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Invest to Scale: Surviving the Ad Overload with Devon MacDonald · Big Talk About Small Business

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: There's such a great opportunity if you're the one company in this crowded, mature, fragmented marketplace that embraces the idea that marketing and advertising is gas on a fire.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_03: That it's just not that hard to excel.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: We are back again in the studio.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: Here we go.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: With another episode, another fantastic episode.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, of big talk about small business.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: And this is a serious business today.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_05: It is a serious business.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_05: We have a serious business from a serious leader.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_05: Devin.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_05: Devin McDonald.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_05: Who's going to be sharing a lot of great insights about how to I mean, really about in that media scaling your business, hopefully, because I know our audience is always about that.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, that well, they should be.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, but that's true.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_05: That's true.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_05: There are there are folks out there that don't really recognize how important this stuff is.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_05: And the world's not getting any easier, is it, Devin?
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: No, not at all.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: More competitors, more products, more problems all the time.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_03: More messages we're bombarded with.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: Jeez, I can't even watch a freaking Facebook reel without getting hit up for pool chemicals like 27 times in the course of it.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's maddening.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: Do you get those?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: Or the investment app.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, put$1,000 in here.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: I've got$36,000 nine months later.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, we're just all bombarded with so much stuff, Devin.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: How do you deal with that?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's terrible.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's terrible for business because there's so many ads that you're getting that could be fraudulent, could not be relevant.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: And just because a platform can deliver ads doesn't mean that it should.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: And we talk about that even with our brands that we work with that are respectfully to the pool company, maybe more reputable, or the financial sellers.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: And we talk to them all the time about brand safety and not over-advertising and making sure that customers are open and in a good spot to listen to it.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a big part about earning trust of our clients and helping them with their business, is just being really transparent with them and saying, you know, sometimes these platforms are not good for you.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_05: So, Devin, why don't we start out first with introduce yourself, what you've done in your career and where you're at today.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_05: That way the audience can understand the credibility that the vibes that they're getting.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: For sure.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: So my name's Devin McDonnell, and I'm the president and one of the owners of Karen's O'Neill, a media agency.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: We do media work, content work, strategy work, and even AI work for brands.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: We're based in Toronto, but we do business across North America.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: And for some clients, we do work over in Europe as well.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: I've been running this company for five years, and I am the founder's retirement plan.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: There's a Karen's and an O'Neill.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: Prior to this, I ran other companies, notably the Canadian Operation for a Global Operating Company.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: And also launched a different agency as part of the Densstream Network.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: So in an advertising, there's lots of global holding companies that have operating companies.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I run a few of those.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: I ran a different business in the tech sector about 20, 25 years ago.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I had a t-shirt business when I was in university.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: I created a t-shirt brand just for fun.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: So I've always had the entrepreneurial spirit.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: I run, I guess, uh five businesses now.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, just love to learn and love to love to try new things.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_05: So when, you know, for those of the audience that may not know of Densu, right?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_05: It's one of the it's one of the major holding companies of media agencies in the world, right?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_05: And there are like five of them.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_05: There's five, and Densu's one of them, correct?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's five, maybe four now, because one bought the other, number two bought number three.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, yeah, so Gensu is a massive Japanese-based organization that would have 100,000 employees around the world.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then I worked also for WPP, uh British-based company, and I ran one of their companies for that.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: So they're they're large organizations with significant volumes of dollars, and the the scale is quite significant.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um and the problems are quite significant too.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's a fascinating world to be a part of.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, Devin.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: You know, my big brother was the chairman and CEO of uh H of uh WPP specialized communication companies, healthcare and specialized communication.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_03: Did you ever run into him?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_03: John Zweig?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_03: What's his name?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_03: John Zweig.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_03: No, I didn't.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um he had a hundred or some odd companies reporting to him there in that mess, and he got out right before it kind of melted down.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, but anyway, so well, mess is your word.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it is a complicated business, and they're going through a lot of consolidation.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, agencies used to scale just by for the sake of scaling in terms of size and volume, but now it's about specialization and servicing and uh helping clients solve multiple problems at once.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: Clients want easier uh tools to work with, they want to talk directly with people, and they don't want to get lost in the shuffle, just like you would with any business that you're involved in as a as a customer yourself.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's a it's a real shift that's happening.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I know in their business, they didn't do a lot of integration between those companies.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, in some cases, like Ford, he told me they have as many as 40 different companies working for Ford.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: Is that not the craziest thing you've ever heard?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's crazy but not uncommon.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: And particularly, I'm not sure when your brother was involved in that, but uh I've I've also worked in that business.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, you have to mirror the behavior of your client.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so Ford's in the manufacturing business and they work with tens of thousands of suppliers.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: So 40 advertising agencies, when you get parks or screws or plates from 2,000 people, it's not that different for them.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um but there is certainly a difficulty in advertising trying to coordinate programs and communications amongst 40 agencies that all might be part of the same company anyway.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's quite messy.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: So let's take this back to small businesses.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: What all now?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, you guys work for some big, big brands and big companies.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: What can you do for a small company?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: What do you say?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: Let's just say, for the sake of example, um, Eric and I have a company.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: We got like we make like 20 products and we're doing five million bucks a year in revenue.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: What can we do for you?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um well, we'd talk to you first about your overall strategy and see where you're at.