Latest / Big Talk About Small Business / Ep. 47 - Navigating Business and Life Together: Lessons from Jodie Spears and Glenn Berkman

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Ep. 47 - Navigating Business and Life Together: Lessons from Jodie Spears and Glenn Berkman · Big Talk About Small Business

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: hey everybody.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: We're back again with another episode of big talk about small business.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: I'm here with my buddy and mentor.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: He used to be a mentee.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Now he's my mentor, eric howerton.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Uh and uh, it's great to be here with you, eric.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: How are you doing today?
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: I'm doing fantastic.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Mark.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: I appreciate it.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: It's always wonderful to share time with you.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: We have some great guests today too.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: We do have.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: We've got Jody.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: Spears oh I can't wait to meet them?
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
• 0:40
  Speaker 4: Can't wait to meet them.
• 0:41
  Speaker 4: Oh, I'll bet you can it.
• 0:42
  Speaker 4: Can't wait to meet them.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'll bet you can.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: It's going to be a fun day.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: We got Jodi Spears and we've got Glenn Berkman.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: They have a podcast called the Couples Inc Podcast, but Eric and I are not a couple.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that's what you thought.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: We do have man love for each other, true, okay, but we are not a couple.
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: It's a bromance.
• 1:07
  Speaker 4: Go ahead and own it.
• 1:08
  Speaker 4: It's a bromance.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: It's been a long running bromance but um, but anyway, I just wanted to make sure that was clear.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Um to everyone.
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: We like to talk to experts in small business and micro business and and to people who are, you know, small business adjacent, not just couples.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: So sure not.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Not that there's anything wrong with that not, there's anything wrong with it.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Safe place for you okay, um, but uh, anyway, the these two is on top of their podcast.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: They have a marketing consulting business called living pink.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: How tell us a little bit about that, guys?
• 1:54
  Speaker 5: Wow, it starts with a journey.
• 1:56
  Speaker 5: Jody and I met at a mutual friend's house at a party, and from the moment I saw her and this is going to sound like some kind of a canned answer, but it's true it was like a bolt of lightning.
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: In a good way, not like he was you know spasming on the floor or having some sort of you know, internal burning.
• 2:10
  Speaker 5: I was spasming but I hit it real well, and through the next two years we had a courtship and I proposed to Jodi and about, I guess, six or eight weeks later she found a lump in one of her breasts and so we had a cancer journey since then.
• 2:32
  Speaker 5: That's gone on for more than 20 years, and about 12 years ago we started Living Pink.
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: That's you know 14.
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: It'll be 14 in October.
• 2:43
  Speaker 5: 14 years ago we started Living Pink, and the name is kind of a tribute to Jodi's journey and also to the journey that people who have had cancer, and breast cancer in particular, have gone through.
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Luckily Glenn stayed with me after the diagnosis because we were just in the engagement stage.
• 3:03
  Speaker 5: No getting rid of me.
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: No, getting rid of him, but it also, unfortunately, the cancer did, and so there was a recurrence in 2009 and that's when it metastasized.
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: So that was the year before we started living pink, because we decided we're going to do something we've always wanted to do.
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: Now's the time and we'll see how it goes.
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: Turns out, I'm still here.
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: We fought it, you know, three additional times, but we decided our approach is living pink as opposed to this being a death sentence, and so we thought we would tell our story with our marketing firm, because our marketing firm tells our clients stories.
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: So we thought it kind of made sense and it just reminds us of where we came from.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: And you got tired of doing AM radio.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Is that right, jodi, that was your early background.
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: Very, very early.
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: I started out when I was still in college.
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: I got a job at the local AM radio station W-E-K-U I'm sorry, w-e-k station, w-e K-U, I'm sorry, w-e-k-y.
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: W-e-k-u is the college station I also worked at.
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: So I had to put a Y and a U in front of me to always remember when I was doing the call letters.
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: So I was like which station am I at, did you?
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: I did Just the letter, just the letter You're listening to why?
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: yeah, why?
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: Um, but it was the kind of place where in the middle of the day, at lunchtime, they were reading the obituaries right before they did swap shop and I was just like, oh you know, is this where my career should go?
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: So I ended up switching and trying to lean more to public radio.
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: So it was a little bit more of a you know storytelling as opposed to hey, we've got the funeral home sponsoring our obituaries, let's do that.
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: At noon is the perfect time, or any time of drive time Right next to swap shop, right next to swap shop.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: The farmer calls in.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: It's like I've got two snow tires mounted on 15-inch wheels.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Now they'll fit a Ford pickup from 77 to 85.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: The tread's not too good, but they still hold air.
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: I'd like 20 for them, right exactly swap shop I mean, really, that's the swap shops may have listened to 102 yeah, that's like I felt like I was back listening to a caller on Swap Shop.
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: That was amazing.
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: I wonder if let's just open up the phone lines right now.
• 5:32
  Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Jodi, you do have a voice, though for radio I can hear it now you could have a show like Delilah, you know, except this is Jodi.
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: I have listened to Delilah before.
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: My sister and I would listen sometimes when we're, you know, driving around and whatever, and we're like Delilah.
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: And always these like dedications and talk and wonderful advice.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: She means so much to so many people.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: Delilah does.
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: She changes lives.
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: Almost as much as Swap Shop, almost as much as Swap Shop.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: She's all about love, she's all about love.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: So anyway, sorry to get sidetracked on that.
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: What better journey than Swap Shop and Delilah?
