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Marketing is a system (Brett Hollman and Jamie Schneiderman) · Unstuck Pod

• Jamie: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Unstuck Pod. I'm really excited today to have Brett Holman here from Angie. Brett, it's nice to meet you. ⁓ nice to meet you. Nice to see you. Thanks coming on. Brett Hollman: Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me, Jamie. Jamie: So can you start off, I'd love for you to share with everyone a little bit more about your background, some of the things that you've done, your journey that taken you to where you are today and what you're doing. And we obviously wanna hear about that as well. Brett Hollman: Yeah. Sure, know, I mean, going way back, was, you know, in kind of architecture and software development manager kind of, you know, positions in my early career. And then I ⁓ eventually, that was at a company called Level Communications that eventually kind of over to being a solutions architect over AWS in the early days. So I was lucky, one of the first few. I think like probably number 20 at AWS in terms of solutions architecture, got to help open the Irvine office and open California for Amazon. It's pretty exciting time. Left to be a SaaS CTO in 2016. Did that for about three years. The company had an exit shortly after I left. And yeah, that was a good experience. Went back to Amazon, to AWS to build up their AI solutions architecture organization. It's kind of what I left for. ⁓ And I ended up building that from a few engineers, ML data scientists to massive team ⁓ spanning in North and South America. And had teams facing the product teams, teams facing customers, all that. eventually, ⁓ I had opportunity to go over and lead the AI team at and Intuit, which was the platform team that sat across all AI services across all the products and different companies and subsidiaries and so on and so forth. So we to build up the generative AI platform, GenOS. was the product development leader for that. That's one of their big hallmark achievements in the last few years. yeah, anyway, left for NG in 2024. But of course, we started building it nights and weekends before that. I did hire a CTO and he was kind of full time for a few years before we went live. And been live since, I think it's May 8th, 2023. So just past three years, this is our birthday month. And yeah, here we are. So I'm filling a different role, kind of a hybrid business and technology role. But it's been a great experience getting to spread my wings a little bit. Jamie: years in. So, okay, so I want, we'll come back and talk more about some of your AI experience. Cause I think there's, well, you've worked in some incredible places and been part of some really interesting things you talk about early days at AWS you know, Intuit platform and all, like, ⁓ again, and I could go on and on, but I think, I think that's interesting. So I do want to come back to it, before we go forward, so can you tell everyone a little bit more about what is NG? ⁓ Brett Hollman: Sure. Yeah, very interesting. ⁓ Jamie: Who are who's the customer? What are you? What are you working on there? What is that? Brett Hollman: Yeah. Yeah, our ideal customer is sole entrepreneurs and small business owners, like teams under 10, I'd say. And we're basically service-based businesses ⁓ that into that. And we have a lot of wedding professionals, event professionals, venues, ⁓ designers, web graphic designers, people that are doing something creative service-based usually is. kind of our core customer. And we kind of focus on people that are trying to grow. Like see marketing as something they should be doing, not shouldn't be doing, or just don't want to do. They see it a value to grow their business. And Enji is, we've repositioned a little bit. But essentially, our repositioning would say we're a marketing project management tool that not only helps you plan your marketing. And we do have an AI that helps you build a marketing strategy and plan, but then also to do your marketing. And we have all these tools plugged in. But at the core, we're project management tools that help you put it all on one calendar, create your content. You know, we've got our own AI copywriter that writes, you know, we build a brand voice and brand identity for you. It creates content for you using that brand voice and brand identity, you know, puts it on your calendar, schedules it out to destinations. We pull back the metrics, present them all to you in a nice dashboard. So it's like a full multi-channel marketing thing, but we also have all the tools for social media and content kind of built into the platform. A lot of things you'll have to go external for. Like if you're going to do advertising, of course you're going to go to Google or you're to go to Meta or whatever or LinkedIn. but you know, at the core of kind of content is content and social media are built into the platform. But the strategies you get are multi-channel and, or omni-channel, I should say. Jamie: So these are your customers, busy, they're running their own business, they've got stuff going on. So the for them is what? ⁓ It's chaos and there's too much happening and it's hard to keep track of everything from a marketing perspective? Is that? Brett Hollman: Mm-hmm. I would say, first off, most of those customers, that isn't what they ⁓ are in. ⁓ They're in doing their trade, whatever that might be. ⁓ If a wedding planner or somebody running a venue or a DJ or a web designer