How to Think like a CRO Expert with Josh Silverbauer

Speaker A: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Marketing Roundtable, a digital marketing podcast. My name is Brandon Jones and I'm the producer and I'm also a paid media strategist. And I'm going to hand it over to Brian Cosgrove, the host for today.

Speaker B: Hi, I'm Brian Cosgrove, principal of, uh, Brando and Analytics strategist, and we're here today to talk with Josh Silverbauer.

Speaker C: Hello, everybody. Josh Silverbauer here. Um, I'm the head of analytics and CRO at From the Future, and I'm looking forward to the discussion.

Speaker A: It's great having you on.

Speaker B: Awesome. So, Josh, uh, a lot of what we've done in a lot of our past episodes is we're trying to tell the story a little bit about how someone gets to the level that you're at. So right now, you're currently doing a lot of work in the space of CRO. And for people who don't know what CRO is, uh, can you share a little bit about that? Sure.

Speaker C: Uh, uh, well, ultimately, conversion, it's. It stands for CRO, which is, you know, everybody hates a. Ah, a good acronym, right? Because, you know, half the people will know it and half the people will assume what it means, and then, like, probably 1% gets it, right? But CRO starts, uh, stands for conversion rate optimization. And when you hear that, you're like, well, what does that even mean?

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker C: Well, conversion rate optimization is really anything, you know, when, when people think of conversion rate optimization, those who do know it, for the majority of the people who do it, think about AB testing generally, right? It's like, um, you know, if you think about the, uh, a website, it's seeing one version or a group of people seeing one version of the website and another group of people seeing another version, and then they're testing to see, you know, which, um, version actually, uh, is getting people to do the action that you want them to do at a higher rate. Right? Um, right. However, it's not all that. It's also, you know, beyond just testing. Uh, it's. It's also just anything that can improve, um, people taking the action that you want them to take on on a website. Right. And. And actions in general can go beyond a website. You can test anything. You can test email conversion rate. Right? So, uh, it's just optimizing an action that you want people to take, you know, in that moment, usually via digital. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's.

Speaker B: So, I mean, to your point, I think you've covered it pretty well. Like you know, it's really the UX side of a lot of the digital analytics work. Right. So we're collecting some details, some signals and messages that say, hey, this part of a website or webpage or even an app was interacted with and there's a certain desired path that, that people want the customer, the user to take. And you're doing what you can to either test out different versions, those pages or uh, otherwise kind of understand and really analyze what could be done to make that application, you know, do what it's designed to do. And so this is an area that, you know, kind of overlaps with user experience, design. Yep. It certainly overlaps, um, with a lot of the tools that people might use for marketing analytics. But it's kind of its own thing.

Speaker C: Well, it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's an interesting uh, combination of creative. Right. Where you have to think of, you know, what could be better, what could make this experience better. Right. Um, and that's, you know, ideas of what could be better and then measurement. Right, right. Like is it actually improving? Right. So it takes, you know, it, it takes a, a left, right brain, you know, that wants to, a pendulum, Right. That wants to swing back and forth in the brain to, you know, come um, up with good ideas and then, and then have the patience to measure them, you know.

Speaker B: Right, right, right, right. And you even mentioned that it can extend to other areas like direct mail or it could extend to other forms of marketing or messaging. So I mean, you know, to that point, uh, ultimately it's about people taking action and you use the word conversion. And so in, you know, in our industry, people really do mean that to be whatever that desired action is. And it could be filling out a form, it could be adding, buying, purchasing a product, could be, you know, whatever it is from this screen. Where do you want them to go to next?

Speaker C: Exactly. And it can be very one dimensional or it can be, you know, ten steps down the road. Right. Um, a one dimensional email campaign where you're trying to do conversion rate. It could be just a click on that link, you know, and you're testing two different versions of an email. Ah, but it could also be, you know, what, ah, you know, if you have enough data what that link, uh, ended up producing and on the website and then ultimately down the road they ended up, you know, submitting the form that you want and you're testing that form itself. Right. Uh, so there's, you know, there's, there's definitely, you know, depending on again how Much data you have to make an actual, you know, this is actually true, um, improvement. Right. Um, you want to have that too. But like, you know, you know, it really, you can, you can do it with anything ultimately, if you have enough data.

Speaker B: And so in your world, you know, when you talk about the data, there are certain different kinds of tools that you use, you know, to actually do this analysis and they collect different levels of fidelity of data. Can you share a little bit about kind of the current state? Like, what are people using today? What kinds of tools do you think classes of tools are the most useful for people listening and sort of how do they fit in to the mission of what you're trying to do?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, there are definitely, um. It really depends on what sector of CRO we're talking about, right. Uh, which, you know, helps, uh, select a tool or what tools we're talking about here. So like, if we're talking about purely a B testing, right. There are, um, tools that are developed, um, like optimizely or convert.com or um. Uh, there used to be Google Optimize, right. That these are tools that were built to support testing on your website. Right. Like they handle splitting traffic, uh, on your site and then handle. You can. They usually come with a visual editor where you can, you know, change a few things if you want to change your button from red to blue, you know, and see how that affects. Right. Um, they will handle all of that in the platform and then it will also tell you when and if your variation, uh, reaches statistical significance on its improvement. Right. Uh, and so, you know, that can be very helpful so that you don't have to go and, you know, find it somewhere in an alternative analytics tool.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker C: But you can use, you know, if you are still, you know, if you really, really wanted to, you could use something like Google Tag Manager or something to even, you know, just set up your own tests and handle that stuff too. Right. Um, so there's a lot of, a lot of tests. You know, there's a lot of types of testing software out there and depending on your level of sophisticate, sophistication, again inform kind of the tool that you end up using. Um, there's also like behavioral analytics tools which are more for trying to understand. They're more almost for the ideation stage. You're trying to understand what's wrong. Right. You're trying to come up with theories. Right. If you have a. And these tools like, you know, like Microsoft Clarity or hotjar, right. These tools are there to help show you visually what people are doing on the website, right. Whether that's a session recording, um, you know, where you're actually seeing people's sessions, or like a heat map where you're seeing, you know, where people are clicking or scrolling. And you can make observations from that, saying, oh, wow, you know, my, my, my form is like, you know, 75% down the page. No one's reaching that. Right. So like, you know, let's bring it up. Um, so you can come up with those type of, you know, observations. And then there's qualitative, right, Surveys, forms where you're actually asking people and getting a bunch of data on. What do you think about this? Is the user experience good or not? On my site, right. Like, how do you feel about, you know, uh, going through the site? What would you want, you know, to improve? And that could be really helpful too, from an ideation perspective. And it's all about what can we make better? What can we do ultimately to make this better? And that will help with dictating whatever you end up doing, uh, testing or just improving, you know.