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: So there you go.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: So, glenn, though, tell us a little bit about yourself.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: What was your background prior to this?
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Living Pink marketing consulting?
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: He was also radio.
• 6:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I've had more radio experience, I think, than Jody has, and that can be a good or a bad thing, depending on your attitude about salacious activity, criminal records, income tax evasion, things like that.
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: But yeah, I started when I was a kid.
• 6:38
  Speaker 5: In high school I started at the local radio station there in the small town where I grew up.
• 6:44
  Speaker 5: School I started at the local radio station there in the small town where I grew up, hebrew Springs on Greer's Ferry Lake and it just morphed into something that was kind of out of my control, as radio kind of does.
• 6:55
  Speaker 5: But I also worked.
• 6:56
  Speaker 5: I kind of developed a knack for production, the production side of the industry, and so I worked in commercial production studios.
• 7:04
  Speaker 5: I owned a studio for a couple of years and then Jodi and I went into business 14 years ago, right, and here we are.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Well, hey guys, just as an aside here and this is a podcast about small business obviously KURM is for sale.
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: You could If we wanted to buy it and start a whole, you could come back to northwest arkansas.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, get the hell out a little rock.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Um, come here you could.
• 7:36
  Speaker 5: You know they've got swap shop that's the only stipulation, you, you've got it.
• 7:42
  Speaker 5: No, no other sales page is necessary.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: You've had it as a swap show, glenn can handle the production, jodi can do like a late night show on love Like Delilah.
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: Go ahead caller, Tell me what your issue is.
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: How can love help you?
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: This could be the next.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: You know career path variation.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: But no, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to distract.
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: No, no, this is that's.
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: That's good for us to know.
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: Sure, we could like what's what's another business, a third business.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no big deal.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: No big deal.
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: I do have a quick question, though.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: I think that might be intriguing to listeners.
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, you're both from radio and you have a podcast.
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: Like, how is that?
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: I mean, like, as far as like your podcast production, I mean, how does that transfer?
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, are you happy with the fact that you can podcast now and you have global reach?
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's just kind of a lot of a different world than just in the last decade or two, right In regards to that.
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: Sure, it's really dynamic and that's one of the things, I think, for both of us, that really attracts us to it.
• 8:48
  Speaker 5: The changing landscape, and not just from a technical standpoint but also from a content standpoint, is something that we're really interested in, and we hope that it continues, because this channel is, I think, still kind of in its infancy.
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: The podcast the whole industry.
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: I love I listen to a lot of podcasts.
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: So I love the concept of it because you get to listen when you want to listen to what you want to listen to.
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: But it allows us to tap into our past history, our work history and our talents.
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: Glenn does all the audio design and in our podcast we add sound effects, music, other other other things that enhance it.
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: So it does feel a little bit more like a professional radio program and it just kind of allows us to tap into that.
• 9:35
  Speaker 5: That's despite everything that I do.
• 9:37
  Speaker 5: It still sounds professional.
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: It still sounds professional and it just it was.
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: It was interesting because we toyed around with the idea because again we have, we're busy with our business, but this actually gives us a chance to get together and do something we enjoy and have fun and laugh a lot.
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: And you know, one of the things we always do is a quiz on it or we don't always do.
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: We often do a quiz, so we get to ask each other funny questions and it just it's a fun project for us to work on that taps into what we love doing and then also in an atmosphere that allows us to do this with a simple yes, we have audio equipment from his previous studio, but it's just an upload button.
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: You know that you can reach people who share your interests or that you want to provide information to with just an upload.
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: Does it help your marketing business too?
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: I mean, is that one of the values of from doing the podcast?
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: I don't.
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: We haven't gotten any clients from the business.
• 10:33
  Speaker 5: That's a great question, though I think some of the intangibles are probably what we're talking about here.
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: Some of the things that we talk about, we just have like a sort of a skeletal copy that we have in each episode and we take off from there and we know each other so well, for one thing, that we're able to kind of not read each other's minds but take the thought that we're on for any given time, any given part of the podcast, and really take off and run with it, and I think that that helps exercise.
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: I know it helps my brain to stay sort of out of sleep mode, as I'm a little bit deeper in my prime than Jodi is, and it's really to me it helps me engage in other ways during the workday for Living Pink.
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: And I didn't think about it.
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: I was thinking mainly from the real client comes in, because some people do podcasts especially to bring in clients.
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: Ours is to help other couples in business, but we learn too.
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: We interview other couples how they make working together work.
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: And then we also interview experts.
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: We have a marriage counselor who comes on and talks about some of the peripheral things that affect a couple in business.
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: We have experts in small business management or finance or legal.
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: So we also learn from experts and from each other.
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: So I think from that standpoint, yes, but we didn't create this to create clients for our marketing business as much as to share information.
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: One of the things when we tell people we work together and we're a couple, we automatically hear them say, oh, I can never do that, I would kill my husband or I would kill my wife.
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: And we're like, okay, first, why so violent?
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: Let's back it up a little bit.
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: Maybe you could just say you wouldn't like it.
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: But it's always oh, I would kill him, oh, it'd drive me crazy.
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: And so we were like, well, that's so weird, because we do know a lot of couples who are in business together and we thought, well, let's reach out, see if we can find them and help them.
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: But we thought, well, somebody needs to say it's not that bad, if you know your roles and your goals and you kind of you know, set those boundaries, you can make it work.
