Episode 023 Season 2: Retrospective, Best Moments and What’s Coming Up

Transcript

Dave 0:00
Welcome to the final episode of season two of the agency balance. I’m Dave Snyder. I’m Lisa Zwikl. Thank you so much for joining us on this final episode. It’s gonna be a little bit of a retrospective. And Lisa, if I’m sounding extra bassy, it’s because I was sick the last couple weeks. It’s been a rough couple weeks. It’s been a rough couple weeks still. I had covid, I had bronchitis, so this might be like my permanent voice bronchitis. I’ve never had that before. It sucked. I’m sure. I don’t know if I’ve ever had it. It feels like somebody’s sitting on your chest and you can’t breathe. Yeah, it’s no joke. We were talking this morning as we were getting set up about getting old. I think bronchitis is like an old person’s thing. They get

an old person’s thing or young person’s thing. Can little kids get that? Yeah, they can get everything. I don’t know if my kids ever had that.

I know they used to get, like, that thing, and they got the nebulizer. Did your kids ever use a nebulizer? You know what that is? It’s like this little, like mechanical, it’s like a box that’s like a breathing thing. It likes one of those respirators they put, Oh, yeah. And it puts in, like, moisture into their thing, or whatever, like with some medicine. Yeah. I feel like my kids use that like all the time. They like, oh, just put them on the nebulizer.

Lisa 1:24
Yeah, we’ve had a lot of humidifiers and steamy showers. Oh,

Dave 1:29
yeah, that’s good, yeah. Well, we’re pumped for this final episode. We’re happy to share that we have now over 1000 listeners. It’s wild. 1000 listeners after two seasons, we had 10 guests, 10 different guests this season,

Lisa 1:48
so many different voices and perspectives, I agree. And

Dave 1:51
as I was going through the clips that we’re gonna take you through, and if you haven’t had a chance to listen back at some of those episodes, we’re gonna take you through some of the highlights, maybe talk about them a little bit, and eight different countries, that’s crazy to me too, that people want to listen to us in other countries. That’s cool. Thank you, everybody that’s listening. We appreciate you. Yeah, and we’re starting to book season three. We have some great guests already lined up some cool new things, so that will be coming out probably early this fall. Can’t believe we’re getting into fall already. It’s good. We have a hurricane going on right now. So in the middle of this we’ll either lose power, or there’ll be rain pelting on our Windows, or we’ll get distracted, or get distracted. It’s it’s in a lull right now. So awesome. So before we get into talking about our past guests and listening to them, I want to start with surprises this year, things that have surprised you. Has anything surprised you this year, I feel

Lisa 2:57
like life is always full of surprises. I It’s been a year. Yeah, I think that, from a business perspective, we just thought this year was going to steady out, even out. But for marketers, it, I think anyone in the sales and marketing space, it has not at all, especially in the agency space, it’s been interesting. My take on it is marketers, CMOs marketing leaders are shy on what move to make, where to invest and what to do, because typical things have not been working. Google’s algorithm changes has changed so much this year, AI is evolving at a rapid pace, so I think it’s hard to decide what to do, where to invest. I’ve seen so many marketers just stop investing in tools like Google ads and totally change their playbooks, which is exciting, but it’s also surprising. It’s also full of surprises. Yeah,

Dave 4:08
I’m taking a sip of water. I’m gonna be doing that a lot in this episode. I can feel it. I’m gonna try to not cough. It’s, it’s like, I don’t know if it’s paralysis by analysis, by paralysis, or whatever they say, you know, like you don’t you get you over analyze things, and you’re trying to be so precise on what you’re doing and try not to make the wrong decision, so then you end up, don’t making any decisions right? I think one of my biggest learnings this year, for us, specifically I wrote down, was like, I always to a fault. Probably, I make decisions pretty quickly, but I’ve tried to make them even more quickly now and continue to fail fast. So fail fast. What that means is like you can just analyze and overanalyze and do things and try to figure things. Ah, well, we’ll try this or whatever, and it takes time, but just just make a decision, try it, move forward with it. If. Doesn’t work. No effing big deal. Just try something different then, because if you’re not trying and you’re not failing forward, you know What? What? The Heck

Lisa 5:13
yeah, yeah, I’m all for that, and I think, I think that that’s part of the reason why marketers have been pulling back on certain things. Because to me, I’m all for failing fast, as long as you can learn from it, but I always like to calculate the risk, do a little risk analysis and make sure that no matter what decision I make, I know the impact. So pulling back on Google ad budget, for example, if marketers can’t measure the ROI on it per se, then what is the risk like? Maybe just save that $10,000 plus a month and just stop doing it and try something else and see what happens. See if you can do something faster that has a bigger, faster impact.

Dave 5:56
Yeah, I was consulting yesterday with with a long time friend of smart acre, and he was asking about that. He’s like, where should I put my money? And I was like, well, before you even do that, let’s, let’s look at the problems you’re solving as a service. So let’s do the Google searches, the whole zero click, where people are finding their information, not not only on like when you start keying it in and you’re getting the answers, but Gemini being up top, trying to generate the response, then you’re getting sometimes ads you’re going to skip over that we’re trained to skip over that. And then you’re looking for those answers to your questions. If you’re in that phase of searching for to get if you’re not searching for something specific, to seek out an individual, a business, but you’re trying to get a question answered, you might get that. You probably will get that answer before you even click into something now. So that’s why you’re seeing traffic drop. That’s why you’re seeing people not take that next step. So how do you lean into that? How do you create content that somebody’s still going to engage with? That’s a that was like, I was like, saying that out loud, but then it turned into a question, how do you do that? How are you doing that right now, for you know, some of our clients and our own stuff,

