A Digital Deep Dive with Andrew Grimes

Andrew Grimes is the founder and CEO of Newman Digital Strategies. He is a successful entrepreneur, and his insights into the world of digital advertising have helped countless businesses thrive. He's also known for his wonderful personality and, yes, his hot wife. In this episode, Andrew will give us a deep dive into the world of digital advertising, and share his unique perspective on what it takes to succeed in this fast-paced industry.

Connect with RESLV to rediscover your own story and stay up to date with us by following any of the links below:
LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook
Watch the episode on YouTube, yes you can experience this fun in video mode!

Transcript

Hi, I'm Jesy Herron, host of Rediscover Your Story, a podcast for marketers who need a break from the everyday learning but still want to hear from like minded professionals on all things creative. Today we're going to talk with Andrew Grimes of Newman Digital Strategies, a great friend with a hot wife, and he's going to give us a download on all things digital advertising. 

So without further ado, let's discover his story. Hello. How are you doing? Good. And you? Good. Thanks for making the drive up from Lexington. Oh, happy to. Anything for you, Jesse. You. Okay. I really want to dove in to our story. Yep. So this is the rediscovery podcast. There's got to be a story involved, right? So let's just flash back a couple of years to the first time that we met. 

Do you remember that phone call? I do. And I recounted often to random people, why tell a story? Okay. So we were on the phone and it was I think it was a phone. It wasn't even Zoom, right? It was on the phone. And we were talking about potentially working on a project or maybe something bigger than that. 

I can't recall. And you paused and you said, Oh, my God, I just looked you up. Your wife is freaking hot. I think I told you smoke. And I said something along those lines, which very obviously made me pause and it took me back and I thought, okay, I love her or she's a lunatic. I'm unsure which one it is because but I'm going to find out for sure. 

And to this day, I still repeat that story. But I think it's hilarious because I've also thought, does she tell that to everyone? And that's just Hermes. I don't I don't tell that to everyone. That's not just my muse. I did. I like Googled you. Right. Because every buddy's shrine. So we're having this conversation. I kind of looked up maybe before, but then you had made some other comment. 

I looked up your wife, and that's when I was like, Oh, damn, she is out of your league. Oh, smoking hot. No doubt she's out of my league in more ways than one. But I was just taken aback by how frank it was, albeit truthful. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah. But then I love that that was sort of the beginning of Andrew and Jesse. 

Like, that was the beginning of our partnership, our relationship, our sort of like working dialog was just truly authentic, giving each other shit. Yeah. No B.S.. No, just kind of like, okay, here we go. And you told me my wife was hot the first time we met, and I was like, Oh, this is the tone. And this feels normal. 

Like a friend that you would work with as a because it wasn't like somebody had connected us like, Oh, I know Jesse, I know Andrew. You guys would work well together. Right? It was I mean, pretty blind, pretty blinding. Yep. And putting us in that scenario and all of a sudden just. Oh, yeah, like we're on the same wavelength here about how we like to work, which is casual. 

I mean, honestly, my wife's told me over this past weekend, she said, you have to start dressing better for things because what's wrong with how you dress? She said, you own a business. You stand up in front of people at a university and you don't look like it. And I was like, Yeah, but that's, that's what works for me. 

And that's, but that's that carries over into how, like, business relationships, how I go about doing work. It's let's make this work for all of us. Yeah. And we initially just hit it right off because we go about it same way. And it was fun. Yes, we made it fun. We made it totally fun. And we worked in a virtual capacity. 

So we would just kind of get on zoom and just work together to kind of like hang out the virtual water cooler, too, which I thought was awesome. Yeah, I have a couple of people that work for me now who just leave Google me open. Yeah, all day. Oh, yeah. And they just sit there and be with one another and throw shade and do whatever they do. 

Yeah, but it, I mean, even for me who lives in that world, they leave it open all day and that's their office. Exactly. So let's get into talking about what you do. So you started a whole agency? I did. Because you. Because why actually tell me that? So tell me. Tell me about starting this agency and tell me your sort of why. 

