Building a Successful Ad Agency: Personal Development, Paid Ads, & Business Strategies w/ Hal Smith

Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to the Approved Perspective podcast, powered by Approved Social.

Speaker B: Hey Preston, how you doing?

Speaker A: Al, how are you buddy? What's going, what's going on?

Speaker B: Uh, nothing much, just um, you know, busy Monday, getting back in the swing of things.

Speaker A: So I'm just going to tell a little story about how we first met. Um, so we met working on some large sort of political campaigns and uh, did some work here and there after that. But um, you know, some of these campaigns generating over 100 million plus we worked on to help contribute to that. And um, since then you're one of the few people that I've stayed in touch with. Um, and most of that we were sort of just talking about is just the political world that uh, we've kind of came from was, was one that you really look to get out of. You're either one of those long term lifers who looks like they have dark bags in their eyes and uh, is living off energy drinks or you go the agency route or a SaaS company, start your own business and you also have the bags. So I guess we're just gluttons for pain. I don't know what it is but um, happy to have my buddy Hal who uh, is ah, an expert in the ad game and specifically we're talking about paid media. Uh, and I know we've talked about this how to. But the creative side of things as well being a huge piece, whether that be the landing page optimization side of things. Right. There's only so much optimization you can do on the ad front if the landing pages aren't converting, you know, and whatnot there. So super happy to have you Hal.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: So um, before we get started into anything like strategy related, I'd love to hear just what your background is, is what your story is. Sort of fill in the gaps for what I gave because I gave like the 90,000 foot view. Just fill in the gaps of where you are and how you've been able to grow your agency. Because I know we've had some conversations where um, the business, you know, struggled at first. Right. And I was there with my agency too. And then you were able to turn it around. So just tell us a little bit of background about you.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. So we actually, I think I met you at the very beginning of my career. Yeah, I think you're right out of college. Yeah. Started off uh, yeah, yeah, right out of college working on a presidential campaign. Um, it was a great experience for me because coming straight out of college I was immediately exposed to what is really the highest level of uh, digital advertising or really an advertising campaign. Right. It's a presidential campaign, it's national, it's huge. Lots of money, uh, lots of different, yeah, huge, huge budgets, Lots of different, you know, strategies and then, you know, related tactics for each of those strategies online. Right. Um, lots of very smart people involved, very complex infrastructure. And that was my first exposure to digital advertising. So the bar was really high for me coming right out of college in terms of what I thought or how I thought, you know, things worked.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: I would say the other thing too is like a, uh, grad school for me. Right. All of a sudden I learned all these very intricate like concepts about digital advertising at like the highest level you could possibly learn it at. So that was very cool. Coming out of that experience, I went and worked for a political consulting firm and I was one of the kind of first digital marketing employees. Helped scale up that shop. I had left that after about a year, uh, to go work for my old boss who was on the campaign, uh, that presidential campaign to help him start up, uh, really what ultimately became two different, different agencies. So one was uh, corporate, like uh, commercial based clients, and then the other one was political as well. Did that for a couple of years. And then I decided to go off on my own in 2020. Uh, so started my own agency then. Had a pretty good first year, but I, uh, only had political clients and so ended up shutting down after that election year. And then I went in house with one of my clients which was a email, uh, marketing agency. I went there to basically spin up their ads team, did that for about a year, decided I didn't really want to work for, work for someone anymore. And then started off, uh, uh, you know, started my agency again. Um, year one was pretty tough. Year two got a lot better. Uh, year three, which is what we're in now, um, is doing really well. So I've, I've definitely learned some things along the way. I think like the biggest kind of narrative of my career has been spinning up digital advertising teams that are very focused on uh, performance advertising, direct response advertising, and doing it at a really, uh, large scale. So typically managing monthly ad budgets in the millions for pretty large clients. Uh, and it's a pretty complicated process, it's pretty complicated setup, but that's basically what my focus has been on. That's what my expertise is in.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And so now your vertical is what

Speaker B: it's direct to consumer companies, broadly speaking. But typically uh, they're direct to consumer companies that are Pretty sizable. So they're at least like doing eight figures revenue. Uh, they have large addressable markets and they're spitting a pretty considerable amount of money uh, online to ah, acquire new customers. Right. Uh, and that's where we kind of focus in on um, so we're just right, running, you know, our minimum campaign spend online, you know, for clients who we're working with is about 100k per month. Uh so they're generally our clients are spending a couple million dollars a year on uh, you know, direct response customer acquisition campaigns. Right.

Speaker A: So these, these are folks who you would say you really are very aware of what they should be doing. They're spending a good amount of money and you're coming in and helping them. Now are you oftentimes taking them from zero in their paid marketing side of things or are you typically jumping in and helping after a previous agency or an internal team couldn't, couldn't handle it?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's the latter. Uh, so we're typically coming in and taking over from an agency that really underserved them. We did. When I started off at the beginning with the agency, uh, year one, um, we were working with a lot of startups where it was a zero to one phase. Right. We're activating digital ads for the first time. We were setting up that infrastructure, um, I learned that's a, not really where you want to be as an agency. And it sounds bad but there are a couple of reasons for that. So first of all, um, their growth potential is fairly limited. Right. It's not like you can turn on ads and immediately start spending hundreds of thousand dollars per month. Right. There's so many things that you have to figure out. Plus a company at that size, I'm the usually early stage startups, uh, they just don't have the resources to actually spend money on ads. Also too, they're typically pre product market fit. Um, if you're pre product market fit, you really shouldn't be spending money on digital advertising. Uh so I learned that as well. So, so yeah, digital ads I think truly really starts after you have product market fit. You've seen success in a lot of areas, but now when you're ready to kind of accelerate that growth, um, then you start running ads, uh, you start doing digital advertising. An analogy I constantly use is um, like imagine your business is like you're trying to start a bonfire, right? Um, that digital advertising will never spark that initial flame, but it's like pouring gasoline on a fire once it's actually started, right. You're Just massively accelerating that growth. Um, and then the other kind of extension way to extend that analogy too is like how well you've structured the, the wood pile of that bonfire is how successful you're going to be, uh, in keeping that fire lit for a longer period of time.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And so if you know you, I've been in lots of situations like this, but if you just turn on ads, you start spending a lot of money, start acquiring a ton of customers, uh, you can actually just blow up your business. Right. Because it can be like a really unprofitable customer acquisition cost. You're driving, uh, you could, uh, sell yourself out of inventory, you could sell many more products than your manufacturing is able to keep up with and your supply chain could get backlogged by six months. But I've just learned it's best to really start scaling digital ads. Once a business has hit a certain level of maturity, and that typically happens around eight figures revenue, then it's a very safe place to really start scaling digital ads. And that's what we're really focused on. Good.