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: I mean, some people can't, and if that's the case then they probably shouldn't start a business, but it's doable, and so that's one of the things that inspired us to start the podcast.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: So what are some of the highlights that you've seen, Like what's a number one fundamental rule if we have a listener that's looking to start a business or thinking about doing it with their wife or their husband, spouse partner.
• 13:05
  Speaker 5: Run away.
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: I just talked about how it's doable.
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: I just talked about.
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: Well, we, we had to pop that balloon.
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: That's true.
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: That's true.
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: Some people should run.
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: Maybe they should, you know that's such a great question.
• 13:22
  Speaker 5: Um, one piece of advice if there were something to boil down from this, it's that you and your spouse are have, um you, you already have the relationship built in before you go into the business.
• 13:35
  Speaker 5: You're on the same team.
• 13:36
  Speaker 5: You're on the same team.
• 13:37
  Speaker 5: You have, if you have any uh experience, if you've been married anytime at all, you kind of know what to expect from your partner, and that goes a long way toward um, both new ideas and augmenting your uhing any challenges that would come up and really helping to solve those.
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: And from a practical standpoint I would say, like I was saying before, roles you really need to define the roles.
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: You should do this with a business partner to begin with, but when it comes to a spouse, it's nice to have something that you own and that you do yourself and that you trust your spouse to do.
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: We kind of boil it to the three Ts Do you have a talent for it, do you have the time for it and do you take joy in doing this?
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: So when you look at your task now, there are always going to be things that no one wants to do.
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: No one wants to do payroll, no one wants to do you know, invoices or whatever.
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: But well, somebody might.
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: But we're not that those people.
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: But we take on those things we don't necessarily want.
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: But Glenn really has a talent for writing.
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: He has the time to do it and he takes joy in it.
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: So he tends to do most of our writing.
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: I love strategy and I love meeting with clients, so that's what I do more of.
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: So we kind of by having our own, what we own ourselves helps us, because then we feel we truly are contributing to the business and we have a place If you are doing the same thing, or you're not giving your spouse something to own or become a part of, then it's not going to succeed.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so many I'm sorry, Eric, I just got to say so many spouses who work together.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: They have undefined roles.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: They both want to agree on everything.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Their employees don't know who to go to.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: They get conflicting directions and that's a huge problem.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: You know, I do agree with you a hundred percent that the role definitions and clarity of what's yours and what's mine is essential in couples that I've seen work together successfully in their businesses.
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: You know and I like that word trust too that you trust the partner.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: I mean it's just like in business, though.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: I mean like I have a partner, I mean my, my partners.
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: In the past I've 100% trusted them to get done what they need to do, and if I was with my wife working, I mean I can immediately tell you what she'd be fantastic at and I would trust her with right and hopefully now would she trust me from the things I do.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: That's the sticker, you know.
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: Well, it's good to trust the other person and then also to have their trust.
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: I think that you're right.
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: You do have to make sure that both partners trust that the other person is going to do what they're going to do, because otherwise that's.
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: I mean, you're going to have conflict and it's okay, You're going to have disagreements.
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: But if you're constantly second guessing and judging the other person on the role because you don't trust them, that's going to be a breakdown in how you manage your business and it's not going to be successful.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, my wife and I.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: One of our businesses was a design, build, construction and development company and I used to design everything prior to bringing her into that business, down to even doing paintings on the walls, designing the furniture, everything for some of our projects.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: And well, I designed everything for all of them, but the extent of what we did varied, obviously.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: That shit changed though, didn't it, bro?
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: That was also what she?
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: liked to do okay, and so you know, there was a lot of conflict there initially until I finally decided you know what it's yours, you do what you want, um, and and I did ultimately, because I think she was truly actually better at it than I was, although that was kind of hard to admit and to come to that conclusion, you know and give that up.
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: Can you give it back to me?
• 17:37
  Speaker 5: It's yours.
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: You do what you want.
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: No, that's part of the tease Like you have a talent but also, do you have the time and do you take joy?
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: There are things that I can do that Glenn can also do, and vice versa, but one of us doesn't have the time to do it or doesn't take joy in it or whatever.
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: So there are things that I know Glenn could handle meeting with clients and doing strategy but he doesn't have the time and I'd rather his time be spent on something that he really does you know, again, take joy in.
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: So it doesn't mean that you're not talented if you hand over the creative aspect of the business to a spouse.
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: It just means that it just doesn't fit in the way this needs to work that is most profitable and best for your business.
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: Because, yeah, again, there are things that each of us can do, but there's no reason to have us both take on the task of, you know, sending ads to the media.
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: Glenn has a relationship now built with all the vendors that we send ads to, and so it's just much better for him to manage it Not that I couldn't, but he's already done that and he has the time.
• 18:39
  Speaker 5: I haven't messed it up too bad so far.
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: That's the short story.
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: Yes, not too bad.
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: Not too bad at all.
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: Really good, really good.
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: At some point you're going to learn how to do it.
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: After 14 years, you'll get it right.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Let's get into the into Living Pink and some of what you do for clients.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: I'd like to hear more about that.
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: Well, we started out focusing mainly on public relations, because that was a little bit more of my background, but then we expanded.
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: So we pretty much do anything when it involves communications, whether it's paid ads, earned media, like getting on TV or getting in a magazine article, social media we manage social media accounts and then owned if they have a website.
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: We might help build the website Not us, but we, you know, contract with someone who does build the website.
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: Managing the content yeah, managing the content tends to be more of what we do.
• 19:32
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's true.