Yeah. I mean, I think the back story kind of spells it out. When I got out of college, I my first job was doing accounting for a State Department contractor where I was responsible for all accounting in Sudan, Ivory Coast, like war torn west Africa. And what was interesting, I was like, I hate accounting. Hmm. Even though that's. 

But I got a degree in which billions of people do. Right. Mind blowing that that's your degree? Yeah, well, and then I ran into a guy in a basement back at my college at a party and was like, Hey, I'm working for this place. You should come by one day or whatever. And it was the very first social media company in the U.S. which started out of a polling situation. 

I don't know. And I went in to interview and walked straight into the glass of the glass conference room where they were going to interview me. I'm not even sure you know that. I don't know this big guy, though, like, yeah, three, six, four, two, two, one, two. And they're like going into the conference room and I walked straight into the glass because one of those glass come and I thought, Well, this is never going to work out right. 

And they asked me all these questions. I ended up working there and went, I love this. Yep, this is my jam. And then I moved back to Kentucky for one reason or another, worked at a fortune 500 company, went and taught at the University of Kentucky. But agency stuff was just it's what I liked. Yeah. And I'd always done consulting on the side and then COVID hit and I told my wife, we can either do one of a handful of things, we can go to Montana. 

Just do whatever. Be the Yellowstone ranchers. Yeah, for the time being. But we had a one year old and we aren't going to do that. So too, I could really lean into this consulting and see what happens. And that's what we did is I leaned into it and then all of a sudden the ball just started rolling faster and faster to the point where I couldn't do it on my own. 

I couldn't do it with one other person, I couldn't do it with two other people, and it blew up into an agency. And I do it because I genuinely have fun doing it well. And it comes across in everything that you do, I think, in a digital agency. So just a quick recap. It's Newman Digital Strategies and as Newman Digital Strategies and as an agency, especially in that digital capacity, you can't be stagnant. 

You have to always be learning. You have to always be understanding. What are those next trends? What's the next thing coming down? I mean, Google changes their algorithm. You think about all of the things that have to happen. You have to stay up on it. You have to genuinely love what you do because you're constantly learning for sure. 

Everything's changing underneath your feet. Everything you could do one thing on a Tuesday and have it work and on Wednesday it craps and then Thursday back up. Right. And it's just that constant change. And, you know, still to this day, I use a term or a phrase that you used a lot, which was the digital day trader thing. 

Yeah. And you know, I think there's a lot of validity to that where you just have to be on it. And if you're not on it, then you miss but people who like to work in agencies and that it's the people whose brains jump around and who like to focus on different things and not just focus on one thing because they get bored. 

Yeah, and I'm bad when I get bored and so you got to keep it interesting. Yes, right. It keeps anything is fun. So real quick, just give me like a summary like a 32nd elevator pitch about what it is that ends. Newman Digital Strategies does. So I like to say that we put people or businesses in front of the people that are looking for them at the right time, the right place in the right time. 

So if somebody is you know, I think I could easily go, oh, we do search engine optimization, we do pay per click, we do media buying. But I don't think a lot of people understand that it's a lot of just terms, marketing terms, acronyms. And so we put people and businesses, organizations in front of the right people at the right time online and meeting them at the point of their search. 

Yep, yep. That's right. So if you're on your Instagram and we're putting businesses in front of you, if you're doing a Google search, we're putting businesses and businesses in front of you. You know, it's search engine optimization. It's media buying across different channels. It's website design and development, it's email marketing, a whole slew of different things. But all it really is is making sure you get seen. 

Yeah, yeah. Making sure that you have those impressions and get the people to the point of search where they need to be. So. So talk to me though, like, because there's been so many updates, so many changes. I mean, I feel like, again, it's just constantly changing under your feet all times. What's the latest and greatest? What are the things that people should be really thinking about? 

