← Digital Social Hour
Digital Social Hour
Chris Kubby: The Brutal Truth About Woke Branding, DEI & Why Big Brands Are Failing | DSH #1642
00:57:42
Loading summary
Transcript391 lines
- [00:01]
A
So good, so good, so good.
- [00:03]
B
Give big, save big with Rack Friday deals at Nordstrom Rack. For a limited time, take an extra 40% off red tag clearance for a total Savings up to 75% off. Save on gifts for everyone on your list from brands like Vince Cole, Haan, Sam Edelman and more. All sales final and restrictions apply. The best stuff goes fast. So bring your gift list and your wish list to your nearest Nordstrom rack today. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast, Smart move. Being financially savvy. Smart move. Another smart move. Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan like a good neighbor. State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.
- [00:58]
A
You have to completely flip your mindset and say we need to build ton of different advertising and see what works basically and then use that to continue to optimize along the way. Yeah, owning media is going to be something that becomes way more valuable because it's not done by AI. Take your best performing stuff and throw more money behind it. It's like, this is a really good hand we have. Any kind of change will hurt. Unless the upside is double or triple what you're doing today, it's going to cost you more.
- [01:32]
C
Wow.
- [01:32]
A
Because change really hurts your business. It slows you down, it makes you think, it makes you change out teams, it makes you do different things. And unless it gives you 2x3x what you're doing today, there's no point in doing it.
- [01:52]
C
Okay, guys, got Chris out here. We're gonna talk marketing today. All the way from Denmark. I believe he is the first guest from Denmark. So thanks for the flight, man.
- [01:59]
A
Yeah, no problem.
- [02:00]
C
It was great. That's a long journey. Was it direct or did you have to stop?
- [02:02]
A
No, there was a stop in Amsterdam. Okay. So yeah, not so bad.
- [02:05]
C
Pick up some cannabis on the way?
- [02:06]
A
No, no, they actually, they've reduced a lot of that. So it used to be that you could go and there'd be a lot of cafes that you could smoke at.
- [02:12]
C
Yeah.
- [02:13]
A
And they've totally changed over the last, I want to say two, three years, maybe four years. They've started to really like you have to be a local to kind of get it. So it's not as an open Amsterdam like you might have.
- [02:26]
C
You know, When I was 18, I went there for the sole purpose of.
- [02:30]
A
Just finding some, some cafes.
- [02:32]
C
Cannabis. Yeah. So now you can't do that now it's.
- [02:35]
A
It's a little bit dicey. So you can still do it, but it's not as open.
- [02:39]
C
I wonder what caused that.
- [02:41]
A
Yeah, I don't know. Like they became a little more friendly, family friendly. Like, I think maybe they got sick of just the red light association. Yeah, exactly. So they just, they've started to reduce it. Maybe the crime was a problem. They didn't want to be associated with it. I have no clue. I just. I was like, okay, that's your strength. You have to lean into your strengths.
- [02:59]
C
That's interesting. Yeah. I see Europe undergoing a lot of transformations depending on the country. How's it in Denmark? Is it changing pretty rapidly there?
- [03:05]
A
No, Denmark has been sort of the safeguard in most of the things. Denmark's been really good.
- [03:09]
C
That's good.
- [03:10]
A
I've been there for 17, 18 years now. So it's changed a lot. Like it's become. It's become way more cosmopolitan, way more international. So for example, when I got there, you would call into the government and it would all be in Danish and you have to try to make your way through it. Now you call most places and it's English. They'll actually ask you in the menus. Press 9 for English.
- [03:32]
D
So they toast the holidays in a new way and raise a glass of rumchata, a delicious creamy blend of horchata with rum. Enjoy it over ice or in your coffee. Your holiday cocktails just got sweeter. Tap or click the banner for more. Drink responsibly. Caribbean rum with real dairy cream. Natural and artificial flavors. Alcohol 13.75 by volume 27.5 proof. Copyright 2025 Agave Loco Brands, Pojoaquee, Wisconsin. All rights reserved.
- [04:01]
A
Really become cosmopolitan. Also, the food culture there has exploded. And just the. Because it had Noma, which was the number one restaurant in the world for a few years.
- [04:13]
C
Was that a steakhouse or.
- [04:14]
A
No, it's, it was, it's. You could call it sort of new Nordic.
- [04:17]
C
Okay.
- [04:17]
A
Which is this. I don't know what you'd call it, but it's. It's local ingredients, it's fresh ingredients done in a very special Michelin three star way. Yeah. So they, they were like the number one restaurant for many years. So the food culture in Denmark just exploded.
- [04:32]
C
I need to add that to the bucket list.
- [04:34]
A
Yeah, I mean, as you can get really good food for good pricing, I find most places throughout Europe or the world, you have to pay quite a bit of Money to get decent food in Denmark. It's. It's actually quite, quite decent.
- [04:46]
C
That's cool.
- [04:46]
A
Yeah. But Denmark's been, well, I mean the whole immigration thing, they've been really, I would say more strict on immigration than any other European country, so. Well, other than maybe Poland or Hungary is a little bit in that direction too. But compared to Sweden. Sweden sort of let in a lot of Syrian refugees and stuff like that and a lot of immigrants. Yeah, I'm an immigrant as well. I don't know why they let me in, but they let me in.
- [05:12]
C
Timing.
- [05:13]
A
Yeah, I got in early, but yeah. Yeah. So they've. Denmark's been really kind of safeguarded and it's great culture, great place to build a business, really super capitalistic while still being, you know, focused on its people and trying to, you know, help out and do the best thing for its people.
- [05:29]
C
That's cool.
- [05:30]
A
Yeah, it's a really cool place.
- [05:31]
C
The cool part about what you do, I guess is you can work from pretty much anywhere, right?
- [05:34]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Actually my team went full remote, kind of. We flip flop. So we went in Corona times. We went obviously remote and then it was everyone back to the office and we came back in. And then over the last year and a half we just said screw it.
- [05:50]
C
You aren't seeing any difference in results?
- [05:52]
A
No, exactly. Like of course the culture and there's some office stuff and nice like hanging out with people. That's always good community. But from a work standpoint, when you're a digital marketing agency, you can be anywhere. It doesn't matter as long as you're on the same time zone, can have meetings with clients and most of our clients are doing some of the same stuff anyway. So working remote has been, you know, awesome. So I can be anywhere?
- [06:17]
C
Yeah. With, with the agency model, I'm curious, how has AI impacted that industry? I'm sure it's heard it right.
- [06:22]
A
Oh, it's crushing us.
- [06:23]
C
Yeah, it's getting, are getting wiped.
- [06:26]
A
Yeah. But I think every agency is going to go through massive changes. We're just going to see way more clients take stuff in house with their AI agents and things that they're building. We're already seeing the pressure of that. A lot of our customers are, you know, the budgets are less, they're. They're changing things around. They want stuff faster, cheaper, better. I'll see. I think we're going to see every major agency in the world just get flipped on its head in the last, in the next like five years.
- [06:54]
C
Jeez.
- [06:54]
A
Yeah, it's Going to, it's going to decimate agencies. I think it's also going to change, like the corporate marketing departments as well. You're going to see them completely flip. Change what they're doing, how they're running their businesses, going to bring in younger talent that knows how to use AI, knows how to prompt, knows how to squeeze the best out of these systems. And it's going to be, yeah, it's going to be a total, total change of the marketing game, 100%.
