeping the salary slightly higher and not getting too greedy on how we pay them and compensate them in India. ROB: Yeah, this past year we have a partner who's very much in that outsourcing space in India, and I feel like they had to do about 25% bumps across the board to stop the bleeding from people. They had really good retention and then they got hit by the COVID compensation wave over there. AVI: Yeah. I was concerned. My being of Indian origin didn't help that part, because that was definitely the same worry, a U.S. company dealing with these entities in India. ROB: One thing that you shared with us as we were booking is that you've recently undertaken an acquisition, which is a different sort of adventure in another entity. Talk about that process, how you figured out who you wanted to acquire, how you closed that transaction. AVI: Sure. For a year and a half, I was saying, "I need to grow faster; should I invest?" This opportunity – this is a white label PPC service. The reason I was very intrigued by this is we do PPC for our clients. Our clients' ad spends are in hundreds of thousands of dollars per month, so these are big, and they allow us to experiment. I thought, we do this and our clients let us do whatever; are we really good? There must be somebody who does only PPC. If anybody does only PPC and nothing else, they must be good because that's all they do. So, I used to keep hiring consultants from other companies to audit us. But anything they told us was not eye-opening. Some good ideas. When I ran into this opportunity, Rob Warner's company InvisiblePPC – he's out of the UK – I said, "Oh, you guys do just PPC ads, and you do it for agencies, and you are not working with a $100,000 budget. Most of your clients are spending $5,000-$10,000 a month, which means these small clients, if they don't see the results, are going to fire you. You've got to figure this out very quickly on $5,000, so you must be really good, right? I'm very intrigued just understanding how you do this." I had a technical interest in seeing how he does it. As I talked to Rob more, I realized they really know. And by the way, the secret sauce, which I'm happy to give away, is simple: if you do the same kind of ads again and again, and once you spend hundreds of millions of dollars doing it for those sectors, you become really good. What the white label service does – it only works for smaller agencies who cannot do their ads, and we take only what we call smart niches. If it is a local business – plumber, HVAC – those we have figured out exactly, so we can tell you for $1,000, you'll get so many leads, guaranteed. Because we have been doing it for so long. It's unlike our main agency business. There, every client is special, is different. We have to figure out and tell them in advance the cost per acquisition, work together. Here, we are able to actually tell our clients that "This is what it'll be." It's an amazing business that way. If it fits the right kind of client and right agency, it's like a no-brainer. You will not lose money. How often can a marketer go to a client and say, "Yes, I'll get you a lead for this much, guaranteed, don't worry, and first month you'll have it. You won't have to wait for two months for me to do planning"? That's what this white label business does. Once I saw inside, doing this again and again and spending that much money and becoming a Google Premier Partner and having access to all that is amazing. That's where I felt great – it's a technology kind of business, and I understand this stuff, and Rob had built a lot of tools which are proprietary tools that others don't have. I can tell who is advertising in the local market. I can use that. Even SEMrush don't do that. So we can really target that kind of thing. As a growth strategy, I think if it matches and you understand the business, then acquire. That's what I learned. If we were taking on something else which we didn't do at all, then we'd have to figure it out. At least the systems we follow there, but we know PPC. We have done it. We understand the business in general. And we can keep it separate in a sense and not mess with it. We are a big agency. Our clients are not the clients of agencies who come there, because it's a very different business. Also, as I was telling you, those $2,000 a month ones who we don't want to take on, now we can pass on to those agencies and say, "Hey, we don't deal with that. Here are some clients for you. You guys do their social, because unfortunately we don't take them on." ROB: The predictability of it certainly makes sense. If you're a plumber, there's lots of places you can get leads, and you're going to pay for them. You're going to pay for Yelp, you're going to pay for Angie's List. If your PPC partner can't be in that ballpark or better – there's a price tag. They know what the expected price is, and you have to match it. But I guess those platforms also know what the going rate is for a PPC lead and they probably reprice a little bit according to the market rate as well. AVI: Exactly. It's just the volume and having done the same thing. HVAC in Boston to Austin will not be that different. It will be very similar pricing. We have data on both cities, so we can tell you exactly. I'm amazed at the fact that you can have this predictable marketing and still saying, "Let's figure it out together." ROB: Some agencies are probably glad for the business, they're glad for the backend help. I can see some of them being a little bit apprehensive about working with a white label PPC partner that's also owned by somebody who could arguably steal the business if the client grows up. How do you calm those fears? AVI: In some ways, if they don't know the details, it's a legitimate fear. If I was an agency, I'd worry about that. Two things. There are different people running those two companies. I just own it, and I kept that team intact. My