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: So, yeah, we just try to help clients reach their audience.
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: We're very good, we like to say hyper-local, so most all of our clients, their audience is Little Rock Because along with doing the paid advertising we might also find a partnership with another local vendor, so we strengthen their bonds in the community and try to focus on that.
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: We also like working with small businesses, preferably if we're working with the actual owner of the business, because you know we're the owners, they're the owners, we can talk and have a vested interest in how this works.
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: Most of our model too, mark, is B2C.
• 20:12
  Speaker 5: We've tried B2B before and's really.
• 20:16
  Speaker 5: It's not our jam.
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: We just you know it's a tough thing to do.
• 20:20
  Speaker 5: You're really speaking a different language, and our role as sort of the go-between for the business to the consumer is really what we thrive at, I think, and our success point.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: I see so like.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Do you typically have, like ongoing long-term contracts with these clients where you donate a certain amount of time to them every month?
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Is that the idea?
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: Well, I don't like the word donate, so we'll stop that.
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: Whether you realize it or not, you are going to be donating a little bit of time.
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: This is a not-for-profit business.
• 20:59
  Speaker 5: It didn't start out that way.
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: It's not by intention.
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we actually have.
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: One of our clients has been with us 10 years.
• 21:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: And then the next.
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: This year is 10 years, the next one is seven, yes, so, yeah, so we have some fairly long-term clients.
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: We've had a variety of projects, different clients, over the years, but we try to build a relationship with them and you know, for instance, one of our largest clients is Colonial Wines and Spirits and we went in back in 2013, 2014, and we created their brand, celebrate More.
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: We created a new logo, we started basically developing their brand identity and worked with them on creating community events.
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: They were already very well entrenched in the community as far as like the arts, but we brought in groups for tasting events, like we worked with the local Girl Scouts for their parents to come in Well, the parents, but the Girl Scouts, parents who would come in and we did a Girl Scout cookie and wine pairing event.
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: If you were in Boy Scouts, I almost guarantee you were drinking wine.
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: So but yeah so, but it was like one of those cases of like okay, and we junior league we partnered with them.
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: They have a cookbook.
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: We did wine and chocolate just recently with a local chocolatier.
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: So we work on trying to partner and then promote and market those events, along with just doing a magazine they have every month and other things.
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: So we work on just enhancing their brand across all the channels paid, owned, social and earned.
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: We also have Shotgun Dance Pizza and so we have gone in and worked on everything from their on hold we actually found a Sam Elliott sound alike to do their on hold we actually found a sam elliott sound alike yeah to do their on hold audio yeah, that's a lot of fun
• 22:57
  Speaker 5: oh my gosh project and he'll update those, uh, periodically.
• 23:00
  Speaker 5: And working with him is so easy and it does feel like when you get off it's a phone patch because he's out of state.
• 23:07
  Speaker 5: You get off the phone thinking that you've actually worked with sam elliott.
• 23:11
  Speaker 5: It's uncanny.
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah, oh it, oh it is great.
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: It is great.
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: Hey Park, I can't do, I can't do the voice, but you can kind of do it almost.
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: Not not as good, not here, not now, but anyway.
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: So we'll do things on hold, but then we'll also revamp their menu, We'll work on promotions for them and so forth for them and so forth.
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, if it's something the client needs that is a communication to the consumer or somehow enhances the consumer's experience, we want to work on that to make it brand focused.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: I just want to give you one little story.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: It's a minor thing but it's interesting.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: You said work on their menu.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: I had some students that worked with a Little Rock area pizza buffet restaurant owner.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: This guy had two restaurants.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, one of their recommendations this is like 10 years ago.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: He's a very successful guy, but one of their recommendations was to raise all his soft drink prices by 10 cents.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: He sold 260,000 soft drinks, so it made him an extra $26,000.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Just boom like that.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: And you know the guy.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: All they did was look at his.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: He told him who his competitors were.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: They looked at the pricing of their soft drinks drinks and said raise them by a dime oh my gosh, it's the science of menuing menus is.
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: It's like where you're?
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: We've we looked into where your eyes go when you see the menu.
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: Um, there's a formation that happens.
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: Uh, where, what?
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: What the images are, you know?
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: Should those be this or this?
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: Like, what's your most?
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: You know your best seller, yeah, what's your best seller?
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: What's your most you know your best seller?
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, what's your best seller?
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: What's your most popular?
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: Things that, like you know, pop out and so it's designed to influence you.
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: Something as simple as whether you put dollar signs in a menu or not can affect the way someone looks at something.
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: So it was such a great science and a great project.
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: We really enjoyed working on that.
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: That and and just, we love building a partnership, like I said, with the owner of the business, because he was, you know, all it's very collaborative.
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: Everything we do, we don't just like, okay, here's here, take this, you must do this.
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: We work together on it and we offer our expertise and we build a trust with them and most times, again, they've been with us so long.
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: They trust us when we say here's what I'd recommend, here's what we should do, that kind of thing.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: You know I've been in marketing for a long time now yeah, 20 years or so and what I really appreciate about you know there's big agencies, right for the big players and there's smaller agencies, medium-sized for medium-sized businesses.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: And I think that it's so appropriate, that conversation you're talking about, because the service and the thinking strategy and a little bit broader, you're pulling a lot of pieces together and you're basically taking these little, you know, gravel roads, these back roads that bigger agencies cannot do for a smaller business, right, and so I think it's, you know, small businesses need to be very careful.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: Or even, you know, growing businesses need to be careful about who they're choosing, because, if you can, to be able to work with a team like yours that can know about a dollar sign and a menu, and that impact that it can make, you know, towards their customer base is real money and like real money for the success of that business at that time.