- [07:21]
C
So how are you getting ahead of that?
- [07:23]
A
Well, I don't know if it, I mean, like, no, honestly, I think it's a. What we're seeing with AI is it's changing so rapidly that it's, I feel like it's, it's a little like social media back in maybe, you know, 2007, 8, 9, where that was coming in, where it's just completely changing stuff and it was happening so rapidly that people were not being able to keep up. And that's the same with AI. I mean, a new model, a new tool, a new way of working comes out every day, it seems. So getting ahead is nearly impossible. Like, what you need to do is you need to be extremely playful, sandboxing everything, trying everything. So just being extremely curious, going out, buying all these tools, trying them out, saying, okay, we'll spend 30 bucks over here on this tool, 20 bucks here, 100 bucks, and just literally experiment, experiment, experiment, and get a sense of how are these things working, where do they suck, where do they do better? And that's the only way that you, you get ahead. And then I think from a business strategy standpoint, you have to be able to do something that I can't. So if that's access to people, access to creators, access to distribution channels that don't exist, like can't, you can't just buy your way in. That's where agencies, I think, are going to be able to safeguard their business. Having something that I can't do.
- [08:50]
C
Right.
- [08:50]
A
Because an AI, for example, like you've got a ton of followers, you've got a following. AI can't build that. Right.
- [08:57]
C
It'd be hard. Yeah.
- [08:58]
A
Right now, it'd be impossible. It just doesn't happen. So anybody with a distribution network of actual content ideas, their personal brand. Personal brand? Not even just personal brand, just brand media in general.
- [09:10]
C
Yeah.
- [09:11]
A
Owning media is going to be something that becomes way more valuable because it's not done by AI. AI can write stuff, it can analyze stuff, it can, you know, do a lot of the research, a Lot of the desk work, but it can't build a network. It can't build a media business, can help with parts of it, but it can't do that full network effect thing. So that's where I think agencies need to play. They need to figure out how do they maybe own the distribution network or at least have something into the distribution network that doesn't exist.
- [09:42]
C
That makes sense.
- [09:43]
A
Yeah.
- [09:43]
C
When it comes to marketing, specifically because you're a marketing agency, right?
- [09:46]
A
Yeah.
- [09:47]
C
Do you see AI ever becoming better than humans at that? Just specifically like running ads and marketing.
- [09:52]
A
Running ads, yes. Because the thing is that humans can't do is. Are not really good at pulling multiple nodes in together, like multiple, you know, data points and saying, okay, where do I put my money? So if I'm looking at Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, some sort of digital display, all of these things, and I'm connecting my CRM or I'm connecting my different marketing platforms, and I want to know, where should I put my money? Humans are really bad at taking all that data and trying to sort that out. We can make assumptions. Well, so does AI, but so, I mean, that's, that's where we will see the complete automation of ad buying done by AI very soon. Even Facebook, like Mark Zuckerberg came out, it was two or three months ago, and said, our plan is to completely remove the agency. Wow. Yeah. Our plan is. Yeah. Completely remove the ad buyer. Basically, the. The platform will also go through and tell you which creative is working the best and what you should replicate and what you should keep building. And then the system will build that content for you. It's going to be shit to start with. Like, we're not seeing. We're not seeing a lot of great AI content. Especially if you leave it sort of to automate itself. It's not doing a great job. You still need humans to go, ah, this sucks. Maybe do this, do that. But in the future, it's going to just basically analyze everything and tell you run this creative in these places with this cost and it'll run it for you and just spit out the results.
- [11:22]
C
I remember the old days of Facebook ads. There was so much targeting involved.
- [11:25]
A
Yeah, that's kind of gone, right?
- [11:27]
C
Yeah, it's gone.
- [11:28]
A
Which makes it funny. Right. Because we're still stuck in the old ways. When clients come to us, they're basically start with their. Their targeting. They say, who do we want? We have these Personas that we've built.
- [11:37]
C
Yeah, the avatar.
- [11:38]
A
Yeah. And we're. And I'm kind of saying Back saying to them, great, but these don't exist. Like you can put all of these things, okay, it needs to be this ethnicity and this age and this income bracket and this, all this. And then these psychographics on top. They need to be super into yoga and all these things and those things. You don't need those anymore. Basically, you're just running. And the algorithms and the AI figure out where best to place it that's giving you the results. And then so all the ad buying, tweaking is all gone.
- [12:12]
C
It's gotten easier, right?
- [12:13]
A
It's gotten easier. And it's also gotten. I would say it's gotten easier, but it has also given us. We're still stuck in the old ways, like I said. So the hard part is actually convincing clients to let the algorithms do their thing and also build creative in a way that lets it do its thing. So they're still stuck on. We build one ad for one target or one or two, three ads for one target audience, and that's all gone away. So you have to completely flip your mindset and say we need to build ton of different advertising and see what works, basically. And then use that to continue to optimize along the way. Yeah, and they're still. They're not doing that yet.
- [12:55]
C
Yeah, right. Do you mainly focus on high ticket these days because the ad cost has gotten so expensive. We were talking before we filmed about how much you're paying per lead now.
- [13:02]
A
Yeah, for my own business. Yeah. Like for my own business I'm paying 200 bucks.
- [13:07]
C
You know, a lead, which is crazy.
- [13:09]
A
Is crazy.
- [13:10]
C
Used to be 20.
- [13:10]
A
Yeah, it used to be way less, but the. And that's because I think there's some fatigue, some. Definitely some advertising marketing fatigue out there. People are not. I think they're more interested in finding you through untraditional means. More interested in. In less, you know, getting advertised to and down the throat. They're more interested in finding you on TikTok or finding you on organic. Yeah, organic. There's a certain, there's a certain signal that happens when they found you on their own. There's more trust build. There's more versus people just throwing advertising at you. So the ad, the lead for us, because we do have a high ticket, I mean, we're mostly working with Fortune 500 brands. So 200 bucks lead is probably not so bad when we're spelling like when a client typically spends $100,000 or more with us. So it's okay. Yeah, but it's, it's not perfect. Because you don't know. Usually the lead times are so long because. Or the sales cycle so long you might have somebody drop in two years ago. That now becomes actual business.
- [14:18]
C
Hard to track.
- [14:19]
A
So it's super hard to track. And. And it's also very. You could spend a ton of money at the front end getting those leads.
- [14:26]
C
Yeah.
- [14:26]
A
And you don't know that you know if this is going to work or not because you got to wait two years to actually find out. So actually building a, an acquisition funnel for clients is extremely hard in my type of business.
- [14:38]
C
Yeah.
- [14:38]
A
Yeah.
- [14:39]
C
So you're seeing success with LinkedIn ads?
- [14:41]
A
LinkedIn ads work pretty good for B2B stuff. Yeah. B2B, absolutely. They're very much more. I mean, it's where people are that you want and you can target that. It's harder to target job titles and people within specific industries on Facebook, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, like all of those. Google, those are great for retargeting. So when you do actually know who you actually want to go for, then retarget them with cheaper ads. So begin with the expensive and then go cheap just to, you know, track them down and. And advertise more.