team is not talking to them. I mean, they're talking in the sense – our business, we transition to them the smaller ones. But otherwise, keep it separate. That's one. The other one is we have looked at the market. We don't take on local clients who need local SEO. These are exactly that. So those ones, that is never our market. Unless they are a nationwide company, they're not our client. It becomes a very different story. That's what we tell them. And here's the other part. I teach our company – we have started presenting to our company the details of how to build an agency. Exactly how to build an agency. That's available to our agency partners. We're teaching those as courses. "Go and build your agency like this if you want. This is what we did." That's the added value we are giving to them. We'll tell you how we do it so you can compete with us and grow if you want to. That's open. Just to be fair, there's no doubt we will add more white label services. Right now it's pure PPC, but I do foresee – why not Facebook ads too? But we will keep that always focused on a special market, not for everybody because it just does not make sense. ROB: It helps to think about that all in abundance. There really is no shortage of business out there for most people in services firms; it's just about earning that business, being known, liked, and trusted, all of that sort of thing. If we rewind a little bit, Avi, and look at the big picture of Kuware, we look at the journey, what are some key things you've learned along the way that you might go back and tell yourself to do a little bit differently if you had to start fresh? AVI: One thing which it took me a long time to learn, because I came from salaried employee, very well compensated options and things – I was not used to this concept – even if the bank was willing to give me a loan, I would not take it. I said, "It needs to be bootstrapped or it needs to be VC funding." So one of the things I would tell myself is, hey, if it is a business, you want to grow it? Get that capital. Not as equity capital if possible. That's the only way you'll grow, and it's okay. Be comfortable with it. The other part I've learned is that things will break. Get used to it. This took a while. Initially, "What are we going to do now?" When we acquired this business, things happened, and I realized that I'm so calm about it. It's okay. I would be surprised if things didn't break. That means something is hidden, something is not working right. That is the advice I would give everybody. Stay calm. You'll figure it out. Things will go wrong. It's a business. Things will not run smoothly, ever. In fact, if they're running too smoothly, then you're not aggressive enough. You're not growing. Things will have to break, and then they break, you'll figure it out. That's the advice I would give myself if I went back when I used to get very worried and unable to sleep. Now I can handle it. ROB: There are so many ways to respond to that breaking. There is sleeplessness, there is frustration. Some people take it out on people, and I think that's something people dread when they're going to work for a smaller, privately held business. Sometimes somebody needs to be fired, and the rest of the time you just go figure it out together. It's usually not the first one. It's usually not that somebody needs to be fired because it's usually my fault in the business anyhow. AVI: Correct. I tell people in my team, don't do the same mistake again and again. I learned this at Intel. You're allowed to every day do a mistake, but don't do the mistake you did yesterday. In a smaller business it's harder, but I said, "It's okay. It'll happen." The other thing is a rule – we came up with this – a lot of times it's clients. At that time, I've got all the way down through the hierarchy that any of our associates can fire a client because it's not working. They don't have to go all the way to ask us because it's a big client. Some clients say "Eff this, eff that." I don't have a problem if they talk to me in a friendly manner and they're friendly and they do that. But if they do that with meanness, then the f-word is a problem at that point. Then we don't take it. As simple as that. So, our employees feel very empowered, and as a result they go to bat for us. They will do extra work because they know they have the right to decide if somebody is not working right with them. Those are the kinds of things – that took a while. Earlier, it was always this worry about what'll happen. One client goes and what happens? But slowly – it's a journey, for sure. ROB: It sounds like you have your mind and your eyes already a little bit on what else might be viable as a white label service to add on. What comes to mind? Is it Instagram in a box? Is it SEO? What scales similarly? AVI: The local SEO will scale. Facebook ads is very similar and will scale. TikTok ads will scale. They are very specialized services, and Facebook and all is harder, but it's getting very specialized. Anything which is specialized and localized will scale and can be added as a service, and it's harder for people to learn. Those will scale. But at the same time, I'm not of the mindset, like some other white label agencies, "We'll do everything for you." If you're running a marketing agency, there's a part of it you've got to do. You cannot just be a manager outsourcing everything to somebody. You've got to find some areas where you're good, especially if you want to grow. You've got to start owning a few of those pieces. That's what I tell the agency owners. You don't do PPC right now, but if you find that's the area eventually you want, you've got to take it on. There are some things you've got to start keeping in-house. Otherwise you're becoming a manager and you will not learn the marketing aspects to grow to the next level. I'm not envisioning building a white label agency which does "Just