Speaker B: Right. So you've got, you just mentioned three classes of tools. You've got one set of tools that, like you said, the Microsoft clarities of the world, the hot jars where you're looking at sessions, you're looking at behavior, you're trying to understand what happens in sequence. You're trying to get context to make some improvements. And I imagine that you're also maybe baselining or otherwise trying to figure out what's the current rate right now for people moving into the next stage. What do we know? Are they even behaving like they're the right people? A lot of details around like that that might help you identify an opportunity. Now, you mentioned with that, you also have the ability to get qualitative information surveys. You can ask people when they're on these different places, have you found what you're looking for? Things like that, you could ask specific questions. You can interject those with surveys. And then the last set of tools that you mentioned, this is where you mentioned the red versus blue button piece. And there you're saying that, all right, with this, hey, there's a theory that blue buttons might be better than red buttons or red buttons might be better than blue buttons. And you get to go in there and you're like, look, we have a hunch, but let's prove it. You're able to go and run it against real sessions in real time, swapping the red button out for a blue One and actually seeing if people with the blue button or the red button actually get to the next step. So that's kind of how you can. And you mentioned statistical significance and all of the integrity around that. So that it's more of a scientific piece than just an opinion, just a theoretical.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker C: And you know like there, you know I would say there, there's one more big tool out there um, for this and it's called your brain. Um, and you know like some observations don't need to come from an analytical place. Right. You can simply just look at a site and you know, use is said as heuristics. Right. This is just observations based off of your own ux, you know, intuition of is there potential friction here based off of messaging, based off of you know, how the site was laid out. If you have, you know, like I will say that, you know, and I don't want to get too digress. Digressive here on the conversation but you know, when I, I had a. I um, was working with a chiropractor who I would trade website services for and he would trade me chiropractic uh, sessions which was great. And I checked out his website and um, he had a JavaScript blocker on his personal website and he didn't see that there was um, some uh, that. That essentially someone had hacked into his site and there was a um, like you know, like the dvd, the DVD thing that just like hits the different corners. Well, you know and like never. It just bounces around the tv. Well there was something like that but it was very dirty and I'm not going to go into what it was that was just going around the website. Right. Well that was probably hindering conversions I would guess.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: Yeah, I don't need some measurement tool to tell me that. Right. So there are certain things that you can see with your own eyes and have observations and hypothesis to say okay, we don't even need to test that, let's just remove that. Right. And so you know, coming up with ideas as well on what else would, you know, improve conversion rate just from your old noggin.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So I mean and to that point your goal is just to make the website or the app better. That's it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And it's, and it's, it's a continual process. Right. Because it's never going to be perfect. And the, you know, the standards of what is good design changes too and what is what resonates changes is Right. So you can't just be like great, we made this improvement and that's it. In six months. You might want to test something else with that exact same thing. Because the standards around what is, you know, accepted from an, uh, from a design perspective or from, you know, a messaging perspective, change.

Speaker B: I mean, but for everybody listening here, there's a career path where you can become the expert on how to make these websites and these apps work better.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: And in this case, it's not about the marketing function. It's not about some of the other sort of upstream, like how we got the traffic, it's. This is the traffic we have. How do we get it to do the thing we want?

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker C: It's a support system for every traffic source. Right. Um, you know, it doesn't matter if people are sending paid media traffic or it's the organic or all of these things. It's like, you know, it doesn't matter how somebody gets to your house. You want to have a clean house so that people like your house, you know?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Ah, absolutely, absolutely. So there's a career in this for people that might, that already know a bit about data and a bit about analytics that um, you know, that they can play this central role at making these large websites, these large apps work well. And so currently you're doing this work with a company called from the future. Can you tell me a little bit about them?

Speaker C: Yep. From the future, um, is a customer experience first agency. Um, so, you know, it really, uh, focuses on, you know, everything from top of funnel, um, you know, first impression all the way down to the final, you know, if we're talking about B2B sales, you know, the actual sale itself versus, you know, and, and, and focuses on every step in between. Right. Like, you know, what ha. You know, what is the ad doing when it pushes somebody to a. The website? What does the website look like when that person, you know, gets there? Then ultimately are they converting? Right. Are they filling out the form we want them to fill? Why not? Why? Yes. Right. Then they're in the funnel of the sales funnel. How's sales performing? What is the sales actually saying to their customers? Is there opportunity there? So thinking about every single step in that process, from start to finish, around what makes, you know, what ultimately creates a valuable customer for, you know, um, because a lot of times it's, it's fragmented where people are do this part of it but not that part of it. And ultimately like, this is all one journey for, for a customer. Right. And so what does that full journey look like?