- [15:11]
C
Yeah. Right. So, yeah, I built everything for the pod. Organic at the moment, but we're going to start with paid soon. Yeah. So I'm just learning. I'm trying to decide what platform I want to start with. I hear mixed things about YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn. Actually, I don't hear too many people running on there.
- [15:26]
A
No, I mean, I would think that Instagram, I love Instagram's quick. I mean, if you're doing it on desktop. So I don't recommend you buying ads on the mobile phone because Apple's gonna take 30%, which is ridiculous. But if you do all of your ads on desktop, Instagram just boosting stuff. I find that works extremely well for content like yours because it's, it's more organic and. And that'll actually perform quite well. I think so.
- [15:54]
C
Yeah.
- [15:55]
A
Yeah. Do you find. I always, like, think like the poker method, take your best performing stuff and throw more money behind it. It's like, this is a really good hand we have. You know, it's got. It's like, you know, it's a full house or whatever. It's done really good organically, then put some steam behind it and then it'll go even better.
- [16:12]
C
Yeah, I need to do that. I also see a lot of the top shows saying like DM me this word for the link to the episode.
- [16:17]
A
Yeah.
- [16:17]
C
I want to Start doing that.
- [16:18]
A
Yeah, many chat is amazing for that kind of stuff because you can automate all of that. So we've used manychat for brands and that's really powerful because then, yeah, DM me this, or DM me this word or, or, or comment this word. And then it just automatically sends out to them the stuff.
- [16:34]
C
It's, it's a win win. Because Instagram's algorithm is based off engagement too. So them commenting is helping you get more views. Plus you're getting a view on the YouTube video now too.
- [16:42]
A
Yeah, you just have to be careful.
- [16:43]
C
A little bit of.
- [16:45]
A
So Instagram is tracking when you're actually asking for calls to action.
- [16:50]
C
Oh, really?
- [16:51]
A
Yeah, so they want to know. They prefer there's not solid data on this, but they prefer more organic engagement.
- [17:00]
C
Okay, so you don't want to do it every post.
- [17:02]
A
No, exactly. Right. So if you're, if you're asking for the dm, if you're asking for the call, like the comment, that can tend to lower your reach a little bit. But you have to test it because I've seen tons of brands, tons of creators win with that strategy and you can. But I've also seen some get. Not shadow banned, but like a little bit of reach reduced.
- [17:22]
C
Interesting.
- [17:23]
A
When they start asking for that engagement because Instagram is tracking when they hear that or they see that in the, in the video.
- [17:31]
C
Yeah, I got to look into that more. I know some of my favorite shows like Diary of a CEO.
- [17:35]
A
Yeah.
- [17:35]
C
They do that on their Instagram. Yeah, Jay Shetty does it too.
- [17:39]
A
So they're asking for the DM or they're asking for the comment.
- [17:41]
C
Yeah, they say DM me this word for the link to the YouTube episode. Yeah. But I don't know if they do it every post. Probably not.
- [17:47]
A
Well, it's nice because you don't want to ask for the link in bio anymore. You don't want to say, hey, go to the link in my bio. That'll. That'll flag that trigger. So asking for the DMs a little bit more. And also when you're building these parasocial relationships, a DM with somebody will we valued more from Instagram side. It'll show a deeper connection with your audience because you're DMing them. Even though it may be automated, it still shows a deeper connection versus just comments or someone clicking a link in your bio. So that will actually build up your audience a bit quicker or faster or, you know, give you some more juice there.
- [18:22]
C
And you also build the messenger list. Right. The subscriber list on messenger. So that's worth something.
- [18:27]
A
Adding them to close friends as well, which is also super valuable if you just want to, you know, get. Because you're going to come out into the top of the stories.
- [18:36]
C
Yeah.
- [18:36]
A
When you message those close friends, so everyone who DMs, you get them into close friends and then when you release something you say, just to my close friends. And you're going to get way more engagement off the get go because it'll be the first thing they see. So there's a, there's some tactics there.
- [18:49]
C
When it comes to the creator economy. I'm sure you get asked all the time like should I start on social media? Like what platform should I focus on? What are you generally telling people?
- [18:57]
A
I tell people YouTube, YouTube all the time. Yeah, YouTube's the best. I mean it's just, it's a place that's going to pay you. It's also extremely hard. It's a higher, I would say it's a little bit more investment time wise but you will get more brand recognition out of it. You'll get people that spend more time with you on it. And it'll also teach you how to keep people's attention for longer periods because you're not doing these 30 second one minute videos that you see on TikTok or Instagram. You have to be able to keep an audience for 5 plus minutes, 10 minutes. So you will hone your skills as a creator much quicker on a YouTube than you will on any other platform. And it's going to pay you way more in the future. Yeah, or as soon as you get past, I think it's 10,000 views on a monthly basis. When you average that, then you start getting paid or get partner and then get paid.
- [19:57]
C
I also advise people this might be a hot take, but I say not to rely on the platforms as your main source of income. I tell people to create an offer.
- [20:05]
A
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I fucked up that so bad. No, honestly, like I just went all in. Okay. Personal brand and I'll be out there and I'll give all my information for free and stuff like that. And I won't build any stand store, I won't have any digital offering or anything like that. And I left so much money on the table.
- [20:22]
C
Crazy because you were early too.
- [20:23]
A
Yeah, I was super early. So I had, you know, a massive Snapchat following pretty decent on YouTube. Like 20,000. Yeah, you know, I was up to 250 or whatever on Instagram. So I had a Lot of things going. But I never. I always thought, I think some creators fall into this trap. They feel like they're selling out.
- [20:40]
C
Yeah.
- [20:41]
A
If they do a digital product or they do a mastermind or they. Of course, yeah. And it's like, that's all BS at the end of the day. You have knowledge that you can sell, you have things that you've done, you've got templates you've built, probably a ton of things that you yourself don't even realize is valuable. Why wouldn't you say, hey, get this for five bucks or get this for ten bucks or get my course for a thousand bucks? Why wouldn't you do those things? And I think for me, what held me back was this idea that, oh, that's selling out. That's not. And obviously I was running my own agency. I didn't really need that income. I had my own income from other places. But I really recommend people start thinking about small digital things that they can just sell. Like, you know, get that, that subscription based thing going, get that digital product going so that they build an income from things other than YouTube, other than, you know, Instagram or TikTok paying them.
- [21:37]
C
Yeah. It's easy to come up with those now, especially with tools like wap.
- [21:40]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Where you can actually get like. Well, you can also. What's interesting with that is that you can also get a lot of clippers and things like that to help you get your content out there.
- [21:49]
C
So that's a big part of my strategy.
- [21:51]
A
Yeah, it builds. It's sort of. Yeah, it's interesting. It kind of. It gives you an affiliate marketing angle and a distribution angle at the same time.
- [22:02]
C
Yeah.
- [22:03]
A
And that's super powerful.
- [22:04]
C
I think Tate was the first one that really mastered that.
- [22:07]
A
Yeah, he crushed it on that. Right. But he had an offering, like, that's the thing. You have to have an offering where you can give these clippers some money off the back of their sales.
- [22:18]
C
Yep.
- [22:18]
A
Right. So they clip it, they make the edit and. And they also get a cut of the whatever you've sold.
- [22:24]
C
Yeah.
