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Dive into the riveting world of entrepreneurship with Kyle Barry, a master marketer who's smashing normalcy and fear with his innovative strategies. From the hectic kitchen of a family restaurant to the adrenaline-fueled arenas of professional paintball, Kyle's diverse experiences have sculpted a unique business acumen. Discover how Kaizen Marketing Agency thrives on psychology, data, and passion to deliver unmatched customer acquisition.
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
Breaking the norm in marketing.Ownership and profits in business.The psychological edge in sales.The value of diversified experiences.Strategies for lasting success.Resources:
Kaizen MarketingDevNoodleConnect with Kyle Barry:
LinkedInConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
48:04 - I believe that the only way to find truth is to source out as many potential sources as possible. Weed out their personal relations, weed out their personal emotions behind X, Y, and Z, and find out how Malcolm Gladwell and Alex Hormozi talk about business and find the common denominators there. ‘Cause as you start looking through enough information, you'll find that all these things are very consistent across the board. It's why Kaizen has done so well for small to medium-sized businesses. Because in today's world everyone cares about the big fish. Everyone cares about the e-commerce business that's gonna be able to scale to a hundred thousand dollars a month. And they put every bell and whistle on that e-commerce client and they do a 10th of that for the local restaurant when in actuality they're the same structure. You need the same outreach email programs, CRM, support, communication tactics in an e-commerce business as you do in a restaurant.09:12 - The greatest lesson was definitely getting suspended from high school. 'Cause I printed, I think it was like 6,000 menus out of the printer in high school. And I was like getting yelled at the end of it. Like, you can't do that. And I was like, no, no, it's fine. Don't worry about it. And yeah, my persistency there got me a suspension in school, but enough flyers to be able to go around my whole little town and put the flyers into people's cars, into their mailboxes, which is totally illegal. Didn't know that at the time. Into their mailboxes and everywhere else to start driving my own customers into the business that my father didn't have previously. So that was the best learning lesson I had from outside of learning how to cook. You know, it's a valuable lesson that I'll always have, but the marketing aspect of it is what I fell in love with it. 22:53 - There is zero difference in your brain. The only difference is that in your frontal lobe, if you have a level of dopamine and you're happy, you become excited. If you have a high level of serotonin and you're not happy or you're depressed, you become, you get anxiety from it. You get anxiety from it. So to understand that it's the same exact thing, but you decide how you actually take that feeling and push it out to the world. Change the way I thought a lot about emotions, right? Because if I'm sitting here feeling anxiety and I'm scared and I'm start sweating and I have anxiety, if I can convince myself, no, it's not anxiety, that's excitement. I'm pumped, I'm pumped up so much that I'm nervous about it, use the excitement, hone that excitement and I used to not be able to talk on stage. I used to shake when I was getting sales calls that all of that has changed.32:16 - Everything that you think, everything that you feel is not part of this world. It's only a part of you. It only relies inside you yourself. You are the wall that defines how the world recognizes you when you put that out into the world, right? Every time you say something, you move your hands, you make a gesture. That's what you're gonna be defined as in this world. So make sure that you understand nobody else in existence controls how you are defined besides you, you are the one that are gonna take the emotions and the thought process and define what that really looks like as a representation of yourself. So as you were saying like that, that left and right brain ideology and the structure of how to see things, it is completely controlled by you. It is the hardest thing in the world to do, to find out how to control yourself and your own emotions past what you naturally feel. 40:27 - But even when we send reports, I just got off a meeting right before this call where, you know, we start off the call with, Hey, you spent $2,000 on your meta advertising, we generated $8,000 in total revenue, then here's the consumer avatars, here's the creative that's working, here's the message test that we put out there. Here's the results of the success that we're having. But it always starts and we're forefront with, you gave me X and I delivered Y in revenue, which I believe is the core value for any agency out there. -
Dive into the dynamic intersection of college sports and influencer campaigns as we chat with Brent Barkin, CEO of PlayBooked. Discover the ins and outs of utilizing athletes to amplify brand messages and learn the secrets to targeting the elusive 18-25 demographic. From pinpointing micro influencers to creating impactful marketing strategies, we're dissecting the playbook for modern brand engagement. Don't miss these game-time decisions in the marketing arena!
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
Athletes as authentic brand voicesThe rise of NIL in college sportsHarnessing micro-influencers at scaleThe evolution of athlete marketingStrategies for targeting 18-25 year-oldsResources:
PlayBookedDevNoodleConnect with Brent Barkin:
LinkedInConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
35:15 - And it's my personal opinion that that aggregation of their following is infinitely better than paying an Uber influencer or paying somebody with 10 times the following and paying them 20 times the money to do the same thing. And I also personally believe that athletes have a unique value proposition because their voice is really felt to be authentic that if they talk about a product and if they back something just like the uniform they wear that it stands for something more than themselves. So it's that authenticity of their voice that that really enhances the message.43:11 - I think the worst thing that a marketing agency can do is pretend to be good at something they're not. I think it's dangerous and I think it's stupid. I would rather tell one of our clients that we're working with the brand or group and here's what we're doing. What a lot of them won't do is they won't tell you they're working with a third party. They'll just do it and then they'll just jack the rates up so their margin is the same. So it ends up being much more expensive. And I would say if it's more expensive, it's usually not as productive.11:47 - I think the main thing is people don't necessarily know what they know, what they want to do, know what, what interests them. And what's so crazy is, you know, the more I do what I'm doing with, with PlayBooked and talk to student athletes, the more you realize how many different types of jobs there are out there in the world and every day you learn about something else that you never knew existed, right? So if you are at that stage, if you're a young person at that stage, I think the main thing is, you know, LinkedIn is a great tool. Talk to as many people as you can. Have one-on-one conversations with people and ask them what they do and if you have no agenda, other than I really wanna understand what they do, how they got that job. Do they like it? Do they not? If they don't, why? And if you're at that age where you're really trying to figure out what you want to do with your life, I think the first thing is recognize that there's 10 times more opportunities out there than you ever thought there were.31:00 - What that kind of reinforced for me was when people are just on autopilot, that they just get there and they do it. You don't realize how valuable that is for business to have people that just kind of know what they're supposed to do and do it without being told. And that's, you know, functionally you and I then started talking about the value habits and you know, the emotional effort or emotional energy it takes to do something that is, that your brain is recognized as a habit is a ton less emotional effort, physical effort often, and emotional energy. And when I say emotional energy, those tasks, if they require thought and effort and intellectual energy, they drain you. So just like that Roomba definitely imagine Roomba, but the Roomba doesn't have to keep going and being recharged. So if you as a person, as an individual create positive habits for you every day for yourself every day and you layer those habits on top of each other, you, your productivity skyrockets and your energy to do that, to do those tasks really stays almost the same. 25:02 - Brent: We're a marketing company. Well we don't use AI, we only use people and that's right. And then somebody next door to you could use AI and eat your lunch and you're patting yourself on the back that you.
Alex: So would you put it as a like the way as he was calling you an efficiency expert, kind of like internally focused on the company and creating efficiencies, potentially saving money. Whereas he was thinking externally, how can we grow, how can we attract new people, do more things?
Brent: This was expensive, you know, you hear this all the time, cutting expensive to a profit. So you, instead of a company, the best way to grow profits is to grow your top line. Because even then the percentage you play the law percentages, if we had 10% bottom line profit, and I do twice the amount of money I did twice the amount of profit, right? All my fixed expenses drop as a percent, you know, all the variable expenses will keep going up, but you make more and more money. He was basically saying, I was more focused on how do we save money than how do we make money. -
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Dive into a riveting session with Matt Butler Co-founder & CEO of Bonsai as he unpacks the world of precision marketing. This episode explores the intricate dance between analytics and agency success, from the struggles of justifying ad spending to leveraging first-party data—a candid look at what fuels motivation and discipline in business and beyond.
Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
SEO and web design referralsLeveraging first-party dataScaling up with OverstoryTruth about incrementality in adsBuilding motivation and disciplineResources:
BonsaiDevNoodleThe Book of WhyConnect with Matt Butler:
LinkedInConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedIn
34:02 - I would argue the ones, a lot of the people that have right to complain and don't end up being the most successful people that you meet typically. And I totally agree with you. I've always had this rule for myself of, you know, if you're gonna complain, either do something bad or shut your mouth, you know, like we don't have time for that.
