Season 4 Episode 4: How To March With Pace And Urgency

Michael Maher: Hello everybody, welcome to the longer game. We are deeper into season four now, which is kind of crazy to even think about. I didn't even want to start a podcast before I did this, but I had someone give me great advice, which was, if you can do it better, why would you not do it? That still remains to be seen.

However, we like to talk about retail, future of retail here on this podcast, and we bring on all kinds of people to help us to decipher what that actually means. Believe that the future of retail is just being omni-channel, but that goes way beyond Just being multi-channel and there's a lot of factors that that play are at play there people in retail people that are digital all that stuff today on the show. I have Matt Barney's the CEO of agility I'm gonna let him tell you a little bit about what he does.

So welcome Matt. Good to have you Matt Behrend: Yeah, thank you. Excited to talk today. So yeah, Matt Berend from Agility.

We ⁓ exist to mid-market companies the advertising stack. Sounds boring and undifferentiated. What focus on ⁓ is solving the problem ⁓ of measurement and targeting, so ⁓ brand advertising. So companies that to ⁓ make the jump from performance marketing and wrapping brand into it and measuring across channels and controlling audiences across channels.

Yeah, those are the things that we focus on. yeah, deep, deep in the brand advertising world and loving it. It's an incredibly exciting time for it. Michael Maher: When you talk about brand versus performance, can you just break that down a little bit more about how you view that, maybe how brands should be looking about it?

From my perspective on Amazon, we often talk about brand versus non-brand, and in my world, non-brand is all the stuff that just does not include your brand name because people are often searching for a generic thing like men's shirt versus unreal or DeKind and Maybe they are searching the brand as well too. this podcast will ⁓ be featured or sponsored by DeKind and Unreal. We'll see what happens when the episode goes live. ⁓ open to sponsorships.

But when I think about non-brand, I'm thinking about all the things that are generic that you want to win on so that you can bring people back to build brand awareness and then see your brand searches go up. And a lot of times people advertise on brand only. Matt Behrend: Yeah. Michael Maher: and it's traffic that they're already gonna win.

But that's like an Amazon perspective. What do you, when you think about brand versus performance marketing, how do you view that? Matt Behrend: Yeah, great question. We have this conversation constantly.

The world is really in a kind of transitional period right now around this. ⁓ most businesses in world have thrived on performance marketing for a long time, but the cost of entry, right, into ⁓ search and social has so low that there's just a lot competition and everybody has been feeling the cost of those channels driving up. So when we talk about brand advertising, we're talking about creating new buyers. we about performance marketing, typically in search and social.

⁓ It's channels that you to click, right? You expect ⁓ a conversion directly. ⁓ lot of companies look at their performance marketing and think about a conversion, ⁓ you know, tenure of seven days or less. the high end, 30 days, which magically happens to coincide with most companies' cookie policies.

So an interesting insight there. But ⁓ we talk about brand advertising, we're talking about ⁓ new buyers that aren't aware, aren't brand aware, ⁓ and aren't product aware. Or they have some awareness of those things, but they're not purchasing or not purchasing frequently enough. Couple of interesting insights.

⁓ Brand advertising has been proven now to be most effective when it's full funnel. So when somebody is experiencing performance marketing ads that a promotion of some kind or are incentivizing them to click, and other places in their digital time or digital attention, ⁓ they're experiencing advertisements that are more emotional based. They tell a story. helps people to feel connected to the brand, ⁓ that affinity, right?

⁓ word that we love to use, that we all love to use. But it doesn't mean a whole lot in our measurement. ⁓ When you're doing, yeah. Michael Maher: Sometimes you just feel like you're talking with someone and you're using all the words and you're just like, man, there's a lot of jargon in here.

Like I hear that in my own head and I'm like, ROAS and ACOS and or search equity and all this stuff. And I'm like, man, you really, really sound like a tool. But the thing is, it's, those are real. What I have learned is how I distill this down and just make it, how do we make it matter?

Matt Behrend: Yeah. Yeah, it's so true. Hmm. Michael Maher: to the brand?