Speaker A: Yeah. No. Okay, so what do you find in this realm? Because these people are obviously more sophisticated than a lot, uh, in terms of their businesses at that point. Right. They've either tested organically, they've tested some marketing internally and they're looking to scale that or you know, wherever they've, they've gotten some proven, proven market fit. So what do you find is the biggest hurdle for those people when you're jumping in with, with them? Right. I mean, they understand it, but there's still got to be some concept, something that you bring to the table where you're going to have to like convince them of why that is, that you're the best fit for them moving forward. What do you see that being?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, God, it's such a great question. I think it's. There are a couple really interesting hurdles that we have to always address. Uh, one is they've typically the agency they were working with before, because they've always worked with an agency before we started working with them. Like, we typically come in and what we do, we do what's called a bake off, right. Where we start running campaigns in parallel to what their existing agency is doing and we effectively just prove that we're better running these campaigns. Um, and then they see it and they fire the existing agency and they start working with us. But I think.

Speaker A: So do you, do you suggest that as an idea and a concept or do you say, hey, we'll do this for free? Or, like, what do you do for that? I mean, do you.

Speaker B: I ask for it. Um, and the reason why is, uh, it's this. The saying, you know, Preston, you and I are walking in the woods, we see a grizzly bear. Uh, I don't have to run faster than the bear. I just have to run faster than you. Right. And, uh, the reality is, uh, you know, the way it works in terms

Speaker A: of neither one of us can run very fast, so we're both getting eaten.

Speaker B: That's true.

Speaker A: Yeah, probably, yeah. HE LAUGHS Eats me, then eats you.

Speaker B: Yeah, Right. But it's a good point. But in that context, uh, the reality is, like, it's sometimes really, really hard to hit, uh, the goals of our clients. Right. And they have very high expectations. It might be a very tough, uh, climate in which we're advertising in. Right, right. But if we can prove that we're significantly better than their existing agency in terms of how we operate, but also to the performance we're driving, um, it's a lot easier than hitting maybe what might be, um, unrealistic goals that the client might have. Right. So.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, good point. So they're like, hey, we saw, you know, 3x return six months ago, but now our agency's doing 2x return. And you go, well, you know, I don't know if we can ever hit that 6x because of whatever they were doing in the past or the platforms have changed or whatever, and your offer changed. And, um, so instead of doing that, you go, well, all I got to do is beat them now at 2x, and if I can get up to 2x quickly and get to 2.5x, I go, hey, proof is in three months, I generated this much. Give us a little bit more time, we're going to be able to get back to where we think we could be, which is 5x or 4x or whatever you think the ROAS is going to be. Is that sort of a fair way to. That you pitch it? Because I think, yeah, I think that's a helpful tip for anybody who's listening. A lot of people who are in the agency game still, and they go, okay, this, this is something that I need to be implementing because for a long time, you know, even. Even myself most of the time, uh, with my agency, we'd get, you know, we'd wait for them to sort of make that handoff. And I think what you're suggesting is a great way to get in the door more quickly, even if they're sort of timid about trying something.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: I mean that's. Well, what's the worst case that can happen is you just go back to your other team or we beat the heck out of them and you're making more money.

Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I think the other reason why I offer this is because I'm extremely confident in my team and I know that we'll do a better job. Like we've done it time and time again. All of our clients that are at this stage of growth, not like the early stage startup type clients, but all of our bigger clients we started working with, they were all working with agencies previously. Um, we beat the previous agency and performance and then we took on that client. And the reason why is because my team are, the people I've recruited are people that have lots of experience working with big brands. Right. These guys have worked with the brands that people study and write case studies about. Right. And like research and be like, oh, this is what they're doing. This is kind of the cutting edge. But those guys are now like working over at H Street. I've been, I've been very lucky recruiting some really exceptional people. And uh, when you work with clients that are typically around eight figures, they're working with much bigger agencies, right? They're working with agencies that are typically between 50 and 200 people. Well the issue is agencies at that size, uh, all the actual like hands on keyboard, like grunt work in terms of like setting up campaigns or optimizing campaigns is typically done by uh, entry level people. Uh, what they've effectively done is build out these kind of systems and processes that they hand over to entry level people and they basically do all the work. Well, the people I have are people that love this type of work and they want to keep doing this type of work that have like 8 to 10 years experience doing this type of work. So it's, it's not even a fair.

Speaker A: Buyers. Yeah, through and through. They're, they're ad buyers. They're not just a marketer, right. A paid social guy. These are ad buyers, I think.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Very big distinction between, between someone who does this and that's all they want to do and the guy who you hire as a, uh, just a general marketer.

Speaker B: Right. And typically those, those people who have that level of experience that are that good typically get bumped into management. Right. And they stop touching the campaigns.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Well, the people I have working with me like love this so much. They want to keep doing it. I'm like, for sure, like we'll keep doing it. Yeah, really highly and they were really good. And they have lots of performance incentives working at H Street as well. And so the cool thing is, is like you have somebody like that face to face with somebody who's like currently working on the account like the previous agency, that's like an entry level person that's following a checklist. There's no comparison. Like we, we do significantly better in that context. Right.

Speaker A: So how much of it do you think is the creative concepts that you guys come up with versus the AB testing, multivariate testing mindset that you might have? And, and like the strategy there because it's such a, I mean, like, I don't know what the percentage is, but of course it's massive that you have to get somebody to stop first and then read and then click. Right. There's just a sequence of things that could happen. Do you feel like the creative and the concepts that you guys create specifically for a new client, like, you come in, you go, hey, I like what you guys are running. X number of discounts, this kind of offers that you have. Um, but if we tweak it into this offer, we think that we're going to have a better performance there. Or is it mostly your performance is based on, hey, we're going to ab test the shit out of these things and then determine which way we go based on that.

Speaker B: Yeah. So it's, it's both. So we have.

Speaker A: You're taking what you've learned from previous. I mean, that's why they pay you the big bucks. Right? This is not, you're not, you're not at the entry level agency stage. You're at a stage where it's like, hey, I spent hundreds of millions of dollars, I don't know how much where you're at, but ton of money. And now I'm taking that knowledge and applying it to other, other clients.

Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. So, uh, a couple key concepts here. One is our testing process. So we test what, uh, we call our iterative track and then we have our big swings track. And those are two different things. And so we are testing like iterations of things we know we're working well. Like typically, like it might be historic creative, the client already has, but then we bring in some like, big swing concepts that we know that are very distinctly different that might make a huge impact on the account. Right. Yeah. Another thing is, is thinking about creative in a couple different ways. So, um, you can think about it in terms of like being Persona based. Uh, you can think about it in terms of like, what type of psychological Triggers you're trying to like tap into, um, also to the format of the creative. So like static images, gifs, or like user generated content. Right. Um, another way of thinking about it is uh, the offer strategy separate from the actual creative that you're running. Right. So that might be like, oh, we have like buy one get two free or buy two get one free or stuff like that that's added to a specific Persona that we're targeting, that's added to a user generated content video. Does that make sense? So you have a couple layers on that and we have a really good framework of kind of mixing and matching these key components that we know will work well. Right. And yes, a lot of it is just kind of a historic deep like domain expertise in terms of what we know works. Then on top of that is a really good methodology around testing these kind of key concepts. Right. But I think the key thing here is something that always run into is you can have unlimited iterations of any creative concept. Right. And like the only problem is, well, the thing is you can have unlimited iterations and one of those combinations will be the perfect ad. Right. We all know this.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: Like, right.

Speaker A: Uh, who knows what yellow button with the blue background and the child smiling or whatever.

Speaker B: Exactly. But the issue is, um, there's a huge resource problem. Right. It's either time or money. And so if you have unlimited money and unlimited time, you could find the ultimate ad. Right. Uh, with all those permutations, combinations, whatever it might be. So no one has unlimited time or money. So what you have to do is apply this domain knowledge to figure out, hey, these are the uh, testing variables that have the most likelihood of success. Let's test that first and let's quickly kind of optimize from there. Knowing what works, uh, it's kind of taking a heuristic approach, uh, knowing kind of the big broad strokes of what we know works best based on our expertise. Instead of trying to create every single combination, every single type of a B test, every single type of permutation. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and that's what's key. That's where it's like the expertise and knowledge also the kind of, uh, I would say the um, art of it comes in and then it is, you know, the applied kind of testing science side of it. Right.

Speaker A: So yeah, and I think that's why, that's why people pay agencies like yours the big bucks is because of the experience that you've done. It's like we do have a benefit, uh, coming from the background that both of us have had of participating in massive spins. I mean, a million bucks a day, sometimes incredible amounts of money going out and that we are testing things that we came up with and, um, being able to then go, okay, how do I now apply that to these other businesses that I have access to? Well, for the most part, most marketers aren't going to have that much information in such a short amount of time. Like you said, I mean, it was a graduate degree, master's degree, whatever, doctorate in, um, marketing. Right. For, for, for us at the time. And I was new into it as well. Just, um. And so I think that is something that we often undervalue, especially in the agency world. And I think a lot of people that I've talked to that are also agency owners and founders say the same thing. It's like it took me too long to value the previous work that I had done and was just sort of pitching the same thing over and over again at the same level. And you're. Well, no, every time you close a new client and every time you work on a client for a period of time, you're gaining knowledge, you're actually able to reprice and start to move up in the world. I mean, that's, that's the whole goal of what you're doing. And man, I felt for this too, is like, set a package, you got the package, and for the next three years are running this package. Cause it's working. Well, guess what? That package should have been ramped up every year. And you should be going after slightly bigger clients and slightly, you know, people who have more ad spend and then adding things on, like, um, you know, an ad spend percentage and whatnot. Now, you probably do that, I'm assuming, because you, you know, why not? And I think it does become more, much more complex when you're spending, you know, a million bucks a quarter or whatever. Um, so what do you do there? I mean, how do you handle that? And do you get a lot of objections? Because I know I got objections from some clients, but a lot of times they were small ones. The big guys seem to know on

Speaker B: pricing, we do a retainer plus a percentage management fee. Um, when I, I always get objections based on our pricing. Right. I think everyone does. And it plus two with any people always try to negotiate with you. Right. So they're always going to try to, you push you a little bit, try to see what they can get. But my response to the objections is, well, let's bake it into the customer acquisition cost, right? So, you know, we tip, we'll take the, the CAC that the client defines. Uh, we'll add in our pricing to that at different spend levels, and then we'll just have a much lower target cac. So it's still profitable for the, the client with their fees included. And so they can't really, if they, if they negotiate with us, it doesn't really matter because the number stays the same on their end. It just makes us, uh, have to work harder. The other thing, and what I talk about is that Charlie Munger quote, which is, I'm paraphrasing, but I think it's, you know, it's, uh, show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome. Right. And so, uh, percentage of media spend model heavily incentivizes us, uh, to scale advertising spend. Um, but stay active, right? To stay active and to keep pushing things, keep seeing how we can grow. We have to commit. We also, like, guarantee that we'll scale spend at the target customer acquisition cost. Right. So it keeps us from spending money, you know, at an extreme level without it actually being profitable for the client. We have to keep that target cac, and we're incentivized to scale spend as much as we can. And then I turn around into my media buyers, these guys I described with the ton of experience, I give them a heavy performance comp model. And so they're also really heavily incentivized to scale and, uh, you know, have a couple of team members who have been extremely successful scaling up our clients and made a ton of money doing it. Right. But I'm super pumped. Right? Everyone's winning this. Yeah. So, uh, so that's what I'm trying to do.

Speaker A: You'll get more business, you'll get referrals, which I think is where you're at. I mean, you're basically saying, we talked about this earlier, but like, hey, we have to sort of have a wait list in some ways, and you have to have more criteria for who qualifies as a client. Um, and I think, you know, you've already said some of the criteria there, right? The, uh, amount of ad spend and, you know, being willing to do those kinds of deals. Um, okay, so CAC is interesting and it's for everybody, whether you're internal or external marketer, or you're a startup, founder, CEO, whatever. Um, when you're talking about cac, which is customer acquisition cost, and you're looking at that for a new customer, um, are you setting baselines based on the previous agency? Are you looking historically over the lifetime of what they have done before. Different channels. And then how do you then predict or plan what your model is for? Hey, we think we can do X or Y or Z or do you not make any kind of promises or commitments?