Quotables:
Alex: Yeah, 100%. You gotta look for the solutions right away. Like you spend your time complaining. It's just, I know Josh has this thing, he calls it stress-free shampoo. But you should basically, without going into, unless Josh, you want to, but you surround yourself with this like negative thought as you're complaining about the things and you just, you get into the cycle of consistently thinking about it instead of like, I gotta get out of this. What's the solution? Let's just focus on that.
Josh: Yeah
Matt: Failing is painful and a lot of people, like, I failed constantly, right? And it sucks. And you can put complaining on as a way to like, give yourself an excuse to not feel so bad about those failures28:05 - Josh: Maybe we should have another podcast just called Fucking Motivation.
Matt: Yeah, no, I do like, there's a, there's probably a market for that. No, I the way I would always feel about that is like, yeah, I mean, there'd be times when I would say I wouldn't try to go people into like, you know, razzing me or digging, digging me. But like, I do think I had a little bit more of a spark in the face of like, essentially that, you know, that you mentality as opposed to like, someone lavishing you with, you know, oh, you're great. Isn't this wonderful? Like, I didn't really, I never responded that well to like overarching phrase, but if you really wanted to get my gears going right, go ahead and, you know, like poke the bear a little bit, right? Like say like, yeah, no, you know what, you can't do it. Like I, I knew you couldn't do it right? Then it's like, all right, let's see about that. Right? Like there's, I think, I think that drives people in many ways. I think that's important too.
Matt: And I think you need to call on that sometimes too, by the way. So like, there, your motivations and like the thing that will keep you disciplined and focused isn't the same every single day. And there's these periods that, you know, that might be something you need to tap into all the time, right? Like, if you're just like constantly acting like the world's against you44:57 - That's totally true. We had a few pilot smaller clients maybe before them that were, let's just say that I'm not sure they were really paying clients, but we were teasing out like, well, what is it that we do? Like how do we help an organization understand its information and then build a growth strategy on top of that first party data? But yeah, I mean like that's how it got going. 2020 happened, the pandemic happened, we got into a great relationship helping ancestry kind of rethink how they wanted to orchestrate and measure their marketing success, which then led into like a whole slew of where we're at today around like having an actual solution and technology to do those things and more. 19:12 - Josh: The thing that like resonated internally for me though is like this idea of, I think sometimes people think of discipline and focus as being these sort of skills in a vacuum that you can, you know, oh, you need to have it, you can train it.
Matt: It's just a matter of like powering up that discipline bar and then like, or you know, same thing with focus, right? And I think my big, maybe it isn't quite as straightforward as that. The discipline and focus comes when you have like a why behind it. Like a reason that you want something, right? And then there is that element of the belief, right? Like you speaking for myself, I tend to find that if there's something out there that I wanna achieve, if I tell someone about it, that's great. But by and large people don't, they're not necessarily not, no one's necessarily expecting success for you. And that doesn't comes across as really negative. 35:20 - To close out that stress-free shampoo theory, a lot of it is basically like, you know, the people that are really stress, they usually surround themselves with stress-free shampoo and stress-free poems and stress-free whatever. And all you're doing is surrounding yourself with the word stress, even though it says stress free. And I think what Alex was kind of getting at is complaining is the same thing where, you know, you start to complain and then you make it your personality, even though, you know, you don't want to keep complaining, but it becomes you and you post memes about it and you post, you think it's a silly little Instagram post, but you're really like making your personality. -
Dive into a dynamic conversation with Deevo Tindall as he spins tales from road rage to the power of microdosing. Is what we know about branding and caffeine all a lie? Uncover life lessons on what truly powers success and get a kick of real talk on stoicism and discipline—all wrapped in a bittersweet blend of humor and insight.
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
Brand before marketing.Coffee as a societal loophole.Stoicism in modern life.Storytelling as a core strategy.Photography to brand strategy leap.Resources:
The Brand StorytellerThe Branding Laboratory PodcastFusion PhotographyFusion Photography on InstagramDevNoodleConnect with Deevo Tindall:
LinkedInConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
And so I had this idea of what if I could bridge the gap between content strategy and deployment? And so I started like helping clients. It was sort of more on an ad hoc capacity. I know a bunch, I know so many people. And so I knew a social media manager. I'm pretty good at social media myself. I knew copywriters, I knew web developers. I knew SEO people. So I started like plugging and playing little solutions like, let's just take you for example, you know, you had this great content shoot that I had done for you, but you didn't really know how to do that. I was like, Hey Josh, I can take your content. I can put it on social media for you. I can get you on a website. Like all these different things. Well, I don't have a website. Well, I know somebody who can build a website, so let me get you, so anyhow, you can see where I'm going with this. And so one thing just led to an next, and before you knew it, I sort of was getting these different business things, opportunities because I had treated these people just as well as I had treated my other clients. So I was getting referrals and all these things.41:48 - Deevo: Anyway, I was just genuinely curious in sort of the, the, I'm always been curious about the metaphysical connection. So I've, I grew up with God in my life and all these different religions and so I've never really believed in any one theory. I just had a lot of hypotheses about a bunch of different things. And I'm fascinated by that sort of micro macrocosm relationship of humans and this, you know, this idea of God. And then I started, you know, exploring, you know, there's plant-based medicines and all the different effects and the shamans and things that they espouse to. And then I started diving into like Native American histories and like all the different things that they did. And I was like, you know, the further I went down the rabbit hole, the further I started to realize that the information that we have been given was misinformation in order to guide us down a different rabbit hole of someone else's choosing. Right? And so it's one of the reasons I started my podcast unlearn everything is I started realizing that everything we have been told is a lie. Literally everything we have been told is a lie from politics to economics, to relationships, to sex, to God, to the universe, to literally everything has been a lie. And one of those things that I discovered was that plant-based medicine was also a lie. It has been ostracized so that they could push us into the direction of alcohol. For example, alcohol is one of the single biggest poisons on the planet.
Josh: As pharmaceutical, I put pharmaceuticals in there, in there as well.1:03:20 - You need to get that down so that you, your team, anything that is associated with your business has consistency, clarity and cohesion so that when your customer reads it, they can align with that and they understand the language that you're sharing, the problems that you solve. Because not everybody is your customer, you know, very specific types of people are your customer. And so you wanna make sure that the language that you're speaking to them is the language they understand and that speaks to their problem. 38:31 - And so I know I'm going different direction than you had hoped, but just to be vulnerable, I can tell you that we do always have a choice in how we respond to everything. And I would suspect that the people who have a better outcome are generally the people that choose a more optimal response to everything, every trigger, every failure, every inopportunity, ever anything that ever happens to them that doesn't go advantageously for them. Deevo number one would choose, would choose the lighter response and Deevo number two would choose the blame response. And like, it's your fault that I suck.39:22 - I think introspective awareness, learning to find a time and a place to be by yourself and understand who you are and how you operate and have some quiet time by yourself is one way. Therapy is another. Finding good group of peers and mentors to surround yourself with. It's very important that you surround yourself with quality people. You become a byproduct of the six people you hang around with most. And if the six people that you're surrounding yourself are assholes, you're gonna become an asshole. -
Dive into Rusty Dycus' world of marketing dynamism and entrepreneurial fun as he deciphers the chaos of juggling multiple businesses. From pet rocks to unparalleled marketing strategies, Rusty's zest for building, selling, and the joy behind it all is contagious. Tune in to learn how to transform every wall into a stepping stone for success.