Lisa 7:20
instead of trying to wait for someone to engage with you, I’ve been for smart acre and for our clients, looking at ways that the brand the business can be engaging, whether that’s through online communities, through shifting what always used to be organic social content to more thought leadership. Content founder led branding think is huge right now and makes such an impact because it gives you that organic, natural, authentic human voice. But personally, and what I’ve seen working for smart acre is being out in communities, B to B, marketing communities, leadership communities, communities with other C level execs and helping them solve their problems when they’re searching for something in that moment, through people that they trust. Yeah,

Dave 8:14
I bet your analytics are all screwed up. Like, I’m just saying, like listeners, like your if you look at your analytics, like referral traffic, direct traffic, or again, like, that’s, it’s all wonky. The data is all wonky. Because the way that things, the way that people are coming in and out and clicking and searching for you, is, is there? I don’t know. That’s what I think. I just think every time I look at analytics, it’s, it’s really hard, it’s really hard to kind of put those touch points along the way, and then you’re, you’re constantly being asked, Why? Why isn’t why are we down? Why are we not getting the leads? Why? Why isn’t this working? So you have to be able to think differently on that. It’s, it’s ridiculously hard right now. It’s, it’s, I think it’s really hard. And I don’t know if there’s like, a, you know, breaking moment. Hold on. I’m gonna Belch. We can cut that far out if we want, or leave it in there. I don’t know if there’s like this tipping point for for the way that we’re talking about search and people finding and all that stuff. But I don’t know.

Lisa 9:19
My take on it is that good marketing is still going to be good marketing. And all the lazy tactics or repeatable things or things that you can just do on a in a thoughtless manner, it’s just gonna get worse. It’s going to make the good brands and the good marketers, the good salespeople, stand out, and everyone else, it’s going to you’re just going to get lost in the noise.

Dave 9:42
Yeah, yeah. I mean, listen, like I was, I think I shared this around, and I’m going to give credit where credit’s due to RAND. Rand Fishkin. Fishkins. Last Name Rand. You have the best facial hair. I’m so envious. You always continue to innovate and you’re. Glasses. But anyways, I’m digressing. He talked about like, we’re trained, right? We’re trained to use apps, to stay natively in the apps, where we’re trained to not click on anything in emails, because it could be bad, it could be phishing, it could be wrong. We’re trained to not pick up the phone because of spam calls, and now being scared that if I talk, they’re going to use my voice. Where we’re on social platforms, where they want us to stay on platform. So they’re training us to say, don’t use links. Don’t you. If you don’t stay on our platform and you link out, or you put something that’s going to take people away from our platform that we’re not going to reward. You look at the way Instagram and all. They never, they never put links like it does. If you put a link in there, it’s not going to link. So these algorithms are already discrediting those posts, right? I could probably go on and on, but this is the this is the way we’re trained now. So how do you break through? How do you break through? On that? How do you break through? It’s hard. I agree with you, right? I think still do good marketing and drawing back to what I was doing yesterday. And then I’ll let you I’ll shut up, let you talk. I was like, look for the problems that you’re trying to solve and put out good content. So like video, so still produce, I think YouTube, and we’re doing this for ourselves, like, I think YouTube is still untapped for marketers that you could be putting out good video content that is going to help somebody make a decision, and they may or may not go with you, but at least you’re educating in that. So do the searches use Google Trends to see what what word outperforms another over the last nine months, something that I use now this is the part where I shut up.

Lisa 11:59
I think that listening is so key. And tools like there’s so many AI tools now, that instead of using them to produce content, using them to analyze content or playback common themes, I think is really, really critical for being able to understand your audience. We’ve always talked about personas and ICPs, and I think as marketers, we get very markety in how we define them, but now there’s so much data at our fingertips that you can literally go through an online community of your target audience and analyze what are they saying, what are the common pain points you can use LinkedIn to stay on platform without being a thought leader and putting yourself out there like I know so many clients are struggling to get their salespeople to be thought leaders on on LinkedIn, don’t worry about being a thought leader. Worry about being a listener. Worry about finding who your target audience is and seeing what they’re talking about, seeing what events they’re going to looking on the event page, seeing what are the main keynote speakers, or what are the topics that everyone’s talking about. That’s just one example, but there’s so much information out there that you can use to tailor your messaging, tailor how you’re even targeting your audience and take what used to be really, really big budgets and use them in a much more strategic way. Yeah,

Dave 13:25
that’s good that’s good stuff. Hey, that’s good stuff. Lisa,

Lisa 13:31
thanks, Dave, yeah,

Dave 13:34
shameless plug. If you want to book Lisa’s time and talk to her about these things, she is available. We’re going to put that link on agencybalance.com where you can book Lisa directly and or Dave directly. Yeah, me too. Me too, if you want to talk to me

Lisa 13:53
that that’s been a surprise this year. Okay, is more and more marketers are coming to us and saying, I just need a gut check. I need I have little faith in what I’ve used to be doing in the past. I need someone I can just bounce an idea around. I need a peer CMO, or I need someone that can be my CMO, but not full time, just in a temporary capacity to help point me in the right direction. So yeah, if you need that, we have that available with myself. Dave, our other smart acre leaders, it’s been a need for marketing and sales leaders to have that have that gut check, and we’re really good at giving you a confident boost or telling you if you have a terrible idea, yeah, or that we’ve seen it fail in the past.