- [22:24]
A
So you can really build some. Some scale that way. It's really impressive.
- [22:27]
C
It's a good model. Yeah. Because a lot of these clippers are like teenagers, people that are young. So them making a couple thousand a month is, you know.
- [22:33]
A
Yeah. And they're doing a better job clipping than, you know, some of us old guys.
- [22:36]
C
Oh, way better. Because they know the lingo. You know, I think the average age of my clippers got to be under 18.
- [22:41]
A
Oh, really?
- [22:42]
C
Yeah, my discord, I was like a thousand people. Okay. And they're all like teenagers. Some of them are making 5k a month.
- [22:48]
A
That's amazing.
- [22:49]
C
Yeah, it's crazy.
- [22:50]
A
It's so. It's so out there now. Like, you can really see the money is out there in the digital space. And to ignore that is just stupidity.
- [22:59]
C
Yeah. I was even playing around on school the other day.
- [23:01]
A
Yeah.
- [23:02]
C
Just joining communities and, like, I'm thinking about joining a couple paid ones that are like a couple thousand a month seems like a pretty cool app. Have you been on there?
- [23:09]
A
Yeah, I have. I've always. I signed up for a course in actually an AI building. That was pretty good. I think. You know, it's interesting for me, a lot of guys get a lot of good stuff out of the communities that are built in school. And, like, you've got sort of a network there and, like, you can message people similar to probably your Discord. And I was. I'm always there for. Just give me the tools, give me the stuff. Yeah. And I'll like, go away and I won't spend any time in the community.
- [23:35]
C
Well, you're in Denmark, so you can't really meet up.
- [23:37]
A
No way. Also, and I'm like, you know, the messaging is on a different time zone, so I'm like missing stuff all the time. Yeah. So I'm not the typical school user or the typical. Any kind of Discord user as well. I just go for like, hey, give me the template, give me the knowledge, and then I'll screw off.
- [23:52]
C
That makes sense.
- [23:53]
A
But there's so much more in the community. Like, you can see that being a part of that. You gain so much.
- [23:59]
C
Oh, yeah, right.
- [24:00]
A
So school is. I mean, school's amazing. I think that. And there's more platforms like that popping up that allow you to sell, you know, a mastermind or sell a community in some ways and. And make huge money off of it.
- [24:13]
C
Yeah. I mean, I almost joined Hormosis. I think it was 18 grand. And he got like a thousand people in there off his book launch.
- [24:19]
A
Was it 18,000 to join?
- [24:22]
C
Yeah. So he had the 6,000 for the books, but there was an upsell.
- [24:25]
A
But you got like 100 books or something like that.
- [24:27]
C
400 books. Yeah. But there was a 18K upsell, which is the school community, and I think a thousand people joined that. So he made. What is that? 18 million.
- [24:35]
A
Just all thought Hermosi is amazing.
- [24:37]
C
That's. That's the guys.
- [24:39]
A
The guy's incredible.
- [24:40]
C
Yeah, he's out here.
- [24:40]
A
Yeah. I came to his actually acquisition dot com. They do workshops. Yeah, Yeah, I went to his workshop back in January.
- [24:46]
C
How was it?
- [24:47]
A
Life changing.
- [24:48]
C
Really?
- [24:48]
A
Yeah. I highly recommend.
- [24:49]
C
What was the biggest takeaway?
- [24:52]
A
Wrong problem or no right problem? Wrong solution. So a lot of us as entrepreneurs, we. We spend time, like trying to fix our business or grow our business, scale it. And we're working on problems and we're trying to find the solutions to those problems. And oftentimes we're actually doing the right. We're fixing the right problem, but the wrong solution. So, for example, for me, my business, we were struggling with getting more whales in the door. So big ticket clients, like hardcore Fortune.
- [25:22]
C
500, shout out to today's sponsor, Quince. As the weather cools, I'm swapping in the pieces that actually gets the job done, that are warm to durable and built to last. Quince delivers every time with wardrobe staples that'll carry you through the season. They have fall staples that you'll actually want to wear, like the 100 Mongolian cashmere for just $60. They also got classic fit denim and real leather and wool outerwear that looks sharp and holds up. By partnering directly with ethical factories and top artisans, Quince cuts out the middleman to deliver premium quality at half the cost of similar brands. They've really become a go to across the board. You can. You guys know how I love linen and how I've talked about it on previous episodes. I picked up some linen pants and they feel incredible. The quality is definitely noticeable compared to other brands. Layer up this fall with pieces that feel as good as they look. Go to quince.comdsh for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. They're also available in Canada too.
- [26:29]
A
And I saw the market is going towards more quick and dirty, you know, like smaller brands. A lot of DTC brands were growing super fast. So we just thought we were missing out on that 98% of the market because we're talking about the 1%, 2% of Fortune 5000 versus how many other small medium businesses there are. Yeah, it's just dramatically different. Right. So we thought, okay, we're missing the boat on all of these smaller brands. And so we could get them. We could build a monthly subscription type of business that had, you know, monthly reoccurring revenue. That would flatten out some of the peaks and valleys in our business and that would be amazing.
- [27:11]
C
Right?
- [27:12]
A
But we built a business hunting whales. Right? And we built a business servicing whales. So switching gears and now trying to service the small medium businesses and trying to do monthly recurring with them was too big of a swing. So the upside on, the upside on that also is that they're harder to manage. They're, you know, they're, they're kind of transient. They drop you if you don't get results within, you know, 30 days.
- [27:38]
C
Right.
- [27:39]
A
And so our business wasn't really built for that. So it was the right problem. Okay. Get rid of the peaks and valleys in the business and then also bring in more revenue. But is that the little clients? No, actually what you need to do is actually build a better system for closing whales. So going through hormones thing was really eye opening into, okay, you're really great at solving problems, but you're solving them the wrong way.
- [28:04]
C
Right.
- [28:04]
A
And that's what's, you know, slowing down your business a bit. So you gotta go really think about those things. And then one of the other big takeaways was change. Any kind of change will hurt. Well, unless the upside is double or triple what you're doing today, it's gonna cost you more.
- [28:22]
C
Wow.
- [28:23]
A
Because change really hurts your business. It slows you down, it makes you think, it makes you change out teams, it makes you do different things. And unless it gives you 2x3x what you're doing today, there's no point in doing it. So, for example, a lot of companies go through rebrands. They think, oh, let's, let's rebrand, let's do our new logo, let's, you know, switch up this, we're going to focus on this market instead. They have to really do some serious analysis and say, will this 2x3x or more our business in the near future?
- [28:57]
C
Right.
- [28:58]
A
And if it doesn't, you don't do that change.
- [29:01]
C
It looks like for the big brands, at least it usually doesn't. Right. Because there's some recent examples. Jaguar, Cracker Barrel.
- [29:06]
A
Yeah.
- [29:07]
C
Seems like it didn't help at all.
- [29:08]
A
Didn't help at all. In fact, it went worse for them. Right. Even I would say, yeah. So Cracker Barrel, changing their logo out, changing their design of their stores and they just didn't read the room. They didn't read the room of, of American culture is not progress. It's not, I wouldn't say progressive. It's just progressive in a different way now. And they went ahead and did this and it actually hurt them more and probably cost them a fortune.