give it to us, we'll take care of it for you. Just talk to the clients." I want to keep it specific services which you handle here, and we will do it for you kind of thing. ROB: Got it. That's really interesting. It'll be interesting to hear as you evolve in that direction, as you consider more acquisitions. There's all sorts of mechanics to get into in acquisitions that we won't deal with in the moment, but are fascinating in and of themselves. Avi, when people want to find and connect with you and with Kuware, where should they go to find you? AVI: I am most active on LinkedIn. That's the best way to find me. Kuware also. I'm just Avi at Kuware. That will work. Also direct email will absolutely work. LinkedIn message will always work. Of course, LinkedIn has become a little bit – everybody's trying to prospect so much, and we offer a service too, so we are in the same game in some ways. But for sure, any message which has something substantial gets through fine. That's not a problem. LinkedIn will be the best way to find me. Avi at kuware.com would be the other great way to do it. I do hardly any Twitter at all. ROB: [laughs] Sometimes it's safer that way. Avi, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast, to share with the audience. We will be glad to keep an eye on your journey, and certainly wish you the best. Maybe we'll all get out to Austin next year. We'll see. AVI: Yeah, that would be great, Rob. Thank you. It was very natural talking to you. That part was absolutely great. I'm looking forward to staying connected and chatting more. ROB: Sounds good. Thank you so much, Avi. Be well. AVI: All right. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Matthew Hunt built and sold two agencies over the past decade. Automation Wolf is his third iteration. In his second agency, after losing almost two years of momentum because he never "got around" to marketing his own business, he hired another marketing agency to promote his agency. Although he was not completely satisfied with the result, he says, "80 percent done is better than not done at all" and his agency finally gained momentum and grew. In this interview, Matthew explains his understanding of what a lot of agencies don't understand – that clients are "not looking for a do-it-yourself model or a done-with-you model" and "not looking to coach-and-consult it." He claims, "They're looking for done-for-you model." Matthew believes that most agencies should probably not be trying to do for themselves what they do for their clients. He has found that webinars, epic inbound-outbound marketing efforts, and labyrinthine Rube-Goldberg-machine sales funnels don't work. He proposes that the most important website component for agencies with under a million dollars in annual revenue is a "ten-minute amplifier video," where the owner-founder (usually an agency's best salesperson) articulates the transformation the agency can provide for its clients. Skip the blogs. Skip the podcasts. The abbreviated VSL (video sales letter, which Matthew says needs to be "done right"), social proofs of success (before-and-after reports, analytics screenshots, and brief descriptions of how the agency effected change), a scrolling list of customer testimonials, and the price are all a smaller agency needs to drive business. The goal is to get as few leads as possible but to get pre-qualified, pre-sold leads and to close them all. As it grows, the "filter" for an agency is not how much money it will take to scale, but how much time you can put into it. Matthew holds that low effort, high-impact demand generation is the most effective way to generate business. He recommends connecting with clients and potential clients on LinkedIn and posting helpful, short-form (snackable) content to build relationships and entice potential customers to the agency's VSL. Matthew says, "People only buy from people they know, like, and trust, and no selling can be done until you actually establish trust." He then goes on to say that the biggest mistake many people make with inbound and outbound is they're always trying to sell too early." Matthew discusses the challenges an agency faces in building an agency team and a "referral engine" and the strategies he has employed to move his agency quickly through the phases of startup . . . stay up . . . and scale up. He can be found as Matthew Hunt on LinkedIn or on his agency's website at: automationwolf.com. ROB: Welcome to The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host Rob Kischuk and I am joined today by Matthew Hunt who is the founder at Automation Wolf based in Toronto Ontario, welcome to the podcast, Matthew. MATTHEW: Thanks, Rob. Thanks for having me. ROB: It's excellent to have you here. Why don't you start off by giving us the rundown on Automation Wolf? What is your sweet spot? MATTHEW: Automation was created because it was one of my own problems. I wish I had had this service when I built my first two agencies. Most agencies, at the end of the day, suffer from what we call the cobbler's kid goes with no shoes syndrome – where they're so busy taking care of their team and their existing clients that they never get around to doing their own marketing. I remember my second agency, so this is my third agency. I've had two that I sold in the last ten years and built – this is the third one. But my second one, I remember losing almost two years of momentum because I kept thinking we were going to get around to doing our own marketing. Finally, after two years, I finally bit the bullet. I hired another agency to do marketing for our marketing agency. It wasn't done perfectly, but I'll tell you something – 80 percent of done is better than not done at all. So even though I didn't think it was perfect and it wasn't exactly what I wanted, it provided so much momentum. That's when we really started to grow, so sometimes you just got to do it. ROB: What was the