Speaker B: And so kind of, uh, you know, working in an agency or in a professional services capacity, you're working with lots of different big brands, and you're trying to solve these kinds of problems. What's a typical week look like for you?

Speaker C: It. It really. I mean, this is why I love agency, um, agency, you know, I. It takes a very, you know, specific personality to embrace, you know, being at an agency, as you guys probably know, because it's chaos, and you have to like chaos. Right? But chaos, it's con. It's controlled chaos where, you know, you have, you know, all these different clients who have these businesses, and something can go wrong in any one of these sections. So you have to kind of jump around into what is the most valuable thing to, you know, that I can do in this moment for this situation. Right. And that might be testing, but that also might be observations or that might be optimizing a lead score for, you know, so that the sales team can make better decisions around where they focus their time. Right. And so each one of these, you know, sections are opportunities, um, that can be focused on or tweaked to make it better for that business. And so every week I'm doing something a little bit different, you know, um, finding, I guess, finding the friction.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: Which is all part of that conversion rate optimization and fixing the friction or improving the fixing. I don't necessarily know if we'll ever fix the friction, but improving the.

Speaker B: The.

Speaker C: The outcome of the friction, you know.

Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. So, uh, so you've been there for. For a bit now, but you have a pretty interesting backstory.

Speaker C: I do.

Speaker B: Can you tell me kind of how does someone get into this role? How does someone even get into this, uh, you know, place to be doing this work at the level that you're doing it at? Tell me a little bit about your journey to get there.

Speaker C: Sure thing. And, you know, you. You guys can cut this for time if you want, but I'm gonna go and I'm gonna start at the beginning. I'm gonna start, you know, I was, you know, born in Philadelphia. No, I'm just kidding. I was. But, um, you know, it. So I. I would say the. The journey started, um, um, actually, before I ever, uh, knew I wanted to do this, um, I went into school, into Emerson. Emerson College for Marketing. Um, um. And I just did not resonate with it. And the reason is because digital wasn't even digital yet. Right. This is 2004. Facebook was just starting, right. Uh, sending, you know, accounts to the Boston schools. I was in Boston, so I got a Facebook account. But really, you Know, they were teaching traditional marketing in school. I didn't really do. And my friends were all film majors, so I ended up with an audio engineering degree so that I could go on to films and, you know, help people out in, you know, doing film stuff. And I was always a musician, so I wanted to be around music but not have to, you know, have people judge the music that I created. Um, so got out of school, did music and played in a band for five years, uh, out of school, uh, which was great. I worked in coffee shops. It was awesome. Um, and really did nothing with a career at that point. Uh, met my current wife who, um, you know, was like, why don't you try something else? You know, And I was like, oh, okay, maybe I should try something else. Maybe I should do something with this degree. So I went back into. I went. I got an internship at a Apple and Adobe training center. Um, and at the Apple and Adobe training center, I wanted to relearn music production, right. But the internship was sales. And I had been put on basically going through their salesforce and calling people and adding lists, right? And I was like, man, they do not have this set up very well to be able to prioritize my time around having to call people because there's certain people who are more potentially valuable than other people based off of the attributes that we know about them, but that doesn't say anything or those aren't actually uploaded in a way that we could get to those lists, right. I was just going in order. I said, you know what, I'm going to redesign the salesforce because I'll just teach myself how to do it to make my life easier. So this is a key point for the people, listeners out there. Oftentimes when you start doing something is to solve a problem for yourself, right? And that's, uh, a lot about CRO too. What problem do you have when you go and explore something like this, like a site, Right. Where do you see the friction? Right? And that's a hypothesis there, right. And so that is the way of thinking that led me onto a path to end up here. Um, but ultimately, you know, I fixed up their salesforce. They were like, wow, that's great. You want a job? And I said, sure. And so then I ended up rising up to the, the marketing manager of that company. Um, I ultimately got kind of bored only doing it for one brand. So I joined another agency, my first agency, uh, which is called Syndicate Strategies. And I taught myself all about Google there. And then the salesperson or the CEO would Bring me to different places to sell the value of analytics. And I said, well, if I can sell analytics and I can do analytics, why do I need a job? So I started my own bit agency at that point. Um, so let's pause there.

Speaker B: There's, there's a lot to recap. So it's uh. So you went from, okay, tried marketing. Didn't like it.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: And it was at the beginning of digital. So the marketing that you tried wasn't exactly the flavor that you work on today.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: You're into music, you're into audio production, you're into, you know, I presume, composition and you know, making things work together.

Speaker C: Yes, yep.

Speaker B: So. And ah, you know, people often talk about how music and math have a strong connection. There's a lot of math to music. There's sort of a different, you know, uh, sort of different skill sets on, on how you bring those pieces together and. But here you were kind of in an interesting career crossroads. You're trying out this Adobe and Apple, uh, you know, opportunity, you're in sales, you're looking at a screen and you don't like what you see, you don't like how it, how it works. So all of this came out of you having, noticing really that there was, that this could be better, that something about this interface could be better. And so, yeah, I mean, to your point about the listeners out here, it's like if you notice screens or websites or pages could be better and you sort of have a compulsion to want to make it better, this could be a good career path for you.