Dave 14:43
It is, it’s, yes. So take us up on that. If you want to just talk well, you can book us directly on our site. I think, I think that’s that, is it, it’s, there’s, there’s this back to the point of like people get power. Realized they’re just so afraid to make the wrong mistakes because they’re just for whatever reason, if they’re new in the org. But yeah, happy to bounce ideas off. We’ve been doing this a long time, and we don’t have all the answers, but we have seen enough to know to get you going in the right direction for sure, yep, um, topic, change the balance. Things I was thinking this morning, actually, or last couple weeks, I was on vacation. And then, just like trying to get my my Zen back, of of balance and and I wanted to talk to you about some of the things being, through a difficult year. How do you How can you kind of remind and keep yourself and pinch yourself every once in a while to keep balance, like, so one of the things I’m trying to continue to do is like, not continue to not sweat the small stuff and just like, let it go. If whatever, it’s not for me. I’m trying not to over analyze things. I’m not trying to, like, nitpick things. I’m just like, go, like, let it. And that’s my personal life too, especially as like, my kids are now, like young adults in age years. They’re young adults. They got a long way to go, sorry, Mom and Dad, when I was that. So anything that you’re you’re trying to do for kind of balance and self improvement right now,

Lisa 16:32
so much, I think for me, every year that goes by, I’m more honest with myself around my faults, and I know that habits are habits, like for me, for example, in points of stress, I go, go, go, go, go, go, go, until I just break. And that’s a really hard thing for me to see in myself. So I’ve started to realize I can’t rely on myself to to recognize that. So I have been intentional in finding people that can call me on my shit, which I think is really important. Actually, one of our guests this season, Erica Butler, from hire. She’s one of those people from me. She also runs a business. She’s also a mom. She also deals with a lot of stress and pressure. So we meet with each other once a month, just as a peer to peer, and we tell each other what’s going on, and she calls me on my shit. She asked me a question during our last meeting that brought me to tears, and she was like, Lisa, you need to go talk to a therapist. And I wouldn’t have seen that in myself. She’s like, this is going to help you so much. You’re going to be able to just, you know, have a different perspective on things. It’s another person in your corner that will help you out when you need someone to, like, loosen that that pressure and have an outlet for you. So yeah, that have have people like, whether it’s you what, no matter how you frame it, maybe it’s like your personal board of directors or advisors, those people that you need to have in your corner. Find people that will call you all your shit. Oh, I

Dave 18:09
love that. We’re gonna print that on a t shirt, like if you hop over to YouTube, the t shirt I’m wearing today is Truffle Shuffle. Shout out to the truffle bar. We’ll put a link in the amazing chocolates. And he is a truffle that is from the Goonies. Do you remember the Goonies? Yeah, okay. He it’s chunk. And he would do the truffle, truffle like the and he would shake his belly, and I’m wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Good segue with Erica. Let’s listen to Erica. What I

Speaker 1 18:42
have found, I’m just speaking from personal experience. It’s not profit or team. It they just are so blended. They just go so hand in hand, because when you have the right team, the profit grows, and the profit is there and you run a successful business. So what I have found is, always pick the team, always prioritize the team. But you can’t just give $5,000 bonuses to everyone and go broke. You can’t do that. But can you do a really heartfelt note and gift card if the sales are down that year? What can you do that shows your team that you prioritize them, care about them, being creative, I will say, in general, like I said, prioritize the team, but there might be a really rough year. It happens in major Fortune 100 organizations and small businesses that you literally, you just lost some key clients, and you need to let some people go. And that is so hard and is so oh, it just is not fun for anyone involved, but it’s the right thing for the business and for the majority of the team, and I have learned not to feel it’s sad, it’s hard, but it’s the right thing to ensure that business moves forward. And if you communicate that the right way, and you have real relationships, you’re still putting the people first. You’re being honest and transparent.

Lisa 19:58
I love her. She’s. So smart. Yeah,

Dave 20:01
yeah. Great wisdom from Erica Butler. And we’ll link up. We’ll link up her info. Great, great wisdom there. We’ll drop a link to the books that she’s mentioning as well. But she’s talking about, like, team and hiring for talent and hiring the A players and like, during a stressful time of the economy that we’re in, I think it magnifies when there’s areas of weakness on a team member, things aren’t you’re obviously, you know, you’re taxing, you’re watching every dollar and you’re those are being, you know, spent. But then you also need to balance the what she was talking about there of like, the cost of replacing folks that if they go away, you know, the the inherent things, but anything else that you wanted to draw out there,

Lisa 20:51
it’s hard to do the right thing. It often is. So just having that other perspective, or challenging yourself to look at it from the other side of it, think is really important. And Erica, if you if you ever have questions about the people side of things, she’s a great resource. Check her out, send her a message on LinkedIn. She always challenges me to look at things differently. And I think that that’s so important for different aspects of your business, to have those people that can challenge you of just have you thought about it this way? Or what’s the risk? What you really have to think about it from both angles, so that you can make a fast decision but feel confident in your decision?

Dave 21:33
Yep, very well said. All right, let’s, let’s jump into another clip here, and this comes from Sharon Mauston, and we were talking about privacy. This was our very first. This was 11 months ago. So let’s see if this still holds up in the terms of what has happened with privacy 11 months later. So

Sharon 21:55
that’s a can spam compliance if you’re in the US or castle, if you’re in Canada, and basically what they’re doing is they’re working around loopholes. And the loophole is that you can contact someone general guidelines are once with a list that you know that you’ve acquired, whether that’s at a trade show or you know, through other nefarious means, maybe AI. But you know, if you, you know, if you the way that the can spam laws, and then way that the email laws are written, it says you have to do some of these things. You have to identify that it is an advertisement. You have to give a physical address, not a PO Box, a physical address. You have to give them an option to opt out all of those things that you have to do in order to be can’t spam compliant. Don’t necessarily mean that they can’t email you. It just means that they have to give you that option. Now, if you respond to those emails, then they’ll put you on another list that gives you all

Dave 23:09
spam.