lag time from pulling the trigger to impact? Because there's kind of some shortcuts . . . there's some cheats . . . there's some fast forwards you can do and then you really have to do the work and build the engine, right? MATTHEW: Yeah, totally. What's really interesting is another thing a lot of marketing agencies tend to make mistakes with is they think what they do for their clients is what they should do for themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth. I spent a lot of time doing a lot of inbound marketing and then even trying outbound marketing. In general, both were pretty epic failures for my agency. Same thing with webinars or doing other things like this . . . they really did not produce the results that I was after. I would say that's the case for most marketing agencies. They can't understand, or there's two things – one is it becomes sort of, for lack of better vocabulary, but of a mind eff because it works so well for your clients, but then it doesn't work for you. The second thing, right? You're like, "Why is this working for clients but my own damn agency, it doesn't work for." The second thing is a lot of times the thing that they do for their client isn't the right thing for them because they're not – they shouldn't be using the same filter, The filter you should be using for your own agency is really a different question than the money question. That's usually what people are asking, like "What's the ROI and how much money can I throw at this thing to scale this thing up?" That's not the real problem for them. The real problem is time. How much time can you provide? What you want to look at is, "What is the thing that we can do as an agency that is a low effort but yet high impact? That's the first thing. So, to get things in the right order. Once you use that as a filter, what you're going to discover is, it's much like growing up as a kid – if you've ever raised kids. I've got 3 of them myself now. But they have to learn how to sit up first before they crawl. Then they learn how to crawl and then they learn how to walk, and then they learn how to run. Then, when they get to be – my kids' age now is teens, they start to do backflips off the back shed of the house and you go, "My god! Get off the shed! Why are you on the roof?" Right? But that's a good problem to have. That's one filter. The next thing is really understanding. You know how your ideal clients actually buy and where your best customers come from. Once you understand that, then you start making the right marketing decisions. A lot of agencies, what they don't understand is their clients don't actually want to know how to do something – they're coming to you because they're not looking for a do-it-yourself model or a done-with-you model. They're not looking to coach-and-consult it. They're looking for done-for-you model. They're also busy as well, too. In general, the first thing that most agencies need to do is get their ten-minute amplifier video on their website that explains what sort of transformation they provide for other people. The reason why you want to do this – some people call the VSL, but a VSL is way too long. If it's more than ten minutes, it's too long. That's the first asset you need because, what it does, it multiplies you. Usually, who's the best salesperson in your organization? Yeah, usually owner-founder. If you can create your signature system and you can clearly articulate the transformation that you provide for people – from the before and after state that they're going to receive – in ten minutes or less and you don't gate the video, people will watch it and they will fill out your contact form and you've already done the demo. So, then you're only getting people . . . and you should put the price in there too and that is the only thing you need. And if you're a marketing agency that's under a million dollars per year, if you do anything else besides that VSL and a whack of testimonials down below, you are totally wasting your time. Do not do anything else. Do not blog. Do not create a podcast. Do not. You do not get to collect go and collect your two hundred dollars. That is where you need to start. If you haven't done that, that's the only thing you need to do. Then you need to find a way to get people to that VSL. Getting them there is not as hard as you think. You don't need as many people as you think either, because the goal is not to get lots of leads and fill your calendar with loads of leads. The goal is to get as few leads as possible but close them all. And have them pre-qualified before they get there, right? And if you can have them pre-qualified, pre-sold, then the time that they get to you – you can suck at sales and you can charge more. Because you shouldn't seem like everybody else – which is like all your other competitors – which is probably a sea of sameness. If – just go ahead and do this – please type in digital marketing agency of any kind that you want. You go and do this right? Go to Google right now, I dare you to pause this and go and look. I want you with it, quickly go and look at all the digital marketing websites from city to city to city, from service offer to service offer – you all look exactly the freaking same. Then I dare you to go and look at your Google analytics or whatever analytics tool you want to look at and look at what is the average time on your website. It's probably a minute. What do you think all this other stuff is doing for you at the end of the day? I know you sell this as a service – to blog and create content and to run ads into having these epic crazy labyrinth funnels that one thing triggers to another thing, which triggers this email, and this triggers this upsell, in this downsell and ends up turning into this giant Rube Goldberg machine which is totally cool. Don't get me wrong – I am wowed by it. It is awesome and there was so much work into it, but it