Speaker B: This is always a really tough conversation with our clients, um, once we start working with them. So, yeah, first thing first, we ask them, what's your source of truth? Right. So how do they track their customers? Right. Their new customers. And we, and then we ask to get access to it, uh, so we can actually see what that looks like compared to media span, uh, historically. Right. The second thing we ask them about is what is your unit economics or what's your contribution margin? Right. So how profitable are you, uh, in selling one of your products, like, on a specific, like one unit basis? Uh, then we start trying to figure out, you know, have they tested any type of bundle strategy or have, you know, do they have any type of subscription models or anything like that? And the. What we're truly trying to figure out is, first of all, uh, do they have a profitable business model? That is really important for us to figure out because a lot of times we've actually uncovered that they're not selling products as profitably as they thought they were. Right, right. Uh, and then it makes this much. It makes it much harder for us because our CAC has to become much smaller. And that's actually, you know, it's very difficult to get a, uh, cac, like less than 20 bucks on Facebook today, for example. And like, Facebook's always kind of a benchmark for us. We always start there and how we model things. And we, uh, you know, extrapolate to TikTok, Google Ads and stuff like that. But, yeah, um, so we have that conversation and then from that we start building a model of what we think would be easiest for us. Right. Because, you know, we want to make sure that this is going to be successful at scale. So we try to figure out the kind of pockets of opportunity. And typically that's by, uh, bundling products or leaning into more of a subscription model or finding a hero product that we think is a very profitable product, um, that will allow us to kind of scale up on. We also try to find like a gateway product, right. Where it's like that first thing that someone purchases, but then they're most likely to purchase multiple other products and they'll have a higher ltv. Uh, but we really try to figure out, hey, what's this best combination of things? And that's how we'll start, like that's where we will focus in terms of what products we'll start advertising for. Right. Then once we identify that, then we put it into a media plan for the first 30, 60 and 90 days. Working with the client. Right. And we do set up projections that we hold ourselves accountable to. Right. And then we try to, you know, those first 30, 60, 90 days go by. We want to make sure we're on track for those projections uh, that we set. Right. Um, and those projections are typically a spin number per month as well as a uh, target CAC and what we're hitting at that spend. Finally, on the reporting side, on our end, we tie all of our reporting to that source of truth and it's typically Shopify. Uh, on top of that, in terms of attribution, we do uh, UTM tracking, uh, we look at in platform pixel tracking. And then we also typically add a third party attribution partner like Triple Whale or North Beam. So we can also look at it uh, from another perspective as well. Uh, finally with those three layers, we sit down with the client, we come up with a KPI that's typically uh, pulling from each of those reporting, uh, sources to kind of come to something that's combined and we, we're pretty confident. Confident is like a good number. So. Yeah.

Speaker A: So there's a lot there that I think is interesting one. First off, um, like the blended average of cac, is that where the, the problem lies with most customers is or is where they go, hey, we're actually at uh, you know, CPA of 30 on Facebook or whatever. But they're not equating for the fact that this guy entered through search as well. So now it's double cost or you know, whatever other campaigns that they're running or you know, maybe they have to run the campaign multiple times or you know, whatever. Is that, is that sort of the biggest problem?

Speaker B: You think that? Yep, that's the biggest problem. The problem is, um, uh, it takes a while to kind of uncover this. Right. Because one thing is they might have a lot of success outside of paid channels. Okay. And then that becomes very noisy on the paid side. So let's say they do a lot of media and they get a lot of sales through that earned media. Right. And it's like organic sales on their website or let's say they have a really good influencer campaign, uh, or influencer program. They get a lot of sales through that and not all of them are directly attributable. Right. There's like noise that exists and that typically happens with brands that are a little bit larger. So you have to deal with that. And then within the paid ads ecosystem you're dealing with this cross channel attribution issue. We have like Meta, you have Google search, you have TikTok. And you know, the typical thing we always see is people uh, view content on Meta and TikTok, uh, it does trigger them to want to buy but then they typically make that purchase a couple of days later through Google Search. Right. So Google Search always looks super profitable. It always looks great. Um, and then you have that kind

Speaker A: of brand search, guys.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, but, but then it's. What we typically try to do is as we're activating channels, uh, watch you know, performance by channel for, you know, that let's say like a month or like 60 days. Then try to draw a correlation between that kind of activation and increase in ad spend by channel and then what that ultimately turns out to in terms of revenue. But we're also trying to look at things from like more of a marketing efficiency ratio standpoint where it's generally like, here's how much you spent, here's how much revenue, uh, that drove. And then it's like if you're spending more, you're also driving more revenue or is there a certain kind of point, ah, of diminishing marginal returns where you're spending more and then revenue stayed the same or it starts to get lower. Right. Uh, so we try to look at that as well but it's. The truth is it's all very ugly and messy. No one's figured out the silver, silver bullet to actually know how to draw like no linear, direct like one to one attribution. It's pretty tough.

Speaker A: Every tool claims that it's the best. But uh, yeah, there seems to be nothing out there that's uh, that's absolutely perfect. But when you do have redundancies like you have, you've got basically three different, you know, sources that you're sort of using. Um, yeah, you can at least have a, an idea of the direction that you're going. And that's, that's one of the biggest things that I've seen and heard a lot of is people don't set their expectation or they don't. Not that they don't set their expectations. They don't do like a really good audit and analytics review prior to taking over.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, and it's like, great, I got a new client, let's close them. Sounds good. But what you didn't realize was hey, their CAC isn't What they think it is, that agency was lying to them about X, Y and Z. They, you know, I mean, all happens all the time. All the time where you, like an agency is legit lying to them. And um. Yeah, so it's, it's, it's. That's the biggest problem I think I've ever seen is agencies jumping in and not knowing the analytics because then they don't know where they're going. I mean, right. They don't know if they can actually improve it or not. And so they're setting themselves up for failure. And I did it to myself many times going, let's just get this fucking client and then move on to, uh, figuring that out later. Um, but it's not that you couldn't have still gotten that client. It's how you set up that conversation. Hey, in order for us to prove to you that we're going to be the best agency, we've got to make sure that this analytics is correct. It's really our responsibility to make sure that this performs well for you. And who's going to. Most people are going to say yes to that, right? Most people are going to give you access to what you need in order to do that correctly. Um, okay, so CAC is interesting, um, when you're talking about, are you doing, uh, SaaS at all? Because obviously I'm interested just because of what we do. Do you do SaaS?