I saying the thing that they need to know or am I trying to wow them with my knowledge or am I just naturally taking on this litany of of jargon? What really is applicable to them? And that gets me to think a little bit more. So I'm not saying you sound like a tool.

I'm saying I feel like I do because I'm using all the terms and then it's like, this word is starting to sound weird. I don't even know what it means anymore, which is, think, where you're at with affinity. Matt Behrend: Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I try not to say affinity a lot, but a lot of times that's word that people have been told, at least by consultants, like you should care a lot about brand affinity. But ⁓ reality is if I'm explaining this to a ⁓ grader, I'm saying think about your own experience in reality. You buy emotionally and you justify logically.

Buying emotionally comes from emotional storytelling and ads that help somebody connect personally and emotionally to a brand. think marketer believes that brand advertising is going to drive sales, ⁓ but now it's been really, ⁓ really difficult justify it because performance marketing measurement makes brand advertising look really bad. It just does. Michael Maher: If, if what?

If you're focusing on things like ROAS and other conversion-based metrics. Matt Behrend: Yes, you're, yes, yes, if you're focused on the short term. So it's one of those things like companies, it's unfortunate, but CMOs are the, they have the highest turnover rate of any executive, right, the C-suite. Their tenure on average is about 18 months in like companies with ⁓ between hundred million ⁓ and up.

pretty, pretty short for CMOs. it's unfortunately, at least from our research, we've found that it's because you bring a new CMO in, they cut spend, and all the numbers go up, right? Because ⁓ there's effects from advertising that don't show up in typical performance marketing. Those last, yeah.

Michael Maher: Yeah. You know, I gotta say though, if I were gonna be 18 months as a CMO, I think I could add a hundred million dollar plus company, I might be able to retire after doing that for 18 months versus being an entrepreneur. Just saying, it might be worth it. People see that on Amazon all the time where you spend and immediately things look good.

And then 30, 60, 90 days later, you start to notice the impact. And that's a rule in sales. ⁓ Matt Behrend: Do that a couple times. Yeah, well, yeah.

Yeah. Michael Maher: For any salesperson out there, know I've read a lot of books. One of them that I read that was great was called Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blunt. And he says there's a 30-day rule with a 90-day impact.

You stop prospecting for 30 days, everything will seem okay, but 90 days down the road, your prospects are immediately gonna dry up and it's gonna hurt, and then you're gonna start to do things based on universal law of need, which says, Matt Behrend: Yeah. Michael Maher: You I believe this is correct. The more you want and need something, the like harder you hold onto and cling to it. And that actually can end up a purging you.

So what you're saying, I think it is a, is a rule that is true across many different disciplines. Matt Behrend: Yes. Yeah, it's a good point. The companies that are winning today in today's market are the ones that can effectively combine performance marketing and brand advertising.

If you can do that effectively, you have a huge competitive advantage because many, companies cannot. The marketing teams just haven't figured out to report to the CFO anything that's acceptable other than efficiency metrics like ROAS and other things like that. So it's an interesting time. Michael Maher: If you look at brand versus performance marketing from a consumer perspective, I would liken it to...

Coca-Cola that's a brand ad. The trucks and the polar bear and all that stuff, all the stuff you see at the Super Bowl, that's brand marketing or brand advertising. And ⁓ everything you're seeing on Meta, Instagram, Facebook, whatever, that's more like performance marketing. Does that sound right?

Matt Behrend: Yep. Well, I'll give a caveat. ⁓ yes, we the same definition of performance marketing. It's basically search and social, it's stuff that's clickable.

The content, nature of it tends to be really promotional. Brand advertising, ⁓ emotional storytelling, and it's typically through channels. You can do it for sure on Meta. Michael Maher: Okay.

Matt Behrend: ⁓ You can obviously it in some of Google's ecosystem like display ads YouTube and things that. But ⁓ typically ⁓ where are a lot of successes on the open internet, so you're looking at CTV, ⁓ OLV, streaming TV, is actually, if done correctly, can perform really well. that the big difference between what Coke is doing, so that the biggest best brands have always been able to leverage brand advertising effectively because they had large enough budgets to just flood every channel.