- [29:31]
C
Lots of money on the stock market.
- [29:32]
A
And also paying for the branding. Like, and all of these agencies out there that do this, like I call them a little bit like Snake oil salesmen because they're promising this 3x or 4x on their business, but they can't deliver that. Pizza Hut just changed their logo. I actually think that's going to go fine. Jaguar. Jaguar. Jaguar. I'm Latino now. Jaguar. Jaguar. Who changed their business or changed their entire look and feel, changed how Their cars. I mean, they've just seen, I think they said they're 98 down in sales.
- [30:04]
C
Holy crap.
- [30:05]
A
They're also not producing cars. So I got a caveat that, like. But they've just destroyed their business and now the CEOs out, they've changed the agency, all because they wanted to go woke.
- [30:15]
C
Right.
- [30:15]
A
And it's just, it's decimated their business.
- [30:18]
C
Yeah. Since you're working with these big brands, you might know the answer to this, but do you feel like there's a disconnect sometimes with the, like the upper management level and the customer because they're so far removed 100%?
- [30:29]
A
Yeah. And I think there's also a disconnect between the employees in general. I think we've been hearing so many times that employees want to work for companies that are extremely progressive, extremely, you know, want to save the environment, want to save the world. And the reality is that there's a lot of push from the employees to do those things, but that's not necessarily what's good for the business, Right? Yes. You want to have great employees. I mean, that's the lifeblood of any company. But it cannot come at a cost of actually hitting the target market and selling a product. That's what we're all here for. It's a business.
- [31:11]
C
Yeah.
- [31:12]
A
You have to sell something.
- [31:12]
C
At the end of the day, gotta make profit, Right?
- [31:14]
A
Yeah. You're not a, an activist company. You're not, you're not, you know, you're not an NGO or some are, but you are here not for the betterment of society necessarily. You're here for selling a product to people.
- [31:27]
C
Yeah.
- [31:27]
A
And a lot of companies have forgotten that and they're now just getting back to basics. They're going, okay, wait a second, hold up. We can't follow this WOKE agenda anymore. We can't be activists. We can't. Like, one day we're caring about this thing, and then the next day we have to care about this thing. And then there's war in, in Israel and Gaza and we can't care about, like, there's just too many things to care about. And we cannot be this political animal anymore because there's too many places to play. We need to, to go back to basics and be about business.
- [31:58]
C
Yeah.
- [31:58]
A
So we're seeing that massive change. We're seeing that in the briefs that we get from clients. They're, they're telling us for a good example, they're not, you know, they're not using the DEI thing anymore. A lot of our campaigns that we did in the past, they would always ask for, hey, give us a mix of race, ethnicities, different, you know, people, genders, you know, styles. They're now saying no, like we need to go back to basics. Right. Target audience. Right. Target market. Who are you putting in the ads? It has to match their societies, it has to match who they're trying to reach. So all of that is kind of going away and, and less of the woke language, less of, less of the woke sort of agenda is coming through, which I think will be good. I think they'll get back to selling product.
- [32:44]
C
Right. Advertising will be how it used to be.
- [32:46]
A
Yeah, how it used to be. And also, you know, I don't, I don't shame them for doing that. They're trying to follow the culture, but the culture is swung so many ways now that they're now going okay, what and what can they do? Right. They're kind of screwed if they do screwed if they don't. So now they're just following where the culture's going Again.
- [33:06]
C
I'd imagine there was some government pressure depending on where they were too, to.
- [33:10]
A
Yeah, there's been, I don't know, the conspiracy theory is that the ECG stuff like you or ESG stuff that from the UN was driving the investment community which was driving the corporate community because if you didn't follow these rules then you weren't going to get investment, you weren't going to get supply. Yeah. You haven't heard this?
- [33:33]
C
No. So the esg, is that the environment?
- [33:34]
A
Yeah, let's see. Environment Sustainability Group. No, I don't know what G stands for. Basically it was just a bunch of it's kind of goals that they had for 2030, which was things about society, things about sustainability, things about equality and, and on the surface those things are all great. Nobody's arguing with all those things. But the problem is when it became a, a sort of a ransom, if you don't do this, we're going to crush your business. And that's a little like that became that, that's why they became so politicized is because they had to step in line with, with what the, the UN, what big corporations like BlackRock were saying. It's like, wow, you have to do this, otherwise you're not going to get money, you're not going to get support from the international community. And so a lot of companies fell in line, but I think that's going to go away as well, hopefully.
- [34:26]
C
Yeah, I hope so. Yeah. That's just one component. I know in America with the DEI stuff, publicly traded companies, how to have some sort of, you know, di hires.
- [34:34]
A
Yeah.
- [34:34]
C
And that was really affecting business too, I think.
- [34:36]
A
Well, it's. And like I said, like, on the surface these seem like good ideas, but when you put them into practice is when it falls apart. Because now you're not hiring for merit, you're hiring for some sort of quota.
- [34:48]
C
Right.
- [34:48]
A
System on people. And that this just when you get that intersectionality of people's, it's like, guys, this is not how you run a business. Traditionally, it's been about performance. And that's why companies have been struggling. I mean, we're seeing this. There's tons of company laying off, tons of companies laying off people. I mean, obviously AI has a part in that, but I think a lot of it comes down to we didn't focus on performance, focus on other shit. Now we got to get back to basics. Right?
- [35:15]
C
Yeah. Seems like there's a big intersection with politics and business these days too.
- [35:19]
A
Yeah, too much so. Right. So it's, it's getting. And I. Let's, let's see if it pans out. I think it'll be pulled apart, but I think we're a little bit extreme. Like, Elon Musk is now calling for people to cancel their Netflix subscriptions. People were canceling their Disney subscriptions when Jimmy Kimmel got axed for that. And people are voting with their wallet, which is good, but it's just, it's becoming chaos out there. No company can do anything without upsetting the left or upsetting the right. And it's like, what do you guys like, what are we doing here? Yeah, right. So I'm, I advocate for the middle. I'm. I'm a big middleist.
- [35:56]
C
I'm a middle list. I have on both sides.
- [35:58]
A
Yeah, exactly. Like, I got friends left. Right. I. I got people who are like super mega. I got people that are, you know, super leftists. And, and I'm like, guys, we just have to get back to like normaly. And that's where most people for most of history were mostly in the middle. Yeah, we got to get back to.
- [36:14]
C
80% of people, I think.
- [36:15]
A
Yeah, we got to get back to the middle and start talking about things in, in the fair way and, and not this sort of, oh, you're a racist and you're a Nazi and you're a. You're a, you know, whatever. You're a fascist. It's like, let's calm down.
- [36:28]
C
Let's.
- [36:28]
A
Let's take it down a bit.
- [36:29]
C
So it is extreme, man. Is it like that in Denmark? Are people pretty divided over.
- [36:33]
A
No, no, it's. I mean, it's a very liberal country, Denmark. I mean, it's a. It's a capitalist society, but it's also got a backbone of socialism. There's. There is a lot of social programs. There's a lot of things that are meant to help people. Taxes are very high, obviously.
- [36:52]
C
How high?
- [36:54]
A
50%. Holy crap.
- [36:56]
C
I mean, America's like 45.
- [36:58]
A
Yeah. But there's also other things. So there's a 25 sales tax as well.
