Latest / The Jon and Marc Podcast / Why Founder-Led Marketing Beats Private Equity for Law Firms

Transcript

Why Founder-Led Marketing Beats Private Equity for Law Firms · The Jon and Marc Podcast

0:00
There will be jobs to be replaced by AI 100%.
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We have communicated this openly to our employees.
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Your job as you do it today is not the same job that you were
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going to be doing in six months from now.
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I can't look at any employee across the company.
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The things they are doing today are being done the exact same
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way that they were doing them six months ago.
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Hi, I'm Jen Cox. I am the VP of Client Services
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at Our Digital and this is a special edition of the Jen, John
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and Mark podcast. Hey, that's not the name.
0:41
It is now. We could talk about marketing,
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we talked about our digital, we could talk about there's a very.
0:48
Outside of anything. Very heated sandwich debate from
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last night. We need to finish.
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Have you told our origin story? I mean, I know I was like
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employee number 7. So like, how did we start?
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How did we start? Well, how much time do we have?
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The short version of the story is I was Mark's customer.
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I don't think many people know that.
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Not my favorite customer either. Glad you still feel that way.
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At the time I was the chief Operating officer of a company
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called Launch that which oversaw two big websites in the legal
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space. Amongst a few other projects
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that we worked on werentasbestos.com.
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We rent drugwatch.com and I had helped move the company on to
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Salesforce and Mark was the solution engineer assigned to
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our account. I went to Dreamforce one year,
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probably a dozen years ago, and it's.
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Probably like 2000. Met Market Happy Hour for the
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first time. 16. And 2015?
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I asked Mark what is the one pain point that clients have
1:57
with Salesforce that hasn't been solved yet and immediately
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Mark's answer was. Logging communication for your
2:04
cell phone into Salesforce like actual text messages.
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And I said, OK, that's actually a great idea, right?
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12 years ago people were using text messaging but it was not
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like it is today where it's getting logged in CRMS and.
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Because traditionally you just log your emails and your like
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phone calls after you come put your notes in.
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Also back then it was like pretty taboo to like text your
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clients or like prospects. We went back from San Francisco
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back to Orlando and I wound up building out an arm of our
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agency that was doing, we were doing Litify work and other
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sales force work. And there was a large firm we
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had done one of the the earliest Litify implementations, and we
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wound up building this product that Mark had conceptualized.
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And I told Mark about him like, hey, you know, you remember that
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thing that you talked about? Like we built it.
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Yeah. And then he, I was like, cool.
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And he said he was hiring for VPS sales.
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I'd run my course at Salesforce. It was kind of unhappy at the
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position I was in. I was like, Skrill, let's go and
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then talk to John. We made a deal and I went to go
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work for him. He was my boss.
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I would fly into Orlando Monday morning, live there through
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Thursday night, and fly home Thursday night and work from
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home Friday. And and that was the start.
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So here's my customer then he was my boss.
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We then wound up getting acquired by Litify.
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So I left the agency, wound up going to work to with work for
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Litify. I was their VP of growth.
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They took the text messaging solution that we had built and
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their intention was to to bake it into Litify.
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Mark came along, Damian, our current head of development came
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with me, with us from the agency to Litify and he's still with us
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now. And you know, you kind of Fast
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forward through COVID and we both wound up leaving Litify and
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Mark went back to Salesforce and I, I was trying to figure out
4:02
what to do with life. I, I just chose to leave because
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I much would, I would much rather market to people versus
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marketing to businesses and especially marketing to
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marketing very expensive software with a very long
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implementation cycle to lawyers, which just it, it, it didn't
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excite me. And then I got in a car
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accident. Yep.
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And we are actually business partners because of a car
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accident and deli. Very specific deli.
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Yep. So I happened to call John that
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day and he would just been T boned.
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He was like, hey, just got T boned and real frazzled.
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The kids are freaking out, cars totaled.
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I'll call you back later. So I next ate him some cat's
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deli and then he calls me the next day or two days later.
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He's like, did you mail me cat's deli?