Speaker C: Totally. It's all about, uh, you know, you and your own ability to recognize that there's a problem that you want to fix, you know, and, and you know, the rest is just, you know, making a compelling argument about it. And you know, and if you have a hypothesis that really resonates and you know, of a way to show data that you know is ultimately can say this is true or not. Even if you don't win.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: And we'll talk about that in a little bit. But even if you don't win, it's still about learning around what works and what doesn't work. Right. And the more you do that, the more you can, you know, make better educated decisions. Just like it's science, you know, of

Speaker B: course, but you started this kind of in a CRM system, Salesforce. And I can't imagine that you had the uh, the tool set that you have today. You had to start off with an intuition. Yeah, right. Like you had to start off intuition that it could be better.

Speaker C: Totally. It, it was the, like the uh, I, I will never, you know, and I think the, the listeners out there, this is a great approach to life. Never feel like you are stuck. Always feel like you can create a better, you know, situation for yourself, you know, whatever that looks like for you, you know, but like just feeling stuck is. Is the worst feeling. So try to figure out how you can make it better. And that can ultimately give you additional skills to be able to, you know, that with. Coupling it with the mentality of all of, uh, saying yes to yourself, you know, is really important. It's really important.

Speaker B: So you convinced them to let you kind of make changes or improve the system. And then you were saying at that point analytics tools came into play. So tell me a little bit about just that period right there where you went from, hey, this could be better to convincing people to give you a shot at actually making it better. And then sort of the evolution of that. Sure.

Speaker C: Um, yeah. So, I mean, no one was really managing the salesforce. They had it stood up and, and I, you know, I basically was like, hey, you don't have to pay me anymore. I'm just gonna do this. Right? It was very much like it was my first job, so I was like very, you know, I was, I was like, I think I was making like 29,000 a year. Right. It was just like I was, it was nothing. And I was like, hey, I'm gonna manage all this stuff for you and you don't have to pay me anymore. I'm just going to do it because I'm interested in it. And they were like, sure, you know, and so, you know, that ultimately, you know, when, when, when I started to do that and I started to like that, I started to look at what other opportunities were there at that company that no one was really doing. But they had what other softwares? And one of them was Google Ads, right? And Google Ads was. I. It was brand new to me, but no one was really managing it. Right. They had a, uh, ahead of at that point, but they were more just kind of like direct mail, all that stuff. No one was really paying too much attention to what had been set up and forget up, you know, in the, in the Google Ads. And so I was like, I'll teach myself that too. And that kind of like, I was like, I will take on the Google Ads as well. You know, uh, that led me to Google Analytics and I realized how much I loved analytics at that point. I had never, I had never taken Anything that had anything to do with numbers, you know, besides from in, since high school, you know. But I love it. You know, I love the, I don't know, I loved how all the pieces could fit together and you know, the psychology of, you know, I love psychology. So the psychology of people and like the psychology of looking at how people take action. And that kind of led me to Google Tag Manager, which was my ultimate love. Um, because that is all about architecture and puzzles and I was a puzzle person. You know, how does this fit together with this to make this, you know. And so yeah, I mean the pathway to analytics was like deeply through my love for like basically setting up and puzzles and having the ultimate kind of, you know, puzzle to show people, you

Speaker B: know, there's so much to, to think about there. So you kind of gave your management at that first job an offer they can't refuse.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Basically you're not only going to do the tasks they assigned you, you're going to just make the whole system better.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: Uh, and they're not going to pay you more for it, but it's a good way for you to get applied professional experience. And you had to win them over. Like you had to sell yourself that you could actually make it better. They had to trust you to give you the opportunity.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: And you clearly resoundingly earn their trust. Now they're having you look at other software systems unrelated and you're solving problems there with Google Ads. That leads you immediately to Google Analytics. Now you're seeing traffic, now you're seeing people actually coming to the website. And what happens, A, uh, tool set you didn't necessarily have on Salesforce to begin with. You've now got this new tool set and then that leads you, like you said, to Google Tag Manager, which is how do I even deploy tools like this? How do I attract different key events? How do I kind of put all the puzzle pieces together? So now you're sort of architecting the system, the data set that you're collecting. And you did all of this without uh, going to school for it, without even, it sounds like being directly mentored at the time with, with experts in this. You sort of, you're, you're kind of self taught, is that right?

Speaker C: I am self taught. I mean there were like the, you know, there were the people out there on the web like Simo Ahava and Julian Wanaman who were create, or you know, creating these, these tutorials and throwing them out there on YouTube for basically free for people on, you know, this is how these Systems work, you know, and I learned like, you know, I, I think, like, you know, for me, I'm never, I, I'm never good at. Throw me in a room with a teacher and be taught, you know, because I just oftentimes don't resonate with that. I have to kind of look and find the, the tutors and the mentors that I want to learn from. And they were that for me unofficially until years later where now I know them and, you know, I'm in the same, you know, group as them. But like, yeah, it was, it was like years of just learning from online videos.

Speaker B: Yeah. And so it's, it's amazing how far you can get with that. But also the fact is that a lot of times, even if you wanted to learn a lot of this in a school or university, they're not exactly operating at the current pace with the exact tool set being used in business today.

Speaker C: Totally.

Speaker B: Um, it's more academic and theoretical than applied. And so you're doing this work. It's going super well. You're learning. Google Tag Manager, you're still working for this company, I presume you mentioned maybe starting at a small agency. Tell me a little bit about that transition. So how do you go from hey, I'm doing this for this one company I work for to I'm doing this in a professional services environment. I'm doing, I'm selling this service.