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
Embrace chaos for business growthFinding fun in entrepreneurial endeavorsInsights on effective customer engagementDirect mail as the backbone of salesStrategies for meaningful B2B connectionsResources:
Olde School MarketingDevNoodleConnect with Rusty Dycus:
LinkedInConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
29:24 - If you get done with the end of your week and you have not had fun, you screwed up. So everything that we do, why are we doing it? Why do you do, oh well we need money. Do you really, do you really need as much money as you make? Or do you just like, why do we do what we do? So if you're not having fun doing it, why are we doing it? Money is not even real. Money is just something that we, the government's conned us into thinking that actually has value. It really doesn't, it has no value. We trade our time and energy for nothing.49:49 - If you're not bow out, get somebody else to do it that's gonna do a better job. You can subcontract and still make a decent margin and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with subcontracting if there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, Josh, I'm just not gonna be the best at that. But you know what, I got a buddy and he's really good at art and he can make your picture and he can do it very well. Would you like me to get ahold of him and see if he'd like to work with you? There's nothing wrong with that at all. So know your own strengths and weaknesses and make sure you're doing for somebody else a good job. Don't take a job on that you're not qualified for. And I see it all the time. I see marketing agencies all the time screw people because they don't know how to help them. They just need the cash flow. They're just gonna take the job and then they hurt the customer and then they never wanna do business with 'em again. And then they got a bad rap on their sheet and then they get to talk to me and they're like, well, I got screwed by this person and this person and this person, and how are you gonna be any different? And that's what we're doing to ourselves. So as marketing agencies do us all a favor and stick to your swim lanes and do what you can do well and do it well and then subcontract or give it away.15:07 - Honestly, money is not that appealing to me. To me, money is like a brick. I'm looking at money and it's a brick. And how do I take that brick and put concrete on top of it and put another brick on top of that and make something fun with it. So that's all money is to me. It's just a tool, it's a material and I need it to make more.18:28 - Most of the time the failure comes from me. So everything rises and falls with leadership. If I could teach you to anything, it is that case study right there. If there's a problem in your company, if there's something that's not going wrong, Alex, look at yourself because we are the problem every time. We didn't say the right thing. We didn't motivate the people correctly. We weren't measuring the right things. We didn't employ enough with the right people to move us down the track where we need to be. So always, I'm always looking at these scenarios. I made a major decision 20 minutes ago and I'm moving teams and members around in order to accomplish a better goal that I was the problem.24:45 - It doesn't matter. It's just business. I'm not on the roof swinging a hammer. Why would I swing a hammer? I I would suck at that. I would cut the board all kinds of weird ways and it would never fit. That's not my strength. So you take strengths and weaknesses and I'm always on, I want to hone my own skillset to where I'm focused on my strengths, not my weaknesses. So when I bring somebody into, I don't care what company, it's, we may have somebody and I employed them for the construction company. We're building a house and I find out that he's better at marketing. I'm sucking 'em over here into the marketing department. It doesn't matter. Put people where they're gonna flourish and then help them grow that. -
Dive into an insightful conversation with Preston Powell, CEO of WebServ, as he shares his transition from battling addiction to pioneering marketing strategies. Explore the nuances of narrowing a business focus while staying agile enough to embrace lucrative opportunities. This episode deftly mixes triumph, practical business tactics, and a dash of humor – perfect for anyone seeking inspiration on professional and personal fronts.
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
Overcame heroin addictionBuild MRR for growth sustainabilitySpecialize to provide industry-specific valueLearning curve steep for business financesExpanding reach beyond behavioral healthResources:
WebServDevNoodleConnect with Preston Powell:
LinkedInConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
46:12 - Because more general answer that might apply to just marketers in general is just, is specialized. That's what I would tell to an aspiring marketer. Like, figure out one thing that you like, whether it's, you know, technical or creative or you know, whatever it might be. But just go way down the rabbit hole over there because you'll provide a lot more value. You know, I've tried to make sure that our departments are like highly specialized so that we can provide a unique value that that isn't easy to find. 53:35 - Josh: The day that I realized that everyone's insecure was the day that I became a little bit more secure. And same thing. 'cause like, oh, like everyone's walking around just thinking about themselves and like, about all their little insecurities and everything. So I was like, that makes me feel a lot more secure. The same thing with imposter syndrome. Like if you kind of know that everyone's walking around doing it, there's like almost there hopefully is like a comfort level that comes with like, oh, that's like a normal feeling to have. And I'm not like, that's how progress goes with humans, right? Is you put yourself into
Alex: This Yeah. The feeling of uncomfortableness and you wanting to show up.33:09 - Initial plateaus were around like just not having the organization. So if I was focusing on service delivery, I couldn't focus on sales and vice versa. And then once we got to maybe a 100K we plateaued for a long time because we'd get clients, but we weren't retaining clients as well as we could. So we needed to work on retention. And yeah, there's been a number of plateaus. I think we plateaued again around 200K and exact reasons for each one are definitely somewhat debatable. But, mostly it's just that either you're not set up for growth, like you don't have the infrastructure for it or your focus is in, in the wrong area.24:35 - I think it depends a lot. So I had a pretty, pretty high tolerance for like, I guess just like the pain that I put myself through and just really didn't have an interest in making a change. So like that kind of struck me. I, you know, I was so far beyond what should have been rock bottom for so long and I wasn't in too much worse a state I'd been in for, you know, the previous several months. But that was just something for like, that stood out to me as kind of like that fork in the road. But it is really hard. So like if you wanna like help somebody out that's struggling, their rock bottom or their turning point could be way higher than that. And hopefully for most people it is. Cause you can, I dragged myself through a lot of things that I didn't necessarily need to, I don't really regret it or anything 'cause I don't know if I would've just subscribed to like doing the right thing when I was in my teenage years and, it just wasn't my personality I, you know, was kind of a troublemaker for a long, long time. So I don't know.30:05 - It's never worked very well if you go too broad because one like behavioral healthcare is an industry where everybody knows each other. So if I do really good work in behavioral healthcare, everybody hears about it and I get a lot of inbound referrals. So kind of like free marketing there. Also, we put on a lot of events in the space and those are all just great marketing opportunities for us. And we go to every conference. So I've got like five business development people and at any given time I've probably got a couple of 'em in different states at different events -
Dive into the dynamic twists of business partnerships, the pulse of comedic controversies, and the cyclical nature of trends in politics and fashion. Insights on finding your footing when the industry shakes, marketing mastery, and the secret sauce to managing change like a pro.
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
Lessons from a business partner's exitValue of contrary opinions in businessTransitioning from V1 to V2 selfThe thin line of business and identityInsight into balancing work and faithResources:
Cascade InsightsDevNoodleConnect with Sean Campbell:
LinkedInConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
24:42 - I mean, in short, I think what he was getting at, although it's not like you would say this about a second grader, I've said to people since then, I'm pathologically incapable of learning something and not wanting to teach it. It's like my first mo like I was out fishing this morning, that's why I was a little late for the show. If I find a spot where I'm finding fish and my buddy's on the boat, the first thing I do is like, Hey, I was throwing this and I was throwing it over there and why don't you go over there? Right. I've been wired that way probably ever since Father Boivin noticed in me. 57:03 - I'm not saying that's a horrible thing. They're trying to network, they're trying to grow. But at some point there's that fine line. It's like, is your identity the business? You're the only one who knows that maybe your spouse does. They could probably tell you, this business isn't my identity. It would suck if it went away, it would suck. But I'm still me. And I can tell you that if you talk to most business owners, you guys do it on the show all the time. I would say at best 50% of them could answer that question in the positive. Like if they were being honest with you. 'Cause you can see it, you can see it when you talk to certain business owners. Like they have not separated who they are from the business. And that's made a huge difference. 38:10 - So one of the things you go through, I think, when co-founders leave is that you have to be humble. You have to be willing to go to clients who maybe you've worked with for years you wanna say, Hey, why don't you just trust me as I am? But they have legitimate questions. You've been through change, right? And so you have to be humble enough to say like, look, yeah, things are gonna change. It's under my leadership. I understand that trust is earned. We're a different company in some ways than we were before. 38:09 - So now you've got a whole different dynamic of how do you communicate to clients about the fact that your co-owners now in a different organization and he's competing with you, right? So there's a huge amount of, how do you talk about that and how do you do it in a way that, I mean, nobody, a client doesn't really care about our dirty laundry. It's the best way to put it, right? Like the Don Henley song back in the day, dirty Laundry, right? Nobody cares about it. They just wanna know if you're still gonna do good work. 47:04 - Somebody listening might say, you need a board of advisors and you need to go. Our experience with that was not that great, to be honest. We put in a board of advisors in the first company. Now maybe I just picked the wrong people. Right? That's fine. It's really hard to get board of advisors that understand your business, right? I mean, if you're making mistakes that are like classic, you know, like, oh, you know, I bought a new truck as an expense, right? And you need an advisor that says don't do that. Right? You know what I mean? Like sure, I think you can get good advice if you're struggling with business basics, but I think once you get past the business basics, it's really hard to find an advisor that you don't feel is just gonna be reading from like a business book on the Amazon shelf, to you kind of thing. -
Dive into an entrepreneur's journey from the early grind of networking events to the thrill of accelerating a business. Uncover the unique story behind Roosterly, the hustle of raising capital, and the passion for tech, teaching, and fast cars.