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And I'm like, yeah, bam. That's what friends do when
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friends are in distress. And then I have spoken to him
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every day of my life since. That's the truth.
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There's a there's a lot, right? So that was like.
5:00
Car axes and cat's deli is is how this?
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However, as, as Jerry Seinfeld would say, yadda yadda yadda,
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yeah, yeah. And here we are.
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And then along the way, we just started doing marketing for
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lawyers. Yep.
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It started from nothing, right? It was literally like Mark was
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moonlighting and I was kind of trying to figure stuff out and
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he was still working at Salesforce and we were testing
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different things out. And we just kind of built
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everything from nothing into, you know, so here we are six
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years later or whatever it is, and now there's almost 70 of us.
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We have employees all across the country.
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We have an employee who used to live in the country who now
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lives in England. Yeah.
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I mean, it's it's been quite the ride.
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And right before this, like we just sat and interviewed Mark
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Lanier like something I never thought in a million years.
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Would happen. Wait, we interviewed him.
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He's also been our client for the past four years.
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Yeah, four years. Yeah.
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But you know, it's different. Like Jen sits down, She's like,
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I feel like Mark Lanier. Like, yes, cuz Mark Lanier was
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sitting on that couch about 20 minutes.
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It is. It is still warm for Mark
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Lanier. I remember my interview when I
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started. I do as well.
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I, my first impression of both of you was that not only were
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you incredibly smart, but that you were excited about what you
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were building from the beginning.
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And it made me excited. I was like, I don't, I do SEO
6:31
for hotels like and I had 100 plus clients and we weren't
6:36
accomplishing anything right. Like we had a very controlled
6:39
CMS. There was very little we could actually do SEO wise.
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And so then I was like, wait, I can, I can do, I can move
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needles, I can do something, right.
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So what qualities did you see in each other that made you join up
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and start this? John is an incredibly difficult
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person to work with, which is my favorite thing about him.
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The the reason he's difficult to work with because well, he
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doesn't like to admit he is a super genius and he's able to
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compute and keep more things in his head at once than a normal
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brain can. So when you first start working
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with him, it's very frustrating that he can lane switch between
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20 topics and be on point in different like conversations or
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or wherever he is and getting used to that is very difficult.
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It's simultaneous, simultaneously exhausting and
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exhilarating. I don't know where I'm going to
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land. But but for me, like I had to
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learn how to work with him when he was my boss to understand
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this. But once you start understanding
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like there's nothing we can't do because we're both idiots that
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like we believe we can do anything we want to do.
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And between the two of us, we're just agreed that I was like,
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let's just figure it out. We never we don't try to
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overthink things and it's too difficult.
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I had someone who can have the horsepower who was a great
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collaborator with me. Or we can just see the world we
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want to build and go build it and not let the like the
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roadblocks of the challenges get in the way, Mark Lanier quoted
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in his speech. I think I was reading from
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earlier today, it was like the roadblocks are the path or what
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obstacles are the path? The obstacles are the path.
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So we decided like, hey, we're going to build a company instead
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of going the easiest route to choose every, everything, What
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is the right way to do something which is almost always the
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hardest. And we went with the mentality
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of like, let's just go with the hardest path first because
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that's the best thing for the company, for our clients, for
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the results we want to deliver. And doing that by yourself is
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really challenging when you have a partner to share that mental
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load to tackle the task with it. It's what made it excited to
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work with John. Good luck.
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So you know, this I, I'm, I'm a little bit older than Mark.
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Yep, a little bit. I'm a little bit older than both
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of you. That's right.
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But you look better than both of us.
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No comment. So I have had my share of
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experiences with business partners that we're not
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positive. And I learned so much from
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building multiple businesses before this one and having
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partners who were not aligned with what my vision was for our
9:22
business. And because of that, I could
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never trust. And I had in in 2007, I opened
9:31
my first restaurant and I had business partners in that
9:34
restaurant. And my communicated vision, or
9:37
at least what I thought I had communicated clearly at the time
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was I do not want to be a a restaurant operator.
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That was never something I wanted to do.