Michael Maher: Isn't that amazing what happens when you just got a bunch of cash that you can like pump in? My accountant has wisely said like sales heals, heals our covers all wounds, which like up to a certain point, but like it does. And if you've got more money, you can drive sales. Matt Behrend: It's amazing.

Fill the top of the funnel. Fill the freaking top of the funnel, But so you have a wise accountant. yeah, what those guys have done. Now, in the last of years, technology has evolved enough that the way that the brands have always done brand advertising is now accessible to pretty much any company.

⁓ So changed is you can Michael Maher: Yeah. Matt Behrend: hyper-targeted audiences and advertise only to those audiences across channels. ⁓ can control frequency across channels. You're not wasting a lot of ad dollars to people that aren't your target customer.

So you're running TV ads, they're now only your customer, the most likely people to buy, are going to see those ads. even though the CPMs on CTV be pretty can look scary high, but they're incredibly effective and totally worth it. the that you described Coke in performance marketing, the difference is the way that Coke advertises that like powerful emotional storytelling that's everywhere all time, you can create, you don't need much frequency, you just don't need it. the...

⁓ ⁓ Now it can be controlled and precise. You can create that kind of experience just for your customers. It's pretty cool. How do do it?

⁓ Well, the secret, I mean, ⁓ technology exists now. So we integrated the channels. ⁓ integrated the data. now you can take, like on Meta, for example, you can only use their audiences, right?

Michael Maher: How do you do that? Tell us the secret. Matt Behrend: in the, what done is we've taken all these data sources, behavioral, contextual, social, financial, know, ⁓ purchase data, like what ⁓ purchase data from and Walmart ⁓ and others. we've all of that data and then layered AI onto it.

So you can basically tell it, like, who are you trying to target just completely qualitatively? and it will pull all of that together and say, okay, we're gonna combine these data sources to create this audience. So you don't have to pick channels anymore. That's why brand advertising is accessible to everybody.

You used to have to make big bets on individual channels and then do it across enough channels that you got enough frequency to ⁓ that mind share. If you're top of mind, they're not ready to buy yet, but if you stay top of mind, the theory is they'll buy once they're ready to buy. Michael Maher: Yeah. Matt Behrend: but that was too expensive for a lot of companies, It wasn't just that they couldn't measure it, it actually was too expensive.

And so now, yeah. Michael Maher: too expensive because you also could not the gestational period to actually Get to the point where people are ready to convert For brands could be a lot longer if you're talking about a $300 jacket versus a $25 Cell phone case like those are very different timelines to actually convert and potential potential need so like Yeah, maybe you could flood it for a certain period of time, but to get to that conversion, it was way too expensive. You just run out of cash, right?

Okay. Matt Behrend: Right, exactly. Yeah, so definitely on the product. Now can say like, hey, here's my first party data, ⁓ give an amazing lookalike audience that combines all the different audience data types, ⁓ and only advertise to ⁓ those across all these different channels.

Like, I don't wanna show ads to anybody else. So that's possible now. And... The other thing that the technology can do now is it used to be like you would buy on linear TV, for example, you would run a TV spot for a set period of time and they're sort of giving you like vague answers about how many people you're reaching, et cetera.

Michael Maher: It'll run between one and six a.m. And you'll reach anywhere from a thousand to two hundred fifty thousand people Matt Behrend: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Which is ridiculous and only the only giant enterprises could afford to make bets like that, right? It's frustrating. Michael Maher: Also, if you can afford to make a bet like that, why wouldn't you make a bet on a different time? Other thing I mean that's a very broad range but still I'm sure there's like just the bad spots that you don't want to Be in that you're like, okay.

Well, I guess I have to settle but as you're saying this I'm also thinking Yes, meta is a performance marketing channel, but what if and it sounds like this is what you're doing at agility Matt Behrend: I know. Yeah. Michael Maher: By the way, that's Matt's company. So you guys should check out of Jilly.

What is your URL? Tell people what your URL is. OK. That's great.