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: Well, that's one thing we pride ourselves on is that some agencies and I don't want to disparage other agencies, but you may meet- yeah, go ahead.
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: Okay, all right, here it goes.
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: Now you might meet with the owners of the agency or the A-team, but you end up working with people further down who may not have nearly as much experience or the vested interest.
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: When you work with a small boutique agency, you are working with the owners and you are working with the consultants, who will care about the on-hold messaging just as much as we care about a large TV campaign or just as much as we might care about a print campaign or what have you.
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: We care about the minutia as much as the big stuff and you are talking to will who are consulting and doing it.
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: I know large agencies can't manage that way.
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: They can't scale, and so we've kept ourselves as a micro agency because we don't want to scale to the point where we're not actively involved with all of our clients.
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: We want to have our hands in the business of.
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: You know anyone we're working with.
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: We want to be hands-on.
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: Yeah, what she said.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: I mean like I think this is a good conversation.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: Honestly, if I was a small business or entrepreneur that was starting up a new business, this you can get sucked into a marketing void and just spend gobs of money, gobs of time without results.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: And if you're a new small business, or even for small business trying to grow, it is so critical that your investments are paying off and getting you back, especially in the marketing and advertising.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: If nothing else, they need the reinforcement, or they'll come to the conclusion that promotion's a waste of time and money.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: And then they tell you we believe in word of mouth.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: It's the best advertising.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: I'm like bullshit.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: You'll never get word of mouth if somebody doesn't come in there in the first place.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Right, it'll kill you, man.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: So they lose faith in marketing they do and like.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: Even for this small business that I have right now this podcast videos thing, you know, relentless in the weeds, you know, go get it type of marketing mentality is absolutely essential for this business.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: And if our entire team isn't doing that and if we don't have the right contractors, partners, marketing help, you know to, to get in there and do those things, I mean to have a partner that thinks like I love that, jody, I just love that example that's thinking down to the, to the letter.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: The character that you're using is is exactly what a small business needs.
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: They don't need, you know these like.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: And then the thing is is like a lot of people don't understand these different sizes of agencies and the specialty firms and what they're doing, Cause if you get into the bigger side of agencies, their brains have to be thinking about okay, I have a hundred million dollars, how do I spend that effectively to to bring back this broad reach, you know, and and all the analytics associated with it.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: That's a whole different animal than if you're running one or two locations or whatever and you're and you're just trying to get people in the door to make purchases and then to come back and just not stop thinking about you.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: You know, like that's speaking of menus, though, one of my pet peeves is these freaking qr code menu bullshit.
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: Okay I know that should have gone away after the pandemic, but it still some reason it lingers.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like you go there and you're just sitting there, waiting, and waiting, and waiting and finally you're like, hey, can we have some menu?
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: No, there's a sticker on the table Use that QR code.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, what the hell?
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: I mean?
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Do they realize how inconvenient that is and how, like some of us old people, I can't even read the damn thing?
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: I'm like For my dad passed away.
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: He only had a flip phone and he was like 74.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: So it's not like you know he's an, he is still, I mean if anything, we're veering off toward the Codgerville.
• 30:46
  Speaker 5: Oh sorry, let's don't take that exit just yet.
• 30:48
  Speaker 5: Well you're exclude.
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: You're excluding.
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: I mean I'm a member too.
• 30:52
  Speaker 5: Well, you're excluding.
• 30:53
  Speaker 5: I mean I'm a member too.
• 30:53
  Speaker 5: I hear you, mark.
• 30:54
  Speaker 5: It's pitiful.
• 30:54
  Speaker 5: I want people to get off my lawn right now.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, I'm a big fan of that.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: You know, my next door neighbor in our neighborhood, this guy, he's out there cutting his grass I'd say probably every four days.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, his lawn looks perfect.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: He's a retired guy.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: He's a retired guy, he's a nice guy.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: And I said to my wife I go, this guy, dean, is the probably the nicest human I've ever met.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Because the guy who lives across the street has an old standard poodle and every morning I'm sitting out there on my porch and I watched the standard poodle go to the front yard of my next door neighbor Poodle, go to the front yard of my next door neighbor, take a crap, okay, and then walk back over to their yard.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: And I said to him I'm like Dean, you know, every day that dog comes over and poops in your yard.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: He goes, yeah, he goes, I know, but it's old, and I'm like, wow, what a great guy you are.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, so he's not like us, glenn.
• 31:57
  Speaker 5: We'd be like know damn dog, you will, I yeah, at least you're on your front porch about it.
• 32:00
  Speaker 5: I'd be looking through the blinds kind of like that woman that was on the bewitched tv show.
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
• 32:07
  Speaker 5: Some people of a certain age may remember that.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, but back on the marketing consulting and, eric, maybe you can comment on this too.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, sometimes I think having people like ourselves who are a little bit older, who've experienced maybe something other than the digital marketing age, is helpful, unless all the customers are 20 year olds, because we see things through a different set of eyes.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: I think young people, you know it's all about TikTok, it's all about videos that last 15 seconds or whatever, and they can't see the broader picture of marketing and how some of these other things greatly impact buyer behavior.
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: Well, yeah, if you look at like, OK, I want to hop on the latest TikTok trend, Well, what are you gaining?