Speaker B: No, we don't do anything. Uh, well, you say SaaS. You mean in terms of clients we work with or in terms of like having a product that is clients that you work with? Yeah, we, we don't have any currently. We had a SaaS client. We had two SaaS clients last year. Uh, we have a, ah, mobile app. But no, no SAS clients. Um, they're mostly consumer products, like, uh, CPG type stuff.

Speaker A: Got it. Okay, cool. You might have said that earlier and I missed it, um, with, uh, M. Oh, shoot. I just lost track. I was gonna. I forget. Um, okay, well, let's keep going then. I'm interested in finding more about your business and what you're doing with the ad side of things. Let's rewind a second. When we were on the campaign, we both could come up with ideas, really, and implement ideas within a day or two. I mean, and you're talking about coming up with a new ad campaign idea or, or organic campaign, Creating it, writing the copy, building a landing page for it, and creating new offers, whatever that might look like, even sometimes making products to offer alongside that. And then from there I Would ship my. That was mostly sort of my role. And you participated. Then I would ship it off to you and others to really run those campaigns and do thousands of different tests on these various campaigns and whatnot because we're spending so much money. How have you been able to take sort of that approach? Or have you been able to take much of that approach and apply it to this? Do you feel like that was overkill and it's not needed anymore based on the new updates to the systems and whatnot? Or what's your thought on that? Because at the time, that was revolutionary. It was massive. It was the biggest campaign that's ever been done essentially digitally. Now I don't even know if that's needed as much because of just the platforms and how they run. What do you think? And I don't have a stance. I'm just curious.

Speaker B: Yeah, so I agree. Ad platforms today, it's not needed. And it's because a lot of how these machine learning, uh, I would say like creative optimization algorithms work. Is already doing that work that we used to do manually. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so, for example, like a pmax campaign on Google Ads, you just dump in tons of video iterations, tons of static image iterations, a lot of copy iterations, and then the PMAX campaign figures out how to dynamically optimize those combinations of creative across lots of different placements to figure out the optimal, you know, combination that does drive the most return on ad spend.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: We used to do that or like manually. Right. And we did that on Google Ads. We also did it on Facebook, like Facebook Advantage plus cbo Dynamic creative campaigns, same story. Right. I used to do those type of, you know, iterations that you get from that campaign today. Uh, in like a, you know, Excel spreadsheet. Right. Where it's like tens of thousands of rows and that's weird. Upload those and like pull them down, like look at the data, like edit things and then re upload it. Right. We don't have. You don't have to do that anymore.

Speaker A: Uh, see, I'm still used to. I'm still used to those days. It feels, it feels old when I, when you say that. Because it's totally true. It's not needed anymore with these campaigns. I mean, they'll literally change out the buttons and do all sorts of things for you. I mean, it's. It's wild. So it's not needed. But it's so funny. It's like that's. We're old now to say back in the day when you had to do the manual work.

Speaker B: Uh, I know it's like, I mean that was eight years ago. Right. And that like in tech that's a long time. Right. So a lot has changed since then. But it is nice because it's taken away a lot of brutal manual work that was that honestly is not fun to do. Uh, but on the landing page side I still think there's a lot of opportunity and I think there hasn't been a good tech solution that's uh, kind of developed yet to do that high volume uh, creative optimization on landing pages. Right. Where you're testing out lots of different uh, segments or parts of that landing page. Um, M. That's a great point.

Speaker A: That is a great point.

Speaker B: I think that's like if you could, for the ads people out there who know this, the advantage plus dynamic creative on Meta, if you could create a product that does that for landing pages, uh, that would be a pretty good business.

Speaker A: Uh, why is there not something like that actually how I just. That's. I mean because you're right. Pretty much the only thing I can think of is like a B testing using an unb unbounce or you know, something like that or just your own a B testing or you know, Google, uh, optimize or something.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Um, I think it's because of thing like that.

Speaker B: It's uh, scale uh, of data and um, statistical significance. So what I mean by that scale of data, Meta has so much data on users that it understands without having to do a lot of statistically significant testing. Like what creative combinations deliver to what people. Because it's collecting so much information. Okay.

Speaker A: Gone are the days if you need to spend $10,000 just to make sure you know, it's working right versus you know, or maybe a hundred thousand. But yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: And, and then the uh, statistical significance. So like any type of landing page, uh, test if you're working with a uh, Google Optimized. Well Google Optimized has been some sunsetted but like one of these new like a B test platforms you need to have like a pretty significant amount of traffic uh, on that page and to in order to run like a statistically significant split test. So it's really hard for that page to kind of dynamically change um, because you need so much volume of traffic it will work for these bigger, higher volume uh, clients. My perspective is the only company out there that has a capability to do something like this is probably Shopify. Because Shopify has so much data. Right. You know, using that analogy with meta and then Also too, they probably have so many different types of Shopify stores that are getting traffic at a volume where they could have statistical significance for any type of testing. Um, but it would be like, I think you would have like shopify dynamic product pages. Right. That would be like a feature and then you know, you'd have a product page set up and you just put in the basic inputs like product description, like images, whatever. And then over time that product page is like self optimizing, um, until it gets to like the ultimate page in terms of like conversion rates. Right.

Speaker A: So ultimate boss. Ultimate boss.

Speaker B: Ultimate boss. Yeah.

Speaker A: That's a great idea. I mean I think a tool like maybe like an unbounce even or something like that also because uh, you know, obviously Shopify from like a CPG standpoint or you know, E Comm would be great, but I know SaaS and other, you know, industries would love something like that too. I think that's a brilliant idea. And um, yeah, the right company could do that pretty easily. I would assume. They just, they have the data, it's just can't do. They know that they need to build that.

Speaker B: That's smart. I like that.

Speaker A: And ah, I don't know why because uh, I mean I know that you can do sections and there's different things where some basic stuff but really that's sort of just setting up an A B test. It's not really all that, you know, AI driven or data driven I guess, but.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Yeah, very cool. So maybe you should come up with that idea.

Speaker B: I know. Next business opportunity. Get out of the agency life.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, get out of the agency life. Uh, no. Uh. Okay, cool. Let's see. What direction do we want to go now? Do you have anything specific that you'd like to share? We've been talking for a little while now and um, I've had multiple questions come and go out of my mind. But so far I think we've talked about some interesting stuff. Um, what's on your mind that you would like to share with our listeners?