- [37:02]
C
That's high.
- [37:02]
A
There's 180 car tax.
- [37:05]
C
Holy crap. So if you buy a car.
- [37:07]
A
Yeah. Cars are. You don't. Yeah. People still do it, but it's like getting a loan for your house. If you're going to get a loan for a car, it's like buying a house.
- [37:16]
C
You might as well put down everything.
- [37:17]
A
Yeah. Yeah, basically. So, I mean, people still buy cars because they need them and they love them, and so. But the taxes are nuts. I mean, people don't realize. They think that. They hear that 50% income tax, but there's just so much more. Right. There's also inheritance tax. There's also just taxes on taxes on taxes, green energy taxes, like. So it is a highly taxed society, but it's also only a community of. Or a country of, I don't know, 7 million people, 6 million people.
- [37:47]
C
That's like the size of New York City.
- [37:48]
A
Yeah. So it's, it's very low. So they have something. They can do things differently.
- [37:55]
C
Right.
- [37:55]
A
If you have a country of 300 million people, plus, it's a little bit harder to have this sort of community social network because it's like, it's, it's just the scales too much. Right. It's too big. So there. It's. It's easier and you can move faster because you only have a population of 7 million people.
- [38:11]
C
Yeah.
- [38:11]
A
So if changing stuff, doing stuff, it's. And it's also just culturally, it's been built that way, so it's, it's, it's good.
- [38:18]
C
It's worked throughout history. Yeah.
- [38:20]
A
Taxes are crazy.
- [38:21]
C
At least you could probably see some of where your money's going to over there. Out here you just pay the IRS and you're like, well, I don't know where that went.
- [38:27]
A
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's. I think that's why Danes are happy to pay taxes, because they can see where it's going.
- [38:34]
C
Yeah, right.
- [38:36]
A
But it's still. It's not without its problems. No system is with. Is perfect. Right. So a lot of. A lot of. As an entrepreneur, I struggle a bit with a few things, obviously, when it comes to taxes. So for example. Or just how the society is sort of built. So for example, it's. It's a very employee first sort of society.
- [39:03]
C
Yeah.
- [39:03]
A
So if a, if a person goes on sick leave, they can go on sick leave sort of indefinitely.
- [39:09]
C
Wow.
- [39:10]
A
So you could be paying their salary for many, many years if you don't safeguard yourself.
- [39:15]
C
And you can't fire them.
- [39:16]
A
No, you. Well, you can, but you have to have. If you fire them for being sick, that's going to be a big problem.
- [39:22]
C
Yeah.
- [39:23]
A
We're experiencing this now. For example, like there's a big company in Europe called Novo Nordisk. It's a pharmaceutical.
- [39:29]
C
I heard of them.
- [39:30]
A
Yeah, they do Ozampic.
- [39:31]
C
We'll go.
- [39:32]
A
And they're going through a massive turnaround right now. They're changing and they're firing a whole bunch of people. And there's some consideration in the news, like they're letting people go who are pregnant or on maternity leave and that's a no go. So they're anticipating that the legal battles that these guys are going to experience over the next few years regarding these layoffs are going to be astronomical because you can't lay off pregnant people. You can't lay off women on maternity leave or even men on maternity leave, because men also take. I think it's. I think it's split. I think it's 10 months of maternity leave and then you can split it equal. You can say, interesting. Man takes five, woman takes five or.
- [40:12]
C
So usually the guys do the first half, I'd imagine, and then the woman does the second half.
- [40:15]
A
No, it's the opposite.
- [40:16]
C
Oh, really?
- [40:17]
A
So women do the first half, obviously, because they need to be there with the baby at the beginning. Breastfeeding.
- [40:21]
C
Yeah, yeah, that's what I meant.
- [40:22]
A
Yeah. And then men take the second half, but. And then you don't. If you don't do that, you lose it. Right. So if a man, you can also allocate that as to your partner and say, okay, the. The wife or the partner, they take the full thing, that's fine. But then you're just working. So a lot of guys now are taking actually the, the half off now because they're like, it's a benefit. I get paid to not work. I get paid to look after my kid. I might as well do that.
- [40:44]
C
Yeah.
- [40:44]
A
So there's, as an entrepreneur, you have to have these considerations in place. Also. Stress leave is huge there. People don't.
- [40:51]
C
Stress leave.
- [40:51]
A
Yeah. If people don't like their job, Stop it. They'll just take stress leave.
- [40:54]
C
No way.
- [40:55]
A
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's actually, it's, it's kind of rough. So. Yeah. So people will just literally say, oh, I'm stressed out. I'm going to take, I'm going to leave now.
- [41:04]
C
Oh my God.
- [41:05]
A
And then you're paying them.
- [41:06]
C
I would fire them.
- [41:06]
A
Yeah. But you're going to bear the consequences of that. Really? Yeah. So you're probably going to pay some money in severance.
- [41:15]
C
That's crazy.
- [41:16]
A
A lot of money stress.
- [41:17]
C
Like if you're in business, you're going to be stressed. There's no workaround. I mean, you know what I mean?
- [41:22]
A
I'm a, I'm a North American in Europe. So take this as a grain of salt because I obviously have the proclivities to be like, work hard. Like, let's go, let's see. Rah, rah, rah. No, and that is not necessarily the European.
- [41:36]
C
They're more laid back.
- [41:37]
A
Way more load back. Laid back. Way more about family, work, life, balance. And I love that. Like, don't get me wrong, lots of great things about that. And I have to sometimes like filter myself a little bit because I can't be, hey, like stress. What are you talking about? Like, that's life. Like, gets back to work. But you know what I don't like is people using it because they don't like their job. If you don't like your job, quit. Yeah, like, stop holding me hostage. I'm a small business owner. I can't. Like if I was Microsoft or a huge ass company, no problem. But I'm a small businessman. I can't pay your salary for the next six months while you're stressed out.
- [42:15]
C
You take six months off for stress.
- [42:17]
A
Yeah. You can take. Yeah, it's about six months after. I can fire after because I've got it in my contracts, legally I can fire after 120 days.
- [42:26]
C
Holy crap.
- [42:27]
A
So that's. What is that? 90 days? Is, is. So that's four months. That is after four months. But that's only because I have that contractually put in Which I'm legally allowed. Some companies, I didn't have that at the beginning and someone took. It was only till later, as I grew smarter and better as an entrepreneur that I was, that I put that in.
- [42:45]
C
Yeah.
- [42:46]
A
That I was legally allowed. But yeah. So you get caught with somebody who's on a stress leave for six months and you're just salary. The government helps out though. Like that's where the taxes go. So the government will give you I think 30, 40% of that. So you're not paying the full salary. You're getting a little bit of it, you know, back, but it's not the full amount. So. And, and salaries are also very high there because of the taxes. So you know, the average employees is six. Most of my employees are six figure salaries.
- [43:16]
C
Even for like an assistant role. Like.
- [43:18]
A
Yeah, they're quite high role. Yeah, very. I mean that's. And that's the market. Like you can't. Living in Copenhagen, having young people, you're going to have to pay them a decent salary.
- [43:28]
C
Makes sense.
- [43:29]
A
So. Yeah.
- [43:29]
C
Do you guys do the four hour, four day work week over there?