9:46
I had an idea for a theme of restaurant that I wanted to
9:51
build and I wanted to turn it into something that was
9:54
scalable. And I wanted to run the business
9:55
operation and, and figure out where do we place these
9:59
restaurants? How do we pivot them to fit each
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individual market. That was what my vision was.
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And we built a restaurant and it was right at the economic
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downturn in 2007 in Michigan, right?
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We had Chrysler headquarters like walking distance from the
10:16
restaurant and we still were successful.
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And then we opened a second restaurant and then we opened a
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third restaurant and I wanted to keep going.
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And I had, I had two other partners and they said no, no,
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no, like we have 3 restaurants, we have three people.
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We can't scale. And I said, hold up, this is not
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the deal. Like I'm working.
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We, we did breakfast, lunch, dinner and then we stayed open
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till the bar closed. So I would you think I, I, this
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is where I get my insomnia from, right?
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So we would be open 16 to 18 hours a day and I would be
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working probably, I would work probably six days a week for 2/3
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of the opening hours, 52 weeks a year.
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And they saw the success that we had and they felt like the
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success was because of the three partners each operating a
11:08
restaurant. And I said, you know what,
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here's the deal. I'm going to, I'm going to tell
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you right now there's two options here.
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Option one is I buy you out, you guys walk away and I'll figure
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it out. And option 2 is you guys bite me
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out and as I'll give you a fair number of you, you could be a
11:24
fair number, but like I will do either.
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But I cannot have this because this is not what I want in my
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life. And I let them buy me out.
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And then I moved to Florida and that taught me a lot about what
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I want in a business partner and in a Co founder.
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And Fast forward the way that I structured that deal I wound up
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making, I wound up losing money. They wound up going bankrupt on
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all three restaurants in maybe a year.
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And it was like a structured buyout.
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So I got paid for a year, which didn't even pay back the loans
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that I'd originally taken from TO to get those two, those 3
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restaurants going. I learned at that point that if
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I was ever going to start a business again, that I need to
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have a business partner that is fully aligned with what my
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vision is, even though it could change, right?
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But we have to be aligned on those movements and someone that
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no matter what I can trust. And above all else, like Mark is
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an extremely talented, extremely talented, extremely smart.
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We complement each other very, very well.
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He's very technical. But put all that aside.
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I I would throw all that away just to to have what we have,
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which is a relationship where I know no matter what, he always
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has my back and I always have his.
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Correct, we we have 11 golden rule that we will never fuck
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each other over. Correct.
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So my job is client services and I take it very seriously and I
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have very high standards for my team.
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When we were trying to come up with when you were like working
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tag lines and stuff, how did we get to beyond expectations and
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why is that us? In my opinion, I believe that
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aligns with why we don't have salespeople.
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The way that we have built our business is aligned with going
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beyond expectations. So our business has grown
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because we go beyond expectations and find
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opportunities to add value wherever we can.
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Our statements of work are not a menu of like, these are the
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deliverables you're getting. Like we are so fully aligned
13:30
with our clients that that permeates through like their
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external perception to others of what we do for them.
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When you actually understand it, it makes so much sense.
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But when you look at it from the outside, it's like it.
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I don't wait. Hold on.
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So you're, you're doing their SEO, right?
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Why are you also like building out their dashboards?
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Why are you like fixing their leaf flow?
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Calls. Why are you?
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Yeah. Why are you?
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Why did you build out an intake AI platform to grade calls and
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help their intake team convert calls better?
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Why? Because no matter what
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expectations any of our clients have for what they're going to
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get out of the relationship with the company, we always have to
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just go further. There's always more.
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And we shouldn't necessarily always just be saying we need to
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do more and always charge for that.
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Like we're, we're fully aligned with our clients.
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That's that's how I. Also too, when, when John and I
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decided like, hey, we're going to do this thing like we're
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going to set the standard of what an agency is in the legal
14:39
industry. The expectations were so low for
14:42
what was being delivered that like we're going beyond the
14:45
expectations of a client because they're expecting a low bar and
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we're raising the bar. And then we're going to deliver
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above and beyond what their higher expectations are of
14:53
working with us. And our model has always been do
14:56
whatever is right to make the client successful, whether it
14:59
makes me profitable or not. I will tell you we are the one
15:02
of the largest, highest revenue agencies in the space.