Speaker B: Uh, let's say, um, let's talk about agency life. Let's talk about what it's like to uh. Some things I've learned. Yeah. To scale. Um.

Speaker A: Perfect.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I think, well, let me just say, I'll tell you some big learnings. I had some epiphanies throughout this process.

Speaker A: Okay, do it.

Speaker B: Um, so one is, uh, and it came from this book, the E Myth where I just had to read in the book to really understand it. But you know, being a really good uh, professional in that whatever service you're providing. So, like, for me, it was like, media buying, uh, does not mean you have the skill set to actually run a business around it. Right? Those are two very different things. And so, like, you know, I was really good at media buying. I had a ton of experience. I worked in a lot of different contexts at a really high level. I had no clue what actually took to. To run a business. Right. Uh, so that is something I think is really important to understand that as good as you are or how much you know about a specific service that you want to provide as a business, um, you have to go learn those required, uh, like, business operator skills in order to run a successful agency. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah, man. I mean, this was a big problem for me, too. I think. I think it's, you know, everybody I've heard people compare it to, you know, the plumber who is great, uh, at doing what he does, but he is, as soon as he tries to scale and buy another truck, um, and get another plumber and grow, it's just hard to keep that quality. I mean, example being the kids who mow my. My lawn. You know, I was kind of giving them some business advice and stuff and helping them do some things and build a website and whatnot. And, um, they go, well, the problem is now we've hired some friends to do work for us, but they don't keep the same level of quality that we do. And I go, okay, now we're in an interesting business lesson at 16 years old instead of 35, right? The lesson being, how are we going to process this? How do we make it in such a way that we can sort of guarantee that we have this? And I told him. I was like, look, maybe you have them take a picture before and a picture after, and they have to send it to you, or, you know, there's some sort of easy check that they can have to make sure it's getting done in a quality manner. And a checklist. Here's what you do when you show up. Here's what you do when you leave. And I think that's for me. We also went through the E Myth, and then we went through the E Myth, uh, uh, training program that they have where they have, like, a coaching system. And this was about the time where we almost threw in the towel because we were totally getting hosed. We had built overbuilt our team underbuilt processes and systems, didn't have great tools in place for what we needed. And we're just kind of Running and gunning. And we're doing the exact problem that I'm describing now, which is we didn't have those processes. So quality sucked. Clients got frustrated. They were happy with working with me and my small team. And then when we expanded, things started going downhill. So funny that we're talking about the E myth. Maybe we can link to it or something. But, um, definitely a great resource for, for folks. If you haven't listened to it, at least listen to the book. Uh, or read the book.

Speaker B: For sure.

Speaker A: Um, it'll definitely help you get some good perspective. Um, okay. Sorry. Had to jump in there and say something.

Speaker B: But keep going. Oh, no, no. Yeah. I feel like, uh, when I talk about these things are probably triggering for you because if you talk, they're triggering.

Speaker A: Yeah, triggering for any agency owner.

Speaker B: Any agen owner. You say these things, you're like, I don't know. It's pretty funny.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anybody who's an entrepreneur, I think has experienced this, this pain point realizing that they. To get out of it being just another job, you're working for someone else. You have to be able to process and rebuild yourself. And the only way to do that is by literally spending the time. It's not that hard once you actually do it. It's just hard. The idea of it is difficult.

Speaker B: It's just. It's a different headspace. You have to just think differently and then start working on different things. I think, you know, you the idea of just working on the business instead of in the business. Right. You have to start really thinking in those terms instead of just trying to immediately put out fires all the time.

Speaker A: Uh, so do you have a coach or do you do anything like that, that that's uh, business or, you know, uh, even, um, you know, a C level kind of coach. Executive coach.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I've actually worked with three coaches at this point. Uh, and it's not like any of them were bad. And that's why I've worked with three different ones. It's. I worked with coaches I knew were specialized in a specific problem I was trying to solve or like a specific stage I was trying to grow past. And so I had coaches kind of get me through each, and I basically worked with them. Um, so each coach I probably worked with between like four and six months and then I would get another coach. But the other I, uh, would say the most m impact has been working, uh, or joining, uh, eo, uh, Entrepreneurs Organization. They have an accelerator called eoa and that accelerator is really good. Have you heard of the book called Scaling up, uh, by, uh, Vern Harness.

Speaker A: I have. Yes.

Speaker B: Yeah. So it's like the EOA is based on that book. And so it's like, okay, Scaling up is basically our, like, textbook. We, like, literally follow. Like, it's your bible. Yeah. Um, but that I thought was the most helpful for me to really understand what it means to start building a business and understanding business in terms of, like, this, like, emphasis, like this structure. And within that structure are different processes. And, you know, there are different, like, you know, uh, roles. They're different, you know, know, KPIs for each, you know, process or specific role within the company. And it's like, you start, like, understanding. It's all these different frameworks, and it's like, okay, like, all I have to do is start filling out these frameworks and then I, I start to build, like, a real, like, entity. Right. It's like a real kind of machine. And. And when I started thinking in those terms, it became much easier. So.

Speaker A: Definitely.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay. Um, so this is interesting. I'm looking at it right now. Entrepreneurs organization. Um, okay, cool. What do you say? What would you say? You have invested in your learning and coaching across this journey of you starting this agency. You're three years in, you're at the point where you're wildly successful and doing great and trying to scale more even at this point, um, and carefully, I'm sure you've invested into yourself, what have you. I mean, do you. You don't have to share exact numbers, but I'm curious. I think people would value and appreciate the idea of saying, instead of just investing in my business with new tools, systems, processes, people, I'm investing in myself as a founder, CEO and digital marketer to improve and be better. Um, I give one example. I was talking to a guy who is a business coach and potential, uh, investor and whatnot. And, um, he was telling us about his work. And at the business that he had, he blown it up. He had gone in and was just a financial guy, ended up becoming the CEO. Blew it up. Multi billion dollar deals, um, big acquisitions, giant stuff. He said his secretary came to him after a few years of this and said, hey, you've done great. The business is crushing it, but the culture sucks. People hate it here. There's a lot of politics, there's a lot of issues. And he sort of reinvented himself at that point to be able to make sure that he wasn't hindering his growth even more, you know, by being a poor leader, by being a, uh, you know, creating a culture that's. That's just not going to be as efficient. And I really appreciated that because most people stick to their ways. Most people stay in their ways. They're not looking to change when they get feedback.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But if you can be that person who can invest in yourself and see the value there and are willing to change and grow, then you might be, you know, jumping out of that hindrance. You're starting to actually improve yourself and your business. But it's a mindset change, too. So do you. I mean, what. What have you. What would you say? Time investment that you've sort of made and committed to that.