didn't do anything for you. It didn't create any transformation. It didn't help you, except for create a whole lot of noise, a whole lot of effort, and provided very little impact for you. So, these are some things I want you to consider. The other thing I want you to consider is usually when you're focused on inbound and/or outbound, it's very, very small thinking. It does not leverage what you have already created because most agencies, right, or businesses, begin organically and grow out of referrals. The business grows, which is awesome. But what happens is the business grows and you get some people on payroll and then you have mouths to feed and mortgages to cover and it starts going, "Oh, crap! This is a serious business!" And then you go, "Oh, a client left." Or, all of the sudden you have a bad month or Covid hits and shish hits the fan and you're like, "I need a consistent way of getting business," and so you think the solution is . . . more leads. You're like, "Hey, that worked for my clients and B2C. We sent the gym or the dentist or the lawyer the whatever more business and they're loving it. This is going to work for my agency too." And wrong. It doesn't, you don't need leads, what you need is a consistent way of getting more referrals and staying top of mind with your existing clientele, with your existing partners with, your existing network at the end of the day, without coming across as being salesy or sleazy because nobody likes to be marketed to. Including you, right? Marketers are the most jaded people in the world, right? Nobody likes to be sold to – so it has to feel invisible. So, if it has to feel invisible, it has to be low effort but high impact. Well, what do you do? What I usually recommend is that you look at doing something called Demand Gen. Demand Gen is just a simple way of saying putting helpful content out there that makes people more awesome and gives you the ability to do one to many selling, ideally to your existing warm network. Now, if you're going to do that, a great place to begin is emailing them if you have a list with your database but more ideally, that feels like marketing, a better thing to do is make sure you're connected with them on a place like LinkedIn and then publish little short snackable content on LinkedIn where they go. They don't go to LinkedIn to consume long-form content or read articles or blogs they go to LinkedIn because they treat it like any other social media network and they're in the mindset to discover, maybe learn something very quickly, and/or most likely procrastinate before and after meetings, right, is what they're doing. If you do, that your warm network will see you being helpful and will keep you top of mind. Then they continue to send you referrals. Good things happen and more opportunities come up because, at the end of the day, people only buy from people they know, like, and trust. No selling can be done until you establish trust. So, the biggest mistake that people make with inbound and outbound is they're always trying to sell too early. It's they're eager beavers, right? ROB: So, we poke in tactically a little bit on LinkedIn. Obviously, strategy level makes sense. Tactically, you get all sorts of advice all over the map. You have your brand page. You have companies developing entire initiatives around getting their team to share their brand content. Sometimes there's just the founder as a salesperson in an authentic way. What kind of mix of activity do you see as effective? It seems to me it's a golden age in LinkedIn right now. I see nothing but opportunity there. But there's a lot of ways to waste time, too. MATTHEW: Totally. So, we have a system that we recommend agency owners follow. It's called the "ACES" method – to keep it simple. Basically, you're asking what kind of content do we create and what is most impactful, right? And how do we do this? Here's how you the ACES method – Authority, Connect, Engage, and Show. Authority is anything that you want to be known for, that you know really well, that you can share – where you can offer a tip and make people more awesome. Connect is anything that hits the heart, the gut, and/or the funny bone – comedy goes a long way. Engage is not necessarily always having to come up with the content – a lot of time you can ask your network, your community, your connections for advice to start conversations. Let them create the content for you to gamify a little bit. Why do you always have to be the one coming up with the content? The last one is Show. We don't tell, we Show. We don't want to come across as braggadocios, right? We don't want to be telling people and beating our chest about how amazing we are. What we want to do is give sneak peeks behind the scene. We want to show before-and-after transformations or screenshots of analytics and growth with a little tip of how you went about doing it. This positions you as an expert on what you're doing by showing. If you do that and then break it up into the different content formats – we've got video, text posts, images, and polls, and then pdf documents – those are basically the core types of content, because you don't know what people enjoy. Do a version of each. I only put a post out per day. That's how you stay top of mind. It's all about consistency, right? They can't trust you if they don't like you. They can't like you if they don't know you. So, step one is about being consistent. The biggest challenge is most people are inconsistent. We all know we've got to go to the gym on a regular basis and eat clean if we want to be fit, right? That this is not brain surgery. Well, it's the same thing with LinkedIn, you need the consistency. The problem is time. It's why most people fail. This is why we created one of our personal branding LinkedIn products. We created a product because this would solve this problem – where someone can spend an hour-and-a-half with us per