I mean, this lends itself to what you all do right in the video landscape. And you can look at the news from very currently with what's happening in the TikTok space. Is it going to be around? Is it not? Will it be sold? Who knows? User generated content, all of that. That's probably the one thing that is the biggest question right now is will short form rule in the long run or is it a fad? 

And, you know, there was Vine. Yeah. Remember Vine, do you remember Vine? I remember being on a a business trip with my wife and another guy who is like a Vine superstar and do you remember those little cameras that you like? You did the Vine. I have one. Yeah, I found one the other day. Yeah, in a box in our basement. 

What were they, like, rectangular. What were they? I think it was called a flip camera. Steve, do you know? I have no idea. It's we're older. We're definitely older. I think it was a flip camera maybe. And then, like, the U.S. be, like, flipped out of it. Yeah. And you can plug it into your computer. And then that was sort of like the original content creating device. 

Yeah, right. I mean, look, when the iPhone started putting a camera in your pocket, I mean, that's the big one. And then you also had people that were running around with GoPros on their heads. Yeah. And chess. I mean, you know, they still do it. Yeah, but you don't have to have all that now. I mean, I think I think that's the biggest question about what comes, because you're always going to have algorithm updates. 

I mean, Google's going to stop crawling your page as frequently coming up. So there's this idea of if you're going to do search engine optimization, you do it. Now before Google slows down how often they crawl your site. Really, that's a saying. You've got, you know, meters always changing and we have it. What I think is interesting is how long it takes those platforms to learn about your audience and what you're putting in front of them. 

I mean, you can because it's digital and it is that idea of like day trading. You feel like you should be able to see results right away because you can make changes right away. But that's just not the case. Yeah, right. And so you could have the same campaign slow burner and then all of a sudden that algorithm catches it and it takes off like a rocket. 

And so knowing what those are and like when those changes are going to happen is the hard part, but it's the fun part. Well, and I think to just like back to the sort of day trader mentality, right. It's a matter of having all the different platforms where you can do paid content. So there's so many you obviously have Google where you can do display, you have, you know, you have Instagram, the gram and Facebook tik tok LinkedIn you YouTube, right? 

Like are so many places where you can have this paid content to be out in front of your audience. I mean, it's probably not something you can answer to say like which one is better for that over the other. But is it why is it still just very like audience content dependent? Business dependent, yeah. I mean, it depends on like I said at first, it's about finding the right person at the right time where they live and depending on who the target is, it varies completely. 

And if somebody comes to Newman Digital saying, look, we want to grow our subscribers by 20% or somebody else comes says we want to increase our sales by whatever those metrics may be. You have to align what their goals are with what you think the best platform is, because a lot of times they'll come in, they'll say, Well, my neighbor is on Facebook and I'd really like to show for my neighbor and you're like, That's awesome. 

Your neighbor is never going to buy your thing, right? Does it matter? So who cares? I told the story and I think you've heard it. I was working with a Fortune 500 company where the number two in the company stopped me in the middle of a discussion we were having about how to best utilize LinkedIn. And he said, You know, a couple of days ago my kid came to me and said and showed me a picture of our house on Google. 

Do you think you could get that taken down for me? And obviously I was taken aback, like, what are you talking about? Yeah, but that's the level people, you know, just because you're an executive doesn't mean, you know, anything in the digital space, right? You may be an engineer, you may be an account guy, CFO, whatever. You don't know what's happening from channel to channel, platform to platform. 

So finding the right fit is really important because I could suggest LinkedIn to one and go to the next person and say the last place you want to be is on LinkedIn because it's just not the right target. Right. And I think to one of the things that you and I have always aligned on and talked about is testing and learning. 

Yeah, right. So no matter the content, no matter the medium, the only way to really understand if that platform is getting to the right audience in the right way, the right sort of capacity and frequency and making that engagement is if you test and learn like you have to test. Yeah. I mean, I think for digital it's cheap to test. 