Speaker B: Yeah, I. Jesus hard to actually think about.

Speaker A: Uh, I mean, coaches are expensive.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So I would say tens of thousands of dollars likely for. For what you've invested.

Speaker B: Yeah. Each coach have definitely spent, um, more than $20,000 on, uh. Yeah. Right, good. Because they're like, between 2 and 3k per month. Uh, is what I would pay. And then I'm working with each of them four to six. Four to six months. So definitely, like, let's say over $60,000 in coaching for myself.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Um, and then I, you know, have invested in other areas too, where, like, I've, like, you know, like sales training. Um, also just a lot of time investing and, you know, like, learning about marketing. Um, uh, you know, a lot of time invested, uh, practicing, like, let's say, doing podcasts, like, things like that. Like, I've learned one thing is, is for a long period of time, I was deeply in operations, and I was heads down in the laptop all day. And I realized after a point, the agency is not going m to grow unless I do a better job talking to people, whether it's through, like a podcast or going to networking events and things like that. So I had to invest a lot of time kind of, uh, figuring out how best to talk to people in the most simple terms. Right. Like, how do I talk about the agency, how do I position the agency and, you know, how do I better structure, you know, how I talk about what we do, you know, come up with better descriptions, uh, of the impact we made on clients, all that good stuff. But it's like a lot of time invested on that. Right. Um, and, you know, I'm so in the weeds. We're just focused on what we're doing that, uh, I forgot that I actually need to take a step back and actually come up with kind of a good way of describing who we are and what we do. Right. Um, but I, I think it's massive time commitment and certainly over a hundred thousand dollars of money, uh, spent on it. Uh, and I think it's important to say that because it is worth it. Right. I've gotten. Yeah, I had the returns. So, um, and so for other people, it's like, it is worth investing these things 100 and to your point, like, you're doing this in order to change yourself for the better, and it does require time and money. Uh, and I think the more you invest in terms of time and money, the more you can change yourself and grow. Right? The faster you'll grow. So. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: And I mean, ideally, we're at a place, uh, you know, as an entrepreneur, everybody has their own motivation, but a lot of us have the motivation for freedom. I mean, the goal for me, when I was leaving sort of the, uh, world that I was living in before and working for other people, um, I had an offer from a guy who probably would have been my dream job. I mean, it literally came in right as I started my agency, and it was going to make great money. It was going to be probably pretty easy and, like, right down my alley. And I remember him asking, so, like, why are you not going to take this job? Like, you can just come here first and then start your company in a few years, you know, five years or something. I said, I really want freedom. Like, I really want to have freedom for my family. I want to be able to work from anywhere. I want to be able to talk to anyone whenever I want to and do the things that I want to do. And ultimately, that's a learning curve we've already talked about, because you do have to build the processes in order to do that. And then, um, from there, you've got to get into what you're talking about now, which is the investing in yourself and investing in your team and everyone else to make that commitment and keep moving forward. Um, but I think that's a great thing also to talk about, because everybody should have a coach. I mean, why would we not want to have someone who has a little bit more experience? And if we have to pay for it, go pay for it. It might make you tens of thousands of dollars a month more to have somebody who can at least keep you accountable, keep you motivated, keep you focused on the right areas, what you need to be doing. And, um, and another good point I want to point out too, is there are different coaches for different things. You might need someone for processes and internal work.

Speaker B: Great.

Speaker A: Hire that person, use them, get the information you need and move forward. And that's the whole goal of a coach. You might not need them forever. Um, you might need them for just a period, for a season of what you're working on. But don't forget also the personal side of things, too. Don't just get a business coach. Get somebody who can guide you from a managerial perspective and how you can do that. Um, and then books, too. I would say that I get a lot of recommendations from people like you and people on the podcast for books. I'm constantly trying to listen to a new book and at least just get something in the old steel trap to try to continue to progress that way. And that's a free way. I can't support it. Get out there and start reading, listening, watching some YouTube videos.

Speaker B: I love, uh, books. My kind of rule is books are cheat codes. Like, imagine you're playing a video game and you get a bunch of cheat codes in that game. You get, um, automatic upgrade, whatever it might be. Uh, a book is literally that. And think about it this way. A book is somebody spent their entire life doing one specific thing and they became truly exceptional at that thing and they decided to, as a legacy, to write a book about it. Right? And so you're reading someone's life, their life work, right? That's condensed to like 200 to 300 pages. Like, that is a cheat code. Like, it will upgrade something in your life if you do follow the. If you read it well and then apply those principles. So it's a total no brainer to read books. Uh, and then the other thing I've always done is if I'm trying to learn about something or solve a problem, I typically read three books about it. So I figure out the top three books that are written about that and I just go read all those free books. And then I have a much better idea of that specific problem I'm trying to solve. Right. And I always do that. And I think. And then obviously, yeah, to your point, like, there's so many good podcasts, there's so many good YouTube videos where there's just a massive amount of information out there that you can learn and become much better. It's just a time you have to put in. Um, and I would recommend yet on audiobooks or YouTube videos or podcasts, always just listening to them at 1.5 or 2x speed. Um, if you have a little bit of ADD is. You know, I might have. So yeah, M. Yeah, they need to. Over here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So.