month and we will create all of their social media, snackable content including for LinkedIn, and post it every single day. The way we do it is we record them via Zoom with the intention that snackable content is the lead domino which gets all the videos, and the videos that inspire all the text posts, the images, the polls, the pdf document carousels, etc., and then we post it for them. Basically, we created a product that allows people to look like they go to the gym every day and eat clean. Yet, they only have to go to the gym once a month for an hour and a half. ROB: It's like a filter for your social media. You just put the filter on, everybody looks good. You hinted at it and I'm curious. You said, you had your previous agencies. You sold them. You had one agency that came in and did things about 80 percent right, and then you started Automation Wolf. Number one, what led you to want to dive back into the fray and then start over again? Number two, what was that difference – the twenty percent between what was done for you and what you felt like needed to be done for others? MATTHEW: Great questions. I sold my shares in my second agency due to partner conflicts. Having partners is a very tricky ship to sail. When it works well, it's amazing. When it doesn't, it's like going through an ugly divorce. It's never fun. So, we went through our divorce and I was not finished with my mission yet on creating the business that I wanted to create. That's what sent me back to the fray now. We had an inbound marketing agency that we were a Goldspot, a Reseller of Hubspot, did PPC, did SEO. We were mostly focused on enterprise clients, mostly Fortune Five Hundred. Very successful agency, did very, very well. I was in a non-compete – to not able to do any sort of inbound marketing for two years – which is fine. When you sell your shares, that's the rightful thing that needs to come up – which led me to doing outbound. Yeah, it was like, "All right, fine. I can't do inbound. I'll do outbound." So, I started the outbound agency. We basically sprayed and prayed. We basically spammed people on LinkedIn, used LinkedIn automation. We cold emailed you and did all kinds of stuff. Throughout that process, I quickly realized what worked and what didn't work. The reality was outbound sucks even more than inbound and works even less if you really want to piss the whole industry. Inbound is the same thing but when you do inbound and outbound, you're focused on the exact same market which is the 1 to 3 percent of the market that's in market right now. So, you can grow that way. Inbound, you don't feel it emotionally because you don't see all the nos. When you do outbound, you feel it immediately because everybody tells you how much they hate you in the process, right? What the challenge that I realized was – both are not the correct answer. The right answer is actually creating demand first so you can do outbound and inbound. You want to put them into an invisible marketing funnel where you're adding value first and creating demand. Once we switch around to being focused on that – wow! Magic happened. So, we focus a lot on personal branding on LinkedIn so you can connect with people and put them in a controlled environment where they can get to know, like, and trust you. You could do it through an interview series just like you're doing right now, you can do it through community, you can do it through all different ways. There's a lot of different tactics that do it. But, at the end of the day, all we're trying to do is take a group of people and put them in a controlled environment where it doesn't feel like we're marketing and selling to them. Then we can do one-to-many selling to them where they can get to know, like, and trust me and they can go across that trusto meter to like – ding-ding-ding-trust – that once they end up in our pipeline, they're presold. And this way we can suck at sales and we can charge more money. And that's basically the gist of it, at the end of the day, once you set up a system like that and use the right tactics in the right order, you're off to the races. The right order is always not based on money. It's based on your time. ROB: Yeah, it's certainly about kind of getting to that distinctive place. You mentioned you can do a ten-minute video but you've got to look different from the other thousand agency websites that people saw along the way. Peter Thiel put it differently in saying he likes to be a monopoly. You're talking about a way of being a monopoly in the eye of the buyer. When it comes time to buy, you just can't predict, that you can't time it. That ten-minute video, to me – maybe to some people that's a short video – that sounds like a lot. What is the structure of a good ten-minute video that introduces someone to an agency and starts to build that layer of trust? MATTHEW: That's a great question. There's absolutely a format to doing it. I'll tell you the format and the framework that I follow every single time that works like gangbusters. One is, your first thirty seconds should be a big giant epic promise. For example, when it comes to our LinkedIn services, ours is, "How to get new clients right now from LinkedIn, organically. I'm going to show you how to create all your LinkedIn content by only spending one-and-a-half hours with my team each month." That's it. That's the offer, right? Something like that. The second part is, who it is for, and who it is not for? You can't be all things to everybody. It's really important that you niche down. That's the case. So, for us, we call it out, "Hey! We work with consultants, coaches, people who do B2B, B2B, SAS companies, and agencies. That's, "If you're in B2B and your audience is on LinkedIn, this is for you." The next thing you need to do is tell them all the things that they want and that they've been lied to. It's really, really important that you shout out that they've