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: Because it may end up a lot of people see this, but how many of them are your customers?
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: How many of them are going to come in?
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: How many of them are going to even remember that you were like the 15th team to do a dance routine that everyone else is doing?
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: It's got to relate back to driving sales, driving people to come in and experience, getting inquiries, that kind of thing.
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: It's got to go beyond just what's trendy.
• 33:25
  Speaker 5: You talked about being a little bit more seasoned in the business.
• 33:29
  Speaker 5: One of the benefits of it really is that you know how things and why things work, and the same things that were true 20, 30, 40 years ago in the traditional landscape that we were brought up in work now You're trying to reach prospects and turn them into customers.
• 33:47
  Speaker 5: Whether the channel is social media or newspapers or anything in between, you're still honing that message.
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: You may have a shorter time span, a different format or an audience that is distracted a thousand different ways, but as long as your content, it's like Ted Turner used to say, content is king, and if you have that content and that compelling message, it's going to break through.
• 34:10
  Speaker 5: You're going to.
• 34:11
  Speaker 5: You're going to be successful at that.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: Well, the the reality is is in marketing, right, you're?
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: The whole intent behind marketing and advertising is connecting with your target audience, and if you're a restaurant and you have only 18 year olds that ever come in their parents never come in or anything then you can probably get away with just a digital menu.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: But if you, you know, if you're alien anytime that you alienate a certain audience sector, you're not really completing your marketing journey with them.
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: And so the answer to all this chaos of the technology advances and everything that's happening is to do both, to do all of it to meet the needs of all your clients that are walking in the door, so you're not alienating, you know, and there's a way to do that, you know, and to do that successfully, and so I think that that's your answer, right?
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: If you walked in the restaurant, mark, if you were handed menus and somebody had a QR code, maybe, had additional information or whatever, and that's what they want, to do it and then do it, you know, but don't alienate Mark.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: Freaking Zweig.
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly Because I'm going to talk about you no.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: I'm going to trash talk about you.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Everybody about you.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I've got the, I got the, I got my column in the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal, baby, but no, you know.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, though I think you know, be that like broadcast radio, or you mentioned newspapers.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: I've seen, you know, several companies here in our area.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: I always like to think of Sam's Furniture.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, they have done, you know, absolutely inundated the airwaves during the last recession of 08, 09.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: They put other people out of business by simply being on TV and radio more than anybody else.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: They just threw the money in there.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Now they're the largest furniture store in the state of Arkansas.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: Money in there, now they're the largest furniture store in the state of arkansas.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: And, and you know, sometimes I think some of these sort of old, what the a lot of marketers would consider are tired platforms, direct mail or whatever some of these things it can be really effective.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: Now, you, you, and that's enduring too.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: That magazine could lay in somebody's doctor's office for two years and somebody could pick that up you, you, y'all be, y'all be happy.
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: You know we're about to do a direct mail drop here, right, and I'm building it as a consistent monthly campaign.
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: You know we have different campaigns each month, but direct mail, direct mail, yeah, with social, with podcasting, all these other things that we're doing, you know.
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: But I mean DM man, I love me some DM and it's a force.
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: It can be very effective for some clients and some audiences.
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: You can't just write off an entire channel.
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: You know, if it works for you and your audience, then it's a perfect channel.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: Well, they never know if they don't try it.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's like people say direct mail doesn't work.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: Whenever I hear that, I'm like okay, that's why Restoration Hardware sends out four catalogs in a plastic bag.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: Together that probably cost $20 to print and mail because it doesn't work Right.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: And they keep doing that.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Obviously it works, or they wouldn't do it.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: Well, and the thing that a lot of, I think folks Jody, jody, glenn, y'all might agree with this but, like, if I do this direct mail piece, I may not, I'm actually not anticipating to hitting the target audience, right, that that I'm really going after that.
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: That will actually be the ones that we're doing the work for.
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but I'm really going after the influencer, right, you got the somebody that, like the parents that see this, or they know a friend that have somebody that's about that needs that service.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: Like there's a lot to that ancillary, because you know, you mentioned word of mouth earlier, mark.
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, it really is still the strongest referral.
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: It's not the best marketing, it's the strongest referral that you can have.
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: If I have somebody that knows and trusts, somebody that recommends to do something, it's got a lot of power to it.
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: So I want to surround all of them.
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: I want to surround the buyer and I want to surround the influencer.
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the word influencer has changed.
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: It's always been around.
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: I remember even doing a plan, a PR plan, back in the early 2000s and I use the word influencer before it existed, because I considered the media as an influence or not a target audience.
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: So if we were going to get on the news, this is influencing someone to buy something it's.
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: People have always had an influencer in their lives.
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: We also work with a company called Right at Home and they do in-home care.
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: Well, we reach the person who needs the in-home care, but we also reach an influencer, whether it's their children, their grandchildren.
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: It could be someone that just knows and cares about them.
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: So we have to keep them in mind as well when we send information out or do promotions.
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: It's like, yes, there are people who need in-home care, who might be in their 80s, but their daughter or son may need to see this and say, yeah, I need to talk to mom about, you know, getting some in-home care once a week or something.
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: So you've got to.
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: You do have to think about their main audience and the secondary audience and those influencers within that.
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: You know that whole, I guess, grouping.
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Geosphere or something, yeah for sure.
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: I actually do have a question that from one of our listeners that came up a few episodes ago and it was about marketing.