Right? Right. Is really, really inexpensive to get on and say, well, let's just try this content here, here, here and here. What's the difference? Right. And this is when I teach at the University of Kentucky, I get up and I say, okay, think about traditional. And honestly, in most of the classes that you're sitting here taking, they you're taught traditional marketing, which is, you know, whatever world class podcast. 

I know. But they try, they're telling you, I'm sure you do. And the thing is right, they're taught you traditional has that long runtime and you can't test as much. Right. And even if you are testing it's so expensive that by the time you have the results, you're so far out of pocket that there's not much to be done there. 

I mean, we we're having a conversation this morning with a client about adding in more testing options. And they're like, really, do we need to? It's like, hell, yeah, you need to. You better or you're going to fall behind. Yeah, it's cheap. It's easy. A lot of these platforms do the testing for you, and all you have to do is know what to listen for. 

Yeah, and what about social listening? Is that still thing? Are people still doing some social listening? Yeah. So I look at social this way and social is a whole nother animal as opposed to kind of like paid advertising. But yeah, I mean, it's kind of a cycle where you have social listening. You have to know what's going on. 

You have to understand it from there. You have to influence in some way. And I'm not using it as in the idea of you have to become an influencer or because I think that word's been co-opted, but you have to have some influence. There has to be something of value to what you're saying. And then once you have influence, you can network because nobody wants to network with somebody that doesn't know what the hell they're talking about. 

Yeah. And then from there, you can sell something. So social is really in those four parts, but you can't do any of it without listening. But for a while there, there were all these platforms where that was, you know, what's my brand sentiment? And how many people said this about me and my brand reputation? What was it? Was it there was a term for that to me, and we were really kind of aging ourselves, you know, talking about all these old things. 

But but socializing it is still a thing. Is it still the buzz thing? No. Yeah, but because now the buzz thing has shifted down a level to influence, right? And everybody wants to be an influence there, whether they say they do or not. It's like that. It's one of my favorite. I don't know if you can find out on TikTok to be told I'm not on TikTok. 

I'm I don't believe that for a second. I'm not. I don't believe that. How do you believe that? Actually, ask Abby, my daughter. She we went to this whole social media thing for her school and they brought up Tik Tok and how dangerous it was for kids, right? Yeah. At 11, it probably is really dangerous for you. Sure. 

And she turned around and looked at me and pointed at me straight, pointed at me and said, Well, you have Tik Tok. And I said, No, I don't. I mean, I was literally on trial in front of all of the fifth graders and her principal. And I was like, Girl Scout's honor, I am not on Tik Tok. And she pulled over my phone. 

She goes, It's right here. But I had no accounts. It hadn't even been signed in. It was like that first login page. I can imagine you having it. Tik Tok though you can maybe not for yourself, but you spending a lot of time watching tik tok fair, fair. But we watch the gram, we're on the gram. So there's a guy that works for me and I'm sure he'll listen to this whenever it comes out, but, and it'll, it'll pass him off. 

SKYLER Oh, yeah. SKYLER Yeah, and this is just piss him off, which only makes me even happier. Like, well, let's make sure we keep this part in. But he was spending 2 to 3 hours a night on Tik Tok and doing what? That being the test case for Tik Tok, right. Because their algorithm would just feed you in to whatever you had the interest in, right? 

Which is the beauty of this social media that it can accurately target you. And it it just made me happy because it gave me ammunition to talk smack to him every day. Like, how much time do you spend on Tik Tok last night? Yeah. And he had to make it a year's resolution to cut back on Tik Tok. 

I don't know. What are we cutting back to from, like 3 hours to an hour? Like 20, 30 minutes, 20, 30 minutes. Oh, now let's see what happens. We're going to have to have him give us an update. I mean, it's amazing, though, with all these different things because they come out and, you know, we brought up Vine somehow. 