been lied to because you have to absolve them of their problems. If you tell them it's their fault, they're not going to listen to you. But if you tell them, "It's someone else's fault that's lied to you," then you're going to get their attention. Now that you have their attention, you start going through and describing their problems better than they can describe themselves. You need to hit the hot buttons, fears, frustrations, wants, and aspirations. Remember, if you can make it sound like you're reading their mind, you're saying the stuff they're thinking but they won't say out loud, you know you've hit the hot buttons. Once you've been able to describe their problems better than they can themselves, the next thing is to have counterintuitive thinking about what the problem is. It must be something that's new. So, if you'll notice me, I keep playing with this theme, 'inbound sucks, outbound sucks, but demand gen is right' – here's the old way of doing things versus the new way right? We're playing constantly with FAQ's versus SAQ's, so, frequently-asked questions versus should-ask questions. You know when you discover a problem, the questions you ask to discover it are not going to solve it. You have to ask deeper questions to get there. This is why the five whys exists right? There's a whole system from this – "Why did that happen? Well. why did that? And why did this? Why did that? Why?" And then you get to the root cause of really what's causing the problem and if you can come up with this counterintuitive thinking that is different than everybody else's saying – Boom! That's called positioning and you are no longer in the sea of sameness. You are now unique. You are now monopoly like you said, right? Once you have the monopoly you need to have a very simple signature system that explains what it is that you do. I recommend that everybody have a three-pillar system. So, mine is short-form, long-form, community, which is tied to "know you, like you, trust you." You have three pillars. Usually you have a three-step process for each pillar, so you have a three-by-three matrix. If you can clearly articulate the matrix, then you're good-to-go to get their attention. You clearly state what you're going to charge, so that it's not a surprise to anybody. Nobody should be coming into your marketing funnel who doesn't know what the approximate price is going to be. You don't want to talk to them. You want to spend a lot of time on repelling just as much as you were attracting. This way, by the time they get to you, they're pretty qualified. You didn't have to spend thirty minutes qualifying them when you could have used an automated ten-minute video to do so, right? Then, a sign of the only thing you need is some sort of social proof of success, of transformation – before-and-afters or a whack of testimonials on your site. If you go to my website today, it's a 1-page website with nothing else that you can do except watch a ten-minute video or read the endless scrolling testimonials that are there of our clients. The only thing you can do is reach out and connect to us, so you have no other options. There's nowhere to be confused about what to do. That business in twelve months has grown an agency from zero to over a million dollars of recurring revenue. ROB: That's solid. It sounds like you're at a price point where, if you're demonstrating results, it recurs at loops. You keep building. You scale the process. All of that clearly makes sense and you've kind of shorthanded. But if you really get down to it, in particular, what are some things you're doing differently this time, what you know? You built two companies before. What did you learn in those – obviously a partnership lesson, but outside of that – what have you learned that's different this time? MATTHEW: Less is more, right? Which we all know. Even this system here that we're doing on-demand gen – we just launch one service per year and perfect it. This last year, we perfected the LinkedIn content creation, demand gen system. It's awesome, man. It's perfect. It took a whole year. They do it really well. Next year, we're adding on a few more services. So, do one thing at a time. The one thing. I think there's a whole book on it – just the one thing, right? So, that's the big lesson – less is more. The next big lesson is, spend a lot of time on operations and hiring, on talent and training your talent, and supporting your team, right? You don't want to have false starts. Your team is everything, especially for an agency. Your highest expense is going to usually be people. People are difficult – more people, more problems. It's not like Biggie said. Biggie said, "Mo money, Mo problems." It's not. It's more people, more problems, right? So, focus on really developing the team and understanding the team and understanding what that looks like and getting a lot of referrals. That next thing is, if you deliver what you say you're going to deliver and you even come close to coming to what you say you're going deliver, you will get referrals – and a ton of referrals. So, if you get the referral engine going, you get the team going, I would say that you've got a decent startup and a proof of model. The goal from a startup is to get to stay up and then from stay up is to scale up. I believe that you can do it in a three-year period. Usually, year one is startup. In my case, I even had year one as a false start, focusing on the wrong business – which is proof of model really, right? So, proof. So, it's one thing to sell it. It's one thing to keep it. It's a little bit of the balance of two. I was able to sell the cold emailing spamming thing because people want to buy that too, just like inbound. But ultimately it kind of worked. I wasn't really excited about it. It didn't focus on my unique ability. It didn't make me happy. I didn't go to bed going, "Oh, my god! That was a great day!". It was