Speaker C: You know, after about two years at the, um, agents at the, you know, the brand, uh, that I was at, um, I realized that I had all of these skills now that I thought were really potentially valuable. So I started to look at other opportunities of people who wanted to, you know, wanted these type of skills like analytics and stuff. And I found a small agency outside Philly and um, you know, they, they were like, hey, you know, we're looking for somebody who is going to be our m. You know, I think it was marketing. Uh, oh, man, I don't even remember the title. It was like marketing Strategist. Right. I was like, that sounds good. That sounds like a good title for, for a next step. So let's do that. Um, and, you know, they put me on Google Ads and analytics and Tag Manager and I was really the person who would be the implementation person there. And I like the idea of an agency because it's more puzzles to figure out. Yeah, yeah, it's just more and more. And like, you know, with, with a brand, you, you have that one puzzle and you're constantly. I mean, there's a lot to do within that, but like throwing 10 clients into the mix where all of them have all these problems, you know, it's, it's fun to try to figure out all those things. So, um, you know, I, I started to really understand analytics at that point, and I started to understand how people didn't understand analytics at that point because it was pretty early. Google Analytics was relatively. It wasn't new, but it was still like people were, you know, didn't really.

Speaker B: What year was this?

Speaker C: This is like 20. Uh, 13. 2013. 2012. 2013. Right. So it's, you know, it was there, but, you know, it was, it was still pretty infant in turn. And like, you know, people, a, uh, uh, lot of businesses had it on their websites, but no one really knew what they were really doing with it, you know, and I just, you know, started to really try to lean in on architecture, architecture, architecture. What could be better? What's actually valuable? What do people care about? And does that reflect the analytics? That's still what I do today, right? I go in and I look and I say, what are people asking people to do here? And is the analytics set up to reflect that? You know, what's, what are the questions that people care about? What helps them make better decisions, faster decisions? Is that what the analytics has in there? No, it's a bunch of either like, bad setup stuff or like just, you know, like, uh, noise that aren't supporting the goals that the, the, you know, the businesses have. And so just really being able to understand that and start to communicate that and start to sell that. Right. And I got brought to these different meetings and, you know, I, uh, would be on pitch conversations all the time, you know, of like, selling the idea of what we did as an agency. And I, I, you know, I love that. I love that part of it too. And talking with people and solving, you know, really like connecting with the actual people of these businesses and helping them, you know, really get more value out of stuff. And that's where it really led me onto starting my own thing, which, you know, ultimately came about a year later.

Speaker A: This podcast is powered by Brando, a digital marketing agency that not only provides a, uh, diverse mix of digital services, but, but offers guidance, experience, and true partnership to bring your business to the next level. We offer expertise in analytics, paid media, web development, SEO and design, just to name a few. We've worked with businesses on every level, from local operations to Fortune 500 companies across a variety of industries. We have expertise to help strategize and execute your digital marketing needs. No matter what step in the process you're at, we're there for you. From wireframes to paid campaigns, brand new experts in everything digital. Please reach out today to learn more about how we can help your business grow.

Speaker B: You worked in an agency for a year. You start your own thing. Tell me a little bit about that decision.

Speaker C: Yeah, well, I mean, I started to, um. Well, I had two very close friends of mine. One was a designer and one was, used to be a cpa. Um, they were brothers. And I was like, okay, guys, like, I know enough now about websites and analytics and somewhat about, you know, development, like building websites kind of that. Well, actually, I knew enough about the marketing side that I thought, okay, I want to, you know, start my own thing. And here's two friends who can, you know, help me with the business side and the branding side. So we started to go in and, you know, decide, let's just start saying we do this right? And we developed a brand, uh, called Gru and Blean, um, which is a, uh, spoonerism for blue and green. It's a 1952 theory of relativism by a guy named Nelson Goodman, where basically, this is blue is only blue up until this moment of time. After this moment of time, you cannot prove that that perception of blue would not turn into a perception of green. And therefore your concept of what is right now is not always the same. And that we felt was very, you know, uh, it was a good allegory to marketing. Right? What is right now does not necessarily mean that it will always be. And so we want to make sure that we're always looking ahead and always anticipating that change from blue to green. Problem with Grue and Bleen is a horrible name and no one could figure it out. So we ended up with a lot of branding issues, but it was a good concept. Um, and yeah, I mean, like, we very, you know, quickly realized that we needed to do dev too, because when you're setting up marketing, you also need, like, oftentimes the websites are not good or you need to fix the websites. And you can't just do marketing without the core ability to control how people are actually seeing the website, interacting with the website. So we ended up as an analytics, full service also website company as well. And we did that for seven years.

Speaker B: All right, so you start this. That's an amazing, uh. And that's amazing. Most businesses don't make it that long. And you ran that for quite a bit.

Speaker C: They're still going. It's been up for 13 years. It's great it's amazing.

Speaker B: Yeah. That's awesome. And I'm curious a little bit about at what point did you start offering this service, this kind of like CRO style service.