We brought up Vine already. I did. But how long do they lives? What are they what's the yeah. What will actually get a foothold and stay and what will get a foothold and then slip away, you know. Well, right. Well, and I think we're always going to as marketers, I think we're always going to be challenged with the hyper sweepers of the world. 

I mean, with having a phone in the palm of your hand, you're going to use hyper snipers now, aren't you? I am going to use your deck. You always think, oh, my, my talk track is a good soundbite. It's a good one. Okay. So you can have hyper snipers all at that one. Be on loan for you. Okay. 

But we have so many hyper snipers. So as marketers, it's a huge challenge to try to find the right kind of content to get in front of that right audience. And I don't even think it matters. I mean, when you're talking about B2B, so business to business or even business to consumer, either way, they're so human on the other end of it. 

So I think that's a huge challenge. And I say this and it's there's no B2C, there's no B2B. As much as people want to harp in on it and stick to it, it's all a stage. Human to human. Yep. An example. Can I steal that one? You can steal that one. Okay. I mean, the example I give is this. 

If you proposed on a first date, it probably wouldn't go long run right. And so you have to develop a will shoot a pretty good I made a pretty good case on our first date. That's true. First professional date. But I also know somebody who did propose on a first date. It didn't go up and go, all right, you have to develop a relationship. 

Yeah, yeah. We hit it off the first time we met, but there was a lot of relationship. Bruce Yeah, right. I mean, I remember when we first started working together, I think I screwed something up. Like in the first two weeks it wasn't a big screw up, but it was a like just an oversight or something like that because, I mean, do you. 

Oh, I don't know. Okay. Knowing me like people being mean to me doesn't really kind of just let that pass. But you grow and you learn how other people work and whatever. It's all relational. So whether you're doing video work, whether you're doing paid advertising, whether you're doing you're always learning about different elements. It goes to the testing. 

If you're not learning, then you can sit stagnant and people are going to pass you by. Yeah, exactly. They're going to pass you by. So let's just talk a little bit about video content for a minute. So given the the role that you have, given the thing that you do at Newman, digital strategies like are you seeing more and more video content becoming the necessary kind of content to push out to the different mediums? 

Absolutely. I mean, it's the fastest growing content of 2022. If you look at some of the metrics that are out there, I mean, yeah, I see it like anecdotally, you know, but then there are also things where 95% of people retain from video versus 10% retain from text. Love that. I mean, 95% like I saw that. And that's high. 

That's a typo. Right? Right. But someone screwed that up. Yeah. So I looked at the source and yeah, that's the case. So why wouldn't I if I were trying to sell a product or a service, put something in front that people would be more likely to retain? I mean, in kind of thinking about this, you know, senior executives, if you're talking about that B to B and you're trying to go that route, like 59% of executive level people are making decisions based off video. 

And that's not short for user generated stuff. That's a different type of video. But people, whether it's executives, whether it's, you know, dog walkers, whatever it may be, that's where they're retaining. And then taking action is on video. Just that's what it is. Now, I don't disagree with you. Yeah, yeah. Way I'm not retaining a ton so you kind of. 

I have a four year old, a two year old, a one year old. My brain is moving and in a lot of directions. You're owning a business. Running a business? Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot going on. I need to be able to retain. And if I'm reading and only getting 10% of it versus watching or listening and getting a much higher rate, I know for a fact I'm not getting 95% of it, whoever those people are freaks. 

But that's still. Why wouldn't I be watching? Listening, right? That's the only way I'm going to keep up. I think the video is obviously it's the way everything's moving. I mean, I think that's clear. It's what is not yet clear is what shape that takes. Oh, right. Like how we go about the different formats, links, etc. Like who's in charge of the video? 

Is that the user. Is that. I think that's the the big question mark over. Well then I would also counter question. It's something that I've been thinking about that you and I actually started talking about is more along the lines of how do you really get into the tracking of video and how can you then report back that are a why? 