Lisa 23:13
So much spam. Will you ever take a cleaning company seriously again? Oh

Dave 23:17
my gosh. Oh my gosh. We get so many inquiries about like cleaning. A good example was there was a period of time we didn’t have an office, but they still wanted to clean our office. I’m like, I don’t have an office anymore. I didn’t respond to them. So two things, right? So two things, first is anybody that I have engaged with in a prospect setting for like us, like, we have a lot of companies, new software, potential partners or solutions that out there that we could potentially use. We get a lot of those right. Like, hey, you need to try us, and this is why you need to buy this list, or whatever it is. If I have taking a call or I have engaged, I will be honest with them now, and I will give them feedback, like, Hey, listen, not in it for us, check, check me back a year. The other thing is like, if it’s like, the price is just out of whack, I just try to be so honest with them and give them an answer, because that’s the type of respect that I would want to get as a salesperson. And this ghosting thing that happens when you are engaged, it drives me nuts, and I think we all as salespeople can do a better job with with just just responding. It takes a few seconds. You’re gonna probably get off their list and they’re gonna stop hounding you. So just ask, like, so give a response if they’re asking a response if they’re engaged. That’s the first thing I wanted to share. Do you do that?

Lisa 24:52
I mean, I still answer my phone and if I get a good BDR on. The phone or a good salesperson, I’ll tell them, but I’m also not shy to say, Hey, if you need help with your sales enablement, we can help you with that. I’ve gotten emails that are so bad that I just can’t help myself. I have to respond and just say, you your personalization is way off. You need to do some more research. This is just so terrible.

Dave 25:23
Yep, I’ve done that too. I’ve been honest. I try to help when I can, but it’s so hard since that since that recording, I now have 28,000 more unread emails in my inbox. And so it was somebody else posted. They had me way beat. They’re almost at a half a million in their unread in their inbox. So like breaking through with that, and then the same thing goes, like, with InMail, like, I don’t even look at that anymore. It’s complete garbage. Prove me wrong. People like, drop me a comment and show me how that’s working, because it’s not working. The other thing is, I set up on LinkedIn requests, like service requests, and I’m getting a lot of spam there too. They’re finding their way to get, like, Anytime you open up a hole for somebody to pour something in, they’re gonna try to flood you. Like, it’s so, yeah, that’s, that’s a shame, I think, like, there still is more rules coming out with with privacy, like, Don’t spam people. Like, just be really, really, really pointed with your email. The other thing too with LinkedIn that I stopped doing and so do this. If you’re listening and you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, say that you listen to an episode. Because if somebody, if you blind, if you blind, like request to be a connection. And I look at your like, your title and like your your like, your whatever that is underneath like your subject, and it’s like, totally not irrelevant or like, you’re just trying to sell me, I’m not gonna engage with you. Number one. Number two, I actually, I actually think writing sometimes a description can hurt you in a connection, because you read that and you’re like, so I’m not doing this, but if it’s like, oh, maybe they could be in my universe, then I would connect with them. So that’s that’s interesting, too. Yeah,

Lisa 27:18
yeah, I don’t know. I just always hear the Eminem song in my head, like you only get one shot every time that we’re doing anything for a client, or if I’m reaching out to a prospect, I feel like you never know when they’re just gonna tune you out so you have your message has to be so good, it has to be so intentional. And that’s why marketing is so hard right now. That’s why sales is so hard right now, but just do less, do less and do it better, and know that you get one shot right like they might tune you out after that.

Dave 27:50
Yeah, that’s good. I wish we could use Eminem in our episode, but I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t get published. So awesome. Let’s, let’s move on to, I think this is with one of our own smart acres, Natalie Kelly on season two. Let’s, let’s take a listen to Natalie

Natalie Kelly 28:10
giving people an option to be heard. A lot of times, what we’ve seen in failed cultures or organizations is that it truly was someone just leading from the top and pulling the employees with them. And instead, the more successful ones are the ones where employees are engaged and they’re providing feedback. You hire smart people use their brains as well to solve problems. You don’t have to solve everything. And so that is a for me, I think that that’s one of the number one things, then also allowing people to be in the space that they’re in. If you hired someone, for example, to be in HR, let them be in HR, and do that job that let them be, let them shine, if you will, in that space. So I do think that’s really, really key also, and something that I’ve really learned at Smart acre, and I just it has changed. I think a lot of how I do things personally and professionally is one to have an organized system so truly making sure that your process is down and that you have that identified, but then taking that process and adding in active listening, whether that’s to your clients, to your employees, to your leadership team, whatever you need to mix those two can truly elevate anything that you’re doing, and also makes everything a lot easier, because when we are resisting, whether that be change or anything that’s happening within our workforce or in our home, at that time, whenever we’re resisting that, you’re spending so much energy on that that you can’t truly show up and bring everything to the table. Common

Lisa 29:55
themes, right? Common themes, yeah,

Dave 29:59
well. Natalie Cali, what’s up? Shout out, yeah, it’s absolutely, I like, I think, as a leader, as a leader, you’re, you have your own opinion of things, but you’re really, really not in the day to day. You’re not in their seat anymore, right? It’s, it’s a privilege to be a leader, and that’s something that I was reminded of. It’s, it’s a skill lead. Leadership isn’t just being at the top. Leadership is a job that you should have to get them to be better better, right? Like you need to improve the team. You need to give them skills that they’re that they’re asking for, that they’re striving for, that they don’t have, and you’re trying to take them to that, that next step, whatever, whatever it might be. Any other thoughts there on what she said,