I an URL Let's just put it that way. Not like that crazy, but I've got all my daughters, like her name and all that stuff. I've got that for her if she ever wants to. So I'm going to sell it to her.

She's not going to just get that for free. She's going to have to buy that for me. ⁓ I'll ⁓ it to her. Matt Behrend: Agilityads.

com, agilityads.com. ⁓ cool. Yeah.

I love it. Michael Maher: Only teasing maybe, we'll see. I will buy URLs sometimes and it's funny, anything that's not a .com, my wife is like, I don't wanna hear about it.

It's not real, it's not whatever. co I think still works, .ai could work, but there is something to be said about a .com.

like agilityads.com, that's kind of amazing that you guys got that. Matt Behrend: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we are about seven years old and that doesn't seem like a lot of time, but yeah, I guess we got lucky.

We've got a bunch of URLs that, I don't know what we'll do with them, but as a company, just sort of like think, it's like, oh, we might use that someday and you go grab it. So we've got like, yeah. Michael Maher: Yeah, yeah. Well, it's like there's a lot of non-brand URLs.

It's like you could run a marketing campaign. People don't think it's a brand advertisement because it's unbranded. then it takes you to information about something. Like those are the URLs that you have.

Okay. Matt Behrend: Yeah. Right, yeah, yeah, we've got some of those. Precisionadvertising.

com, bunch of variations of that. fact, is like, for people that are, that's a great way to summarize what we do. It's precision brand advertising. ⁓ Michael Maher: Ooh.

Okay, yeah, because you're giving people attribution to a brand that normally you would not be able to have. And I think there's this juxtaposition that you and I have talked about before, just maybe not recorded, was what big brands versus small brands do well. Or maybe it's legacy versus emerging. And emerging could be ⁓ 10 years.

Legacy to me is like 50 ⁓ more years, maybe it's publicly traded now. Matt Behrend: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Michael Maher: but you look at what they do well and big brands do some things well and they do some things poorly.

And these emerging brands do things well and they do things poorly. And the big brands, I think are great at awareness because they've got the budgets. They understand brand really well, not always the consumer, but they understand brand really well and how to create a cohesive brand and the psychology behind that. They've got R &D down, they've got supply chains down.

What emerging brands I think do really well is they take on new channels. They can be quick to market. They don't have bureaucracy get through all those decisions. And so they can start to win on Amazon or win on direct to consumer.

Whereas these other bigger brands like, ⁓ digital, we'll get to that when we need to. And then it's like, now there's this brand that's doing 100 million dollars and they're taking on one of our legacy brands and taking market share from us. But then these these emerging brands are so focused on performance and on conversion that they forget. Matt Behrend: Meh.

Michael Maher: to build the additional audience and then they're just fishing out of the same pond over and over and over again. And there has to be somewhere in the middle, I think, that they meet. Matt Behrend: Yeah, it's this, yeah. Yeah, totally.

It's that 95.5, right? 5 % of your addressable market is in market, actively trying to buy right now. And everybody in performance marketing is fighting for that 5%.

There's a massive number of potential buyers that was, and this is the whole point, right? It's too expensive for small companies for sure. Mid-market companies, it was a lot of times prohibitively expensive. Michael Maher: Mm.

Matt Behrend: And so enterprises were the only ones that could access the broad market and create new buyers all the time. like you alluded to a second ago, that's kind of the other really exciting thing about how ⁓ and the advertising space has evolved recently. So now you can hyper target across channels. So we talked about ⁓ other thing is you can measure incrementality.

You prove it. ⁓ can. the to do it is you run ⁓ randomized control when you launch a brand, when you launch brand advertising, like cross channel hyper-targeted brand advertising, you still run everything else. You can still make all the changes that you want to, keep optimizing, that's fine.

problem with any time you launched a new channel, especially with these emerging companies like you're talking about, you'd launch it and then ⁓ measurement was really fuzzy. It's like, who's taking credit for this? Like we got more impressions. How do we know what the, ⁓ how much...