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: If you believe in advertising, it's something that we get off to from the beginning.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a belief that's required.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: There's lots of science, but there's lots of art.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: But it's also understanding your growth plan.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so, yes, I've worked with some very large companies and people at my firm have as well, but also small companies.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: And it's asking questions about believing in advertising.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what percentage of your revenue are you going to commit to yourself to promoting yourself?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: And different types of businesses have different types of benchmarks.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: My personal advertising for our business, we're in B2B advertising.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: So we assign two to three percent of our revenues to go into uh advertising for our business.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's the right sort of metric to have.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so with your 5 million or 1 million or$100,000, it's scalable.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you might be on meta-only, you might have some local billboards, you might do your own podcast.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: There's so many opportunities out there that makes the entry point really easy.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: But step one is to recognize it's an expense, that's an investment into the growth of your business, and it you have to have it.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_05: Do you see like the, you know, that's always the interesting thing is like what percentage of your revenue are you going to dedicate, you know, towards your advertising plan?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_05: And and maybe you can help answer this question too.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_05: Do you see marketing and advertising as in part of that two to three percent?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_05: Or is the two to three percent only about paid advertising that you're placing in those medias, right?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's together.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: I would I would say two to three percent is combined marketing and advertising.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: For for my type of business, there's other businesses, uh D2C type businesses, where the cost pro acquisition of a customer is quite high and it's quite competitive.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if you're in the uh clothing business right now, it's very high to get into.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: And you might need to be at the 10 or 15 percent.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're starting off and you're trying to create market share and trying to create awareness, might be quite high.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I always like to look at when when people say, um, we've got this growth plan that we're gonna grow by 30% a year, and then what are you gonna spend on advertising?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we're gonna spend what the average firm spends in our industry.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, does that make any sense?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, how are you gonna grow faster than everybody else, but then spend the same amount of money in marketing they do?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, so yeah, you're right.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: It is that that is a really fundamental thing that we see over and over.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, so many of these small business owners, I'm imagin I would imagine if you sat down with them and you just start talking to them about their attitudes, they'll say, you know, Devin, we think word of mouth the best advertising, don't you, Eric?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: Is that not what you hear?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: It happens a lot.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: And what often happens, no matter what size of company, is the decision maker will have a personal preference.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I read the New York Times, or oh, I watch Fox News, so I think my brand should be there.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that that might be right, but that's the medium that they understand.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: And what you have to think more about is what is the medium that your customers understand that they use.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: And that discussion that you're having, there's top line revenue and there's margin.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: And if you want to scale a business, you might be able to get off with word of mouth as a small business to start.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, that could help.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: Referrals are important and making sure you do good work so people will refer you.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the any growth plan starts at the base of happy customers.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: But it's only going to get you so far, and you you won't be able to scale based on that because you can't scale yourself.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you have to invest in other people and other ways to to grow the business.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_05: So I want to break it down a little bit more simple because this is always such a I think a challenging question for for business owners about this whole percentage.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_05: Comes up all the time.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_05: It does.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_05: And and I think that there's to me, there's kind of two budgets in a way, two baselines of the budget.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_05: There's one, like what I what's my revenue today?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_05: Let's say I was doing$100,000 a year in revenue, right?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_05: And so you have a percentage breakout of that, just from my standpoint of there's a maintenance and a little bit of a growth based upon that revenue because you can kind of afford it.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_05: You know what I'm saying?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_05: From the revenue that you have, you can actually reinvest that money and allocate a budget to continue to grow the company and sustaining your current growth thing.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_05: But then there's a uh kind of like what I'm experiencing right now with one of my businesses is a growth um mechanism.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_05: I'm I'm$100,000 now a year, but I want to be$150,000.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_05: So I've actually need to take some advertising marketing investments based on that growth gap of between the$100 and the$150, which is a$50,000.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_05: And so I want to take a percentage of that and add it to my$100,000 baseline.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_05: Right?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_05: Because if I've really and that I think plays a little different, you got somebody that's probably a business owner that has a little bit of investment capital into the business, not just the revenue capital from the market, but I have the$50,000 in cash I'm gonna put into the company to hit that$150,000 growth metric.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_05: Or not I won't put a$50,000, but I want to invest, let's say it's$5,000 additional ad dollars to get to my$150,000.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: To get to the incremental revenues.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_05: That's right.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_05: And so, you know, like those are like, and I think that what I'm trying to do is express a little bit of comfort to the business owner out there that that is not an advertising marketing expert.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_05: These these things are kind of all over the board.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_05: It's most like what you want to put your hat into or what you're really wanting to put your money and your aggressive growth strategy in into advertising marketing to get to where you're wanting to get, because there's not really a specific number and percentage ratio that is the solid truth that maybe Ford has a has an answer for is the the absolute best metric on the planet.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean you take take you take um Zwag the company that was Zwag White, now Zwike Group, back in the in the day when we were using a lot of direct mail, our marketing costs, it was B to si to B-14 to 16 percent of revenue.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure that was more than everybody else, but we also grew faster than everybody else.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_03: So May works.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_03: But I think uh can we change the subject for just a minute uh on this topic?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: It seems like there's a preoccupation with business owners today with not wanting to spend any money on any advertising efforts that they don't know exactly what kind of a response they got.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_03: Do you find that's the case?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: And how do you because some things you simply cannot quantify the value of.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that's why print advertising is in such bad shape.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_03: I can't imagine broadcast advertising.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_03: You always know what the return is on that, right?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of brand building efforts.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_03: I can't say exactly what that was worth to rebrand this thing.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: Those seem like the the hardest ones to sell to a small business center.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, oh, I put this out on Facebook and I got, you know, 521 click-throughs to our website.