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That's probably the lowest profit margin.
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I wish it was higher, but we always double down on resources
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to make our clients successful. If they're not performing, we do
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whatever we can. Even that cost us extra.
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Even if I'm losing money. Our job is to make our clients
15:19
successful. It only works if every team
15:22
members bought in and believes that like hey, our job is not to
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just clock in, clock out, but to exceed the expectations of the
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clients no matter what they are. So a lot of our competitors are
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pool is getting smaller because they are getting acquired and
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consolidated. Why are we not headed for a big
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payday to sell out? Why is that not our our path?
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Well, first and foremost, I think that when you are are
15:53
taking the bag, you are breaking trust and an alignment with your
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clients. Private equity invests in
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anything. Their goal is to extract as much
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value as they can out of the relationship.
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It's a financial move. However it wants to be framed,
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it is still at its core a financial move.
16:20
And Mark just talked about this like we, we have clients that we
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work on where we know we're doing things right now that are
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costing us more than what the client is paying us, but we're
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doing right by the client and that will retain them long term.
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You cannot do those things in that environment.
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If we got acquired by private equity, our model doesn't work.
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Private equity would would never acquire us if they actually came
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behind the scenes and looked at the at the operation.
16:48
We tell people all the time like, yeah, so we're
16:51
headquartered in Orlando and we've got like 15 people who
16:53
work in Orlando. And then we've got like another
16:55
50-5 people that are all spread out.
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You know, Alec and her video team is all in in Atlanta and
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like Randy and he's in Kentucky and he's got a little squad in
17:04
Kentucky. And then we we just have people
17:06
all over the place and private equity would be like, you're
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going to get rid of that team. We can get video editors, you
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know, in some other country and pay them 7 bucks an hour.
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And you know, why do we need social media people?
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Why do we need content writers? Like they'll be pushing us to
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extract value from our clients instead of pushing us to give
17:24
value to our clients. There's a complete opposing
17:27
force conversation if you're talking about private equity
17:31
acquisition versus giving a law firm what they're paying you
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for. Anything you want to.
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Add we believe we have a vision for the company, a vision of the
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standard that needs to be met and it will be compromised if
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it's anyone besides us leading that vision.
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And by us, by the way, it's. Not our team.
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Yes, like you, you, you know this, but you are a, a overtime
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you've become a part of the decision making of, of what we
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do, not just what we do, but how we do it.
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And you go back to like the when I was running my restaurants,
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like the alignment with everyone from top down and like how
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you're going to go about building your business.
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That sets the stage for everything that you do as a
18:18
company. And it's founder LED business
18:21
versus a money LED private equity LED business are two
18:26
completely different things. I love our executive team who
18:30
has bit has not changed from the beginning.
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It has been you and David and Evan and Damian and Mark and I,
18:38
and we make decisions together and that's it.
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We want to make sure that our incentive incentives are always
18:44
100% aligned with our clients. If they are successful, they
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will make us successful. Yes, which goes back to why we
18:53
don't have sales people, right. Like who is involved in every
18:57
single prospect that is brought to us?
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It's either you or me or Jen. Yes, And that's it.
19:03
And nobody else. And a lot of those relationships
19:07
are brought to us. I mean, almost all of them are
19:09
brought to us through clients who want to share the secret of
19:14
like, of what they're doing. I love that.
19:17
Makes life so much easier. Harder in other ways.
19:19
But like, you know, so much easier in other ways, 'cause you
19:22
don't have client attrition. You know, we don't have these
19:25
giant sales budgets like other agencies have.
19:27
We don't have quotas that we have to hit and worry about.
19:29
We're going to lose, expect to lose 30% of the clients this
19:32
year. So we got to add on, you know,
19:34
30% to make up for that. Plus we have to add on whatever
19:37
the growth numbers are that are expected of our board.