Michael Maher: Metta, Metta's taking credit for it, that's who's. Matt Behrend: Meta and Google for sure. know, one of the more, yeah, was anyway, there a company that had a partnership with Google and they integrated into GA4 and ⁓ it ⁓ they ran CTV. And so ⁓ it this big exciting thing.

Everyone thought it was gonna be like, ⁓ my gosh, we can finally like measure the exact impact, the incremental impact of CTV on, through Google, single source of truth. ⁓ And it just apart because Google's like, no, we're taking credit. That's ours. So whole credit thing, ⁓ the way to correct it is a randomized control trial.

So when you launch brand, you have to randomize a portion of the audience into a control group that receives no brand advertising. And it has to be randomized. ⁓ It's not enough to do geo holdout or other types of like that. Michael Maher: Oh my gosh.

Yeah. Matt Behrend: If you randomize it, you control for all those different variables, know, what you're doing in your other advertising and things like that. Yeah. Yeah, true AB, ⁓ the most most rigorous way possible.

This is ⁓ level of rigor in the data science that you would see in like a pharmaceutical study or something. So you randomize control group, then you've got your treatment group. And then ⁓ because you that, you can actually measure Michael Maher: It's like creating a true A-B experiment. OK.

Okay, yeah. Matt Behrend: impact across all every KPI. You can see lift between the, you can see the lift in the treatment group versus control group in everything. And when you take that to the CFO and it's like, here you go.

There's no art that the CFO is not like, well, that's not a, that's not ROAS, you know, that makes sense to them because they can see things like our, our meta spend. our conversion rate in Metta increased two and a half times in the treatment group compared to the control group. I know, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

that, mean, when you're dealing with the level of complexity in the ⁓ advertising stack today, five channels and they don't talk to each other, ⁓ pulling all together is a nightmare. So we just pulled all the data into one platform and... Michael Maher: sounds like a pharmaceutical study. The treatment groupers.

I know. Matt Behrend: introduce some crazy, awesome, powerful data science and. Michael Maher: We just no big deal. just yeah crazy data science and we can actually show people incrementality We can ⁓ help people to access brand advertising when they couldn't before no big deal guys Matt Behrend: Hahaha.

Yeah. Yeah, no big deal, no big deal. It's, Michael Maher: There are companies I know who will utilize like IROAS. Like what is our incremental return on ad spend, which you're actually able, like, and that they must've been guessing, but it sounds like you are actually able to measure that.

Matt Behrend: Yeah, we can show that with the most rigorous data science that exists today. Yeah. Michael Maher: I was gonna say before that, which is, that's incredible that you guys can do that, agilityads.com.

That's a great URL, I'm just saying it again to help plug you guys. But you think about a channel like Meta, yes, it's more performance, but imagine performance marketing base. Imagine if someone saw brand advertisement on and then also saw it on Facebook. Matt Behrend: Yes.

Michael Maher: Saw it on Instagram or something like that that to me builds continuity a way ⁓ ⁓ drives a connection while also building awareness Which now they are on Instagram and they could go to your profile or on Facebook now You're driving what could be a conversion because now they've seen you multiple times That to me is is really powerful more powerful than just hey, we're running a sale. We're running a promo get a conversion But get a customer maybe now for life because you built that connection.

So I'm almost like slowly dating someone, right? Getting to know them, becoming their friend instead of just, you know, the, quick hit. We'll call it on the, on the conversion side. Like you're actually building a long time partnership.

I don't know many, I haven't also researched this, but I don't know many marriages that are like, man, we just hooked up one night and then we were married and it was the best marriage ever. Like, Matt Behrend: Yeah. Yeah. Michael Maher: You get to know someone a little bit over time, but that to me is way more worth it.

Matt Behrend: Yeah. It is. That is how people actually buy. You actually buy over a long period of time courting a brand.

For the most part. Some products, sure, that can be different. know, like recently I bought some, ⁓ like creatine supplement. Because I was reading about how it does cool things to your brain, like ⁓ mental and also I'm Michael Maher: Dude, it's insane how much more popular that's gotten.