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_03: They like stuff like that, even if it doesn't sell anything, they're happy about that.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: Small businesses like that, they businesses like big businesses like it even more, and it's a terrible trap.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um you have to look at your conversion rates on that and your cost per conversion.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: And if you do not invest in advertising, and if you not invest in your brand, your cost per conversion will go up every month.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: Because what you're doing is converting the people who are in market today.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: You're finding them somehow with a direct mail or with a Facebook post or something.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: Great.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: But for every customer you acquire, you're diminishing that pool.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: Because you're taking them out of the market, and you have to grow your own market or the the market of your industry in order to continue to grow your business overall.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: So the challenge we have in discussions with clients is the balance between performance and the clicks or whatever you want to talk about, and awareness, which could be paid advertising or could be other marketing activities like fought leadership, like opinion pieces, and uh other pieces.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not always paid advertising, but um I think I think the clicks and the all the metrics available are are a trap.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: And uh because the the data is all there, but uh I don't think that the data is always relevant to business growth.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you're mentioning before about the percentage of what you invest.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's an even more important question before that for any business.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: Because you have to invest to grow.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it could be in advertising, but it could also be in a margin reduction.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: It could also be in a compensation deduction or about a reduction about what you're going to make to recognize in the first three years how hard it is to start a business.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so there's sacrifices or judgments to make with the PL or balance sheet or operating plan or however you work at to say, well, where am I gonna invest and how am I gonna grow my business?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: Where am I gonna make sacrifices?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: Because you cannot, you cannot have it all all at once.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: I just gave that lecture to one of my uh former students yesterday.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_03: Two guys that set up a company that exactly who says you're gonna like start out of the gate and make the same margin.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you got to invest in this thing to get it going.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_03: Can I ask one other question?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_03: I find a lot of companies, when you start talking with them about their marketing and their advertising, they want to go back to their existing customer base and they go, Who's buying our product?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we sell that to women between the ages of 18 and 25, yada yada, yada, yada.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe it what drives me crazy about that is I don't necessarily give a shit what the people who are buying our stuff uh think because they're buying our stuff.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: I always say to those people, okay, but what about the people who aren't buying our stuff?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: What what do they think about us?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: What what do they think about our offerings?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because they're not buying.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: They're not buying, okay?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_03: It seems, but there's always that preoccupation to go back to, well, we've done a study.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: Our average consumer has 3.2 years of higher education.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_03: That's who's buying your stuff right now.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: Does that mean that's it?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's a smaller pool of people who have bought versus haven't bought.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think it's a great lesson to talk to people about where I said, you know, it's great.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: You know that you know where you're having success.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: And that's not to say you should make a product for everyone.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: But what can you do to tweak the product or make a secondary product to support the next most likely group of customer to buy or to support that customer group as they continue on into another phase.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: And that's about product expansion and product innovation.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's where the growth opportunity will come from, for sure.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_05: You know, Dev, kind of going on the point about um, you know, you're talking about the trap earlier, right?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_05: And like the numbers always have to meet up to to equal something.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_05: I do think that people for you know don't include or have in their brain about the investment of this because people that are your your audience is not making in instantaneous decisions that they want to buy something.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_05: Sometimes it takes multiple impressions and exposure about a brand or a product.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_05: And sure, you know, it's interesting.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_05: It all comes down to the psychology of the person that's buying, right?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, so there's like if you measured every single thing, you're gonna fall into a trap.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_05: Well, that that doesn't that LinkedIn advertise video ad does not work because it did not convert.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_05: So you stop it, but actually you were kind of nourishing a new service or offering to that, and that's that's a that's an awareness campaign.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_05: You can't necessarily drive analytics against it.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_05: How do you how do you have those conversations with clients?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_05: How do you convince them to and continue to invest in like more of a branding strategy in in hopes that somebody's gonna buy down the road?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: So there's two sides to this.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: So first is of course, the platforms that you're buying media from as a small business, they want all the credit, whether that's on the Google platform or the meta platforms, and they'll tell you that this customer came from us.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: But they don't do a great job of saying, well, they also saw your LinkedIn post and they also saw that flyer you put out, and they also talked to your their neighbor.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: That is not captured.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so attribution is a real important question.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I want to go back to those clicks maybe for a second.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they might have clicked from you to get from that ad to get to your website.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: But what about the other time for the first time that they saw you?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: Where is does that credit lie?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so there's things called multi touch attribution, and then also media mix modeling that's a whole bunch of tests to control.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Data sets to understand what was in market and what wasn't and when did it work.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: A way to think about this is uh a very different it's a big business, but it's Porsche.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: Porsche does not advertise.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yet they sell so many cars all the time.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: They do have events, they do sponsorship things, but think about how many people want to buy a Porsche and they wait decades of their life to buy a Porsche.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: How do you attribute that?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: Should you attribute it to uh an ad that maybe does come up or they they went to an event?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's decades of dreams that go into buying that car.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: And every business has that challenge.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, Porsche is an extreme example, but I think a mistake a lot of um internet-based companies or D2C-based companies make is they think, oh, just because I saw this ad for this t-shirt today and it came through to my website, I should do more of that.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: And it's and it's a bad mistake.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_03: I just got rid of two Porsches last week.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_03: I love my Porsches, so I get it.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_03: But uh love them for life.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_03: I and I love them.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: I've got eight of them total, so I do like them.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_05: So what's your what's your consult with a client on that, like a you know, a small business?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_05: Like, I mean, there's this there's this mystery data black box, right?