Here are a few o topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
Selling t-shirts to managing socials.Affiliate program with a car giveaway.The struggle of scaling a business.Websites from 2004 vs. the modern web.AI and digital currency arbitrage.Resources:
RoosterlyDevNoodleBiggerPockets PodcastBuy Back Your TimeConnect with Irfan Jafrey:
LinkedInConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
30:25 - There's gotta be obviously arbitrage related to AI. There's arbitrage related to digital currencies. That's how Sam Bankman Fried initially was making a lot of money until he wasn't. But I mean, I think in digital currency, I think in things related to AI, we're gonna see a lot of arbitrage I think in PR, which is a very antiquated industry. No disrespect. We work with over 30 PR firms in North America to help them get their clients in the press quickly. And they all agree that it's an inefficient industry and I think we're going to see a lot of arbitrage there as technology makes things more efficient. 24:10 - Josh: Because it's not very often that you hear actually marketing agencies. Actually, two things I'll say about that. One, marketing agencies don't always raise money. And the other thing I forget. So my other question would be, what was the goal for raising capital.
Irfan: Yeah, so I think the important distinction to make is we do not consider ourselves a marketing agency. We do some marketing agency type things, but we raised money. Our capital raise was predicated on the fact that we built a platform to aggregate, curate, schedule, and post content based on combing through a person's LinkedIn profile or Facebook or Instagram profile without them needing to do the heavy lifting.28:35 - The average person on LinkedIn, let's say at that law firm has five hundred to a thousand connections. If you're sharing one piece of really good content on different times throughout that firm, not at the same time, not at the same day, 'cause it's gonna look robotic and spammy, but you can get, extract 10 X, 20 X, a hundred X of value for that piece of content that you put together. 'cause it's syndicated throughout multiple people. So that's also part of our goal is to create the automation around that strategy so that piece of content, whether it's a press release, original content, curated content, has the largest lifecycle with the most impact.32:21 - And so if you can imagine the giant waste of time to, well, not really a waste of time, but if you look at the amount of effort and energy that goes into dressing up and going to a networking event in Chicago in the winter time with the snow and sleet and rai,n parking your car with the risk of it getting a parking ticket and meeting people when you're not a social guy to get a business card so you can sign 'em up for something that's $49, it's quite painful. But as silly as it sounds that being able to do that 40 times was a factor in us able to effectively raise money. We had people that signed up and they're like, yeah, I like the service. Okay, so we're a real business, not a concept at that point knowing, sure, we're only making a, a whopping $800 at that point or whatever it was, but it was enough where the caliber of clients that we had was sufficient to showcase to investors that, ah, okay, this is something that a lot of other people could use. Okay. So, that's sort of how we started.37:01 - Actually no, I would say that about 80% of our business comes through the meta ads that we run. That sort of, you know, Facebook, Instagram, take the rooster really two week free trial if you'd like it. Stay on, there's no contracts. That's sort of the entry point low-risk product to help clients understand if we're a good fit for them and vice versa. They can come back and say, you're fine. Your product sunk sucks. It stinks, I hate it. We don't wanna work with you. And that's fine. Well well you didn't risk, you risked $0. So you took that free trial and it didn't make sense. Or you come back and say, Hey, I really like the welcome book that you guys produced. I like the first couple of weeks of content, here's the changes that I would make. And we're like, yeah, absolutely, we'll make those changes. And then we go from there and then there's a step up to other different products and then they're, they might just come back and say, dude, this is way better than I could do on my own, or our team could do on our own. Keep doing what you're doing. So that's typically how clients get started. Now, 20% of our business comes from a mix of referral, referrals and affiliates. Other agencies, either white labeling us or not white labeling us. -
Dive into an enlightening conversation as we discuss embracing ADHD as an entrepreneurial superpower, the transformative role of AI in the future of marketing, and why sidestepping "superstars" can strengthen your company culture. Prepare for practical insights on hiring right, leveraging AI today, and strategies for a booming marketing career.
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
ADHD as an entrepreneurial edge.AI's role in modern marketing.Importance of strategy in execution.Avoiding ego-driven superstars.Fractional CMO benefits for businesses.Resources:
& MarketingDevNoodleConnect with Rajat Kapur:
LinkedInConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
39:53 - And a lot of the people out there that are independent consultants are looking for a community and a home where they can hang out. We want to be that community. And then obviously we have a business to run, right? So if we can help those two get together, that ends up being a really good model. I think of it as like a very high-end boutique recruiting service because we'll get clients that ask us the craziest thing, they'll say, well I'm in this industry and I want somebody at this particular thing and they might want this geography. And usually within a week we can find three to five candidates in our community that meet almost all or some of those criteria. 47:23 - Josh: And then a few questions I I tend to ask towards the end. If you had to teach something to other marketers, what would it be?
Raj: That's a great question. There's a quote that I have adapted from the Art of War that applies directly to marketing. So it is, strategy is the slowest path to victory. Strategy without execution is the slowest path to victory. And tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. That's straight from that book and it totally applies to marketing. And what I find that happens in the marketing world today is everybody wants a quick ROI. Everybody wants to jump to execution. Everybody wants to get their ads up tomorrow or their social media plan implemented or those emails out as soon as possible. And sometimes it works, but when it doesn't work, it's almost always because you haven't done the strategy work. And the strategy work is never gonna go outta style and it's never gonna go bad. What does the strategy work? It is who are you, who is your ideal customer target? What are their problems? How do you solve them? What makes you unique? That's it, right? That's never gonna go outta style. And so if you think like, you know, in a couple weeks I'm just gonna turn on some Google ads and magically hit the right spot for that decision maker to make that decision, I would tell every marketer to go back to the fundamentals more than they think is comfortable. And that's almost always the right answer.43:01 - Josh: And I guess I wanna understand, how can you work with other agencies or what services can you partner with other agencies? So in other words, what do agencies tend to reach out to you for?
Raj: Yeah, that's great. So most of the time it's strategy, right? So most of the time an agency will reach out to us because they'll say, hey, we're great at the strategy. We can't do the execution that this particular company needs. I think they need a fractional CMO and the arrangements that we have there, I call it a boomerang. So if you're a marketing agency, you already have the relationship and you're able to bring us into potentially place a fractional CMO, you get the first right of refusal on the execution work. Absolutely right. So we have those successful arrangements already and I'm happy to build more of them. 'cause quite often that marketing agency tries to do the strategy strategic work, but they either can't find the budget or they don't have the people and the bandwidth to actually get it done.39:08 - And what we basically do is we go out in the world, we meet companies who have hit a growth ceiling. They've either gotten rid of their marketing person, they never had a marketing person, they've never really invested in marketing and they're looking to get to that next level. And one of our fractionals can usually come in, help them set a really solid marketing foundation and then be their ongoing marketing leader. But as the name insinuates, it's on a fraction of their time and a fraction of the budget basis.40:33 - We've built a really good community for those fractional CMOs. We provide them tools, templates, we provide them ongoing coaching. We have a regular speaker series where we have people that educate them on either building their own business or building their own or building theirselves as a marketer. And that's working really well. So I'd say the couple things are, you know, if you're a marketing in an independent marketing consultant and you're interested, go to our website, apply to be part of our community. If you have all of those criteria, I'd be happy to talk to you. -
Dive into RJ's unique story of transformation from Air Force to children's entertainment, and now, as the CEO of Tipping Point Digital. Get inspired by her relentless pursuit of growth and her ingenious way of standing out in the SEO world. This episode is a blend of life lessons, marketing wisdom, and a touch of unconventional flair – it's a journey you don’t want to miss!