And I think that that is something that to be a fun partnership have been resolved in Newman digital strategies. But I really do believe that at the end of the day when clients want to do video, being able to help them understand how it's executed and then what that ROI y looks like is a really big piece. So yeah, I mean, I think that's the key, right, is being able to well there obviously I'm going to say a lot of things are key just because there's a lot of key factors. 

There are. But one of them is being able to communicate back to people that what they're spending their money on is worthwhile and what that return is. Well, yeah. We're asking people to give us money. To give you money. To give us money. Yeah, but that's the thing. I think that because I've run into this and I'm sure you have to when you're going, when you're competing for business and people will say, we'll do this for you or, you know, would double your whatever it will triple. 

And I hear that back and go, well, that's total bullshit. Yeah, right. There's a promise that you absolutely cannot say that's the case without some level of understanding of their audience, of the quality of the work they're going to put out there of the you know, how good the video is that they're coming up with what's the rest of the campaign look like, right. 

Where you leading them to? Yeah. Yeah, because there's so many pieces. I mean, I had a conversation this morning with a client where we're driving all this traffic, but they are so behind. On having a good UX user experience on their landing pages in their website that it doesn't matter how many people we send, they're because they're not converting because it sucks. 

And that's out of my control no matter how hard I try and communicate that back. But with, you know, circling back to what you were saying on being able to kind of track video and it's you go to these, you're speaking to a business and you're saying, okay, if you invest first, you can get this back. But saying that authentically and truthfully with numbers and track record and facts, that is to me, I'm never going to get in front of somebody and just bullshit, right? 

And say, Oh yeah, give me X number of dollars and I'll give you three. Why? Without even knowing anything about it, right? I will always tell them, I think we can do this will test. Time will tell. But this is what is possible. Yeah. And I think with the quality of this business and the services or the products that you provide, we can make this awesome. 

But there are too many people out there who say, Give me X and I'll give you the man. Yeah, I'll give you millions of impressions, millions of, you know, whatever downloads or whatever that lead gen sort of action is, which I agree with you, it is kind of ridiculous. It's hard to even. How do you quantify that, right? 

Like it's hard to quantify, but I will say that I do love that video and you can kind of tell me if you think this is the case. But I do love that. Video has become a bigger part of different campaigns, especially lead gen campaigns. Yeah, I think video has really amplified lead generating campaigns for businesses. There's not a single campaign I would try and run without at least having a video set, you know, and some people are super reluctant to go the video out because it is expensive or it can be expensive. 

Let's say that it can be expensive. That's a better way to put it. And so the reluctant well, I'm already putting this money in now I have to put even more money in to come up with good quality video content. And my answer is always, well, if you're doing the first, you got to do the second URL. So you're lighting the first on fire because you need all of the different elements in there. 

And you know, some people, some people, certain types of content will work. Yeah. And for the next client, it won't. Right. And so having all of those different types of content in rotation to find the right mix is critical. And video is a huge part of that, not just because it's the fastest growing, the most use, the retention, all of that, but it's it's a piece. 

It's a big piece. The big piece of that puzzle. It's a big piece of that puzzle. But it's a piece. You have to have all the other stuff, too. And you know, and I know you know this, but like when you're creating video content, you also get other aspects of content out of the video. Yep. So you're writing a script now you have some copy that you can utilize. 

You get still images out of it. You could build carousel out of it, right? You can stack all of that stuff on top of just creating some video content. Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. I mean, I don't want to make this about resolve or what we can do, but I think that you're exactly right. I think that, again, turning it back to, you know, what can marketers, you know, lean in on from learning from this podcast. 

And I think it is that you do need to have all those components. So work with an agency, whether it's resolve or whatever, that can take that investment and maximize the hell out of that investment. Like it should not just be one single video that you get from working with your video agency partner. It should be a slew of content that you get from working with your video agency partner and that you should be able to utilize in all your different marketing components. 