Speaker C: So, um, pretty much in year six out of seven for me. Right, okay. So like for a long time it was full service we were doing and like full service did not really include like, we did like, we didn't really include CRO because I didn't really know too much about CRO at that time. Um, but it was very analytics. Um, like half of our business was like analytics and data, uh, implementations and half of it was dev and marketing services. Right. And um, you know, we did that for like six years without growing pretty much, or I would say five years without growing. And it was like five core people who were just doing that. Right, right. And then uh, in like year six we like, we got kind of fed up with the marketing side of things. We didn't love performance and having to be accountable for performance. And we were, we felt like our skill sales skill sets were more like on the back end decision making and also on, we were strong. We were strong in design, we were strong in dev, we were strong in analytics. We weren't as strong in marketing. How do we combine all those things? What can we do with dev, design and um, analytics? Right. What can we do with it? And we had this magical moment right where we are like, okay guys, let's rebrand, which we did, um, at this time around five years. And then let's concentrate on combining these services together. What does that look like? Right, as, as a service. And so we changed our name from Gruembling, which was like the hardest thing to pronounce to what is how do we keep gb, um, you know, Groom Bleed Agency without like so, you know, what's the most simple version of a gmb? So we changed it to great big digital agency, um, which was what it ended up being. And we started to figure out that we could sell this service called CRO, which was basically combining design development and analytics. Right. And I hired um, a guy that, um, a friend of mine who had, I, I, I had been doing some contracting through other agencies through gbda. Um, and I was brought into actually the um, Venetian, um, I'm going to name drop that to do analytics there. Um, uh, tenuity, uh, another agency here brought me in to do that. Um, and they were, I was the analytics guy and I had met a CRO guy who just did their CRO and I was like, wow, this is a service that really resonates with me. So I asked him if he knew anybody and he knew this guy. And I hired this guy to basically train us over basically six months on everything related to CRO. How to sell it, how to do it, how to like, what is it like, everything, you know. And basically from there I was able to really understand the service and what it was and what it is and how to use it and the tools that we needed to use with it and, and I had a pretty good sense of how to sell it too. So, like, that's where that came from. And we started. Yeah. And we grew the business at that point with analytics and Ciro and Dev to, you know, over seven figures during that time. And then I burned out and then I, I jumped.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: All right.

Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, I mean it's, it's a lot to, to have that responsibility, you know, even if you're really good at the service itself, it's a lot to have that responsibility to manage the whole business pipeline and everything.

Speaker C: I'm, I'm much better at a, like, much less stressed as a subject matter expert than I am as a CEO. So.

Speaker B: Yeah. And so. Okay, so why from the Future? So is that where you went to next?

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's where I went to next. So like around the time when I was having, um, my first kid, uh, I was already feeling super burned out. Um, I had been doing, uh, contracting through, um, analytics work. Doing analytics work through, um, uh, a mutual connection of mine. Um, Lance Hollander, who is the CEO now at from the Future, but he was just a board member at that point. And um, he was like, I have this other agency. We're right now, they're an SEO agency, which is what from the Future was at that time. But I'm bringing a bunch of, you know, like, other aspects to it. And I want you to basically head up the analytics and CRO department. Uh, they were, we're bringing in a paid media agency. We're going to change this into basically a programmatic, you know, you know, agency that, you know, uh, and you would essentially be, um, head of analytics. At that time. I wasn't doing CRO as much. Right. And so I said, yeah, sure, um, you know, this sounds good. I need a full time job. I'm really burned out on, you know, doing this. And then I'm having a son coming up. Yeah, this is going to be probably less stressful overall for me, you know. And so I ended up selling my shares to my partners and going over there and um, you know, within two or three years, they wanted to really lean on CRO as a service too. And I said, yeah, I'll do that, you know. You know, like how I say, yeah, I'll do that. It's all about, yeah, I'll do that.

Speaker B: Well, it's interesting that all of this starts with you getting frustrated with the salesforce implementation.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Now that's set, uh, up, I think,

Speaker C: you know, it's a bunch of different frustrations that propelled me into the next step in my life, you know, And I think, you know, the, the moral of the story is if you're frustrated, do something about it and figure out where that can. That thing that you're doing about it can also help you in your own life progress, you know. So I think that's. That's the moral of it all.

Speaker B: Pretty amazing. And now you're. You're leading the team. You're leading the practice over there from, from the future.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker B: You get to, as you mentioned, spend, uh, time, you know, with. With the Simo Ahava, the, The other, you know, the people that you looked up to earlier in your career. You're now peers, you know, doing this kind of work. And you. I, you know, you're doing a lot of speaking and a lot of other kinds of engagements. You, uh, spoke recently at our Philly, uh, at our Philly analytics event. And, uh, that was extremely well received. And you're kind of bringing some of your other interests back into, um, you know, back into this space. Tell, Tell some people about, you know, music and how that crosses over with what you're doing.

Speaker C: You know, I think, you know, as I, as I mentioned, my first part of my career was all just music. And I like to say, like, you know, I was leaning super hard on my right brain in my 20s. Right. And that was so much fun. But I had no money. Right. I literally had like, you know, $300 to my name a month, you know, when I was during that time. And it was fun, but it was also not sustainable. And then pendulum swung, and when I did G, B, D, A, I really felt like it was left brain. Left brain, left brain. Even though I was doing some creative stuff, it was really hard to feel like I was actually having fun in. In the. In like what I was doing in my. In my career. And you, uh, know, it was, you know, we were trying to be super businessy and it never really felt like mine. Right. It just felt like we were creating this thing that was for everybody else to show that we did this stuff for everybody. Else. And so when I left gbda, I made. I, like, I had a. A, um, a friend who was like a brand advisor, um, at that time. And we would have these like, philosophical discussions. I would get on a call with him and he would be, you know, he's very, very thoughtful guy, Very thoughtful, very successful. And I, you know, was talking to him about, like, leaving the business and all this stuff and. And I was like, man, you know, I just, like, I just, I feel like, really difficult to like, lean into myself. Like, um, I'm, you know, I am, um, a singing dancing person and like, that's who I am. And now I'm doing this analytics stuff and how do I. And he was like, he said to me, and I'll never forget it, he's a. Who would not want to work with the singing and dancing analytics guy. And I said, yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe I should just go all in on that and see what happens. And you know, when Universal analytics was sunsetting, you know, I thought it would be fun and, uh, funny to write a Universal analytics or a Universal Sunset song, right? And I was like, I'll just do this. Just throw it out there and, you know, see. See what happens. And people really resonated with it and they were like, what are you doing? Who is this person who's writing this saga about this thing that's happening in our careers? And that really, that was the first time that I really, truly felt like I was able to stand out in this field. I know it was good at it, but really stand out for just being myself, you know, Like I, you know, and being fun and like, uh, a couple years earlier, I'd gone to south by Southwest and like, you know, did a whole conversation around Google Tag Manager. And I just, I felt like, you know, it was all. It was very dry, very boring. And I was like, man, this. Like, I'm not good at this. But then I started to have fun and with what I was saying, and it really resonated. And so, like, you know, I think if you have these things that you feel like are not part. If you're. If you're into sewing, if you're into, you know, cooking, how do you bring that into your career to make both sides of yourself happy? Uh, and that's really what you're trying to do, right? Like, just have fun, you know, and people want to work with fun. They really do. That's what I've learned. And it really helped me with my self branding and really, like, you know, all these People that I learned with over the years. You know, I, I was able to get into Measure Summit, which was the, you know, the biggest kind of like online analytics system, by, you know, like showing off that I did this music stuff and then I ultimately wrote a song for all the, all the speakers that day and put that out there as just a self promotion type of thing with all these people who are bigger than me. And they all loved it and reshared it and reposted and they say, who's this Josh guy? You know, so like again, stuff like that that can really help you personally build your own brand, you know, for that.