And Creatine's been around for a long, long, long time. Matt Behrend: Yeah, when I was in high school, creatine was for the meatheads. And I tried it once and I was super excited. I thought I was gonna get jacked.

But now, yeah, I've to Yeah, now that I'm getting older, I'm like, I could use some additional mental clarity. Let's give it a shot. But thinking about, that was, I saw Michael Maher: Yeah, and then you're like, oh, I have to work out too. I gotta lift weights, damn it!

And eat more food. Matt Behrend: things about that over a six month time period. And most companies are limiting their window for the window that they allow themselves ⁓ win a customer to like seven days, 30 at the most. ⁓ for a lot of products, it's more like six months.

For some products, it's a year. yeah. ⁓ Michael Maher: Yeah. Yeah.

That's a lifestyle change too, like adding a supplement like creatine, you know, is not, again, not, you're like, if you're a normal, I think, consumer, you want to do a little bit of research to make sure you're making the right choice. Matt Behrend: Yeah, exactly. I tried to go on Amazon and buy it and I was overwhelmed with the options and went, some of these, like some the reviews I'm reading are saying that the ingredients here aren't real. And then there's like, but what, you know, there's some like, ⁓ this was sourced from China and something about the quality, you know, wasn't there.

So ⁓ it, I buy. Michael Maher: Yeah. What is creatine HCl versus or HCI versus creatine monohydrate? Is there efficacy in a gummy versus just a regular powder?

Do I need this flavor? Do I need single serve? Like it's, it is a little bit overwhelming. Matt Behrend: ⁓ right.

Yeah, you've shopped for it, I can tell. Yeah. Yeah. Michael Maher: I use, I do use creatine.

I did not even know about the cognitive benefits until I'd been using it. I've gone like back and forth, but like I don't take a ton of supplements other than like fish oil a good multivitamin. I take some extra iron because sometimes I can get anemic and then magnesium ⁓ ⁓ and like protein I consider to be a supplement. But like I'm not taking a bunch of things because At some point maybe I don't take a pre-workout or I don't take all these other things like there are other natural things that I can do to recover but like creatine is like an easy one that does help.

I can't say I've noticed a like cognitive benefit. I've already got like a lot of like good veins like I can donate blood really well but like I do feel like it's increased vascularity like crazy like sometimes my veins will pop and I'm like I should just put a needle in right now and draw blood for myself and then go to Hocksworth and and give it to them. But a lot of people are taking it for the cognitive And people are targeting women now. Like it's not just a meathead thing anymore.

Matt Behrend: Yeah, there's, There's, yeah. Right, yeah, totally. fact, I got made fun of it. One of our investors ⁓ like, you're taking Crete because he was still thinking of it as like meathead.

Tried make fun of me and then I was like, go look at it, The world said ⁓ it's different. ⁓ Michael Maher: Yeah. And then did he apologize to you or no, he didn't. It was an incredible experience.

And now I'm renewing my vows and he's going to be my best man. And my vow renewal. Matt Behrend: very sincerely, we hugged it out, know, tears were shed. It's incredible.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we got there. But, but yeah, it's I mean, the shopping journey, crazy. ⁓ we know how people buy, because it's how we buy.

But technology didn't enable it. So it's a pretty exciting time. The the injection of channels merging and being able to measure incrementality. And actually one of the coolest things is that you can actually project, you can measure pipeline value created and project future revenue from brand advertising.

Yeah. Yeah. So you can go to a CFO and say, hey, this $500,000 that we spent on brand advertising. Michael Maher: Wow, that's insane.

Matt Behrend: is projected to create this much revenue over the next six months, which was impossible for. Michael Maher: with how much accuracy you're doing that with agility, that what you're saying? And how much accuracy do you have with those projections? Matt Behrend: ⁓ huh, yeah.

⁓ It's pretty accurate. can't, I mean, we released that product in August, so it hasn't been long enough yet for us to say like, ⁓ we're accurate within a 5%, you know, but it's working. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I would be.

Michael Maher: But honestly, 15%, 20 % would be incredible. Hey, would you like to make $800,000 or $600,000? Both. Matt Behrend: Yeah, both.