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_05: And it's it's so challenging, and I think that that's important for audience, right?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_05: Like you're okay in having confusion and and mystery in this stuff.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_03: They're so short-term oriented.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think that's the like if they could go say, where do you want to be 10 or 20 years down the road, maybe they'd see the justification.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I'm saying?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's a good point.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's just they're just so short-term oriented.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_05: Small business owners, you're starting a business and developing and building a business and growing a business is not an overnight phenomenon.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's not, I mean, if we give Devin 100 grand of our advertising money, and you and I are the owners of this, we just cut our pay by 50,000 bucks a piece.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's how some people look at it.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's just that linear.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like, you know what?
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: I've got two kids in college right now.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: I can't take a$50,000 hit.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_03: Can you, Eric?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_05: No, I can't.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_05: So let's just not do advertising.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_05: That's what happens.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_05: Isn't that the truth, though?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: It absolutely is what happens in a small business to a publicly traded to everything in between.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: Marketing is often the first expense to be cut because it's one of the largest third-party uh or third third-party expenses.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: So having this conversation that's difficult with founders and small business owners, or even worse, with uh venture capital, um, respectfully to any venture capital listeners, they're focused on the short term.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: They're not focused on the long term.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: And unless you're willing to make a sacrifice and invest in your brand, just like you invest in your business, uh, it won't be successful.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: I I can say that with complete confidence.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I I'd love to see a case where someone did not advertise or do marketing or PR or have a any word of mouth exist about their product and it wasn't successful.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that's what we're talking about, is getting people to talk about your business and getting people to talk about your venture, your product, your service, whatever it might be.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's all marketing and all advertising.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it could be as simple as what you're investing in customer tra and customer service training or in your service technicians or whatever they might be.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: There's a way that that brand's gonna show up with a uniform, with a smile.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's all part of your brand.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: And those pieces will tie into your advertising and your growth all the time.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_05: You know, this is such a good conversation because the other pro there's a lot of problems in this marketing space.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_05: Like everybody's a freaking You've been in it.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, you know it's from a skin person for 20 years.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, everybody is a freaking marketing expert.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_05: Especially because now they have access to these phones, they're constantly being exposed, and they they might be a TikTok user, and then it's like we got to do TikTok.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_05: Well, people need to understand every time you get into a new channel, it's not like you just start releasing ads on it.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_05: Like, yeah, you got no following.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it takes labor and work and and thoughtful process and strategy, and then you gotta look at the gaggum analytics, and there's more data.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and oh well, AI can do it now.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_05: Not necessarily AI hallucinates the hell out of some things.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_05: Like I was going through something the other day.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_05: I was asking Jim and I a question.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_05: It was a simple calculation.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_05: I just was too lazy to do myself in a spreadsheet.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I do it all the time with it.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but copy and paste it through the AI.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's like give me this, give me this uh this this calculation, and it messed up six times in a row.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_05: And the only way I knew is because I took the spreadsheet and and ran the number myself.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_05: I'm like, dude, you're way off.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_05: Like, what are you calculating?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, my bad.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_05: I'm sorry, you're still strong again.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_05: So you can't rely on this automated agentic strategy that's gonna do everything without a human touch and forget them.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_05: The buyer out there is 99.9% still an emotional psychological buyer.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and so these things that you're talking about, Devin, like it's you can't, if you're a business owner, you cannot fall into this trap of everything's hyperanalytical.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, there's a direct one-to-one relationship.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_03: We make data-driven decisions there.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we only make data-driven decisions.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: You just cut out I was taught that in my MBA program.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: You just have a complete specialization in data analytics.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_05: You just cut out 75% of every type of buying decisions out there, which is emotional.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, exactly.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_03: You need to have an emotional.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_03: I was just listening to Bob Lutz this weekend being interviewed.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_03: He's 94 years old, greatest car guy ever.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, people buy cars based on emotion.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: That's it.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_05: That's it.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_05: They still buy everything's emotional.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_05: If I'm on if I'm gonna buy a weight loss gimmick, it's because I'm emotionally tied to the fact I'm tired of being fat and out.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_05: Exactly.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_05: There's an emotion behind it.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_05: You're not, though.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_05: You're not fat.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_05: I appreciate that.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: You're a monster.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, man.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so doesn't have an opinion on marketing because they're exposed to it.