19:39
No, the end of the day, it's Mark and I at four, 5:00 in the
19:43
morning every day texting each other talking about like what
19:46
our priorities are for the day or the week and then having
19:49
meetings with you guys about how we're going to go about
19:51
executing on those priorities. That's it.
19:54
What is the best part of traveling with you and why is it
19:56
seafood towers? And and why is it Seafood Tower?
20:04
I know I'm going to get a seafood tower every time I.
20:06
Travel, that's my fault always. Also like the the availability
20:11
of food when we travel is so limited.
20:14
Like all right, what time is it? It's currently 1:20 PM Pacific
20:19
Time. OK, I have had one meal today
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and it was at 9:00 AM with Randy.
20:28
I don't know what I'm going to eat again like, so when I
20:31
finally sit down to eat, damn straight I'm ordering that
20:34
seafood tower. I had a smoothie and that's all
20:36
I've had. Got to stay light.
20:38
I was anxious about the Mark Lanier podcast and I was like,
20:40
brains got to be firing on all cylinders.
20:42
Wasn't doing super great on the episode, but we've made it
20:44
through, yeah. You were a little.
20:48
Nervous then? I love traveling for work, but I
20:51
hate it at the same time. Same.
20:53
I will say now that I have children I take I'm extremely
20:57
more intent with my travel. Like I'm not messing.
21:03
If I'm going on a trip, I'm there to get shit done and I'm
21:05
I'm coming in. I'm getting what I need to do
21:07
and I'm going home. I'm not going to party like I'm
21:10
I'm here to get work done, meet with clients, achieve something,
21:13
make it a successful trip. I'm not going to waste my time
21:16
when my wife's stuck at home watching both kids, St. that she
21:19
is. You rewind back to like the
21:23
first MTM PS that we used to come to and Mark and I would be
21:27
like, all right, who's going to go to the bank and like pick up
21:29
money so we can gamble, right? And, and we would have fun.
21:33
Why? Because we didn't have a lot of
21:34
meetings like it just, it didn't exist.
21:37
And now I, I did, there's no gambling, there's no partying.
21:42
There's like us being moving from one meeting to another or
21:47
like splitting up. So like one could take one
21:48
meeting and one could take another or we got a podcast to
21:50
film. I'll echo what Mark said.
21:53
Like the reason, the reason why we do what we do is because of
21:58
our, of our family. Like we both have amazing
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families. I, I love Mark's family.
22:03
I know that he loves my family. My wife is at home currently
22:07
seven months pregnant with our third boy.
22:10
And like I, I when I leave for these trips, I try to schedule
22:19
my flight so that I can drop my kids off at school and then rush
22:22
to the airport, get on a plane. I do what I need to do here and
22:26
many times, and Mark thinks I'm crazy for this, but many times
22:29
I'm flying back the same night. When I went to LA and met bunk
22:34
there, I left that time I had to leave at like 5:00 in the
22:37
morning 'cause we're flying across the country.
22:39
I fly to LA. We do everything we had to do
22:41
all day and then I red eye back that night and I get home just
22:46
in time to drive home, pick up my kids and take him to school
22:49
again the next day. And Emmett and Levi, if you guys
22:53
are watching this at some point know that that is why we do what
22:56
we do. It is because of you guys and
22:58
because of your brother coming next month and because of your
23:00
mom that Mark and I do what we do.
23:03
So while we've been here at MTMP, we have most of the exact
23:08
team. Evan's out, he's on paternity
23:10
leave, but we've been having big conversations about how we're
23:16
going to move forward. So how are we going to move
23:19
forward? What's next?
23:23
Well, historically, like my, my background has been in, in legal
23:30
SEO and we've built this agency to be the best legal SEO agency.
23:35
And over the past six months, we've had to evolve dramatically
23:40
because the landscape has evolved.
23:42
Probably a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago, Mark and I
23:45
had a conversation about like this evolution into video.
23:48
Like we saw it happening and we knew that we had to do it.
23:52
And we started testing out like, what's the right way for us to
23:55
do it? And eventually we end up
23:56
building our own video team. And over the past six months,
24:00
we've had to do that in other areas.