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
RJ's vibrant SEO branding trick.Inside look at an elite marketer’s communityTransitioning from the military to marketing.The art of gaining and giving referrals.Leveraging a mentor's wisdom for success.Resources:
Tipping Point DigitalDevNoodleConnect with Rina Jean (RJ) Bindi:
LinkedInConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
17:16 - We're all here for the same thing, which is to add value to others, help them build and be successful. Like that's the big picture scene. And yet everybody's here trying to pay their cell phone bills, feed their babies, keep their employees going, keep their business going. And we need to do what we need to do in order to be our own unique versions of ourselves and to stand out of the crowd. And with marketing it's like, like there's a lot of noise. It's got a low barrier of entry. It's got people from all around the world who say they can do it. And it's just like the, I get you ranking number one over and over and over again and you're just like, come on man. Just be you. Stand out. Carve your niche, find your tribe, find your people. Find the people that are attracted to who you are, what you do, who you serve, and hold those people closest.22:26 - I don't think there was the biggest thing. I mean, there were so many mistakes. There were so many learning opportunities. I needed to work a hundred times harder than I thought to get the results that I wanted. I needed to protect myself as a business owner by taking classes to educate myself about labor laws, employment. I got a payroll company, I got a bookkeeper, I took classes at the Larimer County Small Business development center and learned about like operations, finance, sales, marketing, and then the technician portion of every business. Like that's a really loaded question because it's not just one big thing, it's like business development in itself and how I need to duplicate myself and to hire team and to delegate let go of control.26:32 - And I was just scribbling taking notes. And then I googled like 13 different words that he had talked about and I called him up the following week and I was like, I understand what you were talking about. Can you have another conversation with me please? Like, I mean you have to put yourself out there and you have to be ready for someone to say no, they won't mentor you or why would I do that? You have to be a not afraid of rejection, ego, like how I look, what someone's going to say or think about me. Like I have to care enough about my business and my family and my success to really put myself out there and ask over and over again until I find someone who's the right fit. 48:47 - Josh: and then a lot of what we're trying to do with that community and we kind of talked about it earlier, is again, we wanna make sure that we can understand, you know, where you need help and where you can help others. So to jump into some of those questions, how can you work with other marketing agencies or what services can you partner with other agencies? So in other words, you know, what do agencies tend to reach out to you for?
Rj: They look for partnerships a lot of time. And as I mentioned before, it's when I, I haven't really had anyone who, I've got one or two people who also work with dudes in the trades and they'll ask for some support, but it's usually, it's not about like the process of what we're doing, it's more about the business building aspect and how that works. Not a whole lot of digital marketers really reach out too much unless they're doing like pay per click or something completely different. Or a videographer or someone that would be complimentary like a website developer. 37:24 - I actually reached out to a business broker and asked them about it and he, oh gosh. He's like, so I have a question. Do you have any relationships with other entertainment businesses? I was like, oh, I've got a ton of 'em. Like I know entertainment businesses all around. He is like, you might not even need me. And I was so grateful for him just giving me that little piece of information and he said, reach out to all of the businesses that know you, like you, trust you and ask them if they're in the market and would love to buy your business. I reached out to the biggest business that I knew nationally that I had shared some of my documents with some of my training procedures. I showed them how I automated the back office and had been supporting them. I supported a lot of other entertainment industry companies locally and when people would call and ask for support, I was like, yeah, sure, this is what you need to do. I, and they were just like, they jumped at the chance to own my company. They were like absolutely a hundred percent because they knew the reputation that I had built up, they knew about the systems, they knew how it was organized and I had all of the data and all of the numbers right there for them. It was super simple. -
Dive into an episode where marketing meets self-growth, as Theresa Bassett shares her journey from radio to CEO of The Diamond Group. Discover how her agency adapts to client needs, why comfort zones hinder growth, and the power of identity in shaping behaviors. Plus, she teases their big move towards franchising. Get ready for a treasure trove of agency insights mixed with life lessons.
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
Pivoting toward Full-Service Agency.The Why behind MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue).Diamonds are made under pressure.The power of identity in shaping behavior.Franchising: The Next Big Leap.Resources:
The Diamond GroupDevNoodleBlue Ocean StrategyConnect with Theresa Bassett:
LinkedInEmailConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
36:50 - Like if all I'm after ever doing is seeking comfort and then I'm essentially seeking what I know. And if I'm always seeking what I already know, then I'm not growing much at all. And so I think comfort, you have to get, you have to allow yourself to embrace discomfort in order to embrace the unknown. And the unknown is where all of the growth happens, it’s where all the ideas happen. It's where all of the challenge happens. Yes. But it's also where all of the experiential learning happens. And that's where you grow in capacity and compassion and wisdom and all of those things. So yeah, screw comfort.54:10 - Theresa: And that's where it has to tie back to that identity piece we were talking about. Because I think that you can set targets like those three categories we talked about, and those are the three categories that I recommend in the Uplevel System. But, there's targets and then there's targets, and then there's really good targets, really good targets that pull from a heart space because they're tied to your identity,
Josh: Right? Yep, I've never talked about this publicly yet, but if I start this new podcast idea that I have it's all about this whole self-awareness, motivation, discipline thing, and talk.
Theresa:I love it.
Josh: Successful people and, and how they approach it and everything.
Theresa: It’s gonna be a wild success with that because I hope so. It's system on self-awareness that you've already baked into what fires you up.46:40 - Because I would bet you that, I would bet if you look back at some of the things that you've started and maybe feel like you're undisciplined about maintaining, they're probably in the same genre of the same category year after year, year after year. Like totally right? And so you're practicing long obedience in the same direction, but you just need a different rhythm to being optimally productive. That is me a hundred percent. So I was doing these sprints without really realizing it. And then I was subsequently sometimes beating up myself up for not being disciplined enough, not being persistent enough. And then I'm like, holy crap, actually no, that's not true. Because I'm doing the same things that I'm working on some of the same things year after year, year after year.45:36 - That was very personal to me because I have this whole theory that I'm sure I've mentioned before of like what makes a successful person and to me I think it's a combination and they all kind of work together of self-awareness, motivation, and discipline. And I do this really unfair thing where I'll start to like, you know, I'm like, oh, let me test this theory. Let me look at someone and like a friend, I know this is so bad, but like, okay, where do I rank them in self-awareness? Are they a plus minus or neutral? Same thing with motivation, same thing with discipline. And I think where my biggest weakness is, is discipline. I like to think that I'm self-aware. I think everyone does. I like to, I spend time focusing on motivation and really like capturing that and making sure I'm taking advantage of it. When I call it like the first half-life of your motivator. It's where you can kind of really capture that. But what I think I struggle the most with is creating that discipline after I get the motivator. And I don't really have anywhere that I'm going with this other than I love the idea of doing a discipline sprint. -
Dive into the world of marketing mastery with Aaron Gaeir, CEO of GDX Studios, sharing his wisdom on creating enchanting experiences that amplify every form of media. From fostering an adventurous culture to leveraging pivotal success strategies and crafting valuable partnerships, this episode is a treasure trove for any marketing aficionado.
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
Building a Culture That Amplifies Success.The Power of Experiential Marketing.Strategic Partnerships in Agency Growth.Maintaining Optimism Through Challenges.Harnessing Tech for Marketing Innovation.Resources:
GDX StudiosDevNoodleConnect with Aaron Gaeir:
LinkedInEmailConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
17:48 - What do you mean your DNA and your P&L, your profit loss has a line item for culture. Yeah. And I'm not talking about Taco Tuesdays, I'm not talking about vacations or more time off or doing, you know, happy hours on Fridays, that is, you know, that should be done anyways, right? I'm talking about how you structure building great culture or things like transparency, the way that people are paid, the way that people are compensated, not just in the time and money, and how that influences your culture and the people you hire, what I call PLU’s, people like us.25:00 - Wouldn't it be great to work somewhere where as you create value, you can then create, and I'm not talking about taking out the trash or doing the windows or, you know, plugging in the computer or turning the lights off. That's, you should be doing that anyways. I'm talking about real value and everybody knows what that is. Real, real value. And that doesn't mean maybe a new client or new sales. It could be a new software, it could be uncovering a new employee, a new colleague, right? There's all kinds of things that you can do to create value and everybody can create value from the account bookkeeper on up to the secretary, you name it. Everybody has the opportunity to create value in our company and harness that value.14:04 - Aaron: It's the mental capacity to get through just really tough, tough mental challenges, you know?