or what have you. Some people more aptitude than others, but their aptitude marketing. When you sign up for Enji we get your website, we take it, we scrape it. We have you go through a 20 question questionnaire, but we answer a lot of the questions for you from your website and just make sure that you confirm those or make changes as you go through. And then the AI creates a strategy and a plan for you. And we think most people, we know most people don't have a strategy or plan. And the biggest problem people are having is knowing what to do, staying consistent, and then tracking their metrics realizing what's working and what's not, and what they should push harder on, what they should get rid of. Like those are three basic things, like consistency is much easier if you have a plan. If you've documented something and you actually know what you want to be doing each week and what you should be doing, you know, like from, from an expert, you then, then you're going to feel like pretty confident and you're going to feel confident being consistent in giving those tasks done every week. And then, you know, like looking at the feedback loop, Hey, ⁓ what's out of the four or five things I'm working on. these three things are working. This one's terrible. This one's okay. Maybe I fix the okay one, get rid of ⁓ one that's not working ⁓ so on. So we try to build that pattern for people. That's what we are. ⁓ And guess the best way, ⁓ you you asked what we are, a marketing system for solo pre-nurses and small business owners, right? We help you build that marketing system. Jamie: Okay. No, that's great. Okay. so listen, let's a little bit about ⁓ why group, why that problem, ⁓ and curious how you're reaching folks like that. ⁓ where reaching people, yeah. Brett Hollman: Sure. Yeah. Sure. Well, so why that group? That goes back to, know, ⁓ so was the CTO of Isle Planner. My wife Taylor was the Director of Marketing for Isle Planner. know, Isle Planner, you know, exited a ⁓ ways back like 2020 or something like that. And they, ⁓ she came in first, got the company growing, but they didn't have a CTO or an engineering team. They, you know, built a product. The CTO had left because they'd stalled out, you know, it's just a handful of customers, very few, no revenue really, very little revenue. And then she got it kind of moving for them. and then they said, ⁓ well, we need to hire a CTO and an engineering team, product team, and so on. And came on as their technical advisor and eventually kind of thought like, well, I'm really the only one that I know of that's going to take this job. You know, I've worked at Amazon for a while. I was lucky, you know, that I got in early at Amazon and had a lot of know, vested options and stock there. And I had the chance to take a risk and make very little income. you know, so, so I did that. And, but why that customer? We know that customer very well. The, the, the wedding planner, the wedding venue, the florist. So that's where we started and Taylor's, know, the, the CMO of our company and my co-founder and, and she, I ⁓ she's kind of an influencer in that community. So that's where we set up first. And she was a marketing consultant for about a decade. And she worked with hundreds of brands over the course of that, that, you know, 10 years. And, ⁓ you know, like she always realized people didn't have a plan. So she created a plan for them. She'd, you know, then, you know, like figure out how to build a routine out of that plan that they could, you know, that would work for them. And then she helped them set up a metrics dashboard, make sure they were like seeing what worked. And so ⁓ 2020, after leaving aisle planner. back at Amazon, kind of during COVID had the idea like, hey, what she's doing is a consultant. can build software and AI combined to solve these problems and do it a much broader scale than what she can do as a consultant. Then we can do it at a much cheaper price as well than what, be a software than would do as a consultant. costs thousands of dollars to have somebody come in and analyze your business and go deep. But with software and AI, you can do that pretty quick. Jamie: For sure. Okay. a couple of just trying to make sure. So maybe let me do this. So you get clients early on, earlier because Taylor's an influencer in the space. know the space, you know some of the people who are involved. You get a certain point. assume that you... Brett Hollman: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jamie: go through this, you learn more about the product, like you'll learn kind of what's working, what's not working from people, keep making adjustments, and that's what it is. So tell me what, so where do you go next? So where do you go next, both from a product point of view, from a growing your base point of view, how does that happen? Brett Hollman: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure, sure. Well, you know, so we got our initial customers, know, mainly in the wedding or creative space. You know, since then, you know, we spent a lot of time or Taylor spent a lot of time out there. Like I'm the CEO, but I do like a lot. I do a little bit of podcasting, a little bit of LinkedIn work, but I'm like a tech founder still. And I know how to run a product, like a product organization. So like. That's what we are. We're software product and I'm a technical founder and I've been a product development leader and engineering and AI leader, know, exec in those areas. So, ⁓ like I know how to build an organization around that, but like the whole, know, kind of side is her and that's kind of her expertise. But, you know, ⁓ spend a lot of time in the early days on PR. when I say PR, I don't mean like going and getting into Forbes or things like that. mean like her. her speaking on podcasts, her, like I'm doing here, ⁓ a lot of ⁓ podcasts that are in those communities, right? ⁓ concentric circles around, ⁓ kind of the people she knows, right? So, we did a lot of our work doing guest blogging, doing that, and then we've kind been working at doing events. Events is one of the ways we kind of, You know, like he asked how we've grown since then. Like doing events has allowed us to kind of grow email lists and branch out. And you know, we've done pretty well at events. That's been one of our best things, like setting up a booth, having her at the event as well. You know, that brings people into the booth. You one of the we've done really well at some of the events, like one of the wedding events, it's like, it's everybody in the wedding industry. It's like five or 6,000 attendees, but we ⁓ know a lot of speakers, so. We'll find the topics that make sense and point people back to us and have them add that in their talk. Like, you should go check out these guys because they are going to solve this problem for you. And so then we ended up with a booth that's like 10 deep of people wanting to hear why we're going to solve that problem for them. So that's been really successful at events. The events that where we don't have that, can vary. Milage can vary. Jamie: Well, and speaking of varying, right? So, you know, one of the most challenging parts about growing any business is finding sort of repeatable, scalable ways to grow. And in particular for you, you've got a very, I say it's a large customer base, but each one of them is small. So you need to reach a very large volume. you know, in the same way, yeah, I'm sure. I want to know where like, Brett Hollman: Mm-hmm. That is our challenge, ⁓ Jamie: So look, lots of things have gone right. right. so, and that's what you built is amazing. Right. So you talk about what's next. It's, where do you foresee the challenges? What have been the challenges? What are the things that are extra about doing what you're doing? Cause it's Brett Hollman: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think like, you know, the thing that hit us hard in 2025, and I can talk about this and then can talk about where we're going this year, you know, but, but, know, the thing that hit us hard in 2025, I mean, ⁓ we're an company, ⁓ but the from ⁓ search engine to everything being, you know, like kind of found through LLMs, you know, like zero click web search, ⁓ that, that hurt us. we, we produce a lot of content. We're, very big on. Jamie: Yeah. Brett Hollman: content production, ⁓ video, blog, social, and all sorts. But that content just seemed to ⁓ found a lot less in 2025. Everything seemed to go down in 2025 in terms of web visits. And we were coming off 2024, like at the end of the year, like December was like best month ever. January 2025 was probably top three, but then February was like a pretty quick trail off and, and, ⁓ know, like things slowed down on the website. And so, ⁓ you I'll talk more about, you know, kind of the things we've done there, but then also like kind of the move to agent based tools, like we, we embed AI into our tool and we make it easy. It's, it's very, we have intelligent tools through AI. We don't have chat agents, but we think, you know, like everybody's gone to chat for everything. And we don't think it solves a lot of your problems. It gives you answers that might be or may not be great at times. And, you know, and it doesn't organize things. It's not a project management tool. It's not going to schedule for you. It's not going to do a lot of things for you, but it's the trend that happened in 2025. And we're still seeing that, you know, kind of continue and probably proliferate with, you know, agents now in 2026. And, you know, we've launched our own NTP server. You know, we've got a roadmap and we'll probably have a marketing agent. Jamie: Yeah. Brett Hollman: in 2026 as well. But we ⁓ of believe in the embedded intelligent tools. And that's the way we've done a lot of our design work. So that's kind of the second thing that I think happened to us. And third is like our customers just got crushed in 2025. ⁓ They're the hardest hit kind of part of the economy that's not really well understood. It's understood by us and looking at a lot of data, but like when you watch the news, you're like, ⁓ well. Jamie: Right. Brett Hollman: You know, the GDP still grew, but it's like big AI companies growing, like building, like spending a hundred billion on data center here or whatever. You know, like it's very different than small business. so they were hit. So, you know, this year we kind of thought, thought through, um, strategy and what we wanted to do to kind of change things. We grew last year, but just not, not like Forex like we did the year before. And so, um, you know, so like in 2024, we grew Forex over 2023, but 2025 was smaller growth, you know, um. Jamie: Yeah. Okay. Brett Hollman: So we thought through. We did a reposition recently. We were much more growing based word of mouth ⁓ and education and content. But people weren't necessarily searching for what we offered. And that was one of the kind of realizations we came for. ⁓ We talked with a that does repositions and builds on pages. Jamie: Yep. Yep. Brett Hollman: And they kind of specialize in SaaS, B2B SaaS. And they're quite good. We were really happy with the output of the discussion, two-week sprint and so on. we kind of ⁓ hey, we're not in a category that people are searching for. All our customers find us either through word of mouth or through education or PR. And we want to be in a spot where people are for that particular. you know, that that particular problem, there's an aisle in the software store that they're searching for and we sit that aisle, right? we repositioned around marketing project management. But, know, small businesses and, and we kind of position ourselves as the marketing system, not only do we help you manage your tasks and your project and do all the planning, but we also have all the execution tools built in as well. So it's a one stop shop to plan and do. And, and that's kind the way we reposition is the same platform. Of course, we still have a lot of work to do. We've got to update all of our onboarding, all of our everything really, but we've updated a lot of our marketing, our website now, we're at that point. So we believe this is a good path because it's a path where we're gonna, at the peak times of the year, we're gonna have a lot more traffic coming from LLMs, from search and from other things, where we've seen that taper off in the past. in the areas where we were kind of focused, right? Jamie: Right. So, and so you say marketing project management, marketing systems, and I'm like, are that, is that what these guys, like your customers, that's what they're looking for? They want something like that. Brett Hollman: Yeah, so we changed our ICP as well. I've watched your video on Unstuck. We had a lot of success early on. But if we look at our top 100 customers, and we know those customers really well, we talk to them, we do group coaching as well. And Taylor's got very deep relationships with probably our top 30 or 40 customers. Jamie: Okay. Brett Hollman: You know, they actually all identify with new, our new ICP, as well as our new positioning. Like, ⁓ do they get most out of it is consistency and routine. ⁓ And that's where it helps them the most. And so really resonated with us, you know, like marketing and project management for very small business that helps you plan and do, right. And then, of course, you drill down to the next layer and you see all the tools hook into the... Jamie: Okay. ⁓ Brett Hollman: the project management system. it's not just task management, it's task management, but all the tasks have tools that you can just go execute for them, right? So it's the system, that's the system part of it. But we also changed our ICP. Originally we were on this path of, hey, a lot of people have a tough time with marketing. hey, marketing's hard, but we'll help you make it easy. And that was kind of the way we talked about our business, right? And what we found was those are the customers that are tricked most because they don't want to do their marketing. And so it still work. We actually don't automate everything, although we could. but we we there are companies out there that are trying to do that all like automate the whole thing. And that that is a possibility. That is something we could do. We actually know enough about you. We could do that. But just the we serve. most of them being creatives, most of them care about what it says, what it looks like, all that, like deeply, right? So like, so there's got to be gates and it's got to be a gated process and so on and so forth. So anyway, my point and all of that is that ⁓ changed our ICP from the marketing is hard and we're to make it easy for you to ⁓ people that are trying to grow their business, right? Like the people that are type A that are focused on growth, they know marketing is important. They're trying to do it, but they need some direction, like planning, consistency, routine, and all the tools combined save a significant amount of time, also a significant amount of money for the So ⁓ we help kind of take something that might run in six tabs and copy and paste everywhere. And it's very easy to kind of get broken down in that routine anytime you are switching or navigating from one tool to another. We bring it all together, make it cheaper, everything's integrated, ⁓ and it's a easier to use. ⁓ we think is a better ICP because that's ⁓ our top 100 customers are, right? ⁓ that's a learning, know, less attrition, you know, customers that are going to stick around for the long haul because they see the value versus the people that weren't, you know, we're looking for something that was going to be kind of a slam dunk, but maybe, you know, like in terms of like, I can just be hands off. ⁓ Anyway, that's change we made. ⁓ Jamie: Yeah Well, setting setting the expect. No, no, I, so I hear you. actually think setting the expectation clearly upfront that set sort of says, do you need this? We do this, right? Don't you know, too many times companies attract folks that are. They want the business, so they attract people and go, yeah, we can do that. It's like, yeah, but you're not coming for the right reason. If you're not coming for the right reason, you're not likely to stay. By the way, I've been there. How to business. Brett Hollman: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jamie: We attracted people, I'd say for the wrong reason, got lots of growth, but wasn't, not a great sustainable model when you, when you do that. So, ⁓ Brett Hollman: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And