Lisa 30:48
Natalie is always spot on, especially with the people side of things. One thing that’s just top of mind for me lately as I’m loving the Olympics, I’m loving the USA women’s gymnastics, and watching Simone Biles just dominate, but her personal story and the way that she is not just an athlete and a competitor, but a leader, is so awesome, and she’s lifting everyone else up. And I think that that’s so important in any leadership role, is the only way that you can shine is if people around you are shining. And often leaders are focused on what they need to accomplish, what they need to check off. But really, the best leaders are helping lift up everyone else around them, and that’s truly how you get to grow as a leader. That’s truly how you get to take on more responsibilities or shift what you’re doing, you have to lift up everyone around you and trust them and build the confidence in them so they know how to make good decisions. Yep,

Dave 31:52
yep. Another thing that that while you were saying that came to mind was, h, w, B, T. Have you ever heard that before Hard work beats talent. That’s just, that’s, that’s a, that’s a shout out to a quote from Matt Armstrong. Look him up if you’re in the car community. He’s in in the UK, all self taught, but Hard work beats talent every day that it honestly will. And with the with the Olympics, too. I like basketball. I was watching men’s basketball the USA team, and somebody I don’t know who was, somebody, like, in the family or whatever, was, like, how are they barely winning? Like they’re supposed to be in the NBA. And the best players, I’m like, they don’t play together, like they’re on separate teams. And you put this super team together, they don’t really, they haven’t really practiced together, so they’re barely winning until like now, like later as now they’re in the gold finals. They’re like, well, they’re in the finals. They’re going for gold, because now they’re coming together, and they’re working together as a team, and they and they haven’t worked together for so long, so they don’t they’re still working independently. They’re trying to be independent stars, and maybe one person will step up, the other person will step up. But now they’re kind of jiving together where all these other countries they’ve been playing together for the last four years to prepare for this together. So they know each other, they know their quirks, they know what they eat for breakfast, they know what their family’s going on. So when you’re in a team mentality, it’s gonna take time to get that rhythm, and it’s gonna take time to build that camaraderie,

Lisa 33:29
Yep, yeah, love that Hard work beats talent 100% Yeah,

Dave 33:34
that’s a t shirt that Matt has. You can buy those All right. Next clip this, and it’s coming up on football season. So we had Jeff Atkinson, who is the Director of Photography for the NFL team, Baltimore Ravens, and he just had some really cool things that he, you know, he was talking about. And this is early into the last, last, well, I don’t know how many months ago this was now, but he was talking about some of the innovation, and what I liked about it is storytelling. So let’s, let’s listen to Jeff, I

Jeff Atkinson 34:09
mean, literally walking around the guys as they’re stretching and working out. And that’s, yeah, it’s when they’re laughing and having a good time. And I could start talking to them, and, you know, you mentioned it, you know, how do you, you know, tell a story? I could prod a piece a little bit one way or another, you know, if we knew who we were playing, what the, you know, who was coming into town, if there was any history between things, I could get guys to talk about it. And it kind of became like, you know, Jeff, do your thing, you know, like, just, just do your thing. Go talk to guys. I wasn’t afraid to do it. I talked to coaches. I just, you know, just a kind of a personal guy. It’s just kind of who I am, and that’s how it evolved. I mean, even during the game, like, you know, once you get to know guys on that level, if they’re on a sideline and you’re sitting there shooting them and you’re 510, feet away, you can say something at some point. You know, I don’t do that as much now, but. Back in the day. Can now, you can do it in a tunnel or with a coach beforehand, or, you know, whatever. Maybe get a little sound bite. Maybe get a little sound bite out on a field during warm ups and stuff. But you can get some messages in there, in addition to what you know, what the game itself is, but it is exploded, as far as also, you know, is how much content we develop in a day. It is staggering how big our crew is now and how it all integrates between all the different departments. And it is, it is so impressive. And I’m learning stuff every year, and we’re trying new stuff every year. We’re using new technologies every year, and everything’s just getting it faster and faster and faster, you know, before we’re uploading shots while we’re shooting wirelessly in the stadium to a logging person in the stadium, you know, or it’s crazy. Films is doing NFL. Films is doing it, you know, it’s, it’s incredible how much it’s changed. In that respect, I

Lisa 35:58
have something to say about this. Those are the first thing that came to mind listening to this, which is related, but unrelated, but just the fact that there’s so much content in a situation like that. I think that applies to any business that’s trying to produce content, and it goes overlooked. We can’t all have a personal film crew all the time, right? But there is, there’s content being produced in sales calls recording, there’s content being produced in internal conversations. There’s content being produced on Slack, there’s con there’s millions of ways content is being produced within businesses, and yet, it’s something that I still hear so many people struggle with, is we just don’t have the time or energy to create content. It’s like, No, you don’t have the time and energy to put together a content strategy and maybe to extract it, but you’re focusing on the wrong thing. You have the content. So just create a process for it, and then, boom, you can it’s it’s out. It’s incredible how much content we produce. Yep,