Speaker A: So, yeah, no, definitely. In fact, sometimes I'll even Tell people to watch my videos on 1.7 speed or whatever. Like, so I'm like, it's a little, it's, you know, it's a five minute long, but you can watch it in three. I guarantee you just turn off. Um, so maybe I just need to produce them faster. But um, no, you know, the thing that I would say is the biggest, the most valuable resource that I should have done a lot longer ago is this podcast is a podcast like this for my agency, podcasts like this for the software company for Proof Social, and um, maybe even a personal branded podcast. Because there is no reason not to. And the reason to do it is simply to make a relationship with the person that you're talking to. And from there the side benefit is that you get listeners and you get information and you get to share that information with the people who want to come along for the ride.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But the most valuable benefit, especially in a Covid era where we are going to have more work from home for sure forever, is this connection that we have to have. And you mentioned it, you said, hey, it's not just the learning and this, it's going to the events. Well, this is one way that you can have that without having to be at all of the events. You can have people and have really, uh, custom conversations with the people that you want to have, um, and bring them on the podcast and talk to them about that. So it's another way. But it all comes back to the networking as well. So there's the investing in yourself, there's the investing in your business, and then there's the investing in your network. If you're not investing in your network, if you're not doing one of those three, you're probably, you need to, and you need to consider at least what that looks like and start something. Um, but it's so easy to sort of live inside your world, live with your own lead generation sources, your own conversion sources, and then also your current clients and not be investing in those relationships with other agencies, those relationships with other industries. Um, you just never know what that can lead to. Um, whether it's from a financial fundraising perspective like we are approaching, or from a customer acquisition perspective. It's a no brainer. I tell everybody that I know to start a podcast and do it because I really think it's a no brainer.

Speaker B: Well, yeah, I'm thinking of doing as well. So the main thing I'm trying to figure out is I get all these questions from clients that um, there's always someone that knows the answer better than I do. And so, you know, let's say the attribution question. I'm not a data scientist, Right. I didn't set up attribution software. Right. But I know people that have that. I always call if I really, I try to figure out one of these, like, particular, like, uh, questions that I really don't know how best to answer. I call up somebody, I'm like, hey, like, you know, how does this work? And they'll explain it to me. So what I want to do is have a podcast where I basically just ask those questions, uh, to people who know that specific thing significantly better than I do. Right. And I think I'm going to do that because I think it's. Those are questions I get from clients all the time. And so I think it's going to be great from an education standpoint where you can kind of hear from the horse's mouth about multiple, uh, you know, specific things in the digital advertising world. So. But for me, it's kind of an education.

Speaker A: And with that play.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, go ahead.

Speaker A: Oh, no, I was, I was just saying there's a delay there. Um, from that play, you're also talking about a retention play too. I mean, not only retention play, but, you know, you're opening yourself up to the network that those people have as well when they listen to you and interview you. I would say that there's a lot of benefit from that perspective. If there is another episode, maybe you do one episode a month or something like that that could be, um, directly with someone you think would be a potential customer, that would be a great play as well, because you don't need a huge acquisition channel. We've already talked about. You've got tons of referrals and tons of business. But if you could say, hey, these people did a really interesting marketing campaign last year. I can interview their CMO and bring him on to talk about that. And now I can build a relationship with that person who I want as a client. This is the person from, um, the ideal customer who's got tons of money, can look at, you know, ads library and see how much they're, they're spending or whatever and get, um, an idea of what that looks like. So I would highly suggest that be a consideration if you're looking to grow when you, when you get to that point.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, I appreciate that. That makes a lot of sense for sure. Cool.

Speaker A: Well, how. This has been fun, man. We've gone on for a decent amount of time. Is there any last, Last, uh, Thoughts that you want to leave with us. And then also is there anything that my listeners can go resources on your website? Resources, downloads, things that you think that they might find, um, informational and helpful that they should check out?

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. So you can check out our website at hstreetdigital co and we have a blog on that. You can read some of the stuff that we've written also too, if you check out our LinkedIn page at just Hstreet Digital on LinkedIn, uh, we have a decent amount of content we've been posting there as well as video, uh, clips from podcasts that I've done. Uh, and then in terms of anything I want to share, uh, one key thing about digital advertising, specifically performance advertising, is if you're going to do it well and you're truly going to scale well, it takes a long time. It's like, you know, the idea is like, let's say you're building a skyscraper. If you're going to build the Empire State Building, you need a really strong wide foundation and then you can build a good skyscraper on top of that. I think a big misconception that people have in this space is you can, uh, figure it all out in a matter of weeks. You can't like, unless your current agency is doing a terrible job, uh, you can't really solve for a whole lot of stuff in just a couple of weeks. It takes a lot of partnership. And that's what we found. Our most successful clients are ones that we've worked with for two years. Um, like one of them actually since the very beginning, since the three years we started. But uh, we've seen the most growth and most significant growth, um, from the, you know, the clients we've worked with the longest. Right. Because you're just kind of building and things compound over a long period of time. You can't just m. And I know a lot of agencies in the space, especially on the performance side, kind of offer, uh, month to month clauses or it's like we can turn it all around like two weeks. Right. Just not true. It just doesn't work that way. Unless whatever you're currently doing is so broken and so bad that whatever, you know, someone comes in who basically has like a decent knowledge of things, uh, they just kind of fix those massively broken areas, if that makes sense.

Speaker A: Which does happen from time to time.

Speaker B: Does happen for sure.

Speaker A: I mean you can definitely see some stuff where you're like, wow, this is. Yeah, yeah, I can do this. Yeah, um, no, that's, that's yeah, that's a good point. I think people are quick to follow the shiny object, especially today when new AI tools are popping up all day long saying, you don't need an agency anymore, you don't need a creative design team, you don't need a copywriting team. To some extent, they might be correct, but right now they're missing that experience that an AI will get probably pretty soon, but they're still at that point where, you know, it takes time to learn and grow and improve and to get to the ROAS that you're looking to accomplish and the CAC that you're looking to get to. It might take you a couple years or might take you six months. But the point is, I think what you go back to that testing mindset that will get you there, and then what cuts that even shorter is the experience level that guys like you and I have.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: To be able to. To add to that. That's why when somebody comes to me and they say, hey, your pricing's too high, I go, well, here's why. My pricing is that way. Do you. Have you talked to any agencies that have spent a million dollars a day? Have you talked to any agencies that have done, you know, xyz, number of leads and whatever before? No. Okay, well, that's, you know, that's why I'm. This price. And, you know, I'm not going to negotiate with you because I know why it's valuable. I know why it's worth it. Yeah. Um, cool, man. Well, Hal, thank you for your time, buddy. Check them out. H Street Digital. You can check out their, uh, website. You can check out LinkedIn, where they got some resources for you if you need to talk to them about running their ads. Uh, running your ads. Reach out. He is booked. But at the same time, for the right customer with the right fit, I'm sure that, uh, Hal will figure out and make it work. So, um, yeah, reach out. And, Hal, thanks so much, man. Appreciate your coming on the podcast.

Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun.