Latest / Entrepreneur Odyssey / Why Brand Strategy Beats Marketing Tactics for Growing Businesses

Transcript

Why Brand Strategy Beats Marketing Tactics for Growing Businesses · Entrepreneur Odyssey

• Tejneet Selhi: Hello everyone, welcome back to the Entrepreneur Odyssey. I'm your host, Tijneet Selly, and this is a show where we sit down with founders who've done the actual hard yards so you don't have to learn from every single mistake and lessons the painful way. Before we dive into today's episode, a quick shout out to our sponsor AI Efficacy, who help their customers gain efficiencies and grow their businesses through smart and personalized workflows. Now, onto today's guest. He started his very first business at the tender age of 15. years old. By 16 he was touring the UK as a professional heavy metal drummer. He's worked with brands like Virgin, QVC, the NHS and DHL among many others. He spent over a decade building Venter, a brand consultancy and fractional CMO practice out of London. And recently he made his dream move out to the Cotswolds. He believes that brand strategy is the single most undervalued lever in most businesses. and he's made it his life's work to prove it. Kay Neve, welcome to the Entrepreneur Odyssey. Kaine Levy: Great to be here. Thank you for that introduction. Tejneet Selhi: No worries, great to have you. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about your very first business at the age of 15. Most of us have no idea what we're gonna do at that age. Kaine Levy: Yeah. I think you know, I I grew up watching my dad as a businessman, he was an accountant. Not quite as an exciting of a business to be fair, bless him. but Tejneet Selhi: and Kaine Levy: I think that was all I knew is kind of, you know, over family dinners watching clients pester you with annoying phone calls when you'd rather be spending time with your family. And I thought, yeah, that sounds good. I want that. I I I was just Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Fair enough. Kaine Levy: always very creative, you know, I I was it was two thousand and five, I think, when YouTube was released, I would have been I think pen at the time. And I was just very creative and creating videos. My brother and I were uploading cover videos of us doing music covers of songs, you know, guitar and drums and things like that. So I was always just making videos and being creative. And that just ended up turning into a into a business. you know naturally being in a band myself, I was in that music scene and I just began creating lyric videos and music videos for bands. And initially it was for free. and in those days you could reach out to bands on Facebook and speak to the guitarists and the managers and even the labels. And it's not like now where outreach is totally, you know, impossible and and oversaturated. And and yeah, by 15 I I think I'd had clients in in seven or eight countries around the world. And I just remember sitting in school on the laptop and editing videos while all the other people were talking about the parties they were going to. I was just sat there like a little nerd editing videos and Waiting. I remember sometimes two or three Tejneet Selhi: Thank Kaine Levy: days for a single video to export at that time because the technology wasn't as good as it was now. Yeah, only to find out I'd Tejneet Selhi: Really, I'm so, yeah. Kaine Levy: made a little mistake or a typo or something and I'd have to redo it. yeah. So that that's kind Tejneet Selhi: that's painful. Kaine Levy: of where it all began. It was that kind of love of creativity Tejneet Selhi: Thank Kaine Levy: and music and just wanting to wanting to do it and then eventually just stumbled into a business that It turned out people wanted and and they said, Hey, can you do this for us? You know, I did it for my band and they said, Can you do this for us? And I was like, sure, just compounded. Tejneet Selhi: Brilliant, well that's amazing. The power of YouTube and the power of social media is incredible, isn't it? So tell us a little bit about your band. You know, go for video editing and heavy metal, a heavy metal band. Well I suppose it kind of worked alongside each other from what you explaining. Are you still musically minded in terms of, are you in a band still? Kaine Levy: I'm not still in a band. I do still play ho as a hobby. my partner's musical as well, so she and I kind of jammed together for a bit of fun. But yeah, no, I definitely I definitely wouldn't have time to to to play the way I used to. But no, I was I was touring and and playing professionally from age sort of fifteen to nineteen and I was in a band. I've never actually named it on a podcast. Maybe I will at some point, who knows? But it's do you know Tejneet Selhi: Do? Do! Kaine Levy: The the the reason I haven't is because it's it's in a very kind of t let's call it twenty tens heavy metal era, which was a particular type of like screaming technical type of met metal that I think most people wouldn't understand. So we'll we'll keep it mysterious and just let everyone assume that I'm really good at what I do. and and yeah, I was playing and Tejneet Selhi: Okay. I'm sure you are. I'm sure you are. Kaine Levy: J do you know, I was I I was a music scholar at school and music was like my whole thing. I just absolutely adored it. And I wrote most of the music for the band, you know, most of the parts for the band other than vocals and spent all of my free time outside of school, either in musical groups or or working on this band. And yeah, I just got to the point, unfortunately, when I went to university, I went to film school and well, I wanted to keep touring. My dad was like, You should probably get a real job. I somehow managed to convince him that going to film school was a a real job. I don't know how I managed to convince him of that one. But that that was pretty intense. Tejneet Selhi: you Kaine Levy: I was doing 45 weeks a year and in film school five days a week. So I didn't have the time to be touring. It was a two year degree. And I remember Tejneet Selhi: I'm a little of a... yeah. Yeah. Kaine Levy: the kind of the the evening I hung up the sticks, so to speak, and I was just kind of in tears and I couldn't I couldn't maintain the two. And I think that's been the case for the last kind of 10, 12 years. It's been very difficult to keep that. professional thing going whilst having a business. So yeah, for now it's it's a it's a hobby. Tejneet Selhi: Fair enough, fair enough. Well, if you do ever decide to pick up those sticks, I'm gonna do a shameless shout out to a voluntary community radio station that I'm on and I host local bands, local musicians to come on and promote their music. So if you do ever decide to pick up the sticks again, give me a shout and we'll invite you on Radio Harrow. Kaine Levy: I love that. I love that. I used to go Tejneet Selhi: Yeah, I- Kaine Levy: to school in Northwood, so there we go. Tejneet Selhi: Wow, that's literally round the corner. Oh good, Kaine Levy: Absolutely. Tejneet Selhi: so you would have somewhere to stay then, hopefully. Kaine Levy: Totally. Tejneet Selhi: Amazing. So on to a slightly heavier subject, and I hope you don't mind me asking, because I know what a tremendous influence your father... and still is in your life. And I know you lost him and I was just wondering, know, because it was fairly early on as well, how did you navigate that person professionally at the same time and is there still sort of a lot of wisdom that you carry from him, would you say? Kaine Levy: Yeah, definitely. I think I I d I owe like everything to him and to my mum, but certainly the entrepreneurial side from him, or to him. You know, looking back, you know, my parents put me through private school and and all these things, but more more importantly, coming out of university, I was able to go back and live with my dad for a while and I didn't realise how instrumental that part was to growing a business because I could just afford to fail and and and keep investing in things and getting it wrong. so that in itself was was was so important. And then the early days of of clients came from him. yeah. As an accountant, he had clients in all sorts of sectors and stuff, and he said, Hey, do you do you need some videos? My son's doing videos and that's how I got some of my early clients. So not only that, but just like the lessons I learned from him, how he treated clients, you know, they were people talk about accountants as like I don't know anyone who likes their accountant. I don't I'll be careful what I say publicly here, but like I don't know anyone who likes their accountant, to be perfectly honest. Tejneet Selhi: Hehehehehe Kaine Levy: everyone loved my dad. And when he passed away, everyone was like, We have not been able to replace your dad. he d he just had something about him and the way he ran business, he knew all the legal loopholes, all the special little tricks and tips that you want your kind of expert service provider in any any field to know. the way I kind of handled it when he passed away, for better or for worse, I kind of took it in my stride and I was like, you know what? He's passed away. I'm gonna do everything I can to make him proud and and and and roll with it. And I think that served me well for the most part. I think there are some undealt with emotions that, you know, men put barriers around things and and you know, that how many years, six Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Kaine Levy: and a half, seven years later I probably should still address, but for for Tejneet Selhi: you Kaine Levy: the most part, you know, he's my hero. I think about him all the time. I've got pictures pictures of him just off to the side here that I look at every day to keep me inspired and motivated. Michael. Yeah. Tejneet Selhi: Aww, what's his name? Michael. Aww, Michael sounds like a really excellent man and father and I'm sure he'd be extraordinarily proud of you. Yeah and speaking of some of your achievements, mean Venture has evolved from a full service branding agency to leading with fractional CMO and consultancy work. What drove that shift? Was it intentional or was it the market that was pulling you there? Kaine Levy: That's great question. I think I think both. I I think earlier on in my entrepreneurial journey, you kind of want to do everything. You think if you cast the net wide, you can catch fish here and there and everywhere. But Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Kaine Levy: then at some point you learn that if you just lead with one thing and you niche down a little bit, it's much easier to get your message out there. It's much easier to speak to the pain points and the desires of the people that you want to attract. So there was definitely an element of evolution in there where I was like, okay, let me just zone in on one thing, which was the strategic part, and then it became so much easier to upsell all the other things. You know, instead of being like, Hey, we do everything, it was so much easier to say, Hey, we just do strategy. And then when you do the strategy and they're like, we need someone to do all this stuff now, it's like, Well, we could do that too. It's like, well, you're the obvious choice. Let's you you did it, so let's go with you. Of course they can go somewhere else, but at that point you've built the relationship, right? But then yeah, there was also definitely signals from the market. I mean it the the fractional work has been, to be honest, effortless to sell. It's the first thing in the marketing space to me that's been absolutely effortless to sell. just for context Tejneet Selhi: in. Kaine Levy: for people, you know, I've had, yeah, I've had, you know, it's various iterations with the business from being, as you said, full service branding agency, brand strategy, video production, you know, commercials, design, you know, I've done pretty much everything within branding marketing that you can imagine bar. PR. and this has been by far the easiest thing because I I I I don't know what it is to be honest about it. I think it just seems to sit in between a niche of individual expert and full service agency. And what I mean by that is I think the full service agency model is kind of struggling. People are kind of tired of that now. And also now with AI, you can do a lot more yourself. at the same time, people are struggling with individual professionals and service providers. Like they don't just just an SEO guy, just the paid ads guy, like you know, just an organic social person. Like they need someone who can look at everything strategically from a high level and be like, this is actually what you need to do. You know, I just had a a a marketing consultancy session with a new client the other day, and she said, I need help with SEO. I was like, okay, cool. We had the session and I You know, she said, I've had these calls with SEO people. This is what they said I need to do. What's your take? And I was like, Why why SEO? And she was like, Well, because this is what they told me. And I was like, They told you this because they're SEO people. But like at the high Tejneet Selhi: No, no. Kaine Levy: level, you are trying to get leads. This is what you need to do. SEO is gonna take you a long time and you don't have the budget to invest into SEO over that long period of time. So I think this is where the fractional work has kind of sat really nicely for me in between where I can give them kind of the expertise of a full agency without having to give them all of the kind of full intensive commitment of that of that team, you know. Tejneet Selhi: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense and I think a lot of businesses, especially smaller businesses, don't have money for a marketing department. So to be able to get that advice from somebody like yourself, I think is great. And so your model, and apologies if I'm butchering this, but just for my research, as far as I understand, your model is deliberately not employment-based. Your clients are clients of venture rather than, and not employers. What does that distinction mean and why does that matter to you? Kaine Levy: So typically with fractional models, fractionals will be employed by the companies that they work for, on a three month, six month, whatever, twelve month basis. I don't work that way because I I often know what I think is best for my clients. And if I'm employed by them, there is a a certain hierarchy that I have to work to where I I can't fully tell them what is best for them, if that makes sense. I would have to be you know don't get me wrong, there's still COO, CEO that I work with in in a client model, but I'm not employed by them, so I'm not ultimately answering to them. As a client of mine, there's a dynamic where they understand that they've come to me and they sign my contract, I don't sign their contract, and therefore they come to me as the expert. I still respect the hierarchy of the business and so on. I still report to people. I don't, you know, it's not like I'm I'm just doing things on my terms and I don't respect the the values of the company and so on. But I do that because it A means I, you know, can can run things the way I want to run them, but I do that because I know what's best for them and and this allows me to do that, if that makes sense. Tejneet Selhi: Yeah, no, it does. It does. I think you know your business, you know your clients, you have been in the industry for a long time, right? So I think you've gained that knowledge, that credibility to be able to know what's best. Kaine Levy: Yeah. I I would struggle to need to and I know this happens to marketers all the time because I speak to them. I would struggle to have a CEO tell me, let's say I were employed by them, that I would have to do something a certain way and I know for a fact that it's wrong for them. As Tejneet Selhi: Hmm. Kaine Levy: as an employee I would have to kind of shut up and take it, for the most part. As a Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Kaine Levy: as as a client of mine, I can tell them no, this is wrong, you shouldn't do that and they would either have to listen to me Or we would talk about it and we would find the the middle ground. Or if we really couldn't find a middle ground, I and this has happened before, to be honest, I would I would stop working with the client because I'm not going to invest their money in something that I know is going to be a waste of their money and time. I'm not going to spend my time on something that isn't going to go anywhere because it's going to affect my track record. It's not fun running campaigns and doing things that aren't working. You know, I'm not just here for the paycheck. I want to actually do something that's working. So, yeah, I I don't know. I hope Tejneet Selhi: Yeah, I'm not. Kaine Levy: that doesn't sound arrogant, but that's that's kind of where I'm coming from. Tejneet Selhi: No, I think... It sounds like, like I said before, you've built knowledge of what works and what doesn't work. And you're ultimately there for the customer and want to do the best for the customer. And if they're trying to steer you down a path that isn't going to work, that's going to be of detriment to them and you. I think actually that makes perfect sense. Kaine Levy: Exactly. Tejneet Selhi: And it's commendable. So you went from a team of four during COVID. stand to one full-time hire today. That's always counterintuitive, that's always a counterintuitive model for most agency founders. What happened and what have you learned about the right team size for what work you actually do? Kaine Levy: Yeah, when we were scaling up, it was during COVID and I took on a whole load of expenses. You know, I got an office, I had, you know, the team of four. And after COVID, everything just kind of changed. You know, clients stopped coming into the office, they stopped work shopping with us in person, everything became online, it stopped becoming super interactive. And Tejneet Selhi: No. Kaine Levy: I just asked myself, like, why am I taking on all these expenses? You know, what what what's the purpose of this? and to add on to what I was talking about about earlier in terms of kind of the full service service agency side of things, I discovered that I didn't need to have a full time designer, a full-time this person, a full-time that person if I was leading and niching with one service. I only needed to have my kind of core team with the core service and then I could subcontract or have my core team of freelancers that I would bring in. on a on a ad hoc basis to do the other stuff as and when needed basically. So it was just a case of leaning down and just having what I needed to deliver the core service and then bringing in those other people as I needed them. Tejneet Selhi: I think that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and I'm speaking to lot more multi-agencies who do the same thing. They're bringing in contractors as and when they need them, so that makes sense. Kaine Levy: To be honest as well, I I think I got a bit overzealous. And, you know, I think when you get Tejneet Selhi: Okay. Kaine Levy: to that scale up stage, you start getting excited and you start thinking about how you can ramp things up and get bigger space and more people and more equipment and at a certain point you just realise you've taken on way more liability than you need to. And yeah, it's just not necessary. Tejneet Selhi: Yeah, no, that's fair. It's all about the learning curve, isn't it really? So I understand your first fractional CMO client told you he thought Martin was a load of... I'm going say rubbish. He might have used another word. Kaine Levy: Yeah. Tejneet Selhi: And you've now been working together for over five years. What did you do in those first weeks to kind of help change his mind? And obviously now you're thriving five years later. So what have you done for him in that time? Kaine Levy: I I do know what I agreed to a commission only model. That's what I did. I said, if you don't believe that this will work, let me do this on a commission only model. And and that's what we did for probably the first year, actually. So it was a really long period of time for me to prove myself. And Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Kaine Levy: it got to a point where he he called me and he was like I this I can't do this anymore. This doesn't like this is not making financial sense for me. Like it's costing me too much to have you on commission 'cause it's working too well. So so we had to switch it to a retainer. Tejneet Selhi: Okay, fair enough. Well, suppose that's, well, financially, I suppose, is it better or worse? Who knows? But I think the trust, I think the confidence you showed in your ability is really displayed by doing the commission model in the first place. And then the trust that he's built in you to have that long-term contract, I think is amazing. Kaine Levy: Yeah, and and and and to be fair, as you said, it was my first client in that capacity. It wasn't my first client in marketing. So I knew what I could do, but it was my first client in that capacity. And so I was confident enough to know what I could do, but humble enough to know that I I had to give, you know, I had to negotiate and I I had to step back and be like, Okay, what, you know, I can't just go straight in and charge thousands of pounds for retainers. I need to see what I can do here and improve myself. So Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Kaine Levy: That's why that's why I came up with that. Tejneet Selhi: That's really smart and think that's a really... strong lesson to any founders listening. Even if you have, say, worked in your space for years and years years, but you've worked in corporate, and then you're starting out on your own, I think having some sort of an offer or something to help prove yourself. To be honest, when I first started, I took on a few pro bono projects because you know what, A, I wanted the experience, and B, when the clients liked it, they gave me testimonials. I think, yeah. Kaine Levy: Yeah. I've I've I've heard you know, that advice is so good because, you know, there's a production company in in the US who I used to speak to quite a lot. They do brilliant work. And I I remember asking him at the time, how did you grow your business so quickly? 'Cause they went from doing really small videos to quite big commercials, really high high production value commercials. And he basically said, you know, we would charge, let's say, a thousand dollars for a commercial. Another client would see it and be like, Wow, that is incredible. How much did you charge for that? You know, they would blow it out of the water for a thousand dollars. They would probably do things at cost to themselves. Someone else would come to them and they would say, How much did you charge for that? And they would say, Two thousand dollars. And they would charge that client two thousand dollars and do the same thing where they would blow it out of the water for two thousand dollars and the next client would come and they charge four thousand dollars. And they would do that over and over again until they got to the point where they were scaling up. It's exactly what I did with my videography business when I was, you know, a a teenager as well. And even if even now at the stage of my now, if I wanted to move into a new niche or work with a new type of client or test a new type of offer or product or service, I would I would do that. I'd be like, Hey, I have all this experience, so I'm credible, but I'm testing this new service or I'm moving into this new niche. So I'm willing to do it pretty affordably. Like, what do you say? Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. and it's enticing people in, right? It's getting, because the hardest thing when you're starting a new business, a new product, a new service, it's getting those first few clients in. So yeah, you've got to be creative, I think, initially. Now you've obviously got a lot of experience under your belt, and you're pretty transparent about your fees on your website, which I really respect, because most agencies aren't. and so you're starting from around £3,000 a month for fractional work. At what point did you get comfortable pricing at that level and has there been moments where you realised that you're undercharging? Kaine Levy: Yeah, I'm undercharging now, Tejni, to be honest. I I I you know that you know that when your current clients are telling you that. and when your current clients are are worried about how busy you are. so and that's always Tejneet Selhi: Action. Kaine Levy: been, you know, this is something one of my well my my my coach has always told me, basically max out what you can take on and then when the demand is there and the supply is not, you increase your fees. So that's kind of always the model I've I've taken and and that's also to your question earlier how I knew that the fractional offer was a really in a a really popular one because the the route from not charging a lot to charging three K plus per month was very quick. You know, I think I was charging literally a few hundred pounds a month initially for the for the first retainers. Yeah. I just to like test it as an offer to to the point we were just discussing. Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Kaine Levy: it didn't take long to to get to that at all. So yeah, always like test it and and the minute you see the demand just increase because that's all you can do. Just just listen to the market. Tejneet Selhi: Makes sense, makes sense. And just for listeners who may be interested in coming to you for fractional CMO work or other services, specifically for fractional CMO piece, what do you and your team do for that? Could you just briefly give us an overview? Kaine Levy: Yeah, pretty much run the entire marketing operation for the business. So, everything from figuring out your marketing strategy to building landing pages, creating ads, running ads, doing analytics and reporting, setting up pixels and tracking, running email marketing campaigns, yeah, pretty much anything you can think of around marketing and branding, design work, website related things, y yeah, it's it's very it is really comprehensive and we end up kind of becoming a little bit like business, like right hand men. I I get called that a lot. I'm like, this is Kane, he's my fractional CMO right hand man. 'cause we end up getting involved in things like, you know, hiring staff, it's things that aren't actually Tejneet Selhi: Thank Kaine Levy: related to marketing, but they do Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Kaine Levy: kind of fall under branding, things like company culture and values, which do kind of touch on branding. So yeah, pretty much run the entire marketing and branding operation. Tejneet Selhi: Amazing. I mean, yeah, for £3,000. That's a lot of work. And so you've worked with some really huge brands from Virgin, DHL, down to early stage SaaS startups. When you look at the next two to three years, what's the one shift in marketing that you think most founders are not prepared for? Kaine Levy: Question. I mean yeah, I'm I'm trying not to go with a generic one here, which is gonna be around AI, but I think there's a few things, you know. I think I think marketing teams are getting smaller and younger. AI is getting used more and in the wrong places. I just actually did an an article about this, someone for Executives Diary. They asked me about AI and I, you know, I we love AI, we use it here all the time, but we use it for all of the operational stuff and we use it to write our SOPs and you know, help us with scheduling and and and things like that. And but but we don't use it for anything creative. We don't use it to do the idea ideation part for us. and that I think maybe is something that people aren't prepared for is they're using it to people are using it to replace the ideation part. And we're seeing a lot of kind of the sea of same right now. And AI can only pull from what it knows, right? It can only pull from what's already Tejneet Selhi: of saying my life is. Kaine Levy: out there. So there's no innovation happening within marketing. so I guess that's one thing. else. Yeah, on on the topic of marketing teams getting smaller and younger, I think younger is a good thing, by the way. you know, social media is kind of running the way thing running the way we do things and there are certain industries where yeah, you need to go to exhibitions and set up a booth and that's kind of still the done the done deal and and the way things are done. But Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Kaine Levy: there's there are certain businesses that are just not adapting and they need to be they need to be adapting. Tejneet Selhi: which businesses, is that particular industry that you have found and not adapting Kaine Levy: For for sure. Yeah, like Tejneet Selhi: well enough? Kaine Levy: for pharmaceuticals, medical industry, certain parts of Tejneet Selhi: Okay. Kaine Levy: tech, Tejneet Selhi: Certain parts of tech, I mean, that's worrying if they're not adapting. Kaine Levy: I know, yeah, certain yeah, certain parts of tech, food and bev as well, like fast moving consumer goods, they're they're they're big into their just sh have a booth. And I get it, 'cause people need to like try your products and and meet you and all the rest of it. But I think there's this notion that social media and and paid ads are really expensive, but i it's not. Like to a to the point earlier that we were talking about niching. If you can niche properly and find your little segment of customers, paid ads is actually really easy because you just you just you can have your product framed five different ways for five different customers. So let's say you sell, I mean, I'm working right now with a dating coach. she works with women kind of between ages of 29 and 39. There are so many different ways you can frame that same thing, whether it's women who want to start a family, that could Be a particular pain point that goes to that's one ad that goes to one landing page, and they're all around maybe the biological clock that's that's ticking down. Tejneet Selhi: you Kaine Levy: Maybe there's another one that's more around the desires of meeting your dream man. So it's not so much about the stress of of the biological clock, but it's more about the desires of meeting your dream man that could go to another landing page. Like all of these things can have their own little ad spend on them. You don't have to be spending huge amounts, but as long as the Tejneet Selhi: me. Kaine Levy: the the ad, the the copy and the landing page are all like super, super tailored to that individual. Not this like generic, hey, we do this for everyone and we work in this sector and that sector and we serve this person and that person. That never works. That's Tejneet Selhi: Mm-hmm. Kaine Levy: when you're competing with the big guys because they can afford to just spend advertising money on absolutely everything. Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Kaine Levy: so yeah, I I I think that's that's something that people need to be aware of is that in their heads they're like, well we'll just spend like three grand on a booth. at a at a conference, it's like you could probably have made a better return running three grand on ads. Tejneet Selhi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. that's, I guess that's where having a strategist like yourself working alongside you, you can advise the, you know, what works for that person's industry or that particular business's industry, rather than them wasting money on things that just won't work. Kaine Levy: Well they d Tejany, it it surprises me how few people think about the direct ROI of what they're spending that money on. They they don't they think, well, we've always done exhibitions and and booths, so we'll do booths. And it's like have you thought about if you spent that three K here, here or here, what that might actually look like? Have you have you tried it? Have you have you set up a a waiting list page, like an MVP test page, and run like three hundred pounds worth of ads to that just to see if there's any interest, even. You could do it super cheap, super fast. Not like people don't do this stuff. They that you need to like do rapid iteration, rapid testing to see what people are responding to, what the market's responding to. Tejneet Selhi: I mean, I've spoken to quite a few ad agencies recently and the suggestion is that you spend maybe the first few weeks just to test it out, say 10, 15 pounds a day, and then ramp it up to 35. to 50 pounds a day to kind of get a good steady stream of leads. Is that what you would recommend as well or do you have a different take? Kaine Levy: That wouldn't be my approach personally. I don't wanna rock the boat, but Tejneet Selhi: I'm interested to hear your approach, that's why I asked. Kaine Levy: n I I I wouldn't run it that way because for starters every ad campaign has a learning phase and a a learning phase is just essentially the algorithm the algorithm's way of learning what's working and what's not working. And the only way it can learn what's working is by getting the conversion data that you want it to make. So for example, if a conversion is a a conversion could be a sale of a product. You could say this I want you to track this as a conversion. It could be someone completing a form on your website and making an inquiry. It could be, yeah, filling a form, it could be cl visiting a certain page. A conversion could be whatever you decide it is. So an ad campaign needs to get us enough of those conversions for it to understand, okay, this ad is working, this ad set is not working, this is the type of person between this age group and this location, this demographic that's working and this isn't working. If it doesn't have enough of those signals, It can't optimize that campaign and get you more of those results. And if you're not spending enough, it can't get those, it can't get enough results for you. So really, like the the more you can spend, the faster you can spend, the quicker you can get the results. And then the quicker you can start optimizing on the things that are working and moving budget away from the things that aren't working. Of course, not everyone has that luxury. Like if you need to start small and slow, you can. It's fine to spend 10, 15 pounds a day. Just be aware that it's going to take you a lot longer. to get to the result that you want to get to. And sometimes it's better to just spend the same budget that you would have spent over six weeks in three and then just iterate and and then basically stabilize after that three week period, if that makes sense. So that that's that's how I prefer to do it. Tejneet Selhi: Right, I see. I mean, that makes sense, that makes sense, because the more you're putting out there, the more you're testing to see what is working, what's not working. That does make sense. And again, the per day amount, is there an ideal amount that you would suggest? Kaine Levy: No, it just depends on the industry and how much your product and service costs. I mean, like, for example, you know, if you're if you're charging let's take me for example, right? If I'm ch if I'm charging a service that starts at three grand a month, it would be stingy of me to spend ten, fifteen pounds a day knowing that a client is worth three K plus to me, right? Like it would take, you know, what, ten pound a day, that's three hundred pounds a month, that's ten months. To break even, right? It ten ten months to get one client doesn't seem like a good ROI to me. But if you're selling, for example, I have a client in America, the sort of average order value there in e commerce business is about a hundred and thirty odd dollars. you know, we spend we spend about six, seven hundred dollars a day. but but we get a return on that because, you know, we're getting, you know, three three X return. So It's yeah, it it you go where the money is. I think people are people are hesitant to spend until they see the the results. They're like, It doesn't work for me. But if you knew for Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Yeah. Kaine Levy: sure for every dollar you put in you were gonna get two, three, four back, you'd you'd that number now becomes irrelevant. It doesn't matter whether it's ten or ten thousand a day, you'd do it, right? Tejneet Selhi: Yeah, yeah, I guess it makes sense. And would you say meta-ads over other ads? Kaine Levy: Again, depends on depends on the business and the service. Like for that e-commerce business, Meta works really well. It's a it's a product that it's for couples, they get to use it together. It's a date night type product. Meta's perfect for that. They're scrolling through, they see kind of a fun product. We can have fun with the visuals. on the flip side, I have a life coach who charges, you know, in the tens of thousands for his service. If you were to stick that on Facebook. while someone's scrolling, they're not gonna be in the mindset to spend that kind of money. so for him we use Google ads because Google ads is a more search-based intent platform. So you wanna catch people who are already searching for that and they're already in a buying mindset, right? So similarly if you're if you're selling really cheap products, you might want to try TikTok. much lower quality traffic, but again, if you if you've got a a low margin, low, low rev low cost product, that is it's it's worth trying because it's quick, people are impulse buying over there. yeah. So it's it's again, on we don't just test ad sets and ad campaigns and ad creatives on on one platform. We test the platforms as well. Tejneet Selhi: Yeah, that makes such good sense. And I think further justifies, you know, if anyone's looking for a fractional CMO, then Cain is your... your person to go to. We've almost come to the end of our discussion but I've got maybe a couple more questions. You've been doing this for 14 years and often as a lone founder with no investors, no co-founder and no one to bounce off. If you could send a voice note back to yourself at the beginning of year one, what would you actually say? What advice would you give yourself really, simply put? Kaine Levy: I think stick with it. Stick with it. Tejneet Selhi: Okay. Kaine Levy: that I think it's the I don't can't remember if it's the parabolic curve or the hyperbolic curve, the one that's like flat for ages and then it just goes like that. It's so true of entrepreneurship. Like it feels like you're making no progress sometimes for years. But I think the progress I've made in the last three years, two, three years, far exceeds what I've done probably in the last 10 before that. So Everything I think is planting seeds and it's just a case of waiting for them to to grow. Tejneet Selhi: I love that, that's such great advice, And actually we touched on AI, but I'm going to ask you one final question. Is there any area of your business that you wish you could automate that you haven't already? Kaine Levy: Me. I think I I think you'll Tejneet Selhi: So duplicate you. Kaine Levy: probably hear this from a lot of service-based business founders that you speak to, like we're always our own bottleneck. because Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Kaine Levy: you know, people want access to us and we have a certain expertise and niche expertise that people desire, and you can hire people, but they'll never fully be you, and that's okay. But yeah, I think if there's anything I could you know, all jokes aside, if there's anything I could automate, I think it would be Think it would be Do you know what? If there was like a hub that did all of the admin of a business, you know, I'm talking payroll, bookkeeping, you know, emails, pay slips, just like an all in one Tejneet Selhi: Hmm. Kaine Levy: admin platform, that'd be pretty good. Anyone could Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Kaine Levy: take that business idea. There we go. Someone can have that. Tejneet Selhi: There you go, there you go. Maybe Kaine Levy: Okay. Tejneet Selhi: AI, if you can see, will be the ones that pick that up for you. Kaine Levy: Yeah. Tejneet Selhi: But look, Kay, this has been a genuinely brilliant conversation. I really enjoyed it. And thank you so much for giving your time and being so open about your journey. think it's really... Kaine Levy: Thank you for having me, I really appreciate it. Tejneet Selhi: Yeah, hopefully you'll come back again at some point in the future when your dynasty is growing even more. Kaine Levy: That would be my pleasure. It would be my pleasure. Well, if the hopefully the audience liked it, so Tejneet Selhi: I'm sure they will. And for everyone listening, if you're working with a fractal CMO or thinking about it, Cain's website is cainlevy.com. It's worth a proper read. And if you're an early stage founder who knows your marketing needs a complete rethink, he's the person to call. And if this episode landed for you, please do subscribe, leave us a review and a share and share it with other founders who need to hear it. And a reminder, every episode of Entrepreneur Odyssey exists so that you can learn from people who have already done the hard work. So until next time, keep building.