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: And they're they're a part of it, it's part of culture.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: So they think they're an expert.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, my advice is to talk to an expert and someone else.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: That doesn't need to be mean.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not saying an agency, but there's a lot some other small businesses who do this.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to go back to your point about TikTok.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: Whether it's TikTok or a podcast or out of home or print or whatever, every medium and every media has its own set of specifications and its own culture.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: And if you want to get into TikTok or Instagram or Snap, there are their own cultures that require their own tonality, their own set of um community moderation, their own set of assets.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it is very difficult to manage all of those and get those right.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a fine balance between having your all your eggs in one basket, which you should never do, and spreading yourself too thin, which is what most brands do.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: And if you don't show up in an authentic way on TikTok, like if you took your out-of-homeboard and you just jammed it into TikTok, it's not gonna work.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: I guarantee it.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: You have to flow to the culture of that platform and the audience that you're trying to reach on it, which has their own language and approach and tonality.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's very different.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: And producing all those assets is complicated and takes time, let alone promoting it with media, which is a whole other aspect of it too.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: So it's you have to be very careful and and recognize where your audience is and and again how to how to best speak with them and and meet and meet them.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_03: And you have to experiment.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, constant experimentation.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_03: And some things will work great, and then six months later they don't work.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's why you got to constantly be throwing these new hooks in the water, yeah, in my opinion.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that that kind of backs into your investment strategy, right?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_05: Like if you don't do anything, you're really doing yourself.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, that's danger zone.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_05: But if you think that you can define something and just go all in and it's gonna work, is is a terrible nether trap.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_05: And so this whole marketing advertising stuff, and I I commend, I mean, like your business is is brutal, honestly, Devin.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_05: Like you're what you're doing is because you're you're having to fight so much misinformed, whether the biggest company, and I've worked with those two, you've had the largest companies in the world and what they think is the right marketing strategy to the smallest founder business that you know has no idea and they may think they're right, like you're constantly having to have these dialogues, right?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_05: You're actually a therapist in a lot of ways.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_05: You're a counselor.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so we can provide good counsel, but if we end up arguing with a client after a while, you know, we probably shouldn't be your corporate.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: So we probably, you know, excuse ourselves for an assignment once a year from a client because we're just not aligned.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: And um, it gets to a point in running our own business, which is a small business as well, about where we're gonna focus our time, clients who believe in what we're doing and are investing with us and how we're helping them grow, or clients who want to argue about, you know, frequency and digital.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's um it it it's a it's a tough, tough place to be.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: But it's also the fun part about our business and why our business uh is interesting, I think, is because there is so much change.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: And you have to be will we have to be willing to change our business to adapt to what the market is doing.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it is a a constant piece.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: If you think back to your brother's business or anything that you have done in marketing in the past from two years ago, let alone 20 years ago, the landscape is dramatically different.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: A great example is we got a brief the other day from a client.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's a request for a proposal on RFP, which is very common in our business.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: And they said, Oh, last year we did X amount of money in branded search for our prop.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: We want to do that again.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: We had to say to them, you know, respectfully, I don't know exactly what you did last year, but branded searches can't change completely because of AI and the way Google has changed their their algorithms.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think you need to do this at all.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: You may not, you may not even need to do this.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: What you do need to do is understand how to influence a language model so that your business comes up, and that's a whole other content discussion.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: We got some good credibility.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_03: What when you say things like that to the client telling them they shouldn't spend that money on that, that's like going to the restaurant.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, what do you think about the duck?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: I wouldn't get the duck, it sucks.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah that that that helps, I'm sure, if you can, if you can tell them they shouldn't spend that money.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: Just stepping back though, maybe to the 40,000 foot level, I mean, I don't think any of us here would disagree.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: Uh well, two things.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_03: One is I do think with small businesses, if you have specific cases where you can say, here is Company X that was this size in this market doing this thing, and they did these three things and now they're here.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_03: That really helps people understand that.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_03: Like I here I always talk about Sam's furniture.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: Sam's furniture, nothing special.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_03: Same furniture you buy everywhere in the United States at all these furniture stores.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: However, they were relentless advertisers.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_03: They covered uh billboards, radio, and TV.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: And they had two messages.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_03: One, get it at Sam's, same-day delivery.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: And they just pound that into your head.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_03: And then suddenly, lo and behold, after a period of time, they're now the largest store in the state.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: So I like using cases or Coca-Cola.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_03: I always, you know, I would say, here's Coke.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: How much do they spend on marketing and advertising?