- [43:31]
A
No.
- [43:32]
C
Oh no.
- [43:32]
A
And I hope to God that never comes.
- [43:34]
C
I know somewhere in Europe. I forget which country it was. They did studies on it.
- [43:38]
A
I think it's Belgium now.
- [43:39]
C
Belgium.
- [43:39]
A
Belgium. You told me this the other day.
- [43:41]
C
Right.
- [43:42]
A
No.
- [43:42]
C
Either way. The article I read actually said it actually increased productivity. Surprisingly so. So we should look into that more. But I don't know, it's interesting they.
- [43:52]
A
Say that, but at the other side of the coin, I know that my clients are working on the Friday, sort of the Monday or whatever.
- [43:59]
C
Like you have people to answer to. So. Yeah. For your business.
- [44:03]
A
Yeah. So I'm like, if the government demands, I guess if everybody is off then you just have to like make sure that you take the day off, that your clients are taking that day off.
- [44:13]
C
Yeah.
- [44:13]
A
So that, that makes sense. But I just don't, I don't get it.
- [44:17]
C
I couldn't do it. I do, I do six myself.
- [44:20]
A
Most entrepreneurs do. Right. They're just, they're 24, seven. Like this is, it's our, it's our love. It's like what we want to do. So it's difficult, but I understand, I understand the feeling. People want to spend more time with their kids. They want to spend more time with their family and their friends. And that's obviously good. But I would think that we're going to see massive, you know, GDP downhill, you know, trends if everyone decides the four day work week.
- [44:48]
C
I agree.
- [44:48]
A
Right. So productivity will just drop.
- [44:50]
C
Yeah. The compound effect of that would be massive.
- [44:53]
A
But maybe with AI, like that's where it's going to go because there just won't be enough jobs. There just won't be enough work. We're going to outsource everything to AI and robotics and then we're going to have to do four day work week because it's like we got nothing to do. What are we going to do? Might as well go sit on a beach.
- [45:09]
C
It seems like blue collar's coming back. I remember when I was going to college, it was kind of like looked down on in America. I don't know if it's like that in where you're at or you grew up in Canada, right?
- [45:18]
A
I grew up in Canada and I think it has been looked down upon. But it's coming back all over the world like you said. Blue collar's back.
- [45:26]
C
It's back. Dude. I just paid like 10k for roofing fix. 10k for AC fix.
- [45:30]
A
Yeah. And those are great jobs. I told my son who's 16 now. Well, 16 in a couple of weeks. Few weeks. Be a carpenter, be an electrician, be a plumber, go do something. Blue collar. It's incredibly rewarding, incredibly valuable job that AI Robotics won't take. I don't know if he's going to listen to me, but probably not. But yeah. My daughter wants to be a veterinarian and I'm like, that's great. We're going to always need pets. Want pets. They're always going to need health, you know, things. So become a veterinarian.
- [46:05]
C
Just paid 2, 000 for dog dental cleaning.
- [46:08]
A
Okay.
- [46:08]
C
Isn't that crazy?
- [46:09]
A
Yeah.
- [46:09]
C
What kind of dog do you have? Mini Australian shepherd.
- [46:12]
A
Oh, beautiful.
- [46:13]
C
But yeah, because you got to put them under, so it's pretty expensive. So.
- [46:16]
A
Yeah, yeah. You didn't use the bones, the chew bones that like.
- [46:19]
C
I, I use the dental juice. But no, he doesn't do a good enough job. Cavities? I think so.
- [46:23]
A
Okay. Yeah. It's expensive, right? So that's gonna be a, that's gonna be a place to go. So blue collar is the way to go. I mean, maybe I'll end up there. Seriously, man, you see me doing the roofing, I'll be calling you up. Now that I know that you paid 2,000, I'll be like 10,000. 10,000. Sorry. Yeah, Sean, I'll do your roof for you, man.
- [46:40]
C
My uncle retired off roofing, I think. Well, he owned the roofing company. So if you can combine the blue Collar with like someone that runs the company. It's a good combo, right?
- [46:48]
A
Yeah, I think so. And you're also going to see a lot of the boomers get out of their businesses, those blue collar businesses, because they want to retire.
- [46:55]
C
Right.
- [46:55]
A
So you'll be able to buy up a business that has already customers, revenue, the infrastructure, the ways of working. Right. So we're going to see a lot more. I'd love to do that in my, you know.
- [47:06]
C
Yeah, I want to do that when I can afford that too. My buddy Eric Hawk, you might know him, Hawk Media. Yeah, it's the fastest growing agency in the United States. Okay. He's, he's doing that right now. He's just buying up agencies.
- [47:17]
A
Okay. Yeah, smaller agencies. Like, like my, like, like, yeah, I.
- [47:22]
C
Think like anywhere from 11 to a couple hundred employees.
- [47:24]
A
Ah, okay. Yeah, yeah. So that's about my size.
- [47:26]
C
I could connect you if you want, if you're ready.
- [47:28]
A
No, maybe, let's see. But yeah, I think there's a rollup happening for sure. I mean, I'm on a lot of newsletters where there's companies that are agency owners that are selling and I get messages every day. People are.
- [47:39]
C
Because they're scared of AI. Right.
- [47:41]
A
Yeah. And, and so I'm not willing to concede yet, but give it two or three years and I think you're going to see a lot of them. And, and I also think that a lot of big brands that we work with, they look down on us when we're only a boutique shop. Like, we can't work with you. You're right.
- [47:59]
C
You don't have enough employees.
- [48:00]
A
Yeah, we want to work the big. Because nobody gets fired. Like that old adage, nobody got fired for hiring IBM. It's the same within the advertising agency.
- [48:07]
C
Right? They want to play it safe.
- [48:08]
A
Yeah, they want to play it safe. Especially now, nowadays. So they don't want to hire the.
- [48:12]
C
Little guys, they want to hire Deloitte and like.
- [48:14]
A
Yeah. So a lot of agency owners are running towards the big agencies, the network agencies, to weather the storm of this AI's thing and, you know, get their customers through those big, big agency networks. I'm not there yet, but give me six months. Yeah, maybe.
- [48:33]
C
I always thought it was interesting how these brands hire these consultants that never have never run a business. Like personally. It didn't make sense to me.
- [48:39]
A
Yeah, it's, it's a classic problem, right? You think that you're great at what you do and then you try to go. I guess I fall into that too. But I, I had a entrepreneurship bone in my body before I started. Right. But I, I had a sense of how do you actually run a business?
- [48:55]
C
Yeah.
- [48:55]
A
Before I went into it. And that's sort of my saving grace. But yeah, a lot of guys, that's.
- [49:00]
C
Why I dropped out of college. My marketing professor never ran a business.
- [49:03]
A
No. And that's, that's why marketing degrees are crap. You shouldn't have them. I don't.
- [49:07]
C
Yeah. When I'm hiring people, I don't care.
- [49:09]
A
No, ma, we'd rather see a creator come to us and say, this is what I built. This is my, you know, Instagram, this is my platforms, is what I've done. Because, and we see this also with the people that we hire if they want to be trained by us. And I'm like, go train yourself. Like, there's a world of knowledge out there. You can go publish your own thing. You can skip all the metal men here. You don't need us.
- [49:37]
C
Yeah.
- [49:37]
A
Why would you, why would you like try to get us to teach you? We want you to teach us. So go out there, build your brand, build your creator thing, do whatever. Then we're more willing to hire you. Versus a kid straight out of college that really has no world, no real world knowledge, hasn't tried anything, hasn't built anything. For real.
- [49:56]
C
Yeah.
- [49:57]
A
Because ultimately social media is going to determine if it's successful. And if you haven't played in that arena, then you don't belong in this sport because you haven't actually tested your skills in the actual arena.
- [50:12]
C
Yeah.
- [50:12]
A
You just have skills that you think are valuable from your school, but they're not.
- [50:17]
C
They're not.
- [50:18]
A
They're absolutely not. And, and if you haven't built the muscle to go out there and get your ass kicked every day on social and turn that around and figure out the ways that it works. You're not built for this game anymore. The game is totally different, changed.
- [50:31]
C
Yeah. It's all, all about results for me. There's this awesome site you YT Jobs co. Yeah. Yeah. I just hired four new thumbnail editors off there. All I cared about was their, their resume, their work history. Yeah.
- [50:42]
A
That's all that matters now. It's a totally merit based thing. Right. So we don't want copywriters, we don't want video editors. We don't want people that just have school knowledge. We want people that actively publish on Social, preferably every day, because they need to build that muscle. If they don't have that muscle, then you are not going to get that muscle here, like, you're just not. You need to build it elsewhere and then come to us and, and then keep building. We don't care. Keep going, keep going with your channels, Keep going with your creator thing. Like, we'll support that even. We'll, like, we'll behind you, be behind you 100. Because that testing ground is what you can bring into our business. And you'll fly. You'll do amazing stuff for us.
- [51:22]
C
Yeah, I love that. So you let your employees have a personal brand too?
- [51:25]
A
Absolutely. Also freelance on the side.
- [51:28]
C
Go for it. Oh, really? Yeah, go for it.
- [51:30]
A
As long as they're not like competing. But like, we have people that do photography on the side. Actually, one of our employees is sort of a hostess, bartender, slash party, you know, facilitator on the side. We don't mind that at all because, listen, the opportunities are out there. If they wanted to build their own digital product, they wanted to write their own book, they wanted to do whatever, go for it. Like the opportunity is there. More power to you. You're going to be a more valuable employee to me. Right, because you're going to also, you know, it's no secret people have their own desires, their own hobbies that they love probably more than their job. So go do that. It'll fill your cup.
- [52:10]
C
Yeah.
- [52:11]
A
Yeah.
- [52:11]
C
Let's end off with the book. Hook, line and sinker. What was the story behind this and where can people find it and everything?
- [52:19]
A
So the book is quite interesting. So you can just DM me about the book. Actually, I'm not even on Amazon yet. And the book, okay, so I've always wanted to write a book and I've been in this social media game for so many years and I've gotten so much knowledge also working with big brands, working with my own creation stuff, creator stuff, working with other creators, and I just had no place to put it. So I was like, listen, I need to do something here. I need to write this book. So I just took all of my knowledge over the last 10, 15 years and tried to distill it down into something that I think can really be a practical tool for hooking people, like grabbing your audience, keeping them, and then selling them stuff. So the whole. That's why it's. Hook, line, sinker.
- [53:02]
C
Got it the whole.
- [53:03]
A
The whole way through. And it's interesting how I wrote the book. So I wasn't able to do this book until AI came around. So to write the book. And you can if you want to write a book. Anybody who's listening or Watching what you can do is I just did voice notes driving to work every morning. I would do huge voice memos, 10, 20 minutes of my ideas and thoughts on building content, building businesses, doing the hook, line and sinker. And then I basically would take those, get them transcribed in AI and then put them through AI to structure this thing and make it into, yeah, make it into sections while still keeping my tone of voice and keeping my, my history and my knowledge. Right. So, and that was how. And then I would do massive edits. Right. Because I'd get these sections and then I would sit through and change and move stuff around and fix it. Basically being an editor on the side. And so using AI is almost my ghostwriter slash collaboration partner. I was finally able to put together like a 244 page book. That's impressive.
- [54:05]
C
That's why I haven't written one too.
- [54:07]
A
Use AI man. Like. But I would say do it in the method that I'm talking about because if you want to get your own experience and your own voice in it and your own sort of things into it, then you need to feed the AI with your own stuff, your own personality and your own thoughts. And that's been a game changer for me. It still took six, seven months to produce. Right. So it's not, it's not, you're not going to build anything valuable in two weeks or three weeks. You still have to put in the time. But it, it made, it meant that I didn't have to go pay $20,000 to a ghostwriter or anything like that. I could actually do it myself. So I think it's been extremely valuable learning that process and basically putting a book together. And I think what I've heard so far from people who have read it, they've said it's game changer, basically. Yeah. Massive. They wish they had that book when they first started their career in content creation because it really goes through psychological hooks, psychological ways of dealing with content, how to actually like influence people, persuade people. So they, they love it. And I'm super happy with it as well. So.
- [55:13]
C
That's cool, dude. I'll definitely run this through Chat gbt. Yeah, that's what I do when I. Because since I film so much, sometimes I don't have time to read the full book. Yeah, when, when I interview people.
- [55:22]
A
Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah.
- [55:23]
C
But chat GBT.
- [55:24]
A
I'll send you the PDF as well.
- [55:25]
C
Cool.
- [55:25]
A
So. And I've also got an AI built and trained on this. So anybody who DM's me about the book I'll also give them access, free access to the custom GPT. Basically the entire knowledge of the hook, line, sinker method put into a GPT, custom GPT so that they can ask it questions, write scripts from it, all that kind of stuff using the same methodology.
- [55:44]
C
Nice. We'll link your Instagram for people to message you. Anything else you want to close off with here?
- [55:48]
A
No man. Thanks for the time. I really appreciate it. It's been awesome.
- [55:51]
C
We'll link your agency as well if people want to get a consulting call maybe or something.
- [55:55]
A
Sure.
- [55:56]
C
Or you only work with big clients.
- [55:57]
A
We only work with big brands. So if you're a cmo, you're a marketing manager, brand manager at a big firm, Fortune 500, Fortune 1000 company. You know, we're your guys.
- [56:06]
C
Cool.
- [56:06]
A
We're a boutique agency. We specialize in social content for big brands. They which they all struggle with and scaling that content which is also the other struggle. It's like they can build small campaigns or big campaigns, but actually scaling that and making it work for social. That's our bread and butter.
- [56:24]
C
That's awesome.
- [56:24]
A
Great at.
- [56:25]
C
Thanks for your time Matt.
- [56:26]
A
Thank you so much. Check them out.
- [56:28]
C
Peace. I hope you guys are enjoying the show. Please don't forget to like and subscribe. It helps the show a lot with the algorithm. Thank you.
- [56:39]
A
Hey, Ryan Reynolds here wishing you a very happy half off holiday because right now Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited. To be clear, that's half the price, not half the service. Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price. So that means half day. Give it a try at Mintmobile. Com Switch Upfront payment of $45 for.
- [57:03]
D
3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first 3 months only. Speed Slow Hacker 35 gigabytes of networks busy taxes and fees extra. Cmtmobile.
- [57:09]
C
Com.