24:02
We've had to do it very quickly. So we now have a social media
24:06
team that is incredibly good. We now have a paid team that is
24:11
incredibly good. We have a business analytics
24:13
team that's incredibly good. Our content team, right?
24:17
A lot of agencies like you, maybe they'll outsource content
24:20
or they'll AI, they got a whole bunch of content and they, you
24:24
know, we have like Chelsea, our head of content, who we're going
24:28
to have dinner with tonight, lives here in Vegas.
24:30
Our editors are like those are attorneys, those are attorneys
24:35
who are also content editors. So they're reviewing the content
24:38
at a very high level. And our content writers, we have
24:40
one of our writers happens to live in Vegas as well.
24:42
We're going to meet her tonight. So like we have that content
24:44
arm, we built APR arm. Like I think that the future of
24:47
of the company is providing whatever it is that a law firm
24:52
needs to sign more cases. However, we have to do that
24:56
through a, a digital path. Granted, pretty much everything
25:00
is digital now, including TV. But like, are we helping our
25:03
clients, you know, design their billboards?
25:05
Yes. Are we helping our clients like
25:07
determine if their, their Current TV strategy is the right
25:10
TV strategy? Yes.
25:12
We, we just want to be both the strategy drivers as well as the
25:17
executors of that strategy. So a lot of like a lot of firms
25:21
now, you know, use fractional CMOS and we have very good
25:25
friends who are fractional CM OS.
25:26
They can say these are the things that you need to do, they
25:30
can't do them. And then maybe we'll find like a
25:33
point solution agency that can do that one thing and then they
25:37
have another agency that does another thing.
25:39
And then you have those agencies fighting against each other.
25:41
Whereas like we have shifted to this like tactic agnostic
25:45
mindset of whatever it is that needs to get done to meet the
25:48
client's goals is what it is, what it's going to be.
25:51
Part of our growth of where we're going as a company, like
25:55
there's a ton of demand happening and we don't have
25:58
goals we have to have from a revenue standpoint.
26:00
We don't have a board to report to.
26:02
We know where we want the company to go, but our our goal
26:05
is to not just grow the company from a revenue perspective, but
26:09
we only want to partner with people who will be true
26:11
partners. So we're moving the company to
26:13
being a true partner with our our clients and those are the
26:17
people we want. And in order to really service
26:20
them the best possible way, we need every tool in our tool belt
26:23
to give them the best advantage. They have to get the most amount
26:26
of cases to be successful as a firm and we're doing out
26:30
building out everything we can to make them successful, like
26:34
our vision for the company and what we strive to have for all
26:37
of our existing and future clients.
26:39
I can't say who the client is, but like we had drinks with one
26:42
of our clients last night and he was like, you guys are us, like
26:47
we're just because you're our marketing vendor, you're a part
26:50
of our team, You're you're like, you might as well be employees.
26:53
We're that tightly connected that we're fully aligned on how
26:58
the number one goal is to make them successful.
27:01
And our vision for the company is to make ourselves fully
27:04
integrated in the line with all of our clients and customers
27:06
that we work with so that they're happy everyday, they're
27:09
successful and they know they have a trusted partner who has
27:12
only one thing in mind, which is making them successful.
27:15
And for my team specifically, having a more well-rounded legal
27:19
marketing team like we, we started as SE OS, but we've had
27:23
to expand our skill sets and pivot and pivot and pivot and
27:26
get these other teams and work with them and learn from them.
27:28
It's been really exciting to to watch my guys grow and learn and
27:33
and get excited about other stuff too.
27:35
I, I love the R&D of what we do. There's so much testing like
27:39
Damian and his dev team and David and the OPS team like
27:44
coming up with ideas or like grabbing something that we throw
27:47
at them and actually like figuring out if we can make that
27:51
work. There's the the tools that are
27:53
available right now are, are effectively limitless.
27:57
If you can come up with the idea and put in the hands of an
27:59
intelligent enough person who understands how to put
28:01
guardrails around it, you can do incredible, incredible things.
28:05
And I think we talked about like, where are we going?