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_03: Here's Yummy Cola.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_03: How much do they spend on marketing and advertising?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: Which one sells for more?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_03: Which one sells more?
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, well, yeah, they sell a thousand times more Coke and it sells for twice the price, the Yummy Cola.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_03: But they didn't minimize.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_03: I think that helps.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_03: But if you if you look at the the the mass of small businesses in this country, and the Lord knows how many there are, I see different numbers: 35 million, 40 million, whatever.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, a zillion of them are one person companies.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: But you take almost any business in any market, and nobody stands out.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: And there's such a great opportunity.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_03: If you're the one company in this crowded, mature, fragmented marketplace that embraces the idea that marketing and advertising is gas on a fire, that it's just not that hard to excel.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I personally believe.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: I love the SAMS furniture example.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's a great example.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_02: So they believe in awareness that drives foot traffic.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: They have a call to action, go to Sams, and they have a value proposition, same-day delivery.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's very simple, it's very consistent, it's easy to digest because it is the same product.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, the advice that we give to a lot of businesses is we well, we ask them what brands do they admire and what do they do.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and it could be code, it could be Sam Furniture.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_02: And we say, okay, great, well let's look at what you're doing, what you're asking us to do, and let's find the differences there.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then for small business owners, you know, talk to your competitors.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: I have a number of competitors in my field.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we compete against business for each other every day.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_02: But we talk to each other.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_02: And we because we have the same problems, it's a huge market, furniture market, soda market, media market.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: There's lots of business to go around.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_02: But they'll help you.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if you ask them and if you tell them you have a problem, they'll help you.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: And they one day might ask you for help too.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I I I would really tell any of your listeners to do that, to talk to your their competitors and to um shit uh share problems and secrets.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_05: You know, one one thing they keep coming on back to, and you started out with this, Devin, and then Mark, you just kind of brought it up, is is what we're really saying about the small the business owner is this is an attitude and a perspective, a correct one about advertising and marketing, which is you absolutely have to do it.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_05: You know, you absolutely and then you need to be open to start with that as a yeah, like mental like Devin won't work with you if you have a crappy attitude about advertising and marketing, like it's not going to be a good fit because like he's he doesn't want to argue with somebody, you know, and and experience that kind of back and forth dialogue.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_05: But that attitude is so fundamental if you're building a business.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_05: It it's just like a lot of the you know, if if you're an aspiring founder and you're going out raising money with investors and you go in there and your spreadsheet has all these great numbers and profitability and scalability and stuff, but you have no advertising marketing budget, or it's sitting at that all the time.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that that's I mean that's a shit.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_05: That's a crappy half a percent, or that's what that's the wrong attitude about building the business.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_05: You're trying to build, you're investing your entire being as a business owner into this business, and that means you need to like you have to invest in in promoting in advertising and marketing.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_05: And so you want to work with people that have good attitudes about the services that they're trying to select with you, right?
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, if you're selling anything, if you don't believe in furniture that you need a couch, well, why bother trying to sell them the couch?
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, there's a belief in advertising that's required.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I I I would give that to anyone.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: And if someone doesn't believe in it, you know, really look at the businesses, try to find one that maybe's been successful.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: You might have one example.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: But there are millions of examples where businesses have succeeded in different ways for different types of advertising.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: And it's also important to be open to new ideas.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: And that means listening to your family, that means listening to your peer group and your competitors.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: Because they'll have gone through things that they have tried or not tried.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: And um and you have to think about it differently.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's it's funny, I've had uh law firms as an as a client before, as an example.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: They're great lawyers, okay?
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: They're great at being lawyers.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: There some of them are good business people, but none of them are great marketers.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a it's a very difficult discussion to have with a group of managing directors at a lawyer or managing partners about that.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, it's going back to that growth plan.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think you mentioned that earlier.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_02: And if you don't see the growth in advertising, or if you see a growth in sales but a reduction in advertising, we see that all the time.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_02: And and we we talk to the clients and saying, Where where do you expect the growth to happen?
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_02: What is the overall plan?
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's not our business to know that, but um, we want their business to be successful and we want uh media to be a big part of that success.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, increase in spend does not necessarily mean it's not required.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: You can do lots of nifty things.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_02: There was a great case out just this week.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_02: MasterCard reduced spend and grew their brand uh over the last 10 years.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_02: Fascinating.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_02: And yes, that's a huge global brand, but you need a belief and you need a plan, um, whatever side business you have about how you're gonna grow the business.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_03: I think, you know, you take your lawyer example there, Devin.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_03: I think a lot of the problem, I spent my entire career working with professionals, architects, and engineers.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_03: And they're not that much different from lawyers or CPAs, let's say.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, they're all in the same business, right?
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_03: Selling expertise.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_03: But the problem with a lot of them is they don't believe there's any science to marketing.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_03: There's a science to being a lawyer, there's a science to being a mechanical engineer, but marketing, no science to that.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you you alluded to that, I think, early on, that there is a science to all this stuff.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_03: Do you find that's the case?