But the big problem was this when you're going to the, you know, if let's say you're the head of digital and you're going to the CMO and the CMO is going to the CFO or the board trying to secure these budgets, you just couldn't give any concrete data to justify like, hey, we need to keep up this spend. Because the problem with brand advertising is if you stop, the benefits continue for a little while. It's that Michael Maher: Either one. Yeah.

Matt Behrend: anecdote that we talked about when a CMO gets in and they cut spend and everything looks more efficient for a while. Everyone's excited. It's like, ⁓ our new CMO is so talented. the reality is, yeah, right.

And enjoy too. ⁓ Yeah, we're efficient. Yeah, right. Michael Maher: Yeah.

All he did was this, or she did was this. Turn the faucet up. Look at how much less we're wasting. We're thirsty though.

We need water. Now please turn the faucet back on. Matt Behrend: So they'll so anyway, so it projects the future value. But if you cut spend, there's some lagging effects.

It'll it'll keep going up, meaning that the the return for that ad spend will keep growing. then it'll drop. So ⁓ we see companies doing that all the time, where they're like, they have their old habits. And so they'll they'll be like, seems to be working.

And then something will happen in their business. And they're like, take money from brand because, you know, old habits. They'll take money from brand, they'll like, see, it's still going. So we would have closed that revenue anyway, right?

That's always the fear is like, well, we actually need the brand? We probably would have gotten sales anyway. Thankfully you can prove that now, but with the randomized control trials. Anyway, ⁓ CFOs can look at it and say, okay, I've got ⁓ forward data that actually helps me cash plan in a that allows me to justify the marketing team using performance and brand together.

Michael Maher: You talked about how your company is seven years old and what you guys believed in. I've always said that regardless of what your religion or faith is, I think there are lot of parallels between faith in God being an entrepreneur. But regardless of ⁓ you believe in that, you have to have an extreme amount of faith in what you're doing to believe in that to keep going. you playing the long game, which is essentially what you're helping brands do.

now, right, is hey, don't just focus on the short, quick conversion, the quick hit, but build business, create new business. You could have gone and just created another performance marketing agency or something that measured performance marketing even more efficiently, but instead you are building a new audience with what you were doing. Can you just give us a little insight into that journey of seven years ago to now and what that looks like? Matt Behrend: Yeah, so it's pretty interesting.

So years ago, ⁓ company started as a basically display retargeting ⁓ agency. ⁓ I didn't it. about four years in, I'm a technology entrepreneur, SaaS entrepreneur. So I came in, bought that agency ⁓ from the original It was a perfect launch pad for the vision that my partners and I had, was what we've been talking about today, merging channels, layering in AI, ⁓ ⁓ didn't have the AI vision yet, layering in the measurement.

And then in the last two years, we've layered in AI. The journey has been one of keep the team together and don't run out of cash because there's a huge opportunity here. And it has, like to what you're saying, I've had to ask for faith essentially from the team so many times to say, know, hey, because again, a lot of these innovations have only come to market in August and some of them are the first in the world. ⁓ So the, and we've, you some people have left along the way and said like, Michael Maher: Yeah, sure.

That's insane. Matt Behrend: I don't think this is ever going to happen. Cool vision, but it's too difficult. So yeah, it's been really hard.

But that's kind of the game in technology entrepreneurship. have to stay committed and ⁓ with pace and urgency long enough without running out of cash. And enough people believing, including your investors, ⁓ until results start to come. revenue results, right?

Market starts to say, the market starts to prove to you that you have product market fit because they're buying at a really efficient rate. Close rates go up, you start retaining almost all your clients, ⁓ kind of thing. Michael Maher: If we have not, kudos to you guys for just staying in it, if we as humans have not learned by now that there will never be anything new if we don't try to make and do new things and have faith that those new things will come to fruition, we will just be doing the same shit over and over and over and over again.

How many times have we also heard so like if we don't learn that by now, maybe we never will but how many times have we heard stories about people laughed in his face 20 banks said no this person said no blah blah blah and it's like you have to be so Determined and believe in what you're doing that You're willing to risk it all for that vision to come to fruition and then everyone ends up getting to benefit from it Like my wife and daughter and I are huge Disney World fans. So we go there a lot Matt Behrend: Yeah.