Dave 37:03
that was that spot on we’re listening to Jeff is how much his job is to extract. His job is to try to get as much of that. And it’s somebody else to put it together, to position it, to package it up. And I think that’s the other thing a lot of companies struggle with, is like, how do I polish it? How do I spin it? You know, the other day we were talking about, I was like, Hey, listen, we just came off that prospect call, and that’s, this is one of the use cases we’re trying to sell. Why don’t we just take that, anonymize it, and then use that for a piece, for our own stuff, and it’s, produced that way. So I think getting creative on how you’re you’re creating the content, and then if you don’t feel confident in the tools, that’s where somebody like, like us or Eva, a freelancer, or somebody else can help you that is better at polishing it, to make it better and push it out there, yeah, and do it in real time. Like, that’s what he was saying too, is like he’s doing it in real time. He’s shooting photos, he’s shooting video, and it’s wirelessly sending to the booth, and they’re using it on live air on social media. Like, how many times you you follow a live event, and things are progressing on social it’s important to get content out there fast too, because it can get dated. That’s what we first talked about. I was like, you shoot this stuff, and something happens. People are already on to the next story. I think that happens business too, if, like, if it’s a timely get the content out there quick. Yep,

Lisa 38:32
yeah. Who cares if it’s perfect, as long as it’s aligned to your overall brand, your tone, your message, especially on channels like communities, it’s good to be a little unpolished.

Dave 38:45
Yeah, all right. Our next clip here is Jeff Hill. He’s talking about hiring for strengths is a bad idea. I listened back to this a couple times this week, so let’s listen in to Jeff. Another Jeff,

Jeff 39:01
yeah. So always been a good writer, right? So contents never been real issue. Sometimes you have a dearth of ideas or something, someone to help you sort of guide you there, but, but I’m strong in content generation and development and product marketing that kind of stuff, right? But not very good in social media at all, right, not very good with digital ads. Again, enough to be dangerous on the social media. You know, again, usually, let’s face it, it’s younger folks that are better at social media. I’m, I think there’s, there’s marginal benefit to all the social media work. A lot of people do not say, I think it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it can’t hurt kind of thing. I don’t know that it should be at the core of anybody’s objectives to actually generate leads. And it just, it just takes either too long or it’s too subtle, especially for startup, you have to go much faster. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it right and. Doesn’t mean it can’t be done better. I’m, you know, SEO, I know enough to be dangerous, like I said, but there’s a lot of nuances there, and that’s changing rapidly. We joked the other day about, hopefully you guys are figuring all that out with chat, CBT and, and how that’s going to impact, you know, search and organic search and, and by the time I have some money to hire you guys, you guys will figure that out for us, because I hope so, but yeah, digital ad optimization, just pull it. We talked about pulling the levers. You know, you can’t know how to pull all the levers all the time. Again, I I work in HubSpot every day, but I’m by no means a HubSpot expert. So these are the things that I know. Those are examples, like attendees, repetitively, but there are others as well, website updates, landing page design, things of that nature. You know, there’s a good example of that fail fast methodology, or that ethos we talked about, where we, I don’t know how many times we go through a landing page, it’s not working right. And then you guys have come back. Hey, how about this? Maybe this is what’s going on. You guys have analyzed some of the, you know, some of the, some of the traffic, some of the metrics, and we and we dropped, but we did it quickly.

Lisa 41:06
Fail fast. Yeah, he

Dave 41:08
said it there. He said, fail fast. I love listening to Jeff. He’s humble, he he’s direct, he’s he’s honest, and he’s obviously experienced, but he what, I think for listening back on it, it’s like, he he’s good at, he knows what he’s good at, he knows what he’s not good at, and he’s gonna hire those people. He’s not gonna I think sometimes my interpretation, like with what you were starting with, was like, the strengths was like, don’t just keep hiring the same people. Sometimes, because you’re not gonna get a benefit out of that. It’s better to hire like different skill sets, especially if you don’t have enough work in certain areas for that. And I think, I think that’s that’s important every time you hire somebody, whether if you’re a ginormous company that is hiring hundreds of people, or you’re hiring one, I think it’s good to just stop and say, Are we hiring for the right person? Like, what are we hiring for? What are we what are we trying to solve with adding this, this person? Yep.

Lisa 42:09
And is this person going to come in and think exactly the way I think, or are they going to think differently? I think diversity is so critical, diversity and thought diversity in all aspects of how you’re hiring, but it really helps you build a team that that can can challenge each other to raise the bar, yep. Oh, that’s

Dave 42:33
good. That was good. That was a good episode. Definitely listen back on that if you haven’t already. We had our we had our first author on the on the podcast. This

Lisa 42:44
was, is so ironic how that all came together. It

Dave 42:47
did, yeah, Jack, Jack Skeels, he wrote a book called unmanaged. I think we have that linked up on the site. You can get a discount code from Jack. I know it’s not on Amazon and stuff. And he obviously, it’s like a project manager and an agile back background. So let’s listen into the some of the some of the things that Jack was dropping on, on us on the AB podcast.