like, "Oh, my god! I just spammed the world. I'm a fraud, right?" You know, you've got to love what you do, too. But once you get the right thing that people want to buy and then you can keep them, then you've got what's called proof of model and that's really your first year. The second year, and the way I'm looking at this is the first year is proof of model, the second year is getting up or the first years is about getting you out of operations – the day-to-day operations – so, that the second year, you can focus on marketing, selling, and talent acquisition. The third year is scale up that you can get you out of marketing, selling, and talent acquisition. Then once you're out of the third year you have the option at that point to keep it as a running asset because it doesn't take . . . you should only be attending the board meetings and a few other things or you have an asset that you can sell, right? Which is exactly why you bought the business or created the business. Whether you bought it or created it, that's it. If you can't do that in a three-year period, you're probably on the wrong track – you're probably spinning your wheels and not focusing on the right things. That's a very realistic and fair amount of time to build a great business. ROB: It's an interesting mirror that you talk about holding up with the spamming. There were some folks who were involved in starting Sales Loft, which is now a billion-dollar valuation company. Their first product was built around scraping and spamming LinkedIn, harvesting email addresses, that sort of thing. They had a million dollars in revenue around it and they threw the product away because it wasn't really authentic to them. They were selling a sugar high. It sounds like you've been in that world. I've seen the LinkedIn automation in the agency space. We've seen how many sugar high newsfeed optimizations, spamming, SEO, right? SEO used to be about tactics and ways to skirt the rules. We keep having to figure out how to be authentic if we want to build a real business. MATTHEW: It always comes back to the fundamentals. At the end of the day, most people think they have a sales problem or they think they have a lead-gen problem – but they don't. They actually have a community problem and a trust problem. If they made the measurement of the objective to build more community and to build more trust in that community, they would make very different decisions. Same thing, as well, to the mindset about forever business versus a short-term business – because one is focused on tactics and me-me-me-me versus you-you-you-you. Then the same thing even when it comes like creating content. You're very smart to have this podcast because you're focused on being a talent scout instead of being the talent. Being talent is actually really hard. If you look at the biggest and best and fastest-growing companies out there, they focus on two things – one, being a media company is really good talent scouts or two, they focus on the network effect. Okay, if you do that, you have epic growth really, really quick. The reason you have it is this. If you are a talent scout, then you become Tim Ferriss, Joe Rogan, Oprah. What are the experts of absolutely all? Okay. But what are they really good at? What are they really good at doing? Bringing in really interesting people, asking them really interesting questions to teach their audience what to look for and what to look out that builds trust. So then expert comes and goes, okay, and the law of transference passes all that expertise to those hosts. They're the ones who are the sticky ones that everybody is after going forward. They're building what's called a media company. Then those who take that media company flip it into these private communities -- something like real vision television – you name it. They then get the network effect, which is what Facebook is, and Youtube is, and Instagram is, that has exponential growth that it takes on its own life. Once you have the network effect and you have that ability of hosting where you built trust with the community basically – instead of calling it network, call it community – it's a deeper connection, you then have a license to print money – because you can go to that community you want and say, "What is the problem? What is it that you want to solve?", go find the product or service and connect it with your community, and instantly print money. The end. If you ask yourself, instead, as a business and in B2B, "How do I create more community? How do I build more trust with this? How do I treat this as a forever business?", you start making really different decisions about what you're going to invest your time and energy and money into at the end of the day. So, it's usually just that you're asking their problems. They're asking, "How do I get more leads and how do I get more sales?" It's a very surface-level question. It's a byproduct. A byproduct of community and trust is lots of leads and sales and rabid buyers who are ready to throw you money. ROB: But there's a lot of work ahead of that. MATTHEW Yeah. ROB: Lots of good thoughts, lots of distilled knowledge from experience from building businesses, from scaling up. Congratulations on all of that. When people want to connect with you and with Automation Wolf, where should, they go to find you? MATTHEW: There's only two places you can find me – either on LinkedIn – you just search Matthew Hunt – or at automationwolf.com. You won't find me anywhere else. ROB: Yeah, and you can do like three things on the site – you can read the testimonials, you can watch the video, you can schedule some time. It's all pretty clean and simple, very good. Well thank you so much for that distillation of wisdom, Matthew. Good to connect with you. Thank you for sharing with the audience I wish you all the best. MATTHEW: You too Rob. Thank you for having me. ROB: All right. Be well. Thanks.