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, um every profession thinks that they're the only profession is a part of that too.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: But there are so many great case studies and models and studies and proof points within existing companies.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: And there's so many great frameworks that you can apply to your business about what you need to do as a uh mature company, as a startup, the small business, and what your scope and scale is.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there's so many resources out there.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you could ask ChatGPT or another LLM, but to your point of hallucinations, I don't know.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: If that'll help.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: But um, you know, and if you're if you um as a founder or owner, if you're just gonna disagree with it, I mean, okay, that's that's fine.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna disagree with it and and maybe it's not for you.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: But um, you know, every field is their area of expertise, and firms like mine have people who have, you know, five to thirty years experience in marketing and media.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: And we we've seen a lot.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we've worked across hundreds of brands and thousands of campaigns.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: It really is.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's a fun way to learn about it and learn about different businesses and the way that different businesses are structured.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_02: But um, the math behind it is uh undeniable.
• 43:07
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• 43:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_05: Then let's uh so speaking of that, I want to kind of turn into like what's the value of working with a company like yours versus for doing your own.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_05: So but there's a lot of questions in that.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_05: And you mentioned some of that that experience that you guys have had within your firm combined whatever, it doesn't necessarily mean like if if I was approaching a firm like yours, like I need to come with an an attitude and understanding that hey, you guys have seen a lot more things happening in this world, and just having that experience of going through these changes and these evolutions.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_05: And technology and the marketing platforms, et cetera.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_05: You actually bring a lot of weight.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_05: It's kind of like a lot of mentorship.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_05: It's like a lot of, you can see down the road better than I can as somebody that just had an idea about creating a coffee cup that I think is going to be the best damn thing under the sign, right?
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_05: Which is great.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_05: You need to have that as an entrepreneur.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_05: But when you it's like it's like going into an attorney.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you got to find one that knows something about you do.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_05: And you need to have a good general counsel.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_05: But if you're going to sell your firm, you don't want to use your general counsel to go negotiate.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_05: Or if you get sued, you don't want that person going in being your litigator.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_05: Or if you're going to apply for a patent, you know, there's specializations here.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_05: There are.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_05: First of all, I guess the two questions is one, are you a general consultancy agency that kind of is your brand partner, you know, overview watching, like a general counsel?
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_05: And do you believe that there's, and if so, are you that, or are you a special specialty house that's really great at this specific vertical, whether that be in social or or advertising, media buying, whatever?
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_05: Because there's a lot of that.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_05: And to your example, like with Ford, that's why they have so many people.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_05: They had 40 companies.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so they're specialized.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_05: And who are you?
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_05: What do you do?
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_05: And then how would you advise companies on to approach this specialization versus generalization?
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_02: So, first thing then, you know.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: You need to recognize as a business owner, you're making coffee cups, you're probably great at coffee cups and acquiring card cardboard and design and packaging and efficiency and distribution.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_02: Amazing.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_02: But it doesn't mean that you're great at parking.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so just recognize that first and foremost.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you could start small, you could do things on your own, you could hire someone to do that.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_02: And whether you want to be in meta or, you know, those great radio ads that you mentioned before, you can get away with that for a bit.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: But you're gonna have a very hard time learning, and you're gonna have a very hard time scaling.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, businesses like mine, we have 70 people who do this in different areas of fashion over time and different levels of experience.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_02: There's firms that are much larger, and there's firms that are much smaller, but they are experts in this.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like your lawyer example, they're experts in being a lawyer.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_02: Great.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_02: So just recognize that first.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_02: And once you get over that, or if you agree with that, then it's time to engage a professional as an individual consultant or an agency.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_02: For my agency, we focus on mid-market in particular, and we really like uh the challenger type brands.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so we will not work with, you know, we work with people who make local marketing decisions.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so they might be a global company or they might be a regional company, but we they have a VP of marketing, they have a CMO or a director of marketing.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_02: They put they've invested in it and they have that structure.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_02: But within our field and within our group, then we have specialists within it.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_02: We got a call this morning from a health food brand based in Texas, and they just want to hire us for Google Ads.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, great.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's a wide type of Google Ads within the environment, from search to display to YouTube, super.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so, yeah, we have a team that specializes in the Google performance that will engage for that.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that's the thing within media is that we're as a media agency, we're experts at that.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's different disciplines within it.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: Broadcast is becoming the new specialty because very few people know how to use it and know how to buy it.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's its own unique thing.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that I think will be the last specialty within media.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_02: But um, all the platforms are so unique in how they're set up.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, even if you wanted to hire a social agency, how you go and buy and optimize on TikTok, as an example, is very different than Instagram or Snapchat or X or LinkedIn.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: The platforms are all different.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_02: So you have to find the right mix of partner to max your scale, to max your ambition, and to max your expertise about where you want to go.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: But it does start with asking a question to yourself if you're an expert in marketing or in uh making some.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so just to for clarity, it's like there's your agency has a specialty of industry.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_05: Right?