Yeah, I mean, you can be even if somebody was like, all I can afford is one video, that one video can get chopped. Yeah, right. All I can afford is to run this one campaign. Well, then it's my job to figure out how to chop what they think is one campaign into multiple campaigns. They're all equally as effective as the one the client had in their mind to begin with. 

Right. And so the constant churn of content and, you know, maybe maybe there's somebody that can't afford certain things figuring out what we can do to make their budget work for them is a huge part of it. I mean, as an agency owner, I would love to only work with clients who have bottomless pockets. Pipe dream, hashtag pipe dream. 

Yes, yes. You know, I mean, who wouldn't want it? Oh, you want to do this? You Want to go? Here you go. Oh, no budget. Just do what you want to do and just bring me and all of the leads. Yeah. Check. Yeah. Okay. Done that, right. Yeah. I mean those big clients are awesome, but they're also sometimes not as fun, right? 

Because there's not that additional challenge. Right, right. Right. Like I'm I'm an athlete. That nature that's ingrained in my brain and I'm realizing that now that I'm raising three little kids, there's this, like, competitive streak to me that I think is served me well, but also at times can be a little bit overboard. But I like the challenge of, oh, you know what? 

This client kind of seems like it's going to be a dud. Let's kick. Let's blow this up. Yeah, right. Like let's not there's this one specifically out of the park just to prove to ourselves, like, we can do this shit. Mm. Oh, I 100% agree with you. There's nothing more exciting than having, like, the challenge and the constraints of this is kind of the box that I need you to live in, but I also need results. 

So how can I, like, work within these constraints to deliver the results and actually not even just deliver the results, but just like ring the excellent bell and blow it out of the water? Yeah. I mean, you and I are like that. We want not only do we want to work with great people, but we want to work with the people that they know because they're probably also great, right? 

Like so we look to referrals as part of how we grow our own businesses. Yeah. I mean it's to me that's the fun in it. Right. And I can be talking to somebody and go, you know, I really think you need to do this and have no hesitation in knowing where to send them, because then I feel like they're getting the best value. 

They're getting a relationship that I know they can count on. Like there are all these different elements to it that I'm just like, I'm excited for everybody involved. Yeah, exactly. I think that's called like being the Macy's Santa. Ooh, that's a good one, too, as not to plug Macy's, but I feel like that's what it is, right? Like, yes, someone calls and look, budgets are budgets, right? 

You have your bottom line. Everybody has their bottom line. It's just the way that it is. You can't go into a mercedes dealership and say that you want to buy with a Ford budget. You just can't. That just doesn't work in the real world. But if I need to direct you to the Ford dealership, I can direct you to the Ford dealer, shepherd the whatever. 

Right? Yeah. I'm sure those are the same for you. And it is fun and it is exciting to be able to say, okay, that's not necessarily a perfect fit for me, but I'll get you to someone. You know, though, I think that's interesting, too. And I have conversations with this pretty often because I have a really good friend who is the owner of a creative agency. 

I know this friend who you know. Yes. And they do very good work and they are like, I refer to them. They refer to me. Yes. And can we just pause and say that this friend has stood us up for lunch? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, we're going to call him out on this. He knows who he is. 

I mean, there are a lot of things wrong with him. No, we're not going to go there. I won't go with beloved studio for lunch menu. So the next time I'm in Lexington, he's having he's actually buying our lunch. I make him buy anytime we go anywhere. Good. Or else I'll just, you know, like him from going around places and so okay friend. 

Now, you know, when we get back together for lunch, you're buying. Yeah, but I mean, that's the thing. Like you refer back and forth, but then you also see, okay, this is going to be a fit for y'all. Yep, not for me. Here you go. Go over here. Because this is what you're looking for or this is what you need. 

Right now, there's a client that I have right now that initially went to his agency and wanted some branding work done, and the cost to rebrand this business was going to be too much for the business at that time. Sure. And said, but what you need to do before you rebrand is you need to go start pushing this product, this service that you have. 