Josh: Yeah. I think still to this day, out of all the, the sports and workouts that I've done, I think a wrestling match has been the hardest and most tiring thing. And then not to go too far in this direction, but those tournaments, when you have three matches, four matches in a day, I mean, you feel a hundred percent cooked after one match and then you gotta recoup after, you know, an hour and then get back out there. It was, it was unlike anything I've ever done. 01:28:00 - This is a gateway to getting to the spatial computing. This is the gateway of using tactile experiences to get people into the metaverse or spatial computing. So it's exciting new, very cool that I'm putting a lot of eggs in that basket so people in that space could use us big time. 'cause I'm having people like agencies, I got one guy in Prague that I love that does these amazing mockups and he, they're they're blown you away. 01:04:15 - Aaron: It does feel good, right?
Josh: Yeah. you know, I have this whole obsession of motivation, you know, which one's more powerful, a good positive, a positive motivator or an FU motivator. And as much as I want to pretend like the positive motivators are stronger, it tends to be the FU motivators are the stronger ones.
Aaron: I had a whole company in that field of medical devo, you know, medical as you know, diabetes, obesity. I sold that to Cigna. And my IP was motivation. And it's two things. It's carrot or the stick. And you're right, the stick works better. Fear.
Josh: Well said.
Aaron: Losing eyesight, fear of dying from diabetes, fear of losing your leg is far stronger than saying, Hey dad, I want you to walk me down the aisle, get off the couch and stop eating cheeseburgers. That's powerful, right? I want you to be there for my grandkids. I want my kids to have a grandpa. That's powerful. But when, when somebody says, look, you're gonna lose your eyesight and we're gonna have to take your leg. Ooh, that's real powerful. -
Dive into an energizing discussion on the simplicity of work attire, the nuances of office culture, and the riveting journey of climbing the corporate ladder in digital marketing. From wardrobe hacks to the intricacies of acquisitions and the essence of agency success, this episode is a treasure trove for keen minds!
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
Sweatshirt and white polos for weeks!Why choose consistent clothing?Tactical decision-making power talk.How a chance dinner talk led to a job.Transforming from peer to president.Resources:
MediauraDevNoodleThe Influence of ADHD on Entrepreneurial Tendencies (Masters in Marketing Agency episode with Andrew AebersoldConnect with Amelia Veron:
LinkedInConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
56:35 - It's 'cause I think it's so important. But you know, I always use the diner example. When you go to a restaurant that has everything under the sun on the menu, it usually means nothing is that great there. As opposed to when you go to those fine dining restaurants, and there's like three things on the menu, you know, that there's services or in this case, the food is probably a lot better per service or dish. So I think and to your point, we've talked to a few marketing agencies that their aim was to be that full service, and then they realize they're kind of diluting all the services and not providing the best service for their clients. So, you know, I think that's worth mentioning.22:03 - Amelia: And that, not to say we haven't had our fair share of disagreements, but I think the trust is built there at this point that we can disagree and get into it and then the next day be like, I'm fine. I'm over it now.
Josh: Well that was literally gonna be kind of my next question, which is like, does that ever get frustrating or is that kind of just how it should be? 'cause you know, I think there's a lot of power when it comes, I call it like diversity and thought.33:57 - Your kind of production work doesn't really have much to do with your managerial skills. You know, I think, you have to be self-motivated. Like you have to be a problem solver and you have to just be a little tenacious. Like, I mean, stuff gets rough sometimes and you have to go home and be like, I'm gonna do it one way or the other, I'm going to do it. And sometimes people just don't have those qualities and I don't think you can make someone be that person.38:32 - I call it like Aristotle's mean, or Aristotle's, I forget, but it's this idea that everyone tends to bounce up and down. Whether it's happiness, it can go into politics, it can go into anything and people bounce. 'Cause what they do is they identify that there's an issue, maybe everyone's upset so they try to go the other way and they usually go too far and then they identify that too far and then they come back. And the more someone can kind of close that, that gap or that parabola, that tends to be the better solution. So I think that was, a really good point.42:36 - The beginning stage is mainly like, how are you doing? Are you getting the concepts like do you like it here? Do I mean frankly like, do we like you here? And so it's kind of us trying to suss out like the skills that maybe you can't interview about during that 90 days. -
Dive deep into the insightful world of marketing and PR with our expert guest, Jen Hartmann. Discover fascinating insights on mergers, strategic networking, and innovative PR tactics like News Jacking. Packed with relatable stories and expert tips, this episode is a goldmine for agency owners looking to up their game.
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
The art of strategic networking.Importance of community in agency growth.Innovative PR tactics that work.Hiring practices that set agencies apart.The impact of M&A on your agency.Resources:
NEAT: The AgencyDevNoodleInvisible InfluenceMy First Million PodcastConnect with Jen Hartmann:
LinkedInConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
38:11 - I pay for their coffee and I ask them all about them. I do not make the conversation about me. In fact, I talk very little when I am taking somebody out to dinner or coffee. I just wanna learn all about them and what they're working on. And then what I do is I do something for them. I don't expect anything in return. I want nothing in return, in fact in that moment. But I will make an intro to somebody who I think they should meet. I will review their website or their marketing strategy, their social media, I'll give them tips, I will send them a contact of a journalist. I do something just because I think I should do something for that person and that comes back tenfold every single time. They will open up doors for me that I would not have been able to open myself. And so that has been really impactful. 28:28 - Josh: How did you guys get your first client?
Jenn: Oh my gosh, okay. Let me think back. My network, this is still something I do a lot of, but I do a lot of networking and I go on a lot of coffee dates and dinner dates and whatever it may be. But I really leveraged my network to get our first couple of clients back in 2020 or back in 2019 really. And I still do it today. I still do a healthy amount of networking and that really helps to bring in clients. I mean of course we have a sales team and we're doing a lot of lead gen and closing deals on the phone, but like I'm still out and about having conversations with people. I've just noticed that when I meet people they, not to toot my own horn, but people like me very quickly. And when people like you, they trust you and they wanna buy from you.47:34 - And that's truly not the way to do PR in 2024. I think that worked maybe 20 years ago. But things are just different nowadays. So for example, we do a lot of news jacking, which sounds kind of wild, but essentially what it means is we're constantly looking at trends and breaking news and we're figuring out how can we latch our client onto that trend or that breaking news topic. And so we get a ton of features for our clients from doing that. So other agencies see it, they like it, they bring clients to us.20:02 - Josh: Because this is something that we've talked about a decent amount, especially if the owner was an athlete or something like that and they find a lot of value in hiring athletes. Do you see the same thing?
Jenn: For sure. I would say that a high percentage of our employees played professional sports or competed at like the top level of their sport, whatever that might look like. And I think athletes do have certain traits, they know how to work really, really hard and they also know how to take feedback. They're very coachable. And so yes, I think athletes develop these skills that do carry over into the workplace.36:31 - So a piece of advice I would definitely give people right off the bat is start building your network before you need your network. If you need a network and you haven't built a network, it's too late. Like you, you're already starting up behind. So start building up your network years before you need them. I have always been a really great networker. I think I got it from my dad. My dad has a great network, he's a talker, he's very friendly, people like him and I think I just saw what he did growing up and I took it and I started doing that when I was in college. So any networking event they had in college, I would go any opportunity to meet CEOs or CMOs from companies around town, I would go and I would take it. I took every internship opportunity I could throughout college just for the sake of building up my network. And it honestly really paid off. -
Dive into the dynamic world of influencer marketing with BabbleBoxx CEO Sherri Langburt. Discover the resilience behind her story, groundbreaking moves in marketing, and the power of trusting your gut in business. This episode is a must-listen for those seeking inspiration and industry-insider knowledge.
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
Sherri’s unique approach to getting hired.Influencer marketing: beyond the hypeStaying in your lane for success.The impact of having immigrant parents.Building communities within agencies.Resources:
BabbleBoxxDevNoodleConnect with Sherri Langburt:
LinkedInConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
41:18 - Sherri: I think the cream thing was like, you could see all the stuff on your face, right?