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: And I mean, you know, and I really appreciate this question because, if I can reflect back, as in my, in my entrepreneurial experience, like, when is it a good decision for a small business to hire an agency or a partner?
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: Right, I mean it's a scary thing.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: Right, it's an investment.
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: You know, you've got a lot of expenses going out and you really need to do this.
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: Like when and why would I invest into a boutique firm?
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: Like when's the right time?
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: Like, is it whenever I'm just starting out?
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: Is it as I'm going?
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: And then, how do I kind of justify that, that commitment?
• 42:22
  Speaker 5: It's really, you know, backing up to this, to the small business thing, it's a leap of faith when you go off on your own.
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: You know people that are in the traditional workspace and they're employees or team members.
• 42:37
  Speaker 5: It's really easy for them to start thinking after a couple of business cycles well, I can do this task very well.
• 42:43
  Speaker 5: I know, you know from experience I had education, training, all the things that I need to do this I can probably do it myself, better or cheaper or both.
• 42:53
  Speaker 5: So I'm going to start a business.
• 42:55
  Speaker 5: Well, you may know about your task.
• 42:58
  Speaker 5: You know about how to make.
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: You know cufflinks.
• 43:01
  Speaker 5: You're an expert at it.
• 43:03
  Speaker 5: People say you make the finest cufflinks around, but you work for someone else.
• 43:06
  Speaker 5: You want that cut.
• 43:07
  Speaker 5: You want to go ahead, flex your entrepreneurship or whatever.
• 43:11
  Speaker 5: It's terrifying and there are things that you don't know, that you don't know until you take that step.
• 43:17
  Speaker 5: One of those big things is marketing, and that's why you see so much.
• 43:23
  Speaker 5: I call it advertising.
• 43:26
  Speaker 5: There are so many people who are trying to advertise their business and promote it by themselves and they don't speak the language that most people will respond to.
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: They're technicians.
• 43:39
  Speaker 5: So, in answer to your question, eric, I think from the outset.
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: That should be one of your top priorities.
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you'll see.
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: I mean, how many times have we seen a say for instance, a restaurant opens up and they have amazing, like the facility, it looks great, their fixtures are great, their booth's great, everything just looks amazing.
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: Maybe they've got a good location, maybe not, but they've invested in that.
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: They've invested in all these things, but you've never heard, you never hear anything about them ever.
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: They just don't include that in their budget and you don't have to bring in a you know a huge agency and you don't have to give them.
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: Like a lot of times we've started out with agencies or with clients and they will.
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: It's a small, small investment.
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: Then it grows.
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: So you don't have to go in all in, but you can get in with an agency to help you get started and never like you, you don't want to miss an opportunity of your grand opening.
• 44:40
  Speaker 4: Well, make sure everyone knows about this.
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: You don't want to miss your opportunities early on, but you don't have to invest an enormous amount but then grow each year.
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: I think it's easy to overlook and think, oh well, we don't need to advertise.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: We're so good that everybody's going to know that.
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you can't build it and they will come.
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: And one of my pet peeves is when I hear people say we're the best kept secret.
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: Well, that's not a good thing, you know it's.
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like best kept secret.
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: Well, that's not a good thing, you know it's.
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: It's yeah, it's like best kept secret.
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: Find out.
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: You know, well, you shouldn't be, and it you should.
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: People should know about you and be talking about you, and it doesn't have to be a huge investment, but you do need to consider okay, how are people finding out about me If it's not in like a you know gangbusters location?
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: You're automatically going to get walk in traffic or walk by traffic.
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: You've got to think about how am I pulling people in?
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: There was an outdoor lifestyle center, there was a restaurant, but there was nothing, no signage or anything.
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: It seemed.
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: And I'm like why?
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: It's like you could walk right by it.
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: They didn't have.
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: You know, they had plenty of real estate on their window.
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: They could have been a decal, they could have just put the little sandwich board out, but you'd walk right by and, surprise, surprise, they were out of business.
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: You know it's on you.
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: You've got to make sure the experience matches what you've told them it's going to be, so you can have those repeat.
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's another problem.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: It's like you know, marketing does involve customer service.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: That, to me, is part of marketing and a lot of businesses I mean I, you know, I teach entrepreneurship and small enterprise management there at the University of Arkansas and I have for 20 years and I have my students work with an area business in a consulting project that they do every year, and you see the same things over and over, aside from all the stuff you're talking about marketing-wise that they do not do over and over, aside from all the stuff you're talking about marketing-wise that they do not do.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: The other thing they don't do is they look at labor like it's a number on a spreadsheet, on a business plan.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: We're going to pay $20,000 for servers or whatever.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: There's no benefits, there's no training, there's no philosophy that they try to embed in these people about what they're trying to do.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: And then, as you say, people come and they end up with a very mediocre experience.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: Maybe the facility's nice that tends to be what they emphasize or the food itself is nice, and they just blow it right there, you know.
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: You've got to think about it completely.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: It's holistic blow it right there.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: You know you got to think about it completely.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: It's holistic.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: That's why my dad, who was in the ad agency business, started out immediately after world war ii and he was a the true don draper character, um, in real life, in every respect, down to the jag and the clothes and the heavy drinking, um part, um part and became very successful but got disillusioned in the late 60s, just like Don Draper did.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: He said that the problem with marketing and advertising is that the real problem is a management problem.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: It's where management allocates its resources and its time.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: So you always have to keep moving up the food chain to work with the very top people, which is essentially what you guys were saying early on here.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: You know you want to work with the owners because their problem, you know, marketing is a pretty wide.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: You can cast a pretty wide net with marketing, depending on how you define it.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: You know the product and service itself is part of marketing.