Jack 43:09
One of the interesting things is, if you ask managers how what the relationship is with productivity, most managers think of themselves as as an engine of productivity. And in fact, this is absolutely not true, and it’s this is proven in Nobel Prize winning research and theory and the like that actually the the amount of managing that goes on inside of an organization, and I’m going to tie this to your intro to this question, as well, the amount of managing that goes on inside the organization, which roughly equates to how many people have a manager title, right? Is inversely proportional to its productivity, okay? And that is to say, the more we manage, the harder we manage, the less productivity we get out of the organization. I’m going to tell you a really simple example, which I came came up with, like, literally, the day after we published the book, because I was talking to someone about it, and, and it goes like this, I’ve got a factory line. I’m back in factory land, and we talk about factory land, and, you know, the old industrial model, and I’m a manager, and I have my eight people on my assembly line right and, and I’m as a manager, I’m measured. My measurement is, do we get those 200 widgets assembled every day, right? That’s, that’s my main measure, right? And so maybe I’m thinking, Hmm, time to be managerial. I think I’ll hold a status meeting with everyone, right? And I schedule my one, one hour status meeting and pull everyone off the assembly line and and during that hour, we don’t assemble any widgets at all. Come the end of the week, my supervisor, my manager, says, Hey, I noticed you only hit 192 widgets this week. What’s going wrong? And what went wrong is, I took everyone off the assembly line. Okay? Right? And in the old factory model, this was crystal clear. Managers knew that they needed to minimize their impact upon the production function, but that was a very trackable production function, right? It was very obvious how many were supposed to produce, because we’re producing the same thing over and over. Is consistent process and the like. And I was the only one to blame if we didn’t hit that number. Fast forward, we’re in a multi manager environment where there are multiple people who think that they can conduct acts of managing with impunity, with no cost or anything like that. And when we take the workers productivity down, who’s responsible the worker, we push it back onto the worker. And this is crazy, but it’s all this idea of managerial exceptionalism that it couldn’t possibly be a manager decreasing productivity. Yet, in fact, as we see in agencies, an amazing amount of productivity gets killed by managerial actions. They’re just sort of thoughtless. They don’t know better. It’s not ill intention, but they just don’t know better. Oh,

Dave 46:03
Jack, dropping bombs there.

Lisa 46:05
It’s so true. Yeah, it’s so true. I mean, the the cost of meetings, in terms of of agencies, or even with with clients, so it’s how we conduct our status calls. It’s never just, we’re just going to tell you what we did. No, we’re going to work through things together. We’re going to eliminate roadblocks, we’re going to collaborate. I think it’s as a leader and not necessarily a manager. I personally think it’s really important to be able to not tell people what to do, but show them what to do. And if you can use that time for collaboration and for guidance and for lifting as you grow, it’s going to help your team be productive and thoughtful and do great work together.

Dave 46:51
Yeah, there. That book is such a great resource and a reminder of probably listening to that makes me want to just go back and read it again. They talk about the manager tax and the that that how that can really impact your profitability and your bottom line. But at the end of the day, too, especially like in a smaller organization, managers have to be doing work. They have to be producing things, and they have to be doing it on different level. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be doing managerial things. When talking about managing it means is you’re overseeing somebody else to make sure that they’re getting their job done and that they’re being efficient and they’re putting things through right. But I think there’s also things that you could be doing to be productive and to be utilized in that. And so that’s something that we look at, great, great resource, unmanaged book. Definitely check it out. My belly is growling. Do you hear it? Oh my gosh. Um, we have, I think there’s like, two or three more clips. And then let’s, let’s

Lisa 47:50
wrap, yeah, because I do have a meeting at 1030

Dave 47:53
Oh geez. We gotta get rolling. Let’s skip over us. And let’s go to last the last two here. This is Josh legal, talking about his trip around the world.

Josh 48:04
I mean, in preparation, right? Like, I think that’s even, that’s, that was even a step out in like, I don’t know what to do. Like, I’ve, like, I said I’ve never really traveled. I mean, I have traveled internationally. I’ve been to Canada, yeah. So not exactly a huge culture shock up there. It’s America with kilometers. I mean, that’s basically what you’re dealing with up there. So it’s not very different than what things are like down here culturally. So I was trying to, I was trying to do this simultaneously, like, get prepared for everything, and simultaneously, like, be prepared for nothing, because you don’t actually know what you’re going into, and I want to prepare for the wrong thing. So I was really like, you know, from a business standpoint, I just wanted to make sure there was clear goals and objectives set for the business. And in my absence, again, not because I don’t have a good team there who can manage everything in, you know, when I’m not there, but it was really that side of, like, making sure the ship is still moving forward, and not just sort of like stagnating in my absence. It’s only a week. But I also recognize the fact that I could get sick while I’m there. I could be out for another week when I get back, you know, I had a friend who went out there, actually, to the same area, wound up getting a parasite, was knocked down for a couple weeks when it came back, you know. So I knew that there was like risk here, so I had to have things set up in advance of my absence that it was going to be more than just here are the, you know, five or six business days that I’m going to be gone. And recognize the fact that this could very quickly become 1116, business days, you know, the better part of a month, and are the objectives clearly stated in advance. And, you know, thankfully, shout out to Mike Clark, COO, V, I C, solutions just really holding it down, knowing what’s what, making sure things are moving forward. So, you know, we were, I was blessed to be able to have. Have that side of things kind of taken care of, everybody knew what to do. And then even with at home, you know, again, my wife’s a superstar. She manages, you know, getting three kids to school every day, bringing them back, getting dinner on the table like she’s the best. And so, you know, she was, of course, sad to see me not be there for a week, but simultaneously, really excited for me, so I didn’t have a whole lot to worry about there. So it was nice. I think, emotionally, you know, I had to temper my expectations, because it’s very I’m such a planner that at times I can plan out, like, what’s going to be fun and what’s not going to be fun, and, like, emotionally, like, how I’m going to deal with it. You know what I mean? Like, I can, I can fall into this trap of, like, ultra planning at times. So I really had to kind of dial it back for myself and say, Okay, I want to be totally open to, like, what is going to happen here and that I’m not able to control it, but I want to experience it. I want to see, you know, what opportunities are going to come for. You know, meeting people and encouraging people, and, like, being able to bless the people were there to serve, and not just going in with this, like, preconceived Alright, I’m gonna get this done. I’m gonna get this done. I’m gonna get this done, you know. So I really had to be careful not to overhype myself, yeah, and just kind of like, let it be what it is. Plan for the unplanned, exactly. But even in that, I can get a little too granular. So I tried to, you know, have the things I needed, not overpack or over worry about, like, what if this happens, or what if that happens? I mean, the other thing you have to realize is, like, we’re not going to, you know, it is a third world country, right, but we’re going to be in a major city. Like, there are still, yes, there are like, street side vendors who are selling, like, you know, live stock and, you know, things like that. But there are also, like, small shopping malls where there’s, like a grocery store and like a restaurant, and, you know, there was a north face store in the one mall we were by Ritz Carlton too, right? So there was still opportunity, like, you know, if I needed some new T shirts or something, because I, you know, mine got lost or ripped or what, you know, I could get what I needed. So I didn’t want to overthink it so much that I was, like, you know, preparing for, like, some backwoods Safari that I was going to be on for a month, or something like that. I was, I wasn’t, you know, going off the grid. I was just going to a place that was very unknown to me.