Josh: Not only that, but it was actually like, it was like a silly design. Like it was this, it looks like a push pop almost. And because even just the look of it was like anyone could put cream on their face, right? But it was like literally the look of the product was different, and for that reason, it ended up blowing up on TikTok. So Yeah. Yeah. TikTok is, and I'll be honest, I don't see it cooling off anytime soon. I, I see that as like it's, we're still in the ramp-up phase. I'm trying to think if there's like another example of something that took off and then didn't really go anywhere after two years. But I see TikTok shop or whatever it's called.16:28 - Josh: And I guess since you, you know, you did talk about the box, can you tell us a little bit more about BabbleBoxx and who you guys help?
Sherri: So we have all different kinds. So we're an influencer marketing agency. I say full service because we stay in our lane. We don't offer SEO and we don't offer email marketing. We only do influencer very specific, but we do a lot with an influencer. So when you think about influencers and you say full service, people are like, that's bizarre. But you know, we do regular campaigns that are not a Boxx. So any kind of influencer activation. We do our co-branded boxes, which are our BabbleBoxx, which are these themed kits that go out to brands. So they're multi-brand collab. So right now we have one for Super Bowl in market, we're gearing up for National Nutrition Month and we bring five brands in those boxes. They go out to influencers. And then because of those kits, then brands started to come to us saying, well wait a minute, could you do custom kits? So we do custom kits. I would say, my favorite way to describe them is these hype kits.21:10 - Like we've had a lot of PR people say, could we become your in-house PR person? And I think we have to stay in our lane. And you know, it's funny, so many people come to me and say like, as I was growing this and people laughed at me when I launched this and what are you doing? And oh, now they're like, there's so much competition. There's like 30,000 ad agencies in New York, so there's a thousand influencer agencies.29:05 - Josh: And I think I shared a story last time we spoke, but how do you listen to your gut? Do you have any, do you focus on specifically, do you think it's actually just natural to you now? Like what does that look like?
Sherri: I think that I'm by nature very intuitive and I think that for so many years people told me, like with the Weight Watchers thing, like, you're crazy. You're crazy, you're crazy. And if you have that intuition, listen to it. Don't listen to the, I'm crying to the outside voices, right? And so it's like taking the outside voices and not listening to them is I think one of the biggest steps. It's even like you'll see it on social, like, why are you listening to all the noise? Or when I started this company and people are like, there's, there's one woman who kept calling me and really might wanna come work with you, but, and she would always find a thing and it's like the noise. But I think that it's something that you just feel. 34:13 - Don't stay in your silo. Like, don't assume like so many brands, like, oh, men are not our demo. Try it, test it. Or women 50 plus are too old for us, or we need to be like with the hottest, you know, beauty people. What if maybe that's not like people want what they think they want, like it's really cool to have the hot women promote your product. Maybe that's not where your product is gonna shine, so don't stay in that silo. -
Dive into the engaging world of Brian Mattocks as he unfolds the significance of community in business, the nuances of marketing, and the power of podcasting in this insightful episode. Discover his unique perspective on building networks, mastering communication, and why attention is the currency of connection.
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
Community building insights.Teaching through experience.Marketing attention mechanics.Brian's podcasting journey.Referral importance in business.Resources:
Podcast ChefDevNoodleConnect with Brian Mattocks:
LinkedInConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
24:25 - If you give someone attention, you've beaten the game. The trick is how to give them the right attention in the right way. And how to direct that into something that's positive and productive with what you guys have done with the profiles and with building out the amount of research you've done, you are giving attention to somebody in a even more powerful way because the attention you're giving them is information about the most important subject in their life, right? Which is them.37:36 - I had to deal with the fact that, you know, what I thought was clever and interesting wasn't effective. I had to learn that everything that you're doing in an environment like this is practice. And as practice as that experiment, you have to evolve your approach to solving those problems. And as I went through, you know, week after week, year after year, I learned what works and what doesn't in this case.45:34 - Alex Garaschenko: That's really interesting. So we're starting our community with having done 60 some episodes, so 60 plus members potentially that will be coming into this community wonder, do you think that the initiation, when we start the community of all 60 coming together by us pairing people up, maybe in a way would that, how would you do the initiation for something like that where you already have a pool of people and now you're just.
Brian Mattocks: I wouldn't have, I wouldn't take 60, I'd take a dozen, I'd take eight and make them the founding founding members, give them their own experience and then slowly bring in the rest of the, the outliers. Make sure that your initial tribe, as it were, are folks that you believe are gonna be spark plugs in your community, folks that engage folks that care and make them your founder circle.47:02 - So, alright, so there's a couple ways to learn, right? I mean, you can talk about the learning styles, which has been debunked, but the best way to learn is from somebody else's experience, right? Because it's a force multiplier. I can go out and learn how to play piano by myself or I can watch somebody else who's learned how to play piano and get access to that, like in a video game, right? I'm a big video gamer, and so learning from other people is outrageously the strongest force multiplier you can get.49:32 - Yeah, a podcast is great. Like how big is your network gonna be when you're sitting in your office by yourself? Even if you go to the local networking events, more often than not, the folks that are showing up there aren't sweet spot folks for you. They're not either great partner relationships or not good peer relationships. More often than not, those are a collection of local folks that don't want to sit in their office anymore. I'm not suggesting that face-to-face networking is bad, but focus driven face-to-face networking is so much better where you can control, or at the very least, get access to a limited audience that's specialized. That's why the conferences usually are a much better play when it comes to the networking conversation or do it on steroids, do it with podcasting. I can specify position an organization, I can specify size of organization, I can get folks to be on a show that really, you know, you can get down to some very, very fine level of demographic detail and you can't network that sharply that powerfully locally. You're just not gonna get there.1:05:09 - The rest of it is just execution on that attention cycle. How can you give that attention in a way that is super powerful? 'cause again, the path you're on is the path to creating believers. It's lifelong, you know, partners, it's the kind of relationship that folks would give up last in the event that they had to give up a relationship because you made them feel great because you gave them attention in ways that they couldn't get any other way. So I would just say lean into that. -
Dive deep into the world of in-house marketing agencies with expert Kasper Sierslev, Chief Commercial & Creative Officer at Zite. Kasper unveils the intricacies of creativity and process-driven success. Explore his unique model that combines efficiency with innovation and learn the art of churning out impactful ideas while fostering a thriving workforce community. It's an episode brimming with insider tips that bridge the gap between abstract creativity and tangible business outcomes, a true treat for the marketing-minded!
Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
The art of bad ideas vs. great outcomes.Building communities within in-house teams.External creatives enrich in-house ideas.Two-day co-creation sprints with experts.Process and creativity walk hand-in-hand.Resources:
ZiteDevNoodleWin-Win-HouseConnect with Kasper Sierslev:
LinkedInConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
19:42 - What are this relatable truth that you and I know, but we never really talk about it. So I really like that. And I think it's for that part. I mean, I write a lot of these things down in my notebook or on my phone when whenever I notice weird things say, oh, maybe I could use this at something at some point. And I look it up whenever I have to come up with an idea.20:38 - I mean, for the first, I don't know, 20, 15 years of my career, it was really scary showing your bad ideas and telling them it was like taking all your clothes off and just say, ah, here I am, look at me. But it actually, it's the best, best advice I could give anyone is just share all your bad ideas. Just lay them out there and it will at one point, if you keep going, inspire the person you're sitting next to come up with something slightly better.26:04 - Sometimes we use AI to just spark something, something you can put up the walls. I mean, it's literally we put things on the wall, we [use] very old fashioned white paper black ink and so on. So if you can draw it badly and you can write it with an ink marker on a piece of paper and people understand it, then I'm sure it will work whenever you bring in photographers or 3D artists or whatever.28:19 - I don't think inspiration is for amateurs at all. I think inspiration is really important. You have to visit places you haven't been before. Look at, I mean, I love going to a thousand Europe or Japan or something, and look at the advertising, look at the art, look at the streets and everything. Read magazines I haven't read before, hear new music, etc. Not necessarily to do something now it's just to fill up, as you say, you know, fill up all the brains with weird things and at one point you connect them. Creativity is really, you know, connecting.42:10 - I'm not scared of the gut feeling, but I also know that if I have to sell it in afterwards, I have to do the rational thing. I was doing a lot of car advertising couple of years back and we always had like this, you don't buy a car for the meth or the specs, you buy it for how it looks or how it feels in the curves or something like that. But you need to have that kind of, we call it the pop argument when you are explaining it to your friends at the pop or your wife. You say, oh, but it really goes really fast on the mileage or it's really efficient or it's safe or something like that. But it's a feeling that you buy that makes you buy the car. -
From under-the-weather resilience to big wins in higher education marketing, this episode is a mishmash of grit, strategy, and insider tricks. Discover how one agency CEO capitalized on specific niches and key partnerships to dominate the community college marketing scene—all while fighting off the remnants of a COVID cough. Tune in for stories and strategies that inspire!
Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
Battling COVID while still on the job. Strategic shifts that spike agency wins.The intricacies of higher education marketing.Turn rejections into productive fuel.Insights on hiring the right agency talent.Resources:
Graduate CommunicationsDevNoodle2BobsBuild a Better AgencyConnect with Cheryl Broom:
LinkedInConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
8:50 - She was in the back of the room standing and she was crying, crying. She was crying for me because she felt so bad that I'd finally, you know, gotten the nerve to get up and do this thing. And I had forgotten. And then I looked in the beginning in the front of the audience at the kids sitting on the floor. And this one really cool sixth grade girl looked up at me and it was like something out of an eighties movie. And she said, you can do it.16:18 - I'm very much motivated by challenge rather than discouraged by it. And I think that's interesting like the MiraCosta example that the college, I mean women have been putting up with this for years. I mean, every woman at every community college for the last 50 years had been told that they didn't get maternity leave and they couldn't use their sick time past, you know, four to six weeks.22:45 - Like I didn't set out to be like, I'm gonna destroy you. It was more like like I better get going if I'm gonna survive. It was like a fire under me to fight back to pro to protect myself and my family rather than to undermine someone.25:10 - Yeah, we have, so we have a really creative team and we have people who are musicians, professional authors who, huge sports fans, even athletes. And I think that people that have that drive in their life just bring a lot of enthusiasm and challenge to the workplace. So we like to hire people who are outgoing and who have passion 'cause they bring that passion and it's makes work more interesting.45:25 - I think being a good listener, I hear a lot of problems when I come in. When our agency comes in after failed relationships with other agencies, I'll always ask what, why did your last agency not work out for you? And usually it's because they didn't take the time to listen and to find out what the true problem was. They just jumped right into solutions. And now even in my scopes of work that I write, I usually put blocks of time to strategy rather than just jumping straight to a solution. -
Dive into the riveting journey of Cassandra Bailey, as she navigates partnerships, acquisitions, and the stimulating challenges of running a successful PR agency. Uncover her passion for fostering community, her robust marketing approach, and how she capitalizes on future trends. Get ready for a trove of insights that will inspire both budding and seasoned marketers!
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
Discussing the future of digital communications.How to maintain a "clean digital footprint".Importance of community and EO networks.Cass shares acquisition and business operation insights.Center of Influence & Referral Network strategies.Resources:
Slice CommunicationsDevNoodleConnect with Cassandra Bailey:
LinkedInConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
1:23 - I think a lot of times we get so fixated on the here and now of what does that social post say or what's in that press release? Is it AP style? Are we using an Oxford comma that like we lose sight of the fact that we have tremendous influence in the world. In a lot of cases we direct or advise CEOs on what to say and how to say it. We influence how nonprofits talk about their mission or their vision or their values. Like there really is a lot that we have to add to the world of the community and that is a superpower that we should take seriously and be intentional about.8:24 -I think we would have, and I should have early on, clearly defined our roles in the company, understood our swim lanes. I think we should have allocated equity in the business based on what each of us had to bring to the table. That was an article that I read after I bought the company back that like, that's a common mistake that a lot of founders, especially friend founders start that. That they start with is that you just go in 50-50, oh, we're just gonna be 50-50. Whereas one partner might bring a certain skillset and another partner might bring a different skillset. And really 50-50 probably isn't the way that most relationships should be when they start as friends and then become businesses. that's just a default that actually isn't intentional or thoughtful and creates a lot of resentment from the very beginning. 13:51 - That became a real big point of conflict in terms of how we were doing cashflow management and cash management. But neither one of us knew how to talk about it as cash management. And so that put us in a really uncomfortable and bad place around money early on.28:57 - The company lost so much value and I didn't even know it. Like we weren't getting, so they took over all of our financial operations, our HR operations, which was also very attractive, right? We talked earlier about how like I had no business operations expertise and really no interest in business operations. So like they were gonna give us these platforms and this incredible technology that we could use to grow. We didn't see like bank statements or financial reports and is or like anything for months and months. 45:10 - Oh my gosh. It's a whole thing about known and unknown and self-discovery and recognizing your blind spots, right? The clearing tool, the clearing tool has been an amazing thing that has changed trust and relationship in my agency. It is like six parts. It's amazing. I love it. It's the way to deal with conflict. -
Dive deep into the art of agency growth, team culture, and strategic collaboration in this powerhouse episode featuring Skyler Reeves. Get insider knowledge on honing operations, the importance of philosophy in business, and harnessing community for creating enterprise value. Plus, tips on positioning your agency in a crowded market. Don't miss these impactful insights that can reshape your agency's future!
Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.
Growth through internal education.Effective client expectation management.Collaborating with other agencies. Building enterprise value.The importance of conversion rate optimization.Resources:
Ardent GrowthDevNoodleConnect with Skyler Reeves:
LinkedInConnect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInQuotables:
4:19 - I think it's, you know, when you're running a business, there's definitely some merit to the who not how line of thinking, I need to do it more myself. Frankly, I think if you know that you're the type of person who does like to learn or who does like to challenge themselves, I think that's where the real benefit comes from. So there's a certain, you know, when we give ourselves these self-limiting beliefs of I can't do something or I'm not capable of something that's very different from, I don't want to do something and it's the things that you think you can't do that I think are worth exploring and trying to get down to the core and really asking yourself, why do you think that way? At what point in your life did you start telling yourself that?8:57 - I think it probably comes, a lot of it has to do with how you're looking at both the micro and the macro simultaneously sometimes. So in the micro, I don't think about the macro and I just think about what's the small win. But when I do feel like I'm kind of hitting against a wall, like whether I'm trying to, I mean in the world of software development, it's like a lot of times you're solving novel problems unless you're just on a team somewhere just banging out code for somebody. But in that world of solving novel problems, it's you're always gonna hit a brick wall at some point and there's always something that goes wrong. You gotta troubleshoot, you gotta figure out, you don't even know how to approach the problem. And I think what helps me push through there is the experience of, I look back and I say, things may be hard, but if I just start to calculate up the progress that I've made over a year, you start to realize what that golf looks like.41:56 - Once things start to get boring, don't change. If it's making you money and it's consistent, just start hiring people to run your company at that point and just let it make money and you go solve whatever novel problems you want to on the side, but just let that thing start printing you money at that point. 'cause that's when you know you've got something. 29:32 - Where you give a customer something to review like a piece of content and tell 'em to edit it. Most customers are not at trained editors, right? They're like, there's a way to edit content, there's different stages of editing, different types of editing. You have to kind of know what the writer's looking for, et cetera. Most writers or most customers are not trained editors, but everyone thinks that they are just like everyone thinks that they can write when half the time what they're really doing is just hitting keys on a keyboard. And so what happens is you ask 'em to edit it and in their mind think I have to provide feedback here, right? Like I have to, I have to do something, I have to, I don't know if it's like, I need to assert control or I need to assert my knowledge or what, right? So getting on a call with them, streamline that a ton because we can say, we're not here to talk about grammar.34:34 - So it's like, look at the behavior and change the behavior. Like ask yourself like, what's the root cause here? How do I change it? And again, I think a big part of it's just fear. It's fear of telling the clients either a no or yes, but, they really don't care for the most part. Again, they just wanna know, they want the thing done. And if it's something that's like really urgent, okay, they'll let you know, they'll say, I really need this like this week, is there any way we can expedite this? And then there's your chance to make more margin just like sure, you know, 200% the cost, right? And if it's really that urgent, they'll pay it. - もっと表示する