Michael Maher: Like just the vision that Walt had in what he was doing, the amount of times he had to reinvent himself. If he had given up after one or two or five failures or people were like, why are you making an animated movie a full length feature? That's so stupid. Like the amount of criticism that you have to face push past, and I like how you said to march with pace and urgency until you see the results are to come.

think you just keep getting the same things over and over. We never ⁓ anything new. New ⁓ new revenue streams, new experiences for our family. You don't do that.

You just get the same thing over and over again. Matt Behrend: Yeah, man, you're speaking my language. Somebody a long time ago, had a mentor, her name was Linda. She believed in me.

This is about 15 years ago now. She believed in me like nobody else ever had. And she gave me a vision of myself, of what was possible with enough persistence that... Michael Maher: Mm.

Matt Behrend: helped me believe that I could do things that these other entrepreneurs have done. And interesting is once I got that self belief, the next lesson that I learned was, man, it has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with the incredibly talented people around me. Those are the that are making it happen, solving the incredibly difficult problems, We have a brilliant head of data science, a brilliant head of product.

brilliant head of our client services. All these incredible, our creative team's amazing, our engineers are amazing. just worked so hard to get incredible people. And ⁓ is the sole reason why we've been able to have some ⁓ really powerful breakthroughs.

Michael Maher: Everybody needs a Linda sounds like, which is incredible to have that that gets you to believe in yourself to know that you also can't do it alone. So it helps breed some humility in you to then get the right team around you ⁓ do that. Not enough to only believe in yourself because I think that's a, a, a place for, for failure to abound. But if you ⁓ then yourself with the right people, there's a, there's a humility there that breeds results or success.

Matt Behrend: Yeah. Yeah, and frankly, just getting into the tactics of it, just being generous with equity. People need to have meaningful ownership. need to, if there's a win, if you're building towards a win and there's a lot of sacrifice involved, that win has got to be real.

that's something I believe in personally, especially in a startup environment where you're not, there's not. Michael Maher: Hmm Matt Behrend: there's not as high of salaries to be given out because you're reinvesting in the company and trying to grow. And you're sacrificing some cash along the way for potentially a ⁓ stock value down the road. So there are some things like that that matter a lot, but man, we're ⁓ the of it right now.

Michael Maher: Yeah. Matt Behrend: years and years away from an exit, but it's really exciting to have finally gotten this product to market and seeing companies absolutely crushing it with it. Michael Maher: That's insane. It's amazing.

sounds like Linda might've been a, CS Lewis fan, which he is famously quoted talking about humility. I don't know why this is something that's not in my, on my mind right now, but he just said, humility is not thinking less of yourself. It's thinking of yourself less. So you in what your capabilities ⁓ of but it's also being there to serve the team and be around you.

And sounds like that's served you really well. Matt Behrend: We'll see. We'll see. Yeah.

Michael Maher: At least up until this point dude, you've been you've been great The story is amazing and what you're doing with agility, honestly, it sounds incredible So I can't wait for people to experience that Matt if people want to know more about what you're doing Where can they find you at the gym? Snort and creatine because you're now ready to get jacked or and you want to be clear-headed or where can they find you? Matt Behrend: Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, hit me up at the gym. No, just kidding. ⁓ Never interrupt my workout. ⁓ Michael Maher: You Do not talk to me.

Matt Behrend: No, that's not at all. Please interrupt. agilityads.com is a great place.

LinkedIn, obviously, if you just want to send a direct message, I actually do check those. I literally have to have somebody help me sort through all that. LinkedIn's crazy now. But yeah, message me on LinkedIn or through our website, agilityads.

com. Michael Maher: ⁓ yeah. Love it. Thanks for going on.

That's all we got for you today, people. So you don't got to go home, but I don't know what you got to do, but we just don't have anything else. So that's it. We'll talk to you next time.

Cheers. Matt Behrend: Yeah.