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, it's one of the things that Glenn does, as managing the Shotgun Dan social media pages, because they have three locations is, in some ways, customer service.
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: I mean he will respond to bad reviews and make sure that there is a solution if possible.
• 48:52
  Speaker 5: That's where the real curmudgeon comes out.
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: You call that a complaint.
• 48:56
  Speaker 5: I have a complaint for you.
• 48:57
  Speaker 5: Then I just go down.
• 48:58
  Speaker 5: I've got to like 10 on a template.
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: And they get so tired they don't want to complain anymore.
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 49:02
  Speaker 5: You never hear from them again.
• 49:04
  Speaker 5: It works really well.
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: So say that again, glenn.
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: I didn't understand.
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: Like, what did you mean by that?
• 49:11
  Speaker 5: No, this is the social media for Shotgun Dance, for our pizza client.
• 49:15
  Speaker 5: They have multiple locations and sometimes you know you'll have people that'll put on Google or Facebook or whatever that they had a subpar experience and you know we shut him down really quick.
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: No, he's kidding, he actually does respond.
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: He responds really well, Even even to the questions that make no sense, like what size is a 10 inch pizza?
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: That's an actual that was an actual question and we're like okay, I think they meant how many slices.
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: It may have been a person from Europe, you know that was going to visit.
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: We're like well, yes, let's translate it into centimeters.
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: You could say that's 127 millimeters, or whatever.
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: But yes, so he.
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: But he responds, but he responds even if they're kind of ridiculous.
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: Or or you know they say because that's part of the experience is the follow-up too.
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: You know, because that's part of the experience is the follow up too.
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: And so, as and with social media management, we can't answer everything.
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: If something's in stock, we will send it to the business itself and he often will have to say, please call the manager's office, but you've got to follow up with that.
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: And customer service is a huge part of that and it comes down to training is a huge part of that and it comes down to training.
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: Sometimes, you know, are you fully training these people to provide the service that you expect, because they're not going to love it as much as you do as the owner?
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: But there are things you can do to try to help them understand why it's important that they greet the person, certain, you know a certain way, or make sure that they do refills there through training, and then, like you said, hiring the right people they need.
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: It's not just a line item, it's not the same as like, okay, we need this many desks and also this many employees.
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: It's not the same.
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: You've got to really put some time and effort into who you hire as well.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: Well, hey, unfortunately we're running out of time here.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: Hey, unfortunately we're running out of time here.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: So why don't you tell our listeners how they can find your podcast?
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: First, tell us a little bit about the Couples Inc podcast location where that's housed.
• 51:20
  Speaker 5: Sure, it's just about any of the main services.
• 51:24
  Speaker 5: We're on Apple, spotify, we were on Google until they dropped Google and we're transitioning over to the YouTube channel that they're making use of now.
• 51:34
  Speaker 5: But just any syndicator.
• 51:35
  Speaker 5: If you search for Couples Inc Podcast, you'll find us.
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: And we also have CouplesIncPodcastcom, which you can listen to the episodes on there as well, and also it'll show the different locations that were listed.
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so we're all.
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: We're all fine.
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: Podcasts are sold.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, that's good to know.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: You said that, said that like a radio commercial.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: But so, and then, and then, living Pink, your marketing consulting business, where can people find that?
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: Livingpinkcommunicationscom.
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: That's our main website and you can find out a little bit more about us, some about our work, our strategy and our approach to things.
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: You know, we even include sort of a resonate roadmap where what we do in terms of using all four channels paid, earned, owned and social so you can learn a little bit more about us, and learn a bit more about us as people, because we're people too.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: Well, indeed you are.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: Well, it's been great talking with you two and we wish you very, very much success in your business.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: It sounds like you've got a great thing going, that you're still smiling and having fun and working with your clients, and it sounds like it's going very well for you.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: So congratulations on that.
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you, thanks, mark, thanks, eric.
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: We've really enjoyed this.
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: This is fun to kind of talk about what we do and get a chance to just you know with other people besides ourselves besides ourselves normally we just have these microphones and we just talk to ourselves.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: You're the ones interviewing people.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: Now we we get to turn the tables on you, um, but uh, so great uh having you on the show and uh, everybody uh here at listening to big talk about small business.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: We're still looking for a good sponsor this is this.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: This is not a money-making venture over here.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: Uh, we're putting a lot of good content out, so if you do have an interest in reaching a small business audience, we'd appreciate hearing from you.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: For the record, for everybody.
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: Like button, smash that like button that's right, that's smash it like follow.
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: For for the record, I'm getting like, just for those of the world knows, mark asked me like when we gonna make money on this thing?
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: Man, I'm like, I'm like you know we go back and forth, so mark is on it, just so everybody understands.
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: Like where, where's the sponsorships, bro?
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: Where's?
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: the sponsorships.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: Where's the beef?
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: Where's the beef?
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: Wendy's is not a sponsor.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: We have fun doing the show nevertheless, and it's always great, so until next week.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: This has been another episode of Big Talk About.
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: Small Business.
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: Thanks everybody.
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: Be sure to head over to our website, wwwbigtalkaboutsmallbusinesscom and click on the ask the host button for the chance to have your questions answered on the show.
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: Stay connected with us on linkedin at big talk about small business and be sure to head over to our website to read articles, browse episodes and ask questions about upcoming shows.