your positioning drives who shows up. ⁓ And if your positioning is a product that's going to be very beneficial to that person, you're going to have a lot of success with them. ⁓ ⁓ one of the lessons we've learned. mean, those are all things that are pretty basic and make sense. if cast that net early on, you can keep it a small net, but going after the right people versus kind a wider net. Jamie: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Brett Hollman: It's easier to be successful, I think. Jamie: Yeah, no, for sure. I agree with you completely. OK, well, you and I can keep going on, but we're running at a time here. And this is great. Let me ask you a question that maybe you can think about. So you think about the journey. You think about the stuff that you guys have done and things that have gone well and things that haven't gone well, or call it not gone the way you expected it to. Brett Hollman: Sure. Yeah. Sure. Jamie: advice would you give others who are in this similar boat? You lot of experience, have a lot of knowledge, a lot of information, but then you jump into a business like this and, know, How do you make the best use of everything that you've got to make it work? Brett Hollman: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you know, that's funny. I wrote a LinkedIn article on this. It's kind of funny. You know, there's a lot of generic businesses out there that are built by people that have an idea and just go try to are using, you know, AI tools to just kind of build something now. And that's cool. I mean, I, know, but it's a lot of noise out there ⁓ for every But ⁓ I mean, think there's a better way to do it. And that is really to like kind of understand your customer first. Jamie: Yep, I agree. Brett Hollman: And, know, understand your positioning, understand your customer, what their problems are you like how you're going to solve them. And you know, don't just start with an idea and go build something. There's no such thing as if you build it, they will come. Other than in that movie, I'm spacing the name, Field of Dreams, Field of Dreams. Yeah. But if you it, they will come is not, that doesn't exist. So there's going to be lots of lots of clog code failures, Jamie: it's a Field Dreams. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. Brett Hollman: or lots of lovable failures or lots of, you know, like millions of them, honestly, ⁓ because people never spent the time to really like figure out what they're trying to do, like figure out their customer, figure out the problem, like talk to them and really get down into the details and then build. You know, We built, we did start by building, but we started with 10 years of experience in that problem, right? So we knew it was a problem. We really understood the problem well. My co-founder was solving that problem for 10 years and then we decided to go build something around it. But even then, we've learned a lot around who the customer should be. As a consultant, you can be much more hands-on. That marketing is hard, I want to hire a consultant for it. We're kind of somewhere in that hybrid. We're much cheaper and we do a lot of that through AI, but we're not hands-on like a consultant. Jamie: He'll tell me to do it. Brett Hollman: And you know, but we're also, you like way better than putting together your own system. We're trying to figure things out on your own. So, you know, like ⁓ each one those is a quantum leap, right? And so, so anyway, you know, think that would be My advice to like new founders out there is like, you know, understand the problem you know, and maybe you do, maybe you're coming from something where you are the expert and you see this gap. But then you know, go, go verify it. Go ask people, test people on it, then learn from that, and then build, and then you'll have something good up the gate. ⁓ Jamie: I know I think that's great. I think it's terrific advice. I think it's the right advice and everybody who's building a should be thinking that way. Folks get tend to get too very product oriented and forget like does it actually solve a problem for somebody right so. Brett Hollman: Everybody likes to fall in love with their product, right? And that's the biggest problem us, know, for any founder, right? Don't in love with your product. Be objective. you know? ⁓ Jamie: Yeah, I love it. No, it's great. Brett, thank you so much. This is great. Really appreciate it. Really appreciate all the insights and thought and sharing information. Where can folks find you, reach you? And I'll put some links in the description. Brett Hollman: Sure, yeah, yeah. our website is ng.co. See, that's E-N-J-I dot C-O. And we're on Instagram, we're at ng, E-N-J-I underscore co. And then our LinkedIn, actually, we have to go look that up. I should know it off the top of my head, but I'll give you the links. But yeah, we're on LinkedIn as well. And we have a, I think we're at at ng marketing on YouTube. And we have a huge channel on education. Jamie: Okay. Okay. Okay. Brett Hollman: know, like marketing education on YouTube, both with our product and just, you know, like things that are important to anybody that's, you know, trying to learn how to do extra wires, you with marketing. So that's up there as well. Jamie: jam. I love it. I think it's fantastic. Well, thank you so much. This is great. And for everybody who's watching, listening, appreciate it. And until next time, see you later. Brett Hollman: Yeah. Jamie, thanks for having me.