Speaker B: So, um, that's cool. And so can people go and find this song that you made about universal analytics?

Speaker C: So I turned that Universal Sunset, um, song into a full album. It's a rock opera. It has a lot of the people that we all looked up to in the analytics space. Um, I have two, uh, albums. User Journey, Volume 1, User Journey, Volume 2. They star people like Simo Ahava, Juliana Jackson, some people who are really big in this space. Um, so check it out. Yeah, definitely you go on Spotify, or if you don't prefer Spotify, it's on all the other platforms too.

Speaker B: Awesome. So definitely I recommend everybody check it out. Um, all right, so here we are. You're. You know, there's a lot going on in the industry right now with AI. There's a lot going on in the industry. You know, it's always evolving. Like you said, where it was when you were in school versus where it was ten years later versus where it is now. Um, a lot's changed and it's going to keep changing. I'd like to hear you being at the forefront, kind of at the bleeding edge of this practice. Where do you see it going? And obviously we gotta bring up AI. How do you see it playing a role?

Speaker C: So right now, AI is the most that I think you can get out of it right now. Um, is where it sits in terms of the process around, you know, enriching data or like an automation where you have AI, you know, kind of, uh, taking data and information and then assessing, you know, either creating kind of enhancements to that data or, um, you know, like an example of that would be like lead scoring. Right. It can automatically do that based off of its own knowledge around certain people's businesses, et cetera. Right. So there's, there's absolutely practical use cases of AI right now though. I think it's very overhyped. Um, however, in the future when this stuff Gets better.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: And there's more connectivity between analytics platforms and um, CRO platforms and all this stuff. Like you can see this in like a tool like amplitude, which is, you know, a tool that I would think is kind of at the forefront of, you know, um, kind of all of the different pieces that kind of go into, you know, data and analysis and marketing. And it's taking the information, using machine learning to observe what's happening in real time. Right. And then outputting with LLMs, right. What um, you can do with that data. Right. In real time. So like, you know, person, like a lot of friction on XYZ page, you know, maybe, uh, you know, you could improve it by you know, changing this to that. Right. And then button click to it actually happening on the website. Right. Or in the future. No button click. It's just constantly optimizing at hyperspeed, you know, for that person's personal journey of what it's seeing. Who is that person? What are they there for? What's going to resonate the most in that moment for you? For them, it's hyper personalization. Right. For that end user. And ultimately that is going to be way more effective than any type of A B testing. Because you're taking AB testing is all about groups of users at a, like a long speed. Right. Hyper personalization is anticipating what that end user needs in that moment and then optimizing everything to that. Right. So, you know, I think there's going to be a lot more action from analysis and then back to action, back to analysis, back to action without human intervention, you know, will that last? I don't know. It kind of takes the fun out of everything. Right. So we'll see.

Speaker B: I think it could, it's, it's interesting to me. Um, you know, in that world, how do they know that, for example, the hyper personalization didn't do something that, yeah, isn't intended. You know, we know a lot of these AI tools and LLMs and things hallucinate. They miss key key. You know, it's hard to bound things. Right. Yeah, it seems to be like one of the biggest challenges. And so it could put a button in a weird place or it could, you know, um, do something that had you seen it, you wouldn't have approved it. And you know, how do you see that problem being overcome?

Speaker C: About a year ago I got turned onto a platform. Uh, the name of it is not coming to me right now is like Twit Twit or something like that, um, where they were approaching this exact scenario. Um, by basically doing a global A B test with hyper personalization versus non hyper personalization. Right. Where it was basically testing in an A B, you know, situation of like, here is your part of the website to. Here's your 50% of users to do whatever you want with. And we're going to take the other 50% and we're going to hyper personalize and you can see which one works better, you know. And so that's an interesting approach to it in terms of like, you know, a blanket. Is this better than that? But you're right where without the oversight, it's very easy to see how this could snowball into a bad direction. A really bad direction, which would cause a pendulum swing the other way. Right. Of like, wow, this is like really. We don't want to, we want to really have our hands completely on this because of compliance, because of privacy, because of all this stuff that we need to take into consideration instead of like, you know, just letting the robots go wild, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah. I also wonder, um, you know, from a user perspective if you can't count on your sessions to be, you know, there's no structure if things are too flexible, you know, it sort of makes it difficult for you to even know what to expect or what you can or can't get out, uh, of the, uh, you know, like there's a certain degree, I've seen that when you change certain things in A B tests, there's some friction for the existing users or the past users, um, just because it's different, they just don't know where to find things. And you kind of run into this like, dip with the past users before they, before you see the climb.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so I'm curious, kind of like, do you think that's a risk?