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_05: Because you said you you said brands, so we're talking about product manufacturers, right?
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_05: So there's that.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_05: There could be brands for a service, but yeah.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, could it be brands for a service?
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: For sure, for sure.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, our our specialty is in with meat is in media, you know, and um it's not necessarily within packaged goods or automotive or whatnot.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's within media.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_02: That's how we contractors agencies is often will be exclusive within a category.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_02: The information that we learn about um Yeah, they can't work for another product is very deep.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_02: We learn a lot about it as a way to understand how to make emotional connection and price proposition or value proposition and how to target it.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_02: So we have to specialize as a as a media service.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: But for us in growing our business, we did a similar thing.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when I started here uh five years ago, you know, we were more focused on traditional media and um we did some digital work and some social work.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_02: But I added in more of the upfront strategy side, of the data side of things.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's in my background, and of uh getting more into the digital side of marketing.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that's how we've we've scaled our businesses by different diversifying the specializations and uh different clients we can serve.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's a great um place to end this.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_03: We're gonna have to wrap this up, but let's just say I'm somebody out there, I've got a business, I'm willing to commit 25 grand a month to marketing and advertising.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_03: 25 grand a month to outside marketing expertise and paid media.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_03: Let me say that, not counting my internal spending.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_03: Could it are are we too small for a company like yours, or are are you a good candidate to help us?
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there's companies like mine that can handle that, but that would be too small for my company.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we work at a different scale than that.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_02: But there's people in your like if you're in that range, there's people in your professional network, there's people in your city, there's people in your town who are great at that and can do that.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_02: You have to talk to them.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_02: You can talk to me too, and we can point you in that direction.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_02: But there are there are thousands of great agencies out there with so much expertise and so many great ideas about how to invest your media and how to how to help you grow your business.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_05: So to help the small business owner that might be like, holy crap, 25 grand and I can't afford you.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_05: Like it demystified for them from the agency perspective, why you why you have why that's not enough for you guys?
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_05: Like, because I think that's a confusion point, right?
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_05: Why why is that not enough investment?
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, this is gonna sound terrible, but in media,$25,000 does not go a long way.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_05: Sure, sure.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, if you have a small business and you're focused on a region or city or town, great, okay, that's fine.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_02: And you're gonna best build your business there as a service provider or a physical product to sell.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_02: You can do that.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_02: If you're a digital-based business and your market is North America, you're gonna have a really hard time.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_02: And you're gonna still have to pick as a narrow audience to to market against and to target to effectively use that$25,000.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it is it is uh it is tough to do.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_02: We have these same discussions with clients who come to us with a couple decimals on the other side, and have to say to them, this is not enough money for what you want to do.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_02: You have to make some hard choices about where you're gonna grow.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_02: Every business of every scale, you could be$25 a month, and you have to think about your focus, what your target's gonna be, how they're gonna align to your value proposition, and how you're gonna sell to them.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_02: I I think it's a mistake that so many brands make and businesses make that they think they can sell to everyone, and it's it is so hard.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_02: We start off the conversation about a fractured market and all the ads that you get.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, people are exposed to thousands of ads a day.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_02: How are you gonna stand up?
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the narrower the market, the easier it is to market to them.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_03: That's for sure.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_03: I love that answer.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_05: I know we're ending, but I love that answer, and I think that's so helpful for our audience because if you're if you're looking for a partner and you are a localized small business, you don't have much money, you're bootstrapping everything, like you should be as a freaking entrepreneur because that's what entrepreneurs do.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_05: Sure.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_05: But your selection and who you go approach is very important.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_05: And it's not about the fact that you're so expensive, it's about the fact that my investment is it's a small geography and local laws, and the bigger it gets, the more it's going to cost for me to reach that.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_05: So all right, Devin.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_05: Well, how can people get a hold of you?
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you can uh find me on LinkedIn, Devin McDonald, and that's easy.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, or on our website, Karen's O'Neil.com.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_02: And um happy to talk with any of the listeners.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_02: You can say I heard you on the big talk about small business, and I'd be happy to shout with anybody.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, hey, Devin, one last question.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_03: You seem like a really smart guy, and so I'm sure other people are out there, and you're still calm, which is really nice.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_03: They're gonna be out there listening to this.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_03: What if they said, you know what, we're not gonna hire Devin's agency to do anything, but we'd love to just have Devin come spend a day with us, and we'll pay you as a consultant.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_03: Do you ever do that?
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I've done it.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_02: I've done it before.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I used to be a consultant and um, you know, happy to talk.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: Always happy to the first phone call is free, but um happy to go and talk with people.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_02: And there's people on my team who are uh way smarter than me, too.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_02: So uh there's there's lots of experts here.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's really cool.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_05: Nice, Devin.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks so much.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_05: We appreciate your time.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_02: Devin great speaking with you both.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_03: You as well.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, until next week, it's gonna be in another episode of Talk About Small Business.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you, Devin.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_04: We appreciate you, brother.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks, Devin.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_04: Cheers.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_04: Cheers, man.
• 55:46
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• 55:49
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