Dave 52:21
I could listen to that episode with Josh like, I think the two things that I drew from that was like, the preparation and planning for the unknown is really important. But the most important thing that he said there was like setting expectations. Like, if you’re going out, set expectations for your team. What you what the expectations for, for not only for you, but for them to, like, ask them what their expectations are while you’re gone. Do they have, like, can they just do whatever they want? Do they have the executive decision? I mean, and then he’s, he’s, he was really thoughtful in that thinking like, what, whoever thinks that, right? I this just happened to me? I went on vacation, thankfully. Like, I got sick in the middle of vacation, so, like, my end of my vacation sucked. But what happens when you get sick?

Lisa 53:09
Right? Yeah, it’s planning for the unplanned, which is something you taught me really well, Dave, but you always you have to, you have to be mindful of that plan for the unplanned, even in terms of just your day or recording a podcast, someone knocked on the door, right? You just have to be prepared for the situations that could come up. But listen to that whole episode with Josh. It’s so good. Yeah, I love how he talks about getting out of your comfort zone, and I think that that’s so critical for for life and business.

Dave 53:42
Last clip here Todd Kunsman, he was, he was just on the podcast, and this clip is actually early on, but I thought it was really good. So let’s, let’s listen to Todd here. Yeah. So

Speaker 2 53:54
it started in my last role, where I was working for a company where the whole goal was really to get employees and leaders to be sharing, creating content, so kind of getting the inside scoop of many SaaS companies, or B to B companies that were looking to dive into that space, which was really interesting, because it was such a new thing when I first joined there back in 2017 and now it’s becoming kind of a bigger thing today, more than ever. But I think balancing is it can be challenging, right? Because it’s like you’re doing marketing all day. You’re doing other kinds of content copywriting, and then you’re like, oh, I have this other thing around my either personal brand or driving awareness to work on too. But I found the more you start doing these things, it just becomes easier and easier. Like, now I’m writing things. Takes me 510 minutes most days, and it’s just becoming second nature. So of course, in the beginning it was a lot harder spending hours planning and figuring things out. But then over time, it just kind of gets easier and easier, and then you start to find your balance between working full time, which you know, hopefully, as a marketer, they’re supportive of that, because LinkedIn is a really important channel these days, so you kind of need to be active there, and you want to work for leaders that understand that too, because they’re missing something. Be really important if they are against it. You know, you remember back in the day it was like, Oh, if you’re on social media, work like, you’d get fired or something like, for marketers, like you have to be there. And even non marketers who are working for B to B or SaaS companies should be active here too. So, yeah, I think it’s it’s changed. It’s been a interesting journey over the years to see how LinkedIn, especially has progressed. But I think it’s important to be active here and find your balance between the timing of your work and what you’re creating personally as well.

Lisa 55:26
I’ve enjoyed that conversation so much. Talk about hard work. Todd is he’s always doing something. He’s so focused on his nine to five career, we’ll call it. He always seems to have a side hustle going on, and he puts himself out there and shares, in real time, what he’s learning from doing the work, from practicing the craft. And I think that that’s so important. We’re all doing the work. It’s not it doesn’t have to be hard to talk about, as long as you draw on your authentic experiences and share that people are interested in that. Yeah,

Dave 56:04
they are. Side Hustle is important. I have a side hustle. You have a side hustle. I think everybody should have a side hustle. Side Hustle could doesn’t mean it has to be like a monetary a monetizing off of it. Either it could literally be picking strawberries and giving them to your family, but doing something like that, you’re gonna draw different learnings, different skills. You maybe you didn’t even know you had, like, I didn’t perfect. Negotiating overnight. I negotiate. I like when I sell baseball cards, that’s negotiation. And you pick up on things, body language, the way that somebody stalls, the way that somebody then just walks away. Those are all things that I’ve learned to attribute into sales. So I think, I think that’s that’s great. What an amazing lineup we had in season two. This was fun. I’m glad that you joined me. Really like helped out as my co host this season. So thank you so much, yeah, is it awesome? Can

Lisa 57:03
I come back again for season three?

Dave 57:05
Yeah, you can do the whole season now. We so we are coming back for season three. Maybe we’ll put out a little teaser or something of that. But thank you so much for listening, being a part of this. If you want to become a guest. You can go on agencybalance.com, there is a form. You can drop us a line there, and yeah, be on the lookout for another amazing season. And let’s, let’s get to 10 countries. Let’s do it more countries in season three.

Lisa 57:34
Sounds good. Thank you to everyone that listened and joined and opened any feedback, any topics, any speakers we are listening.