28:07
It's it's having that mindset of like, there is no limit, right?
28:11
We have these skill sets that we have today and the strategies
28:15
that we believe work today and we execute them at a high level.
28:18
But the future is whatever the future is that the market's
28:20
going to move. And we're going to react to the
28:22
way that the market moves and the way the consumers make their
28:25
decisions about hiring an attorney or vetting an attorney.
28:29
And we're going to make sure that we do the things that help
28:32
our clients be there when our client when their potential
28:35
clients are looking. I just love the judicial panel
28:37
where they were talking about AI replacing lawyers, and it was
28:41
very fascinating to hear from judges and lawyers their
28:44
experiences with AI. So how are we going to keep AI
28:47
from taking our jobs? Our stance on the use of AI is
28:53
at least the the way that it is today, is that it cannot replace
28:57
a person at all. We absolutely, you know this.
29:01
We use AI in so many different ways.
29:04
It helps us get things done better, faster, more
29:07
efficiently, so that the humans are doing the things that the
29:09
human should be doing. That's the right way to do it.
29:13
I love AI. It's wonderful.
29:15
It it's, it's interesting. The way I look at AI is how do I
29:20
leverage it as a tool for my company to free up my people
29:26
from doing what people need to do to service my clients.
29:30
So often in agencies, the client experience is so bad because the
29:34
people are running around doing busy work for a zillion clients.
29:37
They don't actually interact with the client.
29:39
They're just doing the work because there's work to that
29:42
needs to be done. So and not focusing on the
29:45
strategy, the vision, like understanding what's going on
29:48
from a high level. So it's we're using a very much
29:51
so to free up the time of our great people to spend more time
29:54
focusing, looking at the accounts they work on, the only
29:57
work on a handful of accounts. The more time we can have the
30:00
critical thinking freed up for our like a players that are
30:03
working directly with their clients.
30:05
That's what we're using AI for, to free up the work that they
30:07
were doing before, to do the things that makes a huge impact.
30:11
There will be jobs that are going to be replaced by AI 100%,
30:16
but the way that that we have communicated this openly to our
30:21
employees is that your job as you do it today is not the same
30:26
job that you are going to be doing in six months from now.
30:29
And that scares some people because they don't at first,
30:32
they don't understand it. But the reality is like, if
30:35
you're a content writer, I'll take a role that like, yes, a
30:38
content writer will probably be a content writer six months from
30:40
now, but the way you do your job is going to continue to evolve
30:44
the way our video editors have done their job, right?
30:47
They're, they're not just going and you know, maybe it's a new
30:50
software tool instead of, you know, Adobe Premiere, you know,
30:53
they're using something else. Yes, that stuff happens and it
30:56
evolves, but we're using, we're using all types of different AI
31:02
models in video editing that we're doing for social media.
31:06
Their job has evolved. I can't look at any employee
31:08
across the company whose job the things they are doing today are
31:12
being done the exact same way that they were doing them six
31:14
months ago. I would say even that window is
31:17
tightening up and it's, it's probably even, you know, more
31:19
often than every six months. And that is what is going to
31:24
keep AI from taking people's jobs.
31:26
Like if, if someone's role becomes completely able to be
31:29
eliminated with AI, well, that person is a part of this company
31:32
for more than just what they did over the past six months or a
31:35
year. We'll find something else for
31:37
them to do because they're a great person, because we don't
31:39
like, just like our, our client attrition being minimal, our
31:42
employee attrition being minimal is, is something else that we're
31:45
really proud of. I look at AI as an improv
31:49
partner because that is what the great Cassidy Lewis taught me to
31:52
do. And I will take CMO Academy
31:55
lessons to heart always. Well, this was really fun.
31:58
I have to go do my job and, you know, run our company.
32:01
Bye bye, Jen. Well, that's a wrap.
32:04
Special edition of the Jed Jonomark podcast, little inside
32:08
of our digital little back story.
32:10
If you want to see more content like this about us, about the
32:15
company behind the scenes, likes comment, subscribe, let us know
32:20
what you think about the episode.
32:22
We'll see you again soon.