So good a name and digital. Yeah they'll do you right now. Right and then six months from now, a year from now, come back to us. Right, right. And that's the way I don't know. I feel like that's the way it should be. Yes, I agree with you. That's the way it should be. Like if someone came to me and said, hey, I want a video, I'll say, okay, for Hill, what do you want it to do? 

What are you going to do with it once you have it? And if they can't answer some of those basic questions, it's like, Whoa, yeah, pause. You actually don't need a video. You need to work on your messaging or you need to work on your priorities, communication, your audience, etc.. So I completely agree with you. I think that's so idealistic. 

It is. And you know, like it because it's not going to be like people aren't going to just turn people. And part of this, it's kind of where it popped up in my head was, you know, turning away business. This isn't the right fit for me. So go do this first step and that can be hard for people because with money I'll spend the same. 

Yeah, right. But finding that the right type of people, the right partner. The right partner. Right. And if you have a relationship with other businesses that you trust that you would not hesitate to send someone to, then you don't have to as a business owner, go, God, I need this right now. Yeah, you can go. Look, I would love to do work for you, but you guys need to go talk to Jessie, right? 

That should be your first step. Or you need to go talk to Wil over here or whoever it may be, because I'm not going to be the best option for you. I'm not going to serve you well, right? Yeah. Doing the right thing. Yeah. Because that is the right thing to do is to go. I'm not like, I would love to have your business, but let's time. 

Yeah, do it the right cadence because if you gave it to me now, there's a chance that we might not do as good a job as we could. If you had video content from Jessie or you had some branding work done from Will's company, right? And then if we bring all those parts together, then we can be successful. 

But, you know, there's a lot of not that happening. I agree with you. And I really feel like to kind of wrap a bow around it. I think it goes back to again how you and I did business together. Well, like as great partners, right? Like it's having that mindset that almost like servant leader mindset, not only with like team members but with potential clients and prospects and having again even going back to like having those authentic conversations. 

Right, like you I we're not going to bullshit anybody because you can't bullshit a bullshitter, but we're never going to bullshit anybody. I'm never going to tell someone like, Yeah, yeah, let me just do that for you. Even though in the back of my mind, I know it's not the right thing for them to do, are they? They missed three steps before they should have right to me. 

Right, right. Or they don't have the step four or five and six after they have the content for me. And so it's having that like well-rounded sort of knowledge of who they should work with and what they should do before were the right fit. And I think that that's something that you and I have always connected on is like customer or first partnership, first relationship first is how we do business. 

Yeah. And I mean, look, there, there's a part to my life that is really important to me and some of the kind of pillars of it are being honest, being open, being willing, and doing the next right thing. You know what I mean? And it sounds cheesy, sounds easy, but those are things that have served me well since I've learned them. 

And when I learned those things, be honest, be open, be willing. And just how hard is it to do the next right thing if we're not looking forward too far, we're not thinking about a business way down the road. If I get this client, then I can do X, Y and Z or whatever. Like, you know, powers like I'm owned by my jet ski, you know, like, that's not the that's not what we're talking about. 

Yeah. If you just kind of nailed those things, then the rest does, like, fall into place and you end up working with people you like. You have fun doing it. And no matter what, if it's, you know, the type of work that you're doing, it resolve is it's type of work I'm doing if it's, you know, planting seeds and growing trees like fun. 

Yeah, it's fun and enjoyable and easy. If you're doing that, you're awesome. But in thank you for coming on this podcast. You know, you texted me and said, Will you come on my podcast? And of course, my initial reaction I think was No if. And then it was something like, hell no, definitely not. Yep. And then I think third I said, of course I'll do anything that's I know because says you're the best. 

Thank you. I love you, too. Thank you. So I think this is like our, our, our goodbye. Is that okay, Steve? Or do we need to say anything else? Thank you for listening. If you would like to rediscover your own story, please connect with us at any of the links below. My name is Jesse Herring. Thanks for taking a break with me.