Speaker C: Totally. I mean, I, I know the amount of times that like, like just Netflix is a great example of this. Right. Where its whole approach is hyper personalization. Right. What, uh, what should you watch next? What should you watch right now? And the, you know, the. And they're expecting that by hyper personalizing I'm going to have a better experience. But the amount of times that I've gone on Netflix and can't find the thing that I've. I'm trying to watch because I'm in the middle of it because they're hyper personalizing, what I should watch next or for me, you know, is a lot. Which is ridiculous. Right. You would think that it's right center for me that I should be able to find what I'm looking for because I've already experienced it, but it's somewhere buried in the recommendations for me. Right. And that, that is an example of hyper personalization gone bad. Right. Um, and so, yeah, they're, they're, there is a balance of, you know, let's make a better experience for the users and learn what works. Right. Personally, versus like letting machine learning just go crazy. Right. Ultimately you would be able to achieve faster results with machine learning and AI, but you don't necessarily know, you have no control over that. That's the problem with pmax, right. Everyone, you know, PMAX is all about like, hey, just feed it into the system and you know, we're not going to tell you anything about the data, but like it's going to work. See, just put in like your budget here and we'll get it to work. Meanwhile, you have no fricking idea what's happening with it. Right? And so there's, there's, you know, that, that issue of you're losing control and ultimately, is that actually where we want to go as humans with this stuff?

Speaker B: You know, I'm curious. So, you know, as a professional in the space and, and you know, thinking about people that might be starting their careers and wanting to go in this direction, it seems like there's, there's gotta be a role. If that PMAX style, uh, site optimization is the default. If that becomes the normal, then there's gotta be a role for people to create experiences that win against that, to come up with strategies or to come up with different angles or frameworks that my, my, uh, optimization has to be your auto optimization.

Speaker C: Sure. And that's all about, you know, the confidence, the storytelling, the, your ability to insert yourself. Right. Your ability to say, I know there's a better way. Which goes back to the beginning of this conversation.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: Which is like, if there is somebody who thinks to themselves, I know there's a better way. You are always going to find opportunities, right? Because people will listen to you. And if you can prove yourself right and you can make that case and then, you know, actually go out there and prove it, people are going to give you opportunities and they're going to tell their friends.

Speaker B: So it sounds like there's, you know, new jobs still available or an evolution of jobs just to be the people that can kind of steer, you know, these tools, these AI tools and some of these dynamic pieces.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And your point earlier about intuition playing a big role sometimes, you know, being able to go and look at the data and reinterpret what the AI was doing, what Variations it tried and see what your human intuition can, can draw from it that maybe the AI didn't notice.

Speaker C: Well, that's, it's, it goes back to the, it said in the very beginning of this conversation though I just wanted to like, note on it is that the reason that it's not always going to be perfect is because sometimes ugly wins. What does that mean? Well, sometimes you can think that this is a horrible experience because X, Y and Z, you know, there's hamster dams jumping all over the place, you know, but ultimately some, you know, people like hamsters, I don't know. But it wins. Right? And that is something that if you just purely throw into AI's hands, they're killing those hamsters, you know, they're not going to let those hamsters go be up there. But sometimes ugly wins. And because people are weird and they're imperfect and you know, they, no matter what you think should happen, it doesn't always happen. Right. And so ultimately, you know, humans are there for humans and we're creating decisions and we're doing things that are going to resonate more than what a, you know, a bot would for us. Sometimes it will, sometimes it won't, but just like us, you know.

Speaker B: Well, I think that is a great way to put it, uh, to place it. And I think you've provided invaluable information for people that want to make a career in the space. Um, could you tell people a little bit about where to find you and tell them a little bit about some of the other things that you're, you're doing online? Sure.

Speaker C: Um, the best place to find me is on LinkedIn. I have a, you know, pretty big, you know, uh, exhaustive presence there where I'm constantly doing things that are sometimes work related and sometimes very bizarre. So you can definitely follow me there. Um, I have a show, um, called Third Party show, which is basically if you were to combine the Tonight Show, Pee Wee Herman and uh, analytics or whatever, marketing. Um, and so, you know, it's essentially a variety show with skits and music and comedy and marketing, all about marketing. So check that out. Uh, I have a YouTube channel called analyrical, um, that has a bunch of music and songs and then you can find me on Spotify or any of the music channels, Josh Silverbauer and Friends. So those, those are what I will plug and I'm sure I'm gonna have something weird tomorrow because I'll say, yeah, yeah, let's do that too.

Speaker B: So it's been a pleasure speaking with you Josh.

Speaker A: Yeah, Josh, this has been great. Specifically, like, your journey into this, uh, I always find is very interesting. You spoke very directly to me, having a background at audio, and you know why we're here right now. Um, so always, always, uh, a pleasure.

Speaker C: Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me on. A lot of fun.

Speaker A: So, to all of our listeners, thanks for spending time with us. Uh, learn more about Brain do and our marketing services on our website at www.brain.de. if you'd like to see more from us, consider subscribing or giving us a follow. We can be found at Brain do on Instagram or other social media at the exact same handle. Otherwise, we'll see you next time at the roundtable.